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It attests to Farquhar's stature as a man that he composed this warm-hearted and vibrant play while he was dying. Like The Recruiting Officer, the play is set in a provincial town and its plot is slight: Aimwell and Archer, two impecunious London gentlemen, arrive in Lichfield looking for an heiress to marry. Aimwell, posing as his elder brother, falls in love with his 'prey' Dorinda and confesses his imposture to her; his 'man-servant' Archer arouses the wistful interest of the unhappily married Mrs Sullen. The introduction to this edition discusses the play for its theatrical merits and argues that it dramatises the ills of marriage in early modern England, shown by Farquhar to be more injurious to the wife than to the husband, and calls for a reform of the divorce laws.
An English lieutenant is ordered to stage a play starring prisoners of the Australian penal colony he supervises in this phantasmagoric historical fiction masterwork from the author of Schindler’s List In the penal colony of Sydney Cove, Australia, at the farthest reaches of the late-nineteenth-century British Empire, Lieutenant Ralph Clark has received a bizarre commission. In honor of the king’s birthday, Clark is charged with staging a production of the George Farquhar comedy The Recruiting Officer using as cast and production crew the highwaymen, whores, cutpurses, killers, and other assorted disreputables exiled there from the British Isles. Pining over the family he left behind, Clark must work miracles with only two printed scripts, a company of unstable and largely illiterate “actors,” and the dubious assistance of his colleagues. But the success—or failure—of the mammoth enterprise rests largely on the shoulders of lead actress Mary Brenham, the mesmerizing and enigmatic female convict to whom Clark finds himself strangely and dangerously attracted. Based on the lieutenant’s real diaries, The Playmaker is a truly remarkable achievement. Atmospheric, dreamlike, and richly evoking time and place, featuring a monumental cast of magnificently drawn, unforgettable characters, it is a work of insight, imagination, and true genius by one of the most notable names in historical fiction.
When Max Stafford-Clark took the unusual step of choosing to stage 'The Recruiting Officer', he also decided to keep a rehearsal diary. What emerges is an instructive account of the rehearsal methods of a respected British theatre director.