WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Short and Sweet: A Comic Drama, in One Act cover

Short and Sweet: A Comic Drama, in One Act

Chapter 2: Transcriber’s Note
By Adolphus Charles Troughton
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

HumourPlays/Films/Dramas

About This Book

A one-act comic drama portrays two stock-exchange friends, their wives, and household servants whose plans for a fashionable afternoon near the Crystal Palace are derailed by caprice, petty jealousies, and social posturing. Rapidly staged scenes confine action to a well-furnished apartment where mistaken timing, wardrobe fusses, orders to servants, and biting repartee generate situational comedy. The play uses brisk dialogue and physical business to lampoon vanity and domestic affectation, leading through a sequence of misunderstandings and reconciliations that restore social order by curtain fall.

Transcriber’s Note

This transcription is based on a microcopy made available by University of California, Davis. Because of the quality of the microcopy, the transcription was checked against a copy owned by Fordham University, a digitized version of which is posted by the Internet Archive at:

archive.org/details/TroughtonShortSweet

In general, this transcription attempts to retain the formatting, punctuation and spelling of the source text. Thus, variant spellings such as “lieve,” “doat,” “one’self,” and “extacies” as well as words and spellings intended for comic effect such as “horrorble” and “tremengeous” have been retained. The following changes were made to the text:

  • p. 2: In the costume note, “MRS. SHORT—Ditto” was changed to “Mrs. SHORT—Ditto” for consistency.
  • p. 6: Come, we havn’t a minute to spare—Changed “havn’t” to “haven’t” for consistency.
  • p. 11: Another (she pours out another—aside)—Added a period after “Another”.
  • p. 16: what we make them, at least in marriage, Louisa was not—Changed the comma after “marriage” to a period.
  • p. 26: the bouquet of violets to-night. (she stops and looks at—Changed the period after “to-night” to a comma.
  • p. 30: that there is anythihg at all like this going on at home—Changed “anythihg” to “anything”.