Chapter X: Introduction: On the Reading of Plays (9)

Merely to tell a good story To paint a picture of life in the Arran Islands or in old France or in a modern industrial town To show us character and its development, as in novels like Thackeray's and Eliot's (Of course, brief plays like these cannot show development of character, but only critical points in such development--the result of forces perhaps long at work, or the awakening of new ideas and other determinants of character.) To portray a social situation, such as the relation between workmen and employers, or between men and women To show the inevitable effects of action and motive, as of the determined loyalty of Dugald Stewart and his mother, or the battle of fisher-folk or weavers with grinding poverty.

Of course, no play will probably do any one of these things exclusively, but usually each is concerned most with some one purpose.

What effect has the play on you? Even if its tragedy is painful or its account of human character makes you uncomfortable, is it good for you to realize these things, or merely uselessly unpleasant? Is the play stupidly and falsely cheering because it presents untrue "happy endings" or other distortions of things as they are? Do you think the play has merely temporary, or genuine and permanent, appeal?

NOTES ON THE DRAMAS AND THE DRAMATISTS

_Harold Chapin_: THE PHILOSOPHER OF BUTTERBIGGENS

Harold Chapin, as we learn from _Soldier and Dramatist_ (Lane, 1917), was an American both by ancestry and nativity. But he lived the greater part of his life in England, and died for England at Loos in April, 1915. His activity was always associated with the stage. When he was but seven years old he played the little Marcius to his mother's Volumnia at the Shakespeare Festival, at Stratford-on-Avon in 1893. In 1911 he produced Mr. Harold Brighouse's _Lonesome-Like_ and several of his own short plays at the Glasgow Repertory Theatre. For several years before the war he was Mr. Granville Barker's stage manager, and helped him to produce the beautiful Shakespearean plays at the Savoy Theatre in London.

Of Chapin's own dramas, _The New Morality_ and _Art and Opportunity_ have been given recently in New York and in London, and several of the one-act plays at a memorial performance in London in 1916, in matinée at the Punch and Judy Theatre, and before the Drama League in New York in March and April, 1921. Of the shorter plays, mentioned in the bibliographies following these notes, _It's the Poor that 'elps the Poor, The Dumb and the Blind, and The Philosopher of Butterbiggens_ have been given the highest praise by such critics as Mr. William Archer, who wrote, "No English-speaking man of more unquestionable genius has been lost to the world in this world-frenzy." These true and honest dramas represent the English Repertory theatres at their best in this brief form, and give promise of the great and permanently interesting "human comedy" which Chapin might have completed had his life not been sacrificed. In spite of the simplicity and lightness of the little play here given, there is more shrewd philosophy in old David Pirnie, and more real humanity in his family, than is to be found portrayed in many pretentious social dramas and difficult psychological novels. It is admirable on the stage, as was shown by the Provincetown Players last winter. In the memorial performance for Harold Chapin in London, the author's little son appeared in the part of wee Alexander.

"Butterbiggens," Mrs. Alice Chapin, the dramatist's mother, replied to an inquiry as to "what Butterbiggens is or are," "is, are, and always will be a suburb of Glasgow."

There is little difficulty with the modified Scots dialect in this play if one remembers that _ae_ generally takes the place of such sounds as _e_ in _tea_, _o_ in _so_, _a_ in _have_, and so on, and that _a'_ means _all_. A _wean_ is a small _bairn_, _yinst_ is _once_, _ava_ is _at all_, and _thrang_ is "thick" or intimate.

_Distempered_ means calcimined, or painted in water-dissolved color on the plaster.

_Lady Gregory_: SPREADING THE NEWS

In her notes on the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which she was most influential in building up, Lady Augusta Gregory says that it was the desire of the players and writers who worked there to establish an Irish drama which should have a "firm base in reality and an apex of beauty." This phrase, which admirably expresses the best in the play-making going on to-day, finds most adequate illustration in the work of Synge, of Yeats, and of Lady Gregory herself. The basis in reality of such jolly and robust comedies as her _Seven Irish Plays_ and _New Irish Comedies_ is clearly discernible. They are in the tradition of the best early English comedy, from the miracle plays onward; of Hans Sachs's _Shrovetide Plays_, and of Molière's dramatizations of medieaval _fabliaux_, as in _The Physician in Spite of Himself_. Lady Gregory describes in her notes on _Spreading the News_ how the play grew out of an idea of picturing tragic consequences from idle rumor and defamation of character. It is certainly not to be regretted that she allowed "laughter to have its way with the little play," and gave Bartley Fallon a share of glory from the woeful day to illuminate dull, older years.

The inhabitants of this same village of Cloon appear as old friends in other of Lady Gregory's plays, with, as usual, nothing to do but mind one another's business. In _The Jackdaw_ another absurd rumor is fanned into full blaze by greed; upon _Hyacinth Halvey_ works the potent and embarrassing influence of too good a reputation. Still other plays attain a notable height of beauty--notably _The Rising of the Moon_ and _The Traveling Man_. _The Gaol Gate_ tells a story similar to that of _Campbell of Kilmhor_, with genuinely tragic effect. She has written, besides, two volumes of Irish folk-history, _Gods and Fighting Men_ and _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, which Mr. Yeats calls masterpieces of prose which one "can weigh with Malory and feel no discontent at the tally."[1] A writer who has produced such range and beauty of works, from very human, characteristic comedy and farce to fine, poignant tragedy, besides writing excellent stories and contributing largely to an important experimental theatre, is secure of her share of fame.

The "Removable Magistrate" is apparently one appointed by British officialdom; this one, having just come from the Bay of Bengal, is going to fit upon the natives of Cloon methods which may have worked in a rather different district.

The song "with a skin on it," which Bartley sings, is given in Lady Gregory's _Seven Short Plays_ (Putnam, 1909).

[Footnote 1: Appendix to _The Poetical Works of William B. Yeats_, volume II, (Macmillan, 1912).]

