Five Little Plays — Story, Setting & Ideas

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Authors: Sutro, Alfred, 1863-1933 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: English drama -- 20th century Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 26,834

Reading time 117 min

Text sections 4

The catalog record for Five Little Plays — Story, Setting & Ideas provides practical reading context through 26,834 words, 1 hr 57 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 10.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “English drama -- 20th century,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #14519

Alfred Sutro's Five Little Plays collects five one-act dramas from 1911-1922, each compressing a domestic crisis into a single scene. The volume showcases Sutro's ear for conversational rhythm and his ability to shift from brittle comedy to stark pathos, as seen in the desperate poverty of 'The Man on the Kerb' and the marital tensions of 'The Man in the Stalls.'

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg14519

Read the Text

Where was it, this beautiful feeling, when you got me to go to your rooms?

WALTER. [_Harshly._] We needn't--

BETTY. I liked you--I've said that--I liked you from the first. But I was straight enough. Liked you, of course--but I had no idea, not the slightest.... Thought it fun to play the fool, flirt just a bit. But it was you, you, _you_ who--

WALTER. [_Breaking in sulkily and stamping his foot._] Never mind about who it was.

BETTY. [_Passionately._] Never mind! You dare!

WALTER. [_Doggedly._] Yes--I dare. And look here--since you force me to it--that's all rot--yes, it is--just rot. Just as you like it now, hearing Hector ask me to stop with you, and kissing me the moment his back is turned--so you met me halfway, and more than halfway.

WALTER. That's what a woman always says, when a man speaks the truth. Because it _is_ the truth--and you know it. "The way I squeezed your hand!" D'you think I _meant_ to squeeze it--in a way! Why, as there's a Heaven above me, you were as sacred to me--as my own sister!

BETTY. [_Quietly, as she sits, to right of the table._] What I'm wondering is--you see, you're the only lover I've had--what I wonder is, when a man breaks off, tells a woman he's tired of her, wants to get married--does he _always_ abuse the woman--

WALTER. [_Sulkily._] I haven't--

BETTY. Degrade, and throw mud on, the love she has had for him?

WALTER. [_With a bitter shrug._] Love--

BETTY. [_Passionately, as she springs to her feet._] Love, love, yes, you--cruel man! Love, what else? I adore you, don't you know that? Live for you! would give up everything in the world--everything, everything! And Walter, Walter! If it's only _that_--that you want a home--well, let's go off together. He'll divorce us--we can get married. Don't go away, and leave me here, alone with him! I couldn't stand it--Walter, I couldn't, I couldn't!

[_She goes eagerly to him, flings her arms round his neck, and a dry sob bursts from her._

WALTER. [_Very gently._] Betty, Betty, you've been so brave ... Betty, dear, the horrid things I've said were only to make you angry, to make you feel what a brute I was, how well you're rid of me. Oh, I'm not proud of myself! But look here, we must be sensible--we must, really.... You know, if you were divorced--if I were the co-respondent in a divorce case--I'd lose my berth, get the sack--

BETTY. [_Clinging to him._] We could go to Australia--anywhere--

WALTER. I've no money.

BETTY. [_With a sudden movement, raising her head and leaving him._] And Mary Gillingham has lots?

WALTER. It's not for her money that I--

BETTY. [_With a start._] You love her?

WALTER. [_Dropping his head, and speaking under his breath._] Yes.

BETTY. [_Wringing her hands._] You do, you do?

WALTER. Yes, that's the truth--I do. Oh, Betty I'm so frightfully sorry--

BETTY. [_With a groan._] Then you don't love me any more ...

WALTER. It's not that. But you see--

BETTY. [_Moaning._] You don't, you don't!

[_She stands there, crushed, overwhelmed, dry-eyed, broken moans escaping from her; suddenly she hears a key turning in the lock of the hall-door outside, and rushes to the card-table._

BETTY. Hector! Quick, quick--the cards!

[WALTER _flies to the table, and sits by her side. He seizes one pack and proceeds to shuffle it, she is dealing with the other. All this takes only a second._ HECTOR _comes in--they both spring up._

BETTY. Hector! You're not ill?

