Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People

BY CONSTANCE D'ARCY MACKAY Author of The House of the Heart and Other Plays for Children and The Silver Thread and Other Folk Plays for Young People
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY — Published March, 1912
No performance of these plays may be given without full acknowledgment of the author and publishers. Acknowledgment should be made to read as follows: By Constance D'Arcy Mackay; from Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People ; Copyright, 1912, by Henry Holt and Company; Produced by arrangement with the publishers. Amateurs may produce the plays in this volume without charge. Professional actors must apply for acting rights to the author, in care of the publishers.
THE one-act plays for young people contained in this volume can be produced separately, or may be used as links in the chain of episodes which go to make up outdoor or indoor pageants. There are full directions for simple costumes, dances, and music. Each play deals with the youth of some American hero, so that the lad who plays George Washington or Benjamin Franklin will be in touch with the emotions of a patriot of his own years, instead of incongruously portraying an adult. Much of the dialogue contains the actual words of Lincoln, Washington, and Franklin, so that in learning their lines the youthful players may grasp something of the hardihood and sagacity of Washington, the perseverance of Franklin, and the honesty and dauntlessness of Lincoln, and of those salient virtues that went to the up-building of America—a heritage from the time when all the land was young.
The plays are suitable for schools, summer camps, boys' clubs, historic festivals, patriotic societies, and social settlements and playgrounds. The outdoor plays are especially adapted for a Safe and Sane Fourth. All the plays have stood the test of production.
The Pageant of Patriots —the first children's patriotic pageant ever given in America—was produced in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, N. Y., under the auspices of Brooklyn's ten Social Settlements, May, 1911. The Hawthorne Pageant was first produced on Arbor Day, May, 1911, by the Wadleigh High School, New York City; Pocahontas was given as a separate play at Franklin Park, Boston, by Lincoln House, and some of the other plays have been given at various schools in New York City.