The Second Mrs Tanqueray

The play was first produced in 1893 by the actor-manager George Alexander and despite causing some shock to his audiences by its scandalous subject it was a box-office success, and was revived in London and New York in many productions during the 20th century.

The English dramatist Arthur Wing Pinero had won fame as a writer of farces and other comedies, including The Magistrate (1885), Dandy Dick (1887) and The Cabinet Minister (1890).

Pinero intended the central character to kill himself at the climax of the play, but the actor-manager John Hare persuaded him to tone down the ending to avoid alienating his respectable society audience.

While he was planning it, several plays of Henrik Ibsen were presented in London for the first time, regarded by much of polite society as avant garde, blunt and shocking.

[5] The cast was: The piece was a box-office success and was still playing to full houses when Alexander, who disliked acting in long runs, closed the production in April 1894.

All are upper class members of British society, and the friends are disturbed when they learn of the forthcoming second marriage of Tanqueray to a Mrs Paula Jarman, a woman with a "bad reputation".

[12] More recently, the play has been revived in the West End with Eileen Herlie in the title role in 1950,[13] and at the National Theatre in 1981, starring Felicity Kendal.