Dramatics in the home

by William Byron Forbush

Dramatic Play and Games

It is astonishing how large a proportion of play is dramatic in character. Mr. George E. Freeland watched a baby of two and a half years for a whole day and noted that he engaged in fifty-four different imaginative games. It would be pretty hard, therefore, to enumerate all the ways in which a child of three, at the period when imagination seems to awaken, utilizes this faculty in play. This is the time when the child imitates the acts of older people; therefore, whatever tiny implements or apparatus he can use for that purpose are acceptable to him.

Of the ready-made toys, toy furniture for the house, the sand pile for outdoors and the doll for both are most useful. “The doll,” as Sully tells us, “takes a supreme place in this fancy realm of play. The doll is an all-important comrade in that solitude à deux, of which the child, like the adult, is so fond.” The complete adaptability of the doll makes it an ideal means for the puppet play of idealism. “A good, efficient, able-bodied doll, like the American girl’s,” says Joseph Lee, “is at home in any situation in life, from princess to kitchen maid, to which she may be called. And one doll in her time plays many parts; she has to, or lose her job.” Besides this, so perfectly does the doll mingle with the child’s own personality that it produces and maintains a complete feeling of oneness.

Says Sully: “‘The dolly must do all and be all that I am;’ so the child, in his warm attachment, seems to argue. This feeling of oneness is strengthened by that of exclusive possession, the sense that the child himself is the only one who really knows dolly or can hear her cry. It is another manifestation of the same feeling of intimacy and solidarity when a child insists on dolly’s being treated by others as courteously as he himself is treated. Children will often expect the mother or nurse to kiss and say good-night to their pet or pets—for their hearts are capacious—when she says good-night to themselves.”

“The rimes of Mother Goose,” says Mrs. Herts, “were predominantingly dramatic. A great many of them associate words, song, and action. The ordinary printed collections are misleading in this respect. The words, taken alone, are not the thing. Think of printing ‘Pease porridge hot’ as a separate and independent poem without the dramatic hand-play! Indeed, it is a pity to have these rimes in books at all.”

The mother may help the development of this expressive instinct in early childhood. Even a baby ought to be treated as a play-mate, not as a plaything. There is an old-fashioned game known as “Come to see.” The little damsel with her doll, and perhaps “dressed up” in some of her mother’s wardrobe, came to call on mother. Her efforts to behave exactly as a lady should were aided and guided by the mother’s careful behavior as hostess. It is a training in manners. When the children play visit each other they use all the manners they have. They practice useful lessons without knowing it. The mother who takes these baby games seriously enough to enter into them in the child spirit is teaching her children as truly as is the kindergartner.

The child from four to seven is capable of a wide range of imagination. These years are regarded by psychologists as the most active imaginatively throughout life. Capable of imitation of the ideas as well as the acts of adults, the child uses dolls, soldiers, Noah’s arks, carts, playhouses, blocks, sand-piles, paint boxes, and stencils to act out a great variety of adult occupations. The imagination seems to engage in freer play the more incomplete are the media provided by others for its expression.

“Nothing,” says Stevenson, “can stagger a child’s faith; he accepts the clumsiest substitutions and can swallow the most staring incongruities. The chair he has just been besieging as a castle, or valiantly cutting to the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the accommodation of a morning visitor, and he is nothing abashed; he can skirmish by the hour with a stationary coal scuttle; in the midst of the enchanted pleasance, he can see, without sensible shock, the gardener soberly digging potatoes for the day’s dinner. He can make abstraction of whatever does not fit into his fable; and he puts his eyes in his pocket, just as we hold our noses in an unsavory lane.”

Joseph Lee says, “One of the most petted quadrupeds I have known consisted, to the prosaic eye, of half a barrel hoop.”

