The Second Mrs. Tanqueray

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is a problem play by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. It adopts the "Woman with a past" plot, popular in nineteenth century melodrama.

The play opens with a late night dinner between the widower Mr Tanqueray and some of his longtime professional friends. All are upper class members of British Society, and are very disturbed when they learn of the upcoming second marriage of Tanqueray to a Mrs Paula Jarman, a lower class woman with a known sexual past.

As the play progresses we see the misery of the mismatched couple and their shared efforts to foster a bond between the young, but impeccably proper Miss Eillean Tanqueray and her young unhappy stepmother. This is compromised when Mrs Tanqueray learns the identity of her stepdaughter's fiancé; he is the man who ruined her, years ago. She reveals her knowledge to her husband, who prevents the marriage and alienates his daughter. This alienation spreads and husband and wife, father and daughter, step-parent and child are all angered and alone. When the daughter learns the reasons behind her disappointment she is struck with pity and makes a speech about trying again with her stepmother, only to go to her and find her dead, apparently by suicide.

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was first performed on 27 May 1893, at the St. James Theatre, London, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Paula. Mrs. Campbell became a star on the strength of her performance. The play was "sensationally successful"

The play is referred to in Hilaire Belloc's cautionary verse (1907) Matilda:

The humour of this reference lies in the fact that the play is of a serious nature, ending in suicide - and therefore entirely unsuitable for Matilda in any case: the aunt was herself lying to Matilda about why she was not permitted to accompany her. It is understood that adults know the difference between a good lie and a bad one. The joke is therefore at the expense of the depressingly grim subject of the play, and is for the benefit of the adult reader of Belloc's poem. The aunt is therefore revealed as a person of social conscience, both because she attends the theatre to see a serious play on a contemporary (feminist) theme, and because she protects her niece from any suspicion of the nastiness which attaches to its subject. So Belloc shows that Matilda's attention-seeking behaviour is a wilful mischief rather than the result of an improperly nurtured upbringing. Yet her conscientious and modern-minded aunt neglectfully left Matilda at home.

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