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:
I. THE TRAGEDIES: Stories of the beautiful and potent queens who brought suffering upon themselves and upon others; compare Synge's and Yeats's stories of Deirdre.
Putnam.
II. THE TRAGI-COMEDIES: THE WHITE COCKADE: In which James II defeats the gains of his loyal subjects by his abject and ridiculous cowardice.
Putnam.
CANAVANS: A covetous miller, his clever wandering brother, and some pleasant absurdity about the popular worship of Queen Elizabeth by her loyal subjects in Ireland.
Putnam.
THE DELIVERER: Apparently an Irish peasant's idea of the story of
Moses.
Putnam.
WORKHOUSE WARD; HYACINTH HALVEY; THE JACKDAW:
Comedies full of Irish wit, conscious and unconscious comedy, and endless complication of events and hearsay in Cloon.
All in Seven Short Plays, Putnam.
THE BOGIE MAN; THE FULL MOON; COATS:
More about Cloon people, including the rescue of Hyacinth Halvey from his troublesome reputation and from the place by the magic and lunacy of moonlight.
In New Irish Comedies, Putnam.
DAMER'S GOLD: A fortunate rescue from the torments of miserliness and pestilent heirs; the author's notes on the origin of the play are interesting.
Ibid.
THE GAOL GATE: A brief and effective tragic story of two women who fear that their man has betrayed his mates, but who find that he has been hanged without informing; the mother improvises a psalm of praise of his steadfastness.
In Seven Short Plays.
THE TRAVELING MAN: A peasant woman who has been befriended by a mysterious wanderer expects his return so that she may thank him. She drives away a tramp from her kitchen, and then discovers who he was.
Ibid.
THE GOLDEN APPLE: Many scenes, some excellent fun; of a search for miraculous fruit, of a giant who is high and bloodthirsty only in carefully fostered reputation, and the like matters.
Putnam.
+St. John Hankin+
THE PERFECT LOVER: Delightful dramatic version of Suckling's
"Constant Lover."
In Dramatic Works, Seeker.
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL: The same young man, or his close image, having managed to be received by his family as a returned prodigal, calmly puts upon them the question of his future.
Ibid.
THE CASSILIS ENGAGEMENT
Ibid.
+Gerhardt Hauptmann+
THE WEAVERS: Painful presentation of the suffering of the German weavers in the first adjustments of the Industrial Revolution.
In Dickinson's Chief Contemporary Dramatists; also in
Lewisohn's translations, Huebsch.
+Winifred N. Hawkridge+
THE FLORIST SHOP: Rather sentimentalist play of good influences wafted by a young woman as a florist's clerk; excellent business combines with the influences.
In Harvard Dramatic Club Plays, First Series, Brentano's.
+Hazelton and Benrimo+
THE YELLOW JACKET: The conventions of the Chinese theatre, more or less faithfully presented, make a quite comical presentment of an ancient Chinese legend.
Bobbs, Merrill.
+Theresa Helburn+
ENTER THE HERO: A madly fanciful girl fabricates a romance out of whole cloth, casts a friend as hero, and tells her small world about it. Even the rough measures the hero has to use to escape do not succeed in curing her of the habit.
In Flying Stage Plays, No. 4, Ahrens; Fifty Contemporary
One-Act Plays, Stewart and Kidd.
+Perez Hirschbein+
IN THE DARK: Grim and awful picture of the depths of misery and starvation in a Ghetto basement. Translated by Goldberg.
In Six Plays of the Yiddish Theatre, First Series: Luce.
+Hugo von Hofmannsthal+
MADONNA DIANORA: Fearsome tragedy of the Ring-and-Book sort, beautifully and poignantly presented.
Translated by Harriett Boas, Badger.
+Stanley Houghton+
THE DEAR DEPARTED: Somewhat precipitate haste for advantage in dividing grandfather's effects is fittingly rebuked.
In Dramatic Works, vol. i. French, New York; Constable, London.
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT: A mother finds being an "imaginary invalid" excellent for checkmating her daughter's plans, but inconveniently in the way of her own.
