| Men Without Wives | |
| Setting: | A remote north Queensland cattle station |
| Place: | Sydney Players Club, St James Hall, Sydney |
| Orig Lang: | English |
| Subject: | male-female relationships |
| Genre: | drama |
Men Without Wives is a 1938 Australian stage play by Henrietta Drake-Brockman. It was her best known play.[1] [2]
It won first prize in a 1938 playwriting competition held to celebrate the New South Wales Sesquicentenary.[3]
The Sydney Morning Herald said the play has "a passionate sincerity and an earnest conviction which outweigh the inconsistencies and flimsiness of its development und the artificiality of its construction... a not insignificant monument to the dauntless and magnificent courage of the woman outback."[4]
Leslie Rees said "it had atmospheric cogency and hard unflinching truths, but the best of it was the character of Ma Bates, a horsey, betrousered, tough-living, genuine nor’-wester, a splendid study, who should have dominated the play from the beginning, instead of merely from the second act. Better construction would have made of Men Without Wives an important and memorable drama."[5]
The play was published in a collection of her plays which also included Dampier's Ghost.
The play was adapted for radio in 1948.