Although at first Maggie is portrayed as being bossy and quite the “ugly duckling” along side her two sisters, she showed herself to be much their superior in intelligence and wit, even if she was not in the looks department.
Mrs. Hepworth Analysis
Mrs. Hepworth is one of Hobson’s more distinguished customers, a wealthy elderly woman who visits the shop in Act One to compliment Will on his excellent workmanship on a pair of boots she purchased previously.
Although Mrs Hepworth is not one of the principal characters of the play, her character is very useful in three ways.
Firstly, she succeeds in making a fool of Hobson, which increases the reader’s dislike of him, by making it easy to laugh at him. She does this when Hobson automatically assumes that she is visiting the shop to complain, and he grovels and metaphorically licks her boots (excuse the pun!). She dismisses Hobson’s fawning with a snobbish put down, leaving Hobson feeling very embarrassed in front of his daughters and a lowly worker who he considers himself better than.
Mrs. Hepworth’s character also introduces the reader to Will, a nervous and easily influenced young man, who goes on to become one of the principal characters of the play when he later marries Maggie.
She also remarks that Will should inform her if he ever changed employers after giving him her card, to which Hobson exclaims that that would not happen and she then comments that it could happen and adds sharply that he is probably underpaid anyway, which soon quiets Hobson.
Although Mrs. Hepworth is quite a minor character in the play, without her introduction of Will, the reader would not be as well informed or accustomed to the mannerisms of his character and the ‘transition’ between the introductions of the different characters would be a lot less smooth and more abrupt and sudden, when he came in later. Also, her remark about him moving employers gives the reader an idea that this may occur later on in the play.
Summary of Act One
In Act 1 the reader is carefully introduced to all of thew characters in such a way that first impressions sculpt the way in which the reader for most of the play, views the characters.
Set in the interior of Hobson’s Boot shop in Chapel Street, Salford, Act 1 begins with Albert Prosser, the 26 year old son of an established solicitor (who likes Alice) coming into the shop where Maggie, Alice and Vickey are sitting behind the counter. Albert has come in to see Alice, and Maggie knows this but tired of him always coming in and making “sheep’s eyes” at Alice, she teaches him a lesson – making him buy a pair of boots and laces costing him quite a lot of money. Soon after this when Albert has left, Hobson enters and has a ‘talk’ with his three daughters, informing them that he has had enough of them interfering with his “comings-in and goings-out” and that he considers them immodest in the way they dress, bumptious and uppity. When he threatens to find husbands for Alice and Vickey so that he can wash his hands of them, Maggie inquires whether, if he is dealing husbands round, she gets one and Hobson laughs cruelly exclaiming “Well, that’s a good one, you with husband!” When Maggie asks why not, he tells her that she is, “well past the marrying age” and that she is an, “old maid if ever there was one.”
Although Maggie is probably angry at her father’s remarks, she has no chance to react yet because Mrs. Hepworth, one of Hobson’s wealthier customers enters wanting to know the maker of the boots she is wearing. At first Hobson is puzzled and assumes that she is dissatisfied with the quality of the boots, however it turns out it is exactly the opposite. When presented with the maker of the boots, Will Mossop, a lanky dull-witted man of about 30, she praises him on the exceptional quality f the boots and even gives him her card so that he could inform her if he ever moved employers, Mrs. Hepworth then leaves.
Then enters Jim Heeler, a friend of Hobson’s who he talks to about marrying off Alice and Vickey and his opinion on what he should do. Jim immediately changes Hobson’s mind when he tells him about the amount of money that two weddings will cost him, and having to replace them with paid workers if they left the shop.
After Jim and Hobson leave to go to the Moonrakers (the local pub), Maggie calls Will up from the cellar below the shop where he works, and tells him that she thinks he is very gifted and that his skilled hands mean that he could leave Hobson’s shop and work somewhere else – where he would be paid and appreciated more. She then casually asks him to marry her and he does not refuse, partly because he does not want to offend her and also because he is afraid of her. He tells her about his previous engagement to Ada Figgins who then enters the shop to bring Will his dinner. Maggie using her ability to overpower people, manages to win Will in a short war of words with Ada, who although is quite a weak, poor blooded girl, has a mother who is even more strong willed than Maggie, and who Will is even more afraid of. Because Will lodges with Ada and her mother so Maggie solved that problem easily, telling him to stay with Tubby Wadlow, another one of Hobson’s workers.
