Like all H.E Bates stories of Country Matters, this one is deceptively simple and has, at its heart, a clever take on Shakespeare's Othello. A farmer, who is unable to read or write, works a smallholding in rural England. He has a farmhand who has been stealing the proceeds of the sale of eggs. When the farmer brings a woman into the farm, the farmhand begins to sew the seeds of distrust as he sees his power base being eroded. When the woman eventually goes away, she leaves a note for the farmer. The farm hand, realising his master's problems with reading, reads his own version of the letter in which the woman "confesses" to stealing the money and gives this as her reason for leaving. Like Othello, it is a tragedy and most beautifully acted. Ithink it would be well worth re-issuing on DVD, perhaps in a compilation of Bates' stories.
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