Publisher's Synopsis
"Hester's Mystery" is one of Pinero's earlier plays. The villain, in order to force the heroine to marry him, attempts to create a mystery about her unexplained absence from the boarding school. The mystery is satisfactorily explained along lines conventional both in plot and style.
-"Bulletin of Bibliography," Volume 6
The new little piece at the Folly Theatre- "Hester's Mystery," by Mr. Pinero-we have only lately had the opportunity of seeing. It is probably the brightest short piece now being played in London, and in some respects is even better worth going to than Mr. Byron's "Upper Crust," which is the principal piece of the evening at the same play-house.
In "Hester's Mystery" everything is well done. The story counts for next to nothing in this agreeable little piece, but it is most adroitly told; it is enlivened with humour, and with true touches of character. Certainly we take exception to one of the personages. The clerical looking son of the schoolmistress bears painful resemblance to the politer villains of melodrama. He is to be classed among unreal and conventional things. But the shrewish farming woman is good, and is acted shrewishly by Miss Eliza Johnstone; the young husband 'who seeks employment as a labourer is represented by a manly performer; the old rustic, whose heart is good but whose wits are hopelessly dull, is played with great freshness, truth and simplicity by Mr. G. Shelton; and the heroine, Hester, has as her representative a young actress of excellent liveliness and mobility of expression and of great variety of resource -indeed, Miss Erne Listen plays the part in a way that could not possibly be bettered, so brightly and naturally that her performance alone would make the thing worth seeing. The theatre is fortunate in having found in Mr. Pinero a writer who combines with stage knowledge the will and the faculty to be realistic and vivid rather than artificial and mannered, and Mr. Pinero is fortunate in having his work interpreted with worthy success.
-"The Academy and Literature," Volume 17