New Women Dramatists in America, 1890–1920 (review)

Sherry Engle’s zeal to win recognition for the five playwrights covered in this book is engaging. Even more importantly, she underpins her enthusiasm with assiduous searches in public-records offices and archives for the arcane data that would enable her to reconstruct her subjects’ career trajectories. New Women Dramatists in America, 1890–1920 makes a genuine contribution with its reader-friendly narratives, exhaustive listings of productions for each author (as well as plays not staged or published), and an invaluable appendix of New York productions (theatre, opening date, length of run) of plays between 1885 and 1925 by hundreds of different women.

Engle’s five chosen women, each of whom earned substantial recognition as an author of Broadwayproduced plays during the Progressive Era, are Martha Morton, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, Rida Johnson Young, and collaborators Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland and Beulah Marie Dix. Morton and Young are deservedly well-known in American theatre studies of the era, the others less so. Each of the five becomes a distinctive personality through Engle’s deft analyses. She certainly achieves her modest aim of presenting their lives and work as representative of the experiences of countless women who tenaciously wielded the pen during those years. While “acknowledging and celebrating their accomplishments” (11), Engle seems tacitly cognizant that there is no pressing need to resurrect the plays themselves.

Chapter 1 is devoted to Martha Morton (1865– 1925), long acknowledged as the “dean of American women playwrights,” not only for her oft-signaled leadership in getting women admitted to the organization that would evolve into the Dramatists Guild, but also for her exemplary track record of plays written for and toured by star performers like William Crane and Sol Smith Russell, for her active involvement in putting her own plays onstage, and for her mentorship of younger women dramatists. The chapter culminates with the complete text of Morton’s address to the all-male American Dramatists’ Club at Delmonico’s on 20 January 1907—a delightful record of her wit and astuteness. Ironically, both Morton in her address and Engle in her notes (202) signal Charles Klein as the only male charter member of Morton’s newly formed Society of Dramatic Authors, but neither gives us the names of Morton’s twenty-nine women colleagues.

Madeleine Lucette Ryley (1858–1934), the subject of chapter 2, serves as a case study of a woman dramatist who divided her energies between the New York and London stages. Engle finds it instructive to note the kinds of revisions Ryley would make to tailor her plays to one audience or the other. For the study of Ryley as well as for the four others, one must applaud Engle’s persistence in reading and summarizing for us a lot of marginal plays. It is not easy to plow through so many typescripts in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection without ever unearthing a real gem; nevertheless, Engle rewards herself and us with flashes of insight gleaned from a plot or some dialogue. Considering that stars like Nat Goodwin and Maxine Elliott sought out Ryley’s work, we are well served by Engle’s effort to convey some inkling of what that work was.

Chapter 3 treats Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland (1855–1908) and Beulah Marie Dix (1876–1970) first for their individual efforts, and then for the betterknown plays resulting from their collaboration. The stories of their difficulties with English actor Martin Harvey, and later problems with American actress Amelia Bingham, reveal much about the theatrical profession at the turn of the nineteenth century. Sutherland and Dix’s most successful play, The Road to Yesterday (1906), became the basis for Victor Herbert’s operetta The Dream Girl (1924), with book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young.

The modest yet commanding figure of Rida Johnson Young (1875–1926) appropriately occupies the book’s final chapter. Remembered today largely as the author of book and lyrics for Victor Herbert’s Naughty Marietta (1910) and Sigmund Romberg’s Maytime...