Four Plays by Arthur Wing Pinero: ‘The Magistrate’, ‘Trelawny of the “Wells”’, ‘The Thunderbolt’, ‘The Second Mrs Tanqueray’

Abstract

Pinero’s outstanding characteristics as a playwright are his versatility, his brilliant stagecraft, the depth of his psychological understanding, particularly of women, and his deterministic philosophy and ironic view of life. His versatility is amply illustrated by the different genres to which the plays discussed in this chapter belong: comedy-farce (The Magistrate), sentimental comedy (Trelawny of the ‘Wells’), satiric social comedy (The Thunderbolt) and tragic drama (The Second Mrs Tanqueray). Only in social comedy did any other English dramatist of his time come near him in achievement; and that was Henry Arthur Jones. Oscar Wilde’s plays are wittier in language, but, with the exception of The Importance of Being Earnest, weak in structure and derivative in plot.