The Farmer's Wife is a romantic comedy play by the British writer Eden Phillpotts, based on the scenario of his novel Widecombe Fair (1913).
[2][3] By 1926 when Laurence Olivier went on tour in the lead role, the play had already been performed 1,300 times.
[4] 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 to film: the 1928 silent film The Farmer's Wife, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jameson Thomas and Lillian Hall-Davis, and the 1941 sound film The Farmer's Wife, directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Basil Sydney and Patricia Roc.
[6] The Farmer's Wife was adapted into a 1951 Broadway musical entitled Courtin' Time with a creative team including lyricist Jack Lawrence, composer Don Walker, and writer William Roos.