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Married Life: A Comedy, in Three Acts

Chapter 12: Transcriber’s Note
By John Baldwin Buckstone
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About This Book

A three-act comedy follows several married couples through a series of misunderstandings, jealousies, and domestic quarrels that expose the foibles of conjugal life. Scenes move between private apartments, a drawing room, and a boarding house as characters negotiate gossip, imagined infidelities, and social pretensions; comic reversals and mistaken assumptions escalate tensions before reconciliations and social lessons are reached. The tone balances satire of marital manners with farcical situations and witty exchanges, using stock character types to critique vanity, jealousy, and the performative aspects of polite society.

Transcriber’s Note

Two sets of images of the same edition were used in this transcription. The first, digitized by the Internet Archive from a copy made available by the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto, is posted at:

archive.org/details/populardramasasp00buckuoft

The text of Married Life begins at p. 386. The second, digitized by Google from a copy made available by the British Library, is posted at:

books.google.com/books?id=JdhZAAAAcAAJ

In general, the grammar and spelling in the source text have not been changed, and no attempt has been made to make the spelling consistent. For example, the contraction for “will not” is spelled both “wont” and “won’t”, and “secrecy” is also spelled “secresy”. Emendations were made to correct for minor printing problems.

The following changes were made to the text:

  • For consistency, the formatting of names in stage directions has been standardized throughout the text: small caps in the html version and all caps in the text version. The abbreviations “Mr.” and “Mrs.” have been transcribed consistently with a period.
  • p. 11: Lynx. (Looking off, L. H )—They’re your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Coddle—Inserted a period after “L. H”.
  • p. 17: Mrs. Ly. (Looking off, L. H,)—Who is this?—Changed the comma after “H” to a period.
  • p. 18: Young Allow me to tell Mrs. Lynx—Inserted a period after “Young”.
  • p. 23: They approach the L H. door—Inserted a period after “L”.
  • p. 24: (she sinks into a chair )—Inserted a period after “chair”.
  • p. 25: Young. You shall uot—(without.)—Changed “uot” to “not”.
  • p. 43: “The monster to whom you are married. . .”—No attempt was made to reproduce the convention in the source text of single quotation marks printed down the left margin indicating that the text is part of a continuous quote.
  • p. 44: Ah, this door—(pointing R. H )—leads to the canal—Inserted a period after “R. H”.
  • p. 52: Lynx. I am not in search of her—Changed “not” to “now”. In his next line, Lynx states he is seeking his wife to explain his relationship with his niece, and thus “now” makes more sense. This change was also made in the American edition published by Harold Roorbach in 1889, a digitized copy of which is posted at:

archive.org/details/marriedlife00buck

  • p. 56: Tol de rol lol.—(Dancing.) You hear,—Inserted an em-dash after “(Dancing.)” for consistency.
  • p. 56: receive your huband and his friend.—Changed “huband” to “husband”.
  • p. 57: the more I reflect, the more I am imcensed against my husband.—Changed “imcensed” to “incensed”.