ABSTRACT

In July 1921 Gwen John was held up by the Bookman of 'The New Dramatist', part of a younger generation of playwrights whose work serious and socially conscious – embodied some of the shifts taking place in post-war theatre. In terms of twentieth-century theatre history, Gwen John is a figure on the margins, her work generally regarded as being of limited importance. In Gwen John's collected works there are very few full-length plays and although there are some meaty 'star' parts, their shortness sometimes limited their appeal to theatrical managements. John's most popular work was Gloriana, her play about Queen Elizabeth I, produced by Israel Zangwill at the Little Theatre in December 1924 amid an atmosphere of bad temper and quarrels between playwright and producer. John's play, which featured John Gielgud in the cast, was written, as the Play Pictorial noted, in patriotic prose, 'with a purple patch in Drake's lengthy description of the overthrow of the Armada'.