Four Plays

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. A. A. Milne's Four Plays opens with the sparkling social comedy To Have the Honour, a drawing-room farce of dinners, flirtation, and carefully managed appearances. In the Battersbys' country cottage, Angela prepares for the arrival of Prince Michael of Neo-Slavonia while her father Simon fusses over wine, cigars, and the proper rituals of hospitality. Around them, Jennifer, Robert Holt, Ethel, Mrs. Faithfull, Imogen, and Dr. Ainslie bring their own blend of wit, vanity, curiosity, and skepticism, turning royal expectation into a lively satire of class, nationality, etiquette, and romantic possibility. Milne's dialogue is brisk and affectionate, exposing snobbery and social posing while keeping the mood light, teasing, and charmingly absurd. The later domestic comedy traces a different kind of confusion, as Ariadne's disappearance sparks alarm, theories of elopement, and talk of divorce, only for the supposed scandal to collapse into a misunderstanding about trains and timing. John's indignation, Hector's practical cleverness, and Ariadne's cool literalism drive the scene, creating a sharp portrait of marriage, misunderstanding, and the comic gap between emotion and common sense.