Little Theater for Little Women

I’ve had kids’ theater on my mind these days, and want now to acknowledge my awe for one of the best anthologies of theater BY children that’s ever existed.

Comic Tragedies was copywritten 1893 by Anna B. Pratt but the title page says “Written by ‘Jo’ and ‘Meg’ and acted by the ‘Little Women’.” A foreword by Meg (not in quotes this time) and dated “Concord, Mass. 1893” reminds the reader of how, in Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, the sisters would write and stage plays for their own amusement, then explains:
From the little stage library, still extant, the following plays have been selected as fair examples of the work of these children of sixteen and seventeen. With some slight changes and omissions they remain as written more than forty years ago by Meg and Jo, so dear to the hearts of many other “Little Women.”
We then are presented with complete, multi-act scripts for:
Norna; or The Witch’s Curse
The Captive of Castile; or, The Moorish Maiden’s Vow
The Greek Slave
Ion
Bianca: An Operatic Tragedy
The Unloved Wife; or, Woman’s Faith

I had a copy out for months from the invaluable Institute Library, a private lending library here in New Haven. Nabu Press issued a glossy covered paperback last year for $24.20. But Comic Tragedies is also easily available on Project Gutenberg and other book-archive sites. It has even been recorded for LibraVox.

Scholarly commentary on the book is relatively scarce, considering the scads of theses that have been written about Little Women. Is Comic Tragedies a literary fabrication or as advertised, the actual works that inspired one of the imaginative highlights of Alcott’s famous novel?

Christine Anne Alexander and Juliet McMaster, in The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf appear to have the straight dope:

In 893, Anna Alcott Pratt published some of these amateur dramatics… Here, with editorial changes, were the real prototypes of the dramatics portrayed in Little Women. Unfortunately, Louisa’s part in composing these juvenilia cannot be accurately determined, since Anna, as a teenager, wrote too.

Lit scholars can pick apart the verbiage to declare which words might be Louisa. Little thespians will just enjoy performing them:

RIENZI: ‘Tis a wild and lonely spot, and ‘t is said strange spirits have been seen to wander here. Why come they not? ‘T is past the hour, and I who stand undaunted when the fiercest battle rages round me, now tremble with strange fear in this dim spot. Shame on thee, Rienziu, there is nought to fear.
[Opens a scroll and reads.]
Here are their names, all pledged to see the deed accomplished. ‘T is a goodly list and Constantine must fall when foes like these are round him.
[Ione appears within the glen.]
Ha! Methought I heard a sound! Nay, ‘t was my foolish fancy. Spirits, I defy thee!
IONE: Beware! Beware!
—From The Greek Slave