The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays Part 1

The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays.

by Various.

FOREWORD

We are at present in the midst of a bewildering quant.i.ty of play-publication and production. The one-act play in particular, chiefly represented in this volume, appears to be taking the place of that rather squeezed sponge, the short story, in the favor of the reading public. Of course, this tendency has its reaction in schoolrooms. One even hears of high-school cla.s.ses which attempt to keep up with the entire output of such dramas in English readings. If this is not merely an apologue, it is certainly a horrible example. The bulk of current drama, as of published matter generally, is not worthy the time of the English cla.s.s. Only what is measurably of rank, in truth and fineness, with the literature which has endured from past times can be defended for use there. And we have too much that is both well fitted to young people's keen interest and enjoyment, and beautifully worthy as well, for time to be wasted upon the third- and fourth-rate.

Obviously, much of the best in modern play-writing has not been included in this volume. Because of copyright complications the works of Mr. Masefield, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Drinkwater, and Sir James Barrie are not here represented. The plays by these writers that seem best fitted to use by teachers and pupils in high schools, together with a large number of other dramas for this purpose, are listed and annotated at the back of the book. Suggestions as to desirable inclusions and omissions will be welcomed by the editor and the publishers.

Following in their own way the lead of the Theatre Libre in Paris and the Freie Buhne in Germany, and of the Independent and the Repertory theatres in Great Britain, numerous "little theatres"

and drama a.s.sociations in this country are giving impulsion and direction to the movement for finer drama and more excellent presentation. The Harvard dramatic societies, the Morningside Players at Columbia, Mr. Alex Drummond's Community Theatre at the State Fair in Ithaca, the Little Country Theatre at Fargo, South Dakota, and similar groups at the University of California and elsewhere, ill.u.s.trate the leadership of the colleges. In many high schools, as at South Bend, Indiana, more or less complete Little Theatres are active. The Chicago Little Theatre, the Wisconsin Dramatic Society, the Provincetown Players, the Neighborhood Playhouse, in New York, and others of that ilk, are well known and influential. They are extending the tradition of the best European theatres in their attempts to cultivate excellent and individual expression in drama. They realize that plays must be tested by actual performance,--though not necessarily by the unnatural demands of success in compet.i.tion with Broadway revues and farce-melodramas,--and thus developed toward a genuine artistic embodiment of the vast and varied life, the manifold and deep idealism of this country.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their courteous and generous cooperation the editor is greatly indebted to the authors and publishers of all the plays included. He is equally grateful to other dramatists who were personally as cordial in intention but quite impotent to grant copyright privileges. In addition, he has received most friendly and cordial criticism from friends and friendly strangers to whom he appealed--among others, from Mr. Harold Brighouse; Mr.

Theodore Hinckley, editor of "Drama"; Mr. Clarence Stratton, now Director of English at Cleveland, and author of a forthcoming book on the Little Theatre in this country; Mr. Allan Monkhouse, author of "Mary Broome" and "War Plays"; Professor Allan Abbot, of Teachers College, Columbia University; Mr. Frank G. Thompkins, of Central High School, Detroit; Mrs. Mary Austin; Professor Earl B. Pence, of De Pauw University; Professor Brander Matthews; and Mrs. Alice Chapin. Indebtedness to many lists is obvious, particularly to that of the Drama League and the National Council of Teachers of English, and that of Professor Pence in the "Illinois Bulletin."

"Ile" is reprinted by special arrangement with the author and with Boni and Liveright, publishers, New York. "Ile" is reprinted from the volume "The Moon of The Caribbees" and six other plays of the sea, which volume is one of the series of plays by Mr.

O'Neill, the series including "Beyond the Horizon," a drama in four acts, "The Straw," a play in three acts and five scenes, "Gold," a play in four acts and "Chris" a play in four acts.

INTRODUCTION: ON THE READING OF PLAYS

The elder Dumas, who wrote many successful plays, as well as the famous romances, said that all he needed for constructing a drama was "four boards, two actors, and a pa.s.sion." What he meant by pa.s.sion has been defined by a later French writer, Ferdinand Brunetiere, as a conflict of wills. The Philosopher of b.u.t.terbiggens, whom you will meet early in this book, points out that "what you are all the time wanting" is "your own way." When two strong desires conflict and we wonder which is coming out ahead, we say that the situation is dramatic. This clash is clearly defined in any effective play, from the crude melodrama in which the forces are hero and villain with pistols, to such subtle conflicts, based on a man's misunderstanding of even his own motives and purposes, as in Mr. Middleton's "Tides."

