ABSTRACT
This chaptyer shows that the play is Tom Robertson's Caste, first performed in April 1867 and first published in 1889. Both the play and its author inhabit a difficult position in Victorian theatre history. The earliest version of Caste, the manuscript, is written in at least four different hands and was submitted for licensing to the then censor, William Bodham-Donne, in March 1867. A collation of the extract printed in Drama in Performance with the manuscript and prompt book versions of Caste reveals fundamental differences in the texts' dramatic marks. The discrepancy between the manuscript and prompt book versions of the act drop can be attributed to additions made by the author and actors during the first rehearsal and performance of Caste. Robertson's characters therefore interpret the milk jug as George Bernard Shaw does in 1897; it merely heightens the excitement of George Redford's return by providing a reminder of the mundanities of daily life that he is interrupting.
