The Money Spinner An Original Comedy in Two Acts

THE plot of The Money-Spinner is briefly this: The young lady from whom the play takes its title is a daughter of Baron Croodle, an adventurer and the keeper of a gambling den in Paris, and because of her proverbial “luck” at card-playing, the girl has received the sobriquet of “The Money-Spinner.'' She has married the manager of a cotton firm at Rouen, who, during his employers’ absence, has embezzled ten thousand francs. To save her husband from disgrace, “The Money-Spinner” invites a former lover, Lord Kengussie, to play cards with her, hoping to win from him the required sum. But luck is against her, and by a sudden impulse she is tempted to cheat her opponent. This she is doing successfully, when stopped by Jules Faubert, who, disguised as a clerk, is in reality a detective employed to watch Harold Boycott, the embezzler. For the sake of the love he once bore her, Lord Kengussie forgives the woman, and supplies her husband with the money necessary for him to cover his defalcations. The constructive ingenuity and keen dramatic perception of Mr. Pinero cannot be too highly commended, for he contrived to make a play full of interest out of material which in less skilful and experienced hands would have become simply repulsive. The sympathy of the audience is gained for Baron Croodle, a vile brandy-drinking old scamp; for the embezzler; and for his wife, a would-be thief; whilst Faubert, the detective, who has simply done his duty, is nearly kicked out of the house because he has done that duty. However, The Money-Spinner is certainly one of the best and most successful of the too few original modern plays, and was but a forerunner of the success to be earned later on in the year by two other pieces from the pen of the same author.... We may note that an additional first act to The Money-Spinner, in which the Baron figures prominently at his gambling-den, was added to the play last spring, and produced at the Theatre Royal, Northampton.

—Dramatic Notes: An Illustrated Yearbook of the Stage