MODERN POETIC DRAMA IN AMERICA (1900-1942)

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University Microfilms 3 00 North Z e e b Road A nn A rbor, M ichigan 48106 A X ero x Education C om pany

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T5-'84i0 Andrews, M ary Lee, 1898M o d e r n po e t i c drama in A m e r i c a (19001942)... N e w York, 1942. 3p. l . , 3 6 2 t y p e w r i t t e n leaves. 29cm. Thesis (Ph.D.) - New Y o r k university, S c h o o l of education, 1942. Bibliography: p . 356-362. A8 9 4 4 2

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T H IS D IS S E R T A T IO N HAS BEEN M IC R O F IL M E D E X A C T L Y AS R E C E IV E D .

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JUL 31 1942

MODERN POETIC DRAMA IN AMERICA

(1900 - 1942)

MARY LEE ANDREWS

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education of *

New York University

1942

P L E A S E NO TE :

Some pages may have i n d i st inet p r i n t . F i l m e d as r e c e i v e d .

University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The writer wishes to express deep appreciation to the chairman of her sponsoring committee, Professor Walter Barnes, who has given so generously of his time and interest in supervising the work from the inception of the plan to the completion of the investigation. His wide knowledge of research and genuine scholarship have been of great assistance throughout the study.

Special thanks next go

to Professor Dudley F. McCollum and Professor Roy Mitchell, the other members of the sponsoring committee.

They have both given very help­

ful suggestions and most constructive criticisms of the work.

An

expression of gratitude is tendered the staff of the Theatre Section of the New York Public Library at Forty-second Street and to the staff of the White Plains Public Library for help in assembling great quantities of the material.

The writer wishes to acknowledge the fine

assistance of Miss Peggy Holcomb and Mrs. Elizabeth Butler, who have had charge of the typing of the manuscript» Finally the investigator wishes to mention the zealous interest and encouragement of her husband and three children who have helped make the study possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction........................... .................. ..

Page 1

Chapter I - Poetic Drama From ColonialTimes to 1900 ......... English Influence ...................................... Pre-Revolutionary Plays . . . ................. .......................... Drama of the Revolution From the Revolution to 1900 ............................

8 9 10 12 15

Chapter II - Poetic Drama From 1900 to the End of the First World W a r ................................ Political, Economic and Social Conditions in America. . . Poetic Drama and Literary History....................... Themes, Language and Forms of Poetic P l a y s ............ William Vaughjjm M o o d y ............. ............ .. Percy M a c K a y e ......................... Josephine Preston Peabody .............................. Other Writers of Poetic Plays .......................... Conclusions . . . . . ..................................

38 39 42 4446 52 63 72 94

Chapter III - Poetic Drama From the End of the First World War to 1929.............................. 96 Conditions in the United S t a t e s ................. 96 i Literature of the Period................................ 99 j Rise of the "Little Theatres" and College Theatres. . . . 102 Themes of Poetic Drama. .............................. 104 Edna St. Vincent M i l l a y .................................. 107 Sidney Howard .......................... 114 Edwin Milton Royle........................................ 117 Arthur Goodrich ........................................ 120 Other W r i t e r s ........................... 127 Community D r a m a .......... 149 Chapter IV - Poetic Drama From 1929 To1942.................. 156 Situation in America. .......................... 157 Literature of the Period........... 158 Themes of Poetic Drama............... 160 Maxwell Anderson.......................................... 165 Elizabeth the Q u e e n ...................................... 170 Night Over T a o s ................... 175 Mary of S c o t l a n d ........................................ 181 Valley F o r g e ............................................ 186 Win t e r s e t.......... 191 The Masque of K i n g s .............. « . . . ................196 High T o r .......... 199

Page Chapter IV - Poetic Drama From 1929 To 1942(Continued). . . . . . 203 The Wingless V i c t o r y ........................ .. Key L a r g o .............................................. 206 Journey to Jerusalem.................................... 211 Conclusions Concerning Maxwell Anderson ................ 215 T. S. E l i o t ............................................ 219 Archibald MacLeish .................................... 230 Frank D u r h a m ........ * ................................ 234 Stanley Young ................................. Marc Blitzstein.................................. Roark Bradford . . . . . ............................ -243 Conclusions.......................................... 251 Chapter V - Poetic Drama For the Microphone.................. Types of Radio Verse Drama.............................. Problems Which the Writers of Radio Verse Plays Must Face Research in Radio Drama . . . . . ...................... Themes of Radio Drama ........ . . . . . . . . . . . . Archibald MacLeish............................. Maxwell Anderson ................................... Stephen Vincent B e n l t .................................. Alfred Kreymborg ........ . . . . . ... Norman C o r w i n .......................................... Other W r i t e r s.............................. Conclusions .........................

253 254 255 262 265

Chapter VI - Problems Confronting the Poet Dramatist . . . . The Problem of the Audience............................ The Poet Dramatist and Newspaper Reviewers.............. The Theatre and Poetic Drama.......................... The A c t o r ................................ The Poet Dramatist and the Scenic Artist................ Conclusions...........................................

329 330 333 334

Chapter VII - Conclusions................... ..............

344

Play List and Bibliography

350

237 240

272 234 290 291 302 309 327

336 338 342

INTRODUCTION

This investigation is a study of modern poetic drama in America. The period from 1900 to 1942 is covered.

In general it is chronological

in nature hut also contains a record of critical opinion.

The main pur­

pose of this study is to investigate the growth of poetic drama in America from 1900 to 1942, to survey its trends in content and form and to point out some of the problems as well as favorable factors in its development.

Explanation of Terms The term Mpoetie drama” in this study includes only those plays which are written in verse or which are predominantly in verse.

Since there is

some confusion about the terms connected with poetic drama, these will now be examined.

Following the historical tradition, the earlier writers

used the term "dramatic poetry." or "verse drama."

Many modern critics speak of "poetic drama"

T. S. Eliot refers to work in this field as "verse drama,"

yet he also uses the older term "dramatic poetry" to make the distinction between dramatic poetry and other poetry.

Some think of poetic drama as

the "literary drama" or "closet drama" of the library, in contrast to drama which can be acted in the theatre.

Much poetic drama of the past has not

been able to meet the demands of the theatre, and thus the last terms are rather a reproach. A discussion of the differences between dramatic poetry, closet drama and poetic drama which reaches the stage may clarify the preceding terms. The dramatic poem is a dialogue or monologue in verse and is planned to be read or heard but not acted.

The story which is told may have dramatic

2

qualities and may have dramatic form but that does not make it a play.

It

develops a situation logically through the speech and imagined action of certain characters.

One of the highly developed forms of dramatic poetry

is Browning1s My Last Duchess, while a simpler type is one of the old ballads such as The Farmer1s Curst Wife. The latter is a good example of dramatic poetry.

In it the farmer tells Satan that he may take away his

troublesome wife.

Satan takes her to hell^but she causes so much trouble

there that he soon brings her back home.

There is much dialogue between

the farmer and Satan, but it is not a play; it is a dramatic story.

The

dramatic poem does not claim to be drama. Dramatic poetry differs from closet drama in that the latter^* assumes that it is of equal importance and rank as those plays which gain stage presentation.

Closet drama is a play in form, yet it is usually lacking in

dramatic conflict, sometimes in character portrayal and in other ways does not meet the requirements of the theatre.

Closet drama often shows more

ornate description, lyric qualities and philosophical reflection than does the stage play.

The difficulty^ has always been that many poets have tried

to write plays for the stage, but because of their lack of knowledge of theatrical techniques, the pieces have fallen far short of the requirements and have become closet dramas.

While these closet dramas have an honored

place in the library, they cannot be considered in the same category with plays which are produced.

A great many of the verse plays written between

1900 and 1929 fall into this classification of closet drama. excluded from this study.

1 2

George R. Kemodle, Good Theatre, Yale Review . (Autumn;1938)» p. 112. Montrose Moses. The American Dramatist, pp. 215-217.

They have been

3

There is also a tendency today among many writers on this subject to define poetic drama as any play either in verse or prose in which the symbolic and the imaginative have a large part.

This broad definition

includes many prose plays of Eugene O ’Neill, Percy MacKaye, Lynn Riggs and others.

This classification must be subjective since there are no

criteria for deciding into which category a play shall fall.

It would be

difficult in a study to draw the line between a prose play which some people class as poetic and one which can be considered as prose.

For this

reason, it seems wise to limit this study to plays which are definitely in verse or are predominantly in verse.

Importance of this Study There is need for an investigation of modern poetic drama in America because of the increased interest in this form in the last few years and because of the success of some of our poet

dramatists.

They have not only

received recognition for their verse plays in the theatre but have also done much experimental work in designing poetic dramas for an entirely new medium, the radio.

Because verse plays for the microphone have had a sub­

stantial development within the five year period,

1937 to 1942, a chapter

of this study will be devoted to work in this field. Although much ha3 been written concerning individual poetic plays for the stage, very little has been recorded about the work in radio verse drama.

No comprehensive study of the entire field of poetic drama has

been made.

It seems that a worthwhile service to one's contemporaries is

to show the trends of their work, to reveal their aims and to show how they have accomplished their purposes.

Since the poetic drama in the future w i U

likely be an outgrowth of the present, a survey should be useful.

Related Studies Concerning modern poetic drama, much has been written in magazines, newspapers, collections of essays, histories of the drama and in chapters of books about the drama.

There is one small full length book, M o d e m

Poetic Drama, by Priscilla Thouless, dealing with the work of a group of English playwrights.

A Ph.D. thesis, Trends in M o d e m Poetic Drama in English,

was written in the University of Illinois in 1933 by M. B. Schiller.

This

study shows the trends of poetic drama in England, Ireland and America. The author gives a detailed account of the accomplishments in England and Ireland and the major part of her work is devoted to these countries. Some other critical works of note are An Essay of Poetic Drama by T. S. Eliot, the prefaces to Panic. The Fall of the City. The Cradle Will Rock, by Archibald MacLeish, and the prefaces to Winterset and Journey to Jerusalem by Maxwell Anderson.

These last named prefaces contain many of the beliefs

of Mr. MacLeish and Mr. Anderson concerning the place of poetic drama in the m o d e m theatre and on the radio, the themes appropriate to poetic plays and the language and form found in m o d e m verse plays

Scope of this Study The range of this study includes a consideration of the better known dramatists who have written a number of poetic plays, as well as those writers who have contributed only one or two.

The plays to be used will be those

which have been discussed by such historians of drama as Arthur Hobson Quinn, Montrose Moses, Margaret Mayorga, Joseph Wood Krutch, Arthur Homblow and Barrett H. Clark, in their histories of American Drama, as well as those plays which have been produced in various sections of the country in "Little

5

Theatres", college theatres and commercial theatres.

These latter may

not be as well known as those plays discussed in the histories, but they have attracted the attention of the critics and anthologists and have had production. This study does not aim to discuss every play written in verse during this period.

Since 1900, a great number of verse dramas have been written

which have not met the requirements of the commercial theatres, the "Little Theatres" or the college theatres.

Neither have they been con­

sidered of sufficient importance to be mentioned in standard histories of drama.

Verse dramas to the number of about fifty, for which no record of

production has been found and of which no mention is made in the standard histories of drama, have been excluded from this study. that these pieces fall into the category of closet drama.

It is assumed In addition no

consideration is given in this study to plays that are definitely for children and young people.

Some Features of this Study Some space is given to the tracing of foreign influences, particularly of the influence of English and Irish poetic drama upon the poetic work in America. Vllhile tracing historically the work of individual dramatists, it seems wise to give a survey of critical opinion on the problems which surround the poet dramatist.

Some of these, such as the problems of the theatre and

the actor, are external factorsj but some, such as the problems of speech, of subject-matter and form, are the responsibility of the dramatist.

6

Because verse drama for radio has had an important development and because many of the problems of the radio dramatist are different from those of the stage dramatist, it has been thought best to include a separate chapter devoted solely to verse plays for the microphone. is an overlapping of dates.

There necessarily

The chapter on verse drama which covers the

years 1929-1942 parallels in part the chapter on radio verse drama which covers the period, 1937-1942. It is impossible in this investigation to trace the long history of poetic drama, from earliest times, yet it seems wise to give a background for the investigation in a brief discussion of poetic drama in .America up to 1900.

Method of Research As a background for the investigation, a study has been made of the economic, religious, sociological and literary developments in the United States for the period concerned in the main problem.

Then as the study

progresses, the influence of these forces are evaluated and an effort made to see how poetic drama has reflected or paralleled these developments. For the preliminary chapter dealing with the growth of poetic drama before 1900, secondary sources such as standard historical material and critical opinion are used.

Some of these are;

A. H. Quinn

A History of the American Drama. Vol.2

Montrose Moses and John Mason Brown

The American Theatre 1752-193A

Margaret Mayorga

A Short History of the American Drama

M. F. Bellinger

A Short History of the Drama

John Gassner

Masters of the Drama

T. H. Dickinson

The Case of American Drama

7

Richard Burton

The Mew American Drama

William Dunlap

A History of the American Theatre

1832

J

For the main body of the study a list of dramatists and their plays has been secured from all the available standard histories of American drama, The Dramatic Index, Reader?Guide. Burns Mantle’s Contemporary American Playwrights and Miller’s Contemporary American Writers.

Since the

historian and critic often neglect to mention the form in which a play is cast, over a thousand plays have been examined in order to find those written in verse.

The plays have been read for content and form.

After

the reading of each play there are given (1) facts concerning its production, (2) a discussion of its theme and related themes, (3) a summary of its content

and (4-) a description of its verse form.

To arrive at an estimate of the play and to ascertain general trends, the influence of external forces and the worth of the playwright, critical material from magazines, newspapers, journals and books has From this the evaluation has been made.

been assembled.

The combined judgments of the

critics are recorded concerning (l) the quality of language and verse, (2) the organization and motivation of the play, (3) the philosophy and social criticism found in it, (4-) the acting and staging and (5) a general estimate of its worth. Since little or no critical material is available for some of the stage plays and for the radio dramas, the evaluation of the play and the playwright has been greatly curtailed.

In a preliminary investigation, the writer ' -

found that there are few press notices or criticisms available for many plays produced in the "Little Theatres."

This is also true regarding

radio verse dramas because a system of reviewing radio plays has not yet been developed.

8

CHAPTER I POETIC DRAMA FROM COLONIAL TIMES TO 1900

Poetic Drama from the Beginning to the Revolution This chapter will be devoted to a discussion of the growth of poetic drama in America from the beginning to 1900.

When we examine the history

of Colonial times to discover the beginning of American drama, we find that early attempts were very sporadic and the output extremely small.

In fact,

the Colonial period was almost over before the first play, written by an American and performed by a professional company, was presented in Philadelphia.

Causes for the Slow Development of Drama There were many reasons for the tardy appearance of drama in America. In most of the colonial”*" settlements the task of clearing the forests, build­ ing homes, resisting Indian attacks and getting a living in this new country consumed most of the efforts of the Colonists.

There was little time left

for recreation and development of the arts in communities where the physical demands of life were so urgent.

What small time there was for leisure was

devoted to the simplest of recreation and church going. There was definite hostility on the part of the Puritans toward the theatre and the drama.

This antipathy was one of the chief forces that

hindered the growth of drama.

One needs to know something of the early

Puritan movement in England to understand how its influence could be carried over to America and could retard the establishment of the theatre and the writing of plays.

1 2

2

The Puritan movement in Ihgland was directed against the

Ralph P. Boas and Katherine Burton, Social Backgrounds of American Literature. pp. £-14. Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of the American Dramaf pp. 21-22.

9

political power and tyranny of the monarch.

During all the years of

struggle against Charles I and Charles II, the drama in England was the plaything of the king and came to be associated with royalty.

During the

Restoration^ the stage was very degenerate, there was rioting in the theatre and the actors often had unsavory reputations. increased the hostility of the Puritans.

This sorry state

Then when actors from the ifaglish

theatres later came over to America to perform their plays, the opposition to them was vociferous. The Puritans were serious-minded religious folk, and the gayety of theatrical presentations appeared trivial to them.

They also opposed them

because of the expense involved and because they did not want to give a livelihood to actors with an Immoral reputation.

This reputation for lax

morals and loose living among actor folk, a relic of Restoration days, greatly hindered the theatre particularly in New England and Philadelphia. In the Southern Colonies, the drama did not have to face the hostility it did in the East.

The Colonists in Virginia were Royalists and brought

to the colonies the customs and tastes of the English court. amusement and had the money to pay for it.

They liked

The lack of large cities in the

South together with the long distances between settlements, however, pre­ vented the theatre from developing very rapidly there. Another force which hindered the development of drama was the copy­ right situation.

The absence of copyright laws made it cheaper to import

European plays than to pay American writers for their plays.

The result of

this was that the native plays were greatly outnumbered by foreign import­ ations and adaptations.

These foreign plays would have been a good influence

1 V. F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature, p. 93 . 2. Montrose Moses, The American Drama, at.. p. 42 .

10

on American drama if the native plays could have competed on equal terms with theme

Yet it was impossible for American work to compete with

foreign pieces which could be purchased for almost nothing.

Under these

circumstances, it is remarkable that any native drama developed.

The Hallams Before the time of the production of the first American play, a group of English actors had given plays in different towns in America.

In 1752

the Lewis Hallam Company came from England and opened at Williamsburg with a wide repertory of English plays}'

From there the company went to New York

and established a theatre, where much Puritan opposition was encountered. Later they traveled to Charleston and Philadelphia, and toured the colonies but met hostility on every side.

When in 1761 the company came to Newport,

playing Othello, the playbill was found to describe the drama as a

2

"series of moral dialogues in five parts" and explained the moral signifi­ cance of this play.

This group came to be known in later years as the

American Company and has been credited with the establishment of the American stage.

Early Attempts at Playmaking In spite of all the difficulties mentioned earlier, there were some attempts at native playwriting and acting. were carried on in the colleges:

The most significant of these

The College of Philadelphia (now the

University of Pennsylvania), William and Mary, Yale College and Harvard. These earlier works were often in the form of exercises which were planned

1 2

Glen Hughes, History of the Theatre, p. 319 . Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of the American Drama, p. 26 .

11

for use at commencement programs.

In these colleges there were also some

prologues and epilogues written in blank verse to be used as supplements to foreign plays. The most important early attempt at playmaking was Major Robert Roger's Ponteack or the Savages of America. a verse play published in 1766. This was the first drama in which the author and subject matter are known to have been American, and it was the forerunner of a number of plays about the Indian.

Although the play attempted to present the problems

existing between the Indian tradesman and the Americans, the conventions which were later to represent the Indian of the stage were also present. The stage Indian has been a sentimental type, and rarely an individual. One reason for this is that the white man has not understood the psychology of the Indian, and the easiest solution has been to make a stock figure of him.

Ponteack, the Indian chief, is the heroj and when his plans against

the English are defeated and his children are dead he shows his great spirit in a last soliloquy.

The entire drama emphasizes the trickery and tyrannous

methods used by the conquerors. fairly readable piece.

The play was published in London.

It is a

There is no record of its production.

On April 23, 1767 occurred the opening night of the first truly American play, The Prince of Parthia by Thomas Godfrey Company produced the play in Philadelphia.

Jr.'*' The American

It is a romantic tragedy in

blank verse with the scene laid in Parthia at about the beginning of the Christian era. of Godfrey.

1

The plot does not follow historical event but is the creation

The play is written in the style of the romantic verse tragedies

A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War, p. 16.

lg 1 of the Elizabethan period.

One writer

suggests that it is important

because it is the first play to be produced but that it is mediocre. Revolutionary War soon interrupted the writing of plays.

The

The theatres

of the colonies fell into the hands of the British who gave their own current and classical drama.

Poetic Drama of the Revolution Thomas Godfrey1s Prince of Parthia was only a small beginning in the production of native pieces.

Although some believed that the Revolution

would entirely crush further activity, such was not the case.

Many plays

both in prose and verse were written, those on the American side expressing the patriotism of the colonists and their resentment against Great Britain, and those on the Tory side loyalty to the crown and hatred of independence. Many of these satiric plays were, of course, published anonymously but the names of some of the authors were discovered later.

Since the British

controlled the theatres, the American plays were not produced but they found production in college groups and influenced social and political writings of the day. Mrs. Mercy Warren and Her Plays The author of two of these American plays was Mrs. Mercy Warren, the wife of General James Warren fluential woman, and some

and

of her

Samuel Adams and John Adams.

thesisterof James Otis. She was an in­ closefriends

wereThomasJefferson,

2

In 1773 she wrote The Adulateur. a blank verse

play, which deals with the events of the Boston Massacre, although she places the scene of the play in Upper Servia.

1 2

Mayorga, Op. cit., p. Mayorga, op. cit., p.

31 . 33 .

The characters in her play

13

are thin disguises of real people, and the chief satire of the piece is directed against Thomas Hutchinson, Acting Governor of the colony.

He was

called "Rapatio" in the play and was afterward called by that name among patriotic people of New England. In

1775 she wrote The Group, another satire in verse, with many of

the same characters as The Adulateur. This play is superior to The Adulateur in the sting of its satire, in its sincerity and in its influence.

The

play concerns the annulment of the Charter of Massachusetts and the appoint­ ment by the King of a Council, through a royal act rather than through the election by the people.

The struggle of the people to regain the Charter

and their hatred of those who betrayed their colony in order to secure public office on the council are portrayed.

Both of these plays^are witty dialogues

written with an oratorical style, in adequate verse form and were influential politically although they are lacking in dramatic qualities.

Later

Mrs. Warren also wrote two tragedies in verse, The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castile which were published in

1790.

Hugh Henry Brackenridge As Mrs. Warren typified the influential woman so Hugh Henry Brackenridge represented the poor but ambitious young man in America.

He endured many

hardships in his struggle for an education and began teaching school when he was fifteen.

He wrote two plays for production in the Maryland Academy

so that probably both of them had an amateur performance. Bunker Hill, a play in blank verse, published in

1

Arthur Homblow, History of the

His The Battle of

1776, shows love of country

American Theatre, p. 151.

u

as well as admiration for the courage of the American soldiers.

He

wrote The Heath of General Montgomery in 1777, a description in dramatic verse of the brave, but ill-fated attack upon the fortress of Quebec. Both of these plays are lacking in dramatic action and are hardly more than college orations.

The Tory Plays It is interesting to compare the plays of Mrs. Warren and Brackenridge with the plays written by the British soldiers or Tory sympathizers.

One

of these, an anonymous play, A Dialogue Between a Southern Delegate and His Spouse on His Return from the Grand Continental Congress - a Fragment Inscribed to the Married Ladies of America, by Their Most Sincere and Affectionate Friend and Servant Mary V. 7.. is a short tirade by a wife against the Continental Congress.

The husband begs her to control her temper

in these lines: MPray for God’s sake my Dear be a little discreet As I hope to be saved, you’ll alarm the whole street; Don’t delight so in scolding yourself out of breath To the neighbors ’tis sport but to me it is Death.” The verse is doggerel but the piece shows a broad humor and satire that is typical of the other Tory plays.

Another play which may be included in

the Tory group is The Blockheads, a comic opera published in 1782, which pokes fun at the aid which the French gave the Americans during the Revo­ lutionary War. These verse plays of the Revolution, judged by literary standards, are not of high quality but they are a beginning.

1

As

quoted by A. H. Quinn in A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War, p. 50.

15

Poetic Drama From The Revolution to 1900

Introduction From the end of the devolution until about the time of the Civil War, romantic verse plays flourished.

Many of the plays proved very successful

on the stage and practically all of the important dramatists wrote in this form.

Although the plays of such dramatists as Dunlap, Barker and Payne

varied widely, the best work of each was found in the field of blank verse. Romantic subjects were attractive and the conception of character that produced heroic types or the incarnation of wickedness appealed to the audiences of that day.

Many of the plays were mediocre, some were crude

and almost all were imitative of a decadent mode in England; yet they ful­ filled a need for entertainment and encouraged theatre-going. During the latter part of the period and after the publication of Boker's Francesca da Rimini (1855)» verse plays had to compete with plays of prose melodrama and prose realism.

In fact the popularity of the verse

plays decreased, and from about the middle of the century until the seventies prose plays were the predominant offerings in the theatres.

Due

to the influence of actors such as Barrett, Mansfield, Skinner and Sothern, who were constantly searching for American plays suited to their talents, there was a brief revival of interest in romantic verse plays about 1880. This revival was short lived and during the latter half of the century prose plays dominated the stage.

16

The Influence of the Acting Companies After meeting many difficulties the American Company was able to re­ open the theatres at the end of the Revolution.

In order to meet current

prejudices a theatre was often called the "Opera House" and the plays were called "Moral Lectures" and "Instructive Tales."

By the time of the pro­

duction of William Dunlap's Andr/ (1798), the American theatre had become an established institution.

For a time three companies maintained rival

circuits and this competition increased the quality of the offerings.

Two

of these companies, successors to the old American Company, carried on their work in New York and Philadelphia and the third company, an independ­ ent group, traveled through the South.

Before 1800, because of more

religious toleration on the part of the Quakers, Philadelphia was the theatrical center of Americaj but after 1800, because of great increases in population and wealth, New York became the theatrical metropolis.

That

the Puritan prejudice died slowly is shown by the fact that the play, in obedience to Puritan rule, began at six in the evening in order that theatre­ goers might return home at a decent retiring hour.

English Influence In a preceding discussion (see page 12) we have seen how the beginning of American poetic drama derived inspiration from English soil. the language, spirit and tradition of the mother country.

It employed

This is natural,

because for a long time the colonists thought of themselves as Englishmen and considered that their work belonged more to England than to America. Many of the writers, before the Bevolution, kept in close touch with English authors.

Thus poetic drama, along with other literature, suffered from

imitativeness.

17

With the coming of the Revolution, such writers as Mrs. Warren and Brackenridge showed in the content and spirit of their plays some native atmosphere and thought, though, of course, the form was still imitative of the English.

After the war was over, many writers realized their

literary servitude to England and began expressing a desire to be American. This soon grew to be a protest.

X

Yet this protest was rather futile; for

while this country was politically free from England, the cultural traditions of England were so intrenched that they persisted for many years afterward. The conditions in a crude new civilization and the low economic and social status of the nation gave the writers a feeling of inferiority and made it easier for them to follow old literary patterns than to create new ones.

Form and Subject Matter of Verse Plays For the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, the poetic plays followed the English pattern to a large degree.

In form they were in blank

verse or in blank verse alternating with prose.

The language used in the

plays was not the language of the American people but literary English.

The

verse had a romantic and sonorous quality that called for acting in the grand manner. One small advance that poetic drama made in freeing itself from the English tradition was in its themes and settings.

Plays continued to be

written on romantic, classic and historical subjects; yet a number of the dramas of this period used the American Indian, the Revolution, native heroes, witchcraft and exploration as subjects while emphasizing the American

1

V. F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature, p. 17.

18

material environment.

It is true that in the plays the Indians were any­

thing but Indians as they really are.

They were not any more realistic

than are the cowboys today in the American "movie."

Yet it is important

that they, as well as other American subjects, were deemed worthy of a place in drama.

The native heroes included Washington, Burgoyne, Andre,

Franklin and others.

Playwrights of the Period In the list of dramatists of this period, William Dunlap stands at the top, not so much because of the quality of his plays as because of his many activities in furthering the cause of drama.

Other important writers

who contributed poetic plays were John Howard Payne, James Nelson Barker, Henry Boker, Richard Penn Smith, Robert E. Bird, Robert T. Conrad, Nathaniel Parker Willis, John Brougham, Julia Ward Howe, Ernest Lacy and William Young.

The majority of their plays were romantic tragedies with

stock plots and stock situations, such as the conflict between love and duty, between rivals in love and between parental and marital love.

There were

other writers of verse plays but many did not conform to the requirements of the stage and might be considered closet dramas.

William Dunlap Of all the dramatists of the period, William Dunlap was the most interesting and had perhaps the greatest influence.

Because he adapted and

wrote more than sixty plays, was a theatrical manager for a number of years, and was the author of many books, the best of which is his History of the American Theatre (1832), he performed a pioneer work which is gratefully remembered.

His chief claim to later fame rests not on his many plays nor

19

on his work as a manager but rather upon his history, which has become a veritable storehouse of information about the theatre of that day. Over a period of fifteen years (1789-18##), his plays were almost constantly on the American stage. English models.

Most of them were adaptations from

He also made translations and adaptations of Kotzebue, at

that time a successful writer for the German stage.

Dunlap had a definitely

commercial attitude and was the first man to cater to the tastes and wishes of the public.

He gave it what it wanted and shaped his plays to make

them acceptable to Puritan consciences. From the standpoint of poetic drama, Dunlap's original plays are, of course, the most important.

The Father or American Shandyism (1789), a

domestic comedy, was the earliest of these.

The prologue is in verse.

The

prologue shows the combination of purpose to amuse and to instruct, but Dunlap does not make the moral lecture paramount.

This play contains the

first allusion in a native piece to the collar button which the husband loses when it rolls under the bed.

A little later in the same year, Dunlap

wrote an interlude in blank verse. Darby's Return

which is of interest

because it contains many allusions to Washington and the Federal Constitution. Better than these two plays is Leicester, or the Fatal Deception (1794), which is Dunlap's first attempt at original tragedy.

It is in blank verse.

Dunlap used the Earl whom Scott later treated in Kenilworth as the central figure for this tragedy of blood.

Dunlap next used melodrama as the method

of his play, Fountainville Abbey (1795), taken from Mrs. Radcliff's novel, Romance of the Forest. The play was very successful. (1796), a tragedy in blank verse, followed. 1.

The Mysterious Monk ^

It showed Dunlap's ability to

William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre, p. 120.

20

use theatrical ideas which had already been successful.

The plot of the

piece deals with the revenge of a vassal for injuries inflicted upon him by a feudal lord who has no feeling of sympathy for those lower than himself.

The vassal makes the lord jealous of his wife and makes him the

murderer, as he supposes, of his friend.

Finally recovering from his

wounds, the friend disguises himself as a monk, saves the wife from her husband’s jealousy and restores all to peace and tranquility. His first native tragedy, Andre (1798), is considered his best work.^ It is in blank verse. in the early plays.

It illustrates how historical stories were dramatized Andre has been condemned and the theme of the play

revolves around all the efforts that are made to save him.

Bland, a young

officer, represents the American sympathizers who are trying to save Andre. He uses every means to achieve his purpose.

Mrs. Bland, the mother of the

young officer, also attempts to save Andre.

Her husband is a prisoner of

the British and they have threatened to execute him if Andre is not re­ leased.

The third effort to save Andre is made by Honora, who has come

from England to visit him.

She is taken from a real character, Honora Seward,

whom Andre loved but who was prevented from marrying Andre by her parents. She died four months before Andre’s execution. This play is well organized.

The character of Andre is well developed.

As much as possible is said in his behalf and he shows great dignity and

courage. The play represents the Federalist attitude in 1798, the wish to be fair to England.

1

flT

Quinn, A History of American Drama From the Beginning

to the Civil War, p. 14.

21

William W. Lord wrote a play of the same title in 1856 and still later one was written by George H. Calvert entitled Arnold and Andre (1876). Dunlap*3^play is better organized, has more effective dialogue and greater dramatic conflict than the other two.

Unlike Lord’s play, which contains

several scenes of anticlimax, Dunlap’s closes with the departure of Andre to the scene of his death.

Dunlap’s play was not a great success on the

stage because it aroused patriotic prejudices, yet in construction and

2

dramatic value it has been ranked as the best play written in America in the eighteenth century - not remarkable praise but surely worth mention.

John Howard Payne In the number of his dramatic undertakings, John Howard Payne equalled William Dunlap but of the importance of his work not so much can be said. Payne was a handsome and precocious young man who had acted in the important theatres of the United States, England and Ireland.

While a successful actor,

he turned his hand to writing plays for the London stage. not among his gifts.

Originality was

He was a revamper, an adapter of the plays of others,

particularly of works from the French.

His plays proved remarkably success­

ful both in London and America and a list of them includes about sixty pieces. Probably his best play is Brutus, his only verse tragedy. formed in London in 1818 where it proved extremely popular. duced in America the next year.

It was per­

It was pro­

From all the great mass of historical

material, he selected certain elements for the tragic story.

Brutus the

patriot is among a group of degenerate people and the action of the play

1 2.

Fred L. Pattie, The First Century of American Literature, p. 234-. Quinn, o£. cit.,p. 16.

22

centers around his assumed incompetence, the rape of Lucrece, the revenge undertaken by Brutus and her husband, CoUatinus, and the making of Brutus a consul.

The tragedy of the story is in the traitorous conduct

of Brutus’ son, Titus, who is later condemned to death by his own father. The play was very popular and held the stage for over seventy years. Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, the elder Wallack and others used it as a vehicle for their talents in England, America and France. Payne, like Dunlap, knew instinctively how to please the public and gained much fame in his day.

With the exception of Brutus, his plays are

today as dead as last year’s fashion in ladies hats.

His fame rests,

ironically enough, on a song from his opera, Clari. which played in Convent Garden in 1823 - "Home Sweet Home."

James Nelson Barker While Payne was adapting foreign plays, James Nelson Barker was writing and working to produce native drama.

With the exception of Marmion (1812),

a romantic verse tragedy, based on the poem by Sir Walter Scott, his work is more truly American than either that of Dunlap or Payne.

Even in

Marmion^Barker shows a feeling of sympathy for his native country.

The

play appeared when America was ready to go to war with Great Britain.

In

the dialogue, he stirred the patriotism of his American audience by telling a story of relations between England and Scotland - relations which were then similar to those between America and Ehgland.

1

The play is full of

Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of The American Drama, p. 77.

23

the booming of cannon, the rush of soldiers camps, the music of the bugle call and other devices that stir excitement.

It was successful because

it expressed the resentment of the Americans against the imprisonment of seamen, the Orders in Council and other English acts. Barker wrote the first Indian play to be performed in America. (Ponteack, which was written earlier, never reached the stage.)

Barker’s

play is The Indian Princess, or La Belle Savage, which was performed for the first time in Philadelphia in I808 and later in many other cities through­ out the country.

Barker had first intended the play as a regular drama, but

at th,e request of the composer, Bray, he changed it into a sort of opera, called on the title page of the printed play, "An Operatic Melo-Drama." It was the first play which dealt with the romance of Pocahontas. later followed by many more on the same theme.

^

It was

The author got the principal

materials of the play from the General History of Virginia written by Captain Smith, and in general the historical facts were preserved.

The most

picturesque details are used with the love element predominating throughout there are five pairs of lovers.

Incidents such as Smith's dramatic rescue

by Pocahontas are carefully toned down so as not to hide the chief interest. The romance of Pocahontas and fiolfe reaches its climax at Powatan's banquet when the princess intervenes and saves the Europeans, after the rival suitor has obligingly absented himself by suicide.

Throughout the play,

Pocahontas is of un-Indian like disposition, kind, merciful and sentimental as well as too favorably inclined to civilized ways.

Captain John Smith is

shown to be very courageous in his stoic indifference to suffering and torture.

1

Albert Keiser, The Indian in American Literature, p. 70.

24

The humorous elements furnished fcy the English settlers, the dramatic and poetic passages and the romantic setting gave the play great popularity. Superstition (1824), another play in verse form, is based on colonial history.

It is the dramatic story of the Puritan refugee, Goff, who comes

from his solitude to lead the people against the Indians.

Into the story

is woven the theme of the intolerance of the Puritans and persecutions for witchcraft. Isabella and her son Charles Fitzroy^have came recently from England. Charles has fallen in love with Mary, the daughter of the village clergy­ man, Ravensworth.

Charles one day meets The Unknown, who has sought

refuge from the vengeance which Charles II is trying to inflict upon the judges of Charles I.

The Unknown is in reality Charles’ grandfather but

neither knows of their relationship.

Soon the Indians attack the place and

the villagers are saved from defeat by the courage of The Unknown, Charles and others.

Charles, who earlier has offended Ravensworth through lack of

respect for his clerical office, is now accused of sorcery because of his association with The Unknown.

Isabella and Charles are both to appear in

court to answer the charges of sorcery.

Charles first secures an inter­

view with Mary7and her father finds them together — rape to the other accusations.

thus adding attempted

Isabella in the court defends herself in a

noble way but Charles, wishing to spare Mary the ordeal of being questioned, will not plead his cause.

Ravensworth works upon the superstitious fears

of the crowd and has Charles executed at once. just as Mary begins to plead for him.

1

Charles’ head is brought in

Barker says that the rapidity of

A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War, p. 44«

25

Charles* execution is based on fact.

In this tragedy the sense of in­

evitable doom is felt throughout the play. The tragedy shows the extreme cruelties of that period.

The drama

is unusual in that the subject has never been used in American plays to any great extent.

According to Margaret Mayorga^ Barker’s plays are lack­

ing in strength and dramatic conflict, but he is to be commended for his pioneering attempts at work of a native character. About this time, the actor came to be a dominating force in the American theatre.

Because the work of such writers as Richard Penn Smith,

Robert Conrad, Robert M. Bird, and Nathaniel Parker Willis was greatly influenced by the actors of the period, a discussion of the importance of the actor will be in order.

The Influence of the Actor From about 1830 to the Civil War the influence of the actor was per­ haps the most important factor in the theatre and in the development of American drama.

It is true that before that date a large number of great

actors and actresses from England visited the American stage.

Such famous

people as W. C. Macready, Charles and Fanny Kemble, Junius Brutus Booth, Edmund and Charles Kean graced the stage and added much to the prestige of the American theatre.

They brought their own plays with them, however, and

were unwilling to experiment with native plays.

In fact, with the except­

ion of Booth, they did practically nothing to encourage American playwriting and cannot be counted as a large factor in the development of American drama.

1

Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of American Drama, p. 82.

26

There are a number of reasons why the American actor became so powerful a force in American drama.

The offer of cash prizes by prominent

actors for plays most suited to their needs, the fact that many of the actors were the managers or authors of the plays in which they appeared and the inadequate copyright laws which made the play the property of the man who acted it, all contributed to magnify the power of the actor. The prizes given by Edwin Forrest, Wallack, Barrett and others did much to increase the writing of romantic tragedies in verse.

This encourage­

ment on the part of famous American actors was the largest factor in causing romantic verse plays to flourish during this period.

Because many of the

actors adhered to a spectacular method of acting and wanted parts of heroic proportions, these verse plays best fulfilled their requirements. Richard Penn Smith, Robert M. Bird and Robert Conrad wrote romantic verse plays for Forrest, who did more than any other actor to encourage the writing of romantic verse plays.

