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Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, now famous for her novels, aphorisms, novellas, and diary writing, saw herself as a playwright, wrote exclusively dramas during the first 30 years of her literary career, and was extremely ambitious: in her own words, she was aiming to become 'the Shakespeare of the nineteenth century.' She authored twenty-six plays, which were reviewed contemptuously by her contemporaries and ignored by posterity. The plays selected for this volume are all short (one-act) comedies dating from roughly the same time period (late 1880s to 1900); they are ideally suited for inclusion in a collection due to their thematic and stylistic compatibility. In each play, a man and a woman who loved each other in the past encounter each other again after years of separation. In each case, the couples reconsider their relationship in a brilliantly witty conversation that not only touches upon their personal relationship, but also on the gender politics of their day. Most importantly, the term 'love' and the expectations it raises in an age that saw the transition from arranged 'reasonable' marriages to the 'love match' is severely and hilariously scrutinised - and the conclusions arrived at in some of these plays hold significant surprises for the reader.

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