_Winthrop Parkhurst_: THE BEGGAR AND THE KING

_The Beggar and the King_ looks at first like a pleasant absurdity; it is in reality valuable as a short history of the ostrich method of dealing with realities. The beggar, of course, continues to cry aloud after his tongue, and even his head, have been removed, because there are so many millions of him. Again and again, in the course of history, he has gathered desperate courage to defy authority that is blind and evil. Always at last, as in the French and the Russian revolutions and in the more recent European revolts, he succeeds in wresting the power from those in autocratic authority. And yet, just as of old, not only kings, but all others who attempt dictatorship and the playing of providence, try the simple tactics of the ostrich; they close the window, or their eyes and ears, as a sufficient answer to rebellion. Appreciating the futility of these methods, we have no difficulty in continuing the drama ourselves beyond the fall of the curtain.

Mr. Winthrop Parkhurst, by birth a New Yorker, according to a family tradition is a descendant on his mother's side of John Huss, the Bohemian reformer and martyr, and on his father's of the executioner of Charles I of England. His writings include _Maracca_, a Biblical one-act play, and several short satirical sketches.

_George Middleton_: TIDES

Mr. George Middleton generally pictures in his dramas problems which are not easy to solve. And he does not try to give ready-made solutions. He merely shows us how various people have tried to work these problems; and his dramas are like real life because the attempts at solutions fail as often as they succeed. Certain of the problems Mr. Middleton presents are such as high-school students meet and can well consider; several of these plays appear in the lists following. _Tides_ is about a man who has supported an unpopular theory. Nothing is said about whether his ideal is right or wrong, but it is clear that he has held to it in perfect sincerity of belief and has been quite unmoved by the bitterest persecution. But when he is offered honor and flattering respect, though he does not really change his belief and adherence, he compromises and partially surrenders his ideal. The fable is similar to that of Ibsen's _The League of Youth_, but the telling here is straighter and clearer. William White's self-deception is made evident to him and to us by his honest and courageous wife, who tells him frankly of it. "Haven't you sometimes noticed that is what bitterness to another means: a failure within oneself?" she comments wisely. An effective contrast is furnished by the son, who has altogether and honestly abandoned his father's theories in the face of new realities as he sees them.

_Eugene O'Neill_: ILE

Eugene O'Neill, American seaman, laborer, newspaperman, and dramatist, has been associated for several years with the Provincetown Players. This group, including Mrs. Glaspell and other playwrights of importance, gather in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, during the summer, and in winter present significant foreign and native plays in a converted stable on Macdougall Street in New York, where may be seen the ring to which Pegasus was once tethered! In 1919 Mr. O'Neill received the Pulitzer Prize for the most important American play of the year.

Mr. O'Neill has had experience of the sea, like the great Englishmen, Mr. Masefield and Mr. Joseph Conrad. He knows the interminable whaling voyages, as described in Melville's _Moby_ _Dick_ and the first chapter of _Typee_--best of all in Bullen's _Cruise of the Cachalot_. Out of this experience of hard life and harder men he has written many poignant and terrible dramas--perhaps the greatest this story of the skipper's wife who insisted on making the voyage with her husband and is worn to the edge of insanity by months of ice-bound solitude. The motive of Captain Keeney is like that which caused Skipper Ireson to leave his fellow townsmen to sink in Chaleur Bay. Against his iron determination his wife's piteous pleading and evident suffering are more potent than the mutinying hands; whether she can avail to turn him home "with a measly four hundred barrel of ile" is the problem of the play.

_J.A. Ferguson_: CAMPBELL OF KILMHOR

This tragic story of the war and hatred in Scotland belongs in the series of attempts made by Charles Edward Stuart and his father to regain the throne lost by James II in 1688. "The Young Pretender's" vigorous campaign in 1745, carried far into England, might easily have succeeded but for the quarrels and disaffection of the Highland chiefs who supported him. His failure was completed at the bloody battle of Culloden, or Drumossie Moor, in 1746, celebrated in Scottish story and song of lamentation. Scott's hero Waverley went into the highland country shortly after these uprisings, and David Balfour, in _Kidnapped_, had numerous adventures in crossing it with Allan Breck Stewart, who was in the service of his kinsmen, the exiled Stuarts. The hatred of Campbells and Stuarts, of Lowlander and Highlander, Loyalist and Jacobite, is intense throughout the record of those days.

The young Scot and his stanch and proudly tearless mother are, of course, the heroic characters in the play. We have a hint that Charles Edward Stuart himself is with the band whom the young man protects so loyally. It may seem strange that the drama is named, not for him, but for the crafty and pitiless executioner of the king's justice. But he is after all the most interesting character in the piece, with his Biblical references in broad Lowland Scots (we may suppose that the Stewarts speak Gaelic among themselves), his superstition, his remorseless cruelty. We should like to see how he takes the discovery that, perhaps for the first time, he has been baffled in his career of unscrupulous and bloody deeds!

This play represents the most successful work of the Glasgow Repertory Theatre in 1914. The author has written no others which have been published, though he is credited with a good story or two. It may be hoped that he will write other dramas as excellent as this one. He has put into very brief and effective form here the spirit and idea of a most intense period of merciless conflict.

A _kebbuck_ is a cheese; _keek_ means peek; _toom_, empty; a _besom_, a broom; and _soop_, sweep.

_John Galsworthy_: THE SUN

According to Professor Lewisohn and other critics Mr. Galsworthy is without question the foremost English dramatist to-day. Without arguing or attempting to offer solutions, he gives the most searching presentation of problems which we have to face and somehow settle. In _Strife_, after a furious contest and bitter hardships, the strike is settled by a compromise which the leaders of both sides count as failure. Things are much as they were at the start; the difficulty is no nearer solution. In _Justice_, "society stamps out a human life not without its fair possibilities--for eighty-one pounds," because obviously clear and guilty infraction of law cannot go unavenged. Justice is not condemned by the facts shown in this play, nor is its working extolled. In _The Mob_, the patrioteering element destroys a man who proclaims the injustice of a small and greedy war of conquest. In _The Pigeon_, brilliant debate is held, but no conclusion reached, as to what we should do with derelict and wasted lives, with men who do not fit into the scheme of success and society.

