The Profligate: A Play in Four Acts

A four-act domestic drama depicts a husband's moral collapse through prolonged recklessness and the damage it inflicts on his marriage and social standing. The narrative follows his partner's struggle between judgment and compassion as friends and community react, and mounting guilt and public disgrace lead to a stark final choice—suicide in the author’s original ending, though some stagings substituted reconciliation. The play interrogates repentance, forgiveness, personal responsibility, and the tension between private conscience and public reputation, employing realist domestic scenes and moral debate to expose social hypocrisy and the limits of atonement.