Ibid.
+Laurence Housman+
RETURN OF ALCESTIS: A modern poetic view of the spirit of
Alcestis returning to Admetus after her sacrifice and rescue.
Edwin Arlington Robinson has also handled this theme lately.
French.
BIRD IN HAND: A pedantic old scholar is mysteriously plagued by an illusion of faery, but in time conquers the obsession.
French.
BETHLEHEM: A nativity play.
Macmillan.
THE CHINESE LANTERN: Pleasantly effective scenes in a Chinese studio.
Sidgwick and Jackson.
+William Dean Howells+
THE SLEEPING CAR; THE REGISTER; THE MOUSE TRAP; THE ALBANY DEPOT; THE GARROTERS:
Amusing but somewhat worn farces, several of them introducing the voluble Mrs. Roberts and her family.
+Henrik Ibsen+
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE: A scientist who insists on making known, and setting to work to remedy, the evils and wrongs of his community has to reckon with the people; compare The Mob, by John Galsworthy.
Boni and Liveright.
THE DOLL'S HOUSE: Nora Hjalmar, who has always been petted and shielded, at last has to face and solve certain difficult problems for herself. She thus discovers just how much her husband's love and indulgence are worth. Her solution of the difficulty is presented, not as necessarily the right thing to have done, but as what such a woman would do under the circumstances.
Boni and Liveright.
THE LADY FROM THE SEA: Ellida Wrangel, wife of the village pastor, feels the call of the sea; she feels she must go with the rough sailor to whom she was once betrothed. When Wrangel sincerely offers her liberty to choose, she "seeks the security of a familiar home, and the wild lure of the great sea spaces can trouble her no more." (Lewisohn.)
Boni and Liveright.
+W.W. Jacobs and Others+
ADMIRAL PETERS; THE GRAY PABKOT; THE CHANGELING; BOATSWAIN'S MATE: Jolly farces of sailors and watchmen and their families, based on Jacobs's stories in Captains All, Many Cargoes, and the rest.
French.
THE MONKEY'S PAW: A most fearful and gruesome play, based on Jacobs's story, in the vein of the Three Wishes, and the Foot of Pharaoh, by Gautier.
French.
+Jerome K. Jerome+
FANNY AND THE SERVANT PBOBLEM: The new Lady Bantock is surprised to discover both her real rank and her strange relationship with her twenty-three servants. An interesting character study.
French.
+William Ellery Leonard+
GLORY OF THE MORNING: The pathos of two civilizations contending for the children of the Indian woman, Glory of the Morning; they must go with their father to France or stay with their mother. Dr. Leonard has newly completed another powerful tragedy, Red Bird, as yet unpublished.
In Wisconsin Plays, First Series, 1914, B.W. Huebsch.
+Justin McCarthy+
IF I WERE KING: A romantic play, in the vein of De Banville's Gringoire, in which Villon becomes Marshal of France, for a brief time and with a fearful condition stipulated by the spider-king, Louis XI.
Heinemann.
+Edward Knoblauch and Arnold Bennett+
MILESTONES: Three different generations, with their different ideas and ideals, confront similar problems with different views, and arrive at various conclusions.
Doran.
+Percy Mackaye+
THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS: Mr. Mackaye, translator with Professor Tatlock of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, has written here a clever play of the travelers' adventures. The Wife of Bath is of course the ringleader in mischief.
Macmillan.
CALIBAN BY THE YELLOW SANDS: A masque for the Shakespeare
Tercentenary Celebration, New York City.
Doubleday.
JEANNE D'ARC: A tragedy made up of incidents in the life of the
Maid.
Macmillan.
SAM AVERAGE: A Silhouette. A soldier of 1812 is kept true to the cause by a vision of Sam Average, the spirit of his nation.
In Yankee Fantasies, Duffield.
THE SCARECROW: A lively dramatization of Hawthorne's Feathertop, from Mosses from an Old Manse.
Macmillan.
+Mary MacMillan+
THE SHADOWED STAR: Portraying the cruel suffering of two Irish peasant women who wait in a city tenement for Christmas as they remember it.
