The Farmer's Wife (play)

The Farmer's Wife is a romantic comedy play by the British writer Eden Philpotts. It was first staged in Birmingham in 1916. Its London premiere was in 1924. By 1926 when Laurence Olivier went on tour in the lead role, the play had already been performed 1,300 times.

After his wife dies, a farmer goes through an elaborate attempt to persuade one of his various female neighbours to marry him without realising that the ideal woman is already working as his housekeeper.

The play was twice adapted for films. A 1928 silent film The Farmer's Wife directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jameson Thomas and Lillian Hall-Davis and a 1941 sound film The Farmer's Wife directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Basil Sydney and Patricia Roc.

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