Charity (play)

Charity is a drama in four acts by W. S. Gilbert that explores the issue of a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married.

[1] It opened on 3 January 1874 at the Haymarket Theatre in London, where Gilbert had previously presented his 'fairy comedies' The Palace of Truth, Pygmalion and Galatea, and The Wicked World.

In Charity, Gilbert wanted to use what he perceived as Mrs. Kendal's capabilities as a tragedienne, and, after abandoning his original plan of a vindictive villainess, he composed one of his most powerful women's roles for her in this play.

He illustrated The Piccadilly Annual; supervised a revival of Pygmalion and Galatea; and wrote Charity; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a parody of Hamlet; a dramatisation of Ought We to Visit Her?

Fred is a very grave person, objecting to the frivolous entertainments being planned by Eve, but they are in love, and, despite her teasing and ignoring his chides, they get along quite well.

Dr. Athelney appears to thank Mrs. Van Brugh for a favour, and she asks his advice about what to settle on Eve, as Fred's father intends to do nothing, claiming that all his money is tied up.

In the course of conversation, Mrs. Van Brugh's husband's first wife is mentioned, but the discussion is interrupted by servants dragging in Ruth Tredgett, a tramp who was caught trying to steal from them.

Mrs. Van Brugh, however, plans to reform her, having learned Ruth's history: born into poverty, raised among thieves, falling victim to a "psalm-singing villain" who had his way with her then abandoned her.

Athelney's moralistic arguments fail in the face of this history, and he admits that her life was "what God knows it couldn't well have helped being under the circumstances."

Mrs. Van Brugh proposes to settle on them a farm in Buckinghamshire left to her by her godfather, but she isn't aware if it is a leasehold or a freehold.

Smailey reveals that he knows this and accuses her of being part of wilful bigamy with her "husband", as his first wife died after Mrs. Van Brugh married him.

She pleads with him, offering to sign any deed he asks, to spare her the shame, but he holds a public announcement of her acts over her head if she does not submit to his will.

Smailey retorts that all her good works spring from her desire for forgiveness and taunts her with her previous criticisms of his own hard-heartedness.

After finally dropping the last letter – a request for her to sit to be photographed by "Scumley and Ripp" – in disgust, she gives vent to her frustration: Her name is now "a word of reproach in every household in the country," her "story a thing to be whispered and hinted at, but not to be openly discussed, for reason of its very shame."

Eve refuses to assign guilt to her mother, insisting she can "see nothing else" but "the perfect woman of the past eighteen years".

He says he had lain awake all night, trying to think of how to lighten the burden on Eve and, finally, came to realise what he must do: Release her from her engagement to a member of the family that has been so hard on her.

Dr. Athelney begins berating him and declares that "I have been a clergyman of the Church of England for five and forty years, and, until today, I have never regretted the restrictions that my calling has imposed upon me.

He is arrested, though Fred promises to stay with him to the end, and the Athelneys, Ruth, Eve, and Mrs. Van Brugh plan to sail off to Australia together, where Dr. Athelney has been granted a bishopric, and they can live "humbly as become penitents, cheerfully as becomes those who have hope, earnestly as becomes those who speak out of the fullness of their experience" and teach "lessons of loving-kindness, patience, faith, forbearance, and charity."

This gets echoed in Mr. Smailey's catchphrase, "I have no desire to press hardly on any fellow creature" (also seen in the quote), which becomes more and more ironic in usage as the play goes on, finally being uttered by Fitz-Partington as he informs Mr. Smailey: "I desire to press hardly on no fellow-creature, but your own policeman is without, and he will be happy to walk off with you whenever you find it convenient to be arrested.

RUTH: ...I got sick and tired of it all, and began to think o' putting a end to it, when I met a smooth-spoken chap – a gentleman, if you please – as wanted to save me from the danger afore me.

I soon got a ticket and tried service and needlework, but no one wouldn't have me; and I got sick and tired of it all, and began to think o' putting an end to it, when I met a smooth-spoken chap—a gentleman, if you please—as wanted to save me from the danger afore me.

[8]The plot, involving a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married, and who had dedicated her life to charity afterwards, was a volatile social subject.

[9] Charity questioned the convention that rules of premarital chastity, framed for women in the Victorian era, did not apply to men.

It also argued that education and a middle-class upbringing set standards that the less fortunate ought not be judged by—that is, the importance of environment in determining morality.

[10] Audiences weren't ready to have core societal values, like the sexual double standard, questioned so directly, and Charity was denounced as immoral.

[11] The Era, in its review, echoed the consensus of both critics and audiences that the play would have had greater success had Gilbert's ending not "evinced a... scornful disregard of certain conventional laws in writing for the stage," meaning that while "sinners" could be pitied, they were expected to come to a bad end (ostracism or death) in Victorian theatre.

[13] Its failure was disappointing to Gilbert, particularly after the success of his earlier "fairy comedies" at the Haymarket, and he grumbled that "pieces written with anything like an earnest purpose seldom seem to succeed.

"[12] Charity did have a good provincial tour, and a production at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, starring Fanny Davenport and Ada Dyas as Ruth.

[16] The American courts would not issue an injunction to prohibit this, since British copyright was unenforceable in America at that time (as Gilbert and Sullivan would experience with H.M.S.

[14] It would not be until the rise of Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw in the 1880s and 1890s that the British public would accept such blunt challenges to their world-views on stage.