In his sketches and stories Mr. Galsworthy presents these same problems, and again without attempted conclusions. _The Freelands_ particularly is a most dramatic novel of conditions and results similar to those in some of the dramas mentioned above. Many of his sketches and essays also--for example, "My Distant Relative" in _The Inn of Tranquillity_ and "Comfort" in _A Commentary_--are of biting and almost cynical irony in viewing proposed and present solutions of problems; but none suggest panaceas. They merely make us think soberly of the size of our problems and their immense complexity, move us to go out to look for more information and to examine carefully our most solid institutions as well as suggested alterations in them.

A large part of Mr. Galsworthy's time and thought, both during the war and since, has been given to the problem of some measure of justice to soldiers, and particularly to wounded and broken soldiers. In _A Sheaf_ and _Another Sheaf_ appear various papers presenting sharply the conditions of suffering and neglect that actually exist. _The Sun_ is a brief sketch of after-war days,--this time of a wounded man who has gained an advantage over one who escaped injury,--and of joy in deliverance from the hell of war--a joy so profound and luminous that the released soldier cannot let a sharp mischance and disappointment mar his happiness. The whole piece is in the key of Captain Bassoon's verses after the Armistice:--

"Every one suddenly burst out singing."

The other two think the happy soldier mad. We are left wondering what the reaction will be from this height of joyful release to the harsh and sombre conditions of workingmen's life after the peace.

The _silver badge_ represents a discharge for wounds. _Crumps_ are, of course, shells.

_Louise Sounders_: THE KNAVE OF HEARTS

_The Knave of Hearts_ is one of the happy tradition of puppet-plays, which come down in unbroken line from the most ancient history, through the illustrious Dr. Faustus and Mr. Punch, to new and even greater favor and fame to-day. For just as the ancient puppet-shows of Italy and England seemed to be losing ground before the moving-picture invasion, they have been heroically rescued by Mr. Tony Sarg,--whose performance of Thackeray's _The Rose and the Ring_ is perfectly absurd and captivating,--and by other excellent artists.

Puppet-shows are delightful because they are easily made and quite convincing. Very good ones have been improvised even by tiny children, with a pasteboard suit-box opening to the front, a slit at the top to let down paper-doll actors on a thread, a bit of scenery, outdoors or in, drawn as background, and a showman to talk for all the characters. Still better puppets are doll heads and arms of various sorts, dressed in flowing robes and provided with holes for two fingers and a thumb of the operator, who moves them from below. They can be made to dance and antic as you like on a stage above the showman's head, as Punch and Judy have always done. The more elaborate marionettes are worked with strings from above, so that they can open and close their mouths and otherwise act most realistically; these are, of course, more difficult, but quite possible to make. In such simple theatres, Goethe and Robert Louis Stevenson and many other famous people played themselves endless stories. If you want to pursue this idea further, a list of references below gives you opportunity for all the information you like about marionettes and puppets.

_The Knave of Hearts_ is charming, either as a puppet-play or, as a class in junior high school gave it recently, a "legitimate drama." The remarks of the manager are all the funnier when applied to real characters. The play explains clearly the reasons for the strange behavior of a respectable nursery character. It is to be published soon in a book of its own with illustrations by Mr. Maxfield Parrish (Scribner's). The author has written other plays and stories, some of which you may have seen in _St. Nicholas_, and also a pleasant operetta, with music by Alice Terhune--_The Woodland_ _Princess_, listed in the bibliography following. She is also an actress with the New York Comedy Club, an excellent amateur organization.

Pompdebile's coat of arms, with a heart rampant (i.e., standing on its hind legs, however that may be accomplished), reminds one of the arms suggested for the old clergyman-scholar, Mr. Casaubon, in George Eliot's _Middlemarch_--"three cuttlefish sable and a commentator rampant."

_Lord Dunsany_: FAME AND THE POET

Lord Dunsany (Edward Moreton Max Plunkett), the eighteenth baron of his name, is the author of a number of stories and plays unique in their type of clever imaginativeness. Besides the inimitable Five Plays and other dramas listed in the bibliography, his best writings are to be found in _Fifty-One Tales_, which includes "The Hen," "Death and Odysseus," "The True Story of the Hare and the Tortoise," and other highly entertaining matters. _Fame and the Poet_, originally published in the _Atlantic_, has been recently produced with good effect by the Harvard Dramatic Club. Fame's startling revelation to her faithful worshiper of her real nature and attributes is naturally most distressing--even more so, perhaps, than the rendezvous which this same goddess appointed another poet, in the _Fifty-One Tales_: "In the cemetery back of the workhouse, after a hundred years."

Lord Dunsany was a captain in the First Royal Iniskilling Fusileers--a regiment mentioned in Sheridan's _Saint Patrick's Day_--and saw service in Syria and the Near East as well as on the western front. He was wounded on April 25, 1916, in Flanders. Since the war he has visited the United States and seen a performance of his _Tents of the Arabs_ at the Neighborhood Playhouse, New York City.

_Beulah Marie Dix_: THE CAPTAIN OF THE GATE

Miss Dix is author of several plays--in addition to those from _Allison's Lad_ included in the play-list, of _Across the Border_, and, with the late Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, of the frequently acted _Rose of Plymouth Town_. She has also written several favorite historical stories, including _Merrylips. The Captain of the Gate_ is a tragedy of Cromwell's ruthless devastation of Ireland. The determined and heroic captain surrenders, to face an ignominious death, to keep his word and ensure delaying the advance of the enemy upon an unprepared countryside, and his courage inspires exhausted and failing men to like heroism. This is an effective piece of dramatic presentation.

