May Holt’s Waiting Consent

Abstract

In 1880 the English actor and manager May Holt, following her real-life marriage to a ‘gentleman’ and temporary withdrawal from London and provincial stages, wrote six plays which were staged many times by several managements. The introduction gives some details of her career and examines in detail her most successful work, a short ‘curtain raiser’ comedy, Waiting Consent, which starred several major actors over the next decade, including Violet and Irene Vanbrugh. An unusual early ‘bedroom farce’, it challenged assumptions about women and marriage in the same decade that saw the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act and the first staging of Ibsen’s A Doll's House. The edited script of Waiting Consent follows.