In Short Plays, Stewart and Kidd.
+Maurice Maeterlinck+
ARDIANE AND BLUEBEARD: A resolute wife finally defies Bluebeard and rescues his wives; but they refuse to forsake their unfortunate and beloved husband.
Dodd, Mead.
A MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY
THE INTRUDER; THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES; INTERIOR (OR HOME):
Poignant and mystical tragedies expressing the unseen and inescapable forces surrounding and closing in upon men's lives.
Boni and Liveright; Dodd, Mead.
THE BLUE BIRD: Two peasant children, accompanied by their friends Dog, Cat, Bread, Sugar, and others, search everywhere for the blue bird of happiness. They visit among other places the realms of the dead, where their grandparents are, and of the unborn. Finally they look in the last and likeliest place.
Dodd, Mead.
THE BETROTHAL: Further adventures of Tytyl.
Dodd, Mead.
+John Masefield+
PHILIP THE KING; TRAGEDY OF POMPEY THE GREAT:
High tragedies. The great Pompey, defeated by the upstart Ceesar, is kingly to the end.
Sidgwick and Jackson, London; Macmillan, New York.
THE SWEEPS OF NINETY-EIGHT: A fugitive from an unsuccessful rebellion achieves a sweeping revenge upon the leaders of the enemy; amusing comedy.
Macmillan.
THE TRAGEDY OF NAN: One of the most poignantly tragic of modern plays; the mercilessness of weak and selfish people crushes out a beautiful life.
Richards, London.
+Rutherford Mayne (J. Waddell)+
THE DRONE: An old man by playing craftily at being on the eve of a great invention lives most comfortably on his brother's means; but forces accumulate against him and he is threatened with eviction from the hive.
Luce.
+George Middleton+
THE BLACK TIE: A play of sharp and quiet suffering, presenting at a new angle the Southern cleavage of races. The negro classes are not allowed to appear in the Sunday-school procession, and the small disappointment is typical of greater deprivations.
In Possession and other One-Act Plays, Holt.
MASKS: An author who has spoiled a good play so that it will "go" on the stage is called upon by the angry characters, whom he created and then forced to do as they would not really have done.
In Masks and other One-Act Plays, Holt.
MOTHERS: A mother tries in vain to prevent a young woman whom she loves from marrying her son and repeating the misery of her own marriage with a weakling.
In Tradition and other One-Act Plays, Holt.
ON BAIL: A gambler's wife who has shared his illegal gains must help him pay his debt to the law; their son, too, is involved.
Ibid.
THE TWO HOUSES: An old professor and his wife talk quietly together of the plans and the realities they have lived among.
In Masks, etc.
WAITING: False conventional ideas have long thwarted, and now threaten to wreck, the happiness of people who care greatly for each other.
In Tradition, etc.
+Edna St. Vincent Millay+
ABIA DA CAPO: A fantasy in which Pierrot, Columbine, and the Grecian shepherds of Theocritus display their varied views of life.
In Reedy's Mirror: reprinted in Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays,
Stewart and Kidd, Cincinnati.
+Allan Milne+
THE BOY COMES HOME: A war profiteer has a bad half-hour of difficulties in getting his soldier nephew to work and live according to his views; he then faces the problem in reality.
In First Plays, Knopf.
THE LUCKY ONE: The Lucky One fails to win a trick he had counted on, but his chorus of relatives—surely related to Sir Willoughby Patterne's—do not even notice the misfortune.
Ibid.
WURZEL-FLUMMERY: Of two men offered a good-sized fortune by a will provided they will adopt Wurzel-Flummery in place of their own more satisfactory surnames, and of their decision.
Ibid.
+Allan Monkhouse+
NIGHT WATCHES: A quiet and vivid picturing of the potential cruelty and frightfulness of ordinary well-meaning ignorance and terror; the fable reminds one of Galsworthy's "The Black Godmother," in The Inn of Tranquillity.
In War Plays, Constable, London.
+William Vaughn Moody+
THE FAITH HEALER: A serious drama presenting in moving and human fashion the effects of faith and disillusion.
