Arthur Wing Pinero

Arthur Pinero wrote The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in 1893 after penning several successful farces. Playing on the “woman with a past” plot that was popular in melodramas, Pinero steered it in a more serious direction, centering the play around the social consequences arising when Aubrey Tanqueray remarries in an attempt to redeem a woman with a questionable past. The play’s structure is based on the principles of the “well-made play” popular throughout the 19th-century. But just as Wilde manipulated the conventions of the “well-made play” to produce a new form of comedy, so did Arthur Pinero manipulate it, forgoing the happy ending to produce an elevated form of tragedy. The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was first performed in 1893, at the St. James Theatre, London, at a time when England was still resisting the growing movement in Europe towards realism and the portrayal of real social problems and human misconduct. But while it was regarded as shocking, it ran well and made a substantial profit. Theatre historian J. P. Wearing phrased it thus: “although not as avant-garde as Ibsen’s plays, Tanqueray confronted its fashionable St. James’s audiences with as forceful a social message as they could stomach.”

A newly engaged aristocrat tries to demonstrate his fidelity to his fiancée while one of his friends tries to urge him to be unfaithful.

A judge faces complications in his life from cases on which he has passed judgment.

"Venice, Easter 1895. In the cafes around St Mark's Square, all the gossip among the English ex-pat community is about two mysterious arrivals in the city. Agnes Ebbsmith is a young widow with a scandalous past. Travelling with her if Lucus Cleeve, an up-and-coming Tory MP who has abandoned his wife in London. Defying convention, Agnes and Lucas are refusing to marry, and living in a 'compact' together. But before long their peace is shattered by the arrival of Lucas's aristocratic family from London."--Page of cover.

If Letty Montressor had not been quite so determined to escape from her family and marriage to the odious Mr Sludge, she would not have been found wandering the streets of London late at night with no other companion but her canary. Harry Tyne, the disgraced heir of Lord Aubrey, has no choice but to rescue the lovely girl with the silvery voice and he carries her off to Vienna. Letty is soon the toast of Europe's glittering high society, yet still she demands more. But in her desire to clear Harry of the scandal attached to his name, Letty discovers too late that she is walking into a carefully prepared trap...