_Percy Mackaye_: GETTYSBURG

Mr. Percy Mackaye has been most active in the movement for a community theatre in the United States and for the revival of pageantry. He contends rightly that this development might be one of the strongest possible influences for true Americanism, and his dramatic work has all been directed toward such a theatre. Most notable are his pageants and masques, particularly _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_, for the Shakespeare Tercentenary; his play _The Scarecrow_, a lively dramatization of Hawthorne's _Feathertop_; his opera _Rip van Winkle_, for which Reginald De Koven composed music; and _The Canterbury Pilgrims_, in which the Wife of Bath is the heroine of further robustious adventures. Mr. Mackaye is also translator, with Professor Tablock, of the _Modern Reader's Chaucer_. The little sketch presented here is taken from a volume of _Yankee Fantasies_, in which various observations of past and present New England life are recorded. Stephen Crane's _The Red Badge of Courage_, a powerful story of the Civil War, is a most excellent help to realizing what the boy Lige really endured in those days of battle.

Mr. Mackaye has adopted here a regularly rhythmic verse without the conventional capital letters at the beginnings of lines --perhaps to typify the simple homeliness of the talk.

_Harold Brighouse_: LONESOME-LIKE

Mr. Brighouse has been best represented in this country by an excellent comedy, _Hobson's Choice_, which was widely played and was printed in the Drama League series of plays (1906). His other best-known work here is the present play, and _The Price of Coal_ (1909), a picturing of the hard life of miners' wives and their Spartan firmness in expectation of fatal accidents. He has produced and published a number of other plays, among them those listed in the bibliography. Mr. Brighouse represents in this volume the work of the English Repertory theatres, which parallel the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the Glasgow Repertory Theatre, and various European stage-societies. That at Manchester, with which he has been associated, is directed by Miss Isabel Horniman, has seen beautiful stage-settings designed by Mr. Robert Burne-Jones, and counts among its dramatists such well-known men as Messrs. Allan Monkhouse, author of _Mary Broome_, a sombre and powerful tragedy; Stanley Houghton, and Gilbert Cannan. The Liverpool Theatre has become even more famous through the dramatic work of Mr. John Drinkwater. The Little Theatre movement in this country, our Drama League, and the various dramatic societies in our colleges and cities are our nearest parallel to these repertory theatres.

_Lonesome-Like_, Mr. Brighouse's most effective short play, is written in a modified Lancashire dialect, the speech of the village weavers and spinners. Many of the words are English of Elizabethan days and earlier, derived mostly from Anglo-Saxon.

_Gradely_ (graithly) means willingly, meekly or decently; _clem_ means starve; _sithee_ is see you or look you; _clogs_ are shoes with wooden soles and leather uppers, and _dungarees_, garments of coarse cotton cloth rather like overalls. _A_ is used throughout for _I_.

As in many English stories, an extreme and painful dread of the _workus_, or poorhouse, provides a strong motive force.

_John Millington Synge_: RIDERS TO THE SEA

The work of the Irish Renaissance in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin reached its most powerful and tragic height in this tragedy, which Mr. Yeats compared to the Antigone and (Edipus of Sophocles). Synge at first wandered about Europe, poetizing; it was Yeats who brought him back to study and embody in genuine literature the poetry of life among his own people. On the bleak Arran Islands he lived in a fisherman's cottage, and through the floor of his room heard the dialect which he presents in simple and poignant beauty in this drama of hopeless struggle. The "second sight"--called "the gift" in _Campbell of Kilmhor_, and an incident also in _The Riding to Lithend_--was a sort of prophetic vision altogether credited among Celtic peoples, as among those of Scott's _Lady of the Lake_. When the mother sees the "riders to the sea,"--her drowned son and her living son riding together,--she feels convinced that he must soon die. The sharp cries of her grief and, above all, the peace of her resignation at the end, after all hope is gone, make this, as a writer in the _Manchester Guardian_ is quoted as calling it, "the tragic masterpiece of our language in our time; wherever it has been in Europe, from Galway to Prague, it has made the word tragedy mean something more profoundly stirring and cleansing to the spirit than it did."

The speech of the people is not difficult to understand when you master a few of its peculiarities. One is the omission of words we generally include, as in, "Isn't it a hard and cruel man (who) won't hear...." Another is the common form "It was crying I was." A few phrases, like _what way_ for how, _the way_ for so that, _in it_ for here or near, and _itself_ for even, or with no particular meaning, as "Where is he itself?" The meanings of other words will be easily untangled.

_William Butler Yeats_: THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE

Mr. Yeats's best poetic dramas, and particularly this one, represent beyond question that "apex of beauty" to which Lady Gregory spoke of the Abbey Theatre dramatists as aspiring. This play is not founded on any particular Irish folk-tale. It is filled with the half-dread, half-envy with which the tellers of Irish legends seem to regard the fate of mortals bewitched by the Leprechaun or Good People. It is rich, too, with the music of beautiful words, without which, Mr. Yeats contends no play can be "of a great kind." He says too, "There is no poem so great that a fine speaker cannot make it greater, or that a bad ear cannot make it nothing."

Mr. Yeats has written broad comedy like Synge's _Shadow of the Glen_ and Lady Gregory's _Irish Comedies_; his _Pot of Broth_ is a most clever retelling of an old, comical tale. But it is by his mystical and poetical plays that he would be judged as playwright and poet--particularly _Deirdre_, which should be compared with Synge's _Deirdre of the Sorrows_; _The Unicorn of the Stars_, written in collaboration with Lady Gregory; _Cathleen Ni Hoolihan_, a dramatization of the spirit of Ireland; _The King's Threshold_, a high glorification of the poet's art, with a fable, based on an ancient Celtic rite, of the hunger strike; and _The Land of Heart's Desire_, most beautifully perfect of all.