In all, he gave about twenty thousand dollars as

prize money for native plays, a large number of which were in verse. Almost every prominent actor was at one time or another the manager of a theatre and usually was the principal performer in his company as well. This gave him much power in interpreting the major role of the play and as the star he had almost complete power over the part. figure of the play was often overemphasized.

Thus the central

Here again the romantic verse

play, with its old world atmosphere and heroic characters,

appealed to the

actor and could be changed to suit his wishes. During this period, such famous actors as Edwin Forrest, John Brougham, E. L. Davenport, Lawrence Barrett and James Wallack appeared in romantic verse plays written ty American dramatists.

27

Richard Penn Smith The actor's influence is seen in the verse plays of Richard Penn Smith. Edwin Forrest offered a prize of substantial amount for plays suited to his histrionic ability and Caius Marius by Smith received the prize.

Forrest

made the play very popular and it was played both in New York and on a tour through the South.

The play was never published.

Smith's other verse

play, The Deformed, or Woman's Trial (1830), is the story of Adorni, a misshapen man who worships beauty all the more because of his deformity. The play faintly resembles Cyrano de Bergerac^- by Rostand.

Robert M. Bird In Robert Montgomery Bird, a physician of Philadelphia, we have one of the most prolific of the dramatists who wrote in the poetic form.

In the

beginning of his career his play^ Pelopldas^was accepted by Edwin Forrest for production.

Because the play contained several characters that

challenged the importance of the principal one, Forrest felt it would not give him the center of the stage, so did not produce it.

The Gladiator (1831),

a play in blank verse, was first performed at the Parke Theatre, with Forrest in the leading role.

It was very successful, was performed over one thousand

times during Bird's lifetime, and was played after the death of its star and author.

Because of the copyright laws, Forrest became rich from it, but

Bird received only the original |100Q.

In general, Bird was true to history

in the play but he used historical facts only as a background for a work full of human values.

28

The chief character is Spartacus^ the leader of the insurrection of the gladiators, who represents the world-wide struggle for freedom against tyranny.

In the first act he begs his owner, Lentulus, to buy his wife

and child and promises to fight for him in the arena.

In the second act

is shown the situation in Rome, governed by a politician who wins the favor of the people by providing gladiatorial combats.

Spartacus is

brought into the arena to fight and finds that his adversary is his own brother, Pharsarius, now a slave of the Romans.

They embrace each other

and immediately set in motion the revolt of the gladiators in the arena. The uprising is successful but Pharsarius demands as his prize the niece of Crassus, the Praetor.

This weakness of Pharsarius is the turning point.

The armies are soon defeated, Spartacus' wife and child are killed and Spartacus dies attacking the camp of the Praetor. The Gladiator was perhaps the most successful play performed in America up to that time.

It was

oratorical and bombastic in places but

it contained scenes of great dramatic worth and was popular until the end of the century. The next play, The Broker of Bogota (1834-) is considered the most artistic of Bird's plays,

though it was not successful and did not have

the wide emotional appeal ofThe

Gladiator. The theme of the play is the

love of a father for his erring son. heroic.

In this, Bird made a domestic play

Throughout the play the love of Febro for his wayward son, his

honesty and his loyalty to middle class conventions win much sympathy. The verse is considered flexible and elevated and does not contain the oratorical note found in The Gladiator.

1

Mayorga, A Short History of the American Drama, p. 99.

29

Robert T. Conrad Robert T. Conrad was a writer of the Philadelphia group to which Bird and Smith belonged. perform.

With them, he furnished plays for Forrest to

His best known play, Jack Cade (1835)> is a tragedy in blank

verse, dealing with the Kentish insurrections in England about 1450 and the struggle of Jack Cade to abolish the institution of villeinage which held him in slavery.

Like many of the historical plays of that

period, Jack Cade appealed to Americans1 love of political freedom and their opposition to human bondage.

The play contains a number of effective

scenes and the blank verse is considered impressive for that period.

Nathaniel Parker Willis An industrious writer of the forties was Nathaniel Parker Willis, a publisher and editor.

Bianca Visconti, his blank verse tragedy based on

Italian history, was produced in 1837. duced in a number of eastern cities.

It was well received and was pro­ Later he wrote a romantic comedy,

Tortesa the Usurer in response to the offer of a prize by James Wallack, who produced it in New York in 1839.

Romantic comedy was seldom written

at that time nor was this one as amusing as the classification suggests. Tortesa is considered a better play than Bianca Visconti which is lacking in character drawing and poetic dialogue. Romeo and Juliet and the Winters Tale.

In parts Tortesa reminds one of

Neither of these plays by

has any connection with American life in any wqy.

. Willis

30

George Henry Boker During this period, the majority of romantic verse plays came from Philadelphia.

Of all these writers, George Henry Boker of Philadelphia

achieved the most lasting fame through his play Francesca da Rimini (1855). It^was in this work that the highest point of dramatic achievement of the verse play was reached in America during the 19th century.

His two

earlier verse plays^ Calaynos (184-9) and The Betrothal (1850),were rated high in character portrayal and in the quality of the verse.

2 Francesca da Rimini (1855) is Boker's masterpiece. twenty-eight hundred lines in three weeks.

He wrote the play of

The Paolo and Francesca motif

has been a favorite one for poems and plays since Dante's meeting with the lovers in the "Inferno.”

This unhappy story of the brother and the

young wife of Giovianni, Lord of Rimini, who loved each other and who were killed by him, has aroused the sympathy of people of all times.

A

number of plays and fragments had been written on the subject in other countries; but Boker was the first to write a play in ihglish on the theme, and he was the first to make the husband the center of interest without decreasing the sympathy for the lovers.

He gives a sympathetic portrayal

of the medieval woman in Francesca, and the noble dignity of his blank verse is impressive.

In addition to these literary merits, the chief

factor responsible for the play’s success is its acting or dramatic quality. The scene, of course, is in Italy.

The character of the young and

handsome Paolo is contrasted with that of his older brother Lanciotto, a brave warrior, but with a misshapen body.

1

Lanciotto’s love for Paolo and

A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama From the Beginning to the Civil War, p. 50. 2. Alfred Kreymborg, Poetic Drama, p. 39.

31

his admiration of Paolo's beauty are shown as well as his craving for affection, which centers upon the beautiful young Francesca.

Francesca

is ready to love Lanciotto whom she has never seen, and when Paolo comes as his brother's deputy she gives him her affection.

When she finds that

she has been duped, she tries to hide her sorrow and Lanciotto thinks she is beginning to love him because she seems willing to go on with the marriage.

The jester, Pepe, soon arouses Lanciotto's suspicions.

The

fact that Lanciotto has to go away to war leaves opportunity for the growth of love between Paolo and Francesca.

Although Paola loves Francesca,

his emotion is mixed with deep guilt, but Francesca loves happily and with no thought of the morrow.

Driven by remorse, Paolo tells Francesca that

he will go away, but she pleads with him not to leave her to the mercy of a husband whom she does not love.

Soon Lanciotto enters and brings with

him the news that Pepe has given him.

He first begs them to deny their

guilt and then kills both Francesca and Paolo.

Lanciotto's deep grief and

v

remorse because of his deed intensifies the closing scene. Francesca da Rimini was first performed with E. L. Davenport in the leading role.

It was revived by Lawrence Barrett for a number of years and

again by Otis Skinner in 1901 when he took the play on a tour of the country.

Later, Stephen Phillips in England wrote Paolo and Francesca

which in the main follows this old story.

His characters do not, however,

seem to be the masters of their souls but are driven by the wind of fate to their doom.

32

John Brougham The success of Barker's earlier Indian play led to the production of a long line of plays dealing with the red man.

Metamora. a prose play by

John Augustus Stone, was one of the most popular of these.

The obvious

weaknesses of this play as well as the extravagances and lack of reality of the other Indian plays finally brought down upon them the ridicule of dramatists and public alike.

To make fun of this type of play, John

Brougham^wrote Metamora or the Last of the Pollywogs (1847), a two-act burlesque in verse.

He followed this with Pocahontas or The Gentle Savage

(1855)> another burlesque in verse.

The popularity of the last was immense

and it probably gave the death blow to Indian drama.

Both pieces were full

of brilliant wit and humor yet, since they were burlesque, they did not rank high as drama and were too contemporary in interest to survive long.

John Savage One of the sporadic attempts at romantic verse drama after 1355 was made by John Savage in the play, Sybil. of its use of American materials. Kentucky in 1825.

This play is of interest because

The story is taken from an incident in

In Frankfort, Colonel Beauchamp killed Colonel Sharpe

because he discovered that the latter had seduced his wife during her girlhood.

Beauchamp was convicted of murder and he and his wife tried to

kill themselves in the cell the night before the execution. failed in his suicide attempt and was later hanged. follows the main facts of the story.

Beauchamp

In the play Savage

He produced the piece in Louisville,

New York and Philadelphia.

1

Albert Keiser, The Indian in American Literature, pp. 16-25.

33

Julia Ward Howe The most successful of the later verse plays were written by Julia Ward Howe, the distinguished writer and patriot.

Leonora, or the

World1s Own^ her first play, was produced in New York in 1857.

It is a

romantic tragedy with the scene in Italy during the eighteenth century. Leonora, the village belle, is led astray by Lothari, who is a nobleman in disguise. her wrongs.

When she learns that he has been married she seeks to avenge She becomes the mistress of the Prince and instigates a false

charge of treason against.Lothari.

The characters are well portrayed

and, although the play is too long, it contains some splendid passages of poetry.

It was repeated in Boston.

Edwin Booth asked Mrs. Howe to write a play for him and in 1864. she wrote Hippolytus.

Because of casting difficulties, it was not produced

until after Mrs. Howe’s death, when Miss Margaret Anglin presented it in Boston in 1911.

William Young As has been mentioned earlier (see page 15), there was a revival of interest in verse drama in the seventies, largely the result of the work of one actor, Lawrence Barrett.

He revived Boker1s Francesca da Rimini

in 1882 and inspired William Young to write plays for him. verse play by Young, was produced in Chicago in 188}.. Arthurian story.

It deals with the

Barrett took the part of King Arthur and Young made him

more human than most writers have done.

1

Pendragon. a

Launcelot and Guinevere were both

A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama, p.

365.

3

considered strong figures.

U

The climax of the story comes in the chamber

of Guinevere when, after Launcelot has been condemned for his treachery, Arthur shows that it is easier to die than live with the knowledge of his friend's betrayal ever before him. Ganelon was produced in New York the

play has

in 1891 and though no manuscript of

survived, Barrett seemedto have had a strong part in this

play which deals with the story of Roland. were published, Ben Hur and The Ra.iah. comedy laid in England.

Only two of Young’s plays

The Rajah is a romantic verse

It has a conventional plot.

Young’s most success­

ful

play was

his

dramatization

in 1899 of the novel, Ben Hur by Lew Wallace.

The

play ran

for

three seasons

in NewYork, Philadelphia and Boston and was

played all over America by touring companies.

Ernest Lacy Ernest Lacy was encouraged in the writing of verse plays by Julia Marlowe, the actress.

Chatterton (1893), a one-act tragedy in blank verse,

was used by Miss Marlowe.

The play is a careful study of the poet’s life.

Lacy shows the poet’s great aspirations which he can never realize because his body and mind have become so weakened by starvation.

He shows that

finally, through fear of insanity, he ends his own life.

Lacy's second

play, Rinaldo. the Doctor of Florence (1395)> a five-act tragedy in verse, is not considered^io have much merit.

1

Quinn,

P* 208

35

Conclusion In a retrospective view of the growth of poetic drama from Its earliest beginnings in the colonial period to the dawn of the twentieth century, ®ne is impressed with the romantic traditions that permeated plays and also with the fact that in a small way they reflected American life.

Although

before the Revolution the few native plays were imitative of English subject matter and style, yet they revealed some elements which came to be a part of American drama.

The plays were chiefly in verse.

The senti­

mental and exaggerated portrayal of the stage Indian was to be repeated many times in later plays.

The Puritan hostility and the way in which the

verse prologues and epilogues tried to soften this animosity forecast other devices for catering to the prejudices of the public. While none of the political plays written by Americans during the Revolution saw public performance, yet these verse plays were truly American in subject matter and were considered to have much higher quality than many of the plays that came later.

It is unfortunate that playwrights like

Mrs. Warren and Hugh Henry Brackenridge did not continue to write after peace was restored. From the end of the Revolution until the middle of the nineteenth century, romantic verse dramas were predominant.

The settings were usually foreign,

the treatment romantic and to the casual observer they did not reflect American life.

Yet a historian\ho has read the plays, especially those of

the Philadelphia group, is impressed with the way they reflect the political and social beliefs of the American people.

1

The Gladiator shows the revolt of

A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama From the Beginning to the Civil War, p. 267.

36

the slaves' struggle against the cruelty of their Roman masters, Metamora the resentment of the Indians against the injustices of the white man, Tortesa the Usurer the hatred of the merchants toward their oppressive rulers and Jack Cade the rebellion of the common people against the power of the English lords.

At this time, the people were busy trying to

establish a new republic and political and human freedom were ideals with which they had the most profound sympathy.

For this reason, these

plays which championed the cause of the oppressed against the oppressor were very popular. Boker1s Francesca da Rimini probably marked the peak of success of the romantic verse play.

After that its popularity steadily declined.

It

is true that there was a temporary revival of interest in that form in the seventies as a result of Barrett's encouragement, but it was short lived. The romantic verse play was not able to compete with the social comedy in prose, the farce-melodrama, and the variety entertainments which became the vogue in the theatre. There were reasons for this decline.

Drama, like other forms of

literature, reflects the changing economic and social conditions in the country.

The country was expanding and developing industrially at a fast

rate and there was a tendency on the part of such writers as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane and William Dean Howells to reflect this life in their works. Romantic subjects were beginning to be less acceptable and in their place came an interest in the realistic portrayal of every-day life.

This desire

for realism on the stage hastened the decline of the vogue for verse plays.

37

A. H. Quinn stuns up the importance of the poetic plays in these words: "But there is no more satisfactory retrospect to the historian of our drama than the steady progress from the Prince of Parthia to Francisca da Rimini.

Perhaps when we are weary of discovering and rediscovering what

is base or banal in our civilization, we may turn back for comfort to the poets who wrought for the sake of the beauty that is universal and with the art that defies the limitations of time or space."

1

Quinn, Ibid.. p. 367.

38

CHAPTER II POETIC DRAMA FROM 1900 TO THE END OF THE WORLD WAR

Introduction This chapter is devoted to a discussion of the growth of poetic drama from 1900 to 1918.

During this period there was a revival of interest in

poetic drama in America.

This does not mean, however, that poetic plays

came to be the predominant offerings in the theatres.

Prose plays con­

tinued to hold the stage and were the most popular offerings.

Such American

writers as Augustus Thomas, Clyde Fitch, Edward Sheldon, Eugene Walter, along with English playwrights, fvanished farces, melodramas, comedies and problem plays to suit the taste of the public.

Yet there was a new interest

shown in verse plays, especially in the work of such poet dramatists as Percy MjpKaye, Josephine Preston Peabody and William Vaughan Moody. This revival of poetic plays in America reflected a similar revival in England, Ireland and on the Continent.

Stephen Phillips’ Paolo and Francesca

enjoyed great popularity in England and America.

It was considered ^

superior to George Henry Boker’s Francesca da Rimini written on the same theme.

The poetic plays of William Butler Yeats in Ireland, of Edmond

Rostand in France, Maurice Maeterlinck in Belgium and Gerhart Hauptmann in Germany were all a part of this revival of poetic drama.

1

Alfred Kreymborg, Poetic Drama, p. 39.

39

Political, Economic and Social Conditions in America Let us briefly examine the situation in America to see whether poetic drama reflected the contemporary scene.

During the closing years of the

nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, the United States became a world power.^

This rise to influence was marked by the acquisition

of possessions on various parts of the globe. annexed.

In 1898 Hawaii became

In 1898, after the Spanish American War, the Philippines, Guam

and Porto Rico became a part of the United States, and a protectorate over Cuba was established.

The purchase of the Virgin Islands in 1917, the

building of the Panama Canal and the occupation of Haiti and Tutuila, December 2, 1899, all added to American interests.

The commercial affairs

of the United States led to the "Open Door" policy in China and to a number of Pan-American Conferences.

As a world power, the United States did much

to encourage peaceful settlement of international disputes. One of the significant features of the era was the growth of the pro­ gressive movement under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

This movement was dedicated to the idea that government should

protect the interests of the common man.

Many reforms of a political and

social nature were the results of this. By the turn of the century, business had reached tremendous proportions. 2 In the single year (1899), ninety-two combinations were organized.

Two years

later, the United States Steel Corporation was formed and in other branches of business similar monopolistic combinations developed.

1 2

The Morgan,

E. C. Barker, W. E. Dodd and H. S. Commager, Our Nation’s Develop­ ment, p. 4-61. A. M. SehleHinger, Political and Social Growth of the American People. p. 297.

40

Rockefeller and like groups controlled these big, trusts.

They managed them

for their own profit with no great regard for the welfare of the average man.

The evils of this situation soon brought a demand for reform.

A group

of young journalists dedicated themselves to the task of exposing the corrupt practices of the big corporations. rakers.

These writers were called Muck-

The government soon began to prosecute the trusts.

In 193-4 the

Federal Trade Commission was established, and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act was passed for the purpose of eliminating the unfair methods of big business. There were other reforms which the Muckrakers helped inaugurate.

In his

writings, Lincoln Steffens revealed the political corruption in city and state governments.

In a similar manner articles and books were written ex­

posing the dangers of food adulteration, the evils connected with child and woman labor, the corrupt practices of banking companies, the problems of juvenile delinquency and other conditions.

These helped to arouse the public,

and legislation was passed which helped to remedy the evils. Organized labor\rew rapidly in numbers and in strength. many strikes with much violence and bloodshed. in wage rates.

There were

2 Definite advances were made

In 1912, Congress passed the eight-hour law for government

contract work. There were many changes in the life and customs of the people.

With

the increase in manufacturing, standards of living were rising and wants were increasing.

Science and invention made their contributions and helped to

satisfy the tastes of the people.

1 2

There was much interest in entertainment

Schlesinger, Ibid. p. 343. H. U. Faulkner, The Quest For Social Justice, p. 76.

A1

and outdoor sports.

Golf^and motoring became the most notable outdoor

recreations, while the motion picture held first place within doors.

In

the field of religion,there was a tendency toward church unity, a liberal­ izing of theology and a socializing of church programs.

Literature of the Period Historical events and social conditions had their effects on literature. One of the marked characteristics of literature was the tendency toward realism. important.

In the field of fiction, novels dealing with social problems were Frank Norris wrote The Pit, a story of grain speculation in the

Chicago market, Upton Sinclair showed the injustices connected with the packing industry in The Jungle and Jack London attacked capitalistic society in The Iron Heel,

i/vhile these men were writing of social problems, Hamlin

Garland, Willa Cather and Stewart Edward White were portraying the hard­ ships of pioneer life.

The historical novel continued to be written by

Owen Wister, Winston Churchill and others.

The importance of city life was

shown in many of the stories of O ’Henry and Richard Harding Davis. In the field of poetry, the years from 1900 to 1914 revealed a period of transition, for comparatively little was being written. Richard Hovey wrote popular lyrics.

Bliss Carman and

William Vaughan Moody reflected the

temper of the age when he protested against the existing order.

Edwin

Arlington Robinson selected his characters from among thwarted individuals. In 1914 there appeared Robert Frost's North of Boston. Amy Lowell's Sword

1 Faulkner, Ibid.. p. 295* 2. Louis Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry, p. 14.

42

Blades and Poppy Seed. Vachel Lindsay's The Congo and Other Poems. The "new poetry” was thus introduced. Prose drama showed great improvement in literary and stage techniques. The stage play^began to reveal more of the qualities of literature than during any preceding period.

Prose drama reflected the influence of the

frontier and a conception of life to a great degree realistic. istic play became a strong rival of the romantic drama.

The real­

Augustus Thomas

in his plays, Arizona and In Mizzoura. and William Vaughan Moody in The Great Divide, revealed life in the frontier sections of America. Clyde Fitch, in The Truth and The Citv. delved into moral situations. Edward Sheldon, in The Nigger, showed the problem of the octoroon in society. Some of these plays were melodramatic, but they reflected the different phases of life in America and a desire to reveal that life in a realistic fashion.

Romantic plays continued to be written.

Oriental pieces which became popular in America. Japan and China.

A number of these were They dealt with life in

They were written in a fanciful style.

Poetic Drama in Relation to the Political. Social and Literary Trends of the Period Poetic drama did not mirror the life of America to as large a degree as did fiction, poetry and prose drama of the era.

2 The majority of poetic

plays were very imitative of foreign themes and of English patterns in par­ ticular.

A few, however, did reflect social conditions and attitudes of

thought.

William Vaughan Moody revealed some of the problems which con-

1 T. H. Dickinson, The Making of American Literature, p. 663. 2. Mary Beatrice Schiller, Trends in Modern Poetic Drama in English, p.79.

fronted man in a world of changing values.

His plays were written as a

protest against false beliefs and conventions.

In The Piper and

The Wolf of Gubbio. Miss Peabody reflected the influence of religion and sounded a universal note of love that is victorious over evil.

In Voices.

Hortense Flexner during the World War revealed the longing of the people for peace,

what Percy MacKaye did for romanticism in A Thousand Years Ago.

Zoe Akins accomplished for realism in The Magical City.

The majority of

the writers found inspiration for their plots outside of native life. They went back^to older literary sources and to history for their materials. Unlike Maxwell Anderson (of a later period) whose Masque of Kings (see Chapter 4, page 196) is history tinged with modern implications, the majority of poet dramatists composed their dialogue in lines of great beauty but reminiscent of earlier poets' style. Of the poet dramatist Montrose Moses wrote in 1911, "He has not only been content to deal with life in the abstract but he has departed from life in search for beauty. - — • The real matter is that the poet, however much he might iove the theatre, has never mastered the technique."

2

Another

writer is of the opinion that the poets^of this period have failed to become great poets because they have evolved their creations from Tennyson, Keats, Shakespeare.

Although the latter criticism does not apply to all of the

poet dramatists of the period yet it does evaluate the work of a number of them.

1 2 3

A. H. Quinn, A History of American Drama From the Civil War to the Present,I p. 28. Montrose Moses, The American Dramatist, p. 216. James Oppenheim, The New Poetry, Poet Lore Magazine XXII, Winter 1911.

Themes of Poetic Drama: Poetic drama dealt with historical, romantic, classical, Biblical and fantastic themes.

There were stories dealing with Greek myths and legends,

tales of the Italian Renaissance and stories of the French Revolution. There were a few plays based on Biblical themes and several which dealt with Pierrot and Columbine motifs and magic happenings.

There was one play

of social criticism dealing with the life of an actress.

The majority of

the plays, however, were romantic tales of a bygone era and tried to re­ create the ancient and legendary heroes. Historical and Romantic Plays The following plays have been classified by historians as historical and romantic plays.

They are arranged chronologically.

William Vaughjjjn Moody -

The Firebringer. The Masque of Judgment. The Death of Eve.

Percy MacKaye -

Jeanne D tArc. Sappho and Phaon. A Thousand Years Ago. The Canterbury Pilgrims.

Josephine Preston Peabody - The Piper. The Wings. Fortune and Men's Eyes. Marlowe, The Wolf of Gubbio. Mary Johnston-

The Goddess of Reason.

Cale Young Rice

-

A Night in Avignon.

Herman^Ciiagedorn

-

The Heart of Youth.

Hortense Flexner -

Voices.

A5

Plays Dealing with Religion and Fantasy The following plays have been classified by historians as plays of religion and fantasy.

They are arranged chronologically.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich - Judith of Bethulia. Victor Mapes

- A Flower of Yeddo.

Anna Hempstead Branch - The Shoes that Danced. Rose of the Wind.. Jane Dransfield

- The Lost Pleiad.

Robert E. Rogers

- Behind a Watteau Picture.

A Play of Social Criticism This is classed by historians as a play of social criticism. Zoe Akins

- The Magical City.

Language and Form of Poetic Drama The majority of the plays followed the English tradition and were very imitative of it.

The language was ornate and resembled the language of the

plays of a generation earlier, where the actors required heroic parts and resounding phrasing.

The writers employed such obsolescent expressions as

twixt, doth smile, forsooth, methinks and didst.

Blank verse or variations

of blank verse was the form for the majority of the plays, although two or three were written in free verse.

Closet Drama Before beginning a study of the playwrights and their plays, mention should be made of a number of poetic dramas which were written during this time but which are not included in this study.

1

There were^a number of poets

Montrose Moses, The American Dramatist, p. 61.

46

who wrote verse plays which did not meet the requirements of the theatre and never reached the stage. atmosphere of the library.

They v/ere literary dramas and carried the They have been classified as closet drama by

the historians and are not included in this study.

Mention should be

made of such poets as Richard Burton, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Henry Van Dyke, Richard Hovey, Olive Tilford Dargan and Ridgely Torrence, whose plays are delightful poetry but did not meet the requirements of the theatre.

Playwrights of the Period

William Vaughan Moody William Vaughan Moody was well known as a poet before his dramas appeared.

His Ode in Time of Hesitation. On a Soldier Fallen in the

Philippines and The Daguerreotype reveal a great love of beauty and at the same time a profound interest in moral issues. in many of his best known poems. compromising character.

The last quality is shown

His patriotism was of a courageous and un­

His was the spirit of revolt against false conventions

and false standards of life.

We find this spirit manifesting itself in his

lyric poetry, his prose and verse dramas. Moody did not write plays to give entertainment to people, but because he had something to say that is of moral and spiritual significance.

Since

he wished to reveal something of human rights and the divine purpose for the world, he found that the dramatic form was best adapted to his message. While his most successful plays are in prose, yet Moody was keenly interested in poetry as a medium of dramatic expression. Percy MacKaye, he revealed his convictions:

In an early letter (1904.) to "It is true that I am heart and

4-7

soul dedicated to the conviction that m o d e m life can be presented on the stage in the poetic mediums, and adequately presented only in that way.” ^ Although his verse dramas did not reach production as did his(prose dramas, yet Moody intended them for stage presentation.

Because A. H. Quinn has

included a study of them in his History of American Drama and 3ays they

2

"represent a conception of life which is essentially dramatic," and because they have been discussed by other historians, they will be treated in this study. His poetic plays form a trilogy, The Masque of Judgment. The Firebringer and The Death of Eve, a fragment.

The themes are ancient.

Moody revels in

old religions as well as in creating new beliefs all his own.

He is doing

far more than recalling legends in the plays; he is trying in a symbolic fashion to present some of the problems of the m o d e m world.

For instance,

The Firebringer deals with the importance of emotional fire in man’s life, and The Masque of Judgment expresses a belief in the joy of life and the importance of the individual will.

The entire trilogy encourages the spirit

of revolt against convention and false gods.

"The Masque of Judgment" The Masque of Judgment was published in 1900.

It tells the story of the

conflict between God and the human beings whom He has created.

The play

deals with the entire period from the Incarnation to Judgment Day and reminds one of Milton’s poems.

There are five acts and a prelude.

Raphael is the

leading character, though Michael and Uriel help to carry forward the story.

1 2

David D. Henry, William Vaughan Moody, p. 122. A. H. Quinn, A History of American Drama From the Civil War to the Present Day II. p. 7.

AB

The prelude celebrates the beauties of the world.

Then Raphael reveals

to Uriel the fact that men have become very quarrelsome and evil on the earth and God has sent his son to teach them how to live.

The Lion and

the Eagle of the Throne have gone to earth to fight in behalf of the Master, but have both returned, badly maimed, to heaven. earth and returns with the news of the crucifixion.

Uriel goes to

This is followed by

the news of God's vengeance which He is bringing upon the people.

Raphael

and Michael go to the Valley of Judgment where lie the bodies of the lost. There are still some who have not perished.

Before he dies, the Angels

hear one youth speak of the glories of the world and of his relation to God: Take but away your too expectant face And all shall then be well. Then I can ponder, as I meant to do And as I singly long since thought was mine, The mysteries divine. Make quiet proof of you If you be verily my Lord or no And, having found you to be truly so Shall understand for sooth. Soon the Serpent comes and destruction is completed.

In this story Moody

seems to say that God has failed to recognize and utilize the individual will of man.

He feels it is man's right and duty to express his own will

and intelligence, even if it means rebellion against God. Some of the lines in the above selection are iambic pentameter and some are iambic trimeter.

Although some of the couplets rhyme others do not.

4-9

“The Firebringer" The Firebringer (1904-), the second in the trilogy, goes back to an earlier time for its story than does the preceding play, but its spiritual implications are similar to those found in The Masque of Judgment.

The

connection between the stories of the two plays is slight and each can be considered separately.

The play is based upon the story of Prometheus.

Before the play opens, Zeus decides to destroy the men of the brazen age. Deukalion, after being warned by Prometheus, builds an ark and embarks with Pyrrha.

The flood comes and all men are drowned except Deukalion, his

family and a few who flee to the hills. The other survivors demand the life of little Aeolus and another child as a sacrifice to the gods.

The children are about to be killed when

Pyrrha throws herself in front of them and pleads for their lives.

The

scene is interrupted by Prometheus who comes with fire which he has stolen from heaven.

Prometheus then goes to his punishment.

Here again Moody stresses the need of revolt on the part of man.

By

this revolt fire is brought to man but he loses his benefactor, Prometheus. In the story, God has been thwarted in his plan to destroy the race; and, though he is still unreconciled to man, his complete tyranny is at an end.

"The Death of Eve" The Death of Eve (1906), the third part of the trilogy, was intended by Moody to show how God was reconciled to man through Eve who had, according to the Biblical story, separated them in the beginning. been published^

1

Only the first act has

It shows Eve as a very old woman with an urgent longing to

A.H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama, II, p. 10.

50

go back to the Garden of M e n .

Eve leaves Adam, who is blind and bedridden,

and goes away to Hod, to the walled city over which Cain rules.

She remains

with him for a time until she can get his sympathetic interest and then she tellshim of her her back again to

desire once again tovisit theGarden

ofEden.

Hetakes

the scene of her first sin and waitsfor her in the

gate.

In the dramatic scene entitled Eve's Song, she explains her love of life, her care for her husband and her sons and her importance to all of them in helping them fulfill their highest natures.

During her communion with God,

she dies in the Garden. Pandora's songs contain some of the loveliest poetry that has come from Moody's pen.

Here is one by Pandora from The Firebringer^

tetrameter, with the last line of each stanza iambic trimeter. I saw the spring and summer pass The trees grow bare, and winter come; All was

the same as once it was

Upon my hills at home.

Then suddenly in my own heart I felt God walk and gaze about; He spoke; His words seemed held apart With gladness and with doubt.

"Here is my meat and wine,"

He said,

My love, my toil, my ancient care; Here is my cloak, my book, my bed, And here my old despair.

1

Louis Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry, p. 135*

It is iambic

51

Here are my seasons: winter, spring, Summer the same, and autumn spells The fruits I look for; everything As on my heavenly hills* The critics are in general agreement as to the fine qualities of Moody's poetry.

They speak of his "challenging lyricism" and "epic quality,"^

his "Miltonic grandeur"

2

and "wide symbolism,"

goes back to the Greek tragedians. suous imagery and imagination. qualities.

3

For his inspiration he

The lines reveal a vast amount of sen­

He always reveals a knowledge of the human

His style is stately and richly embroidered with colorful phrases.

In considering the organization and dramatic qualities of Moody's verse plays, the writers on the subject question just how successful the plays would have been on the stage.

One writer says, "Mr. Moody's plays are

academic and of high import as such, but executed with no thought of practical u s e . A n o t h e r commentator is of the opinion that he lacks the ability to portray human character and to motivate human conduct.'*

A third critic be­

lieves there are confused elements in the structure that retard quick com­ prehension which is so essential to success on the stage.^ In the opinion of the investigator, Moody's plays contain lovely poetry but lack character portrayal and dramatic conflict.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Untermeyer, Ibid. p. 134. W. R. Benet and Norman H. Pearson, The Oxford Anthology of American Literature. pp. 15 - 98. T. H. Dickinson, Playwrights of the New American Theatre, p. 134. Richard Burton, The New American Drama, p. 183. Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of the American Drama, p. 280. David D. Henry, William Vaughan Moody, p. 130.

52

Percy MacKaye Among the writers of historical and romantic plays of this period, Percy MacKaye is one of the most important.

He was the son of Steele

MacKaye, the playwright, and grew up in the theatre.

Before he went to

Harvard, he had already written plays and had composed choral songs for his father's drama, Columbus.

After graduation, he studied in Italy and

Germany and saturated himself with the tales of old world literature. The only play written during his apprenticeship period to be printed is A Garland to Sylvia (1910),which is partly in prose and partly in verse.^ In the preface to this piece MacKaye says that since the young American playwright knows very little of European writers like Rostand, Archer, Hauptman and Barrie, it is natural that he should turn back to Shakespeare for inspiration.

This play, therefore, typifies the usual influences under

which a young American writer of that day strove. and fancies of youth.

It is full of the spirit

In the piece, the author becomes so engrossed with

the conflict that he tries to aid the characters in freeing the lovely heroine from the clutches of the villain.

MacKaye has himself fallen in

love with the heroine. In the preface, MacKaye also shows how he has decided to separate him­ self from the domination of the commercial theatre in the beginning of his career.

Since he has been true to this youthful purpose, his plays which

have reached the commercial stage have often been produced several years after they were written.

1

We may classify his works into the historical and

A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama From the Civil War to the Present Day. II, p. 28.

53

romantic plays, written for the most part in blank verse; the prose plays written about folk life and social problems; the community plays written in verse; and finally the operas. Some of the finest work which MacKaye has done for the American theatre has been his critical works concerning the drama, including the prefaces to his published plays.

These will be mentioned in connection with the dis­

cussion of his pageants because, for the most part, they deal with community drama.

A discussion of the verse plays dealing with romantic, historical

and classical themes will be given here and the community plays will be discussed later.

®Jeanne d'Arc" This drama was written in 1905 and first produced in Philadelphia in 1906.

Later it was produced with great success in New York by Sothern and

Marlowe.^ It was the first of his plays to reach the professional stage.

The author retells the story of the Maid of Domremy and the parts which are regarded as historical are reproduced with truthfulness. The figure of Jeanne stands out distinctly throughout the drama.

There

is an atmosphere of reverence for her beautiful spirit, while she is surrounded by the doubts, ambitions and brutality of the people.

The author

brings the supernatural voices into the play through Jeanne at the end of the second act.

He also adds human interest by introducing the character of

D'Alencon, who is in love with Jeanne but does not share her faith.

1

T. H. Dickinson, Playwrights of the New American Theatre, p. 16.

5A

As night falls on Domremy, she gases over her village and yearns for its peace, while her heart is stirred by the greatness of her under­ taking. Thou little darling town of Domremy Goodnight!

Thou winkest with

thy lid of vines, And layest down within the golden stream Thy yellow thatches and thy poplars palej And thou, too, art upgathered in home-fields; But thy Jeannette must pass away from thee. For He who once disdained not to stay His wandering star o ’er tiny Bethlehem Hath in His love of France, sent unto thee His shining messengers to fetch thy maid. 0 little town, hush still thy breath and hark! Amid thy narrow streets are angels arming, And o ’er thy stepping-stones immortal feet Are bearing light the -undying fleur-de-lys. Later on, when on her lonely journey she comes to the place where she has choice of life or death, the message comes that her mother waits for her.

Sensing the coming doom, she asks the messenger to tell her mother

that though she much prefers to spin at home, yet it is God's will that she go on with her mission to save France. horse, moves on in the procession.

And Jeanne, resolutely turning her

In her left hand she holds her banner,

in her right the sheep bells which her father has given her and which bring to her visions of the hills of Domremy.

55

From the beginning of the play at the village festival in Domremy to the time when with her lover she awaits with unshaken courage the coming of the executioner, the story moves to a tragic climax.

The scene is heightened

in the end by D ,Alencon,s conversion to a belief in her visions. The preceding lines illustrate the verse which one writer believes is of very high quality^

Another says of the play, "It has color, movement,

songs, crowds, stage effects, now and then snatches of felicitous phrasing."2 Still another writer is of the opinion that it is not a powerful play, but that it has deep feeling, certain dramatic qualities and variety which account for its success on the staged

A fourth writer^says that the poetic side of

Jeanne's nature is greatly stressed, while the action which is essential to the plot is somewhat neglected.

The characters are well drawn, but their

contribution to the development of the plot is not clearly set forth. The writers agree that Julia Marlowe gave a beautiful interpretation of the Maid and her personality added much to the lines. This writer believes that the poetry is beautiful and the action adequate.

"The Canterbury Pilgrims" This four-act comedy in blank verse written by MacKaye in 1902 was per­ formed by the Coburn Players in 1909. MacKaye's plays,

It was one of the most successful of

In 1919 it was made into an opera 'with music by Reginald

de Koven.

1 2 3

A

Anonymous, The (Current Plays, The Theatre Magazine (March^1907), p.59. Dickinson, jd£. gjt.;p . 16. Editorial, m. American Poetic Play, The Outlook.(February 1907^ p. 30. Anonymous, The Theatre Magazine, op. cit., p. 59.

56

In this drama, we are taken back across the centuries to the time of Chaucer and are introduced to the principal characters in his tales.

The

poet himself is the central figure, and the Prioress, the wife of Bath, the Knight, the Friar, the Squire, Joanna, the Miller and, at the end, Richard II are the chief characters. Tabard Inn, where

We see the pilgrims first at the

the Squire recognizes Chaucer as the Poet Laureate. The

wife of Bath shows here that

she hopes

Two reveals the pilgrims on the road.

to win Chaucer as her husband.Act The wife of Bath with the aid of

her followers forms a plot to embarrass the Prioress, of whom she is jealous.

The wife of Bath hopes to win Chaucer for herself and uses every

method that she can devise for accomplishing her purpose. In the third act, Chaucer conducts a love scene with the beautiful Prioress.

It is interrupted by the wife of Bath who now completes her plot.

For a time it seems that Chaucer may have to marry the wife of Bath, but when the pilgrims arrive at Canterbury King Richard saves the poet from her hands by decreeing that she who has been married five times can marry only the miller. A springtime

The miller takes her joyousness permeates

willingly. the entire play, as is shown inthe

following lines: Spring makes us youths together.

On such a day

Old age is fuddled and time’s weights run down. Hark} (a cuckoo sounds; they listen) The meadow is the cuckoo's clock, and strikes The hour at every minute; larks run up And ring its golden chimes against the sun.

