Plays

In a quiet West Country village on Ascension Day, the gentle curate Michael Strangway leads a confirmation class that becomes a tender, lightly comic meditation on faith, forgiveness, and the hard edge of ordinary life. His questions to a group of rough-edged village girls reveal both his spiritual intensity and his painful distance from the world around him, especially as gossip about his absent wife begins to surface. When Mercy brings in a caged skylark, Strangway frees it, insisting that wild things belong to the sky, not captivity, and the moment crystallizes the play's concern with mercy, freedom, and the cost of Christian ideals. That moral tenderness is tested by village rumor and private heartbreak. Mrs. Burlacombe and Mrs. Bradmere police the household and probe the scandal surrounding Beatrice Strangway and Dr. Desart, while Jim Bere, disabled and vulnerable, comes to Strangway for help, showing the curate as a refuge for the wounded. Beatrice's secret return brings emotional catastrophe: she admits her love for another man, then begs Strangway not to divorce her because it would ruin the man she truly loves. Strangway, shattered, finally lets her go, choosing mercy over possession. Alongside this domestic tragedy, the play widens into a sharp social comedy of class, labor, and reform. Mrs. Lemmy's earthy wit, a Park Lane gathering shadowed by public unrest, and Lord and Lady William's awkward philanthropic reception all expose the uneasy collision between privilege, activism, and the working lives that sustain them. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.