The following year he lent it to J. Cheever Goodwin, who made alterations and wrote lyrics.

Credits for the play always listed J. Cheever Goodwin as the author; there was no mention of Wilson's authorship with the exception of his ad libbing from the stage.

Boolboom has fled from France to India to escape the vixenish temper of Anita Tivoli to whom he was engaged to be married.

She obliges Boolboom to wed her ("Joseph, James and John"), but he determines to avail himself of "Article 213" should Anita's temper again become unbearable.

Article 213 is an East Indian law obliging a woman to be burnt within 24 hours of when her husband dies.

To prevent Anita being burnt, Boolboom writes to his friend the Nabob of Malabar, asking him to sees that she gets safely away to France.

The Nabob rescues Anita en route to the funeral pyre, hoping that her gratitude will turn into love ("No More Weighted Down By Sorrow" - Act 2 finale).

Boolboom returns disguised as a monk but is surprised to find Anita not just alive but now being courted by the Nabob.

William Raymond Sill wrote in the New York Evening World: "Theatrical history will probably record "The Monks of Malabar" as a qualified success.

Mr. Englander has always been one of the most strenuous advocates of the bass drum, and, like all ardent partisans, has rather overworked that honorable instrument.

In this last piece, he has restrained himself nobly, and although at times he makes "the little old man in the tinshop": work very hard, he gives him many breathing spells.

[2]"Music and Opera," (unidentified newspaper), Clipping File, Billy Rose Theatre Division."Mr. Englander was not moved by a high ambition when he wrote this score.

One of the songs, "Joseph, James and John" is of sufficient musical attractiveness to make its popularity probable.

[9]The play came in for harsh reviews: "Mr. Goodwin can write dialogue and lyrics of this type about as well as any other hack writer of librettos, and it may be said that the talk and the verses of the songs in the new book are made in the old familiar way.

The plot of the operetta is not bad, but it fails to develop the expected hilarity, and except for a few humorous lines of Mr. Wilson's own, there is not much to laugh at.

There is little food for laughter in the complications of the story as it is set forth, and the only humor to bge detedcted lies in the individual lines...The desert wastes of dialogue were occasionally broken by musical numbers that were, in the main, very pleasing; and the tediousness of the performance was relieved somewhat by the charming spectacle presented by the scenery and costumes.