''Housemaster'' is a comedy by the English playwright

Ian Hay Major General John Hay Beith, CBE MC (17 April 1876 – 22 September 1952), was a British schoolmaster and soldier, but is best remembered as a novelist, playwright, essayist, and historian who wrote under the pen name Ian Hay. After rea ...

, first produced at the

Apollo Theatre The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, in central London.

, London, on 12 November 1936, running for 662 performances.Gaye, p. 1532 Under the title ''Bachelor Born'', the play was presented on

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

at the Morosco Theatre in January 1938, running for just over a year.Gaye, p. 1543 A film was made of the play in 1938. The play depicts the conflict between a wise

housemaster {{refimprove, date=September 2018 In British education, a housemaster is a schoolmaster in charge of a boarding house, normally at a boarding school and especially at a public school. The housemaster is responsible for the supervision and care ...

and a puritanical younger headmaster at an English public school, with the action complicated by the unexpected incursion of two women and two girls who have to be accommodated in the otherwise all-male establishment.

Background

Ian Hay had written fifteen plays since his first, ''Tilly of Bloomsbury'' (1919), most of them in collaboration with other writers –

Seymour Hicks Sir Edward Seymour Hicks (30 January 1871 – 6 April 1949), better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and p ...

P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeve ...

, Stephen King-Hall,

Guy Bolton Guy Reginald Bolton (23 November 1884 – 4 September 1979) was an Anglo-American playwright and writer of musical comedies. Born in England and educated in France and the US, he trained as an architect but turned to writing. Bolton preferred ...

, Anthony Armstrong, A. E. W. Mason and

Edgar Wallace Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was a British writer. Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during th ...

."Beith, Maj.-Gen. John Hay"
''Who Was Who'', A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edition, Oxford University Press, December, accessed 23 February 2013 Several of these plays were stage adaptions of novels. Hay had previously written and then published ''Housemaster'' as a novel earlier in 1936, before it was brought to the stage. In his early years Hay had been a schoolmaster at

Durham School Durham School is an independent boarding and day school in the English public school tradition located in Durham, North East England and was an all-boys institution until 1985, when girls were admitted to the sixth form. The school takes pupils ...

and

Fettes College Fettes College () is a co-educational independent boarding and day school in Edinburgh, Scotland, with over two-thirds of its pupils in residence on campus. The school was originally a boarding school for boys only and became co-ed in 1983. In ...

. His biographer Patrick Murray suggests that the former, which had a strong rowing tradition, is the model for Hay's Marbledown School in ''Housemaster''.Murray, Patrick
"Beith, John Hay (1876–1952)"
rev. Katherine Mullin, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 23 February 2013

Original casts

''Housemaster'' was first produced at the

Apollo Theatre The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, in central London.

, London, on 12 November 1936, and ran for 662 performances. The play transferred to America under the title ''Bachelor Born'', and was presented on

at the Morosco Theatre in January 1938, running for just over a year.