_Gordon Bottomley_: THE RIDING TO LITHEND

"_The Riding to Lithend_ is an Icelandic play taken out of the noblest of the Sagas," wrote Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie in his review of the published drama in 1909. "[It] is a fight, one of the greatest fights in legend.... The subject is stirring, and Mr. Bottomley takes it into a very high region of poetry, giving it a purport beyond that of the original teller of the tale.... [The play] is not a representation of life; it is a symbol of life. In it life is entirely fermented into rhythm, by which we mean not only rhythm of words, but rhythm of outline also; the beauty and impressiveness of the play do not depend only on the subject, the diction, and the metre, but on the fact that it has distinct and most evident form, in the musician's sense of the word. It is one of those plays that reach the artist's ideal condition of music, in fact."

This is high praise; but who, after studying the play, will doubt that it is deserved? The powerfully moving events of the story indeed lead up to the climax in a forthright and exciting manner. The terror of the house-women and the thrall, the fearful love of Gunnar's mother Rannveig, and the caution of Kolskegg his brother, who "sailed long ago and far away from us" in obedience to the doom or sentence of the Thing--all these bring out sharply the quite reckless daring of Gunnar himself, who braves the decree. A mysterious and epic touch is added by the three ancient hags-evidently of these minor Norns who watch over individual destinies and announce the irrevocable doom of the gods. It was Hallgerd who broke their thread, representing, of course, Gunnar's span of life.

The centre of interest, as well as the spring of the action, is clearly Hallgerd, descendant of Sigurd Fafnirsbane and of Brynhild--

... a hazardous desirable thing,
A warm unsounded peril, a flashing mischief,
A divine malice, a disquieting voice.

She, and not any superstitious belief in "second-sight" and death decreed, is the cause of Gunnar's remaining outlawed. She wrangles about the headdress, not because she particularly wants it, but to send her husband on a perilous mission to secure it. She says openly that she has "set men at him to show forth his might ... planned thefts and breakings of his word" to stir him to battle. Mr. Abercrombie believes that "She loves her husband Gunnar, but she refuses to give him any help in his last fight, in order that she may see him fight better and fiercer." We should, then, have to suppose that her amazing speech at his death--

O clear sweet laughter of my heart, flow out!
It is so mighty and beautiful and blithe
To watch a man dying--to hover and watch--

is not for the blow Gunnar had given her when she "planned thefts and breakings of his word," but is rather, as the lines powerfully indicate, the exultation of a descendant of the Valkyrie watching above the battlefields.

Really poetical plays--plays which are both poetic and strongly dramatic--are indeed exceedingly rare. Mr. Bottomley is one of the few who have produced such drama in English. For many years he printed his work privately, in beautiful editions for his friends; but of late several of the plays have been made available--_King Lear's Wife in Georgian Poetry_, 1913-15, and in a volume of the same title, including _Midsummer Eve_ and _The Riding to Lithend_, published in London last year.

Those who want more stories of this sort will find them in _Thorgils_ and other Icelandic stories modernized by Mr. Hewlett; in the _Burnt Njal_, translated by Sir George Dasent, from which this story itself springs; and in the translations by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris, the _Saga Library_--particularly the stories of the Volsungs and Nibelungs, and of Grettir the Strong.

_louvre_--a smoke-hole in the roof

_thrall_--a captive or serf

_bill_--a battle-ax

_second sight_--prophetic vision, as in _Riders to the Sea_ and _Campbell of Kilmhor_

_fetch_--one's double; seeing it is supposed to be a sign that one is _fey_ or fated to die

_wimpled_--"clouted up," as Hallgerd expresses it, in a headdress rather like a nun's. A widow, apparently, might wear her hair uncovered

_byre_--cow-barn

_midden_--manure

_quean_--in Middle-English, a jade; in Scotch, a healthy lass; the history of this word and of _queen_, which come from the same root, is strange and interesting

_ambry_--press

_Romeborg_--Rome; _Mickligarth_--Constantinople (Viking names)

_Athcliath_--evidently an Irish port

_mumpers_--beggars

_Markfleet_--a _fleet_ in an inlet of the sea

_mote or gemote_--a formal assembly for making laws

_thing_--assembly for judgment, or parliament; this is an early Icelandic meaning of the word _thing_

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PLAYS FOR READING IN HIGH SCHOOLS

+Thomas Bailey Aldrich+

MERCEDES: A tragic story of the inextinguishable hatreds and reprisals of the French invasion of Spain in 1810, and of a woman's terrible heroism.

In _Collected Works_, Houghton Mifflin.

PAULINE PAVLOVNA: Cleverly executed, slight plot in dialogue, wherein the character of the hero is sharply revealed; reminiscent of Browning's _In a Balcony_, though with a quite different scheme.

_Ibid._

+Mary Austin+

THE ARROW-MAKER: The tragedy of a noble medicine-woman of a tribe of California Indians, and of a weak and selfish chief.

Duffield.

+Granville Barker+

Rococo: In which we discover a clergyman and his relatives in physical altercation over a rococo vase, and follow their dispute to a determinative conclusion.

Sidgwick and Jackson, London.

VOTE BY BALLOT: A drama of English elections and the forces involved.

Sidgwick and Jackson.

THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE: The inheritance is a dishonored name and a dishonest business.

In _Three Plays_, Sidgwick and Jackson.

+Granville Barker and Dion Calthorpe+

HARLEQUINADE: Its development from the days of Persephone, Momus, and Charon is displayed and explained by Alice and her uncle.

Sidgwick and Jackson.

+James Barrie+

THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON: In the struggle for existence on a desert island, the family butler provides the brains and safety for an English family; the party is then rescued, and returns to the impeccable conventions of London.

Scribner's, New York; Hodder and Stoughton, London.

ALICE SIT-BY-THE FIRE: A mother with keen insight and a delightful sense of humor has to deal with a serious attack of romantic imagination in her very young daughter, who feels responsible for the conduct of the family.

