First performance 23 January 1768 | Playwright Hugh Kelly | |
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False Delicacy is a 1768 comic play by the Irish playwright Hugh Kelly with some assistance by David Garrick. It premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre on 23 January 1768. The play was a major success for Kelly. It was acted over twenty times during its first season and within a year ten thousand printed copies of it had been sold. It was subsequently translated into German, French and Portuguese.
It was staged at the same time as Oliver Goldsmith's play The Good Natur'd Man was being performed at Covent Garden and the two plays were seen as being in competition.
Plot
Lord Windworth and Lady Betty Lambton are in love but she is too shy and delicate to admit it, feeling rejected Winworth seeks Miss Marchmont and she only accepts him because she believes that Betty agrees.