The Lady's Not for Burning

[3] It was performed at an Arts Theatre private club for two weeks in London in 1949 starring Alec Clunes, who had also commissioned it.

[4] Gielgud took the play to the United States, where it opened on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on 8 November 1950,[5] with Pamela Brown as the female lead.

Alizon, the fiancée of the Mayor's nephew Humphrey, enters the room and she and Richard immediately feel a connection, although their conversation is interrupted by Thomas' asides.

After recounting her accusers' wild tales about her mystical powers, and laughing over their ludicrous nature, she is shocked to hear that the Mayor also believes them.

To determine the guilt of the prisoners, the mayor proposes that he, Humphrey, Tappercoom, and the Chaplain hide upstairs and eavesdrop on Jennet and Thomas.

Thomas reluctantly consents, provided that Jennet is also allowed to attend; he threatens to inform the whole countryside that the mayor and Tappercoom released a murderer if they don't agree.

Margaret, vexed over Jennet's continued presence in her house, urges her sons to return to the festivities, but they decline.

Tappercoom enters and mocks the mayor's complaints about Jennet's beauty and charm tempting him, reminding him that after she's dead they will possess her substantial property.

When Richard half-heartedly defends the laws to Alizon, who is distraught over the unfairness of the burning, she says she loves him and not Humphrey.

Richard and Alizon return with Old Skipps, who everyone claimed was dead or a dog, and Humphrey and Nicholas bring Tappercoom and the chaplain.

Tappercoom is satisfied that there is no witch or murderer, and Margaret sends her sons to take the very drunk old man home before leaving with the Chaplain.

Thomas, despite his continuing disgust with mankind, agrees to accompany Jennet to whatever new place she goes, and they escape into the night.

There have been at least four TV adaptations: 1950, starring Pamela Brown and Alec Clunes on BBC TV (further information is available through BBC Genome); 1958 (Omnibus, S06E29), with Christopher Plummer and Mary Ure; 1974, with Richard Chamberlain and Eileen Atkins, and 1987, with Kenneth Branagh and Cherie Lunghi.

Fry, thought Trewin, had 'the relish of the Elizabethan word-men', while for The Daily Telegraph's W. A. Darlington, he was 'like a young Shaw, but with a poet's mind'".

Ellis concluded by saying, "The Daily Mail's Cecil Wilson was one of the few dissenting voices: he thought the play a 'crazy quilt of verbiage', and wondered whether 'such fiendish cleverness [would] prove commercial'.

[11] Reviewing a 2007 revival of the play, The Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington noted, "Fry's pun-filled, semi-Shakespearean poetry may no longer be fashionable, but it has an exuberant charity that makes it irresistible.