NOTES ON COSTUME AND STAGING
Grown people, whose parts are taken by boys and girls from seventeen to twenty, and children, are dressed alike—men and boys in knee-trousers, coats with square white collars and cuffs, large belt- and shoe-buckles, broad-brimmed felt hats, with crowns high and flat. If the costumes are to be fully carried out, all should wear wigs, cropped round. Or they may be worn by the Elders only.
Women and girls wear plain dark-colored dresses, with rather full skirts, the children's as long as their mothers'. White kerchiefs, capes, and hoods, of dark colors with bright scarlet or gray-blue linings. The hoods are large and loose, with the edge turned back, giving color about the face. Mistress Delight, Patience, and Prudence wear white caps instead of the hoods.
Pictures of Puritan costumes are easily found in the Perry or Brown collections.
These costumes are best made of canton or outing flannel. Buckles can be made of cardboard and covered with silver paper, or cut from tin.
Indian. Suit made of tan canton flannel, fringed at edge of coat, sleeves, and trousers, with a band of fringe up and down arms and legs. He wears moccasins, beads, and a feather head-dress on his black wig. He carries bow and arrows, and a wooden tomahawk. A quiver can be made of a good-sized mailing-tube. He must have Indian make-up.
Hunter’s dress is more like the Indian's than like the colonist's, but he does not wear his hair long, and his suit should be trimmed with furs, not fringe. Fur cap with tail hanging down at back. He carries an old gun, not a bow.
Mistress Delight's children range from Roger, twelve years old, down to little Prudence, five. The Indian is a boy of Roger's age. The hunter, sixteen or seventeen.
The little Christmas tree should be a very "homemade" one. Strings of popcorn and cranberries, spools and balls covered with bright paper, may be used for decorations, Indian baskets, and such toys as the little Puritans might have made, or any little quaint and old-fashioned trinkets to carry out this idea. Only white candles should be used, and these fastened on in the simplest and most unobtrusive manner.
The singing of the old psalm should be made as doleful and droning, even nasal, as possible. It can be sung to the Scotch tune of "Windsor," which is to be found in most hymn-books. The number of verses used may be determined by the amusement and applause of the audience. The boys who sing it must on no account allow themselves to laugh.
The charm and picturesqueness of the stage will be greatly enhanced if quaint old-time household articles can be borrowed or manufactured for properties—bellows, lantern, candlesticks, andirons, an old foot-stove—above all, a warming-pan, which the mother fills at the fire and carries out when she takes the younger children to bed. The dishes and platter so much admired by Patience should be rather conspicuously ugly.
Finally, a word in regard to the old-time English. When the play was first given it was feared that the children would find it a stumbling-block, and that it would have to be dropped. Quite the reverse proved to be the case, however, and the children all gave their lines with delightful naturalness and evident enjoyment. This has been equally true of other groups of children by whom the play has since been given. They show no awkwardness in the use of the old forms, but seem to feel that it carries them out of the everyday, and makes danger and adventure real to them.
[THE CHRISTMAS MONKS]
IN THREE ACTS