Plot Summary
The action takes place in 1740s London.
A young woman, Ada, has developed a crush on the actor David Garrick so strong that she refuses to accept a marriage arranged by her father, Mr. Ingot. Ingot contrives to meet with Garrick and initially tries to persuade him to leave the country or give up acting, but when Garrick learns the reason, he assures Ingot that he will be able to cure Ada of her attraction and asks Ingot to arrange a meeting. Garrick is sympathetic to Ada's plight because he himself has fallen in love with a girl he doesn't know, but he promises her father that he will not make any romantic moves towards Ada.
Garrick is invited to a dinner party at Ingot's house, where he is stunned and horrified to realize that Ada is the very girl he had been admiring from afar, but because of his promise, he goes through with his plan. He spends the evening tormenting the other guests and pretending to be a drunk and a gambler. When he leaves, Ada is crushed, but she agrees to go through with the marriage her father intends for her. Her fiancé Richard Chivy arrives, actually as drunk as Garrick was just pretending to be, and he tells the Ingots about how he just met David Garrick at his club and listened to him tell a story of how he had spent an evening pretending to be a scoundrel so as to cure a girl of her attraction to him. Chivy does not recognize that the story is about Ada and her father, though they both recognize themselves, and Ada is cheered by the news. Chivy then mentions how someone at the club insulted the girl and father of Garrick's story, and that Garrick is now scheduled to fight a duel with the man.
The next day, Ada goes to Garrick's home, both to escape her impending marriage and to try to stop the duel set for later in the day. Chivy has followed her, and she hides from him. Garrick learns that Ada is hiding in the room, but he plays dumb and offers to help Chivy look for her, until the two men leave together for the duel. Not long after they leave, Ingot arrives and finds Ada. He says he will disown her because of how she has misbehaved. Ada is so upset by the news that she faints. Ingot tries to tell her he didn't mean it, but when he sees she has fainted unconscious he goes to get help. Ada then awakens, the last thing she heard being that she was disowned. Garrick eventually comes into the room, having won the duel, and tries to comfort Ada. He convinces her that her father loves her and that she should listen to him. Ingot overhears this and decides that David Garrick is a better man than Chivy, who by now has left in pursuit of Garrick's housemaid, and so he agrees to allow Ada to marry him.
Read more about this topic: David Garrick (play)
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)