THE PLAY - ACTORS. A PLAY IN ONE ACT. TYPESCRIPT (TOP COPY)

Original Publisher's Copy 4to. pp 41, typed recto only in blue and red type with a few handwritten corrections. Typed address on title page 'G.Cornwallis West– Guards Club Brook Street W1.' Circa 1930; no date given. Blind stamp on cover of the London typing agency Ethel Christian (Southampton Street WC2). Maroon thin card folder with blue and white raffia string as hinge and typed red title label stating this is the 'top copy.'. Play with 9 characters -Thelma Deym 'a great actress' Eloise Marski 'her life-long friend and companion', a confidential French servant and courier, Anna, her old housekeeper and Emile Harden 'an actor and leader of the revolution'. There are also four unnamed revolutionaries and 'as many others as may be possible circumstances permitting.' Set in a 'beautifully furnished' apartment in Budapest during a time of revolution. The leading revolutionary is revealed to be an actor and an old friend of the leading character, the actress Thelma. The theme of the player appears to be a confrontation between the actress and the revolutionaries with much argument and references to the theatre and the sounds of gunfire, the last words of the play are (from Thelma) '.you forget I am an actress.' Major George Frederick Myddleton Cornwallis-West (1874–1951) was a British Army officer, author, and prominent society figure,best remembered for his 1930 memoir Edwardian Hey-Days: Or, A Little About a Lot of Things, and his high-profile marriages to Lady Randolph Churchill and actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Life. .Career: Served as a British Army officer. He went on to work as a financial consultant, but suffered severe financial difficulties and was declared bankrupt in 1916 before later repaying his debts.Major Works Edwardian Hey-Days (1930): An entertaining, anecdotal memoir of high-society life, notable figures, and his own experiences in early 20th-century Britain. Very good indeed.…