The Captive Reader

I finally managed to get my hands on an A.A. Milne play Simon hadn’t read but, instead of being able to taunt him with how wonderful it was (which was obviously what I’d been hoping to do), Sarah Simple proved a bit disappointing.  Of all the Milne plays I’ve read so far this year, it is easily my least favourite, perhaps because it goes back to one of his favourite themes – the misplaced spouse.  After a certain point, there are only so many careless couples you can stomach.

William, now in his mid-thirties, was married years ago to Sarah.  They were both young and foolish and it wasn’t long before Sarah ran off with another man, leaving an illegible note that confused William as to the identity of his wife’s lover.  Not knowing where she was or with whom, he gave up looking.  Now, with the widow Marianne Bell-Mason wanting to marry him, William is quite happy to have an absent wife.  But suddenly, after years with no contact, Sarah returns and is only too willing to give William a divorce.  She will need to be discovered at a hotel with another man in order to give him grounds and it is decided, for simplicity’s sake, that that man should be William in disguise.  It all ends much as you would expect it to, and certainly as Sarah had planned it to.

There are some good exchanges between the characters, particularly between Sarah and Marianne when they first meet, but entertaining as that rivalry is, it highlights a very major issue: Sarah simply isn’t likeable.  She abandoned her husband and now she wants him back and, as far as she’s concerned, that is that.  I didn’t like William either – he’s a waffling nincompoop – but at least he appears mainly lazy and incompetent whereas Sarah seems heartless.  She is marvellously, subtly catty in her remarks about Marianne though, so she has some entertainment value:

WILLIAM. As it happens, she is just my own age.  Thirty-six.

SARAH. What a very odd coincidence.  Which of you said it first?

In addition to the three lovers, William’s twin niece and nephew also appear for, as far as I can tell, no earthly reason.  They are deeply comic characters without being particularly amusing – a waste of good material.  Still, they provide a welcome distraction from the ridiculous adults.  They receive one of Milne’s typically wonderful introductions (for all the flaws this play has, the introductions are still superb):

AMYAS and ALFTRUDA…are twins, seventeen years old.  Both of them take AMYAS with a seriousness which is comic, pathetic or merely irritating according to your mood.  When he grows up, he will probably be one of those critics who are always uneasy if anybody else shares their enthusiasms.  His present enthusiasm is for films; which means the particular films of a particular German producer.  ALFTRUDA mothers him with one hand, and acts as his impresario with the other.

Marianne (Mrs Bell-Mason) also gets a perfect introduction that can’t help but make you feel sympathetic towards her:

MRS BELL-MASON feels extremely motherly, though she is under the impression that she is merely in love with [William], for she is at an age when being a mother would be common form, and winning a lover something of an achievement.  She, too, is attractive, and, as WILLIAM is finding out, soft and kissable; a little on the large side, but pleasantly so.  She is by no means without humour, though relationship to an Earl and marriage to a Canon have brought it certain limitations.  It is just possible that Nature meant her for the most charming sort of courtesan, but the Canon saved her – or spoilt her, according to the point of view.

Though Sarah isn’t likeable – or, perhaps worse, memorable – I don’t think that is the real problem with the play.  Milne wrote Sarah-like characters elsewhere, fast-talking, determined women without much sentiment to them, and they came off well in other circumstances.  No, Sarah wasn’t the main problem, nor was the return to the exhausted topic of errant spouses (which Milne addresses in any number of variations – see Belinda, To Have the Honour, The Dover Road, and Mr Pim Passes By, among others).  Milne was good at writing about relationships that involved affection but this play revolves around attraction and sex heedless of real emotion.  And that he could not write about – not well at least.