An Edwardian David Garrick

While scouting for information in an old issue of Vogue, I came across a brief theater review of a play that's of special interest to me, David Garrick.

A still from the production in question

David Garrick was written in the 1850s, based on a story that had been circulating since the 1830s about the famous British actor David Garrick being hired to cure a girl of her love of the theater and/or theater actors. In Thomas William Robertson's version -- which is at times directly translated from the French play Sullivan -- Garrick is requested by a wealthy businessman, Mr. Ingot, to cure his daughter Ada of a crush... a crush on Garrick himself. Ingot thinks that it is Ada's romantic interest in Garrick that is causing her to reject an arranged marriage he's set up for her. Garrick agrees to Ingot's request sympathetically, since he's also recently found himself with a crush on a girl he doesn't really know. To his horror, Garrick arrives to meet Ada and discovers that she is that very girl. But Garrick is a man of his word and so he is obligated to go through with the show of his life -- trying to disgust the girl he's in love with. 

Several film versions of David Garrick were made during the 1910s. The play was actually pretty popular right until about the 1930s. I suspect that changing morals (arranged marriages were no longer normal, actors were no longer seen as scumbags) were responsible for its downfall. 

I'm personally a huge fan of these corny old stories so I loved the play when I first read it.