Synopsis

Charles Donkin is a long-established

at Marbledown, an English public school. His closest confidant is Frank Hastings, the sceptical and sarcastic maths master. Hastings and the rest of the teaching staff, and their pupils, are discontented at the puritanical innovations imposed by Ovington, the recently appointed headmaster. Donkin, though privately sharing the discontent, strives loyally to keep the peace. Into this all-male establishment comes Barbara Fane, with her three nieces, the daughters of the late Angela Faringdon. Donkin was, it is implied, in love with Angela in his younger days, but she married Aubrey Faringdon, who has brought up his and Angela's three daughters with the aid of their aunt. With the girls now aged 20, 18 and 14, Barbara has decided they need a more stable home than Aubrey can provide, and with his agreement she has come to ask Donkin to fulfil his promise to the dying Angela to look after her daughters if needed. Room is found for them in Donkin's house on the strict understanding that the girls are not to mingle with and distract the 55 boys who board there. This condition is doomed from the outset. The glamorous elder girls cannot help distracting Donkin's older boys and his younger staff; the tomboy Button encourages the younger boys to defy Ovington's petty restrictions. Rosemary, the eldest daughter, has two of Donkin's junior staff falling for her. She spurns the sporty "Beef" Beamish in favour of the gentle, artistic Philip de Pourville. The younger daughters, Chris and Button, encourage the boys of Donkin's house to defy the headmaster's latest and furiously-resented diktat: heedless of Marbledown's long tradition of rowing, Ovington has cancelled the school's participation in the local regatta, and placed the town and the river out of bounds for the duration of the regatta. The boys of Donkin's house openly defy Ovington and go into town ''en masse''. Faced with this comprehensive defiance of the headmaster, Donkin feels obliged to offer his resignation, which Ovington instantly accepts. Sir Berkeley Nightingale, uncle of one of Donkin's senior boys, uses his influence to have Ovington offered a suffragan bishopric. Ovington accepts, and Donkin is appointed headmaster in his place. News comes that Aubrey Faringdon is about to remarry; his fiancée is a sensible widow, whom Barbara considers a suitable stepmother for the girls. Rosemary will stay in England, and Chris and Button will live in Paris with their father and stepmother. Barbara is now free of her responsibilities; the younger girls convince Donkin that she will need looking after, and that it is his duty to marry her. Donkin, with many misgivings, steels himself to propose, but his colleague Frank Hastings anticipates him: Barbara and Hastings have had a private understanding for many years, and now that she is a free agent they are to be married. Rosemary and de Pourville also become engaged; Chris and Nightingale's 18-year-old nephew seem headed in the same direction. Donkin is happier than he has ever been – about to take over as headmaster of the school he loves, and left in peace as a contented old bachelor.

Critical reception

'' The Play Pictorial'' commented, "''Housemaster'' bears on every scene the unmistakable imprint of Ian Hay's master hand. No one is more conversant than he with school life, while his knowledge of the theatre ensures that the play develops with dramatic and humorous effect." ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' found the piece pleasing, but thought the romantic interludes involving Rosemary "have little sentimental interest and are not very funny"; it also thought that the author let the odious headmaster off too lightly to be dramatically satisfying."Apollo Theatre", ''The Times'', 13 November 1936, p. 14 ''

The Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' commented: In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'',

Brooks Atkinson Justin Brooks Atkinson (November 28, 1894 – January 14, 1984) was an American theatre critic. He worked for '' The New York Times'' from 1922 to 1960. In his obituary, the ''Times'' called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of hi ...

warned his readers that the English devotion to old school traditions might seem alien to American audiences, but he found the play, "a delightful comedy about pranks and crotchets in school".

Revivals and adaptations

The play was given in the English provinces in 1937 by a touring company with Michael Logan as Donkin, and a young Richard Pearson as Flossie Nightingale. The play was first presented in the US at the Chestnut Street Opera House,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

, under its original title on 15 November 1937 and transferred as ''Bachelor Born'' to New York, where it opened at the Morosco Theatre,

on 25 January 1938 and ran until 31 January 1939. Leister repeated his role of Donkin. In a 1954 revival,

Jack Hulbert John Norman Hulbert (24 April 189225 March 1978) was a British actor, director, screenwriter and singer, specializing primarily in comedy productions, and often working alongside his wife (Dame) Cicely Courtneidge. Biography Born in Ely, Ca ...

played Donkin, with

Winifred Shotter Winifred Florence Shotter (5 November 1904 – 4 April 1996) was an English actress best known for her appearances in the Aldwych farces of the 1920s and early 1930s. Initially a singer and dancer in the ensembles of musical comedies, Shotte ...

as Barbara Fane and

Donald Hewlett Donald Marland Hewlett (30 August 1920 – 4 June 2011) was a British actor who was best known for his sitcom roles as Colonel Charles Reynolds in ''It Ain't Half Hot Mum'' and Lord Meldrum in '' You Rang, M'Lord?'', both written by Jimmy Perry ...

as Beamish. A film of the play was made in 1938, with Kynaston Reeves reprising his role as Ovington, and Otto Kruger as Donkin."Film Releases: Ian Hay Comedy", ''The Observer'', 31 July 1938, p. 7

Notes

References

* {{cite book, editor-last= Gaye, editor-first=Freda , year= 1967, title=Who's Who in the Theatre , edition=fourteenth, location=London , publisher=Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons , oclc=5997224 1936 plays British plays adapted into films Comedy plays Plays by Ian Hay West End plays