The Private Secretary

The Private Secretary (1883) is a three-act comedy by English actor and playwright Charles Hawtrey. Adapted from a popular German farce, The Private Secretary helped launch Hawtrey’s career as one of Victorian England’s leading theatrical figures. Initially panned by critics and audiences, The Private Secretary was revised and shortened by Hawtrey, who then restaged the play to resounding praise. Revived countless times throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Private Secretary is a comic masterpiece that set the stage for such playwrights as Oscar Wilde. Harry Marsland and Douglas Cattermole are two young friends who find themselves deeply in debt. Ever unwilling to take responsibility, they look to Robert Spalding, a clergyman as honest as he is innocent, for a way out. While Spalding is employed as a secretary for the Marsland family, Douglas…borrows…his identity in order to seek forgiveness from his creditors. Meanwhile, Douglas’ uncle returns from India and mistakes the unwitting clergyman for his nephew and precedes to berate him for his newfound silence and passivity. When a suspicious creditor uncovers their poorly concealed plan, the two friends must bribe him with a chance to stay at Harry’s family estate, which only further risks the chance of Spalding getting to the bottom of his own strange situation. The Private Secretary is a comedy of manners that dissects English aristocratic life in order to expose its capacity for vanity, greed, and exploitation. This edition Charles Hawtrey’s The Private Secretary is a classic work of English comedy reimagined for modern readers.

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