Macmillan.
+Dhan Gopal Mukerji+
THE JUDGMENT or INDRA: A Hindu play, in which a priest of Indra, after making a supreme sacrifice of himself and others in order to root out human affection from his heart, thinks that his god speaks in the lightning of the storm that ensues.
In Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays, edited by Shay and Loving.
Stewart and Kidd.
+Tracy Mygatt+
GOOD FRIDAY: A Passion Play. A powerful tragedy of the conscientious objector.
Published by the author, 23 Bank Street, New York, N.Y.
+Alfred Noyes+
SHERWOOD: A poetical play of Robin Hood and his band.
Stokes.
+Eugene O'Neill+
BEYOND THE HORIZON: The Pulitzer Prize Play, 1920. A tragic story of a young man who longed to seek romance "beyond the horizon," and could find neither that nor any happiness, but only defeat and misery, in his everyday surroundings.
Boni and Liveright.
BOUND EAST FOR CARDIFF: The injury and death of a forecastle hand, illuminating the varying natures of his shipmates.
In Moon of the Caribbees, Boni and Liveright.
IN THE ZONE: Suspicion of treachery in the submarine zone, directed against a sailor who is different from the rest in the forecastle.
Ibid.
WHERE THE CROSS IS MADE: An old sailor goes mad waiting futilely for the return of a treasure expedition he has sent out, and the madness of his idea spreads like panic.
Ibid.
+Hubert Osborne+
THE GOOD MEN DO: AN INDECOROUS EPILOGUE: Shakespeare's family carefully burn his surviving plays in the effort to cast oblivion upon his low occupation.
In Plays of the 47 Workshop, First Series, 1918.
+Monica Barrie O'Shea+
THE RUSHLIGHT: A mother, whose son may be saved if he will betray his comrades, has only to send him a paper containing the information the authorities want. Her attitude should be compared with that of the women in Campbell of Kilmhor and Lady Gregory's The Gaol Gate.
Drama, November, 1917, 28:602.
+Louis N. Parker+
DISRAELI: Play of intrigue centring about the character of Lord
Beaconsfield and his manoeuvres to obtain control of the Suez
Canal.
Lane.
MINUET: A brief play of courage and loyalty in face of Madame
Guillotine.
In Century Magazine, January, 1915.
+Josephine Preston Peabody+
MARLOWE: A tragedy introducing several of the Elizabethan playwrights in tavern scenes, and making a fine and romantic character of Kit Marlowe.
Houghton Mifflin.
THE PIPER: A pleasant dramatization of the legend of Hamelin
Town.
Houghton Mifflin.
THE WOLF OF GUBBIO: A play about Saint Francis and some of his brothers, both animals and villagers.
Houghton Mifflin.
+Louise Saunders (Perkins)+
THE WOODLAND PRINCESS: Very attractive children's operetta with music by Alice Terhune.
Schirmer; French.
+Stephen Phillips+
ULYSSES: A drama or masque of Ulysses' adventures, from his farewell to Calypso through a vigorous combat with the wooers.
Macmillan.
+Eden Phillpotts+
THE SHADOW: A most affecting and tragic play of the influence of a crime upon two people who love most sincerely, and upon their very loyal friend.
In Three Plays, Duckworth, London.
THE MOTHER: A moving presentation of the force of a mother's sense and love; she refuses to shield her son when he has done wrong, but works in every way to set him straight and to continue her influence after her death.
Ibid.
THE POINT OF VIEW: A domestic altercation is arbitrated by a friend of the family, and then the arbiter is given new light on the situation.
Curtain Raisers, Duckworth, London.
+Arthur Wing Pinero+
THE PLAYGOERS: A farce in which a lady attempts to provide cultural amusement for her servants, and succeeds in breaking up the smooth-running establishment.
London.
+David Pinski+
ABIGAIL: A dramatization of a Biblical story from the wars of
David. Translated from the Yiddish by Dr. Goldberg.
In Six Plays of the Yiddish Theatre, Luce.