Maggie, feeling quite pleased with herself probably because she has proved her father wrong, tells her sisters about her intention to marry Will, quite casually. They are astonished and both think that Maggie will be marrying well beneath her. Hobson, who returns soon after this and agrees with Alison and Vickey, describes Will as a “workhouse brat, a come-by chance” and he calls Will to him so they he can beat the love for Maggie out of Will’s puny body. However, Will showing a little bravery tells Hobson that the more he beats him the more he will stick to Maggie like glue and he kisses her, to which Maggie explains “I knew he had it in you!” while Hobson just stands in amaze indecision.
A Summary of Act Two
Act 2 begins a month later in the shop with Alice and Vickey having obvious problems running the shop since Maggie’s departure. Maggie enters followed by Will and Freddie Beenstock (Vickey’s suitor). They tell Alice and Vickey about Hobson getting junk and falling through the trapdoor of Freddie’s corn warehouse into the cellar, on to a large pile of corn.
Maggie has come up with a plan to keep Hobson exactly where he is. She gets Albert Prosser, the son of a solicitor to draw up a document prosecuting him for trespassing and damage of the corn he landed on. She wants him out of the way so that she can get married to Will with her sisters there. She also tells Alice and Vickey about the shop that she has set up with Will and the cellar below it where they are going to live.
After telling her sisters to go and get dress for her wedding, Maggie and Will are left alone and she says to him “The Parson is going to ask you if you will have me and you’ll either answer truthfully or not at all. If you are not willing, just say so now” to which Will replies, “I’ll tell him yes”, and reveals, “Yes Maggie I’m resigned. You’re growing on me, lass. I’ll toe the line with you.”
Summary of Act Three
Act 3 is set in the cellar of Will and Maggie’s shop in Oldfield Road, with Will, Maggie, Albert, Alice, Vickey and Freddie having dinner round the table celebrating Will and Maggie’s marriage earlier that day.
Hobson knocks on the door of the shop calling desperately for Maggie while Alice, Vickey, Freddie and Albert (who are all afraid of Hobson) hide in the bedroom.
When Hobson enters, he is quite distress about an action for damages for trespassing against him, which he says, will bankrupt and ruin him. After watching him squirm and feel total humiliation telling all of this in front of Will whom he considers inferior to him, Maggie solves his problem suggesting an out of court settlement of £1000 and Maggie also manages to get a further £1000 out of him to pay for Alice and Vickey’s weddings and after realising that he has been “diddled” he storms out angrily after giving his word to pay the money, meaning that to retain any honour or self-respect he could not break his promise. Grateful to their sisters Alice and Vickey leave happy, knowing that they are soon to be married to Albert and Freddie.
Summary of Act Four
This time set in Hobson’s living room Act 4 begins with Hobson being ill and daughterless with only Tubby to look after him. When Dr MacFarlane arrives and examined Hobson he diagnoses chronic alcoholism and advises him to swallow his pride and ask one of his daughters to return and help him.
Tubby calls for Maggie, who enters, told that Hobson was dangerously ill. Alice and Vickey are also called and when asked how is willing to look after Hobson, all three are reluctant. Alice and Vickey both find reasons why they cannot, however Maggie being very shrewd and sharp does not dismiss the idea altogether. After quite a lot of tough negotiating on Maggie and Will’s part (who has come on a lot since his marriage to Maggie), Will and Maggie agree to return to Hobson’s shop to look after him and the business on the condition that Will become his partner and he becomes only a sleeping partner, with little impact on the running of the business, with even the name changing to Mossop & Hobsons. Will goes on to suggests more changes to the interior of the shop and the décor, while Hobson has little choice but to accept ungraciously.
