This compendium condenses the three-act domestic drama presented in the supplied text, preserving its principal characters, plot trajectory, theatrical structure and thematic concerns.

Setting and situation
The play is set in a respectable semi-detached parsonage overlooking Victoria Park in the north‑east suburbs of London. The Reverend James Mavor Morell, a vigorous Christian Socialist and popular preacher, conducts parish and public duties from his drawing-room office. Into this domestic and ideological milieu intrude a small circle: Candida (his wife), Miss Proserpine Garnett (his brusque typist), the young curate Alexander Mill, Candida’s practical father Burgess, and Eugene Marchbanks, an impressionable young poet whom Morell has rescued from destitution.

Principal characters (sketch)
- James Morell: genial, eloquent clergyman and social reformer; outwardly confident but liable to jealousy and rhetorical excess.  
- Candida Morell: warm, maternal, practical, shrewd; manages household life and prizes the concrete obligations of marriage.  
- Eugene Marchbanks: an intense, neurotic poet; idealistic, inwardly passionate, inexperienced in practical life.  
- Proserpine Garnett: sharp, lower‑middle class typist, devoted yet resentful; comic realism.  
- Burgess: Candida’s coarse, self‑interested father; comic representative of petty commerce.

Act‑by‑act synopsis
Act I (morning) establishes domestic routine, civic entanglements and light comic conflict: Morell’s public commitments, Proserpine’s impatience, Burgess’s boorishness and the arrival of Marchbanks. Tension between public preaching and private life is sketched; Eugene’s poetic vulnerability and his attraction to Candida are introduced.

Act II (afternoon) heightens psychological friction. Eugene’s poetic sensitivity and frank declarations increasingly unsettle the household; playful social gatherings and a lecture engagement contrast with intimate unease. Morell exhibits an unusual assertiveness (refusing an engagement) and a protective insistence that Candida remain at home with Eugene. Marchbanks’s admiration and Candida’s mixture of affection and practical control deepen the romantic triangle.

Act III (evening) resolves the crisis. Eugene confesses love; Morell, bruised by suspicion, demands Candida choose. Candida surprises both by declaring she will give herself to “the weaker of the two,” and, after weighing duty, affection and the realities of care, reaffirms her marriage. She elects the husband and frames the choice as an ethical, practical devotion: she will remain the stabilizing, restorative force in family and community life.

Themes and style
The drama interrogates tensions between public rhetoric and domestic responsibility, idealism and practicality, masculine pride and vulnerable need. Dialogue is sharp, ironic and theatrical; stage directions and character description blend social satire with humane insight. The play dramatizes choice, not as romantic possessiveness, but as an ethical allocation of care: Candida’s decision privileges the partner who most requires her sustaining love and the quotidian labours that make social ideals lived realities.