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As quotable and relevant today as it was in the early 20th Century.

The most popular of Draper's character sketches, "The Italian Lesson" offers a brief window into the hectic life of a New York society matron. Written in 1925, when Draper was forty and at the height of her creative abilities, the monologue was originally referred to in letters as "The Busy Mother."

"Busy" is something of an understatement. While studying The Inferno, the matron, among much else and with the assistance of a long line of servants, plans a dinner menu, gossips with friends, quells disturbances by her passel of troublesome children, arranges for riding lessons, dentist's appointments, dancing classes, and gymnasium visits for said troublesome children, greets a new puppy, sends her husband's golf clubs and clothes to meet him at the train station, arranges a care package for the injured son of the night watchman, reviews appointment schedules with her secretary, finds guests for a box at the opera, instructs a painter in changes to a child's portrait, gives away concert tickets, tells a schoolteacher to drop mathematics from her son's curriculum, flirts with her lover, orders a new lampshade cover, and has a manicure. The matron notes that Dante, like Shakespeare, "seemed to know the things that always would be true." So did Draper, and like the work of those writers, her monologues are "filled with quotations and great general truths."

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from Ruth Draper and Her Company of Characters: Selected Monologues, released July 18, 2020

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Ruth Draper Brooklyn, New York

Ruth Draper was the undisputed queen of the one-woman theater in the 20th century. Throughout nearly forty years as a professional performer, Draper filled theaters all over the world through her unique ability to transform herself into a vast array of characters. Draper composed more than fifty monologues over the course of her career, seventeen of which are available here. ... more

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