Even young children differ in the vividness and completeness with which they surrender themselves to imaginary situations. It is said that Stevenson himself was one day watching a boy who was playing that a sofa was a boat. When he had finished he climbed down and walked away. “For heaven’s sake, swim ashore!” cried out the imaginative child-lover in genuine distress. It seemed to him a pity that the lad should not carry his drama clear to its proper close.

No doubt, however, it is clumsy or blind interference by adults which most often cripples the capacity of imaginative enjoyment. Sully tells this: “A little girl of four was playing ‘shop’ with her younger sister. The elder one was shopman at the time I came into her room and kissed her. She broke out into piteous sobs; I could not understand why. At last she sobbed out: ‘Mother, you never kiss the man in the shop.’ I had with my kiss quite spoiled her illusion.”

The child soon tires of mechanical toys, talking dolls or elaborate doll-houses with which there is nothing he can do. Illustrating this point Joseph Lee says: “Toys, things of convenient size and shape to play with, are indeed essential. But it is what you can do with or imagine about them, not what they themselves can do, that is important.... It is the child’s own achievement, not that of the clever man who made the toy, that counts.”

Miss Nora A. Smith tells of an old German toy-maker who, “when asked where he got the ideas for his playthings, answered with a half-smile: ‘Not from the children, anyway. Children seldom get the toys they want, but those that their parents want them to want.’”

The passion for destruction which often manifests itself during these years is simply the perversion of the instinct for construction. Being provided with no materials with which he can build he takes apart his too complete toys. A pile of blocks, a sand-pile, a paint-box, some dolls that must be cut out, a ruined shed that perhaps may be made into a doll-house, these are ideal materials for childish play.

There are a number of old-fashioned games which exercise the dramatic instinct. Among these are: Kitty White, Did You Ever See a Lassie?, Farmer in the Dell, Squirrel in the Trees and the Duck Dance. These are all described in Miss Bancroft’s book on play and games, referred to below. Let us take her description of one of the less familiar games, Kitty White, so that we may notice how the dramatic element is expressed throughout. The accompanying music is not given in this citation.

“This is an admirable game for very little children. Their dramatic tendency should be given full rein in impersonating the soft movements of the kitty and the mouse before the chase begins.

“Kitty White so slyly comes,

To catch the Mousie Gray;

But mousie hears her softly creep,

And quickly runs away.

“Run, run, run, little mouse,

Run, run, run, little mouse,

For Kitty White is coming near,

And she will catch the mouse, I fear.”

“One player is chosen for the mouse and stands in the center, and another for Kitty White, who stands outside the circle. The other players join hands in a ring and move around, while singing the first four lines. Meanwhile Kitty White is creeping around outside of the circle, peeping in at little Mousie Gray. When the fourth line is reached, ‘And quickly runs away,’ the circle stops moving and drops hands while the mouse runs out and in through the circle, chased by Kitty White. For the last four lines, while the chase is going on, the players in the circle stand in place and clap their hands while singing ‘Run, run,’ etc. When the mouse is caught, both return to the circle, and another mouse and kitty are chosen.”

Between seven and nine still wider possibilities are found in the dramatic use of materials. Sliced animals and other puzzles which consist of building pictures from sections of cardboard, dolls furnished with patterns for dressing, “Magic Changelings” (cutouts representing Mother Goose characters so pasted together that they may be two or three characters, according to the way in which they are folded), pasteboard farms and villages, a dolly’s school outfit, Miss Duncan’s pasteboard garden with labeled plants, stamped patterns of birds and animals to be sewed and stuffed, the “Dynamobile,” which goes by being wound up or attached to power, these are some of the store-made plays that are worth while.

A child, however, will have equal enjoyment by making a toy village out of blocks, stones, and twigs; he can make a miniature theater out of an old kennel that will satisfy him better than the brightly colored ones which can be bought, and he can play store, train, expressman with nothing more than some boxes and a cart. The larger skill and knowledge of the child gives more content to plays of an earlier period. He now invents and conducts elaborate sieges and defenses for his toy soldiers; he not merely plays with his pets, but he harnesses and drives them. He can get up such varied entertainments as a circus, a Wild West Show, a minstrel performance and a Japanese impersonation.

