Sacred and Profane Love: a Play in Four Acts

CARLOTTA. Yes, yes! Please! Quick! You see I must go-now, at once. And I can't possibly be seen in the street without something on my head. LOUISA (to herself as she leaves room, L.). Talk about swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat! Stops out all night, but she can't possibly be seen in the street without a hat. -from Scene II Arnold Bennett is considered one of the greatest novelists of the early 20th century, yet his work is all but forgotten today. This 1919 play, based on his novel of the same name (also known as The Book of Carlotta), is a delightful romp, a comedy of sexual manners and mores, of cads and fallen women, that reminds us that stories we suspect were ahead of their time were, in fact, very much of their moment. British writer ARNOLD BENNETT (1867-1931) wrote both fiction and nonfiction, but he is best known for the novels Anna of the Five Towns (1902), Buried Alive (1908), and Clayhanger (1910).