Stage-Land

Stage-Land is a collection of satirical sketches published in 1889 by the English humorist Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927), appearing almost simultaneously with Three Men in a Boat, the book that made his name. It has no continuous plot; instead, across fourteen short chapters, it files a dossier on each of the stock characters that recur in nineteenth-century British melodrama, recording their habits and behavioural laws on stage with the cool detachment of a naturalist observing some exotic tribe. The specimens dissected include the hero, the villain, the heroine, the comic relief, the lawyer, the adventuress, the maid, the stage child, the comic lovers, the peasant, the good old man, the Irishman, the detective and the sailor. Jerome observes that the stage hero is usually called George, has no discernible profession, is falsely accused in the opening scene, and that those who hate him invariably end up on the receiving end of a long and furious speech; that the villain wears a clean stiff collar and smokes cigarettes, and once he starts talking must confide his entire scheme to his opponent, always coming to grief just as the curtain is about to fall; that the heroine is dogged by misfortune from beginning to end; and that the comic relief, having been knocked down by the hero in his youth, follows him for the rest of his life. The book also pokes fun at the absurd "stage law", whereby anyone who dies intestate leaves his property to the nearest scoundrel, and a lost marriage certificate automatically voids the marriage. The book is very short, and the original edition was illustrated by J. Bernard Partridge, the pictures and text enhancing each other. Chinese readers usually encounter it in the English original included on the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press "FLTRP Reading" platform, under the Chinese title Wutai—a small book that offers an introduction to Victorian theatrical conventions and English deadpan humour.