The Colonel
1881
F. C. Burnand
N/A
British
Play
N/A pp
Gay Men, Satire
OLIVE. We may learn much from a teapot.
MRS. B. To draw?
OLIVE. To contemplate the harmony of colour and the beauty of form. The nearer to the Great Ideal Perfection it may be the more must we energise to live up to it!
MRS. B. I understand living up to my income, but not up to my teapot.
Summary
An comdedy satire of the aesthetic movement, particularly inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and based on the play “Le Mari à la Campagne” (1844). Two aesthetes attempt to convert a man's wife and mother-in-law to Aestheticism to inherit their fortune; the man's friend, the Colonel, attempts to restore order.
More Info
First performed at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre in 1881.
More information is available at the The Nineteenth-Century Marteau.
Content & Trigger Warnings
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Editions
N/A