FORGOTTEN SOULS: Fanny Segal's self-sacrifice for her sister and lover is carried to a strange and morbid extreme.
In Six Plays of the Yiddish Theatre, Luce.
+Graham Pryce+
THE COMING OF FAIR ANNIE: A simple but effective dramatization of the old ballad.
Gowans and Gray.
+Richard Pryce and Arthur Morrison+
THE DUMB CAKE: A St. Agnes' Eve story in a London slum.
French.
+Serafin and Joaquim Quintero+
A SUNNY MOHNING: Two very old people recall the tremendously romantic happenings of their early youth.
In Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays, Stewart and Kidd.
+Edwin Arlington Robinson+
VAN ZORN: A play of New York studio life in which Van Zorn puts his own desires out of court and plays providence in the lives of his friends.
Macmillan.
+Santiago Rosinol+
THE PRODIGAL DOLL: A comical marionette sows his wild oats most violently and repents in deep sorrow.
In Drama, February, 1917, 5:15.
+Edmond Rostand+
CYRANO DE BERGERAC: A great play of a swashbuckling hero of the
Paris of Molière's time.
Doubleday; also in Dickinson's Contemporary Dramatists, I,
Houghton Mifflin.
L'AIGLON: The tragic story of Napoleon's son, the little King of
Rome, captive among enemies determined to tame his spirit.
Harper.
THE PRINCESS FAR-AWAY: The story of the Troubadour Rudel and the Princess of Tripoli, celebrated in one of Browning's poems, represents all worship of what is beyond attainment.
Stokes.
THE ROMANCERS: The foolish and romantic notions of two lovers are ably caricatured by their fathers' plots and stratagems.
Baker, 1906.
+Arthur Schnitzler+
LAST MASKS: A dying man in the Vienna Hospital contrives an opportunity for the cruel stroke he has intended at a man who has succeeded where he himself has failed; at the moment of possible triumph a different mood controls him. There are three excellent studies of character in the play.
In Anatol and Other Plays, Boni and Liveright.
+George Bernard Shaw+
ANDROCLES AND THE LION: The old story of a saint whom the lion remembered as his friend—with much shrewd light upon certain types of early Christians.
Constable.
CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA: New views of the chief characters, introduced by two interesting scenes—of a garrison in Syria by night and of Cleopatra in the arms of the Sphinx.
In Three Plays for Puritans, Constable.
THE MAN OF DESTINY: Napoleon after Lodi, attacking all courses of his dinner simultaneously, drawing maps with his fork dipped in the gravy, and discoursing shrewdly on courage and success.
Constable.
O'FLAHERTY, V.C.: On a recruiting mission in his own country, O'Flaherty must account to his mother for his hitherto concealed crime of fighting not against, but for England.
In Heartbreak House, Constable.
AUGUSTUS DOES HIS BIT: A high-born muddler in Britain's conduct of the war.
Ibid.
+Arthur Shirley+
GRINGOIRE THE BALLAD-MAKER: A translation and adaptation of de
Banville's comedy about another poet than Villon in the hands of
Louis XI.
Dramatic Publishing Company.
+Thomas Wood Stevens+
THE NURSERY MAID OF HEAVEN: "Vernon Lee's" eighteenth-century legend of Sister Benvenuta and the Christ-Child, in a simple and effectively dramatic form.
In Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays, Stewart and Kidd.
+Alfred Sutro+
THE MAN ON THE KERB: A workman who has failed in every attempt to get work or help faces starvation with his wife and baby in a London tenement basement. No solution of the problem is offered.
In Five Little Plays, Duckworth, London.
A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED: Comedy of a rejected proposal for a society "marriage of convenience," followed by an adjustment of understanding upon another basis.
Ibid.
+John Millington Synge+
DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS: A beautiful and poetic dramatization of the tragic Celtic legend of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna. This may well be compared with Yeats's dramatization of the same story.
Luce.
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD: Rather fearful comedy of the popular idolatry offered by Irish peasants to a man who boasts he has killed his father.
Luce.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN: An awesome husband makes a test of his wife's love.
