A Bit O’ Love Series 4

＂A Bit O’ Love: Series 4＂ by John Galsworthy is a play set in a village in the West on Ascension Day. The play opens in Burlacombe’s farmhouse where Michael Strangway, a clergyman, is playing the flute before a large framed photograph of a woman. The room is paneled and has a low ceiling, with a broad window above the window seat showing the outer gate and yew trees of a churchyard and the porch of a church. Ivy Burlacombe, the farmer’s daughter, enters the room quietly with a prayer book in one hand and a glass of water containing wild orchids and hawthorn in the other. She sits on the window seat and sniffs the flowers. Michael Strangway stops playing the flute and sighs after completing the third movement of Veracini’s violin sonata. The play explores the relationships between Strangway and the village girls, including Gladys Freeman, Connie Trustaford, and Mercy Jarland, as he tries to teach them about the meaning of love and the coming of the Lord.