"And So To Bed"

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 42, 1 May 1931, Page 4

"And So To Bed"

Samuel Pepys in Radio Form —

A THREE-ACT comedy, "And So to Bed," founded on the diary written by the famous Samuel Pepys, will be broadcast from 1YA on Tuesday evening, May 5. The studio presentation will be under the direction of Mr. J. W. Bailey, who will lead a strong east. The following.note, written by the author of the comedy, J. B. Fagan,. is very interesting: "For many years I _had been fascinated by the idea of putting Pepys on the stage in a full-length play. I came to the conclusion that any attempt to dramatise the diary, or a part of it, would probably result in a -gerappy type of chronicle play which would fail to give a living portrait of the ’diarist. "So I began where the diary ended, and placed my play in

June, 1669, a few days after the last entry. "There is no historical foundation for the happenings in ‘And So to Bed,’ but there is a seed in the pages of the diary from which they might -lygve grown, and did grow in my tion. I. think I may claim tot hare drawn Pepys’ portrait faithfully from his own revelation, and that there is little he says and does in my comedy which could not be paralleled in the pages of the diary. To those who may object that I have not shown the grave sober Pepys, the Secretary of State, the father of British Admiralty, I can only say that I happened to catch him as the amorous rogue on an afternoon that was all comedy. And that if I have not extenuated, I have set down naught in malice’: