The Bride of Quietness and Other Plays

Oscar Firkins’ books, posthumously published, are finding what the author, during his reclusive life, never looked for – popularity, that wide appeal which is evinced in the demand for a second edition of this book of plays and the friendly reception that has resulted in putting both his plays and the more recently published Memoirs and Letters on “bestseller” lists. John Keats, in a London twilight finds himself one wit the immortal figures of his Ode on a Grecian Urn. That timelessness of beauty to which he gave serene expression in his famous ode is the theme of The Bride of Quietness, the title play of this volume. The romantically wedded Brownings of Turnpikes in Arcady discover, under the spell of an Italian night, that they are not at all the “practical” persons they have supposed themselves to be. Charlotte, Emily, and the other enigmatic Brontës are vividly revealed in the brief, incisive lines of Empurpled Moors. A sprightly Restoration atmosphere pervades The King’s Vigil, in which Samuel Pepys and Charles II spend a night cloistered behind a massive oak door in hiding from importunate wives and mistresses.

The Bride of Quietness and Other Plays was first published in 1932. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.