Home > ECF > Vol. 12 > Iss. 2 (2000)
Abstract
Those of a certain age recall Monty Woolley's Broadway and film performances in the Hart-Kaufman play, The Man Who Came to Dinner. A nationally renowned critic, while on a lecture tour, injures his hip on an icy staircase of a home where he had been invited for an evening's meal. For various reasons, he ends up staying far beyond the time allotted for his recovery. The critic has opinions, and, despite his curmudgeonly nature, completely rearranges the affairs of the household he occupies, at the same time keeping in constant telephone and telegraph contact with the world's artistic and intellectual luminaries. Curiously, one of those with whom he keeps in touch is a man named Dafoe. At the end of the play, the critic finally readies to leave when we hear him tumbling down the stairs on the way out, presumably to repeat his convalescence and, for better or worse, his influence on the affairs of the household.
Recommended Citation
Seidel, Michael
(2000)
"The Man Who Came to Dinner: Ian Watt and the Theory of Formal Realism,"
Eighteenth-Century Fiction:
Vol. 12:
Iss.
2, Article 5.
Available at:
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/ecf/vol12/iss2/5