In comedy, and even in farce, struggle is clearly present. Here our sympathy is with people who engage in a not impossible combat--against rather obvious villains who can be unmasked, or against such public opinion or popular conventions as can be overset. The hold of an absurd bit of gossip upon stupid people is firm enough in "Spreading the News"; but fortunately it must yield to facts at last. The Queen and the Knave of Hearts are sufficiently clever, with the aid of the superb cookery of the Knave's wife, to do away with an ancient and solemnly reverenced law of Pompdebile's court. So, too, the force of ancient loyalty and enthusiasm almost works a miracle in the invalid veteran of "Gettysburg." And we feel sure that the uncanny powers of the Beggar will be no less successful in overturning the power of the King in Mr. Parkhurst's play.

Again, in comedies as in mathematics, the problem is often solved by subst.i.tution. The soldier in Mr. Galsworthy's "The Sun" is able to find a satisfactory and apparently happy ending without achieving what he originally set out to gain. And the same is true of Jock in Mr. Brighouse's "Lonesome-Like." Or the play which does not end as the chief character wishes may still prove not too serious because, as in "Fame and the Poet," the situation is merely inconvenient and absurd rather than tragic. Now and then it is next to impossible to tell whether the ending is tragic or not; in the "Land of Heart's Desire" we must first decide whether our sympathies are more with Shawn Bruin and with Maire's love for him, or with her keen desire to go

To where the woods, the stars, and the white streams Are holding a continual festival.

It is natural for us to desire a happy ending in stories, as we desire satisfying solutions of the problems in our own lives. And whenever the forces at work are such as make it true and possible, naturally this is the best ending for a story or a play. But where powerful and terrible influences have to be combated, only a poor dramatist will make use of mere chance, or compel his characters to do what such people really would not do, to bring about a fact.i.tious "happy ending." With the relentless, mighty arms of England engaged in hunting the defeated Highlanders after the Battle of Culloden, a play like "Campbell of Kilmhor," in which we sympathize with the ill-fated Stewarts, cannot end happily. If they had yielded under pressure and betrayed their comrades, we might have pitied them, but we could not admire their action, and there would have been no strong conclusion. In "Riders to the Sea," where the characters are compelled by bitter poverty to face the relentless forces of storm and sea, and in "The Biding to Lithend," we expect a tragic end almost from the first lines of the play. We recognize this same dramatic tensity of hopeless conflict in many stories as well as plays; it is most powerful in three or four novels by George Eliot, George Meredith, and Thomas Hardy.

One of the best ways to understand these as real stage plays is through some sort of dramatization. This does not mean, however, that they need be produced with elaborate scenery and costumes, memorizing, and rehearsal; often the best understanding may be secured by quite informal reading in the cla.s.s, with perhaps a hat and cloak and a lath sword or two for properties. With simply a clear s.p.a.ce in the cla.s.sroom for a stage, you and your imaginations can give all the performance necessary for realizing these plays very well indeed. But, of course, you must clearly understand the lines and the play as a whole before you try to take a part, so that you can read simply and naturally, as you think the people in the story probably spoke. Some questions for discussion in the appendix may help you in talking the plays over in cla.s.s or in reading them for yourself before you try to take a part. You will find it sometimes helps, also, to make a diagram or a colored sketch of the scene as the author describes it, or even a small model of the stage for a "dramatic museum" for your school. If you have not tried this, you do not know how much it helps in seeing plays of other times, like Shakespeare's or Moliere's; and it is useful also for modern dramas. Such small stages can be used for puppet theatres as well. "The Knave of Hearts" is intended as a marionette play, and other dramas--Maeterlinck's and even Shakespeare's--have been given in this way with very interesting effects.

If you bring these plays to a performance for others outside your own cla.s.s, you will find that the simplest and least pretentious settings are generally most effective. The Irish players, as Mr.

Yeats tells us, "have made scenery, indeed, but scenery that is little more than a suggestion--a pattern with recurring boughs and leaves of gold for a wood, a great green curtain, with a red stencil upon it to carry the eye upward, for a palace." Mr. John Merrill of the Francis Parker School describes the quite excellent results secured with a dark curtain in a semicircle--a cyclorama--for background, and with colored lights.[1] Such a staging leaves the attention free to follow the lines, and the imagination to picture whatever the play suggests as the place of the action.

