The Profligate: A Play in Four Acts

Dunstan Renshaw is about to marry the innocent Leslie Brudenell. But his past has returned. Janet Preece, his former lover, has tracked him down seeking something and Hugh Murray, the best man who knows Dunstan's secrets, stands in a legal office wrestling with a terrible choice: speak now and destroy the marriage, or stay silent and let Leslie wed a man she does not truly know. The collision is inevitable. Pinero's 1891 problem play takes sharp aim at male sexual hypocrisy in an era when women alone bore the weight of moral judgment. It's a domestic tragedy that asks uncomfortable questions about love, guilt, and whether redemption exists once society has pronounced its verdict.