Hobson's Choice: The Play

"It's a poor sort of woman who'll stay lazy when she sees her best chance slipping from her. A Salford life's too near the bone to lose things through fear of speaking out." (pg. 16)

I first read this play for English Lit in high school in 2005/6 – what must be half my lifetime ago by now – and, before picking it up today, all I remembered of it was that it was vaguely amusing and set in my hometown of Salford (which must've been one of the reasons why the teacher chose to study it). And that the film adaptation was surprisingly star-studded for a story set in such an unpromising Lancashire town: Alexander Korda producing, David Lean behind the camera, with John Mills and Charles Laughton in front of it.

I certainly mustn't have show more appreciated it at the time, because I was really surprised today by how much I enjoyed reading it. And it wasn't just the fact it was set in Salford – casually throwing in street and place names I know well – though I did enjoy that, no matter how routine and unremarkable that sort of thing must seem to, say, a Londoner or a New Yorker. The characters ring true, as does the nuance and humour of the dialogue, and the concept is heart-warming: Maggie, a self-assured woman (an "old maid" at thirty) sees the potential in Will, a talented but timid bootmaker of the underclass, and raises him up (or helps him raise himself up), developing a truly strong and reciprocal relationship that shows a hard-won love by the time the theatre curtain falls.

Will's self-confidence by the end is mirrored by the play's: despite its lowly setting, it has all the panache of a crowd-pleaser and a strong literary vein running through it. Whilst it was completely lost on the teenage me, I can see now the theatre heritage: Hobson's Choice has elements of King Lear recast as a comedy – imagine Cordelia not standing for anyone else's nonsense, and you have the right of it – and it is spartan enough (only two different settings over four acts) to allow for easy reproduction on the stage. The play is like Will when he pops up out of that hatch in Act One: he doesn't seem like much, but you soon begin to take notice. show less

You go, Maggie Hobson!

Miss Hobson, you won't get the vote for another dozen years, but you used your brains and will to mold your life with a happy marriage of mutual respect and well on the road to a successful and honest business.

While you were at it, you saw to it that your two younger sisters were able to marry the suitors of their choice and got your misogynistic alcoholic father on the road to sobriety.

So much for being insulted by being called "bossy."

This makes a fascinating comparison to the previous fiction I just finished, written 4 years before, the idiotic A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This play was immensely more enjoyable and proves that in the 1910s not all male writers were blathering juveniles.

I show more rejoiced. And my reading palette cleared.

Watched the Granada play with the magnificent Patricia Routledge as Maggie and a young, cute Michael Caine as reluctant husband, aired in 1962.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96sFgmD3pTg show less

A comedy play about 3 daughters who do all the work and their overbearing father who does all the drinking.
This is a pretty solid social comedy, the jokes reminded me of the humour of 'Till Death Do Us Part' or 'All in the Family' if your american. The ending might seem a bit harsh to some of the characters but this is a tough time to live in and 'being nice' is a relative term anyway.
So an easy 3-stars when watched/read in a void... however!
Its also clearly a reimagining of [b:King Lear|12938|King Lear|William Shakespeare|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1331563731s/12938.jpg|2342136], and on that basis i gave it an extra star. Personally i always thought Lear himself a bit of an ass and was rooting for the evil daughters most of show more the time :P . The writer of this play seems of a similar opinion.
I also love the differences shown here between the qualities of a good daughter in shakespears time and a good daughter in 1915. There's a lot you can examine in what the playwright chooses to leave and change between the two works.

Edit: Note nobody else seems to be reading it as King Lear 2.0, so maybe its just me :) . show less

What a wonderful play! How have I gone all these years without discovering this little gem? I've never read it, seen the play or movie -- I'm not sure how I missed it! It was simply a brilliant piece of theatre. I'm so sorry that I'm too old to play Maggie. I might be enticed to come out of my theatrical retirement to direct this wonderful piece. In some ways, the plot is predictable but the brilliance of the characters makes it all work beautifully.

During the First World War, Brighouse who wrote Hobson's Choice) was declared unfit for combat, but joined what later became the Royal Air Force, and was seconded to the Air Ministry Intelligence Staff, where in his spare time he wrote Hobson's Choice.