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    A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess"
    A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess"
    A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess"
    Ebook38 pages28 minutes

    A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781535837019
    A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess"

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      A Study Guide for Neil Simon's "The Governess" - Gale

      10

      The Governess

      Neil Simon

      1973

      Introduction

      The Governess, a one-act play by Neil Simon, was written in 1973. The play consists of a brief scene taken from another Simon play, The Good Doctor. Strictly speaking, The Good Doctor is not a play but a series of vignettes or short sketches, and thus, The Governess is able to stand alone as a one-act play. The Good Doctor is sometimes labeled a musical, but strictly speaking, the play has only some musical accompaniment, rather being a musical itself. The Governess contains no music.

      The Governess is based on a short story, A Nincompoop, by the nineteenth-century Russian writer Anton Chekhov. The play is a satire on innocence, trickery, and money and involves the interaction between two characters, the mistress and the family governess, whose innocence the mistress fails to appreciate as an important value. The action takes place in Russia at the turn of the century. Simon's use of Chekhov was a departure from his previous plays, since The Governess is not set in contemporary New York and does not focus on New York life.

      The Governess first opened on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theater on November 27, 1973, as part of the The Good Doctor. The play ran for 208 performances and received several Tony Award nominations, including Best Featured Actress in a Play (a win for Frances Sternhagen, playing the mistress), Best Featured Actor in a Play, Best Original Score, and Best Lighting design. The Governess is available as act 1, scene 3 of The Good Doctor, which is included in The Collected Plays of Neil Simon, Volume II, published in 1979 by Random House.

      Author Biography

      Marvin Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927, in the Bronx in New York City. He is the youngest son of Irving, a garment salesman, and Mamie, who worked a series of part-time jobs to help with family finances while her husband traveled for his job. Simon graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1944, at age sixteen, and began taking classes at New York University, where he joined the Army Air Force Reserve program. The following year, Simon was sent to Colorado for military training at Lowry Field, where he also attended the University of Denver and where he taught himself to write comedy by

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