One-act play: Wurzel-Flummery

Overview
A. A. Milne’s 1917 one‑act play Wurzel‑Flummery is a nimble, witty social comedy that turns a single whimsical premise into a sharp satire of public morality, political image‑making, and the price people will put on their own names. Written during the First World War, it uses light farce to probe serious questions about integrity, reputation, and the theatre of modern public life.

Plot Summary
The action unfolds in the drawing‑room of a rising public figure when a discreet solicitor arrives with an eccentric will. A recently deceased millionaire has left a handsome legacy to two beneficiaries on one outrageous condition: to receive the money, each must assume the absurd double‑barrelled surname “Wurzel‑Flummery.” If either refuses, the terms shift in a way that heightens the stakes for both. What follows is an agile battle of wits and scruples. The respectable politician worries that a ridiculous name will make him a laughing‑stock in Parliament and the press, undoing years of careful branding. His rival, a clever outsider who prides himself on independence, sees both the cash and the publicity value and toys with becoming a celebrity of principle. Over tea and epigrams, each man performs virtue while calculating advantage, trying to trap the other into either a humiliating acceptance or a grand refusal. The solicitor’s dry interventions keep the stakes precise. By the end, positions have inverted at least once: the would‑be purist discovers how profitable “refusal” can be, while the cautious statesman is tempted to pay for silence with his signature. The curtain falls on a decision that exposes the flimsiness of their stated ideals and turns the silly name into a memorable emblem of modern hypocrisy.

Characters
- A polished, image‑conscious politician whose career depends on gravitas and a marketable surname.
- A quick‑witted competitor (journalist, writer, or political gadfly) who relishes paradox and public gamesmanship.
- A cool solicitor, the play’s umpire, who coolly decants legal conditions and triggers each reversal.
- Household companions who supply reactions and nudge the debate, amplifying the social stakes.

Themes and Ideas
Milne dissects the economics of reputation: how names, titles, and labels are traded like assets, and how “principle” often masks self‑interest. The will’s condition literalizes the question “What’s in a name?” and anticipates modern branding, showing that identity can be mortgaged for cash or converted into publicity. The play also skewers the press age’s hunger for spectacle, as each man measures not right and wrong but the likely headline. Underneath the sparkle lies a wartime anxiety about authenticity: in a noisy world, can sincerity survive without becoming another pose?

Style and Tone
The dialogue is brisk, urbane, and epigrammatic, full of reversals and neat paradoxes. Milne places legal exactitude beside social frivolity, letting the comedy arise from precise language, shifting incentives, and the characters’ self‑betraying wit rather than farcical business.

Significance
Wurzel‑Flummery helped establish Milne’s reputation as a playwright of polished, intelligent light comedy. Its compact construction, topical satire, and still‑relevant insights into public image make it a durable one‑act for stages and classrooms alike.