J.M. Barrie's classic comedy "What Every Woman Knows" follows Maggie Wylie, a plain, unassuming Scottish woman whose family essentially buys her a husband, the ambitious but not especially gifted John Shand, by funding his education and political career on the condition that he marry her. As John rises to prominence in Parliament, he remains blithely unaware that it is Maggie, working quietly and without credit behind the scenes, who actually writes his most successful speeches and shapes his political judgment, embodying Barrie's wry central thesis that behind every successful man stands a woman who understands him better than he understands himself. The comedy's gentle, knowing humor and its ultimately tender vindication of Maggie's unglamorous devotion made it one of Barrie's most beloved works beyond his famous "Peter Pan."

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