Reading J.M. Barrie's play "What Every Woman Knows," I experienced a similar feeling I have had approaching other classics, the feeling of approaching a land teeming with life, fraught with bursting-over-the-bounds spiritedness, and of arriving there from an place where life has been depopulated and

John Shand, a railway porter, advances himself in life, by dint of meticulous self-study, up until the time, when he succeeds in becoming a Member of Parliament.

He is a self-important person without a bone of comedy in him. He is not overtly affectionate or amorous to his wife Maggie.

If truth be t

This was a play I saw in 1974 at The Albery Theatre with Dorothy Tutin as Maggie - my sister was working for a theatre agent and got us tickets, I think. I enjoyed it. It was, and remains, an example of a well-made play. Reading it for the first time was - with allowances made for changes in social

This play is a play of its time. Out of that context the play would lose something. It was written only a few years before the suffragette movement and anticipates some of those arguments coming down the tubes. We might look back at this piece and say "oh what misogynist tripe." But in it's day, Bar

Yeah, I don’t know.

This was written before the women’s suffrage, it’s suppose to support the cause. I don’t think I see it?

I mean, the way women are portrayed here are so petty. We are constantly told that Maggie is not beautiful, she’s not smart nor does she have an opinion, at the very end you’d

This was a good, fast read. I don't usually read too many plays, but this was very cute. I picked it up because I was reading Peter Pan with my children and was interested in other works by Barrie.

Notes: My comments on this story contain a few spoilers, I placed warnings above the particular paragraphs.
Also, I categorized this as a 'Funny Read'. It's not a split-your-sides, laugh-out-loud read, but it is rather witty, once you get into it.

So I started reading this knowing nothing about the b