Mrs. Dot: A Farce
1912
Mrs. Dot is a sparkling farce about money, marriage, and the absurd theater of Edwardian courtship. Mrs. Worthley, the wealthy and vivacious brewery owner known to all as Mrs. Dot, has her eye on the handsome but penniless Gerald Halstane. There's just one problem: Gerald is engaged to the comfortably dull Nellie Sellenger, and his finances are in ruins. Then everything changes. A sudden inheritance makes Gerald wealthy and titled overnight, throwing open the doors of possibility. Now he must choose between security and passion, between the expected and the desired. Maugham wires this comedy of manners with sharp observations about class, money, and what we really want from love. The humor lands because it cuts close to bone. Beneath the farcical complications and witty exchanges lies a genuine question: do we marry for love, for money, or for the comfortable fiction that they're the same thing?
