melodramas

- a congenital wastrel, disinherited by the disappointed father
- a blind heroine, cured by a brilliant surgeon
- an unconsummated wedding
- a case of complete amnesia
- mistaken identities, complete with shared initials and identical scars
- a fortune in inheritance
- florid descriptive passages

Still, an engaging read - Satan Sanderson

(not yet finished with the book. I may have to add items to the list. Should I add the spoiler html?)

There should be someone unexpectedly returning from Australia or South Africa having made a fortune, shouldn't there?

>2 thorold: Oh, oh! That recalls to me The Man from Brodney's. The south seas island of Japat, I believe, and it was a ruby and sapphire mine!!

You forgot the unrepentant villain who wants the heroine's fortune and the railroad tracks to which he ties her. Also, the plain, spinster sister.

>4 LibraryPerilous: There doesn't seem to be sister, unless she's been long-lost.
There may be railroad tracks later in the story - they're now congregating in a western mining town. Would sluice runs and gates be an adequate substitute?

Sluice runs and gates would be excellent. And a sawmill with a great big spinning blade.

Yes, it's imperative that the heroine be imperiled:



The small town where I grew up puts on a melodrama during the town's annual festival. It's fun to cheer and boo to scripts such as Egad, the Woman in White.

This is an interesting article on melodrama's role as a nostalgia-maker in society. The points can apply to written melodrama as well.

>7 LibraryPerilous: I like that article's point that melodrama attempts a distillation of good and evil, something much of our present media has run from.

For many years we had an actual river showboat, the Becky Thatcher, permanently docked in Marietta, Ohio. Top deck was a bar and restaurant. The lower deck had a stage and a small auditorium where melodramas were put on during the summer months. Drama students would come for the season and produce them. Audience participation was required, including throwing popcorn at the villain. (Which may be why he's got that cape schtick!) It was immense fun. Sadly, the Becky Thatcher was towed to Pittsburgh in 2009 to be put up for sale, and it sank in 2010.



BTW, I'm cleaning my shelves and I have a volume of plays/skits that are melodramas. Does anyone want it?

Our town encouraged people to throw pennies and other loose change and would add the tiny profit to their fund for the next year's melodrama.

River showboats are very idyllic, I think.

>9 LibraryPerilous: ouch!