The Fascinating Foundling

• Horace Brabazon, a beautiful young man
• Sir Cardonius Boshington, the Lord Chancellor
• Anastasia Vulliamy, a suffragette
• Mercer, an elderly clerk

Horace Brabazon, an elegant young man, enters the office of the Lord Chancellor, Sir Cardonius Boshington. After a scuffle with Mercer, the Chancellor's faithful clerk, he is granted an interview with the great man. Horace says that he was a foundling who was made ward of the Court. As an orphan, he expects the Chancellor to behave as the father of all orphans who are such wards. He has a duty to find Horace a job and also to find him a suitable wife, someone old enough to mother him. Horace then leaves.

Miss Anastasia Vulliamy, another foundling, appears. A suffragette who has recently been released from prison, she demands to be given a weak-willed husband whom she can dominate. Having forgotten his walking-stick, Horace reappears. Anastasia says he looks just like the kind of man she wants. Horace is reluctant to commit to a relationship, but when he discovers that she is a foundling like himself, he embraces her.

Shaw wrote the play at his home in Ayot St. Lawrence for Elizabeth Asquith, the 12-year-old daughter of prime minister H. H. Asquith. She wanted a play to produce at a benefit event for a charity.[1] Shaw's friend Archibald Henderson says that she directed a performance of it by child actors. 'This play, Shaw informed me, was given by a group of children under the direction of Princess Bibesco [Elizabeth Asquith's later married name], but he was unable to recall either place or date.'[2] It was first played professionally by the Arts Theatre Club in January 1928, running for forty-four performances.[2]

It was published in 1926 in the collection Translations and Tomfooleries.[3]

Critic Homer E. Woodbridge says that the play is so bad that Shaw 'properly' subtitled it with the phrase that 'best described' it: 'a disgrace to the author'.[2] Woodbridge adds, '"The Fascinating Foundling" and "The Music Cure", another topical skit dealing with the Marconi scandal, vie in flatness with "Passion, Poison and Petrifaction"; both are really beneath criticism.'[4] Shaw himself seems to have taken much the same view, writing in a letter to Lillah McCarthy, 'I can't stand The Fascinating Foundling'.[5]