The Circle (play)

The play, which caused some outrage among a small minority of playgoers at the time of the premiere, depicts a young married woman contemplating leaving her husband for another man, and looking to an elderly peer and his partner, who eloped thirty years earlier, for advice.

Arnold's wife, Elizabeth, is looking forward to meeting Catherine, whom she sees as a romantic figure for sacrificing her social position in England for love.

This calculated ploy, suggested to him by his father, makes her feel so guilty that she almost resolves to end her relationship with Edward, but the latter tells her candidly that he offers her love and not necessarily happiness.

Clive, unaware that his ploy has failed, joins Porteus and Catherine, boasts of his clever plan, and the play ends with "all three in fits of laughter".

[1] The writer Robert Bechtold describes the play as a comedy of manners – "a rewrite of Lady Windermere's Fan a quarter of a century later in a post World War I atmosphere.