Word: claverton
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...play's theme: dishonesty toward oneself is the worst policy. The play's hero: Lord Claverton, an aged, retired Cabinet minister who idly fingers the empty pages of his once-crowded engagement book. Two unwelcome visitors from the past destroy the sand castle of his memories-precarious memories of what was essentially bogus success. Visitor No. 1 is a moneyed spiv from Central America who shared in a disreputable episode of Claverton's youth. Visitor No. 2 is Maisie Mont joy (now respectably renamed Mrs. Carghill), a onetime chorus girl whom the young Claverton seduced; in true...
Trying to salvage the one good thing left to him-his daughter Monica's love-Claverton tells her the truth about himself and finds that "if a man has one person to whom he is willing to confess everything, then he loves that person, and his love will save him." As a serene Claverton goes off to die under a beech tree-faintly echoing Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus-he wears his fate like a royal robe: "I feel at peace now. It is the peace that ensues upon contrition when contrition ensues upon knowledge of the truth...
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