57

The following lines show a different type of verse and reveal the character of the wife of Bath; Hoi my betters? That little snipper-snapper of a saint He praised for dancing ring-around-the-rose-tree, When honest wives are damned for showing their ankles? A fig for herI - What, him!

a walking hay-cock

That woos a knitting-needle of a nunI And me!

One has much

that when I was to home in Bath

Walked into

kirk before the beadle's wife:

My betters?

Wait till I win my bet!

writer^is of the opinion that the play contains some lovelypoetry, of the comic and hilarious spirit of that time

Another says "MacKaye

had a real knowledge of Chaucer's

and is very effective. language andtimes.

"Sappho and Phaon" This drama was produced in New York in 1907.

Though it was not as

successful as The Canterbury Pilgrims, it is in conception one of the most ambitious of MacKaye*s plays. The author wrote the play with a Prologue, which tells of modern ex­ cavation at the site of Herculaneum, and an induction, which introduces Horace and Virgil as members of the audience viewing the play.

These are

interesting to read but evidently were not considered helpful to the stage

1 2

Editorial, Canterbury Pilgrims, Theatre Magazine (AM'i,l909) p. 31. A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama From the Civil War to the Present, p. 29.

53

presentation, for they were omitted from the actual performance.

Follow­

ing the Greek story, the drama tells the tragic tale of the love of Sappho, the Lesbian poetess, for Phaon, the public slave.

As the story opens,

Sappho is loved by Pittaeus, the tyrant of Mitylene, and by Alcaeus, a poet and noble of Mitylene.

One of Sappho's girl disciples, Anactoria, is in

love with Alcaeus and this affair forms a sub-plot for the play.

Sappho

spurns both Pittaeus and Alcaeus and bestows her love upon Phaon, who al­ ready has a slave wife and two sons.

Because of his love for Sappho, Phaon

gives her a dove which has been intended as a sacrifice to the god^ Poseiden. After he is rejected by Sappho, Alcaeus in revenge buys Phaon to be his slave.

While Phaon is resisting capture, he kills in the darkness his own

little son.

At the same time, Thalassa, his wife, brings the youngest child,

dead, into the temple for sacrifice.

The scene in the end when Sappho and

Thelassa both struggle for the love of Phaon is powerful.

The departure of

Phaon and Thalassa bearing the bodies of their dead children, and Sappho's fatal leap into the Aegean is the culmination of this well known tragedy. The blank verse^is rhythmical and lofty in spirit.

The play glorifies

beauty of scene and phrase to the detriment of the action. between Sappho and Phaon shows the quality of the poetry. Sappho A little child I love - My Phaon, share This weapon with me. A woman only.

Make not of me yet

Comrades let us be,

Or children bargaining their Captaincy 1

Montrose J. Moses, The American Dramatist, p. 22.

The love scene

59

Agamemnon and his brother, hand in hand Against the Trojans. Phaon Childhood never trafficked Rapture like yours.

You would not what you ask.

Another writer1believes that though the play fails to make the past live again in a vivid fashion, yet it is one of the most important of our American poetic plays because of its emotional appeal and because of the author's success in giving the picture of the story of dramatic art through the centuries.

"A Thousand Years Ago” This play by MacKaye was produced at the Schubert theatre in 1914 and had a successful run.

The theme came from an Eighteenth Century Italian

comedy, Turandotte, by Carlo Gozzi, which derived in turn from a romance in the Persian Thousand and One Tales.

In the preface to the printed play the

author says that it is not a revision nor a rewriting of Turandotte. but is an entirely new play.

2

He has used some of the folk-tale material from

the Persian work but has reconceived the story, omitting many characters and creating several new ones. Capocomico.

The chief male character in the play is

He derives his name from the title given to the director of the

old Italian troupes of the Commedia dell* Arte.

The four "Maskers" of the

play, followers of Capocomico, represent the stock types found in the old romantic comedies in Italy.

These early Italian plays were in protest against

1- T. H. Dickinson, Playwrights of the New American Theatre, p. 20. 2 Percy MacKaye, Preface to A Thousand Years Ago.

60

the realistic plays of that period.

Similarly MacKaye defends Romanticism

and opposes the realistic school in America in the lines of this play: Precisely, my bully-boy What would you?

At home half the world is

dyspeptic With pills of reformers and critics and realists. Fun for its own sake? - Pho, it’s old-fashioned, Art with a mask on? - Unnaturalistic, They warn you, and scowl and wag their sad periwigs. In general, the lines in the above are dactylic tetrameter with trun­ cated endings. Thus the play came as a subtle comment on the problems of the theatre of the first decade of the twentieth century.

The theatre was in the

throes of a new and potent realism, and the romantic playwrights, like the vagabond players from Italy in the story, sought refuge in the rich and fascinating Orient.

For this reason such plays of fantasy as

The Yellow Jacket. Kismet and Sumuran were successful on Broadway.

In

addition, by restoring the old European use of masks in his four "maskers," MacKaye did a pioneering work and paved the way for this fine use of masks in later plays. The curtain rises before the walled and sentineled city of Peking. A gay but tattered party of four strolling players come in dancing. leader directs them in music on the mandolin, zither and guitar.

The

With

61

their ribbons flying and their contagious gayety, they take one back a thousand years from the present into a make-believe world.

It is the story

of the love of the Qnperor’s daughter, Turandot, for the beggar who later is revealed as Prince Calaf, the son of the Emperor*s dead enemy.

The city

wall is decorated with the heads of the Haperor's slain enemies and also with the heads of suitors who have failed to guess the famous riddles of Turandot and who have been condemned to death by her.

The Emperor is so

perplexed by this cruel whim of his daughter and by her perpetual gloom that he abdicates his throne to Capocomico, the leader of the strolling mummers, on condition that he shall restore his daughter's cheerfulness and arrange for her a happy marriage.

Capocomico is in danger of losing his own

head if he fails in his undertaking.

This dangerous wager the player gayly

accepts, having already seen the look of love which Turandot has directed toward a beggar at the castle gate.

After guessing a number of beautiful

riddles the Prince is revealed as he who impersonated the beggar, and all ends happily. The following show the nature of the lines which the disguised lover speaks to the Princess: I hear you yet I hear like one who dies out on the desert And dreams he hears sweet water tinkling. Lady, I parch and drink dream water. dash The boon from my lips?

Would you

62

"Fenris the Wolf" Although Fenris the Wolf, written in 1904., has not been performed, a brief discussion of it will be given.

The theme of the play derives

from Scandinavian mythology, yet the author has taken certain liberties with the mythological tale.

Baldur is betrothed to lovely Freya but Fenris,

the wolf god and brother of Baldur, is trying to win Freya.

To settle the

conflict, Odin decrees that all four shall be changed into human beings. In the end there is much violence and death before the lovely Freya is won. The^play seems too remote to be of much interest.

Conclusions In regard to the quality of the poetry in MacKaye's plays, the critics are agreed as to its definite worth.

One writer says American drama "needs

his fancy, his wit, his tenderness and his wide reach of imagination and depth of insight." ^ Another says "MacKaye1s ability lies within the field of the poetic and picturesque."

3

In considering the dramatic qualities of his plays, the authorities

4

agree rather unanimously that his plays are more literary than dramatic. 5 They are too far removed from the main currents of life, are not compact enough and do not have the force and dramatic power necessary for the largest success on the commercial stage.

1 2 3 4 5

A. H. Quinn, A History of American Drama From the Civil War to the Present, II, p. 29. Sheldon Cheney, Mew Movement in the Theatre, p. 105. Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of the American Drama, p. 277. Montrose Moses, The American Dramatist, p. 218. T. H. Dickinson, Playwrights of the Mew American Theatre, p. 26.'

63

Some writers have suggested that MacKaye's interest in community pageants and masques and the fact that he has devoted so much time to that work may account in a measure for his lack of continued development of the strictly dramatic gift.

Since early in his career he divorced

himself from the requirements of the commercial theatre, this may in some measure account for his failure to meet those requirements. Many writers on the subject believe that MacKaye*s most important"*" contribution to American drama, and to poetic drama in particular, has been the inspiration that he has given to other dramatists because of his pioneer work.

2

His experiments with the poetic play in the commercial

theatre, his development of the community pageant and masque in poetic form and his constant writings upon drama did much to encourage the grow­ ing revolt against the domination of the commercial theatre.

During his

entire life he stood for the highest ideals in drama and was unwilling to sacrifice those standards for personal fame or financial gain.

Josephine Preston Peabody One of the most interesting writers of this period was Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. Lionel Marks).

She was a devoted student of drama and poetry

as a child and read plays when she could not go to see them. poems and short stories before she attended Radcliffe College.

She published When in

1900, Fortune and Men's Eves came from the press, critics were enthusiastic in praise of her poetry.

1 2

It was not produced.

Barret H. Clark, The American Drama, p. 28. Cheney, op. cit., pp. 104--107.

64

"Marlowe” This is a five-act tragedy dealing with the life of the dramatist, Marlowe, and with other literary figures of Shakespeare's time.

Josephine

Preston Peabody wrote it in 1901 and sent the manuscript to Mansfield but it was not produced by him.

It was produced in 1905 at Agassiz House,

Radcliffe College. The action of the play is at a London inn, where Marlowe and his friends are celebrating the success of one of his plays.

While there, he

falls in love with a beautiful and innocent girl, Alison. other suitors, Bame and a cousin, Gabriel. Marlowe has had an affair, comes to the inn.

Alison has two

A lady of the court, with whom When Marlowe transfers his

attentions to the lady, Alison steals away like a hurt animal and later marries Gabriel.

Bame, the unsuccessful lover, blames his defeat upon

Marlowe because of disparaging remarks Marlow* lias made concerning him.

He

plots revenge and causes the dramatist to be expelled from the Queen's Players. In the end, Bame and Marlowe fight at the inn and Marlowe is killed. Miss Peabody gives rather an idealistic picture of Marlowe and invests him with more honor and dignity than history gives him.

One critic says that

this play, like most of Miss Peabody's other works'J' has literary and poetic merit but is lacking in the dramatic qualities that are required by the theatre.

There is rhythm and a flexible quality to her verse, as we see in

the lines in which Marlowe speaks of the court lady:

1

Sheldon Cheney, The New Movement in the Theatre, p. 105.

65

Hers is the Beauty that hath moved the world, Since the first woman. No worm may spoil it.

Beauty cannot die. Unto earth it goes

There to be cherished by the cautious spring, Close folded in a rose, until the time Some new imperial spirit comes to earth Yields up her robes of vermiel and of snow,

Violet veined, - beautiful as wings And so the woman comes! Another writer^is of the opinion that

Marlowe

is lacking in character por­

trayal and in suspense, and that the plot does not contain enough action to make it an effective theatre piece.

"The Wings" This is a one-act verse play which Miss Peabody wrote in 1905 but which was not produced until 1912, when it was given at the Toy Theatre in Boston. The scene king,

of the play is Northumbria before

has taken Edburga, a beautiful woman,

700 A.D.Earlier, Aelfric,the to behismistress.

WhenCerdic,

a monk, has insisted that the king put away his mistress, the king in anger banishes Cerdic to a distant island.

Here in a rude hut, Cerdic ministers

to the poor and carves an image of the Virgin out of stone. One day at dusk while Cerdic is praying for a vision of the Virgin in order that he may make a truer carving, his door opens and Edburga, the king’s mistress, appears.

1

He mistakes her for the vision and kneels in

Jessie B. ftittenhouse, The Younger American Poets, p. 120.

66

humility before her.

She tells him^the king has heard that Cerdic has

turned the people against him and is now coming to take his life.

When

Aelfric enters to kill Cerdic, she throws herself between them and saves the monk’s life.

Then the monk says to the king:

Lift up her head and set her by thy side Wed her, whom thou hast humbled Lift her up. The gift that thou hast taken, hold it high. The writers agree that the poetry of the play has distinction. says "her dialogue is vivid, direct and full of original imagery."

1

One Of the

general worth of the play, two writers^are of the opinion that it has^much lyric beauty but little dramatic effectiveness.

"The Piper" This play, by far M s s Peabody’s best known and most important work, was written in 1907 for Otis Skinner but was not produced by him. In 1910, it won the prize of fifteen hundred dollars offered by one of the governors of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon for the best play with which to open the new theatre. submitted in the competition.

Over three hundred manuscripts had been

The success of the play in England was re­

peated in New York in 1911 at the New Theatre, with Edith Wynne Matthison in the leading role.

1 2 3

Rittenhouse, Ibid. p. 122. Richard Burton, The New American Drama, p. 178. A. H. Quinn, A History of American Drama From the Civil War to the Present Day, p. 18.

67

The Piper has atmosphere, action and beautiful poetry.

The old legend

of Hamelin Town is a story which is full of the carefree spirit and life of the woods.

The town is like a town of the dead because the ruling fathers

have killed their own spirits through selfishness.

No wonder the children

are glad to flee from it virhen the call comes from the Piper.

There is a

universal note or theme running throughout - the power of love to conquer hatred, selfishness, revenge and the forces of wickedness. The story opens in the market place of Hamelin.

A group of strolling

players have just finished giving a rude miracle show of Noah’s ark, and the people are in holiday mood.

The priest, Anselm, is preaching to the

crowd, which pays him little heed.

At the same time the burgomaster is

haggling with the Piper, who is insisting upon his reward for ridding the town of the rats.

Veronika, the sad wife of Kurt, and Jan, her little lame

son, listen to the Piper. Jan (softly) Mother, let me stay Here with the Lonely Man

(Piper) The Lonely Man? (Jan points to the Christ in the Shrine. Veronika crosses herself. The Piper looks long at the little boy.) (Veronika) He always calls him so. (Piper) And so would I.

68

(Veronika) It grieves him that the Head is always bowed And stricken.

But he loves more to be here

Than yonder in the church. (Piper) And so do I. (Veronika) What would you darling , with the Lonely Man? What do you wait to see? Jan (shyly) To see Him smile. The burghers then curtly offer the Piper only fifteen guilders in­ stead of the thousand originally promised.

Angrily the Piper refuses.

Soon the organ calls the people to the church.

The Piper is left alone

in the square with the children, who beg him to pipe.

The Piper feels

that he must save the children from these stolid, selfish fathers and so he pipes the Kinderspell.

The children are all fascinated and follow him

gladly, as he moves backwards through the little crooked streets and far away. Up in the Hollow of the hill, he hides the children, where they are happy.

The parents mourn below in the village.

The climax of the play

comes when Veronika, the mother of Jan, climbs the hill, meets the Piper and, before a wayside figure of the Christ, pleads for her little lame son. After the Piper stonily refuses to return little Jan, she cries that her

69

love will bring him back to her arms. before

As she leaves, the Piper struggles

the shrine of the Christ, thelonely Man, thensays: I will not,

no,

I will not,

I have them in my hand. All - all!

Lonely Man!

I have them all—

And I have lived unto this day.

You understand---(He waits as if for some reply) You know what men they are. And what have they to do with such as these? Think of those old as death, in body and heart, Hugging their wretched hoardings, in cold fear Of moth and rust! - While these miraculous ones, Like golden creatures made of sunset-cloud, Go out forever - every day, fade by With Music and wild stars!

Why not?

Ah, but You know

I know - the half - You will be saying

You will be thinking of Your Mother, - Ah, But she was different.

She was not as they,

She was more like . . . this one, the wife of Kurt? Of Kurt!

No, No!

Ask me not this, not this.

(He pleads, defends, excuses passionately; be­ fore his will gives way, as the arrow flies from the bow-string.)

70

I will not give them back! And Jan, - for Jan, that littlest one, that dearest To Thee and me, hark, - he is wonderful. Ask it not of me.

Thou dost know I cannotI

..................... Have Thy way. In the last act, Veronika lies ill.

. . I vri.ll!

The priest says that her soul is

passing, but the Piper calls her back to life by bringing Jan to her arms. The Piper sounds a few notes and listens.

There is an uproar in the dis­

tance, a barking of dogs and then the high sweet voices of the children as they come running down the village street.

The fathers and mothers

laughing and crying rush in. Having kept his promise to the Lonely Man, the Piper says "Ah, the high-road now" and disappears.

Through the mingled notes of joy, soon

comes the far off sound of piping. The preceding lines illustrate the verse.

In regard to the quality of

language and verse of the play, three writers are very enthusiastic. speak concerning "the unbroken poetic power of

1

2

They

the passages ofemotional

3

appeal", the "permanent merit" and the "grace and delicacy" of her poetry. The writers give highest praise to Miss Matthison for her splendid performance as The Piper and say "Our stage has perhaps seen nothing more appealing since Modjeska appeared as Rosalind."^ A number of writers are of the opinion that Miss Peabody has not adapted

1 2 3

A

T. H. Dickinson, Playwrights of the Hew American Theatre, p. 133. Editorial, The Piper, The Outlook (February 11, 1911), p. 30. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, The Tounger American Poets, p. 131. The Outlook, op. cit.. p. 31,

71

her play to all of the requirements of the stage, yet they agree that these defects are almost overcome by the sheer beauty and imaginative qualities of the poetry."^

"The Wolf of Gubbio" In this drama, written in 1913, the theme is again the conflict be­ tween love and greed in the hearts of human beings.

The play was not

produced. The chief character is Saint Francis of Assisi, and his beauty and goodness shine in great contrast to the selfish citizens of Gubbio.

So

great is his power that he persuades the people to allow the poor pilgrim mother, whom they have previously cast out, to become the Madonna in the Christmas spectacle. she is heartbroken.

She has been robbed, her child has been stolen and For one day, the Wolf of Gubbio, who has long been a

terror to the village, is allowed by Saint Francis to mingle with the people.

Through the inspiration of Saint Francis, the people forget their

selfishness and at the Nativity scene give of their best treasures to the sad Madonna.

Finally, the thieves who earlier robbed the people bring back

her coat to the Madonna, and the Wolf, overcome by the Christlike spirit of Saint Francis, brings back the child whom he has stolen. Characteristics of Miss Peabody's Plays: The writers agree that Miss Peabody has been very successful in the field of imaginative poetry.

In regard to her work as a poet dramatist

one writer sums up the opinions of several when he says: "Her plays will live, but even on the stage their interest will always have a literary or historical flavor rather than dramatic emotional appeal." 1 2

T. H. Dickinson, o&. cit.. p. 133. Sheldon Cheney, New Movement in the Theatre, p. 106.

72

Mary Johnston

"The Goddess of Reason" This drama in five acts was written in 1907 by Mary Johnston, the well known novelist.

It was composed especially for Julia Marlowe and

with Miss Marlowe in the leading role was produced in February, 1909, at Daly's Theatre in New York. Revolution.

The play deals with life during the French

The main story concerns the love between Rene Amaury de Vardes,

Baron of Morbec, and Yvette, a peasant girl.

The drama is in blank verse.

When the play opens, a young girl, Yvette, daughter of a peasant woman, is leading the peasants who have rebelled and, before the play opens, have tried to b u m Chateau Morbec.

They are now being hunted down

by the soldiers of the young Baron of Morbec.

Yvette seeks refuge in the

grounds of the Chateau and hears the young Baron tell some guests a story of a vision he has seen the year before in St. Johns wood.

It seems this

is a wood where fairies are, and there They dream of woodland gods and castles high Of faun and Pan and of the table round Of dryad trees and of a maiden dark That Vivien whom old Merlin once did love, Vivien le Gai whose love was poisonous. She has been the vision and the Baron recognizes her when he sees her on his grounds.

She pleads with him to be merciful to her people.

Because

of her intercession, he releases the captured peasants and takes her under his supervision to prevent new uprisings.

He sends her to a convent but

73

she is unhappy because of the Marquise de Blanchforet, whom she thinks the Baron loves. revolutionists.

Soon she escapes from the convent and joins the Two years later she becomes their leader and is named

the Goddess of Reason.

AS she rides in triumphal procession through the

streets, her soldiers find the Baron.

Y Music, Brooklyn, New York in 1910 and later performed widely in Little Theatres throughout the country.

It is a verse fantasy in two acts.

The

suggestion for the play came from the Greek myth of the Pleiad who came to earth to marry the mortal of her choice.

A prologue gives the background

for the story and prepares the atmosphere of the play. the seven beautiful daughters of Atlas.

The Pleiades were

Zeus commanded them to become

constellations and shine at night as stars but allowed them to fly by day in the form of doves to the Hesperides to bring ambrosia back for the king. All carried out the orders of Zeus except Merope, who slipped back to earth to marry Sisyphus, the founder and ruler of Corinth. 1 2

editorial, The Shoes that Danced, Drama Section The New York Herald (July 5, 1922). Louis Untermeyer, M o d e m American Poetry. p. 192.

39

The play proper tells of Merope’s adventures on earth while she is trying to find Sisyphus again.

She first hides in a fisherman’s cottage

and later as she wanders through the woods searching for Sisyphus is found by Tolmid, a wicked noble who is plotting against Sisyphus. hopes to overthrow Sisyphus and seize the throne. who Merope is, he prepares to slay her. prayer before death, which he grants.

Tolmid

When Tolmid realizes

She asks for permission to say a She prays to her heavenly mother,

Pleione, who appears immediately, puts Tolmid in a trance and saves Merope. When Tolmid recovers from this, he goes off in a rage, swearing to kill Sisyphus.

When Tolmid finally meets Sisyphus in the wood, Sisyphus’

friend, Leontes, saves the king’s life but is killed by Tolmid.

The king

is broken hearted at Leontes' death, but Merope brings him back to life by her heavenly power.

All ends happily and a joyous wedding celebration

is prepared. The following lines, which are found in the last scene just before the wedding, show the sentiment in the play and help to account for its general popularity.

As can be seen, some of the lines are iambic pentameter and

some are iambic trimeter. (Sisyphus) Yet when I look on you, I would not have you here Earth's ways are often dark. Too bright You are for sorrow, and for toil too fair.

90

(Merope) Fear not for me, my King, All labor's sweet If ’tis a service b o m of a glad will, And I would prove by all pure simple things, Children and home, companionship, and you That earth, if mortals wish, can be as heaven.

The following criticisms of this play are taken from a bulletin published by Samuel French^"

"The lost Pleiad is as tender and captivating

as it is novel and refreshing" - New York Herald. It is "a lovely play. The dialogue has delicacy and real distinction of style.

There is suspense

in it, and what is rarer still, genuine drama" - Carty Ranck in The Brooklyn Eagle.

Robert E. Rogers "Behind a Watteau Picture"

This one-act fantasy by Robert E. Rogers was first given by the Artists Guild of St. Louis in 1916.

It was produced at the Greenwich Village

Theatre, New York City in November, 1917.

The play was used on the opening

bill of the theatre and ran for seven weeks. The curtain opens upon a scene set in a great gilt picture frame as if it were a painting.

In the scene are the Watteau people, posed before a

rather high wall in the center.

They are the Marquise, the Marquis kneeling

and kissing her hand and the poet fingering a guitar. and explains the Watteau picture.

1

Samuel French, Jane Dransfield.

The guide comes in

As soon as the guide leaves, the figures

91

come to life.

The Marquise begs the poet to do something to amuse them.

They all agree it will be jolly to investigate the garden behind the high wall.

Suddenly a fat Pierrot comes by and starts to go into the garden.

They beg him to let them go in with him. him inside.

There they find a strange, unkempt garden and in the comer

is an open grave. bushes.

Against his wishes, they follow

When they hear someone coming, they hide behind the

In a moment, down the steps of the palace rushes Columbine pursued

by Pierrot, who plans to kill her and bury her in the grave. and Pierrot's pity for her makes him relent. Immediately she jumps up and mocks him.

She swoons

He tells her she may live.

When he is about to seize her again,

the Marquis and^Poet rush out with drawn swords to save her.

Columbine then

causes the Marquis and the Poet to become so jealous of her that they fight a duel in which both are killed.

Pierrot then leads the Marquise home and

says his "greatest curse is to live with Columbine." The verse is not of high order and the piece seems melodramatic in spirit.

Zoe Akins "The Magical City" Zoe Akins has written a number of prose plays for the theatre, but her excursion into poetic drama is not so well known. The Magical City, a one-act play in free verse.

In 1908 she wrote It was first performed in

St. Louis in 1908 and in March 1916 was performed in New York by the Washington Square Players at the Comedy Theatre.

The cast for the New York

production included Margaret Mower, Frank Conroy, Edward F. Ballantine and others.

92

The curtain opens on a dim, luxurious room high up in a hotel. the windows may be seen the magical city of New York. corner of the room, a young poet has fallen asleep.

From

On a couch in the Soon a beautiful girl,

Petronelle, comes in and hands her cloak to her maid, Louise, whom she dearly loves.

She tells Louise that she has been to a gay party after her

performance at the theatre and at the party saw Rudolph, her former lover. Louise warns her to have nothing to do with him, because he deserted Petronelle some months before. Petronelle soon wakens David, the young poet, who loves her devotedly. She seems fearful and begs him to take her far away but he is penniless and says: Petronelle, you Are a golden fairy Whose enchanted palace Is Gotham . . . And here in the Magical City, On the vine at its casement windows, Blooming at dusk, Love like a moonflower blows Whiter against the dark Than lilies in sun-lit gardens, In the green and quiet country. Do not be afraid Of the magical city Petronelle ...............

93

(Petronelle) And y o u ................. David? (David) And I . . . . I am one of the candle flames Guttering in the dark Of Gotham. There is nothing so splendid Under the stars to me As the Magical City That I call home, But where never a kinsman is Nor a thing of my own. There is a sudden knock at the door; and, before Petronelle can leave David's arms, Rudolph Phillips, a strong looking, tall man, enters. Rudolph tells Petronelle to send David away, for he has come back to her. David tells Rudolph that he loves Petronelle also very deeply, but since Rudolph has helped her to rise to fame as an actress he will give up his claim to her love.

Then Rudolph proposes that they leave the decision to

Petronelle and let her choose between them.

When Petronelle chooses Rudolph

and says that she has loved him always, David shoots Rudolph and he dies in Petronelle’s arms. When the doctor and Rudolph's brother, George, arrive, they hush the matter up to prevent a scandal and tell David that he'll be paid if he

94

leaves New York and never returns.

George is kind to Petronelle, but tells

her that since she cannot attend the funeral she must tell Rudolph farewell now. The play contains plenty of action.

It has as its central idea the

effect of the great city and of the mysteries of love upon Petronelle, her lover and the young poet, David.

The lines which are quoted on the pre­

ceding pages show something of the quality of the verse.

The critics are in

general agreement that the verse has directness and beauty^and that the story is told with such fine effectiveness that it '‘grips and moves" one?

The

3 writers also agree that the play was vrell acted and that it was one of the most successful of the productions of the Washington Square Players for that year.

Conclusions As we look back over the twenty-three poetic plays that comprise the work of this period (1900-1913we are impressed with their literary flavor and poetic quality.

The dramas which recreate for us the famous old Greek

myths, the early history of England and Prance, the fairy stories and other elements of a romantic past make pleasant reading and often remind us of the story-book heroes whom we idealized in our youth.

The language is also of

the story-book variety: decorative, rhetorical and quaint. It is doubtful whether many of these plays would be accepted for stage presentation today unless they were planned especially for young people. 1 2 3

Editorial, The First Nighter, The New York Dramatic Mirror (April 1,1916) p. S. > Editorial, Magical City, New York Evening Sun (March 25, 1916). Clipservice. The Magical City (September 23, 1916).

95

Although they were written for production, and most of them did reach the stage, many of them resemble closet drama.

Of course there are exceptions

to this statement, for some of the plays continue to be popular among amateur groups. The three writers who contributed most to poetic drama of this period and reflected some phases of American life were William Vaughan Moody, Josephine Preston Peabody and Percy MacKaye.

Moody's plays are majestic

poetry but their themes are too remote, their language too rhetorical to be effective stage pieces today.

Miss Peabody's The Piper is beautiful

poetry and was very successful on the stage. appeal.

It is in the Peter Pan tradition.

It has a rather universal MacKay's contribution to

poetic drama for the stage might have been greater bad he not become so preoccupied with community drama. of poetic drama has been important.

His influence as a pioneer in the revival The work of these three poets did much

to prepare the way for later poetic plays.

The poetic drama of this period

is important for its literary and historical significance rather than for its dramatic qualities.

96

CHAPTER III POETIC DRAMA FROM THE END OF THE WORLD WAR UNTIL 1 9 2 9

Introduction This chapter will be devoted to a discussion of the growth of poetic drama from 1918 to 1929. went some changes.

After the first World War, poetic drama under­

Prose plays still dominated the stage.

.Although poetic

plays continued to be written, very few of the pieces produced during this time reached the commercial theatre.

They were presented, instead, in the

experimental theatres, which had sprung up over the country.

One reason

for this was the fact that the majority of poetic plays were in one act. The commercial producers were looking for full length dramas and had no place for the short pieces, while the experimental theatres were glad to produce the shorter plays.

Thus verse drama along with prose drama came to

be a part of the development of the experimental theatre. Before beginning a detailed study of the verse drama of this era, let us look at the political, economic and social situation in America to see whether or not literature in general and poetic drama in particular re­ flected any of the conditions of life.

Conditions in the United States At the conclusion of the world conflict} the United States was recog­ nized as one of the important powers and became concerned with many problems which she had not met heretofore.

Very few Americans realized this new

position of their country; this lack of understanding may have changed the

1

Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People. pp.648-679.

97

future history of the world.

The people lost interest in Europe.

They

were willing to allow European nations to solve their own tremendous problems.

Although President Wilson in 1920 received the Nobel Peace Prize,

Congress refused to join the League of Nations.

From that time, the United

States became an interested onlooker in world affairs.

America did assume

a leadership, however, in arranging disarmament conferences and peace pacts. After the United States refused to join the League of Nations, the people and the government became engrossed in internal affairs.

Some'*'

problems of domestic policy which faced the government v/ere the war debts, provisions for ex-soldiers, farm-relief and reduced governmental regulations in business.

For almost the entire period, the Republican party was in

control of the government.

The country seemed highly prosperous.

Truly this was a machine age.

Mass production of essentials and

luxuries became the order of the day.

The growth of the automobile industry

•o

illustrated this.

By 1920n choosing, Shall walk upright, masterless, doff a hat to none, And choose their godsi

It's destined to win, this

dream. As the curtain is about to descend, Washington turns to his ragged men and says, "This liberty will look easy by and by, when nobody dies to get it." Mr. Anderson has undertaken a very difficult task - that of expressing the character of Washington on the stage.

According to the biographers,

there was little in his character that lends itself to dramatic treatment. According to them, he was not a glamorous^figure, but rather a man of great dignity, common sense and strength of character.

Mr. Anderson does

not try to give us all the phases of Washington's history, nor does he have him completely assume a heroic role, but rather he presents a very human picture of him as he faces the terrible crises of Valley Forge. How well Mr. Anderson has succeeded in presenting the character of Washington is a question that the critics have answered in several ways.

1

Stark Young, Valley Forge, The Hew Republic (Dec. 26, 1934) p. 196.

One

190

writer is of the opinion that Washington is portrayed at his noblest and most courageous self.

The playwright does not stress his faults but

rather presents the truth of the greatness of the man who helped to make us free.

2

Another believes that the play has given us a more human and

honest picture of George Washington than we have had in dramatic literature up to this time. As to the dialogue of the play, although there are a few speeches which might be shocking to some, Mr. Anderson shows himself, in general, to be a master of earthy, pithy dialogue as well as the speech of lofty contemplation? There is a general agreement among the writers on the subject, that V»11 ay Forge is a man’s play.

The introduction of the character of Mary Philipse,

dressed in the red uniform of the British, is entirely out of harmony with the spirit of the drama and, in fact, is superfluous to the action. The critics do not agree as to the general worth of the play.

One

U

writer believes it is a fine story, well worth an evening in the theatre. 5 Another says that it is strangely uneven but entertaining.

George Jean Nathan

6

believes it is honest and superior to the average, but sti.ll not a fine play. He thinks

that

the materials are better than the use the author makes ofthem.

When we consider the acting of the piece, we find great tribute given to Philip Merivale for his elegant, human and intense portrayal of Washington.

1 2 3 4 5

6

Edith J.R. Isaacs, Ring Out the Old, Theatre Arts Monthly XIX (February, 1935), p. 5. Editorial, Valley Forge, Scholastic (February 16, 1935)» pp. 9-11. Vernon Grenville, The Play, The Commonweal (December 28, 1934), p.264. Isaacs, 0£. cit.. p. 28 . Joseph Wood Krutch, Drama, The Nation. (December 26, 1934), p. 750. George Jean Nathan, The Theatre of the Moment, p. 26.

Other actors who receive praise are Stanley Ridges for his Colonel Tench and Victor Kilian for his Alcock. The investigator believes that the language of the play is appropriate and in places lofty, that the organization is well done and that the play deserves greater praise than it received from the writers.

"Winterset" This is considered by many writers to be Mr. Anderson’s finest drama. It was produced in New York at the Martin Beck Theatre, September 25, 1935, with Burgess Meredith as Mio and Margo as Miriamne.

It is a definite^de-

parture from the usual blank verse tragedy, in that it does not go back to history for its story but attempts to treat the materials of contemporary life in a manner more deeply imaginative than realistic methods allow.

The

time is the present, and the story is one that could be made into a thrilling melodrama.

The materials are handled in such a way, however, that the

eternal forces of hate, fear, love and revenge hold the stage rather than the action which furthers the plot.

2

The critics agree that the play had excellent settings. rose on a stage of dark and treacherous beauty.

The curtain

The scene was the bank of

a river under the huge, concrete pier of a bridge which rose sheer into the darkness.

On the left,a row of dark tenements stood; and, in the gloom

underneath the bridge, sheds had been built as a shelter for waifs and hobos. These last seemed to signify the hopelessness and despair of the people who

1 2

J. W. Krutch, The American Drama Since 1918. p. 299. Margaret Wentworth, Winterset, The Signpost (October 10, 1925), p.l.

haunted the lower depths of the city.

The sets were by Mr. Mielziner

and added much to the effect of the play. Before the play opens, a radical agitator (reminiscent of Vanzetti) has been sent to death for a murder which he did not commit.

Very recently

a college professor has reopened the case and throws suspicion toward a gangster, Trock, who is just out of prison.

The judge who condemned the

innocent man has also gone insane from brooding over the

decision.Wesoon

see Mio, the outcast son of the man who was executed for

another’scrime,

searching for the real criminal in order to clear his father’s name.

He

comes to a tenement where he promptly falls in love with a young girl, Miriamne, only to find that she is the sister of Garth, an accomplice with Trock in the crime for which his father has died.

He has spent his entire

life hunting for the criminals, and his heart is full of revenge.

Soon

the sinister Trock, the real criminal, comes to the tenement to warn Garth what will happen to him if he confesses.

M o learns that he is the murderer.

Mio tries to bring Trock to justice, but, when he realizes that Garth will also be punished, his love for Miriamne burns out all the revenge in his heart.

He saves her brother.

In saving him, both he and Miriamne meet

death at the hands of Trock's gunmen. The old father's lament over the bodies of his daughter, Miriamne, and Mio reveals some of the finest lines in the play and shows something of Mr. Anderson’s philosophy: Oh Miriamne, and Mio - Mio my son - know this where you lie, this is the glory of earth-born men and women

not to cringe, never to yield, but standing, take defeat implacable and defiant, die unsubmitting.

I wish that I'd died so,

long ago; before you're old you'll wish that you had died as they have.

On this star,

in this hard star-adventure, knowing not what the fires mean to right and left, nor whether a meaning was intended or presumed, man can stand up, and look out blind, and say: In all these turning lights I find no clue, only a masterless night, and in my blood no certain answer, yet is my mind my own, yet is my heart a cry toward something dim in distance, which is higher than I am and makes me emperor of the endless dark even in seekingI From the above, it is seen that Mr. Anderson is making his characters speak more colorfully and more richly than people do in ordinary conversation. Some of the writers have criticized the playwright severely for this.

They

say that these people of the slums would never talk that way and that gang­ sters don’t speak in verse.^ It is true that ordinary people do not speak thus.

1 2

2

The social or intellectual status of a character, however, does not

Otis Ferguson, East River Hamlet, The New Republic (January 13, 1937) p.3. J. W. Krutch, American Drama Since 1918. p. 40.

decide the appropriateness or inappropriateness of elevated speech, but rather the ability of his creator to give him an intensity of feeling which is the foundation of all lofty utterances.

George Jean Nathan says

that in this play we have a mixture of melodrama and a semi-mystical, semiphilosophical blank verse.

Yet there is in some scenes beautiful drama.

There is dignity, lofty feeling and courage throughout it all.

With all its

shortcomings, it does climb toward the mountain heights of dramatic literary beauty.

1

Another writer speaks of the verse as "fiercely living verse cram­

ming its classic form with phrases of extraordinary color and high temperature, with an imagery boldly modern."

2

In this, Maxwell Anderson shows his crusading spirit, for in it he is crying out against the injustices of society and is defending the little man who has been caught in a web of circumstances, from which he is power­ less to escape.

He also goes beyond the mere fact of the cruelty of life.

He shows its effect upon the personality and soul in generating fear, hate and revenge until that soul is a twisted, writhing thing almost incapable of the normal emotions of life.

We see this especially in the personality

3 of the outcast, Mio, who is suspicious and wary when Miriamne is kind to him just as a stray dog acts when someone pats him on the head.

Even though

Trock is the villain of the story, Mr. Anderson shows us how he became that way and how his suffering and punishment have given such a diabolical twist to his personality that he has become a murdering beast.

1 2 3

Thus we have more

George Jean Nathan, The Theatre of the Moment, p. 36. Gilbert W. Gabriel, Maxwell Anderson’s Magnificent Poetry XX Theatre Arts Monthly (June, 1936) p. 465. Eleanor Flexner, American Playwrights, p. 105.

195

pity than hate for him.

Although revenge is the motive of the play, with

hate and fear playing an important part, he does not let it end there but sounds a note of faith and courage in the transformation of Mio's character through his love for Miriamne.

The fact that they meet their death un­

defeated gives them victory even in tragedy. In regard to the acting of the play, the critics are in general agree­ ment that Burgess Meredith played the part of the young outcast Mio with intensity and fire, while Margo gave a fine interpretation of the beautiful and shy Miriamne. Many of the writers believe that this play has much of the Shakespearean spirit.

They mention the fact that Mr. Anderson follows his master when the

old Rabbi speaks the beautiful valedictory over the slain lovers and then gives the same command to take them up and bury them.

This was the usual

ending of Elizabethan tragedy. Two\>f the writers dismiss Winterset as melodrama dressed up in color-

2

ful verse.

