Japie's Courtship

Japie's Courtship is a one act play by an author with the nom-de-plume of "Mowbray-Kloof".

The original text

The pseudonym, which appears to be a combination of (parts of) the names of two well-known Cape Town suburbs ("Mowbray" and "Tamboerskloof" - i.e. "drum ravine"), suggests a Cape Town author. According to the critic D.C. Boonzaier (1923), this was "a weak and attenuated variation of Mr Black's Love and the Hyphen".

Though Boonzaier's comments seem to refer to a full-length play, the suggestion that it was a one-act play comes from the theatre historian S.P. Gosher (1988), who does not mention the name of an author.

Translations and adaptations

Performance history in South Africa

1911: Produced in the Opera House, Cape Town, by an unnamed company, failing deservedly in the view of Boonzaier.

Sources

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p.435

S.P. Gosher. 1988. A historical and critical survey of the South African one-act play written in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Pretoria: University of South Africa.

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