[Footnote 1: John Merrill: "Drama and the School," in _Drama_, November, 1919.]

THE PHILOSOPHER OF b.u.t.tERBIGGENS[1]

Harold Chapin

[Footnote 1: Included by special permission of Mrs. Alice Chapin.

Permission to present this play must be secured from Samuel French, 28 West 38th Street, New York City, who controls all acting rights, etc., in this country.]

CHARACTERS

DAVID PIRNIE LIZZIE, his daughter JOHN BELL, his son-in-law ALEXANDER, John's little son

SCENE: JOHN BELL'S _tenement at b.u.t.terbiggens. It consists of the very usual "two rooms, kitchen, and bath," a concealed bed in the parlor and another in the kitchen enabling him to house his family--consisting of himself, his wife, his little son, and his aged father-in-law--therein. The kitchen-and-living-room is a good-sized square room. The right wall (our right as we look at it) is occupied by a huge built-in dresser, sink, and coal bunker, the left wall by a high-manteled, ovened, and boilered fireplace, the recess on either side of which contains a low painted cupboard. Over the far cupboard hangs a picture of a ship, but over the near one is a small square window. The far wall has two large doors in it, that on the right leading to the lobby, and that on the left appertaining to the old father-in-law's concealed bed. The walls are distempered a brickish red. The ceiling once was white. The floor is covered with bright linoleum and a couple of rag rugs--one before the fire--a large one--and a smaller one before the door of the concealed bed._

_A deal table is just to right of centre. A long flexible gas-bracket depends from the ceiling above it. Another many-jointed gas-bracket projects from the middle of the high mantelpiece, its flame turned down towards the stove. There are wooden chairs at the table, above, below, and to left of it. A high-backed easy chair is above the fire, a kitchen elbow-chair below it._

_The kitchen is very tidy. A newspaper newly fallen to the rug before the fire and another--an evening one--spread flat on the table are (besides a child's mug and plate, also on the table) the only things not stowed in their prescribed places. It is evening--the light beyond the little square window being the gray dimness of a long Northern twilight which slowly deepens during the play. When the curtain rises it is still light enough in the room for a man to read if the print be not too faint and his eyes be good. The warm light of the fire leaps and flickers through the gray, showing up with exceptional clearness the deep-lined face of old DAVID PIRNIE, who is discovered half-risen from his armchair above the fire, standing on the hearth-rug, his body bent and his hand on the chair arm. He is a little, feeble old man with a well-shaped head and weather-beaten face, set off by a grizzled beard and whiskers, wiry and vigorous, in curious contrast to the wreath of snowy hair that encircles his head. His upper lip is shaven. He wears an old suit--the unb.u.t.toned waistcoat of which shows an old flannel shirt. His slippers are low at the heel and his socks loose at the ankles._

_The old man's eyes are fixed appealingly on those of his daughter, who stands in the half-open door, her grasp on the handle, meeting his look squarely--a straight-browed, black-haired, determined young woman of six or seven and twenty.

Her husband_, JOHN, _seated at the table in his shirt-sleeves with his head in his hands, reads hard at the paper and tries to look unconcerned._

DAVID. Aw--but, Lizzie--

LIZZIE (_with splendid firmness_). It's nae use, feyther. I'm no'

gaein' to gie in to the wean. Ye've been tellin' yer stories to him nicht after nicht for dear knows how long, and he's gettin'

to expect them.

DAVID. Why should he no' expect them?

LIZZIE. It disna do for weans to count on things so. He's layin'

up a sad disappointment for himself yin o' these days.

DAVID. He's gettin' a sad disappointment the noo. Och, come on, Lizzie. I'm no' gaein' to dee just yet, an' ye can break him off gradually when I begin to look like to.

LIZZIE. Who's talkin' o' yer deein', feyther?

DAVID. Ye were speakin' o' the disappointment he was layin' up for himself if he got to count on me--

LIZZIE. I wasna thinkin' o' yer deein', feyther--only--it's no guid for a bairn--

DAVID. Where's the harm in my giein' him a bit story before he gangs tae his bed?

LIZZIE. I'm no sayin' there's ony harm in it this yinst, feyther; but it's no richt to gae on nicht after nicht wi' never a break--

DAVID. Whit wey is it no richt if there's nae harm in it?

LIZZIE. It's giein' in to the wean.