sentences:  Last of all is Ma, the stubborn Irish matriarch who rises from her deathbed in order to have a priest sanctify her common-law marriage to a Dutchman.Furth wrote his play intending it to be a tour de force for a single actress playing all four roles.The title is derived from the quote "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined", written by Alexander Pope in his "Moral Essays" in 1773.