Whitewashing Julia, an Original Comedy…
Henry Arthur Jones
Whitewashing Julia is a 1903 comedy by Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), the English playwright of the late Victorian and Edwardian West End. The play concerns Mrs Julia Wren, a widow trailing a rumoured past involving a Mediterranean prince, and the campaign by the respectable society of Shanctonbury to whitewash her reputation into marriageability, a process Jones turns into satire on the moral bookkeeping of English county society, which forgives anything it has decided to forget. The play continues the studies of the woman with a past that Jones had pursued seriously in Mrs Dane’s Defence, here in a comic key. It premiered at the Garrick Theatre under Charles Frohman’s management. The piece shows the Edwardian society comedy working its standard material with full professional polish. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.
