The Good Hope (play)

It takes place in a fishing village, with the conflict between the fishermen and their employer ending in tragedy with the unsound boat setting out to sea and sinking with all hands and the owner pocketing the insurance money.

The socialist Heijermans is considered to have meant the play as a criticism of the entire capitalist system, though some present-day productions downplay this radical approach.

It was translated in a new version for the Royal National Theatre, which relocated the action to the Yorkshire fishing community of Whitby in 1900, by Lee Hall, writer of the award-winning Billy Elliot and Spoonface Steinberg.

The very well known actress Miss Ellen Terry had it produced in all the leading towns of the English provinces and in the London suburbs in 1904 and 1905.

All this according to a letter of 10 May 1979 by Mrs. Anthony Thomas, curator of the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum, Tenterden, Kent.