Mr. Krutch sums up the opinion of five of the writers when he says

that here Maxwell Anderson "seems to have come closer than any other recent American dramatist except O ’Neill to the achievement of a form conveying a tragic view of life at once valid and unmistakably of our own time." Because of its lofty poetry, its closely knit plot,itssocial

3 signifi­

cance and the inevitability of its tragedy the investigator considers that it is Mr. Anderson’s best play.

1 2 3

Alfred Kreymborg, Poetic Drama, p. 4-0. John Mason Brown, Two OnAn Aisle,p. 150. J. W. Krutch, The American Drama since 1918. p. 301.

196

"The Masque of Kings" This drama in blank verse was produced in New York at the Shubert Theatre, February E, 1937. grand manner.

It is an elaborate historical play in the

To a great extent, the plot is based on the situation in

Vienna when Franz Joseph was Emperor and when his son, Prince Rudolph, became the center of a revolutionary movement designed to bring more freedom to the people.

In the beginning, Franz Joseph is in his palace conferring

with some of his army officers, who tell him that a revolution is brewing in Hungary.

The people there love Rudolph and will likely make him king.

The Empress Elizabeth, long estranged from Franz Joseph, comes to plead with him to make Rudolph king over Hungary and thus prevent a revolution.

Then

Franz Joseph reveals the fact that Rudolph has asked the Pope to annul his marriage in order that he may marry Mary Vetsera, his present mistress. He points out that a marriage to a commoner would make Rudolph unacceptable to the people in Hungary.

Later in the evening, Franz Joseph goes to

Rudolph's rooms where he is conferring with some of his friends, who are urging him to aid the revolution against his father.

The Emperor demands

that Rudolph give up his plan of marrying Mary Vetsera.

When Rudolph refuses,

the Emperor calls his guards and has Mary taken away to prison.

Furious at

this treatment of her, Rudolph, who has long desired more freedom for the people but has hesitated to oppose his father, now plots with his.followers to seize Hungary.

The palace is full of spies, and this intrigue soon

reaches the ear of Franz Joseph.

He immediately sends enough soldiers to

Hungary to take care of that situation.

In the absence of the soldiers,

Rudolph's forces take over the city and surround the Palace.

They make the

197

Emperor a prisoner.

Franz Joseph loves his son and has always despaired

because Rudolph does not seem to have the fighting qualities of the Hapsburgs.

Now when he realizes that he is overthrown, he knows at last

that Rudolph can rule like a Hapsburg.

As the old Emperor leaves to go

to prison, he tells Rudolph that he will have to kill at least seven hundred of the Ekaperor1s followers and will have to rule with the same cruelty as his ancestors if he wishes to keep the throne.

When Rudolph

realizes that in trying through revolution to establish a good government, he will be doomed before his reign begins, he abdicates. The tragedy culminates the next day at the hunting lodge when the bodies of Rudolph and Mary Vetsera are found, the result of a double suicide. Before leaving the world, Rudolph speaks these words to the old ikperor, Franz Joseph, who has come out to forgive him: To the old and the dying I leave their dying kingdoms to be plowed by the new sowers of death —

fools like myself

who rush themselves to power to set men free and hold themselves in power by killing men, as time was, as time will be, time out of mind unto this last, forever. In the above lines'*'Rudolph is shown as completely disillusioned about such a belief as the divine right of kings.

The lines also show that this

play, like Mr. Anderson's other verse dramas which are created out of

1

Edith J.R. Isaacs,Broadway in Review, Theatre Arts Monthly (April,1937), p. 11.

198 historical events, is true to the historical period that it represents and at the same time carries with it truths that can be applied to our modern day. Some of the writers report that the play was poorly cast in that Margo, while a young actress of talent, was unfitted to play the part of the Austrian aristocrat, Mary Vetsera.

Henry Hull, who took the part of Rudolph, did not

accent his speeches well.

As the Ajnperor, Dudley Diggs gave a fine perform­

ance and he rather than Rudolph thus dominated the play.

There was unanimous

praise for the period settings of the play, which were created by Lee Simonson. As to the language of the drama, one critic believe3 that it seems loose

2

in places and not as compressed as some of the poetry in his other works, but that it produces the dramatic effect which the playwright plans.

It

leaves the impression of a story realistically told and at the same time it enables him to give a thorough analysis of character.

The compromise he has

chosen may lead him into pretentiousness, but in this play it gives something new and arresting to the theatre. it makes for freedom.

Though it is by no means faultlessly used,

3

Another writer believes that the play contains some

of the finest poetry In English drama and that it proclaims Maxwell Anderson the leading dramatist of America. Mr. Anderson gives us clear pictures of Rudolph, who is a philosopher, idealist and poet at heart, of the Emperor, a proud tyrant, of his unhappy wife and the corrupt court with the network of spies around the throne. 1 2 3

Vernon Grenville, The Masque of Kings, The Commonweal (June 18,1937),p.11. Charles Morgan, Theatre, New York Times (May 8 . 1938) X, p. 1. Grenville, op. cit.. p.

199

Writers who sound a note of disparagement speak of the play as being 1 2 3 verbose, as being not at all remarkable, and somewhat sterile.

The writers,

however, have been fairly generous in praise' of the drama, although they do not feel that it is one of his best plays.

It had a long run on Broadway.

In the opinion of the investigator, the play contains flexible poetry and clear character portrayal.

It is not one of his best plays.

"High Tor" This fantasy in verse was produced in New York for the first time at the Martin Beck Theatre, January 9, 1937.

It is a light and airy play and

reminds us very much of the pieces that delighted audiences several cen­ turies ago.

It is similar to some of the romantic plays in the time of

Elizabeth where the fanciful spirit was usually more important than the allegory.

In writing it, Mr. Anderson has brought together some of the

Washington Irving legends and to make the story complete has added folk elements as well as situations of the present. *

The scene is laid on the broad traprock summit of High Tor, fromwhich one gets a view of the sky, the setting sun and the Tappan Zee. Indian John stands praying to the setting sun.

Old

Van Van Dorn, the young man

who owns High Tor, comes in with Judith, his sweetheart.

He tells her that

the trap rock company is wanting to buy High Tor from him but that he doesn't want to sell because he loves the place so much.

1 2 3

Their talk is

George Jean Nathan, Art of the Night, Saturday Review of Literature. (March 13, 1937), p. 3. Stark Young, Masque of Kings, New Republic (March 3, 1937), p. 10. Eleanor Flexner, American Playwrights, p. 125*

200

interrupted by the arrival of biggs and Skimmerhom, the owners of the trap rock company.

They offer Van seven hundred dollars for High Tor.

When Judith reminds them that they once offered Van’s father ten thousand, they say that now the title is faulty. refuses to sell. mountainside.

This infuriates Van and he flatly

Biggs and Skimmerhom depart to hunt a path down the

Judith leaves in anger, telling Van to keep his mountain.

Here we enter the realm of fantasy in the story.

As Van sits alone on

High Tor, the Hutch ijjrew appear, having been stranded there by the good ship Onrust back in 1600.

Lise, the wife of the Captain, as well as the

others all long for their homes in Holland.

In the next scene, there is

another section of the Tor shown, end on this side a large steam shovel reaches in from a nearby excavation.

Biggs and Skimmerhom return, having

been unable to find their way down the mountain. through the rocks.

Soon three men climb in

They are gangsters who have just robbed the Nanuet bank

in the valley and have fled here with their satchel containing twenty-five thousand dollars.

The Dutch Crew soon appear over the cliff, and the three

robbers in terror flee, leaving their satchel behind them.

The Dutch,

sailors talk to Biggs and Skimmerhom, who have grabbed the satchel.

They

soon conceive the idea of having the sailorshoist them out in the steam shovel in order to swing to the next cliff.

Then they may get down to the

valley.

The sailors comply with the request and hoist them out over the

valley.

Then they leave them high in the air and let them remain there

through the night. and comforts him.

Lise, of the Dutch Crew, meets Van on the mountain top The rising sun still finds Skimmerhom and Biggs occupying

201

their own steam shovel above the valley. thousand dollars for the property.

They finally offer Van fifty

Van appeals to Judith (who has re­

turned to him) and to Indian John to help him decide. a reconciliation vrith the forces of the present. sell his beloved mountain.

Indian John counsels

Van '’.grees at last to

Soon the troopers come, find the twenty-five

thousand dollars on Biggs and Skimmerhom and take them off to jail. Judith, who has heard of Van's meeting with Lise, will have nothing to do with the sale of the mountain.

When Van begs her to come west with

him, she tells him "I'd remember Lise!"

To this he replies:

Was there a Lise? I think she was my dream of you and me and how you left the mountain barren once when you were gone.

She was my dream of you

and how you left the Tor.

Say you'll come

with me. Judith answers "Yes." The following lines in which old Indian John counsels Van about High Tor reveal the philosophy as well as the quality of the lines.

Although

iambic pentameter is the general verse pattern, there are irregularities. This little hill, let them have the little hill and find your peace beyond, for there’s no hill worth a man's peace while he may live and find it.

’ Why, when the rose is gone, or looks aside only a little while, the white stone darkens, the wounds close, and the roof falls, and the walls give way to ruins.

Nothing is made by men

but makes in the end, good ruins. In speaking of the verse of the play, Mr. Nathan^admj.ts that the drama has passages that sing with lovely music.

He also thinks that the play re­

veals Mr. Anderson's overfondness for verbosity along with his determination to see poetry in everything.

2

Another writer speaks of the fanciful and

imaginative poetry of the play.

3

A third critic also testifies to the charm

of the verse. Some serious minded theatregoers were disappointed because they did not understand all of the play and were looking for more lofty symbolism than the author probably meant to give.

Concerning the meaning of the fantasy

one critic^gives his interpretation which explains and defines the play. Man builds and then tears down, but we must realize that no mountain, no matter how important and beautiful and how associated with the past, is worth the sacrifice of a man's life.

Whether he wishes to do

recognize the importance of the present. •The here and now

so

or not, manmust

cannot be put

aside for the past no matter how pleasant that past may be. In regard to the organization and general worth of the piece, the re­ viewers are very enthusiastic.

1 2 3

U

One writer terms this a most original and

George Jean Nathan, Theatre, Scribner's Magazine. IX (June, 1937), pp. 68-70. J. W. Krutch, American Drama Since 1918. p. 302. Editorial, Theatre, Time Magazine XXXII (January 18, 1937), p. 20. John Mason Brown, Two on an Aisle, p. 153*

delightful fantasy, one in which there "are flashes of insight and humanity."

1

2

Another says that it is definitely related to the American

scene and is a well written comedy.

A third writer believes it is a play

that will "help limber up the imagination."^ It is an attempt to make a place in the m o d e m theatre for a type of comedy the kind of which we have not had in almost three centuries. best of Mr. Anderson’s comedies.

The last writer believes this is the It received the Critic’s Circle award

as the best play of American authorship in 1936.

"The Wingless Victory" The playwright has made intolerance the theme of this blank verse tragedy of 1800.

It was first performed in the National Theatre,

Washington, b. C. on November 24-, 1936. Theatre in New York.

Later it moved to the Empire

Katherine Cornell was the producer and also was Oparre,

the leading character in the play.

In this, Mr. Anderson is flaying the

hypocrisy of so called Christians when he lays bare the Puritan persecution of the Malay Princess whom Nathaniel McQuestion brings home from his long voyages in the South Seas. When the play opens, Nathaniel McQuestion, who left home seven years before as a wandering, penniless sailor, returns with a ship loaded with treasure and a Malay Princess for his bride.

He knows the stem, unyielding

nature of his family, but he also knows their need of money, so he bargains with his mother for a welcome for his wife.

1 2 3

His brother, Reverend Phineas

Eleanor Flexner, American Playwrights. B u m s Mantle, Contemporary American Playwrights, p. 4-0. Krutch, 0£. cit.. p. 303.

204.

McQuestion, and his family will not welcome a "savage" and her children. When, in Malay costume, Oparre enters the McQuestion home by the side door and says in a rich voice, "It has been said in my own country it's an ill omen to come by the wrong door", one knows that a tragic fate awaits this beautiful, royal woman in an alien land. The rest of the story moves cruelly and directly to the inevitable tragedy.

Nathaniel and Oparre are defeated almost before they begin the

fight, for they do not realize that they cannot uproot prejudices even by loans and gifts of money to the townspeople.

For a time, Oparre is simply

content to live with her children in her rooms and await her husband's return at night.

When spring comes, at last her loneliness becomes too

great and she says: I'll be content with a half countenancing if the women folk would say once, Yes my dear, we sew tomorrow: come draw a hem with us!

Not really caring

if I accept, not bothering much about me as I sit there sewing. By this time, her husband knows that even this is too much to expect, for he has seen the dark looks of his former friends who pass by him on the street without speaking to him.

Then he realizes that even his money cannot

buy the goodwill of the people of the town.

Slowly he begins to resent and

then to hate his wife, who has separated him from all his friends.

Soon the

rulers of the village demand that Nathaniel send Oparre away or with her go away penniless.

He is too broken in spirit to resist.

205

In the last seene, the children, the nurse and Oparre are in the cabin of the ship,

The Wingless Victory.

A vial of hemlock, which the

faithful nurse has carried with her from a distant land, brings the sleep of death to them all.

This is the inevitable ending to this tragic story.

Miss Katherine Comell^as Oparre had one of the most difficult roles of her interesting

career.

She seemed to change her personality and to be­

come in reality an

Eastern woman, for her body was relaxed and her fine

voice had warmth, color and wider range than ever before.

Praise is also

given to Joe Mielziner for the beautiful and appropriate settings of the play.

2

The critics commend the quality of the verse and one speaks of the following last speech of Oparre as fine poetry: The earth rolls toward the dark, and men begin to sleep.

God of the children,

God of the lesser

childrenof the earth,

the black and the

unclean,the vengeful,

you

are mine. Now as when I was

a child.He came too soon

this Christ of peace.

Men are not ready yet.

Another hundred thousand years they must drink your potion of tears and blood.

1 2

Edith S. E. Isaacs, Coat of Many Colors, Theatre Arts Monthly. XVI (February, 1937) p. 30. Gilbert Seldes, The People and the Arts, Scribner's Magazine. (March,1937) p. 70.

206

Another commentator, on the other hand, says, "the writing is for the most part undistinguished, and some of it is incredibly bad."

1

Still another

2

He, critic thinks the poetry inAWingless Victory very superior to that in High Tor. As to the construction and motivation of the play, one writer believes that the first part, with its logical action and somber atmosphere of tragedy, makes one think that this is going to be a well organized play with the con­ flict between the Christian faith of the beautiful Malay Princess and the narrow bigotry of her husband's family.

In the second and third acts, he

weakens his theme by scattering his interest and cheapens his character of the sea captain by making the problem one of general prejudice.

This same

3 writer believes that Oparre is real and colorful in her first entrance but very soon becomes a stock figure without life.

The other reviewers are in

general agreement with Mr. Nathan^that the play contains many beautiful word patterns but lacks organization and character portrayal. The investigator thinks that the play is far better than the critics would have one believe.

The verse is flexible and the story holds the in­

terest until the final curtain.

"Key Largo" This tragedy in blank verse was produced in New York November 27, 1939, with Paul Muni in the leading role.

1 2 3 4

It belongs with the most outstanding of

Eleanor Flexner, American Playwrights, p. 116. George Jean Nathan, The Morning After the First Night, p. 106. Vernon Grenville, The Play and Screen, The Commonweal (January 18, 1937), p. 304. George Jean Nathan, The Play, Saturday Review of Literature. (January 30, 1937), p. 2.

207

Mr. Anderson’s works like Winterset. which it resembles, in that it tries to explore the deep significance which, underlies a situation of the present day.

In this play, as in Winterset. the playwright is thinking deep

thoughts about life and death, loyalty and sacrifice, the relations between God and man. The theme is the problem of a young man who saves his own life because he has lost faith in a cause.

Yet, in the months afterward, he finds that

unless he has faith in something there is not much for which to live. The story begins with a prologue at a lonely Spanish outpost which is held by four young American volunteers.

King McCloud, the leader of the

group, has just overheard some officers talking and learns that the entire army is retreating.

At the same time, they are being left to hold the

enemy while the main army withdraws.

He also learns that this is part of

a wholesale retreat and that the cause is lost in Spain.

Because of these

things, King tells the others, Victor, Monte and Jerry, that he is deserting. The other three decide to stay and face the certain death that awaits them. King argues that no man should give his own life for a hopeless cause in which he no longer even believes. We next see him arriving in America and trying to justify his actions to himself.

Finally he comes to Key Largo in Florida, where Victor’s blind

father and sister, Alegre, live.

When he tells his story, they realize how

oppressed and sick he is in mind, and they bid him stay with them. and her father make their living by keeping roomers.

Alegre

When King arrives,

he

finds a criminal, Murillo, with his gang of come-on gamblers occupying most

208

of the house.

The old blind father and Alegre are completely at the

mercy of this band of cut-throats.

When King realizes their plight, he

resolves to stay and protect them if he can. Murillo murders a man late one night after a gambling game.

Under

the dominance of the gangster, the sheriff tries to pin the blame upon King and some innocent Indians. Murillois the murderer. these criminals.

The old blind father testifies that

King finally decides

to give his

life to fight

He kills Murillo but loses his ovm life in the battle.

The entire play is the study of the mental suffering of King.

The

following lines show his feeling of guilt about his conduct in Spain. can be seen, the meter is very irregular and seems to show the confused mind of King: Something within myself accuses me.

They accuse me.

Without warrant,

without reason, day and night, incessantly, till I look at a bed with horror, as a place where a man can’t sleep, and look at a road with horror as something I must walk along forever followed by the dead I - Will you forgive - all this this is just raving

I came here running from a Civil war Where madmen and morons tore a continent

As

209

apart to share it, where death and rape were common as flies on a dead soldier . . . . I must choose again between death and the rape of a woman, between death and the murder of innocent men.

I made my choice

long ago and ran and

left them bleeding

there in the field.

And I say its better tolive

Finally after much

struggle, he comes to

. .

this conclusionas he goes out

to meet his death: A man must die for what he believes - if he's unfortunate enough to have to face

it in his time.

And if he won't, then he'll end up believing in nothing at all - and that's death, too. This verse is somewhat different from the easy, flowing lines of some of his other plays. it is not

One critic is of the opinion that this is poetry, but

the poetry of ornament; it is rather a new intensity, "a hewing

the linewhich is almost ruthless."^-

to

Another writer says that thepoetry has

2

"beauty of diction and that distinction of style in the dialogue for which Mr. Anderson is well known.

3

A third critic thinks that Mr. Anderson has

written very eloquent poetry.

1

Richard Lockridge, Key Largo, Drama’ • Section, Mew York Sun (November 28, 1939) p. 20. 2 Burns Mantle, Key Largo, New York ■Daily News. Drama Section (Nov.28,1929), . P* s. 3 Vernon Grenville, The Stage and Screen, The Commonweal (Dec.8 ,1939) p.163.

210

As to the casting and acting of the play, the critics are in agree­ ment generally and are complimentary about both.

Mr. McClintic directed

the play, which was well cast and up to the high standards that the Playwrights Company maintains.

Paxil Muni played the part of the dis­

illusioned idealist, King McCloud, and brought to the part the straight­ forward masculine force and clearness that is the distinguishing mark of his performances.

By his understanding portrayal, Mr. Muni made

sympathetic a person who might otherwise have seemed contemptible. The chief defects^which the writers find in the play are the long speeches toward the end, which do not seem to achieve the desired effect, and action, which keeps the piece moving and brings it to a mechanical end that seems melodramatic rather than inevitable.

Another quarrel which the

writers have with Mr. Anderson is that at times they believe the motivation'"' to be obscure, particularly at the end when King decides to go to his own destruction.

This is probably out of a sentimental feeling for the girl,

Alegre, who he discovers is in love with him.

This motivation should be

clarified. Mr. Krutch^ sums up his beliefs when he says that in spite of the short­ comings the play does not fail.

The writer has chosen a great theme and

has made something out of that theme. The investigator believes that the language of the play is appropriate but that its organization is confused.

1 Joseph Wood Krutch, Drama, The Nation. (December 9, 1939), p. 656. 2. Brooks Atkinson, Key Largo, Drama Section, Mew York Times (December 10,1939). 3 Krutch, 0£. cit., p. 658.

211

"Journey to Jerusalem" Mr. Anderson dramatized the early life of Jesus in this drama, which was first performed on October 12, 19-40, at the National Theater in New York. It was produced by the Playwrights Company, with Sidney Lumet as Jeshua and Arnold Moss as Ishmael. In a preface to the play, the author^tells how he happened to write it. He says that there is no answer to the rule of force in the world except some sort of faith: men of the earth.

faith in the dignity of the individual man and the If we are to have a belief in our own worth, then we

must believe also that there is a purpose and a creator behind this universe. Christianity recognizes the work of the individual more than does any other religion.

In addition, the life and teachings of Jesus give us the most

perfect pattern of the good life that we have in the world. a time in the world's history very similar to our own: "despair and unfaith" had seized his people.

Jesus came at

a time when

The purpose of the play,

therefore, is to present this problem of unfaith as it presented itself to Jesus when in his youth he pondered the Old Testament. the play is:

Thus the theme of

who is the Messiah and what is his mission in the world?

This question is asked first by the Roman sentinel sent to guard Herod. In the beginning of the play, the soothsayer is telling Herod that he hal seen again the star in the east and he believes the Messiah is at hand. Soon we see Joseph and Miriam preparing to go to Jerusalem.

They are

greatly worried about taking Jeshua with them because they fear his age will be asked and suspicion will point to him, who twelve years before escaped Herod's wrath. 1

Maxwell Anderson, Preface to Journey to Jerusalem, pp.5-7.

212

On the way to Jerusalem, Joseph’s party meetsa band of revolutionists. Ishmael, their leader, recognizes Jeshua as the Messiah, and from that time he protects the entire group.

When the people are being counted,

Ishmael lies about Jeshua's age and gets him safely inside.

Later when

Jeshua talks to the elders in the temple and amazes them with his wisdom, he still does not recognize his own mission.

It is left for the old prophet,

Ishmael, to tell the young lad his future destiny. not to appear as a king but humbly he is to come. and death will he be able to save his people.

Jeshua learns that he is Only through suffering

A soldieroverhears

their

conversation and Ishmael is killed in saving the life ofJeshua.After­ wards, the lad's bravery in facing the soldiers saves his own life the second time. The following lines from the conversation between Jeshua and his Mother are mentioned by writers as having lofty beauty.1 Although the pattern is generally iambic pentameter, here again are many irregular lines. Jeshua.

I must tell you - in one night two or three years ago, when I'd been ill, I felt you bending over me with a light when I 'was half asleep - and heard Mother saying: "It's as if there were an ushering of wings when I come to bring him v/ater - and then a shadowing of wings overhead, when I shield him from the sun." Do you remember, Mother, what you said?

1

E.V.R. Wyatt, The Drama, Catholic World, November, 194-0> pp.216-217.

213

Miriam.

Yes the whole air seemed troubled in the room, as if I were never ministering alone but with bright companions,

The critics are not in agreement concerning the worth of the poetry. Three of the reviewers are of the opinion that it is of high quality, while three writers believe that his poetry has fallen far below his previous achievements and does not do justice to the inspiring subject with which he is dealing.^ The latter group is rather emphatic in terming the verse "dull^"

Written in a "pedestrian mood," for, with the exception

of a few passages, his dialogue does not soar to lofty heights. been overwhelmed with the task that he set for himself.

He may have

Into the mouths of

the humble characters he puts colloqualisms which jar on one's ears.

One

may argue that poor Jews and common soldiers do not speak in eloquent language, but the Bible does not uphold that view.

A great theme should not be cheapened

by realistic language. The writers give high praise to Mr. Mielziner’s sets with their high gates and lofty arches of Jerusalem, although one says that the acting space which he planned was too small.^ Sidney Lumet as the boy Jesus was splendid in figure, but his performance, in the opinion of several writers, contained too much restraint.

Arnold Moss who played Ishmael and Arlene Francis who

took the part of Miriam received praise for their performances.

1

Rosamond Gilder, Broadway in Review, Theatre Arts Monthly. XVIV (December, 194-0), p. 850. 2 J. W. Krutch, Drama, The Nation (October 19, 194-0), p. 20. 3 Vernon Grenville, The Stage and Screen, The Commonweal (October 18, 194-0), p. 550. 4- Rosamond Gilder, op. cit.. p. 850 .

214

1 The writers agree that here Mr. Anderson has attempted perhaps his most difficult theme.

The story of Jesus, which is the most dramatic

in the world and beautifully told in the four gospels, is so thoroughly the center of the religious beliefs of millions of people that it is almost impossible to interpret it on the stage.

One critic sums up the

opinions of three others when he says that Maxwell Anderson has written a stirring verse drama which has nobility and strength.

It is an illumi­

nating study of the Christ and is about a period of his life of which we know very little.

Stark Young^quarrels with the playwright for using the

Greek version as a source of the play and for drawing the parallel in the piece between Rome and Hitlerism.

One^historian sums up the opinion

of two others when he says that the play contains action which is blurred and indefinite and that the piece as a whole is flat and tame.

Still

another writer^is of the opinion that the play gives theatregoers some­ thing serious to think about.

The drama presents a panorama of the least

known stages of the early life of Christ and in telling the story reveals rare understanding.

1 2 3 4 5

Always it seems at one with the Bible story.

Editorial, New Play in Manhattan, Time Magazine (October 14, 1940), p. 62. Wyatt, 0£. cit., p. 40. Stark Young, First Century Problems, The New Republic (October 21, 1940), P. 557. J. W. Krutch, op. cit.. p. 40. Willard Fairchild, In the Field of the Arts, The Spur (November, 1940), p.40.

215

General Characteristics of Maxwell Anderson's Verse Flays Since we have discussed the salient features of Mr. Anderson’s in­ dividual plays, now we shall summarize these characteristics in order that we may learn something of his place in American drama.

We shall examine

the status of his verse, his ability at character portrayal, the organiza­ tion and motivation of his plays and the social criticism found in his plays.

A comparison between the work of Mr. Anderson and Mr. O ’Neill will

also prove helpful. Maxwell Anderson has eliminated the prejudice that many people hold concerning verse plays on the stage.

He has written a blank verse that does

not seem eccentric but reads well and sounds pleasant to the ear.

The fact

that he has kept the spirit of blank verse but has broken up his lines to fit the thought helps to account for this naturalness. There are still a few of the commentators who do not think that verse

1

is suited to the stage and who do not like it.

2

They believe that this play­

wright by using this form rather than prose has cut himself off from a large part of his potential audience.

On the other hand, the majority of the

critics believe that his verse is of high order and think that it is an important contribution to American drama.

~

They are not blind to his faults,

however, for they often mention the fact that he is verbose and is inclined to make poetry out of everything.

3 One of the writers mentions the following

passages as some of the most eloquent and lofty in his plays:

1 2 3

Gilbert Seldes, The People and the Arts, Scribner's Magazine (March, 1937), p . 30. i&lmund Wilson, Prize Winning Blank Verse, The New Republic (June 23, 1937), p. 193. J. R. Parker, Anderson, Magazine of Art. (April, 1937), p. 9.

216

Elizabeth's last words to Essex, Ezdra's beautiful lines which he speaks over the bodies of Mio and Miriamne, Lise's soliloquy lamenting her life in death, Oparre's renunciation of a Puritan God and Mio's hopeless attempt to run into the night and elude Trock's men.

Mr. Nathan says as

a criticism and a tribute: I would rather listen to the average Anderson play, whatever its dramatic defects, than to look at many other American writers' plays, whatever their purely dramatic virtues in turn. As a paid critic, it is my duty to indicate Anderson's short­ comings as a dramatist, but as a lay individual it is also my duty to confess that I am a ripe sponge for the beauties inherent in the English language and that, when a playwright comes along who knows how to extract and merchant them, I frequently am willing comfortably to forget whether he is a great hand at drama or not. ^ Character Portrayal In regard to Mr. Anderson's ability at creating character, the comment­ ators are enthusiastic.

They mention Mary of Scotland, Elizabeth, Mio,

Washington, Rudolph, as perhaps the best of his full length portraits. Organization of Plays When we come to the organization and motivation of his plays, there are some conflicting opinions among the reviewers.

They do agree that the

tows how, in the opening scene of his plays, to convey the atmosphere and tone of the story, to sketch his dramatic situation and to foretell the final catastrophe. Wingless Victory.

He does this in a splendid manner in The

Within ten minutes after the curtain rises, you know that

this is an age-old story of race prejudice and that tragedy will be inevitable.

1 2

George Jean Nathan, The Morning After the First Night, p. 109. Edith J.R. Isaacs, Drama. Theatre Arts Monthly XCT iFebruarv. 1937), p. 89.

Mr. Anderson has more plot than the writers of English verse dramas of this period, for he has organized all his plays within the framework of the realistic plot.

The chief criticism which the writers level at

2 the playwright in regard to his plots is that he often allows his long speeches to impede the action.

Thus the plays lack the inevitable and

logical drive of events that belongs to all great drama. Social Criticism Found in His Plays

3

Maxwell Anderson is a b o m reformer.

Within his plays is found some

of the best social criticism on the American stage.

He cries out against

persecution and race prejudice in^ Wingless Victory, against the miscarriage of justice in Winterset. against war for trade advantage in

Valley FotyreiT

against lack of religious faith in Journey to Jerusalem. His plays of social criticism might lead one to suspect him of belonging to the left wing group of dramatists.

This, however, is not the case, for he places himself

definitely outside the ranks of left wing writers in his statements concern­ ing the business of poetic drama.

He believes that poetry cannot be great

poetry and have as its purpose the practical or political reorganization of the affairs of the world.

Good poetry can satirize the evils of state, yet

satiric verse is usually second rate. no concrete plans for the world.

The writers of dramatic poetry have

He says:

"My hope for the human race is

that it will so far improve in mentality and magnanimity over a period of millenniums that it will be able to govern itself without recourse to

1 2 3

Mary Beatrice Schiller, Recent Trends in Poetic Drama in Efaglish. p. 30. B.H. Clark, Broadway Plays in Review. The Drama Magazine (May. 1938) r p. 10 . Isaacs, op. cit.. p. 90.

218

violence . . . Marxism is an ingenious political invention which would work if the majority of men were honest and unselfish, but they are not."1 Maxwell Anderson and Eugene O'Neill A comparison between the work of Maxwell Anderson and that of Eugene O'Neill will help to focus attention on the chief characteristics of

2 Mr. Anderson's work.

Joseph Wood Krutch has made this comparison;

(1)

Mr. Anderson seems less eccentric to the average theatregoer than does Mr. O'Neill - he doesn't strain the imagination.

(2)

He has adapted his

plays to the requirements of the stage better than O'Neill. fluent with words, while O'Neill lacks this verbal form.

(3)

(4)

He is

Anderson

often seems unable to find ideas for his words which come spontaneously. O'Neill finds it difficult to put his ideas into words.

(i>)

O'Neill has

the poet's imagination without the facility of expression, while the other produces verse which the critics claim is not exactly poetry but sounds like it. Conclusions From the study of his plays and from all the critical opinion, one is greatly impressed with Mr. Anderson's versatility, hi a a hi 11tv

wr-ttp

poetry which generally is full of eloquence and imagination, his success in the organization of his plots and his mastery of the art of character por­ trayal.

1 2

John Mason Brown sums up the opinion of many writers when he says:

Maxwell Anderson, Yes By the Eternal, Theatre Arts Monthly. XXI (May, 1937), P. 51. Joseph Wood Krutch, The American Drama Since 1918. pp. 288-318.

219

"I happily confess I can no longer deny or resist the facinating spell Mr. Anderson's drama is able to cast over those who sit before it in spite of its obvious shortcomings.

His is the kind of play, although by no

means the actual play, upon which the hope and glory of the future theatre rests."

Other Writers of Verse Dr*nn» During this time Maxwell Anderson contributed more verse plays to the theatre than all of the other poet dramatists combined.

This fact should

not cause us to minimize the work of the other writers, however, for they made some very individual and worth while contributions to the drama of this period. writers.

Let us turn now to a consideration of the work of these

They ares

T. S. Allot, Archibald MacLeish, Marc Blitzstein,

Stanley Young, Roark Bradford, Arank Durham, Richard Nusbaum and Delmore Schwartz.

Although the plays by each dramatist will be discussed as a unit,

chronological order will be generally followed.

T. S. Eliot Mr. Eliot won his first fame as a lyric and reflective poet.

Within

the last few years, his several plays show that he can also write lines which

2

can be spoken or chanted with powerful effect.

He does not attempt to adapt

his poetry to the demands of the modern theatre to as large a degree as does Maxwell Anderson, neither does he pattern his plays after the Shakespearean tradition.

1 2

His plays seem rather to go back to medieval times for their

John Mason Brown, Two on the Aisle, p. 152. Joseph Wood Krutch, Drama, The Nation. CXIVI (April 8 , 1936), p. 459.

220

Inspiration, to the pageantry of religious drama, to the miracle and morality plays.

This similarity to medieval plays is especially shown in

Murder in the Cathedral, with his use of the Four Tempters, who are not persons but are considered as symbols.

The chorus of the Women of Canterbury

is also used in a symbolic fashion.

"The Rock" This pageant play, hy T. S. ELiot, was written for performance at Sadler's Wells Theatre from May 28th to June 9th, 193A, on behalf of the Forty Five Churches Fund of the Diocese of London.

In the preface to the

published version, Mr. Eliot says that he did not write the play alone. He wrote the choruses and dialogue of the pageant under the direction of a number of people.

He wrote only one scene alone.

He says "for this scene

and of course for the sentiment expressed in the choruses I must assume responsibility."1 In this pageant of the Church of England are found Crusaders, Bolsheviks, economists, plutocrats, prophets of the Bible and workmen.

These people tell of the past history of the Church and the

different scenes are connected by a chorus speaking with masks.

The chorus

chants over and over the theme, which is the need of spiritual faith in the modern world.

This faith is shown by the workmen who are attempting to

build a new church in the suburbs.

The Rock, who is the pv *icipal character,

is supposed to be eternal and all powerful faith. When the play opens, we find a group of workmen building a church on some land that is not firm enough for the foundations of so large a building.

1

T. S. Eliot, Preface to The Rock. P. IV.

221

As they work and face discouragements, the Anglo Saxons come on the stage and show that they adopted Christianity.

Later we see the first Bishop

of London trying to build his church in a swamp.

Soon the Crusaders come

on and make preparations for starting their high mission.

We see Samuel

Pepys and Sir Christopher Wren as they stand looking over the burned x*emains of London and planning a new city.

As the different periods in

history are reached, the choruses, after the manner of the Greeks, chant the importance and significance of the scenes.

At intervals -- there are

groups of m o d e m people - - Communists, the unemployed and the wealthy who come on and air their views about the failure of religion.

Quite often we

are entertained by the amusing conversations between two of the builders. After many difficulties, the church is finally finished and the Rock, who now is Saint Peter, gives his blessing. The following lines from the chorus at the beginning of the play show the nature of the verse and something of the theme.

Some of the lines are

iambic pentameter and some are anapestic tetrameter; The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

0 perpetual revolution of configured stars,

0 perpetual

recurrence of determined seasons,

0 world of spring and autumn, birth and dying The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion but not of stillness, t Knowledge of words and ignorance of the Word.

222

The commentators agree that the poetry found in the choruses is of very high order.

One writer summarizes the opinion of four others when

he speaks of the choruses of the play as "a revival in English Poetry of the spirit of the very greatest which English Poetry has ever known, but at the same time with a present day touch .1*1 About the language of the rest of the play, the critics are not so enthusiastic.

One says that the

dialogue seems stilted and the dialect is not accurate.

She adds ** I am

sure Mr. Eliot does not know how English brieklayers and stone masons really talk." 2 Commentators all mention the satirical power of the play.

Mr. Eliot

points scornfully to the people in the suburbs, "In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels" where godlessness prevails, to the "subsiding base­ ments where the rat breeds.”

Here the poor are forced to live.

He also

satirizes the Communists and the wealthy for their lack of taste and common sense. In regard to the organization of the drama, one writer is of the opinion that the plot is lacking in vitality^ while another commentator sums up the belief of two colleagues when he says that it is a clear play with "imaginative brilliance and satirical force." ^

1 2 3 A

Percy Hutchinson, Eda Lou Walton, A (September 23, Ibid.. p. 10. J. E. Sewell, Mr. (September 23,

The Rock, Hew York Times (July 14-, 1935). Modern Pageant, New York Herald Tribune Book Section 1931). T. S. Eliot’s The Rock, London Daily Telegraph 1931).

"IJurder in the Cathedral" Murder in the Cathedral was first produced in Canterbury Cathedral as a part of the Canterbury festival in June, 1935.

The play was directed

by E. Martin Browne with Robert Speaight as the Archbishop.

Ashley Dukes,

the director of the Mercury Theatre in London, saw the play and, believing that it had value for the theatre, arranged for it to be produced in London with Mr. Browne as director and Mr. Speaight in the leading role. a long run, the play toured the provinces. Federal Theatre in New York. melodrama.

After

Later it was produced by the

The Federal Theatre played the piece as

Still later, in April 1938, the English Company brought the

play to New York.

The English Company showed the conflict between the

flesh and the spirit of Thomas a Beeket.

It gave the interpretation which

the poet intended.^The theme of Mr. Eliot's tragedy is a universal one in that it reveals the battles within the soul of man. and death of Thomas a Becket.

It tells the story of the last days

It shows the great man tempted by the sins

of pleasure, worldly power, material gain and at last fcy the greatest temptation of all, the glory of martyrdom.

How he conquers these and goes

forth courageously to his death is the heart of the play. The play opens with the Chorus of the Women singing in the Archbishop's Hall.

They create the atmosphere and set the stage for the play.

They tell

how for seven years the Archbishop of Canterbury has been away and how desolate they have been without his spiritual guidance.

1

They feel that some

Edith J. R. Isaacs, Broadway in Review, Theatre Arts Monthly XXII (April, 1938), p. 255.

tragedy awaits - something they cannot understand.

Soon a herald comes

saying that the Archbishop is returning to Canterbury.

He tells that the

Archbishop is at peace with the Pope and the King of France, but that he is not reconciled with the King of England. settled.

The old quarrel is not

The priests and the people are overjoyed at the prospect of

his return, but they fear for his safety. When the Archbishop appears, the people strew flowers in his way. Soon the Tempters come to the Archbishop.

The first one offers him a

place of ease and pleasure in the kingdom if he will make peace with the king.

The next tells him he can seize the chancellorship if he chooses.

The third suggests that he fight against the king and the fourth tells him that he will win great reward in heaven if he seeks martyrdom.

