The Private Secretary is a popular 1883 farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

 in three acts, by Sir Charles Henry Hawtrey. The play was adapted from the German Der Bibliothekar, a book by Gustav von Moser.

Famous actors who played the Reverend Robert Spalding included Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Herbert Beerbohm Tree

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...

, W. S. Penley

W. S. Penley

William Sydney Penley was an English actor, singer and comedian best remembered as producer and star of the phenomenally successful 1892 Brandon Thomas farce, Charley's Aunt and as the Reverend Robert Spalding in many productions of The Private Secretary.-Life and career:Penley was born at...

 and Frank Thornton

Frank Thornton (Savoyard)

Frank Thornton was an English actor, singer, comedian and producer. Despite a successful stage career in comedies in London, on tour and abroad, Thornton is probably best remembered as the understudy to George Grossmith in a series of Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1884.Thornton began...

. In 1886, Tyrone Power

Tyrone Power

Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...

 made his stage debut playing Gibson in a production of the play and, in 1890, an 18-year-old William Desmond Taylor

William Desmond Taylor

William Desmond Taylor was an Irish-born American actor, successful film director of silent movies and a popular figure in the growing Hollywood film colony of the 1910s and early 1920s...

, managed to get a bit-part in another production.