The rogues comedy; a play in three acts

The Rogue’s Comedy is an 1896 play in three acts by Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), the English dramatist who with Pinero dominated the serious West End stage of the 1890s. The comedy follows Bailey Prothero, a charming adventurer who sets up in London society as a clairvoyant and fortune-teller, fleecing the fashionable world that crowds his consulting rooms, until the arrival of the son who does not know him forces the rogue toward exposure and a kind of reckoning. Jones builds the play on the Victorian fascination with society impostors and spiritualist charlatans. The piece premiered at the Garrick Theatre with Edward Willard in the lead. It belongs to the sequence of society comedies through which Jones anatomised the hypocrisies of the London world. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.