Pinero: From Farce to Social Drama

THE REPUTATION OF ARTHUR WING PINERO IS CURIOUSLY SPLIT. In the theatre, he is remembered as the author of the Court farces — The Magistrate, The Schoolmistress, Dandy Dick — and of Trelawny of the 'Wells,' all of which are frequently revived and greeted with enthusiasm, while his serious pieces have lain neglected for at least a generation. But for critics, theatre historians, and the compilers of anthologies, he is primarily the author of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, a play that would be dangerous to any author's reputation, "a brilliant pastiche of Ibsen, grafted on an ordinary commercial melodrama of coincidence." Perhaps the reluctance of academic critics to acknowledge that farce is a form worthy of attention has had something to do with this: Allardyce Nicoll's remark that "Pinero, whose training had been in farce, discovered his real strength in a kind of tragic drama” suggests that while farce may be a good school for the beginner, the techniques learned in it need to be applied in more serious work.