In the

following lines Becket responds to the Tempters: Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain, Temptation shall not come in this kind again. The last temptation is the greatest treason To do the right deed for the wrong reason. This response and his Christmas sermon show how he solves his inner conflict.

In the sermon, he says in substance:

A martyr is a part of God's

plan to lead men back to his love, and a true martyr is one who has made his will the will of God while he desires nothing for himself — "glory of martyrdom."

not even the

He tells his people that he wishes them to remember

this when they have another martyr.

Lh £-

The second scene is in the Cathedral where nfour Knights come.

In

spite of the efforts of the priests to save Thomas a Becket, he is murdered upon the Altar.

As soon as the Arohhishop is slain, the Knights in

rambling speeches try to justify his murder to the people. returns to its high mood.

The play then

It closes with a scene of great sadness:

The

lament of the people and the priests over the death of their great leader. In the opening scenes and throughout the play at proper intervals, Hr. Eliot uses his Chorus of the Women of Canterbury to tell some of the story and to provide the atmosphere and spiritual exaltation of the play. This employment of choric speech is one of the experimental devices that Mr. Eliot, Ur. MacLeish and other writers are using today.

As to the

effectiveness of the chorus in this play, one writer says, "It required a poet's faith to conceive a chorus trained to such use as Eliot makes of the Chorus of the Women of Canterbury, but his faith has been rewarded, and there is not a syllable of the words he has written for them that does not come with all its color and persuasion through the choric speech.”^ The speech of the Third Priest to the Knights and indirectly to the people of the world is another example of the verse. Mr. Eliot's verse is fairly regular iambic pentameter.

As can be seen, It scans more

easily than does Maxwell Anderson's. In the small circle of pain within the skull, You still shall tramp and tread one endless round

1

Isaacs, Ibid., p. 255

226

ex'

Of thought, to justify your action to yourselves. Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave, Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe Which never is belief:

This is your fate on earth,

And we must think no further of you. Three of the writers believe that the poetry is of fine quality. They speak of his language of "high poetic beauty, a beauty none the less potent in its restraint,"

1

of his feeling for speech and dramatic situation,

of the "appropriateness of verse to subject matter and the consequent vary­ ing rhythms, the unforced suitability and modesty of presentation."^ This last writer also mentions his ability to write pungent truths in a new way such as Sometimes at your prayers, Sometimes hesitating at the angles of stairs. « t « i * * * % Death has an hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways. One writer tempers his praise of Mr. Eliot’s verse by mentioning that the Knights’ warning to Becket is so noisy that the action of the play is hampered. ^ Concerning the organization and quality of the play, the writers are in general agreement that the drama contains not only fine poetry but is

1 2 3 A

Vernon Grenville, Murder in the Cathedral, The Commonweal (April 3,1936), p. 636. Edward Reed, Prefaces, Parenthesis, Poetry, Theatre Arts Monthly. XX (March, 1936), pp. 231-232. Marianne Moore, Reviews, Poetry. XLVII (February, 1936), p. 280. Horace Gregory, Reviews, Poetry. XLVIII (July, 1936), p. 228.

p

/227

dramatically conceived and presented.

Some phases of the piece which

are mentioned as especially effective are the use of the Chorus of the Women of Canterbury in giving the simple setting, the ironic speeches of the Knights and Becket’s moving Christmas sermon.

In conclusion, they

speak of the play as a splendid mixture of the "lovely and intimate,

a

"successful accomplishment,"^ and the "greatest play our generation has produced."3

"The Family Reunion" This drama of modern times was written London in April, 1939.

Helen Hayes was the

by Mr. Eliot and produced in Dowager, Michael Redgrave

took the part of Harry and Catherine Lacy was Agatha. The characters in the play remind us of the Forsytes, for they are men of property and belong to the wealthy, social group in England. people bring with them a curse and a sense of impending doom.

These

The theme

is a mixture of the pagan conception of a family curse and the Christian belief in the expiation of sin.

The curse has to do with a tendency to

murder the wives of the family. The scene is laid in Wishwood, the country house of the Monchensey family.

The family is gathered to celebrate the seventieth birthday of

Lady Monchensey, a widow.

Her son, Lord Harry Monchensey, arrives after

having been away eight years.

During this time his wife, whom the family

dislikes, has drowned at sea.

Harry soon tells the family that he pushed

1 2 3

Reed, op. cit.. p. 232. George K. Anderson and Eda Lou Walton, This Generation, p. 366. Archibald MacLeish, Foreword to The Cradle Will Rock. P. III.

his wife overboard and is her murderer. The family doctor talks to him.

They do not believe his story.

The doctor tells him that he must do

nothing to shock his mother because the least agitation will likely cause her death.

Agatha, one of his mother's sisters, privately tells Harry

that just before his birth she was his father's mistress.

During that

period his father tried several times to kill his mother.

He now feels

that he has inherited this evil passion from his father and that it is a kind of family curse.

In his tortured condition, he sees the Eumenides

in the window and decides to go out to hunt down these furies. his

mother that he is going away.

but

to no avail.

She begs and pleads with him to stay,

The shock of his going brings on her death.

Mr. Eliot experiments in writing the verse of this play. are

unrhymed.

He tells

The lines

He uses different kinds of meter but there are more anapestic

feet in the play than iambic.

In the more conventional speeches the rhythm

seems to disappear and the characters can discuss ordinary matters in a very natural fashion. The commentators agree that beoause of the splendid use of rhythms and its newness of style, it is an important play. that the verse is good stage verse.

One^writer suggests

It is easy flowing and flexible and

does not pay too much attention to meter.

The following speech of the

Dowager concerning old age is mentioned as one of the very beautiful passages of the play.^

1 2

Editorial, Family Reunion, New York Times (April 9, 1939) • Editorial, Family Reunion, Dramatic Section, The London Observer (March 26, 1939).

I have nothing to do but watch the days draw out Now that I sit in the house from October to June, And the swallow comes too soon and the spring will be over, And the cuckoo will be gone before I am out again. 0 Sun, that was once so warm.

0 Light that was

taken for granted When I was young and strong, and sun and light unsought for And the night unfeared and the day expected And the clocks could be trusted, tomorrow assured And time would not stop in the dark! When we consider the organization of the play, we find that the writers do not commend it very highly.

They think it does not tell as

strong and clear a story as does Murder in the Cathedral.

For that reason

alone It will not be popular with the average theatregoer.

The reviewers

2

say that one reason for the lack of power in the plot is the confusion of ideas.

When Mr. Eliot has Harry discuss his beliefs concerning expiation

and methods of lifting curses, he creates a muddled and mystical sort of exaltation. stition.

1 2

It seems a strange mixture of Christian beliefs and super­

Pagan ideas are hard to reconcile with those that are Christian.

Brooks Atkinson, Family Reunion, Drama Section, New York Times (April 9, 1929), p. S. London Observer, op. cit., p. 10.

230

The writers^give praise to the actors who interpreted the play in London.

Helen Hayes as the Dowager, with all her fine ability at convey­

ing pathos, is commended for her performance. The investigator thinks that the play contains much flexible poetry but that the organization is not well developed.

The character portrayal

is not clear.

Archibald MacLeish "Panic" Before he entered the field of verse drama Mr. MacLeish was well known as a modern poet.

Therefore when P«n-ic was produced, it received a

great deal of advance publicity.

It was presented at the Phoenix Theatre,

May, 1935, with Orson Welles as the banker, Zita Johan as lone and Harold Johnson as the blind man. In a foreword to the drama, MacLeish tells why he has not written this contemporary play in Shakespearean blank verse.

Through the years

the stresses in .English speech have changed, particularly in America, and blank verse which caught the rhythm of the noble, deliberate speech of the Elizabethans does not interpret American speech at all.

"The classical

rhythm equivalent to American speech would be more nearly the trochee or dactyl than the iamb of blank verse.

He says he has used a line of five

accents but unlimited syllablesj the accent coming in the position which is indicated by the sense.

1 2

In addition, in almost all of the play, the

Atkinson, op. eit.. p. 8. Archibald MacLeish, Preface to Panic, p. 1.

231

rhythm falls away from 'the heavily stressed first syllables to weak syllables at the end.

In the piece, the crowd is a chorus speaking with

the many voices found on an American street. The action is in McGafferty's office in New York and on a street in front of an electric news bulletin.

There are no act divisions, but

there is continuous action with the shift of scenes from the street to the office and back again. of fear.

The theme of the play is the consuming power

The time is 1933.

When the curtain rises, the street is faintly lighted by the flashes of the news bulletins.

Men and women are talking and complaining about

the stopping of factories and the foreclosures in business.

The light

of the street vanishes and McGafferty, the owner of the country's prin­ cipal

industries and largest bank, is seen talking to other bankers.

they listen to the news ticker, they learn are closing.

As

that banks all over thecountry

McGafferty tells the bankers that the only thing to do is

to raise the cash - at least a hundred million dollars - which will tide the banks over and stop the runs on them.

While they are talking, the

doors are thrown open and a mob of unemployed push in.

They heckle the

bankers and tell them that their day as captains of industry is over. There is a blind man in the crowd.

He goes to McGafferty and says:

The prophecies come true Not of themselves but of the ears that hear them. The violence works in the blood.

The living inherit the

Hard speech of the dead like the

seed

of a pestilence;

They carry it close in their mouths and their breath feeds it.

232

You yourselves will feed it and will die. You yourselves in your minds will make the Fate that murders you.

The bursting seed of

Death is rotting ripe beneath your tongues1 After the mob is driven out, McGafferty tells the bankers that he will raise fifty million if they will do their share to stop the tide. They will do nothing.

They say "Every man for himself and to hell with

the rest of them.11 As soon as they leave, McGafferty begins to recall the terrible words of the mob and those of the Blind Man. bank, enters.

Immelman, the president of the

He begs McGafferty to allow him to call in the loans, but

McGafferty tells him this would create a terrible panic and must not be done.

The two men begin trying to borrow money by telephone.

midst of this, lone, McGafferty*s mistress, comes in. for his indifference to her.

lone upbraids him

She tries to be gay and turn McGafferty*s

mind away from the terrible thing that is upon them. he is an old man.

In the

His fame will soon be gone.

tirely and does her best to encourage him.

He tells her that

She rejects the idea en­

The ticker continues its noise.

They learn that a bank moratorium has been declared.

Soon Griggs, a lawyer,

enters and tells them that Shelton, the president of another company, has just committed suicide. bank has closed.

Following this news, word comes that McGafferty’s

With this culmination of catastrophe, comes the added

torture to him of the prospect concerning the future investigation of his

233

business.

When the lights finally go up on the street, the milling

crowd hears that McGafferty has taken his own life. The mere retelling of the story does not in any measure convey the mounting power of fear as it attacks McGafferty, who in the beginning is very courageous and optimistic.

The force of events and the fear of other

people gradually undermine him.

Finally he becomes a beaten old man who

tries to escape by taking his own life.

It is a terrible picture.

The preceding lines from the play illustrate the nature of the verse. The critics praise it heartily.

One^writer summarizes the opinions of a

number when she says that the dramatic quality of his poetry, its color, rhythm and vitality come from the sharpness of its stresses which follow the rhythm of American speech.

This is a definite accomplishment.

The play was not very successful. for this.

The critics give various reasons

One commentator believes that the piece is lacking in technical

2 proficiency.

3 Another writer suggests that dramatic events are impressive

only when they are given a proper setting, yet Mr. MacLeish presents the financial crash as if the depression of three or four years earlier had never transpired.

The millionaire is never seen in prosperous times with

his mistress, lone, by his side.

Since the play begins on a note of tension,

it is hard for the actors to find any relief in the performance later on.

1 2 3

Edith J. R. Isaacs, Broadway in Review, Theatre Arts Monthly. XIX (May, 1935), p. 327. Harold Gregory, Poets in the Theatre, Poetry. XLVIII (July, 1936), pp. 224-228. Ashley Dukes, The English ^pene, Theatre Arts Monthly. XXI (February, 1937), p.30.

234

A third writer says that the play is too condensed and tightly woven to be effective as a theatre piece.

There is not a wasted word nor phrase.^

The m o d e m audience is not trained to take in ideas, action and scene at such a rapid rate of speed. In regard to the acting of the piece, the reviewers are of the opinion that the few rehearsals, lack of intensive training and the difficulty of the play did not make for a very successful performance. Although the drama was not successful as a theatre piece, yet the writers agree that it presents new trends in poetic language.

"As the

most vivid m o d e m verse play that has yet appeared, it will have an in­ fluence in the immediate future, and the rhythms of its speech will surely be echoed widely.®

2

Frank Durham "Fire of The Lord" This one-act folk play, Fire of The Lord saw production in 1937. The first part of this is in prose, but about two thirds of it is in verse. The scene of the story is the yard of Jake's cabin in the "brass 3 ankle" area of South Carolina where there is an intermixture of white, Negro and Indian blood which has produced an isolated race. When the play opens, Lora, an intelligent white girl, and Jim, a white lad, are discussing Lora's grandfather, Harley, who is the most intelligent man in the community.

1 2 3

From this conversation it develops that Harley has

Isaacs, op. cit.. p. 327. Dukes, op. cit., p. 32. Author's note at beginning of play.

235

become very unpopular with these ignorant people because he has advocated irrigation.

The people dare not change the river which God has made, and

they let their crops die.

Harley also has warned them against making

c o m liquor for he knows the law.

As a result many are in jail.

Present­

ly Jake, Lora's father, comes in and tells them that Kubie, the preacher, and the people are coming here to hold a meeting.

He hints that the

meeting has something to do with Harley. Soon a group of bedraggled farmers and their wives appear from the darkness.

They are all "brass ankles" and at their head is Kubie, a

wrinkled man, with the glassy, furtive eyes of a fanatic.

They sit around

the fire and he begins preaching to them in a kind of sing-song chant.

He

tells them that the crops are burning up, that the men are in jail, that there is something wrong in the community. chanting, clapping hands.

The entire crowd begins swaying,

Suddenly another song is heard.

in singing a happy, rollicking tune.

Harley comes

This angers the people.

Black looks

and words are cast at the old man, who has a dignity that sets him above the others. chant again.

As soon as he and Lora go into the cabin, Kubie starts the Finally he says:

You heerd it, Lawd, you heerd it I He talks to jaybirds on a Friday. You heerd it, Lawd, you heerd it! Yeah, Lawd, we heerd it right, yeah, Lawd!

236

He tries to move the rivers from their bedsI You heerd it, Lawd, You heerd itl

Oh,Lawd, Oh, Lawd, he puts us in the jailI Oh,Lawd, right in the jail, Oh, Lawd! This long chant ends with a shout Oh, Lawd, the evil eye! 011 Harley got the evil eye. Harley and Lora hear it and come rushing out of the house.

Both of

them try to reason with the frenzied mob, but by this time the chant has brought on such a hypnotic state that they listen to nothing except the voice of Kubie who tells them that fire will cure the evil eye. chant reaches a higher pitch.

Soon the

They seize Harley and bear M m off to be

burned at the stake. This play gives a terrible picture of ignorance and the hypnotic effect of excess emotionalism. example of the verse.

The above excerpt from the drama gives an

There are some lines of iambic tetrameter and some

of iambic pentameter as well as shorter lines.

The play shows an interest

in developing verse from the speech of the folk. Although the language seems crude, the play has a powerful effect upon the reader.

237

Stanley Young "Robin Landing" This three-act verse tragedy is Mr. Young’s first Broadway production. It opened at the Forty-Sixth Street Theatre in November, 1937, with Ian Keith in the chief role.

The verse of the play is unrhymed and in most

places fairly regular in meter, but there are also occasional short lines. The scene of the play is an Ohio River trading post in a remote part of Kentucky near the end of the eighteenth century. ground, a fit setting for this story of revenge.

It is dark and bloody

The trading post was

founded by Grant Eaton, who went to the wilderness from his New England home to forget his faithless wife.

His brother stole her from him.

During

the first year in the trading post, Eaton married an Indian woman, Sippi, and by her has a son, David, who is now seventeen.

Grant is the ruler of

a group of contented trappers. Suddenly Linda, his former wife, with Kane, the treacherous brother, descend on the settlement.

Eaton has always hated his brother, but now he

despises him even more when he sees him with the woman he has loved.

He

also finds that Kane has supposed him dead and has come here to take possess­ ion of the settlement.

Although Grant still has some tender feelings for

Linda, he holds them both as prisoners.

Kane now plots to seize the camp.

All of this causes consternation, terrible passion and ultimate tragedy among these simple people.

233

David promptly falls in love with Linda.

When she tells him kindly

to go to the towns and seek a girl his own age, he is brokenhearted and flees into the forest.

That night Kane escapes from his room and with his

knife tries to kill Grant while he sleeps. blinding Grant.

He succeeds in completely

Soon Sippi comes in from the forest bearing the body of

young David, who has been killed by the arrows of some Indians.

Then

with these words, she goes back into the forest to her people: A white woman is here. I have seen the look in her eyes and in yours. I am going - the flower that I held I hold no longer.

I am going

bub the bitter arrow Of white love sticks in my mind, And in my dead son's heart. Leaving you, my moccasins are of stone, My heart no less.

Farewell.

Kane tries to escape but is killed by a demented boy, Laban.

Linda stays

to try to comfort Grant in his helpless condition. The preceding lines show the nature of some of the verse in the play, the writers on the subject are in disagreement as to the quality of the verse.

The majority do not give it very high rank.

Four of the writers

are of the opinion that, while there are parts that contain splendid poetry,

239

in general it is rather mediocre.

They speak of it as "high-falutin,"'1'

2 3 "windy versification" with "literary pretensions." They believe that the author tries to make his verse full of great vigor, as if he thought it beneath him to write poetry.

Thus he makes his poetry very rough and

causes the play to become "tawdry.

One of the commentators is of the

opinion that Mr. Young has a talent for using words which have not been worn out by the public.

He mentions the following song of the idiot boy

5 as an example of beautiful verse.

As can be seen, this is anapestic

dimeter. 0 where will I go? 0 where come to rest With this bird in my heart, With this wind in my breast? Where come to rest? Where come to rest? £ Another writer describes the verse as competent and well written. In regard to the organization and motivation of the play, three of the critics are of the opinion that it is not well done.

Since very little

happens until the end of the last act they believe that the plot is not

7

carefully organized and the movement is too slow. g is drowned in too much talk. 1 2 3

A 5 6 7 8

Even then the climax

John Mason Brown, Two On An Aisle, p. 30. John Anderson, Family Feud, Mew York Journal American (November 18,1938). Anonymous - Robin Landing, Time Magazine (November 29,1937), p. 20. Anonymous, Robin Landing, Christian Science Monitor (Hovember 23, 1937). Brooks Atkinson, Robin Landing. New York Times (November 19, 1937). Walter Pritchard Eaton, Play Pick of the Season, New York Herald Tribune (May 1, 1938), p. 21. Kelsey Allen, Robin Landing, Women's Wear Daily (November 19, 1937). Anderson, op. cit.. p. 20.

240

Much commendation is given to the actors who took part in the play. Ian Keith is mentioned as having given a good^performanee as Grant. Wan Sunderland gave an excellent interpretation of the faithless wife. Kathryn Grill's interpretation of the Indian wife, Sippi, was outstanding and Louis Calhern, in the role of the brother, made much out of an un­ sympathetic part. One writer summarizes the feelings of those who were sympathetic to­ ward the play by saying "It is rather a pity that a play as fine in texture and as impressive in words as

Robin Landing

should have to be thrown into

the competitive Broadway market and left to succeed or fail by Broadway standards of entertainment."

2

The investigator thinks that because the writer was practically unknown the play did not get justice at the hands of the critics. I

She believes that

it is an effective drama.

Marc Blitzstein "The Cradle Will Rock" The program says that The Cradle Will Rock is a play in music. does not say that the piece is also predominantly in verse.

It

It is doubtful

whether Mr. Blitzstein himself would claim that it is poetic, because it is in the language of the street and of the mill worker and contains the idiom of the common speech.

Yet since there is definite rhythm in the lines and

since it has verse form, it is included in this study. 1 2

Allen, o£>. cit.. p. 2. Burns Mantle, Contemporary American Playwrights, p. 215.

241

The play was first written for the Welles-Houseman Federal Theatre unit.

Because the material in the play was considered too controversial,

it was dropped as a Federal Theatre offering by the authorities in Washington,

The ban was imposed on the opening evening of the project

(March 20, 1938). 'Iheatre.

The audience was waiting outside the Maxine Elliott

Mr. Welles and Mr. Houseman immediately hired the Venice Theatre

about two miles away, loaded their old piano into a truek and took their furious audience with them to the new theatre. proved to be a most exciting one in the theatre.

It was an evening which In a musty building

with an unlighted stage and with the music of the old piano which was played by the composer in shirt sleeves, the play came into being.

There

was no formal audience but there was a room full of people as interested in the play as were the actors.

There were no special costumes.

The

characters sat at the back of the stage until the time came for them to rise and speak their parts.

At the last, when the song of Joe Worker was

sung, the play grew to a loud climax that shook the theatre.

It later

enjoyed a long run. The play tells with fierce class hatred the story of a steel strike. Mr. Mister, the magnate in Steeltown, buys off President Prexy of the University, with the promise of a research appointment which he has long wanted.

Mrs. Mister tells the Reverend Salvation what to preach, and he

©beys her orders so as to receive her donations for his church.

Mr. Mister

also buys the soul of Dr. Specialist and forces him to swear that a young

242

worker was intoxicated when he was killed in the machinery. all know this is a lie.

The workers

There are many perversions of justice, which

are part of Mr. Mister's campaign to hold the workers under his heel.

In

the end, however, the workers unite in a strong and forceful organization. The following lines, which are a part of Ella's lament for her brother Joe who has been killed in the mill, is a good example of the ferocity and rhythm of the verse.

It is anapestic dimeter with irregularities.

They breed him in the slums I Joe Worker will go To shops where stuff is on show; He'll look at the meat, He'll look at the bread, And too little to eat sort of goes to the head. One big.question inside me cries: How many fakers, peace undertakers, Paid strikebreakers, How many toiling, ailing, dying, piled up bodies, Brother, does it take to make you wise. None

of the writers on the subject claims that there is beauty in the

1

2

verse; but three of them say that the play is effective because of the ferocity of its lines, its mimicry, the rhythm of its music and the animated spirit of

its acting.

3 Mr. Krutchis of the opinion that the force of the

1Editorial,The Cradle Will Hock, Current History Magazine (January,1938), p. 16. 2 Stark Young, The Cradle Will Rock, The New Republic L XXX XIII (January 19, 1938), p. 310. 3 J. W. Krutch, The American Drama Since 1918. p. 22.

243

satire is remarkable, some of the lyrics are amusing, and the vehement spirit is contagious.

One commentator says, "most of the lyrical passages

are crude, quite in the manner of Tin Pan Alley."

He believes that it is

a "sad commentary on the season in our theatre when such stuff as this can be hailed by the critics as a master work.""*2 In regard to the general worth of the play, four of the critics be­ lieve that it is important because of its vividness and fierce drive. These writers say, "its shrewd ferocity and its unfaltering gusto give., it a very brilliant and caustic life."^ proud.

L

It is a play of which one should be

In the preface to the piece, Mr. MacLeish says that Mr. Blitzstein's

play is so direct in its appeal to theatregoers that it "reduces any audience ever collected to its component parts." ^

Roark Bradford "John Henry" This verse drama was written by Mr. Bradford and produced by Sam Byrd in New York, January, 1940.

Jacques Wolfe composed the music.

Mr. Bradford,

who wrote the stories which were the basis for the play, The Green Pastures. was eminently fitted to write this story about the legendary, giant, negro worker, John Henry.

The older negroes spin yarns about him and he comes to

life wherever workers gather. the same pattern:

His great accomplishments follow very much

he can out-work, out-fight and out-love any natural man.

Usually there is a final struggle in which, having overcome all other natural

1 2 3 4

5

Walter Prichard Baton, Play Pick of the Season, New York Herald Tribune Books (May 1, 1933). Editorial, Current History Magazine, op. cit.. p. 16. John Anderson, This Year’s Theatre, Saturday Review of Literature XVIII (April 2, 1938), p. 14Young, pp. cit.. p. 311. Archibald MacLeish, Preface to The Cradle Will Rock, p. TV.

244

men, John Henry pits his strength against steam and steel and in the battle works himself to death.

In the piece Mr. Bradford has been true

to the legend. Paul Robeson took the part of John Henry, and his size, voice and bearing made him especially fitted for the part.’*’ When the play opens, John Henry has just been born.

His mother stands

in the doorway of her cabin in Louisiana and says that he is already six feet tall.

Soon he appears dressed as a roustabout and calls for enough

food to satisfy a giant.

Then he proceeds to lift the cotton bales as

if they were kindling wood and load them on the boat.

John Henry’s fame

as a strong man soon makes him a welcome guest in ail towns. Julie Ann and falls in love with her.

He meets

To her he says:

Cause I'm big and bad and six foot tall And my feets don't tech de ground, Cause I works like a man, and I plays like a fool And I rambles f'm town to town, Lawd, Lawd, And I roams de wide world 'round.

(Julie Ann )

Oh hit ain't for me and you to say, But I takes you by yo' right hand Cause you know John Henry, I'm yo1 woman true, And I know you's my lovin' man, poor boy, les I know you's my lovin' man.

1

Roark Bradford, Paul Robeson is John Henry, Colliers (January 13,1940), P. 15.

213

Although Julie Ann promises to be faithful, it is not long before she is smiling sweetly at the Nigger Named Sam, who is working with John Henry on a big construction job. elope to New Orleans.

John Henry is broken hearted.

catches up with the boat. her back.

Soon she and the Nigger Named Sam He follows her and

Julie Ann rushes to him and begs him to take

When later, however, he discovers her in the arms of the

Nigger Named Sam again, in rage he sends them away.

In New Orleans he

tries to drown his sorrows in drink and cocaine but finally goes back to the Black River country to see if hard work will ease his broken heart. When he arrives he finds that a steam winch is being used to load the bales of cotton on the boat.

He accepts a challenge to load more cotton than

the steam winch before the sun goes down.

Excitement runs high and

Julie Ann returns to lay a large bet on John Henry.

A storm comes and

finally John Henry goes down under a cotton bale.

At the same time Julie

Ann rushes to him to try to roll the cotton away.

They find both bodies

crushed under the bales.

The negroes place Julie Ann beside John Henry on

the cotton bales and sing them both into glory. As the above quotation shows, Mr. Bradford has been true to the rhythm of much Negro music in the sing-song verse which he has used in the play. Many of his lines rhyme at the end and he often adds words such as "Lawd, Lawd" just as in their folk chants and songs the negroes do.

He

uses the dialect of the negro and in the play introduces a number of folk sayings.

The lines are generally iambic or anapestic tetrameter.

The critics are in comparative agreement regarding the worth of the

246 play.

One writer says "It doesn’t come off,"^while another describes it

as an "elaborate bore,"

2

a "rambling" and "bad" play.

formed his part as if it were a vaudeville act.

Paul Robeson per­

Crowds moved across the

stage with no action and spirit and even Mr. Robeson could not save the

3 piece.

Another critic is less caustic in describing the play as “uneven,"

a series of miscellaneous pictures put together in a rather perfunctory manner.

The investigator believes that certain parts of the play contain

scenes of worth, but as a whole the piece does not display a great amount of dramatic genius.

N. Richard Nusbaum "Parting at Imsdorf" This one-act play in blank verse by N. Richard Nusbaum, a young grad­ uate of the University of Pennsylvania, won distinction in that it received two prizes:

the first prize in the Maxwell Anderson Award at Leland

Stanford University, California, and the first prize in the play-writing contest which was sponsored ty the Religious Drama Council of the Greater New York Federation of Churches. Leland Stanford University.

It was first produced August 12, 1940, at

In December of the same year, it was produced

in New York. This play is one of the few dealing with the second world conflict. It is a story of Christian love and compassion in the wasteland of war. Pastor Keilman and his young daughter are still living in the parsonage at Imsdorf though they are in the midst of the German lines.

1 2 3

All the other

George Jean Nathan, John Henry, Newsweek (January 22, 1940), p. 33. Editorial, The Theatre, Time Magazine (January 22, 1940), p. 49. Brooks Atkinson, The Plav. New York Times (January 11, 1940), p. 8.

24.7

villagers have fled.

As the old Pastor bars the windows for the night,

Lieutenant Viertal and Corporal Brucher of the German army come and plead with the old man to leave this place of certain death.

When the old man

refuses, Corporal Brucher tells them that they must go and hunt down an English soldier who is the last of a scouting party still alive. After the German soldiers leave, the old man tries to persuade his daughter, Anna, to seek safety elsewhere but she steadfastly refuses.

Soon Edward

Lavy, an English soldier, comes in exhausted and faints upon the floor. They revive him with wine and Anna takes his gun.

When he can stand, he

tries to flee, but Anna threatens to kill him if he does.

When he is

calmer he tells them that he is a Jew and recently has been a young Jewish Rabbi.

The horror of the war has caused him to lose faith in God and his

soul is in a tormented state.

As they talk, a knocking is heard.

Pastor pleads with Lavy to flee through the cellar.

The

At first he refuses,

for he really wants to die, but finally when Anna tells him she loves him, he goes.

Viertal and Brucher come in hunting the Englishman.

The old

Pastor bars the way to the cellar and Anna tells the soldiers that no one is there.

Pastor Keilman is being hard pressed by the questions of the

soldiers and is also about to lie to save the life of Lavy when Lavy opens the cellar door and comes in. Anna's arms.

Brucher shoots Lavy and he dies in

As he dies, he mumbles the words of a Hebrew prayer.

This is a brief outline of the play but a reading of the lines gives a much richer, fuller picture of the different characters and their mental conflicts.

Pastor Keilman is revealed as a remarkable old man with his

248

religious faith and his deep love of humanity. very sympathetic person.

Lieutenant Viertal is a

His character is in direct contrast to that of

Brucher, who is bloodthirsty and sadistic.

Lavy's half crazed condition

is fully shown at the beginning and his gradual change of feeling, under the influence of the old Pastor's faith and Anna's love, makes the last scene very dramatic. The high quality of the blank verse is shown in the following speech of Viertel, as he pleads with Pastor Keilman to seek safety.

As can be

seen, there are some short lines of three stresses and a few irregular lines. When I was yet a child and lived in Imsdorf And all the older boys were wont to mock My twelfth year stammerings and lispings, And call me Hans the Foolish, Hans the Stupid. And when my twelfth year heart Was a lead plummet sounding The dark waters of my loneliness: And when I had no friend nor dear companion, In those far days of. youthful desolation, I used to come all shame and lisping, And sit beside you. This place was home, and church and haven.

I ask you Father, again I ask you Not as soldier, nor lieutenant,

249

But with twelfth year asking, boyhood asking Leave this place and find a refuge. The investigator believes this play to be well organized and im­ pressive in its character portrayal and philosophy.

Delmore Schwartz "Shenandoah" This one-act play written by Delmore Schwartz in 1939 is found in Poetic Drama, an anthology by Alfred Kreymborg.

In the preface to the play,

the editor comments upon the fact that although Mr. Schwartz has not yet completely mastered the requirements of the theatre, yet this play can be 1 staged and should be produced.

It has not yet been produced.

The plot of

the drama deals with the christening of Shenandoah, a Jewish child eight days old, and the quarrels among the adults in the family concerning a proper name for the infant.

This is not the only important part of the

story, however, for there is Shenandoah himself, now twenty five years of age, who acts as the narrator and retells the incidents of his christening. He also shows how these incidents are connected with forces in the outside world and with historical events. When the play opens Shenandoah relates this story which happened twentyfive years previous.

Shenandoah's mother is preparing for the christening.

She has decided to name the baby Jacob in memory of her deceased father. Her father-in-law comes and begs her not to do it, for his name is also Jacob and it is considered an omen of death to name a Jewish child for a living

1 Alfred Kreymborg, Preface to Shenandoah.

250

person.

From the society page, they find the name "Shenandoah," the valley

where some wealthy person has a home.

When the relatives arrive, the

mother asks her favorite brother to be godfather.

He is willing until

he hears that they are going to call the baby Shenandoah. refuses to saddle a child with such a name.

Then he flatly

They quarrel and wrangle.

Finally the family lawyer helps to bring peace and they go ahead with the christening.

Shenandoah says of his christening:

It is impossible to tell you now How many world wide causes work this room To bring about the person of your name: Europe1

America!

the fear of death!

Belief and half belief in Zion's word! The order of a community in which The lower class looks up and gapes And strives to imitate the sick elite In thought, in emptiness, and luxury.

They are about to give the child a name And circumcise his foreskin.

How profound

Are all these ancient ritesj for with a wound lhat better sign exists - the child is made A Jew forever!

Quickly taught the life

That he must lead, an heir to lasting pain: Do I exaggerate, do I with hindsight see The rise of Hitler?

251

Oh the whole of history Testifies to the chosen people's agony Chosen for wandering and alienation In every kind of life, in every nation The above lines in iambic pentameter verse with occasional rhymes in couplets testify to the rhythmic and flexible poetry and to the elevated character of thought.

The play is well organized, though the critics agree

that dramatic action is lacking.

Conclusions During this period (1929-1942), a number of poetic plays have been pro­ duced on the American stage.

Of the twenty-two plays considered in this

part of the study, all but four have had presentation in the commercial theatre.

Poet dramatists are at last realizing that a poetic play which

does not follow certain dramatic techniques will not get a hearing.

Maxwell

Anderson's gift of dramatic craftsmanship along with his ability as a poet has gained this admission to the theatre for his dramas and possibly for the poetic plays of others. Less than one-third of the plays deal with historical themes, more than one—third are concerned with themes of social criticism and about one-third are devoted to themes of religion and fantasy.

This shows a general

broadening of the interests of the poet dramatists.

They are writing

plays about subjects which were once considered outside the realm of poetic drama.

1 2

The story of a financial crisis such as that found

G. M. O'Donnell, Delmore Schwartz's Achievement, Poetry (May, 1939). Alfred Kreymborg, Poetic Drama, p. 542.

252

in Panic, or the miscarriage of justice in the city slums as shown in Winterset would not in 1910 have been considered proper material for a play. In regard to form and language, we find that the majority of the stage dramas of the period employ modified blank verse such as is found in Maxwell Anderson's plays, or use other traditional rhythms.

There are a

few plays which employ the experimental verse that MacLeish has developed. The language used in these poetic plays ranges from the elevated last words of Elisabeth to Essex to the violent speeches found in The Cradle W j H Rock. The language has become more colorful, more direct, less ornate.

At the

same time, it tries to convey the exact shade of meaning as well as reflect the tones of speech which may be of an ordinary or elevated nature.

In

the presentation of verse plays, such experimental devices as masks and choruses are also used. Poetic plays form a very small part of the drama that has been pre­ sented in the commercial theatre during this period, for prose dramas con­ tinue to hold the stage.

Due to the work of Maxwell Aider son, T, S. Eliot,

Archibald MacLeish and others, however, poetic plays rank far greater in importance than their numbers would indicate.

253 CHAPTER V

POETIC D R A M FOR THE MICROPHONE

Introduction While poet dramatists were winning success in 1936 and 1937 for their verse plays in the theatre, their attention was attracted to an en­ tirely new medium for drama, the radio.

It was not long before they began

experimenting with verse dramas which might be presented before the micro­ phone.

This chapter of the study will be devoted to a consideration of

the verse plays which have been produced over radio. In the tremendous development of broadcasting within the last twelve years, radio drams, has had no small part.

The history of radio drama

X properly dates back to 1929, when the National Broadcasting Company established the Radio -Guild, with the purpose of acquainting the public with the well known plays of the past.

From that time, the growth has been so rapid that

today it is almost impossible to count the sketches and plays that are pre­ sented each week throughout the country.

The two leading chains and the in­

dependent stations in New York City are responsible for the largest production in the country, but many plays also are presented in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and in the cities of the Pacific Coast.

In practically every

large city, plays are being written and broadcast each week.

Thus we may

assume that radio drama is responsible for the greatest output of dramatic writing that we have ever had in world history.

1 2 3

In regard to the quality^of

Louis Reid, Broadcasting Books, The Saturday Review of Literature. XIX (January 14, 1939), p. 3* Ibid. p. 3. Editorial, Verse Drama, Poetry Magazine VIII (August, 1941), p. 281.

254

all this dramatic work critics agree that some of it is of high quality, some of it is mediocre and much of it is very bad.

Types of Radio Drama In general, there are two types of radio drama.

The first is the

"pure""''radio drama which is conceived and written directly in terms of the microphone.

It derives its drhmatic power from the theatre and the actors

who take part in the performance, while from the one-act play it gets its narrative force.

Practically all verse dramas fall in this category, as

well as many plays in prose.

The second type is the novel, stage play, movie

or short story adapted for radio presentation.

These plays are usually

written in much the same way that stage plays are created. in prose and are outside the realm of this study.

They are usually

It is with the "pure"

radio drama in verse that we are concerned.

Importance of Radio Verse Drama One of the best discussions of radio verse drama is found in Archibald MacLeish's preface to the published text of The Fall of the City; A radio play consists of words and word equivalents and nothing else. There is no visible actor disguised to assume a part. There is no stage set contrived to resemble a place. There is only the spoken word— an implement which poets have always claimed to use with a special authority. There is only the word-excited imagination— a theatre in which poets have always claimed peculiar rights to play. Nothing exists save as the word creates it. The word dresses the stage. The word brings on the actors. The word supplies their look, their clothes, their gestures. The more packed and allusive the word, the more illuminating its rhythms, the more perfectly is the scene pre­ pared, the more convincingly is the play enacted..............

1

Denison Merrill, hadio an^ the Writer, Theatre Arts Monthly. XXI (May, 1938), p. 369.

255

Over the radio, verse has no visual presence to compete with* Only the ear is engaged and the ear is already half poet. It believes at oncej creates and believes. It is the eye which is the realist. It is the eye which must see everything before and behind. It is the eye and not the ear which refuses to believe in the lovely girlhood of the middle-aged soprano who sings Isolde ................................ ........ ................... With the eyes closed or staring at nothing, verse has every power over the ear. The ear accepts; accepts and believes; accepts and creates. The ear is the poet's perfect audience— his only true audience. And it is radio and only radio which can give him public access to this perfect friend.

2 Mr. MacLeish also points out another important fact.

The technique

of radio has developed certain tools that are especially useful to the poet. The writers and adapters of prose plays for radio have not made much use of these tools.

The most important of these is the announcer, who is the most

important dramatic character since the Greek Chorus.

For a long time,

modern poets have felt the need of some sort of commentator or chorus in plays, but there were problems connected with the use of both.

