Transcribed from the 1921 W. Heffer & Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] [Picture: Florence Henrietta Darwin] SIX PLAYS By FLORENCE HENRIETTA DARWIN and an Introduction by CECIL SHARP Memoir and Portrait of the Author * * * * * W. HEFFER & SONS LTD., CAMBRIDGE, 1921. SIX PLAYS BY FLORENCE HENRIETTA DARWIN The Plays may be had in paper covers at 1s. 6d. net as under 1. LOVERS’ TASKS 2. BUSHES & BRIARS 3. MY MAN JOHN 4. PRINCESS ROYAL } 5. THE SEEDS OF LOVE } In one volume 6. THE NEW YEAR W. HEFFER & SONS LTD. CAMBRIDGE INTRODUCTION I HAVE been asked to write a few lines of introduction to these volumes of Country Plays, and I do so, not because I can claim any right to speak with authority on the subject of drama, but in order that I may associate myself and express my sympathy with the endeavour which the author has made to restore to his rightful estate the English peasant with whom my work for twenty years or more has brought me into close relations. There have been few serious attempts to depict English country life on the stage. Nor, for that matter, can it be said that the English peasant has fared over well in our literature. Nevertheless, the English countryman has qualities all his own, no less distinctive nor less engaging than those of his Irish, Scottish, Russian, or Continental neighbours, even though his especial characteristics have hitherto been for the most part either ignored or grossly travestied by the playwright. Now in these plays, as it seems to me, he has at last come into his own kingdom and is painted, perhaps for the first time on the stage, in his true colours, neither caricatured on the one hand, nor, on the other, sentimentalised, but faithfully portrayed by a peculiarly sympathetic and skilful hand. It is well, too, that an authentic record should be preserved of the life that has been lived in our country villages year in year out for centuries before its last vestiges—and they are all that now remain—have been completely submerged in the oncoming tide of modern civilisation and progress. Moreover, the songs and dances of the English peasantry that have become widely known in the last few years have awakened a general interest and curiosity in all that concerns the lives and habits of country people and there are many who will be glad to know what manner of men and women were they who created things of so rare and delicate a beauty.