Cupid's Understudy

Field, Salisbury, 1878-1936Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 61K words
Chapters: 7

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Cupid's Understudy by Salisbury FieldAuthor: Field, Salisbury, 1878-1936,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jan 1, 2003

Editor's review

This is an English play by the early twentieth-century American writer Salisbury Field, now in the public domain as an e-book via Project Gutenberg. Built on a light romantic-comedy structure, it spins misunderstandings and misplaced affections around the premise of an understudy to Cupid, the god of love, and belongs squarely to the tradition of American popular stage comedy. Its value lies not in deep social critique but in offering a glimpse of the dialogue rhythms, character configurations, and romantic attitudes of Broadway-style light comedy a century ago; it is useful for those studying early American commercial theater or translating light comedy. The text is short and colloquial, suitable as a brief play selection for English literature classes and for readers who want an old-fashioned light comedy for leisure. Note that it is a script, dense with dialogue and brief in stage directions, so readers used to linear novels will need to adjust their reading rhythm.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English learners looking for a short English play to practice reading
Readers interested in early twentieth-century American popular theater
Drama enthusiasts or students needing light-comedy excerpts

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting profound social issues or weighty literary themes
Readers uncomfortable with script format who only read pure narrative fiction

Reading tips

Read through the character list and scene descriptions first to establish relationships before entering the dialogue.
Reading the dialogue aloud helps capture the rhythm of the lines and stays closer to the script than silent reading.
When encountering old-fashioned colloquialisms or slang, note the context first rather than stopping to look up every word.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a play?

It is a play, made up of character dialogue and stage directions rather than traditional linear narrative. Readers should first clarify the characters and scene changes, then follow the dialogue to advance the plot; the sense of rhythm depends more on imagining the stage than reading a novel does.

How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for beginners?

The language is generally colloquial with short sentences, but it contains early twentieth-century expressions and a little slang, which pure beginners may find challenging. Those with intermediate English reading ability who are willing to use notes or reference tools will find it fairly smooth.

What should I note about the public-domain e-book edition?

This edition comes from Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain electronic text, mainly in plain text, and may lack the notes and introduction of a modern publication. Readers are advised to keep their own notes on character relationships and to watch for early spelling and punctuation conventions.

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About the author

Field, Salisbury, 1878-1936 Author · American · 1878–1936

Salisbury Field (1878–1936) was an American playwright and screenwriter. Public information about his education, early life, and detailed chronology of works is limited; what can be confirmed concerns mainly his professional identity and one representative work. He was active both on Broadway and in early Hollywood, writing for the theatre as well as for the screen, and his career spanned a period when stage drama still predominated and the film industry was rising rapidly. One work by him, Cupid's Understudy, is held in this collection; judging from its title, it likely belongs to the light romantic comedy genre, which was popular on Broadway and on screen at the time and fits his dual focus on stage and film. Given the limited surviving material, a fuller picture of his oeuvre and literary standing awaits more complete bibliography and research.