For instance

there was the difficulty of getting the commentator or chorus on and off the stage.

In radio, the commentator is there before the play begins and is

an integral part of the performance.

His presence is natural, usually very

welcome and gives atmosphere, imagination, quality and depth to a poetic play.

Problems which the Writer of Verse Plays for Radio Must Face It is very difficult to survey the growth of poetic drama for radio, because it is now in the first processes of developing and is still in an experimental state.

1 2

The majority of plays for radio have been written in

Archibald MacLeish, Preface to The Fall of the City, p. 2. Ibid., p. 2.

256

prose.

It was but a few years ago (1937) that the first verse plays

were written for radio.

The success of The Fall of the City (1937) by

Archibald MacLeish encouraged the writing of a number of Others since then. It will be wise at this time to examine some of the problems which the writer of verse plays for radio must face:

the status of the writer,

the position of the actor, the problem of the audience and production costs.

The writer of verse plays shares these problems with the creator

of prose plays, yet certain factors in the situation are of special difficulty to the poet dramatist.

This is true in regard to the position

of the actor, the status of the writer and production costs.

Status of the Writer

1

The chief reason for the slow development of radio drama of high quality has been the status of the writer.

In some other fields of literary

endeavor, the writer is given recognition and generous rewards.

In the

theatre, the successful playwright often has an honorable and profitable financial position.

If his play is made into a movie, the honor is not

so great but the profits are tremendous.

The literary man often receives

pleasant press notices and fat royalties from his books.

It is only the

writers of radio plays who receive little recognition and less remuneration. Radio producers have never paid enough money for radio plays to induce many of the best writers to contribute dramas for radio except on an experimental basis.

1

This has not been entirely the fault of the broadcaster.

Merrill, op. cit.. p. 365.

The press

257

has not developed good criticisms of the programs and thus standards have not been developed.

Also the advertisers, who have greatly enlarged the

field, have been indifferent to the need for better writing for the micro­ phone.

Listeners have not demanded good plays.

playing a radio play over a.nd over.

Also, you cannot go on

This is an important reason.

It is

done once and is gone, unless we perfect some mechanism for revival. In spite of all these difficulties, radio drama of quality is growing, ana more writers of reputation are taking an interest in the microphone. A number of radio plays of importance have been written in verse.

Such

writers as Stephen Vincent Benet, Maxwell Anderson, Archibald MacLeish, and Alfred Kreymborg have written verse plays directly for the microphone and have thus magnified the importance of this department of drama..

The

fact that broadcasters are beginning to take an interest in the production of these plays is also a hopeful sign.

The Actor and, the Radio Play The actor has a large part in the success or failure of a radio play. This is especially true of a verse play.

The author may present a well

written script; the director may have all the sound devices at his control and have the qualifications necessary for radio directing.

But the actor

has the responsibility of creating from the written words and the sound devices a world of reality and emotional power.

Without the help of scenery,

lighting, or gesture the radio actor tries to create for the listeners the drama of actual life. has met this challenge.

This is a difficult task.

Let us see how the actor

258

Very few actors have made much effort to study the problems which are presented by radio.

Generally'*'stage people have fitted radio broadcasts

in between their usual theatrical performances. vents them from being very teachable.

Their fame as actors pre­

A few, who are impressed by their

great radio audience, approach the microphone with a humble attitude and want to be told what to do.

Often there has been no one to tell them any­

thing or give them any guidance except about such things as how to stand before the "mike” or the importance of not crackling the leaves of the manuscript as they go from page to page. It is clear that the actor faces difficult situations.

He is not

allowed the help of any visual aids such as scenery and costuming, and even that hushed expectancy which he may expect from a theatrical audience is not present.

He is playing not to an assembled audience but to thousands

of individual listeners, with their countless home distractions.

To these

listeners he is just a stream of sound which comes from a box, in what is often the noisiest room in the house.

He has only the use of this stream

of sound with which he must produce a world of imagination and reality, where his created characters may live. Thus we see that problems of the radio actor are much different from those he finds in the theatre.

2

He must develop certain techniques to make

his voice and emotions alone do what his physical personality, his dress, the scenery, his voice and the lighting effects have done for him on the stage. This problem is intensified for the actor, who is taking |)art in a verse play,

1 2

J. H. Lapham, What Hope Radio Drama, Theatre Arts Monthly. XVIII (January, 193U), p. 4-9. Merrill,Denison, The Actor and the Radio, Theatre Arts Monthly, XVII (November, 1933)» p. 854.

259

because he needs particular training in the reading of verse, in order to convey to the audience the rhythm, imagery and power of the lines.

All

this requires that he have mastered the art of the interpretation of verse and must add to this, intelligence, imagination and a humble attitude to­ ward this experimental art.

In addition to this, there is a creative gift

which the actor much have if he is to give a superb performance.

One who

does not have this fundamental gift can never hope to be more than an in­ telligent reader of lines.

This is a supreme gift, comparable to the gift

of great acting in the theatre, and of course there are not many actors and actresses who have this supreme intuitive discernment. Such actors as Burgess Meredith, Leslie Howard, Orson Welles, Helen Hayes and others shov* what can be done when the actor makes his voice alone carry his thoughts and his emotions to thousands of listeners.

Radio is also using

many actors who because of lack of physical qualities could not succeed in the theatre.

They are often good radio actors.

The Audience When people wish to blame radio for its shortcomings they usually give the audience a large share of censure.

One writer^estimates that the mental

age of the average radio audience is from eight to twelve years and that it is foolish to try to plan programs above the mental level of those who read the comic strips and funny books.

He feels that the intelligent minority is

so small that it isn't worth considering. angle.

1

J. H. Lapham, op. cit., p. 4-7*

Let us look at it from another

260

Radio listeners have had so little good dramatic fare in comparison to the amount of crooner music, for instance, that there is no way of testing their reactions to it.

After all there is a large potential

audience among people who like good stage drama and good music, and by giving them writingof distinction there are always possibilities^of improving the taste of all listeners.

The very enthusiastic reception given to such

plays as The Fall of the City and The Feast of Ortolans shows that there is a demand for the radio poet. The size of the radio audience is a factor that should give the writer some encouragement.

In one or two nights performance the radio drama may

have as large an audience as the combined attendants of a complete run of a successful Broadway play. be considered.

This ever present audience, therefore, should

It is true that this is an unseen audience and cannot at

first give the vigorous reaction that a live and enthusiastic theatrical audience can give.

Yet the fact that this is a much larger group and a more hetero­

geneous audience— the rich, the poor, the old, the bedridden and a great multitude who can never attend the theatre— should challenge the playwright and actor as well.

If plays of worth are given on the radio over a period

of time, an audience will likely be built up which will be in sympathy with the productions and will provide a stimulation which the playwright and actor can feel.

This should inspire the writer to create his best work for

this audience which will be waiting for his plays.

Let us now examine

another problem which the poet dramatist must face - production costs.

1

Margaret Mayorga, Preface to Best One Act Plays of 1938. P. VI.

261

Costs of Production Because the cost of production of plays in the theatre is higli the unknown playwright often has a difficult time getting a hearing for a verse play.

This is an added reason for writing for the radio.

Compared

with theatrical production, the cost of producing a radio play is extremely low and the physical problems are reduced to a minimum.

It is possible to

secure readers of verse to give the plays, and it is easy to arrange music and sound effects so that the costs can be kept reasonable.

Since the

studios have fewer plays of merit from which to choose than do the theatres, and since they are in greater need, it would seem that there is less chance of a play being rejected. We have seen that the production costs of a radio verse play compared with those of a theatrical piece are very small.

We should remember, however,

that the verse play for radio must compete with the prose play also written for radio.

Here the comparison is not at all favorable.

Authorities say

that the broadcasting studios generally prefer prose plays, and cost is one of the reasons given for their preference.

It seems that generally it costs

less to produce a prose play for radio than one written in verse.

Recently

Poetry Magazine^interviewed several of the executives of the various broad­ casting stations to obtain information concerning the demand for poetic drama and the attitude of the various broadcasting companies toward verse plays. Norman Corwin, who has had several verse plays produced, in replying to the questionnaire says, "There is certainly need for good poetic drama on the air,

1

Editorial, Verse Drama and the Radio, Poetry Magazine, LVIII (August, 194-1)» p. 281.

262

but the place for it is another matter. runs higher than ordinary prose drama.

Production of verse plays usually Outside of the Columbia Workshop

and the NBC Radio Guild, I don’t know where a poetic script has a chance.”

1

Davidson Taylor of CBS also says:

"The experimental programs such as

the Columbia Workshop are the most likely to produce poetic drama.n To understand this attitude on the part of the studios, it is well to remember that radio is largely tinder the dominance of the advertisers and that most of the programs are sponsored by advertising companies.

It is

true that radio has many fine sustaining programs but the broadcasting companies do not have large budgets to pay personnel and creative artists.

They are often

forced to take plays that require the smallest outlay of money; this means that prose plays have preference.

Let us now see what is being done in the

field of research in radio drama.

Research in Radio Drama Radio Guild of NBC In point of age, the Radio Guild of NBC studios is perhaps the oldest organisation which does definitely experimental work.

In 1929^it started a

weekly program in which adaptations of well known stage plays as well as original plays were given.

A number of Greek plays were produced, and during

the years a great many Shakespearian plays were presented. plays have been given by the Radio Guild.

A number of verse

Maxwell Anderson’s Feast of Ortolans

and Alfred Kreymborg's series, The Four Apes and Other Fables of Our Day, were produced there.

1 2

Ibid.. p. 282. Louis Reid Broadcasting Books, The Saturday Review of Literature. XIX (January 14, 1939), p. 2.

263

Columbia Workshop One of the leading spirits in the experimental work in radio drama has been Irving Reis, who in 1936 was made director of the new Columbia Workshop, an organization interested in developing new types of plays and working out new sound devices and microphone accoustics.

In order to en­

courage the writing of more original radio plays, he invited writers to use the facilities of the workshop for experimental work. creative, original and of a serious nature.

The plays were to be

He promised the writers that

there would be no drastic cutting and changing of their pieces.

With this

sort of freedom, the writers became more interested in demonstrating their individual gifts.

Thus Mr. Reis developed a new group of writers, who wrote

many original plays for the workshop.

Archibald MacLeish's The Fall of the City

and Air Raid were produced in the Workshop.

Norman Corwin’s Seems Radio is

Here to Stay, and They Fly Through the Air, as well as many other verse plays had presentation here. Besides developing the use of unusual sound devices and mechanical effects, the workshop has developed the use of music to create the atmosphere for a play, to make transitions and to heighten its dramatic power.

Careful ex­

periments have been carried on to find the best means of using music in drama. Much of this music is called "effect music"^and is planned to give the play a sense of vividness that cannot be achieved by the human voice.

This "effect

music" is even used to take the place of lighting, scenery and costumes. It is employed extensively in the production of verse plays.

The Columbia

Workshop has become one of the most important laboratories in the United States ' for research in radio drama.

1

Douglas Coulter, Preface to Columbia Workshop Plays. P. XIV.

264

The Free Company Another group which has done some interesting experimental work with radio plays is The Free Company.

In 194-0, a group of our outstanding

writers were convinced that the people of America were drifting into a feeling of despondency because of the showy conquests of the dictators. They believed that Americans should be reminded of the freedoms which have often been taken for granted, but which were bought with such sacrifice by our forefathers.

They decided that they would explain this meaning of

America over the radio, not as a preachment but as a presentation.

Since

the bill of rights is the bedrock of the system which guards all citizens in their inalienable freedoms and privileges as individuals, they decided to use these rights, such as freedom of speech, trial by jury, and freedom of worship, as the subjects of their broadcasts.

From February to May, 1940 >

a play was broadcast each week and had an immense audience throughout the country.

Some of the leading writers in the Free Company are Maxwell Anderson,

Stephen Vincent Benet, Marc Connelly, Archibald MacLeish.

Mr. MacLeish

wrote a verse broadcast, The States Talking, as part of the series.

The College Workshops There are many colleges which today have courses in the writing and production of radio programs and maintain a radio workshop for experimental work.

A number of the plays which are discussed in this study have come from

the college workshops.

Often these young people do not receive much encourage­

ment-nor are their programs broadcast widely.

According to Mr. Kozl.enko,

265

1 more of these programs should be heard in competition with the commercially sponsored ones.

If, because of commercial pressure, the large stations are

not able to go forward with more experimental work, these smaller stations should be given a chance to help improve the standards of radio plays.

Themes of Radio Verse Drama When we examine the themes which the writers of radio verse drama employ, we are at once impressed with their variety and modernity.

There are

plays about the horrors of war, the democratic way of life, the importance of radio, the cause of peace, the message of religion, the problem of drought, the call of the sea, the romance of youth and the Russian Revolution.

This

recital of the many themes also shows that the writers are trying to reveal life as it is being lived in different parts of the world today and do not feel impelled to go back very far into history for their materials.

They seem

to have caught the spirit of this modern adventure and are revealing many of its implications to their listeners.

Historical and Romantic Themes Of the thirty-one plays discussed in this study less than one-fourth have themes of a historical or romantic nature.

The themes of these plays are very

different, however, from those used in the historical and romantic stage plays of the period from 1900 to the World War.

The plays of the earlier

period dealt with stories of a historical and romantic past with little or no application to the contemporary scene, while these radio plays deal with

1

William Kozl.enko, Preface to One Hundred Non-Royalty Radio Plays. P.VII.

266

historic material in such a way that the application to modern life is shown.

This is true in Maxwell Anderson's Feast of Ortolans, which

parallels the struggle between capital and labor in America.

In A Story

in Dogtown Common a historical picture is given as the setting of the play, yet the theme, the call of the sea and its power over the life of a sailor, is a universal one and belongs to any period of history.

This play also

shows reflections of modern life. The plays which have historical and romantic themes are the following: Feast of Ortolans....................................... Maxwell Anderson Second Overture......................................... Maxwell Anderson Ballad of Youth..........................................Alfred Kreymborg

A Story in Dogtown Common............................. Joseph Liss

Themes of Social Criticism When we remember that the first verse drama written especially for the radio was produced in 1937 and that ever since that time war has been going on somewhere in the world, it is not surprising that so many of our plays deal with war.

The fact that the democracies have been challenged repeatedly

by the totalitarian nations to defend the democratic and peaceful way of life makes it easy to understand why many of the plays deal with problems of peace and democracy.

Of the thirty plays discussed in this chapter more

than two-thirds are devoted to themes connected with democracy, war and peace. The poet dramatists seem to feel that the American people have become too complacent and have taken their freedoms for granted.

One method they have

used is to show the terrors of war brought on by the dictators.

267

Mr. MacLeish does this in Air Raid and The Fall of the City.

Many of these

plays are realistic and even terrible, but no more so than the events they mirror.

Freedom Is a Trumpet, which is the horrible story of a possible.

Facist coup in America, is provocative in its picture of the dangers that threaten every nation today. war in Spain.

Prometheus in Granada is concerned with the

It is a tribute to the memory of the poet, Frederick Garcia

Lorca, and is the story of his murder by a band of Spanish and Moorish soldiers.

This play, with its scene near the battlefield, and Ajr Raid, with

its story of the murder of helpless women and children, seem nearest the front lines.

The realism of these plays is compelling, and yet it is a

realism in which the symbolic and allegorical are used for contrast. helps to illuminate the narrative.

This

The poets have taken these unhappy themes

and have let their imaginations play upon them, until they have been able to show the spiritual implications. In the pieces which do not deal primarily with war scenes, several methods are used to present other problems.

In What We Defend many of the

early fathers of our country come in to tell the representative of Dictatorship how the American system differs from his and that the people of America will never submit to the rule of a dictator. In Mr. Kreymborg*s series, The Four Apes and Other Fables, he makes use of many animals to represent human beings in their struggle to achieve free­ dom.

In The States Talking Mr. MacLeish allows his men from the different

states to answer one of Hitler's Reichstag speeches.

This play shows much

humor of a native flavor— an element which heretofore has not been found to

268

any large degree in poetic plays.

This is fun which is full of satire and

doesn't quite break into a laugh.

As one writer says, it is a sign

1 "that the American sense of humor is coming of age.” The following plays discussed in the study have themes of social criticism: The Fall of the City.................................... .Archibald MacLeish Air Raid.............. ...................................Archibald MacLeish The States Talking....................................... Archibald MacLeish The P l a n e t s ....................................

Alfred

The Four Apes and Other Fables of Our D a y ............... Alfred (A series of ten plays)

Kreymborg

A Special Announcement................................... William Saroyan They Fly Through the Air................................ .Norman Corwin Words Without Music.............................. ..

Norman Corwin

Seems Radio is Here to Stay............ ..

Norman Corwin

Freedom is a Trumpet..................................... William Merrick Prometheus in G r a n a d a ................................... Norman Rosten What We Defend........................................... Bernard Schoenfield

Themes of Religion and Fantasy In the realm of religion and fantasy there have been^plays in verse written for radio.

Possibly one reason for the few religious plays is the

fact that numerous sermons are broadcast each week from the leading stations. These sermons are given to minister to the religious needs of people and are

1

Margaret Mayorga, Preface to Best One Act Plays of 1938. P. VI.

Kreymborg

269

presented as a supplement to the sermons delivered in the churches.

There

are several Biblical plays in verse by William Ford Manley among those dis­ cussed in this study.

He wrote a series of twelve Biblical dramas for radio,

some of them being in verse.

Many plays of fantasy are being written for

the radio today, but'so far most of them have either been written entirely in prose or predominantly in prose.

This is a field that the poet dramatist of

radio has barely entered. The following plays have themes dealing with religion or fantasy: Samson and Delilah

.William Ford Manley

Ruth.................................................... William Ford Manley Ishm a e l ................................................ William Ford Manley Judith....................................... The Headless Horseman

.VJilliamFordManley Stephen Vincent Benet

Legend of Dust............................

.DwightStrickland

Form and Language of Radio Verse Drama

Length of Play When we inquire into the language and form of all this poetic work, we realise that there are new conventions which govern radio plays, conventions which do not apply to any other form of drama. of play is one of the most important.

The rule concerning the length

The fact that a radio play is often

one-half hour in length means that all of the material of a story must be shortened.

This means disregarding unimportant detail and condensing the

necessary scenes so that every word will count.

270

Number of. Characters The number of characters used in a radio play is very important to its success or failure.

From the study of the plays in this survey, it

seems that the radio verse plays which have the fewest number of main characters have been more successful than those employing a large number. One reason for this is the fact that listeners find it very difficult to distinguish many voices over the air and often become confused— thus losing the thread of the story.

One criticism of Mr. Anderson's radio plays is

that they require too high a degree of concentration because of the number of voices involved."*" The announcer or narrator has come to be one of the most important personages in the radio verse play, for he tells the story which would take a number of characters to portray on the stage.

Often the other characters

in the play are minor and are used to illustrate different scenes in the story as the narrator reaches certain points in the action.

The announcer

helps to make for unity in the production and also aids the listeners in keeping the thread of the narrative without, too great an effort on their part.

Mr. Corwin’s play, They Fly Through the Air, which was immensely

successful on the air illustrates this method very well.

Language In the preceding chapter a detailed discussion of the language used to­ day in poetic plays for the theatre was given.

Since there is a similarity

between the language of poetic plays for the theatre and for radio, it is

1

Editorial, Listening to Feast, New York Times (September 26, 1937), p.10.

271

not thought necessary to repeat that discussion here.

The very nature of

the radio play, however, calls for more compression of language than does the three-act stage play.

For that reason, the radio v/riter must often say

in ten lines what the writer of a stage play sets forth in thirty lines. Since this is true, radio writers are compelled to use words of greater vividness and intensity than is required of the writer for the stage.

Many

of the radio poets believe with the imagists that poetry should be "hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite (and) that concentration is the very essence of poetry."^"

Poetic Form Since a detailed discussion of verse forms used today in poetic plays was also given in the preceding chapter, a long discussion will not be giyen here.

There are some observations concerning poetic form in radio drama,

however, that should be made.

For one thing, the writers of radio plays have

done more experimental work in form than have the writers of stage plays. They have been forced to do this because few of the writers have found blank verse suitable as a vehicle to take their wares to the public. them to experiment with a variety of rhythms and verse forms. some of the plays is still in the formative stage. meaning and suffers from awkwardness of form.

This has caused The verse in

It is often obscure as to

With more experience and more

endeavor, these writers probably will be able to improve this.

1

Louis Untermeyer, as quoted in M o d e m American Poetry, p. 20.

272

Writers of Radio Verse Drama A number of our well known writers have become interested In creating verse plays for the microphone.

Chief among these are Maxwell Anderson,

Archibald MacLeish, William Saroyan, Stephen Vincent Benet and Alfred Kreymborg.

To these writers, radio drama is still

a

side line and not their

major interest, but they have produced some fine experimental work in verse drama and have had an influence on the work of younger writers.

There is

also a number of younger writers not so well known who are creating verse plays for radio.

Norman Corwin, Joseph Liss, Bernard C. Schoenfield and

William Merrick are among the group.

Although the plays by each dramatist

will be discussed as a unit, chronological order will be generally followed.

Archibald MacLeish In the same way that Maxwell Anderson has championed the cause of verse drama for the theatre, has Archibald MacLeish pioneered in the creation of verse plays for radio.

His plays are a radical departure from the form and

plan of the usual stage drama and are written in keeping wi'th the peculiar requirements and facilities of radio.

Because of their novelty and different

approach the plays have caused much discussion— most of it of a complimentary nature.

On account of his deep interest in the cause, Mr. MacLeish has

written many newspaper and magazine articles in which he has made a good case for radio verse drama.

273

"The Fall of the City" This drama was written by Mr. MacLeish in 1937 and produced by the Columbia Workshop.

There had been a verse drama by Geoffry Bridson called

The March of the *A5 broadcast in England in 1936, but Mr. MacLeish*s play was the first production of its kind that American audiences had had oppor­ tunity to hear.

That it will doubtless have a high place in histories of

radio drama is the opinion of many writers on the subject.

It was the

first poetic play of distinction in America to be written directly for the microphone, the first to be produced without adaptation and the first play to make use of the tools of radio for stirring the imagination of the listeners. The play was produced in an armory under the direction of Irving Reis, with Orson Welles taking the part of the radio announcer and Burgess Meredith playing the pacifist orator.

A large group of extras were used and this mob

produced a strength and vitality which could not have been achieved by sound effects alone. When one remembers that the play was written before the fall of Vienna, of Prague, of Memel, of the Danish cities, then one realises the terrible prophecy that it made.

It is a simple story briefly told.

The City— any

city— has been thrown into confusion by a dead woman who for three days has come from her tomb.

At noon on the fourth day, with the people gathered in

the great square of the city, she comes and rives her message: The city of masterless men Will take a master, There will be shouting then: Blood afterI

274

Soon a messenger runs onto the square telling the people, There has come the conqueror I am to tell you. I have raced over sea land: I have run over cave land:

Be warned of this conqueror! This one is dangerous! hord has out-oared him. East over sea-cross has All taken . . . Every country. Leaders come forward one after another. the only way to defeat the conqueror,

The pacifist tells them that

is not by fighting but by surrender­

ing because truth and reason are the only weapons to use.

He says "words win."

Another messenger comes - this time with greater fear and terror in his voice.

The priests see how frightened the people are and exhort them in

long speeches to "turn to your Gods."

The people respond by climbing the

steps toward the temple vrhen suddenly an old general appears, saying: You are foolish old men You ought to be flogged for your foolishness. Your grandfathers died to be free And you - you juggle your freedom! Do you think you are free by a law Like the falling of apples in autumn?

275

You! are you free?

Will you fight?

There are still inches for fighting! There is still a niche in the streets!

You can die! or your children will crawl for it! The people mill about and respond in turn to the emotions of the orators— they shout and scream but do nothing.

Clad in his armor, the

conqueror comes, marches into the square and ascends the platform. he turns to the people kneeling in abject surrender before him. opens his visor.

Finally he

Only the announcer dares to look at him and he sees that

the helmet is empty, that there is no one there and that: their oppressors:

Then

"The people invent

They wish to believe in them . . . The City has fallen."

This is a terrible picture of the influence of the dictators whose power seems to come from the outside but in reality is the product of the people's imaginative fears. Some critics say that the verse in this play is less inventive and poorer in music and images than the verse in Mr. MacLeishfs other poems.^ Others point out that this play, like all good radio scripts, is much more forceful on the air than in print.

It has fulfilled the requirement of the microphone

2

and has departed, it is true, far from the traditional blank verse patterns where music and images can have full sway. near to colloquial speech.

1 2

Here Mr. MacLeish approaches very

He is experimenting with stressed accents and with

Malcolm Cowley, Music at the Microphone, The New Republic (May 26,1937), p. 30. Louis He id, Drama, Fiction and Poetry on the Air, The Saturday Review of Literature (January 14, 1939), p. 3*

276

a falling rhythm at the end of the lines. According to Louis Reed, the author’s use of language in the play is unusual.

He does not employ sonorous expressions but rather short words of

one or two syllables.

They are direct, simple, everyday words which can be

heard on the street end in the home.

They give force and warmth and feel­

ing to the scene that he is describing for us. One writer summarizes the opinions of the majority of the critics in regard to the estimate of the verse in the play when he says that Mr. MacLeish gave the radio audience "Thirty minutes of the finest verbal music of its

1

time."

2

Mr. MacLeish’s use of silence in the play is drams tic and makes the .speeches more effective.

In the beginning of the play the crowd is waiting

in the square to see if the women will come from the tomb.

An indistinguishable

murmur of the crowd fills the air for a time and then fades away into silence as the moment approaches.

This silence heightens the feeling of suspense.

Even when the woman appears the narrator increases the suspense by holding her back, until she speaks and announces the theme of the play.

Later in the

play there is another dreadful silence as the conqueror appears. As has been seen, the radio announcer Is the chief character in this play.

The radio announcer plays a part similar to the narrator or the chorus

of an early Greek play.

This narrator was one of the most important characters

in the classic plays, end the transfer of his role to that of the radio announcer makes for

utnityin the play for

radio. For

one thing the radio

1 2

Fall of Another City,

Theatre

Arts Monthly (February,1939),

Reid, Ibid., H.R. Isaacs, p. 1-47.

p. The

277

announcer immediately commands respect and is able to describe events in a fashion that makes them easily understood and believed.

It will be

interesting to notice how many writers of radio plays in this use of the radio announcer have followed Mr. MacLeish's footsteps.

His use of new

and untried sound effects is important and the influence the use of these has had on the production of other radio plays.

2

One critic feels that a weakness of the play is the long speeches given in the square.

First is the long speech which can be classified as pacifistic,

urging the people, "words win."

Then follows another messenger telling of

the rapid advance of the conqueror.

Then in turn the priest and the general

exhort the crowd with long speeches which lessen the dramatic effect.

If

the speeches had been broken up so that the actors interrupted one another^ the dramatic value would have been greater. This survey of the drama will show something of its social significance. The majority of the critics agree that in spite of weaknesses it is a moving and dramatic play in favor of individual freedom and that it is so important that it will always be considered one of the foremost plays in the pioneering field of radio drama.

One writer summarizes the preceding opinions by

saying "It is a call to arms, a battle cry of freedom!"

3

Another speaks of it

as the "most competent United States verse play written for the radio.

1 2 3

A

Archibald MacLeish, Preface to The Fall of the City. P. V. Gilbert Seldes Screen and Radio, Scribners Magazine (June, 1937), p. 61. Robert ShermanLoomis, M o d e m English Readings, p. 28. Editorial, The Theatre, Time Magazine (August 30, 1937), p. 24.

278

"Air Raid" Archibald MacLeish wrote Air Raid in 1938, before the crisis at Munich, before the German march into Poland and before the war broke out in earnest in 7/estern Europe.

To a certain extent the Munich crisis made many people

realise for the first time just what an air raid over a city would mean to the people in that city, but this play in a more vivid fashion forecast just what the catastrophe would be and how it would come.

The play was presented

over the Columbia Broadcasting bygtem in October, 1938.

Mr. MacLeish does

not name the enemy, neither does he locate the nation and city where the air raid takes place.

Rather, he shows any city and what will happen to the

helpless old men, defenseless women, children end sweethearts who are the victimsof this new terror. The first scene represents the studio director from New York speaking to a radio audience which is waiting with dread the first news that the Second 7/orId 7;ar has been declared somewhere in Europe.

Then the play follow/s

in a series of short pictures, which are picked up by the radio station — pictures describing the people of a European town on a sunny morning and of the events that take place there: We have seen Nothing at all.

We have heard nothing.

The town is very quiet and orderly. They are flushing the cobblestones with water, The sidewalks are slippery with sun. It smells of a summer morning everywhere; It smells of seven o'clock in the morning in Any town they water dust in.

279

Many sleep in the one house here. They work in the fields: shop in the village. The men go out at

davm: return

To evening burning

from the chimneys.

The women keep the

town between.

The women are talking to each other across the courtyard.

They hear

that somewhere there is a battle but they are rather irritated at their husbands for

always wanting to go away to fight.

certainly no

business of theirs.

They think that war

They feel that their job is togive

is birth,

feed the children and take care of death. In the midst of their talk and work,comes the yearning

of the

sergeant, as the enemy planes are sighted some distance sway.

police

The women

pay no attention to the air raid warning until the sergeant comes down the street shouting and telling them to take to the cellars. still incredulous and scoff at his fear.

The women are

He tries to tell them that this

is a new kind of war and "this enemy kills womenmeaning

to killthem,"

but still the v/omen only laugh at him. Soon explosions are heard in the distance and then as the bombers fly nearer for attack, terror and confusion reign in the street and houses. (The .Announcer) We call it peace and kill the women and the children. Our women die in peace beneath the lintels of their doors. W e ’ve learned muchj civilization has gentled us.. W e ’ve learned to take the dying and the Wounds without the vfars.

280

They swing;

the wing dips

There's the signal: Dive:

the dip:

they'll

They're ready to dive:

They're steady:

They're heading down:

They're dead on the town: They're easing over: There they go:

they're nosing:

they're over:

there they ............

(a crazy stammer of machine guns hammers above the rising roar) A woman's voice (shrieking) It's us, do you seel This in a brief way gives a dramatic picture of the happy tranquil people of the town and of the death that comes so suddenly and unexpectedly from the skies.

Lines are quoted from the first and last part of the play

to show the contrast in mood and atmosphere before and during the raid. Now after the laying waste of Warsaw, Rotterdam and other European cities, the naive incredulity of the women seems strange. The verse is different from the smooth flowing blank verse used in so many plays.

The lines have a swift, dramatic and staccato beat which con­

veys the tense and terrible action of the story.

In this as in The Fall

of the City Mr. MacLeish has departed from traditional iambic blank verse and comes very near to American speech.

As one reads the poetry one hears

the stressed accents with the rhythm falling away to weak syllables at the end.

The meanings of the poetry come more easily when one tries to use

the ordinary rhythms of prose in reading it.

281

In regard to the worth of the poetry in the play, three writers commend the verse most highly.

2

They use such expressions as "exciting,”

3

"thrilling” and "significant" in describing the lines. From the summary of the play, it can be seen that it is a recital of events and a recital full of suspense and terror.

A measure of Its power

of theme and organization is the fact that the response of the radio listen­ ers was so enthusiastic that records of the broadcast have been made avail­ able to the public.

In connection with the organization and production of

the play, the writers mention that Mr. MacLeish^has been even more success­ ful with his sound effects in this play than in The Fall of the City. A woman sings a song and its sound is parodied by the air raid siren and the whir of the planes.

The boy calling is echoed by the young man shouting to

his sweetheart, and the latter sound becomes a scream of unbearable agony at the close of the play. 5

One critic thinks that the problem of timing in the play is not entirely solved.

This is especially true of the scene where the sergeant orders the

women to march to the cellars.

The women talk to each other about his orders

and the radio listeners (who cannot see the sergeant as they would on the stage) assume that he hag gone.

They are surprised later to hear him talking

to the women, and it is hard to convince the listeners that he is still there, even though an old woman says "Listen to the policeman."

1 2 3 4 5

H. F.. Isaacs, Drama, Theatre Arts Monthly (February, 1939), p. 147. William Kozlenko, Preface to100 Non-Royalty Radio Plays. P. VI. Louis Reid, Broadcasting Books, The Saturday Review of Literature (January 14, 1939), p. 9. Editorial, Air Raid, Times/ Magazine (October 31, 1938), p. 30. Isaacs, op. cit., p. 147.

282

Critics have, in the main, highly commended Mr. MacLeish'£ pioneering work in his radio verse plays.

Some have felt that he showed something of

the defeatist attitude in The Fall of the City, while others have praised him for warning people against "Chat very attitude.

Unqualified commend­

ation has been given him for his brave attempts to write a new and experimental type of verse that is suited for use on the radio. opinions of many writers on the subject:

The following sums up the

"Vfhen as distinguished a poet as

Archibald MacLeish turns his efforts to a new medium he is doing valuable service which is apt to be underestimated because it has not the perfection his work would have in a field whose possibilities and limits have been more firmly established.

An estimation of his work is of no value at this stage—

That can be done is to give him some indication of the response of his audience with which he has practically no means of contact; and to give him encouragement and interest." ^

"The States Talking" This is an unusual free verse play.

It was presented by The Free

Company over the Columbia Broadcasting System in the spring of 1940*

Mr.

MacLeish wrote the play about the States because of the derision that was being hurled at them by the people on the other side of the Rhine. out the play, the Hitler voice is heard ranting in Germany.

Through­

Mr. Meredith,

the narrator, hears the Hitler voice saying that the States are of mixed blood and never will amount to anything; therefore the Germans will have to rule the world.

1

Mr. Meredith wonders just what the States would say to each

Isaacs, Ibid., p. 149*

282

Critics have, in the main, highly commended Mr. MacLeish’s pioneering work in his radio verse plays.

Some have felt that he showed something of

the defeatist attitude in The Fall of the City, while others have praised him for warning people against that very attitude.

Unqualified commend­

ation has been given him for his brave attempts to write a new and experimental type of verse that is suited for use on the radio. opinions of many writers on the subject:

The following sums up the

"When as distinguished a poet as

Archibald MacLeish turns his efforts to a new medium he is doing valuable service which is apt to be underestimated because it has not the perfection his work would have in a field whose possibilities and limits have been more firmly established.

An estimation of his work is of no value at this stage—

Y.lhat can be done is to give him some indication of the response of his audience with which he has practically no means of contact; and to give him encouragement and interest." ^

"The States Talking" This is an unusual free verse play.

It was presented by The Free

Company over the Columbia Broadcasting System in the spring of 194-0.

Mr.

MacLeish wrote the play about the States because of the derision that was being hurled at them by the people on the other side of the Rhine. out the play, the Hitler voice is heard ranting in Germany.

Through­

Mr. Meredith,

the narrator, hears the Hitler voice saying that the States are of mixed blood and never will amount to anything; therefore the Germans will have to rule the world.

1

Mr. Meredith wonders just what the States would say to each

Isaacs, Ibid., p. 149.

283

other if they heard these words blown across the "continent at the dawn of a spring day."

Soon we hear the voices of the States, men's voices with

the accent and inflections of their regions.

They tell each other that

they hear some "tall talk" from across the water and Maine says "I gather they don't like us." New Hampshire says "I vum." Then they find that the people from across the water

do not like the

women the States have married— the English, the Poles, the; Scots, the Norwegians, the Swedes and others.

Alabama is of the opinion that these

Europeans are just jealous and are not men because they can't make it with strangers.

Maine mentions that possibly the Europeans are superior because

they are pure bred, but Texas answers "So are snakes."

Then the States

wonder if theEuropeans have seen our beautiful girls, or racing boys, or towns, or fat cattle or Texas farms.For a time the Hitler out by the talk between the States.

voice is drowned

When the buzz and rant is heard again,

the States decide that the Hitler rant is from the boys who stayed behind, were afraid of travel, afraid of change, afraid of

strange women andstayed

behind when the others left and came to America. The following lines are an example of the verse: Have they raced our boys says Michigan - fast as black snakes: Quick on the gun as quail:

the sweet striders:

The watchful lads in the lead:

dangerous followers:

Strong hearts in the stretch home? them?

Have they beaten

284

As can be seen, Mr. MacLeish has captured the inflections of speech of the different regions in our country and has employed them very effectively in this piece.

He has also used provincial expressions that

are typical of people in the different states. There is not much plot and yet there is a certain amount of suspense. The conversation is so humorous and satiric that the interest is held throughout. important.

The piece is similar to a chorale and the action does not seem This sort of broadcast should^be successful over radio because

it is "The great strong laughing voice of America."

Maxwell Anderson Maxwell Anderson has devoted most of his interest and talents to creating plays in verse and prose for the theatre.

Within the last few years,

he has also become cognizant of the microphone and of the opportunity it gives to the playwright who wants to experiment in a new medium.

In his

2

plays written for the stage, we find much irony, which is considered one of the highest elements of dramatic art.

Although it is successful on the

stage, no one had dared use it for the radio because of the fear that it would, not be understood by listeners who have to endure so many distractions while trying to concentrate on the program.

With true pioneer spirit,

Mr. Anderson introduced it in the play, The Feast of Ortolans.

"The Feast of Ortolans" This piece was written especially for radio presentation.

It was first

performed by the National Broadcasting Company in September, 1937.

1 2

James Boyd, The Free Company Presents. P. III. Harriet Monroe, Poets and Their Art. p. 67.

In this

285

play the author does not use one protagonist but rather a number of in­ dividual characters and a group, which together present a definite social theme. In his introduction Mr. Anderson tells us that at the time of the French Revolution a group of intellectuals, artists, and nobles are seated in the great dining hall of the Duke of Pompeignan,about twenty miles from Paris.

They have gathered for the Feast of Ortolans, a ceremony which is

observed once each year by the Pompeignan family.

During this feast, accord­

ing to custom, an unusual and extremely delicious dish of ortolans is served to the distinguished guests.

The guests have partaken of hors d !oeuvres

and the first wine and are almost ready for the famous dish to be served. They discuss the disorders that are taking place among the working classes and agree that the common people have too much freedom.

The Marquis

de Lafayette, who is a guest, defends the lower classes and insists that are

they

poorlypaid as well as heavily taxed, while the wealthy lords will not

accept levies on their estates.

A servant enters to explain that the delay

in service is due to the fact that the house servants and woodcutters have quarreled because the woodcutters have brought green wood instead of the seasoned wood required to bake the ortolans.

Then in levity, the guests ask

that a woodcutter be brought in as a guest to the feast, but Lafayette says: The lad’s right.

It is mockery.

You've played

With the thought of revolution, While you jest And the Prince talks of his States - General, The fires roar underneath, and the old injustice

286

Runs too deep to be cured with summoning a Parliament.

I tell you we now stand

On the threshold of a world in which all men Are equal under law as in the sight Of God Himself. Then Lafayette paints a world in which there will be no capitalists, no kings, no nobles and no armies: peace and frugal contentment.

where the men of France may live in

Added to this prophecy, La-Harpe, another

guest, forecasts the terrible revolution which will come soon and will destroy all those present at the feast.

While he pictures the horrible deaths

which will come to those present the guests only laugh at him. their laughter is interrupted by a noise from the courtyard.

Suddenly The cook bursts

into the room and falls dead— the victim of the woodcutter’s wrath. goes into the kitchen to settle the riot.

The host

While he is gone, a young

lieutenant enters and tells the nobles that the rabble in Paris has gone mad, the Bastile has been attackedand the Revolution haB begun. In the play Mr. Andersongives a vivid picture of the French nobles and their pleasure-loving friends. ing of the woodcutters.

Their wealth is contrasted with the suffer­

The cruel and heartless laughter of the nobles in

the face of the sufferings of the poor prevents any sympathy for them. the end the play moves to a powerful dramatic scene.

In

The picture which

LaFayette paints of France - "a country without kings, capitalists and armies” could be applied to the modern scene by some social writers. The writing of the play is involved.^- In fact, one critic feels that the

1

Editorial, Listening to Feast, New York Times (September 26, 1937), p.10.

287

admirable style was too complex and difficult for' the average audience. One had to listen so intently in order to keep up with all the actors and the story that there was little chance to use one's imagination.

The

acting was superb but the structure of the play was so intricate that the listener found it difficult to follow.

This same critic suggests that

simplicity of structure should be the keynote of every verse play for the radio.

"Second Overture" In this drama produced in 1938, Mr. Anderson gives a gripping and terrible picture of one phase of the 1918 Revolution in Russia.

The scene

is in a cellar where a group of refugees are huddled together as prisoners. Chief among the group are the Princess Thalin, Bishop Andre, and Gregor, an exile escaped from the Siberian mines.

They have all been taken from a

train as they have fled from Moscow and are ignorant of the accusation against themselves.

On the whitewashed walls the prisoners discover blood,

names and hopeless messages written by those who have perished there before them.

Among the names the Princess discovers that her husband has preceded

them by three days.

Gregor reveals to them that he is a revolutionary leader

and that he knows they have all been imprisoned by a mistake, which will be corrected when the Commissar comes. A knock is heard.

Charash, the Commissar, enters and tells them they

have all been sentenced to death.

When he calls the name of Gregor, he

recognises Gregor as his old friend of the 1905 revolution and says that he may go free.

The others must die because they are aristocrats.

Gregor

288

then pleads with Charash not to kill these people for they are not guilty of any crime.

Charash says Their,crime

Is what they are. - Yes, what they mean in the world — We have caught A vision of the earth, with men set free, Such as no nation, back through all known time Has seen in our world before.

A vision of the earth

Where men share equally and humbly all The fruits of labor, no ms.n starves, no mother Weed prostitute herself to feed her child, Where men have time for beauty and the sunlight. Of what is learned of wisdom and of truth Falls to all men by right ...................

All these in this cell, Fugitives, madmen, broken nobles, one And all, given half a chance, would return To load us with the chains of the old empire, Even the children among them!

They must die.

(Gregor) I have heard this From others, but never believed it.

You strangle with

Your own hands All hope for the revolution.

Your aspiration,

289

Your faith, and your nobility go down The drain with this unnecessary blood Shed as a military measure.

Justice -

To attain justice you revoke all justice To attain mercy you repudiate The principle of mercy. - Blood will breed murder, Murder breed blood - the evil means we use For a good end, will bring down only more evil And curses at the end. When Gregor’s pleas are in vain, he elects to stay withthe group.Charash leaves and Krassin, the brutal executioner, condition, enters.

in

doomed a drunken

As Krassin turns uncertainly, Gregor upsets the table

and steps on the candle.

Confusion ensues in the darkness, and the prisoners

escape - all except the kind old Bishop Andre, who is killed and Gregor, who remains.

Charash returns and condemns the drunken Krassin and Gregor to

death. This is a picture of heartless cruelty and fanatical belief in a cause. Mr. Anderson allows Charash in the above speeches to defend the cause of the revolution and to reveal the mental workings of its followers,

it the

same time Gregor shatters all his defenses. The lines which were quoted show the quality of Mr. Anderson’s splendid blank verse.

290

Stephen Vincent Benet

Mr. Benet, the author of John Brown's Body and many other ballads and poems, has contributed a musical play in verse for radio.

"The Headless Horseman" This was first produced by the students of Bronxville High School in 1936 and was broadcast by NBC's Blue Network in August, 1937.

In part

it is based on Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The piece had much advance publicity when it was produced on the radio. The play opens with tuneful songs by a chorus of Dutch girls who are attending a quilting bee. girls that she is very sad.

At this party, Katrina Van Tassel tells the She reveals that she is in love with Brom

van Brunt but that she is being forced to marry Ichabod Crane, the school­ master.

Her parents believe that the eldest daughter must marry a school­

master or be carried off by a ghost.

The chorus sings

Alas, Alas, We've come to a pretty pass When the only choice that a maiden can boast Is Ichabod Crane or a family ghost! From here the story does not follow the original legend.

After much

planning by the young people and many difficulties, Brom frightens poor Ichabod with a pumpkin head (not the headless horseman). Brom tells them that he is qualified to teach school and is planning to open his own school soon.

The parents are mollified and all ends happily.

291

From the above lines it, can be seen that the verse is of a tuneful nature.

One writer has said that the verse in this piece is "in the

lighter mood of his

Ballads and Poems." ^

Alfred Kreymborg

2 Alfred Kreymborg always seems to feel the music in life and human relationships and incorporates that feeling in his plays.

Because he has

this definite poetic approach, and since the broadcasting studios are now welcoming the poets, his plays have found a place for themselves. The Planets, which was produced by the National Broadcasting Company with an all-star cast, and The Ballad of Youth were his first two radio plays.

"The Planets" The Planets, a one-act play in verse, was first produced at the Hayden Planetarium in New York on June 6, 1938, with a large cast, sound techni­ cians and music by the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The play is an allegory about the earth and planets.

It moves from

the World War in 1914 to the present and then to the future.

An old

astrologer who is always searching the heavens and looking for peace is the chief character.

During his adventure, he meets the planetary gods who,

as in Grecian times, are wandering over the earth. Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune.

There are Venus, Mars,

The first scene is in 1913

and the old astrologer, seeing the world threatened by a new and terrible war, tries to show the horrors of conflict.

The old man finds lifers, who

tells of the wars of the past and how little they accomplished. 1 2

Soon there

Editorial, The Theatre, Time Magazine. XXX (August 30, 1937), p. 24. Margaret Mayorga, Best OneWlct Plays of 1938. p. 93.

292

is the enlistment of soldiers, with the assassination of Duke Ferdinand. The first World War is on.

At the close of the war, the old astrologer tells

that "the earth has never known so many dead," and he sees the men around the council table at Versailles making terms that will "give revenge another cause." In the aftermath of war, Venus shows the sorrow in the heart of a mother when the news comes that her son has been killed. In the period, 1920 to 1928, Mercury meets the astrologer and tells him that the Russians are having a revolution, democracy has levelled three crowns to the dust and the era of liberty as well as license is being ushered in. Soon Jupiter comes "waddling in" supported by his nine moons. little the worse for drink.

He is a

Nevertheless he invites the astrologer to

watch their wonderful dance into 1929. There is a sudden bump, a crash and silence. Saturn appears.

Jupiter vanishes and

He tells the astrologer that he has been drunk, that he feels

miserable today and that he longs for his lost gold. Presently a voice comes from Italy warning the rest of the world to leave hands off in Ethiopia and to respect the wishes of the Japanese in the East.

These events are followed by the news of the Spanish Civil War.

Soldiers are again marching and the astrologer tries to tell them how they are being misled. The last scene deals with tomorrow.

The astrologer meets Neptune and

reveals the chaotic conditions of a world preparing for another war "another hell far greater than the hells of yesteryear."

293

As can be seen, the play is a denunciation of war.

The following

speech of the astrologer shows this purpose and also represents the poetry of the play: They’re sitting around Versailles Around a polished table that has known Many a crown to fall and many faces Dictating terms to France or France dictating Terms that will give revenge another cause. Since Peace can make more enemies than War. And here although one hand is raised in peace, Losers bowing allegiance to the crowns The victors wear, the victors aren’t one: For they must tease, the large must tease the small To take what they can have, and then no more. The critics agree that The Planets soars to imaginative heights and that

1

there are many beautiful lines.

They feel, however, that the piece is too

much a succession of scenes, that there is not enough organization and that it definitely lacks dramatic form.

Both the elements of poetry and drama

are in the drama but they are never completely blended into a unified verse play. In the opinion of the writers sound effects were most successfully used.

1

This was especially true when the "dogs of war" were turned loose.

Editorial, The Planets, Hew York Times (June 12, 1933), 8X.

294

The incidental music was of great assistance in maintaining the atmosphere

and tempo of the play.

"Ballad of Youth" This play was first performed by the National Broadcasting Company in 1938. boy.

The chief characters are Grandma, Grandpa, Granddaughter and a

There is an announcer, but he does not have a large part.

The two old

people are sitting with their granddaughter, Sally, in their small living room on an evening in the spring.

Sally tries to do her sums and her history

but it is very difficult to keep her mind on her work because her thoughts keep wandering to a tapping at the window.

Sally waves her hand toward the

window and tells Grandma that she is waving at the moon.

Grandma tries to

repress all Sally's exuberance, while Grandpa understands her youthful feel­ ings.

A neighbor calls Grandma on the telephone, and Grandma recommends a

hot bath and a toddy for the son of Mrs. James, a neighbor.

Then Sally tells

Grandpa, "He's the one who loves me so." After Sally goes to bed, Grandpa winds the clock and lets in the cat; then he and Grandma retire. dark.

Soon the announcer says that the room becomes

He also adds that when the lights come on very low, they resemble

moonlight crossing the floor.

A figure comes in and goes to the mirror.

The tapping at the window begins again and a young lad calls softly. lets him in at the window.

Sally

The boy comes and begs for a kiss, but Sally is

hesitant and tells him that she can't understand her o?m feelings. cribes his feeling for her, however, in the lines

She des­

295

When you look at a girl and then look twice Something breaks and it isn’t ice, Something breaks at the merest touch.

(Boy) The whole world loves when the world's sixteen. Just as the two young people are embracing, Grandpa comes in.

After

giving the boy plenty of time to slip out of the window, he says, "Where's that confounded pipe?” him the whole story.

Then he takes Sally on his knee, and she tells

Soon she falls asleep in his arms.

After a long

time she awakens to all the wonder of a world which contains a person like Grandpa. The play is well named because it shows all the hidden feelings and fancies of a young girl who is falling in love for the first time.

It also

show's in contrast the rather blunt directness of the lad who has already made up his mind, and who also is greatly influenced by the beauty of the moonlight and the romantic feeling of youth.

Grandpa is a wonderful person.

He is in love with the memory of his youth. Mr. Kreymborg uses tetrameter couplets of iambs and anapests.

He

quite often breaks up two lines that rhyme and allows them to be said by different characters.

The language and musical quality of his verse is

very appropriate to convey the spirit of romance which permeates the story. This play is better motivated and organized than some of Mr. Kreymborg’s other plays.

Probably one reason for this is that the flute like quality

296

and spirit of childlike wonder, which is found in so much of his poetry rings true in this story of youth.

"The Four Apes and Other Fables of Our Day" This is a series of ten radio plays in verse by Alfred Kreymborg. They were produced during the winter of 1939 by the National Broadcasting Company.

In these fables, many animals, fishes, birds and insects represent

the human problems of our modern world. and Woman, Life and Death.

Nature takes part and so does Man

The verse is in ballad form and there are many

variations of the rhythm to fit the mood and atmosphere. The theme running throughout the series is Man's struggle for freedom and justice, the triumph of political democracy and world brotherhood. The series opens with a choral prelude called The Four Winds Talk It Over. The four -winds come together to talk over their problems and to try to soothe Man, who seems to be continually in trouble.

The winds recommend religion

and science to cure the troubles of the world. kept Man's soul from developing.

Man says that hunger has

The winds seem incapable of helping M&n

and soon leave him in disgust.

"Hole in the Wall" The next play is called Hole in the Wall and the characters are the Narrator, Mother Mouse, Father Mouse, Sister Mouse and Brother Mouse. is a study of the economic problems of life.

This

The author is trying to show

what happens to people who do not have enough food.

297

The scene is a hole in the wall, where the mice live.

Mother Mouse is

pacing the floor because Father Mouse has not yet returned with food for the two children, who are clamoring for their dinner. with a lovely big piece of cheese.

Finally he arrives

After they have dined sumptuously, he

tells them of all the dangers he has met in stealing the food.

Mother Mouse

and the children do not seem greatly concerned about the dangers that Father Mouse has endured.

After the family has retired, Father Mouse sits and says

wryly to himself: Wife, where are you?

bring it here,

The crown your husband ought to wear! Sleep has taken both her paws .And that's the end of her applause. Ah me, what makes a man desire To be a hero all his life. The world no larger than his wife, The earth no smaller than their fire?

Now he’s of the multitude That bleeds because it has no food, Must he become a wretched thief Yfho has to steal for his relief?

"Cricket Wings" The third play of the series is called Cricket Wings. borly concert.

It is a neigh­

In this, the author satirizes the wealthy folk who attend

musical concerts but have no love for music, the critics who seem disgruntled, and the psychiatrists.

298

In the beginning, the narrator tells of the concert which the crickets hold onceeach week in the field. fleas,

To this, all the beetles, the

thespiders, Bogs and Logs are invited.

bees, the

He says oftheaudience:

Then there are two or three who never Feel a note though we play forever And weigh our faults in their narrow eyes, These are the folk who criticize. There’s conversation too, of course And this has such a human source It runs into gossip so profane The artists have to start again. Those who come late must find a seat By knocking knees or treading our feet. When all the members of the audience are seated, the two critics, Mr. Bog and Mr. Log, arrive to hear the concert.

It is clear that they do

not enjoy the music and that Mr. Cricket, who conducts the orchestra, does not like them.

The concert then begins. During the intermission, Mrs.

Beetle serves drinks on the lavra.

Music is forgotten and gossip is begun.

They discuss Mrs. Miller, who does not pay the caterpillars a living wage, and the psychiatrist, Dr. Buzz, who solicits patients at the concerts.

Soon

the conductor raps, little Willie Flea comes out of the Doctor’s hair, the insects find their seats again and the concert is concluded. "Sparrows in Love, A Jazz Drama" In this the author lets the love affairs of the sparrows parallel the

299

triangle which is sometimes found in the life situations of human beings. The language of the play is full of slang and the speech of the streets. Young Bud Sparrow courts Baby Sparrow, who is from the country.

He has

lived a wild life but when he marries Baby he promises to turn over a new leaf and make her happy in a home under a cornice on Times Square. The scene changes to a street near Times Square where Dick, a dray horse, is standing.

Bud, now a father, comes to get food for his baby

sparrows from Dick's food bag.

Thile he is there, Chippie, a young sparrow

with whom he has previously had an affair, comes and tries to lure him back to her.

He repels her advances and flies back home with the food.

As soon

as his babies are fed, however, he flies back to Dick, and Chippie pursues him further.

Baby Sparrow is greatly worried at the absence of her spouse

and comes to hunt him.

Chippie has to hide in Dick's ear.

Dick soon is

able to send Bud and Baby back home together to happiness and their brood.

"Fish After Dark, A Bourgeois Comedy" This play is dedicated to Carl Sandburg.

Here are pictured the wealthy

people of the land, and the middle class folk who feel subservient to the ■vealthy. Club.

Mr. and Mrs. Pelican, very successful and wealthy, are at the

Mr. and Mrs. Crane, not so successful, are much in awe of the Pelicans.

During the course of the evening, Mr. Pelican and Mrs. Crane have a quiet talk together.

She fascinates him.

riches, he is not a happy man.

He tells her that in spite of his

He reveals to her that his conscience

bothers him because of the methods he has used to get his wealth.

To make

300

amends for his past deeds, he gives pretty Mrs. Crane a large piece of land. When the other birds hear of this, they also clamor for help.

In order to

get away from the crowd, the Pelicans go home.

"The Four Apes" In Mr. Kreymborg 's notes in the text he says that in the sixth play,

The Four Apes, the series begins "to move toward the past in search of deeper fundamentals."

The four apes have a certain similarity to diplomats

who gathered around the table in Munich; and the monkeys in the play re­ present the weak countries of Czecho-Slovakia, Albania, Ethiopia.

The Gibbon

represents the United States. The four great apes have gathered to divide the world and to try to settle things without war.

The Gorilla insists that he is seeking only

peace, but that ever since the last war hi3 coimtry has been unjustly treated. The Chimpanzee resents the Gorilla's fortifications. and call in Gibbon who tries to make peace. rights of the small monkeys.

They begin quarreling

He asks them to respect the

They do not pay much heed to the Gibbon's talk

of brotherliness, for the Gorilla becomes unpleasant and boasts of his own god-like qualities. Europe.

At the same time, he threatens to remake the map of

The Orangoutang goes over to his side, arid the conference breaks up

in confusion.

"Father Crocodile"

This play goes back to the early forms of life. burlesque about the evolutionary process.

It is a pleasant

Father Crocodile and Mother Crocodile

301

tell their children about the dinosaurs and other early forms of life. The children think of themselves as a link in the chain that builds toward mankind.

They are greatly disappointed when they learn that man

has already been created and is a wild creature who always starts wars.

"The Haunted Water" This is the only play which uses human characters. call of the sea.

The theme is the

A mother and daughter are lying on the seashore.

The

\\udowed mother tells the daughter of her father, who followed the sea and who was taken by it.

He loved the sea, and the mother tries to insoire

this same love within the rnind of her daughter.

To do this, she relates

the story of the beginning of life from a single cell in the ocean. the girl's husband comes to find them. e-'rth.

Soon

He is a farmer, who loves the

He tells them of the beauty and supremacy of the earth.

With love

of sea and earth and a deeper affection for each other, they all go homeward together.

"Rain Down Death" The ninth in the series of plays takes us into the sky where the Eagle and the Vulture are holding a conversation.

The Eagle, who is the symbol

of freedom, feels rather superior to the Vulture, the scavenger.

Soon they

see the Japanese dropping bombs on the Chinese, the Germans persecuting the Jews and the conflagration beginning in Spain.

As they sorrow over the loss

of freedom in Europe, they wonder just how America is going to-keep the spark alive and maintain her democracy.

Although the Eagle promises his

302

help in keeping aloft the emblem of freedom, they hear the sound of more fighting planes approaching.

"Nature Rides Again" This is a summary of the other plays in the series.

Mother Nature

goes to all the animals and finds them haopy and contented.

Of all her

creatures, Man alone is unhappy because of terrible wars.

The lines found as part of the summaries of the plays illustrate the verse.

One writer has accused Mr. Kreymborg of a flute like quality, a

lyricism that, is a trifle too thin."*" Another writer says the verse is "tinkling, veil written and at times shows a certain amount of depth."

3 Concerning the organization and motivation, one critic is of the opinion that the plays are full of vitality and rely on atmosphere and illusion which the radio creates in order for them to live.

They are pioneer

work in this new field of poetic drama for radio and are a oromise of other endeavors in experimental verse for the microphone.

The investigator found

the plays most difficult to read, but possibly they play better than they read.

Norman Corwin Norman Corwin, one of the younger^r,Titers, has brought definite talent to radio and to verse drama. T 2 3 4

In 1939 he inaugurated a new series of programs,

Conrad Aiken, Scepticisms, n. 24.7" Dudley Fitts, The Four Apes and Other Fables of OurDay, The Saturday Review' of Literature (January 20, 19-40), p. 14. Fitts, Ibid., p. 15. Douglas Coulter, Preface to Columbia Workshop Plays, P. VIII.

303

Words W ithout Music, which has affected the presentation of poetry over the radio ever since.

He has made such a flexible and suitable form for

poetic plays that already many writers are following his leadership.

His

original verse drama, They Ply Through the A i r , was considered by the Tenth Institute for Radio in Education to be the finest single broadcast of the year 1939*

"Seems Radio is Here to Stay" This verse brochure^became the inspiration for a series of haIf-hour broadcasts that appeared as So This is Radio.

It was presented by the

Columbia- Workshop April 24., 1939*

play in the strictest sense

It is not

s.

and yet it gives such a remarkable picture of radio, its power and import­ ance, that it should be mentioned in this study.

The narrator calls in

VTiitman to bring "a snatch of music of the spheres,"

Beethoven to hear his

music played around the world and Shakespeare to hear his plays over the air. Then the narrator calls in the cabinetmaker, the sales representative, the actor, the worker, the' stenographer, the director and others who work in radio.

They tell of the part they play.

Next the listeners in the radio

audience tell of their many interests and their favorite programs.

Last of

all, the narrator sums up this vast miracle of science by these words: Seems radio is here to stay And granting this, grant further That these air lanes were marked out

1

Mex Y'ylie, Best Broadcasts of 193&-39. P« 520.

304

By that same architect who popped the stars in place And set afire the sun and froze the moon And dug the furrows wherein oceans flow.

The microphone is not an ordinary instrument For it looks on vistas wide indeed.

My voice commingles now with northern lights And Asteroids and Alexander's skeleton, With dead volcanoes and with donkey's ears, It swims with minnows end it's in the Sphinx's

jav.. It drifts among whatever spirits pass across the night.

"They Fly Through the Air"

This play hy Norman Corwin was first presented on his own poetry program Words Without Music, on February 19, 1939, and on the Columbia Workshop program on April 10, 1939.

Most radio plays could have been pre­

sented just as successfullj’- in the form of plays for the stage, sketches or short stories.

One writer^has said of this drama that it is definitely

radio from its beginning to the end.

It is doubtful if Mr. Corwin could

have created it had radio not been invented.

The author dedicates this

play to all aviators who have bombed defenseless civilians and strafed

1

Douglas Coulter, Foreword to They Fly Through the Air, p. 97.

305

helpless refugees with machine gun fire.

The Narrator is the chief

protagonist in this pla.y although there are a number of other characters. The play opens at an air field on a beautiful sunny morning. gunner and radio man all leave in a plane loaded with bombs. takes the listeners ahead of the. plane

A pilot,

The Narrator

to the city ’’blinking in the sun”

and to a tenement where a family is having its breakfast.

The father is

trying to decide whether or not he should let his young son have the car. Soon the bombing plane comes over and drops a demolition bomb squarely on this building.

The bomb goes right through the tenement scattering

wreckage outward and making a deep crater where so recently the large building stood. house.

The plane flies on and drops incendiary bombs on a ware­

Soon the pilot sees a number of people streaming out of the city.

He flies low and the gunner turns the machine gun on a crowd of at least three hundred people, mowing them down like so much wheat. all objectives, the plane turns toward its home base. an enemy plane comes in pursuit. pursuing plane is very near.

Having bombed

It is not long until

The bomber "runs for it”, but soon the

Both planes open fire but the pursuit, plane

fires so fast that the motors of the bomber are put out of commission and the bomber soon crashes.

In the end the narrator says:

That’s all, That’s all the fighting they will cere to do. They have a treaty with the earth That never will be broken. They are unbeautiful in death, Their bodies scattered and bestrewn

306

Amid the shattered theorem. There is a little oil and blood Slow-draining on the ground. The metal still is hot, but it will cool. You need not bother picking up the parts.

The sun has reached meridian; The day is warm, There *s not a ripple in the air. Four^of the writers give Mr. Corwin very high praise for his poetry 2 in They Fly Through the Air. They are also very enthusiastic concerning the ■3

organization and motivation of the play.

The biting"satire which he employs

in speaking to the aviators is powerful.

So popular^was this play with the

public

and. radio industry that the studios were soon floodedwithnew scripts

concerning

bombings and air raids.

As can be seen, there are anumber of

iambic lines of different lengths in the play.

"Words Without Music"

5

In the preface to this play, Norman S. Weiser suggests that this is one of the most important radio plays which has been produced within the last five years.

It is a. series of adaptations of several ’well known poems and one

selection of prose.

The different pieces are blended together without the

help of music, though sound effects are used to achieve unusual results.

1 2 3 4 5

Norman S. Weiser, The Writers Radio Theatre, p. 102. Coulter, op. clt.. p. 7. Margaret Mayorga, Best One-Act Plays of 1939. P. VI. Max Wylie, Best Broadcasts of 1938-39» p» 30. Weiser, ojd. cit., p. 103.

307

This series is the result of Corwin's experiments in developing a method for presenting prose and poetry on the radio.

Each selection is given

as a separate unit and yet the announcer has tied the different numbers together much as an announcer does in a village amateur program.

There

is a spirit of comedy in the program. The first selection in the piece is Thomas Hood's study about parent­ hood called A Parental Ode to My Son, Aged Three Years and Five Months. The characters are the father, the mother and the child.

The poem is a

portrait of the father, as he tries to compose a poem about his child and is interrupted by all sorts of antics of the youngster.

The following

lines illustrate this: (Father) Thou merry laughing sprite I With spirits feather-light Untouched by sorrow, unspoiled by sin (up) Good Heavens!

the child is swallowing a pin.

The next number is W. S. Gilberts' Bab Ballad entitled, The Three Kings of Chickeraboo. which gives a comic and understandable explanation of the foreign policy of Great Britain.

This is followed by a jolly poem

by Bean Swift called A Gentle Echo on Women. There is a scene in French (in prose) from Henry the Fifth and a reading of Matthew Arnold's poem, Dover Beach.

This latter is the only serious note in the entire performance.

The next selection in this variety program is an adaptation of Edward Lear's poem, Two Old Bachelors, who catch a muffin and a mouse and resolve to cook

308

the mouse for dinner.

The following lines show their predicament but

do not reveal the rest of the story of this delightful nonsense poem; Narrator;

Said he who caught the mouse to him who caught the muffin

2nd

We might cook this little mouse if we only had some stuffin’. If we had but sage and onions we could do extremely well But how to get that stuffin’ it is difficult to tell. The last selection in the series is also an adaptation of one of

Edward Lear’s poems.

It is the sad, sad love story of The Yonehy-Bonghy-Bo

who falls in love with Lady Jingly Jones only to learn that she already has a mate. The writers are in general agreement that Mr. Corwin has done good service to radio drama in working out these experiments in Words Without Music.

One writer expresses the beliefs of a number when he says •"The

very nature of the experiments makes it almost inevitable that the tech­ nique will be more widely used in the next few years." ^ Of all the younger writers

of radio verse drama, Mr. Corwin has re­

ceived the highest praise for his splendid work which is rich in poetic beauty and dramatic effectiveness.

1 2

Such writers as Margaret Mayorga,

Weiser, Ibid.. p. 103. Margaret Mayorga, Preface to Best One-Act Plays of 1938. P. VIII.

2

309

1

2

3

Douglas Coulter, Louis Reid and Max Wylie pay tribute to him,

William Saroyan

nA Special Announcement" A Special Announcement was produced by Peter Witt and Story Magazine over WHN, New York, in 1939. Voice, Proud and Nobody,

The chief characters are the Narrator, a

The first part of the play is a commentary on all

the different programs that are heard over the air during a day— a day be­ fore war was declared.

The great distances that radio spans are also stressed.

Then suddenly the narrator asks the radio audience to stand by for a special announcement.

Outside the studio there is a man who has been told to go

away, but he will not go. that his name is Nobody.

He comes in and asks why there is a war.

He says

He speaks to Proud who is also in the studio and

asks him why he is afraid to die but is perfectly willing for others to die. Nobody carries a gun and soon the bombs begin to burst.

The narrator in­

terrupts to say that a few minutes ago a man has been killed in Europe. His name is Kurt.

At the time of his death he has been thinking of his

three year old daughter. who have been killed.

This man represents twenty-seven thousand other men

The narrator wonders after all this bloodshed:

Will the children grow, climb mountains Read books, cross oceans, speak in foreign languages.

1 2 3

Douglas Coulter, Preface to Columbia Workshop Plays. P. VII. Louis Reid, Broadcasting Books, Saturday Review of Literature (January 14, 1939.), p. 3. Max Wylie, Best Broadcasts of 1938-1939. p. 30.

310

Will anybody die because it is time to die And not because he has been interrupted by a special announcement? Will anybody have time to live And write his name on a passport, Or at the bottom of a poem? This is a terrible indictment of our hectic, muddled and war torn world and Mr. Saroyan does not in the least soften his condemnation.

He

voices the feelings of thousands who long for the time when the world will be at peace

and people can live as normal humanbeings.

The preceding quotation from the play is a good illustration of the verse.

It is very similar in language to that which Mr. MacLeish uses in

Air Raid and The Fall of the City.

The words used are those of every day

speech and the rhythm is similar to that found in conversation.

It is

definitely experimental in form and has none of the end rhyming of the more traditional poetry.

In comparing this verse with that of Mr. MacLeish's

plays, the investigator believes that this play suffers.

It does not have

the rhythmic qualities and feeling for musical words which Mr. MacLeish's poems contain.

Mr. Saroyan, however, is to be commended for this excursion

into the field of verse and it may be the beginning of better things to come from his pen.

311

Joseph Lisa

"A Story in Dogtown Common” A Story in Dogtown Common, in free verse, was written for the Columbia Workshop and broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1939.

The theme of this play is the call of the sea, even though the

following of that call may mean death to the sailor.

The scene of the

play is Dogtown Common and the fishing village near.

The Story Teller,

George, Molly and Ma Hester are the principal characters. As the play opens, the Story Teller relates something of the history of Dogtown Common and of the mackerel and cod fishing industry of past days.

He also tells of the many men who lost their lives at sea near that

coast.

Now the place is in ruins, and a group of young people -have come

here to pick berries.

George and Molly are in love with each other, so

they linger behind after the other young people leave for the village of Annisquam, which is near.

George begs Molly to marry him very soon.

She

loves him, but has a premonition that if he continues to follow the sea it will mean his death.

She begs him to give up the seafaring life.

comes up and they hasten toward the village. leg.

A storm

Molly falls and hurts her

George carries her until they reach the hut of Ma Hester, an old

woman who is called a witch by the villagers.

Ma Hester binds Molly’s leg

and at the same time tells George that if he goes to sea there will be a watery grave for him. After the storm is over, Molly and George go down to the village and arrive as the church bell is tolling for the death of sixty men who have

312

been drowned in the storm. life.

All this causes George to give up his seafaring

They are married and he goes to work in a rock quarry.

but his longing for the sea makes him extremely unhappy. his work.

He grows to hate

Finally one night, his mind becomes overwrought and he fancies

that his ship is caught in a huge rock. to free his ship. his death.

He loves Molly

He goes out and chops at a rock

The rock cracks and falls on him, thus carrying him to

Molly then realizes that this tragedy has come because she has

held him back from his life’s work.

In the end she says:

Forgive you? Yes George I forgive you. I saw but bleached bones; You saw the living sea. You chose your own destiny in work; I ! your death. George, sweet George, Is the sea happy? The preceding passage illustrates the nature of the poetry.

Here

again is a definitely experimental type of verse in which the author tries to interpret the rhythm of the common speech of his people.

In the first

part of the play when the storyteller recounts the history of the early sailors of Dogtown Common, the lines have flowing rhythm, but the latter part of the drama contains many jerky lines which are lacking in grace. on the whole, is well organized.

The play,

Mr. Sherman Dryer describes it as a

"sensitive and mature treatment of a sea people and the simple beauty and tragedy of their lives."'1’ 1

Sherman H. Dryer, Introduction to One Hundred Non-Royalty Radio Plays by William Kozlenko, p. 15.

313

Bernard C. Schoenfield

"What We Defend" What We Defend was produced by the National Broadcasting Company (exact production date not given)^and published in the Anthology, One Hundred Non-Royalty Radio Plays, by William Kozlenko. experimental fantasy.

It is called an

It is an interpretation of the American way of life.

The two chief characters are the voice representing Dictatorship, and the second voice representing Democracy.

Many Americans such as Jefferson,

Franklin, Adams, Lincoln, pioneers, women, ministers, rabbis, Mormons, Quakers, come in to help interpret life in our country.

The play is a chronicle

beginning in 1782 after American independence was won. Voice representing Dictatorship learns that the colonists have won their independence and calls in Franklin, Jefferson and others to give them advice about America.

They tell the representative of Dictatorship, "We know what

we were defending in the Revolution and we know the course to follow."

The

representative of Dictatorship comes again to give advice and ask for con­ cessions from the Americans at different periods in history.

Finally in 194.0,

the representative of Dictatorship comes to Ameriea to sajr "Conquest is the steel of tanks and the steel of planesj conquest is the alpha and omega of existence."

He says also that Americans should learn to hate Jews, Catholics

and Negroes and do away with all political parties except the party of force.

1

William Kozlenko, One Hundred Non-Royalty Radio Plays, p. 9.

314

The representative of Democracy is irritated at the presumption of this person from across the sea and finally answers him thus We come from all races, creeds and colors And our way of life demands that we be tolerant of our brotherI We came on the Mayflower and we came in the steerage Carrying our bundles of grief. This was a haven for those of the pogromj This was a haven for those of the lash. This spirit of tolerance we have defended, This spirit of tolerance we will defend.

We defend the right to be an individual, To be ourselves, .

To dream our dreams, To build on hope, To have initiative.

Thomas Jefferson then in ringing tones sums up the principles of the American way of life. The play is a chronicle.

The preceding lines illustrate the free verse

which is in a language filled with simple but vivid words. In estimating the general worth of the play, one writer^is of the opinion that it is too melodramatic— too much of a "rifle-shot" play to be effective.

1

Kozlenko, Ibid.. p. 14-.

315

William Merrick

"Freedom is a Trumpet" Freedom is a Trumpet is included in the anthology American Scenes^ by William Kozlenko.

No record has been found concerning its production.

This is a story of a facist coup in .America - a story which we hope is entirely imaginary.

Like the play, The Fall of the City by Archibald

MacLeish, it suggests too much reality to be entertaining. When the play opens, the country is on the verge of a financial panic: stocks are dropping, factories are closing, farmers can't sell their crops. The next scene is in the Capitol where a mob has gathered waiting to see what the statesmen are going to do. revolt and start a riot.

A crowd baiter is trying to get the mob to

A young man with a clear, strong voice tells the

people there is no cause for riot if they use their intelligence.

He tells

them that the president has resigned and the judges of the high court have done likewise, but that there is still hope for the country because four of the oldest statesmen of the land have been chosen to rule until the period of confusion is over.

Soon the four statesmen come to address the people.

They tell the mob that the four of them have just voted out of existence the Constitution.

They tell the people that it was a difficult thing to

decide to eliminate the Constitution, but since it did not work it was the best thing to do.

The mob is stunned at first, but soon the young man asks

"what is wrong with the Constitution?" One of the judges tells him that the Constitution promised "freedom and equality" but "freedom is not for the rabble and never has been."

The

316

judge tells the people to go quietly to their homes,but they will not go. Instead their anger at the four old men becomes fiercer each moment and the crowd baiter shouts to them to fire the buildings and pillage the city.

For

a time it seems probable that the milling people will follow the crowd baiter, but soon

the young man makes himself heard again above the roar of

The soldiers

threaten him but; the workers, fanners and merchantsdemand

he be allowed to speak. To

thecrowd. that

He says:

you four . . . you, and the others . . .

You doomsday men who would saddle sadness on this flowering world as a fool would harness time.

You who would drape funeral wreaths on each Tree you pass in the drum paced processional of life, Make way for resurgent youth and incandescent splendor. I laugh too hard to hear your melancholy wails in my journey through the day I The young man tells them that there is still truth and beauty in the world and big fights to fight.

He talks to them slowly of simple things until

he changes their mood from hate and utter helplessness to courage.

Again the

old judges interrupt and urge the people to be docile and abide by their rulings, but the people shout “No No" and demand the restoration of the Constitution and their rights as free men.

317

In the end the young man shouts: Then let out the word that the spirit of this country is alive and quick and it runs with a rapid pulse! Let the word out and the wheels will start turning, the trains start moving -

The spirit of a free man's Country I It's the trumpet call of libertyI The preceding lines illustrate the nature of the free verse.

In places

the lines lack grace^but in the main they read well and carry the mood and atmosphere of the story to a powerful conclusion.

The words which he uses

are simple, yet very colorful. The play is a study in the psychology of the mob and though there is not much external action, the conflicts going on in the minds of the people and the method the young man uses to cause them to demand their own rights provide much mental action. One writer^is of the opinion that Mr. Merrick's plays show find workman­ ship and that his future as a writer will be a bright one.

Horman Rosten "Prometheus in Granada" This free verse drama is found in One Hundred Non-Royalty Radio Plavs by William Kozlenko.

1

No record has been found concerning its production.

Douglas Coulter, Preface to Columbia Workshop Plays. P. VIII.

318

It is a radio play concerned with the war in Spain and is written in memory of the poet, Frederick Garcia Lorca.

In a prologue the narrator tells how

Lorca was murdered by a group of Moors and Spaniards.

The play proper then

is a flashback to the events surrounding his death. Two soldiers lead Lorca out of Granada up a hill and according to pre­ vious orders of their Facist captain, chain him to a large rock.

Lorca

tells the two men that they are cowards to take advantage of a defenseless person.

As they leave him to go down the hill, they see the captain

with soldiers.

coming

They then realize that the captain means to kill Lorca.

One

runs back hastily and tries to release Lorca, but the captain and his soldiers arrive before he has time to accomplish this.

The captain tells

Lorca to prepare for death, but instead he repeats to them lines from a poem they all know and love. the eyes."

It ends with "None shall wish to look you in

When the soldiers realize that their prisoner is their famous

poet, they refuse to kill him and they go back down the hill, leaving him unharmed.

Lorca’s respite is short, however, for soon enemy planes come

over, set fire to the town in the valley and machine gun Lorca and the peasant women, who by this time have fled to the hill. Lorca’s words as he pleads with the soldiers are a good example of the verse: Comrades, remember this is our land With its silver and fruitj This hill is your hill and the valley Is yours, too, and iron under the valley.

319

You will never win dividedj You are divided by deception. Turn the guns against them And win what’s yours.

Will you rule if they win? No, you'll dig your iron for them! You'll pick your fruit for them! You’ll press the wheat for their mouths! You'll have children for their harness. These lines show the simple direct words used and the compression of language. in the

The words are prophetic when we considerwhat hashappened

occupied countries. To the reader, the play wouldhavemore

pense if the prologue were omitted.

sus­

The play is fairly well organized.

That the narrator should have been used more is the opinion of this in­ vestigator. Dwight Strickland

"Legend of Dust" This play in verse is found in the anthology, One Hundred Non-Royalty Radio Plays, by William Kozlenko.

It has not been produced.

characters are the Narrator, the Woman and the Child.

The chief

The scene is in

the dust bowl region of the United States in the midst of a sandstorm.

The

Woman and the Child are digging a grave in the parched earth for the woman's

320

little daughter who has died of thirst.

The Woman and Child soon lower

the body of the little girl into the dry grave.

Afterwards the Woman tells

the Child that the man on the hill is his sister’s murderer because he has dammed up the spring on the hill and has stolen the river which has been their water supply.

Then she sends the Child into the house and, distraught

with grief, goes to meet a group of neighboring women.

She tries to get

them to help her wreck the dam, kill the man on the hill and thus get revenge, but they refuse to have anything to do with murder.

Although the

rain comes as they talk, and the women gratefully return home, the Woman is still determined to have vengeance.

She returns to her house to get the

knife which they have used in digging the grave. he buried the knife in his sister’s grave.

The Child tells her that

He also tells her that while she

was gone he fell asleep and when he awoke the rain was talking to him and saying "to live - to live - to live."

Then the Woman realizes that her de­

sire for vengeance is not nearly so great as her desire to shape her child’s life for the future.

She gives up her plan for murder.

The following words of the heartbroken woman illustrate the verse: Here, son, on the prairie’s edge behind the empty b a m s In the dust and the wind we shall bury her, And this cross which you made for me out of cottonwood Shall stand, though it dry in the hot sun

321

Like the bony frame of a scarecrow and splinter Shall stand through the years to remind us of drought . . . Shall stand as a milestone, Marking the growth of this desert, Here at the prairie’s edge, Here where the prairie died even as she died, without water .......... The language of the play makes a powerful impression upon the reader. It is full of sensory images that convey in a compelling way, the reality and terror of drought.

The verse is flexible.

The story is well organized

and the faith of the Child makes the last scene a very dramatic one.

The

play does not have much action but is rather a picture of inner conflict. Whether this could be conveyed effectively over the radio is a question.

William Ford Manley William Ford Manley is the author of a series of twelve Biblical plays which were produced by the National Broadcasting Company (production date not given in the printed version).

Of these four are in verse and the

others are part verse and part prose. Ruth. Ishmael and Judith. pentameter verse.

The verse plays are Samson and Delilah.

For the most part, they are written in iambic

322

"Samson and Delilah" This is the first of these plays.

It is in four scenes.

The chief

characters are Samson, Delilah and Noban, a patriarch of the Philistines. In the first scene, Noban is sitting in the council chambers of the Philistines. his people.

He is troubled because of the many victories of Samson over He realizes that their armies are helpless against Samson's

giant strength.

A messenger comes to tell Noban that Samson is coming

this night, alone within their walls, to visit the Philistine girl, Delilah, with whom he is in love.

Noban immediately plans to use Delilah to find

out Samson’s secret strength and bring about his downfall.

Noban and his

men go to Delilah’s house and offer her bags of silver if she will find out the secret of Samson’s strength and thus save her people. threatens her with death if she does not do this.

Noban also

They turn her against

Samson by telling her how he has murdered her people. That night when Samson comes to her, he is completely under the fascination of her charms. his strength.

Soon she gets him to reveal to her the secret of

He tells her it is in his long, uncut hair.

Delilah sings a

song to him which puts him to sleep and then she cuts off his hair. Afterwards the soldiers put out his eyes and throw him in prison.

In

the last scene, shorn of his strength, Samson is brought into the temple to be jeered at by crowds of Philistines. grown again.

By this time, however, his hair has

A little lad, pitying the blind man, leads him to the main

pillar of the temple.

Samson tells the kind lad to flee, and then ca.lH.wg

on his God to give him strength, pulls the entire temple down upon the Philistines.

323

The words of Delilah, before Samson comes that night, reveal her inner conflict and the nature of the lines: The die is cast.

There is no turning back;

It is indeed the dream that shaketh me. Not for his silver, not for all the gold, Nor jewels rich would I betray thee, Samson. No, NoI

It is the fear that in thy love

There lieth death for me, and all my own. 0 cruel trap, from whence there is no escapeI 0 fatal night, wherein my heart is broken, Come not again my love, come not again! The above picture of Delilah is a much more sympathetic interpretation ittl

of her character than that found in Bibl^ stories.

The verse is adequate

though not outstanding in quality.

nRuth" This play follows rather closely the Biblical story, but it adds certain elements that help to paint the character portrait of Ruth. theAnnouncer of Moab.

In the beginning

tells of Naomi's sojourn with her husband and sons in the land

Her two sons and husband die and she decides to return to her

people in Bethlehem.

Her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, start to

Bethlehem with her, but Orpah soon leaves them and returns to her people in Moab.

Naomi pleads with Ruth to leave her and return also but Ruth loyally

remains with Naomi.

When they reach Bethlehem, they are almost starving and

in this strange city Ruth is heartsick with loneliness.

On the day that she

3ZU

makes up her mind to leave Naomi and return to her people in Moab, Naomi, faint with hunger, comesin with a loafof bread which she has procured for Ruth. fields.

This causes Ruth to

remain.

She goes to glean in the harvest

Boaz, a lonely and rich owner of the field, sees her.

Disguising

himself as a laborer, he

talks in a kind manner to her and falls in love

with her.

their work, he invites her to come to a harvest

At the end of

feast that night.

When she comes to the festival, Boaz begs her forgive­

ness for his deception of the day.

In the end Ruth says: I love thee;

I love thee for thy tender gentleness But not alone for that. I love theel

I know not why

Unless 0 Boaz for thyselfl

And wert thou but a humble harvester I still would love thee. The above lines illustrate the iambic pentameter verse, which, though it is not rich in imagery, tells the story adequately.

The play is well

organized and the author has increased the dramatic elements by introducing the picture of Naomi’s and Ruth's unhappy and lonely plight, when they first came to Bethlehem.

"Ishmael” The chief characters in the play, Ishmael. are Sarah, Hagar, Abraham and Ishmael.

There are five scenes.

In the beginning of the plajr Sarah

and Abraham are very sad because they are childless.

When Sarah sees that

Hagar, her handmaiden, loves Abraham and that he returns her affection, she

325

tell3 Hagar that she may become Abraham’s second wife if she will bear him a son. her.

She makes Hagar promise that she will also give that son to

Hagar promises and, according to the polygamous custom of that time,

becomes Abraham's second wife. Abraham.

A son, Ishmael, is bora to Hagar and

When Sarah, according to her pact with Hagar, comes to claim the

baby Hagar refuses to give up the child.

When Abraham begs her to give the

child to Sarah, Hagar threatens to kill the child and her3elf if they force her to do this.

Sarah, thus thwarted, promises revenge.

and finally Sarah in her old age has a son.

Tears pass,

Ishmael, now a lad, becomes

jealous of the young baby and openly mocks Sarah and the young child.

Sarah

in revenge persuades Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away into the desert. In the last scene in the desert, Hagar and Ishmael are near death from thirst.

Finally an Angel comes and shows them where water may be found.

Neither the language nor the plot of this play seem so effective to the reader as that of the two preceding pieces.

"Judith11 The last verse play in the series reminds one of the play, Judith of Bethulia by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (see page 82 ) based on the same Bibl^fiA ! story.

Aldrich took more liberties with the Bib3>,, story than has Mr. Manley.

The play here is in one act and three scenes.

Judith and Holofernes are the

chief characters. When the play opens, the city of Bethulia is surrounded on all sides by the forces of Holofernes.

Because the water supply has failed, the

people of Bethulia are dying of thirst.

The elders of the city have decided

326

to surrender on the following day.

Near a gate of the city an old man

watches in his room with his son and Judith, his daughter.

Judith’s

brothers urge the old man and Judith to flee from the city before it is taken by the enemy.

Judith not only refuses to flee to safety, but

decides that she will go boldly into the camp of the enemy to see if she may be able to save her people.

Judith arrives at Holof ernes’ tent after

a feast which he has held with his captains.

He is amazed at her beauty

and listens to her plea for her suffering people.

She asks him for the

sake of the starving children to spare her city.

Although he refuses her

request, he offers to make her his queen after he has conquered her people. She leaves his tent but tells him that she will come again.

On the fourth

day, Holofernes orders a feast and commands that Judith attend it. Judith appears at Holofernes’ tent.

Finally

He tells her that on the next day he

will take her city but will protect her if she will become his mistress. She agrees and they proceed with the festivities. and much wine.

She plies him with food

When he is overcome with wine, she takes his sword and

dances for him a dance of war.

Suddenly turning, she slays him with his

own sword. The following lines spoken by Holofernes when Judith does not come promptly at bis bidding are an example of the verse: 0 Judith, Judith of Bethulia:

What manner of woman

Art thou thus to make light of my command? And now forsooth, what manner of man am I,

327

To have a heart so easily wrought upon That I have set a guard about thy tent Protecting thee as though thou wert my child I A comparison of these lines with those in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's play show that these do not have the beauty of the earlier play.

This

drama also suffers in comparison with the former in regard to organization and effectiveness.

Conclusion When we realize that about seventeen hundred different programs are broadcast every day in America, a few verse plays produced at intervals may seen rather unimportant. not for their numbers.

1 They are significant for their quality if

The fact that verse drama for radio is only five

years of age makes the accomplishment more impressive.

This is especially

true when we realize that the writers of verse drama for radio have been using a new medium and have had to depart from almost all the conventions surrounding verse drama that is written for the stage. volutionized the rules concerning number

They have re­

of characters, nature of characters

and length of play as well as making marked changes in form, language and theme. The importance of verse plays for radio may also be guaged by the fact that some of our successful dramatists have been willing to enter this field.

1

Several of our leading poets, such as MacLeish, Benet and Kreymborg,

Merrill Denison, Radio and the Writer, Theatre Arts Monthly (May, 1938) p. 369.

328

have created plays in this field and have been successful..

In addition,

a number of younger dramatists are writing and working in various departments of radio, carrying on experiments of an important nature. As long as the broadcasting system is mainly financed by adver­ tising, we can never expect to have a large number of radio verse plays, but the writing and production of these plays will probably continue to be one of the most worth while of radio offerings.

As time passes, many

additional experiments will probably be carried on in this field.

David

Taylor recently said of poetic drama for radio, "most of the poets of America have been remiss in failing to recognize that radio reestablishes with their public the contact which made the troubadours and their humble colleagues socially significant.

The wide social function of poetry could

be restored through radio if poets would prepare themselves to use it." ^

1

Editorial, Verse Drama and the Radio, Poetry Magazine LVIII (August,1941), p. 281.

329 CHAPTER VI

THE PROBLEMS FACING THE POET DRAMATIST

Introduction The world of the theatre and the radio has come to recognize the fact that poetic drama is beginning to be an important force in the drama of today.

Prose drama with its conventional forms is being definitely

influenced by the enthusiasm and inspiration of the new poets, who are entering the field.

Of course, poetic drama is not something newj it is

as old as drama itself and masterpieces as early as the time of the Greeks were written in the poetic form.

Continental nations have continued to

produce poetic drama but in the countries where English is spoken the poetic form has been almost cast aside.

This has also been true in America

where the frontier influence and other forces have developed a realistic school of writers.

Here the popularity of prose plays has always been so

great’ :that generally it has been difficult to get verse plays produced by the commercial theatres. In order that the accomplishments of the poet dramatist may be fully understood, it will be well to consider some of the problems that face him. Many of the problems which he must face are ones which are met by all play­ wrights, but some are peculiarly his own.

Some of these which affect his

development and success are the problem of the audience, the newspaper reviewer, the theatre, the actor and the stage designer.

Over these the

dramatist often cannot have much control unless he turns producer and actor as well, and this would probably not eliminate some problems.

330

The Problem of the Modern Audience The audience in the American theatre is a problem to the dramatist, who wants to give something besides mere entertainment. majority of people distrust the word poetry.

Then too, the

For this situation there

are several reasons which are inherent in the nature of the poetic plays that have been presented in the past.

Many times our poet dramatists have

insisted upon giving the audience verse plays about a distant past, where the language, customs, conflicts and manners of dress were not fully comprehended.

Some people do not like poetry, because, when children,

they were unfortunate in having English teachers who made them hate it. 1 The modern audience is a mixture of the cultural and the ignorant, the conservative and the radical, the realistic and the sentimental. is very difficult to plan fare to meet all tastes.

It

It is true that the

movies often get the least desirable of the population, but the group left for the legitimate theatre is far from a homogeneous one.

There are theatre­

goers who want a sincere presentation of the problems of life, but it is difficult to marshall enough of them to support a high enterprise. Writers condemn the modern audience for its lack of taste in demanding that it be amused^ excited and told risque stories.

This lack of taste is

also reflected in the slavish following of the opinions of the reviewers of plays.

It is true that their opinions are many times worthwhile, but

they are often the result of prejudice as well and should not be taken too

1

M-~B. Schiller, Trends in Modern Poetic Drama in English, p. 78.

331

seriously.

John Mason Browix^in Upstage pleads with audiences to cease

talking about the "wonderfuls" and the "bests’* and throw off this spirit of the herd.

The fact that often the audience is unwilling to make the

mental effort of thinking or that it has an apathetic attitude toward such exertion also makes it difficult for the poet dramatist to clothe his meanings with any subtlety.

Any serious play in prose requires con­

centration, and a poetic play, because of a form which is alien to our' prose speaking audience, requires much more attention and serious thought than the former. There are also wide differences in the political, social, and religious beliefs of the audience.

In certain parts of the United States, the

audience will be predominantly of one political camp, while in a city like New lork there is a general mixture.

In the matter of religious background

and general philosophy of life, there is perhaps even wider divergence in belief.

These people come wrapped in the armor of their individual

differences and dare the dramatist to make even a dent in their protective coats of mail.

The Cost of Play Production as a Factor in Determining the Audience The cost of play production is a factor in the survival of plays and in determining the nature of the audience.

In order to pay his overhead

costs and keep a play running, the producer must sell the majority of his high priced seats each week.

1

The approval of the balcony trade with the $1*65

John Mason Brown, Upstage, p. 270.

332

and $2.20 seats is not enough.

As a result, a small section of the

society of New York together with the critics and Hollywood scouts have the responsibility of choosing what plays the remainder of our population shall enjoy.

This is not a healthy situation.

This audience is not nearly

so tolerant and broadminded as is generally supposed. tainment rather than the play that is disturbing. escape after the work of a busy day.

It prefers enter­

It wants romantic

It is likely to disapprove of a

play of social criticism and to misunderstand a poetic play.

It rebuffed

Bury the Dead and Panic . which received the approval of a number of critics and the balcony trade.

This group^has entirely too much power in proportion

to its size and intellectual status, and yet this is the audience for which the poet dramatist must write his play if he wishes much recognition.

Other Factors in the Problem of the Audience There are, however, some brighter aspects connected with this problem of the audience.

People usually respond to beauty and truth and suffer

vicariously in the midst of another's sorrow.

In the illusion which the

play gives of romance, joy, suffering or exaltation, the audience will usually go along part way at least with the dramatist and will thus raise itself to higher levels of thought.

The theatre is a world of make believe.

The job

of the poet dramatist is to keep the prevailing mood throughout the play and never let the illusion be broken for his audience.

1 2

Eleanor Flexner, American Playwrights, p. 9. Flexner, Ibid.. p. 10.

333

The Poet Dramatist and the Newspaper Reviewers The large cost of producing a drama and the speculative nature of the theatre business makes it imperative that a play bring immediate success if it is to live.

There are few producers or backers who have

the capital to carry a play at a weekly loss until it can overcome poor press notices by word-of-mouth publicity.

Many dramas of worth thus die

untimely deaths, because they are not allowed to run long enough for the public to know about them.

The cut-rate agencies occasionally take over

these plays and provide a partial remedy, but they also do not have much patience with plays that do not have a definite popular appeal. Thus can be seen the power of newspaper critics, who see the play on the opening night.

In their hands is the power of life and death.

We should also remember that what is successful in the New York theatre governs to a large extent what shall be seen on the road.

Within the last

few years, the road has witnessed such a revival that about twenty-five companies go out annually from New York staying for a week in large cities and making short stands in the smaller centers.

Few plays, however, go on

tour unless they have first been successful on Broadway.

In this way, to

a marked extent, the critics decide the dramatic fare for the entire nation. It is assumed that these men realize their responsibility and are con­ scientious workmen. them.

Yet it will be wise to consider some facts concerning

They work under tremendous pressure.

They often go to the theatre

six nights a week and then rush away to write their reviews for appearance in print on the following day.

Some have come to dramatic reviewing by way of

334

feature writing, which is rather far removed from the field of poetic drama.

They are expected to write a good, journalistic story, though

this is not always a good criticism of the play.^ Sometimes, therefore, the dramatic reviewers write their criticism with prejudice and do not help the theatre.

At least they do not aid the progress of the theatre.

2

It is remembered, however, that there are other reviewers and critics who give sound, objective judgment concerning plays. encourage new experiments in form and content.

They have helped to

They have also been able

to look into the future and discern important dramatic trends.

The Theatre and Poetic Drama Because poets’ plays have often been unsuccessful as plays, the theatre has not welcomed them with much enthusiasm.

This is not a perverse attitude

on the part of the theatre, because the poet dramatists themselves, also in the past, have often held themselves rather aloof from the commercial theatre.

The earlier poet dramatists wrote verse plays which were literary,

and neither were the pieces representative of contemporary life nor of the contemporary stage.

They had the atmosphere of the library and laid especial

stress on historical romance without any modern adaptations.

There are also

other reasons why verse plays are not always welcomed by the theatre. •3

Ever since the theatre ceased to depend on the^patronage of the court and the monarch, the theatre has had to live a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde existence.

1 2 3

It has an art that is capable of portraying and exalting life

Glen Hughes, The Story of the Theatre, p. 333. Hughes, Ibid., p. 333. Flexner, op,, cit.. p. 10.

335

yet it can survive only by the selling of entertainment at a profit. Because of this the theatre has catered to the plays which involved the smallest chance of failure at the box office.

To a large extent, these

plays have been light sophisticated comedies, musical plays or prose plays 1 In many instances, the situations

dealing in a realistic way with life.

in these plays would be tragic if they were repeated in our own lives. The theatre has been dissatisfied with its own state in these last few years and has been increasingly aware of this disillusion.

Although for

a long time, it has been dedicated to prose realism, a reaction has set in. This has been due in part to the bitter criticism leveled at the theatre by the professional reviewers of plays, by writers and by drama critics. In writing much about the continual state of doldrums in the theatre they often suggest poetry as a remedy.

"Poets, as we know, have Intuitions

amounting to prophecy"^ one of our critics has said.

Another writer pro­

claims, "I have a strong and chronic hope that the theatre of this country will outgrow the phase of journalistic social comment and reach occasionally ■a

into the upper air of poetic tragedy.""^ The return ofpoetry

to the theatre

will bring "a restoration of form and colour, speech andstyle,

the living

word and the vital p u l s e . " I n e v i t a b l y poetry will take its rightful place in the theatre of the world,where long ago it was bom."^

1 2 3

A 5

Mary Beatrice Schiller, Trends in Modern Poetic Drama in English, p. 82. Richard Dana Skinner, Our Changing Theatre, p. 30. Maxwell Anderson, Preface to Winterset. P. VI. Ashley Dukes, Forms of Dramatic Verse, Theatre Arts Monthly (July, 1927) p. 529. Carl Carmer, Gordon Bottomly and Poetic Drama, Theatre Arts Monthly (February, 1930), p. 163.

336

In order to win the theatre to poetic plays, the dramatist must prove that his creations are good theatre.

By mastering dramatic techniques

and stage conventions to the extent that his pieces become forceful plays as well as uplifting poetry, he will win a place in the modern theatre. Maxwell Anderson has shown his ability in making his poetic dramas successful theatrical pieces, and his remarkable achievements will be an inspiration to other poet dramatists.

Therefore, in order that poetic drama may become

a natural medium of free expression, there will have to be a change of attitude on the part of the theatre, an increase in tolerance and a willing­ ness to experiment with new forms.

The Actor A brief discussion will be given concerning the problem of the actor in relation to the rendition of verse.

Plays in prose have often failed

because the actors used such poor diction that their words were unintelligible beyond the orchestra.

This problem is intensified in the rendition of verse.

Theresas been much discussion and disagreement as to the proper methods of delivering verse. is unsatisfactory.

Yet there is agreement that generally the rendition of it Gordon Bottomly states the problem thus:

"And poetry

has a different sound from prosej and because audiences are not so willing to listen as they were of old, actors are not so willing to cultivate the full possibilities of their voices as they were of old.

In that the actors make

a mistake, for the voice gymnastics implicit in the constant use of dramatic

1

S.

Mary Beatrice Schiller, Trends in Modern Poetic Drama in English, p. 80.

oL■

|.

337

poetry gave the actors of old the wonderful natural instruments which enhance their interpretation of comedy and other prose drama as well.u ^ Because for so many years the majority of plays have been in prose, the actor has learned to speak his lines in a crisp, matter of fact manner. These speeches have been written by playwrights steeped in the manner of realism, so that seldom does the line call for the vivid utterance re­ quired by poetry.

Thus the actor has assidiously cultivated the art of

reticence and has done everything possible to shun anything rhetorical and old fashioned.

When a poetic play is attempted, the average actor is

in a difficult position because he does not want to use the sonorous oratorical methods of the earlier school of acting, and yet the inflections of colloquial speech do not seem to suffice.

As a result, he often speaks

poetry in an awkward, unnatural manner.

2

Stark Young pleads that actors and producers take poetry naturally. When a poetic play is undertaken, there is a tendency to make it a thing apart, to give it a sort of worship, to bow down to it but not always to do its will.

It is somewhat the way many people act in regard to religion.

They go to church, but they do not always exemplify religion in daily life. There has been much discussion about the best method for the rendition of verse but there has not been much agreement on the subject.

There is

3

rather general agreement, however, that the proper speaking of poetry involves an unrestricted use of the tongue and lips, correct breath control,

1 2 3

Gordon Bottomly, Poetry Seeks a New Home, Theatre Arts Monthly (December, 1929), p. 924-. Stark Young, The Gragic Goose Step, The New Republic (May 24, 1922), pp.376-377. Schiller, op. cit., p. 80.

333

a sense of tempo, a feeling for poetic rhythm and a thorough under­ standing of the meaning of the lines.

Some of the chief faults in

reciting poetry have been a tendency toward a "sing-song" rendition with too strong accent of the rhythm, a swallowing of the last words in the lines so that the audience misses them entirely, pauses in the wrong place and too rapid rendition of the lines.

Most recently, poetry has

been given as if it were prose so that the audience did not even realize it was poetic drama.

The last was true in some of the lines spoken by

the characters in The Wingless Victory. Usually the actor feels that it is a privilege to be asked to have a part in a good poetic play.

Although in the past, the actor has had

little opportunity for training in the speaking of verse, yet if the challenge is presented he will probably set himself the task of becoming proficient in this art of revealing the inspiration of the poet and at the same time of glorifying the theatre.

The Poet Dramatist and the ^cenic Artist Since the beginning of the twentieth century, a remarkable revolution has taken place in stage decoration.

As a result of this, there has been

both negative and positive good which has come to the work of the poet dramatist. In order fully to appreciate the vast progress that has been made, it is well to remember some of the earlier stage scenery.

In 1900 the scene

designer was as a rule a scene painter who made back drops on a wholesale

339

pattern.

Sinee in those days traveling companies seldom carried their

ovra scenery, the local theatre and scene painter usually furnished some stock scenery that had to be used for all types of plays. painted in a very artificial manner on canvas.

These were

Supposedly wooden walls

would shake at the slightest touch, whole autumn scenes wrinkled in the breeze, furniture was painted on the walls.

There was usually in every

theatre (l) a forest scene with wood wings and foliage borders in bilious greens or dull browns, (2) a street scene with only one view, (3) a palace scene with huge columns and gold trimmings, (4) a kitchen scene with qll the ugliness of a tenement and (5) an interior which was entirely lacking in beauty or charm.

The furniture and other properties were just as

standard as the scenery.

The poetic play suffered especially at the hands

of these scene painters because subtle meanings and universal truths were difficult to propound in such artificial surroundings.

Mew Era in Scenic Design It can be seen that there was need for a definite art of stage design in the theatre. self.

Some of the earlier designers came from the theatre it­

Such men as Feurbach and Gordon Craig were already established in

some other department of the theatre.

Gordon Craig was an actor and pro­

ducer, when he became interested in stage designing.

He made an extensive

study of this art and formulated many theories which have been used by later designers.

He, along with other scene designers, came to disparage the work

of the poet in the theatre.

He stated his convictions thus:

"I only wish

34 0

you to understand that the poet is not of the theatre, has never come from the theatre, and cannot be of the theatre, and that only the dramatist among writers has any birth claim to the theatre - and that only a slight one.

He and many of his followers came to regard stage

architecture as more important than the actor or the play itself.

Those

designers for a time stunted dramatic genius in order that stage-craft might be the entire production.

It was not long, however, until there

was a protest raised against this usurping of power. gave his convictions on the subject in these words:

Ludwig Lewisohn "They become a menace

when they cause it to be forgotten that the platform is the platform of the eternal poet struggling with the mysteries of the earth. fine language; it is the plain and sober truth."

This is not

Although this condition

in the theatre has been remedied to a great extent, yet there remains something of that spirit in the modern musical plays which are given in tremendous theatres with revolving stages, action on several planes and a predominance of scenic art.

These spectacles are adequate to convey mass

entertainment but are not usually satisfactory in revealing an absorbing drama of inner conflicts. The scenic artist is today trying consistently through the use of color and design to intensify drama and to reveal the true intent of the dramatist.

In their writings on the subject, some of the leaders have

stated that the main province of theatre architecture is to enhance the

1 2

Gordon Craig, On the Art of the Theatre, pp. 142-143• Ludwig Lewisohn, The Drama and the Stage, p. 3*

341

meanings of the play and is subordinate to the values of the play. writer puts it thus:

One

"As artists of the theatre, we must remember that our

motive is to intensify the drama, and that the design or setting is sub­ servient to the play.

It is easy for us to overlook this because our own

art is so fascinating in itself, that it can mislead us.

%

In general, it can be said that the modern scenic artist works hand in hand with the poet dramatist to convey, through the use of color and design, emotions which words alone and the work of the actors cannot fully express.

Effective stage setting also does the work today that the play­

wright' formerly had to do entirely with words.

Often an audience learns of

the education, social class and habits of the leading character in the first scene of the play and in that way the maid and other minor characters don't have to talk through an entire scene about the master of the house.

Such

designers as Donald Oenslager, Lee Simonson, Claude Bragdon, Joe Meilziner and Robert Edmond Jones have made theatre design a work of art. This reliance upon the help of the stage designer together with the new spirit of experimentation have led the poet dramatist to explore untried forms and methods.

There has been a remarkable use of lighting to create

atmosphere and to develop the emotional rhythm of a play.

The use of the

revolving stage and stage wagons has cut down the long waits between scenes and has tended to eliminate breaks which might destroy the illusion.

The

use of music, masks, the soliloquy and the aside are devices aiso employed by poet dramatists in their effortsto find new methods of expression.

1

Victor E. D'Amico, Theatre Art. p. 42.

2. 5ck l\er

V

342

In some of the poetic plays folk signs, folk dances, weather signs and sayings as well as superstitions are used to convey atmosphere.

Super­

stitions are used in Fire of the Lord and The Wingless Victory. Thus the poet dramatist and the stage designer coordinate all phases of both arts to achieve a harmonious and well integrated production.

Conclusion When we recount all of the problems which a poet dramatist must face in creating his plays and in getting them before the public, we are not surprised that the volume of poetic drama is small in comparison to the large number of prose plays produced each year.

Of course, it must be

admitted that writers of prose plays also face the problem of the audience, the actor, the theatre, the scenic artist along with the poet dramatists;

yet there are factors in each that are different.

Mr. Anderson has solved

his relations to his audience by makiBg his verse so understandable that he has taken his people along with him. follow his leadership.

Other writers of verse plays could well

The schools of dramatic art are teaching young actors

the methods of speaking verse, and the verse choirs throughout the country will probably help in training future speaking choirs.

The scenic designer

is constantly making it possible for more experiments and for progress in the field of poetic drama.

The problem of the theatre is one of the most

difficult for the poet dramatist and one in which not so much advance has /

been made, except by such leaders as Maxwell Anderson.

When the poet dramatist

is able to organize his material so that it has sufficient dramatic conflict

343

and unity of purpose, and at the same time is able to develop a verse pattern that will be adequate to carry forward the spirit of his story in a language which is elevated, colorful and rhythmic, his plays will likely be accepted in the theatre.

344 CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSIONS In the main part of this investigation, we have traced the develop­ ment of poetic drama from 1900 to 1942.

As a background for the work,

a brief survey of verse drama from Colonial times was also made.

Three

chapters of this study have been devoted to verse plays for the theatre and one chapter has dealt with radio verse drama.

There has been a short

discussion of the problems facing the poet dramatist.

In this chapter,

we shall briefly summarize the development of poetic drama from 1900 to 1942.

Summary The Period From 1900 to the End of the First World War We first examined the output of the earliest period: of the first World War.

1900 to the end

With the turn of the century, came a renewed in­

terest in verse drama in America, but only a few of the plays had production. Although phases of the American scene were reflected to a certain extent in other literature and in prose drama, poetic drama in general remained aloof from native life. Practically all of the plays were written in the English tradition of the nineteenth century.

The popular themes for poetic plays were historical,

romantic, legendary, fantastic and Biblical subjects. connection between the plays and the life of that time.

There was little The language of the

dramas was excessively ornate and embroidered with phrases found in plays

345

of a generation earlier.

The speech of the pieces was far removed from

the language of actual life.

The plays were practically all in blank

verse or in modifications of blank verse. The influence of the actor was still seen in many of the verse plays of that time, because the dramas were written for certain actors.

They

were created to give the actor ample opportunity to thrill his audience with melodramatic excitement through flowery language and grandiloquent gesture.

Tc a certain extent, the influence of the actor helps to account

for the persistence of this old fashioned speech in poetic plays long after other poetry had discarded such language. During this era a number of writers undertook to create poetic plays. Many of these men were poets and knew almost nothing of the requirements of the theatre.

As a result, some of their pieces became story plays with

very little plot and less action.

The pioneer work of William Vaughan Moody,

Josephine Preston Peabody and Percy MacKaye, however, did much to prepare the way for the later development of poetic plays.

The Period Between the World War and 1929 Poetic drama was not able to throw off the foreign yoke as completely as did other forms of literature, but a definite advance was made toward freedom.

The plays of this time followed three distinct patterns:

those

which were written after the traditional manner and reflected veiy little of the contemporary scene, those which were a definite mixture of the traditional and the m o d e m and those which, in a new and arresting fashion,

346

attempted to reveal the different phases of American life.

Changes of

definite importance were the development of the one-act play as a recog­ nized dramatic form, the expansion of the "Little Theatres," the growth of the college theatres and the development of community drama.

The

"Little Theatres" and the college theatres gave production to the majority of these one-act plays.

It is probably too early to evaluate this period,

but the future historian may say that the experimental work done in the theatres in producing such plays as James Oppehheim's Night, Wallace Steven's Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise and Cloyd Head's Grotesques paved the way for many new developments in both prose and poetic drama.

The Period from 1929 to 1942 For the first time during its history in America, poetic drama has begun to interpret the varied aspects of native life.

Due to the leadership

of Maxwell Anderson, it has also come to hold a place of respect in the theatre.

The fact that he had already written a number of successful prose

plays and understood the requirements of the theatre greatly aided him in creating verse plays to meet the needs of the stage.

His versatility in

regard to themes, his gift of writing poetry which contains many passages of imaginative and lofty grandeur, his ability in organizing his plots according to the requirements of the realistic play, his gift of character portrayal, all proclaim him one of our leading dramatists.

His influence

has been important in the field of prose drama and particularly in poetic drama.

34-7

This revival of poetic drama has influenced the creation of prose plays.

Many writers have introduced the fanciful, the symbolic, the

allegorical and the supernatural in realistic plays.

The success of

The Green Pastures, Our Town and On Borrowed Time

shows this trend.

These have been classified as poetic by some of the historians but, be­ cause they use prose as their form, they have not been so considered in this study. For the first time since 1900, the poet dramatist has become deeply interested in contemporary life and is trying to record that life in the themes, form and language of his plays.

He now takes the entire world as

his source book and chooses his themes wherever he wishes.

Ho longer

does he seem to feel that historical and romantic themes are the only proper subject for verse plays, though, of course, historical and romantic plays continue to be written.

Even these usually carry with them a reflection

of some phase of modern life. The .American poet dramatist has become greatly interested in fanciful and religious subjects.

There have been more plays of religion and fantasy

written during this period than those which are devoted to historical and romantic themes.

The Rock. Murder in the Cathedral and Journey to Jerusalem

show this interest in religion, while High Tor. Sea Wife and A Story of Dogtown Common illustrate themes dealing with fantasy. A writer finds himself today in a world of submerged people, chaotic political conditions and recurrent wars.

These conditions have challenged

the poet to present them intelligently and intrepret them clearly in plays

343

of social criticism.

Among the stage plays, The Cradle Will Rock is per­

haps the most violent, while among the radio plays Air Raid and They Fly Through the Air are two of the most influential. There have come many changes in the language and form of American poetic plays of this period. act form with scene divisions.

The majority of stage plays follows the threeArchibald MacLeish in Panic experimented

with continuous action and shifts in scene.

Practically all of the radio

plays are in one act and are to be performed in less than thirty minutes. Following the trends in other poetry, verse forms have become much more varied.

Modified blank verse has continued to be the form for the majority

of stage plays, yet it is often very irregular and the sense helps to dictate the lines.

There is a second verse pattern such as the experimental

poetry in Mr. MacLeish’s Panic and^Fall of the City. Other poets have followed his leadership and are developing a variety of forms.

At first

glance, their plays seem to be in free verse and entirely different from any­ thing that has come before, but a closer examination reveals much of the past remaining in their dramatic patterns.

The radio plays are usually written

in the new patterns of verse. A feature of the new verse drama is its varied use of words.

There has

been a definite revival of interest among the writers in the power of the spoken word.

The earlier dramatists were often willing to use stock words

and phrases, but the modern poets are continually seeking for words that convey the exact shade of meaning, for words that are colorful, for words that are musical.

34-9

No poet dramatist during this period has approached Maxwell Anderson in dramatic power.

T. S. Eliot, Archibald MacLeish, Norman

Corwin, Stanley Young, William Saroyan, Joseph Liss and others have also done worthwhile experimental work and have contributed their plays both to the theatre and to the microphone.

350

Play List and Bibliography Plays in Verse The following plays are those which have been used in this study. Akins, Zoe The Magical City. 1916 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey Judith of Bethulia.T 19 0 4 Anderson, Maxwell White Desert. 1923 Sea Wife. 1924 Elizabeth the Queen. 1930 Night Over Taos. 1932 Mary of Scotland. 1933 Valley Forge. 1934 Winterset. 1935 The Wingless Victory. 1937 High Tor. 1937 The Masque of Kings. 1937 Key Largo. 1939 Journey to Jerusalem. 1940 Feast of Ortolans (a radio play), 1939 Second Overture

(a radio play), 1939

Benet, Stephen Vincent The Headless Horseman (a radio play), 1939

351

Blitzstein, Marc The Cradle Will Rock. 1933 Bradford, Roark John Henry. 194-0 Branch, Anna Hempstead The Shoes that Danced (one act), 1905 Rose of the Wind (one act), 1910 Corwin, Norman They Fly Through the Air (a radio play), 1939 Seems Radio is Here to stay (a radio brochure), 1939 Words Without Music (a radio play), 1939 Dransfield, Jane The Lost Pleiad, 1910 Durham, Frank Fire of the Lord, 1937 Eliot, Thomas S. Murder in the Cathedral. 1936 The Rock. 1930 Family Reunion, 1939 Flexner, Hortense Voices (one act), 1916 Ficke, A. D. Mr. Faust. 1922

352

Goodrich, Arthur Gaponsacchi, 1923 Richelieu, 1924Hagedom, Hermann Heart of Youth. 1915 Head, Cloyd Grotesques (one act), 1916 Howard, Sidney Swords, 1921 Johnston, Mary Goddess of Reason (five acts), 1907 Kreymborg, Alfred Manikin and Miniken, 1918 Rocking Chairs. 1936 Planets (a radio play) Ballad of Youth (a radio play), 1938 The Four Apes and Other Fables of Our Day. 1939 (a series of ten plays for radio) Lee, Harry The Little Poor Man. 1922 Liss, Joseph A Story in Dogtown Common (a radio play),1937

353

MaeKaye, Percy The Canterbury Pilgrims. 1903 Fenris the Wolf. 1906 Jeanne J3'Arc. 1906 Sappho and Phaon. 1907 A Thousand Years Ago. 1914 Wakefield. 1932 The Evergreen Tree. 1917 Washington. The Man Who Made Us MacLeish, Archibald Panic, 1935 ‘JFall of the City (a radio play), 1937 Air Raid (a radio play), 1938 The States Talking (a radio play), 1940 Manley, William Ford Samson and Delilah (a radio play) Ishmael

(a

radio play)

Ruth (a radio play) Judith (a radio play) Merrick, Wrilliam Freedom is a Trumpet (a radio play), 1939 Millay, Edna St. Vincent Two Slatterns and a King. 1921 The Princess Marries a Page. 1922 The Lamp and the Bell. 1921

354

Moody, William Vaughan The Masque of Judgment, 1900 The Death of Eve, 1902 The Firebringer. 1904 Nusbaum N. Richard Parting at Imsdorf Oppenheim, James Night. 1920 Parker, Louis N. The Minuet. 1915 Peabody, Josephine Preston Fortune and Men's Eyes. 1900 Marlowe. 1901 The Wings. 1905 The Piper. 1909 The Wolf of Gubbio. 1913 Rice, Cale Young A Night in Avignon, 1907 Rosten, Norman Prometheus in Granada (a radio play), 1940 Saroyan, William A Special Announcement (a radio play), 1939

355

Schoenfield, Bernard What We Defend (a radio play), 1939 Stevens, Wallace Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise. 1916 Strickland, Dwight Legend of Dust (a radio play), 1933 Young, Stanley Robin Landing. 1938

3S6

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