When Hobson then exits after being told to go and get the Deeds drawn up for the new partnership in the business, Will and Maggie are left alone and Will who for once stood up for himself against Hobson, revealed to Maggie that he had still been astonished at his own boldness.
Then comes my favourite part of the play, the ending where Will takes Maggie’s hand referring to her wedding ring says, “You’ve worn a brass one long enough” (Maggie used a brass ring from her father’s shop to be her wedding ring rather than going to the expense of buying a proper one). To this Maggie, wrenching her hand free, replies “I’ll wear that ring forever, Will”, and Will explains “I was for getting you a proper one, Maggie”, and Maggie says, “I’m not preventing you. I’ll wear your gold for show, but that that brass stays where you put it Will, and if we get too rich and proud, we’ll just sit down together quite and take a long look at it, so as we’ll not forget the truth about ourselves…”
Will expresses his feelings of amazement, triumph and incredulity with a simple, “Well, by gum!” before turning to follow Maggie and Hobson to start a new life.
About Harold Brighouse
Harold Brighouse was born on 26 July 1882 in Eccles, near Salford, Lancashire. The son of the magistrate and treasurer of the Eccles Liberal Association, John Brighouse (who was described as being “addicted to work “) Harold enjoyed a happy, secured middle class family life with his sister, Hilda, mother (who had been a headmistress) and his father.
Harold was taught by his mother at home who aspired for her son to follow in the footstep of her brother Edwin, a classic genius who had died young. Her home schooling paid off, resulting in him winner a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School. However, his mother was to be disappointed in her high ambition for him, as Harold in his own words was “unteachable” and, he left school at 17 to learn the cotton trade in a shipping merchant’s warehouse.
It was working in central Manchester that was surrounded by the theatres and particularly the summer season of Shakespeare plays at the Theatre Royal in 1990 that awaken his interest in drama. He became compulsive theatergoer when he moved to London on business in 1902 and he became a regular attendee of the first nights of new plays. It was the times that Harold saw the plays in the Courts Theatre seasons run by Harley Granville-Barker and J.E. Vedrenne that have been described as his “rich, random, unpremeditated first apprenticeship to playwriting”.
After marrying a fellow theatre lover, Harold on one of his weekly visits to London (despite now living in Manchester) on business continued his love of the theatre watching “the first performance of, as it happened, an outrageously bad play” and he came to the immediate realisation that he could probably write a play himself.
His first play in accordance with the fashion of the time, was a five act romantic drama, which he sent to leading actor-manager, J. Forbes-Robertson. Although he rejected it, he gave Harold some invaluable advice, “try one-actor first – write of the life you know. Harold followed he advice and wrote his first one act play ‘Lonesome –like’, in 1909. Although it was not performed until two years later, it placed him firmly on the path to becoming a full time writer.
Harold now still work full time for his employer as a salesman wrote plays in the evenings and weekends. He went on to write many plays including Dealing in Futures, The Game, The Northerners, Garside’s Career and of course, Hobson’s choice. Harold died in 1958 and although he wrote over 10 plays Hobson’s Choice is best remembered.
The play’s title – Hobson’s Choice is proverbial; to have Hobson’s Choice is to have no choice at all.
Its origin lies in the practice of the 17th century Cambridgeshire horse trader Hobson, whose customers in theory had a free choice but in practice always ended up with the horse nearest the stable door, which was Hobson’s choice.
List of Characters and Acts
Characters
Alice Hobson
Maggie Hobson
Vickey Hobson
Albert Prosser
Henry Horatio Hobson
Mrs Hepworth
Timothy Wadlow (Tubby)
William Mossop
Jim Heeler
Ada Figgins
Fred Beenstock
Dr Macfarlane
The scene of the play is in Salford, Lancashire,
and the period is 1880.
Act One: Interior of Hobson’s Shop in Chapel Street
Act Two: The same
Act Three: Will Mossop’s shop in Oldfield Road
Act Four: Living-room of Hobson’s shop
