Lottery of Love, The

Lottery of Love, The (1888), a comedy by Augustin Daly. [Daly's Theatre, 105 perf.] Mrs. Zenobia Sherramy ( Mrs. G. H. Gilbert), a “strong‐minded, woman's rights, female suffrage platform apostle” who was jailed in her youth for parading in bloomers, makes life so miserable for her new son‐in‐law, Adolphus Doubledot ( John Drew), and his bride, Diana ( Sara Chalmers), that on the very afternoon of the wedding they agree upon a divorce. Two years later Adolphus has married Josephine ( Ada Rehan), daughter of the widower Benjamin Buttercorn ( James Lewis). Adolphus is horrified when Buttercorn suddenly appears with his own new bride, none other than Diana, with Mrs. Sherramy in tow. But the harridan again makes life so miserable that Adolphus and Buttercorn conspire to foist Diana on the doting Tom Dangerous ( Frederick Bond), who agrees to take daughter and mama to Brazil with him. Based on Bisson and Mars's Les Surprises du divorce, which by coincidence Coquelin was performing across the street during the play's run, the work was called by one of Daly's biographers “the best of Daly's adaptations from the French.” At Daly's and elsewhere it held the stage for the rest of the century.