This play is very difficult to classify--technically a comedy, and while the outcome is fair and fine and more than just
for all concerned (if they follow through as promised), yet it is somewhat sad and the romance incomplete, unconsummated and uncertain--a veritable Shchroedinger''s Cat of an ending.
The play opens in the library of the recently deceased eldest brother of the Mortimer clan, Edward. He made a fortune as a brewer, and had asked his brothers and sister to visit for a deathbed reconciliation, after a lifetime of estrangement (ironically, two of his brothers were members of a Temperance group). A new young lawyer comes in (their old family lawyer, his partner, being busy with other affairs at the moment), and as no will has apparently been found, Edward''s very considerable personal property must be disposed of, most likely to his legal next of kin--the said brothers and sister.
Shortly after they''ve explained how things stand, rather pompously, Edward''s natural (and illegitimate) daughter arrives, and when she finds her father (with whom she was very close) has passed away and apparently left her nothing, her heart is broken, and she resolves to leave and forego any monies not left to her directly by her father, determined to pursue her career in art, which he had given her the means to follow by educating her at an art school in Paris, whence she has just come--her resolution being much to the relief of her rather greedy and insensitive uncles and aunts.
Uncle Thaddeus, however, has a thunderbolt to drop upon the family''s rejoicings and plans, as they meet with the lawyers to accept their good fortune. What it is, the consequences, the deceits and revelations, are worthy of a Roman comedy--yet the heartbreak occasioned, and the uncertain beauty of the future, and the ironic tapestries of character, reveal why is this one of the most underrated plays of the 20th century.