Scribner's; Hodder and Stoughton.

THE OLD LADY SHOWS HER MEDALS: Mrs. Dowie, a charwoman who has resorted to desperate remedies in order to have some part in the war, goes through an agonizing crisis of exposure, into real joy and sharp sorrow. The rich humor of the characters makes this quite unique among plays of its type.

In _Echoes of the War_, Scribner's.

THE WELL-REMEMBERED VOICE.

_Ibid._

PETER PAN: A charming fairy drama of the baby from the Never-Never Land and of his make-believe play with his friends in the nursery.

Scribner's.

THE TWELVE-POUND LOOK: On the eve of achieving knighthood the hero suffers a startling disclosure which leads him to look suspiciously for the "twelve-pound look" in his lady's eyes.

In _Half-Hours_, Scribner's.

WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS: As we behold the creation of John Shand's career by Maggie his wife, who lacks charm, and particularly as we observe her campaign against a woman fully possessed of charm, we want to learn "what every woman knows." The secret is enlightening.

Scribner's.

+Lewis Beach+

BROTHERS, A SARDONIC COMEDY: Two "poor whites" quarrel violently over a worthless inheritance, and then combine in arson to prevent their mother from getting it: a disquieting and searching study of depths of shiftlessness and passionate meanness.

In _Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays_, edited by Frank Shay and Pierre S. Loving. Frank Shay.

THE CLOD: A powerful drama of the flare-up of a stolid and apparently unfeeling nature in the flame of the pity and horror of war.

In _Washington Square Plays_, Doubleday.

+Jacinto Benavente+

HIS WIDOW'S HUSBAND: An absurd comedy of the small gossip and rigid conventions in a Spanish provincial capital. (Translated by John Garrett Underhill.)

In Plays, _First Series_, Scribner's.

+Arnold Bennett+

A GOOD WOMAN: A farcical triangular plot with particularly good comic characters.

In _Polite Farces_, Doran.

THE STEPMOTHER: Satirical presentment of a lady novelist, her efficient secretary, and her stepson, not to mention the doctor downstairs; amusing studies in character.

_Ibid._

THE GREAT ADVENTURE: Good dramatization of the astounding adventures of Priam Farll (from _Buried Alive_), who attends his own funeral in Westminster Abbey, marries a young and suitable widow with whom his late valet has corresponded through a matrimonial bureau, and meets other amazing situations.

Doran.

THE TITLE: A delightful comedy in which several people who have denounced the disgraceful awarding of English titles have a bad time of it with Mrs. Culver, who does not propose to let slip the opportunity of being called "My Lady." You can probably guess which side wins in the end.

Doran.

+Gordon Bottomley+

KING LEAR'S WIFE: An episode in King Lear's earlier years, which throws much imaginative light on Goneril's and Cordelia's later treatment of their father. Lear's wife herself, as we might have guessed, is a pathetic figure.

Constable, London; also in _Georgian Poetry_, 1913-15.

MIDSUMMER EVE: Several farm maidservants meet to see their future lovers' spirits on Midsummer Eve, but see only the "fetch" or double of one of them, foretelling her death.

In _King Lear's Wife and Other Plays_, Constable.

+Anna Hempstead Branch+

ROSE OF THE WIND: A fairy play of the dancing and allurement of bewitched slippers, and of other wonders.

Houghton Mifflin.

+Harold Brighouse+

THE DOORWAY: A sharp and cruel picture of unsheltered people on a freezing night in London.

Joseph Williams, London.

THE GAME: A cocksure and triumphant girl meets more than her match in an old peasant woman, the mother of the man she wants to marry.

In Three Lancashire Plays, Samuel French.

HOBSON'S CHOICE: In which the eldest daughter at Hobson's plays a winning game against her tyrannous father and superior-feeling sisters, using a quite excellent but disregarded piece.

Constable, London; Doubleday, New York.

MAID OF FRANCE: An effective play in which Joan of Arc lays aside her old hate for the English soldiers, whom she discovers on French soil again.

Gowans and Gray, Glasgow.

THE OAK SETTLE

Gowans and Gray.

THE PRICE OF COAL: Picturing the stoical and terrible resignation to peril of death of old women in the coal regions--and presenting an unexpected ending.

Gowans and Gray.

+Harold Brock+

THE BANK ACCOUNT: A small but poignant tragedy of the savings-account which a clerk has counted upon to free him after many years of drudgery, and which he has entrusted to his stupid and vulgar and cheaply frivolous wife.

In Harvard Dramatic Club Plays, First Series, Brentano's.

+Alice Brown+

JOINT OWNERS IN SPAIN: The two most refractory inmates of an Old Ladies' Home have to face and solve the problem of living in the same room.

Walter H. Baker.

+Witter Bynner+

THE LITTLE KING: A delineation of the cruel suffering and the dauntless courage of the small Louis XVII; he refuses to be cowed by the bullying of his keeper or to let a poor boy assume his fate.

Kennerley.

+George Calderon+ idealized him meanwhile that her realization of the altered situation brings an astounding reaction.

Sidgwick and Jackson.

+Margaret Cameron+

THE TEETH OF THE GIFT HORSE: A pleasant farce built about two huge and hideous hand-painted vases and a charming little old lady who perpetrated them.

French.

+Gilbert Cannan+

EVERYBODY'S HUSBAND: Three generations of ladies discuss the individual characteristics of their husbands, but find them, after all, indistinguishable men.

Seeker, London.

JAMES AND JOHN: They are faced with their invalid mother's request that they crown many years of tedious sacrifice and atonement for their father's weak crime by taking him into their lives again.

In _Four Plays_, Sidgwick and Jackson.

MARY'S WEDDING: Bill's mother tries in vain to dissuade Mary from the certain and inescapable misery of marrying her drunkard son. Bill himself settles the problem.

_Ibid._

A SHORT WAY WITH AUTHORS: An entertaining farce showing how a great actor-manager goes about encouraging serious dramatic composition.