HECTOR. [_Kissing her._] Play postponed, my child--bit of luck! When I got to the theatre I found that the actor-manager's car had collided with a cab outside the stage-door--he was thrown through the window--there's a magnificent exit for you! and has been cut about a bit. Nothing serious. But the play's postponed for a week. Bit of luck!

WALTER. [_Sitting._] Not for him.

HECTOR. Oh _he_ has had luck enough--tons of it! I'll get into a jacket--then we'll have some bridge. See what progress you've made, Betty!

[_He hurries out, and closes the door._

BETTY. [_Producing a little mirror from her bag, looking into it, touching her hair._] We were only just in time.

WALTER. [_Eagerly, as he bends across the table._] You're splendid--you are--splendid!

BETTY. Yes. All very nice and comfortable for you--isn't it? [_She puts the mirror back into the bag._]

WALTER. [_Coaxingly._] Betty.

BETTY. To-morrow you'll go to her--or to-night perhaps--

WALTER. To-night--ridiculous! At this hour!

BETTY. She's a deceitful little cat. I saw her last week--she never told me--

WALTER. I don't think she knew. I only proposed to-day.

BETTY. [_Flinging herself back in her chair, and opening wide eyes._] You--proposed--to-day!

WALTER. [_Very embarrassed._] Yes--I mean--

Continue Reading →

Alfred Sutro's Five Little Plays collects five one-act dramas, each built around a single, taut situation. The earliest, The Man in the Stalls (1911), opens in a Shaftesbury Avenue flat where Hector Allen, a play-reader, complains about the drudgery of attending first nights: 'I tell you, if I'd known what it meant, I'd never have taken the job!' The line sets a tone of weary, conversational complaint that Sutro sustains through quick, overlapping dialogue. Stage directions are unusually detailed—the room is described with 'countless feminine touches'—but the plays rely on verbal sparring and sudden emotional pivots rather than elaborate action.

Conversational Rhythm and Verbal Sparring

Sutro's dialogue moves in short, clipped exchanges that mimic natural speech while carrying subtext. In The Open Door, Sir Geoffrey and Lady Torminster trade banter about books and bedtime: 'There are three hundred ways, they say, of cooking a potato—there are as many of dressing up a lie, and calling it a novel.' The line is both a joke and a self-conscious comment on the play's own artifice. Sutro often lets a character's voice define them instantly—Hector's grumbling, Walter's dandyish ease, Mary's exhausted pleading. The rhythm shifts between rapid-fire repartee and longer, more deliberate speeches, especially when a character reaches an emotional breaking point.

Compressed Settings and Escalating Stakes

Each play is confined to a single room or outdoor space, and the action unfolds in real time. The Man on the Kerb uses a bare, impoverished interior where a couple debates suicide: Mary says, 'I'm so tired!' and Joe responds with a cry, 'God, O God, give us bread!' The stage directions note a child's wail and Mary's act of wrapping her shawl around the little girl—small physical details that heighten the desperation. Sutro builds tension through incremental revelations: a character's true motive, a hidden debt, a past betrayal. The one-act structure forces the crisis to surface quickly, often within the first few pages.

Shifts in Tone Across the Collection

The five plays vary markedly in mood. The Man in the Stalls and A Marriage Has Been Arranged… lean toward social comedy, with characters in well-appointed rooms trading witty complaints. The Man on the Kerb and The Open Door move into darker territory—poverty, exhaustion, moral compromise. Sutro does not signal these shifts; he lets the dialogue and setting do the work. The same clipped, naturalistic speech that serves comedy in one play becomes devastating in another. Readers should note how the author's voice remains consistent while the emotional register changes, and how the brevity of each play forces a concentrated effect.

Because the excerpts offer only partial texts, the full arc of each play—and the collection's overall design—remains partly inferred. Readers may wish to compare the opening scenes with the endings to see how Sutro resolves (or withholds resolution from) his tightly wound situations. The plays reward attention to small verbal cues and stage directions, which often carry as much weight as the dialogue itself.

That collection, Five Little Plays, left me thinking about how much silence can sit inside a single room, especially the quiet before someone says something they can’t take back. I found myself carrying that weight into the evening, much like the conversations in A Woman of No Importance — Reading Companion, where every polite line feels borrowed from a longer, sadder story nobody tells aloud.