Robert E. Sherwood’s three-act comedy opened on 25 January 1928 for 125 performances at the Playhouse Theatre, following previews in Providence, Rhode Island, in a William A. Brady and Dwight Deere Wiman* production. Directed by John Cromwell, Roland Young won approval as King Eric, a benignly detached monarch of an unnamed kingdom, reluctantly awakened to the warlike machinations of militant General Northrup. Queen Martha (Gladys Hanson) disdains her husband and supports Northrup and his cabal. She travels to the United States hoping for a loan to “make us powerful, to increase our army and navy, to combat the red peril and subdue the terrible threat of revolution.” King Eric, encouraged by the liberal Dr. Fellman, ultimately prevails against the warmongering and false patriotism of Northrup and his wife. Cast members included Katherine Alexander and Dwight Frye. Critics compared the play, sometimes unfavorably, to George Bernard Shaw’s more satiric works, with Brooks Atkinson writing in the New York Times that the play was confusing in its tone, finding it “a mixed entertainment” in which its various components failed to “blend well.” The Queen’s Husband was popular in England but banned in Australia and Canada as disrespectful to the monarchy. A movie version, called The Royal Bed, was released in 1931.
An important scholar on American theater, Arthur Hobson Quinn was born in Philadelphia. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and joined its faculty in 1895, continuing his distinguished career in academia until retirement in 1945. Quinn’s many books, mostly anthologies and histories, include Representative American Plays (1917), The Early Drama (1917), History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (1923), Contemporary American Plays (1923), and History of the American Drama from the Civil War to the Present Day (1927). He also edited Harper’s Plays and Playwrights series.