_Ibid._

+Harold Chapin+

AUGUSTUS IN SEARCH OF A FATHER: He returns from abroad and discusses with a night-watchman the problem of his search for his father.

THE LITTLE STONE HOUSE: A mother has denied herself everything to build a small mausoleum to her dead son, and so Gowans and Gray.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE COFFEE STALLS: A strange character with an astonishing history is shown us in the night-light from a refreshment wagon in London streets.

Gowans and Gray.

THE DUMB AND THE BLIND: A study of a bargeman's family in London tenements. Mr. William Archer calls this "a veritable masterpiece in its way--a thing Dickens would have delighted in.... We feel that the dumb has spoken and the blind has seen."

Gowans and Gray; forthcoming, French, New York.

IT'S THE POOR THAT 'ELPS THE POOR: Of the simple kindliness of London costermongers and their neighborly help and sympathy.

French.

MUDDLE ANNIE: Of course, it is "Muddle Annie" who helps their friend the policeman save the more suave and self-satisfied members of her family from a precious rogue.

Gowans and Gray.

THE THRESHOLD: Tells of a Welsh girl about to elope with a specious rascal, and of the intervention of her old father, who is killed in a mine accident.

Gowans and Gray; forthcoming, French.

COMEDIES.

Chatto and Windus, London.

+Colin Clements and John M. Saunders, translators+

LOVE IN A FRENCH KITCHEN: A comical medieaval French farce. Jacquinot endures a miserable compound tyranny of petticoats until matters are brought to a head by cumulative injustice and the intervention of accident.

In _Poet Lore_ (1917), 28:722.

+Padraic Colum+

MOGU THE WANDERER: Pageantesque and dramatic story of the rise of a beggar to be the king's vizier, and of as sudden and entire reversal of fortunes.

Little, Brown.

THOMAS MUSKERRY: The tragic story of a poorhouse-keeper who repeats Lear's error of letting go his cherished power, and who suffers as keenly a more humble tragedy.

Maunsell, Dublin.

+Rachel Crothers+

HE AND SHE: A woman's designs win over those of her husband, who has the greater reputation, a large competitive award for a piece of sculpture; but she declines the commission in face of nearer and higher responsibilities.

In Quinn's _Representative American Plays_, Century.

+Windsor P. Daggett and Winifred Smith+

LELIO AND ISABELLA: A COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE: The story of Romeo and Juliet, as the foremost players of the Italian Comedy of Masks may have given it in seventeenth-century Paris--with an ending of their choice. An interesting study in the type.

In manuscript: N.L. Swartout, Summit, N.J.

+H.H. Davies+

THE MOLLUSC: Clever study of a woman who is a mollusc--not merely lazy, since she is capable of huge exertions to avoid being disturbed; she finds plenty of opposition to show forth her powers upon.

Baker.

+Thomas H. Dickinson+

IN HOSPITAL: A poignant small dialogue of a husband and wife who meet courageously the threatened shipwreck of their happiness.

In _Wisconsin Plays, First Series_, B.W. Huebsch.

+Beulah M. Dix+

ALLISON'S LAD: A Cavalier lad, about to be shot as a spy, is seized by terror, but dies bravely, "as if strong arms were around him."

In _Allison's Lad and Other Martial Interludes_, Holt.

THE DARK OF THE DAWN: Colonel Basil Tollocho spares a boy he has sworn to destroy in revenge of a great wrong, and is made glad of his clemency.

_Ibid._

THE HUNDREDTH TRICK: Con of the Hundred Tricks takes fearfully stern measures against possible betrayal of his cause.

_Ibid._

+Beulah Marie Dix and Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland+

ROSE O'PLYMOUTH TOWN: A pleasant play of Puritans and their neighbors.

Dramatic Publishing Company.

+Oliphant Down+

THE MAKER OF DREAMS: Poetical small play in which love appears with a new make-up but in the old role.

Gowans and Gray.

+Ernest Dowson+

THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE: A quite charming tale of Pierrot and the Moon-Maiden.

In his _Collected Poems_, Lane.

+John Drinkwater+

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A dramatic presentation of episodes in Lincoln's life, from his nomination to the presidency to his death.

Sidgwick and Jackson; Houghton Mifflin.

COPHETUA: In which King Cophetua justifies to his court and councillors his marriage to the beggar maid.

Sidgwick and Jackson; Houghton Mifflin.

THE STORM: An intense but quiet tragedy of a woman who waits while men search for her husband, lost in a great storm in the hills.

In _Four Poetic Plays_, Houghtou Mifflin; _Pawns_, Sidgwick and Jackson.

THE GOD or QUIETNESS: The zest of war draws away all the notable worshipers of the god of quietness, and an angry war-lord slays the god himself.

_Ibid._

X-O: A NIGHT OF THE TROJAN WAR: Trojans and Greeks, lovers of poetry, fellowship, and justice, carry on ruthless slaughter, and by irreparable losses strike a balance of exact advantage to either side.

_Ibid._

+Lord Dunsany+

THE GODS OF THE MOUNTAIN: Of seven beggars who wear pieces of green silk beneath their rags, and by brilliant devices of Agmar, their leader, contrive to be taken for the gods of the mountain disguised as beggars--until the real gods leave their thrones at Manna.

In _Five Plays_, Richards, London; Little, Brown.

KING ARGFMENES AND THE UNKNOWN WABBIOR: A slave, born a king, finds an old bronze sword buried in the ground he is tilling, and henceforward has less interest in the bones of the king's dog, who is dying.

_Ibid._

THE GOLDEN DOOM: A child's scrawl on the palace pavements furnishes the text for the soothsayers' prophecy of disaster.

_Ibid._

THE LOST SILK HAT: Of the embarrassment of a rejected suitor who, in his agitation, has left his hat in the lady's drawing-room and dislikes the idea of returning for it.