Luce.
THE TINKER'S WEDDING: Rather boisterous comedy of a tinker-woman who upsets ancient custom by insisting on a church wedding.
Luce.
THE WELL OF THE SAINTS: A gruesome tragedy of a blind beggar and his wife. All these dramas are as strangely filled with beauty and poetry of expression as is the Riders to the Sea.
Luce.
+Rabindranath Tagore+
THE POST OFFICE: "A poetic and symbolic play."
Macmillan.
+Anton Tchekhov+
THE BOOR; THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL; THE WEDDING FEAST; THE TRAGEDIAN IN SPITE OF HIMSELF:
Comical farces of extravagant conversation and action, and apparently real studies of Russian character.
In Plays, Second Series Scribner's.
+William Makepiece Thackeray+
THE ROSE AND THE RING: One of the most delightful of puppet-plays is based on the favorite story.
Smith, Elder and Company, London; Macmillan, New York.
+Augustus Thomas+
OLIVER GOLDSMITH: A very engaging play, introducing Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick in several amusing roles, Dr. Johnson, and others in his circle, and presenting (in Act II) a dress rehearsal of She Stoops to Conquer.
French.
+Frank G. Tompkins+
SHAM: A SOCIAL SATIRE: Of a most superior burglar, who takes only genuine objects of art, disdains the imitation stuff that litters Charles and Clara's home, and reads them a severe lecture on reality and sham in this and other departments of life.
Stewart and Kidd.
+Ridgley Torrence+
GRANNY MAUMEE: Highly tragic play of the blood-hatred of negroes for those who have tortured and killed, and of voodoo rites and miracles; power is given the play by a most human reversal of feeling at the last.
In Plays for a Negro Theatre, Macmillan.
THE RIDER OF DREAMS: A masterful mulatto who keeps his people obedient to a benevolent despotism.
Ibid.
+Stuart Walker+
THE MEDICINE SHOW: Some amusing characters, shiftless but fertile of invention, and their device for getting rich.
In Portmanteau Plays, Stewart and Kidd.
NEVERTHELESS: A play which has interested high-school pupils and their friends in Better Speech programmes.
Ibid.
SIX WHO PASS WHILE THE LENTILS BOIL: A quaint and pleasant comedy of a boy set to watch the lentils cooking, of a queen who is fugitive from execution for a violation of etiquette, and of other matters.
Ibid.
+Percival Wilde+
THE TRAITOR: A traitor in the British camp is discovered by a ruse that is effective and perhaps plausible.
In Dawn and Other One-Act Plays, Holt.
+Oscar M. Wolff+
WHERE BUT IN AMERICA? Amusing small comedy in which a Swedish cook and her fiancé have potent influence in an American household.
In Mayorga, Representative One-Act Plays, Little, Brown.
+William Butler Yeats+
DEIRDRE: The last scene in the tragedy of Deirdre of the Sorrows.
Macmillan.
THE GREEN HELMET: Dramatization of a most interesting Gaelic variant of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; it contains good character study.
Macmillan.
THE KINO'S THRESHOLD: A poet and singer, deprived of his rightful honor at the Irish King's court, makes effective use of the ancient traditional weapon of the hunger strike in order to secure to his art and its worthy practisers their due recognition.
Macmillan.
THE HOUR GLASS: A mystical play of wisdom and folly and the approach of death.
Macmillan.
CATHLEEN NI HOOLIHAN: A moving dramatization of the compelling spirit of Love of Country.
Macmillan.
THE POT OF BROTH: An ancient story, pleasantly dramatized, of a witty wanderer who plays to his advantage on the credulity, greed, and love of flattery of a sharp-tongued peasant woman.
Macmillan.
+William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory+
THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS: A mystical play of a dreamer's rough contacts with reality.
Stratford, 1904.
+Israel Zangwill+
THE WAR GOD: Those who sacrifice others to the War God are themselves immolated on his altar.
Macmillan.
THE MELTING POT: A serious play in which the tragic consequences of race prejudice are realizably and poignantly set forth.
Macmillan.