page_title: Ruth Draper
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Ruth Draper / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of Ruth Draper by John Singer Sargent.
context_page_description: Ruth Draper was an American actress, dramatist and noted diseuse who specialized in character-driven monologues and monodrama. Her best-known pieces include The Italian Lesson, Three Women and Mr. Clifford, Doctors and Diets, and A Church in Italy.
context_section_description: Ruth Draper's inspiration to become an actress came from the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a friend of her family. She made her Broadway debut in the 1916 play A Lady's Name by Cyril Harcourt, and by 1921 was becoming well known as monologist, or more specifically diseuse, appearing in monodramas.
  Thus, Draper dominated the field of professional solo performance during the second quarter of the twentieth century, performing with great success throughout the United States and Europe. Draper's one-person shows differed in kind from the majority of the early lyceum and Chautauqua solo performers coming before her, as the monologues/monodramas she performed were original characters as opposed to selections of published literature.
  With a chair, shawl and occasional table as her only props, Draper entertained audiences in a half dozen languages worldwide for nearly forty years. Her best-known pieces include The Italian Lesson, Three Women and Mr. Clifford, Doctors and Diets, and A Church in Italy.
  Such theatre legends as George Bernard Shaw, Thornton Wilder, John Gielgud, Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, Laurence Olivier, and Uta Hagen were among those dazzled by Draper's artistry and talent, as were authors Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton and Agatha Christie. Draper inspired characters in two of Christie's works — Carlotta Adams in the 1933 novel Lord Edgware Dies, and Aspasia Glen in the short story "The Dead Harlequin".
  In 1951 King George VI of the United Kingdom awarded Ruth Draper honorary membership in the Order of the British Empire with the rank of Commander (CBE). On April 29, 1953, she had lunch with C. S. Lewis the day after he saw her performance at the New Theatre in Oxford. Nearly a quarter century earlier she gave a performance at Windsor Castle after an invitation from King George V and Queen Mary.
  Draper had many relationships in Italy, in large part through her connection with Lauro De Bosis, a young Italian poet and writer who died in 1931 after a daring flight over Rome during which he threw thousands of leaflets denouncing Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party.
caption: Ruth Draper as a Dalmatian Peasant by John Singer Sargent
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