_Ibid._

THE QUEEN'S ENEMIES: They are invited to a feast of reconciliation in the great banquet room below the level of the river.

In _Plays of Gods and Men._ Unwin, London; J.W. Luce, Boston.

A NIGHT AT AN INN: A commonplace ancient plot is filled anew with dramatic terror and a sense of mystery.

_Ibid._

+Edith M.O. Ellis (Mrs. Havelock Ellis)+

THE SUBJECTION OF KEZIA: Joe Pengilly, a Cornish villager, is finally convinced that strong measures toward her subjection are alone capable of keeping his wife's love, and buys a stout cane. We learn how he fared in carrying these measures out.

In _Love in Danger_, Houghton Mifflin.

+St. John Ervine+

FOUR IRISH PLAYS:

MIXED MARRIAGE: A tragedy of the violent hatreds of Ulster.

Maunsell.

THE ORANGEMAN: A comic study of the petty madness of the same hatreds.

Maunsell.

THE CRITICS: Dramatic critics furiously condemn a play at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Gradually we discover the idea of the play through their abuse, and at last we recognize it.

Maunsell.

JANE CLEGG: A strong and clear-sighted, honest woman has to deal with a feeble and braggart husband whose foolish crime threatens to wreck her own and her children's lives.

Sidgwick and Jackson.

+Rachel Lyman Field+

THREE PILLS IN A BOTTLE: Fantastic play of a little sick boy who gives the medicine that was to have made him strong to feeding the starved and abused souls of various passers-by.

In _Plays of the 47 Workshop_, First Series, Brentano's.

+Anatole France+

THE MAN WHO MARRIED A DUMB WIFE: A mad and comic farce, in the tradition of _Pierre Patelin_ and _The Physician in Spite of Himself_. Judge Botal calls in a learned physician and his aides to make his dumb wife speak. The result is so astoundingly successful that he pleads for relief. Finally a desperate remedy is found.

Translated by Curtis Hidden Page, Lane, 1915.

+J.O. Francis+

CHANGE: The tragic conflict of ideals of two generations which have grown irreparably apart in social and economic views.

Educational Publishing Company, Cardiff; Doubleday, New York.

+Zona Gale+

THE NEIGHBORS: Kindliness called forth among village people to aid a poor seamstress who is to undertake the care of her orphan nephew.

In _Wisconsin Plays, First Series_, B.W. Huebsch.

MISS LULU BETT: A starved life blossoms suddenly and unexpectedly. This play, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for 1920, is stronger and finer work than the author has done heretofore.

Appleton (in novel form).

+John Galsworthy+

THE ELDEST SON: Sir William Cheshire comes to quite different solutions of similar problems when different individual and class factors enter into them.

Scribner's.

JUSTICE: Mr. Ludwig Lewisohn writes: "The economic structure of society on any basis requires the keeping of certain compacts. It cannot endure such a breaking of these compacts as Falder is guilty of when he changes the figures on the cheque. Yet by the simple march of events it is overwhelmingly proven that society here stamps out a human life not without its fair possibilities-- for eighty-one pounds."

Scribner's.

THE LITTLE MAN: Brilliant caricature of various national types of tourist, and absurd apotheosis of the Little Man, of no particular nation and of insignificant appearance, who proves quietly capable of doing what the rest discuss.

Scribner's.

THE MOB: The reply of the hysterical and "patrioteering" members of his own class, and of the many-headed rage, to a man who stood against an unjust war.

Scribner's.

THE PIGEON: A discussion of social misfits and mavericks, with, of course, no attempted panacea or solution.

Scribner's.

THE SILVER Box:

"Jones: Call this justice? What about 'im? 'E got drunk! 'E took the purse--'E took the purse, but (_in a muffled shout_) it's 'is money got '_im_ off! _Justice_!

"The Magistrate: We will now adjourn for lunch." (Act II.)

In _Plays, First Series_, Scribner's, 1916.

STRIFE: In the strike the leaders of the men and of the employers are stanch against compromise, but "the strong men with strong convictions are broken. The second-rate run the world through half-measures and concessions." (Lewisohn.)

_Ibid._

+Louise Ayers Garnett+

MASTER WILL OF STRATFORD: A pleasant drama of Will Shakespeare's boyhood. Compare Landor's "Citation and Examination of Will Shakespeare for Deer-Stealing."

Macmillan.

+Alice Gerstenberg+

OVERTONES: While two women are conversing politely, they are attended by their real, unconventional selves, who interrupt to say what the women actually think and mean. Compare Ninah Wilcox Putnam's _Orthodoxy_ (_Forum_, June, 1914, 51:801), in which everyone in church says what he is thinking instead of what is proper and expected.

In _Washington Square Plays_, Doubleday.

+Giuseppa Giacosa+

THE RIGHTS OF THE SOUL: Anna is sternly loyal to her husband Paolo, but refuses to submit to his incessant prying into her individuality and questioning of her thoughts and her feelings.

Frank Shay.

THE WAGER: "Sentimental comedy, poetic and graceful, by one of the greatest contemporary Italian dramatists."

Barrett H. Clark, translator. French.

+W.S. Gilbert+

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN: A most absurd parody on Hamlet, wherein a lamentable tragedy written and repented by his uncle the king is unearthed and turned to the sad prince's undoing.

In _Original Plays_, Scribner's.

ENGAGED

PRINCESS IDA

+William Gillette+

SECRET SERVICE: A most intense situation in Richmond during the Civil War, ably handled by a quiet and brilliant Northern secret-service man; weakened by a manufactured happy ending.

French.

+Susan Glaspell+

TRIFLES: Two women, by noting the significant trifles which the sheriff and the attorney overlook, discover the story of suffering which led to a crime. Speaking of their neglect of neighborly kindness, one says, "That's a crime too, and who's going to punish that?"

In _Washington Square Plays_.

+Lady Gregory+

IRISH FOLK-HISTORY PLAYS: