In this high-spirited farce, the vain aging fop, Sir Harcourt, sets off to Oak Hall in the country to marry the beautiful eighteen-year-old Grace, the niece of his old friend, Max Harkaway. In doing so, he will get his hands on her fortune and secure himself a nimble young bride. Sir Harcourt leaves his son, Charles Courtly, at home, little realizing that he is a dissolute man about town and not the hard-working student Sir Harcourt believes him to be. He also does not realize that Charles has followed him to Oak Hall and is simultaneously wooing Grace, under the assumed name of Augustus Hamilton.
However, Sir Harcourt finds himself aroused and distracted by the playful Lady Gay Spanker, who has agreed to help Charles’ romance by distracting his father. With a double courtship, comical deception, and tons of naive vanity, Dion Boucicault’s farce ridicules the tendency to make snap judgments based upon fashion or wealth, town or country, nature or artifice.
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