The child continues to play with dolls, but can now be induced to produce an entire puppet show, one of the most educative employments, by the way, possible to youthful play. He or she is now old enough to be interested also in the simpler festivals, such as those of the May Pole, Halloween, and the Fourth of July. Among the formal games appropriate to these years are Bird Catcher, The Wee Bologna Man, Fox and Geese and All Aboard.

We may provide an important stimulus to observation by encouraging it in imaginative play. Miss Nora A. Smith makes this suggestion: “Half-grown boys and girls too would be delighted to play at ‘Scouting,’ it being understood that a scout is always a special person, selected for his special qualifications, and that he is supposed to be unusually active, intelligent and trustworthy.

“The commanding officer, peacefully seated under a tree meanwhile, sends out such a child scout to bring him a full report of the country up to a given point, stating the condition of the roads, fences and bridges; giving a description of the rocks or trees behind which the enemy might take shelter; noting the presence of any figures in the distance—dust rising or birds flying—the foot-marks, wheel-marks, hoof-prints in the road, etc., or the presence of any object by the wayside which would indicate that the foe had passed by.

“If it is explained that the expedition is a dangerous one, necessitating great care and discretion on the part of the recruit, and if it is suggested that it will perhaps be well to make certain marks to guard against losing his way on return, by breaking small branches, piling up stones, ‘blazing’ trees, scratching fence-posts, etc., the excitement will be great and the game delightful, as well as preeminently useful.”

This is about the time when he begins to get up entirely original amateur shows, dramatizing either the stories he has read or the dramas he has witnessed. In his The Coming Generation Dr. Forbush gives these illustrations from his own household: “On going upstairs in the country, the author has often been confronted by a large brown paper poster which reads:

GREAT SHOW
AND FEED
At two o’clock
Admission One Cent.

I pay my fee at the door of one of the children’s chambers, and am asked by the youthful ticket-seller if I care for a reserved seat. In a stage whisper he adds, ‘O Parp, do take one; if you don’t, we’ll come out short on the refreshments.’ I deposit the additional penny, and am ushered to a seat upon the bed, over which is the placard, ‘First Balcony.’ The rabble is seated on chairs.

“We are handed programs, executed with the expenditure of much muscle and saliva. First, according to this program, is a ‘P’rad of Ginruls,’ introducing the entire company. Then follow recitations, songs, shadow pictures, stereopticon and original plays, one of border life and the other of conflict with crime in the city. A reminiscence of Cooper is traceable in these vigorously acted dramas. The manipulation of apparatus and the movements and dialogue behind the scenes are as entertaining to the spectators as the regular acts. At the close a plate of delicious plums is passed, for which the youngsters must have walked two miles in the hot sun, and mortgaged all of the proceeds of the entertainment in advance.”

The superior craftsmanship of the child between ten and twelve enables him to enjoy games which imitate in close detail many adult activities. Crepe paper, beads, and such plastic materials as clay and plasticine can be used for improving the beauty of constructive articles. The boy now enjoys some of the published games by which he can play conductor, postoffice, and banker, and the girl who plays house does some actual cooking and house-cleaning.

There was a description not long ago in American Motherhood of the way a family carried their dramatic representations of literature still further. They made models of the places they read about. An Esquimau village was the simplest task. The people, dogs, sledges, and seals can be modeled in clay and colored if material is at hand. If not, they can be made of paper. Some oiled paper over blue makes a beautiful polar sea, in which should float a great iceberg built either from paper, or modeled from clay and covered with cotton, over which clambers a polar bear. Cotton should cover the rude huts and all the land with its snowy whiteness, and if a few pennies are available, a sprinkling of diamond dust makes the scene very realistic.

The guidance of an older person is desirable in the matter of reading, for the children should be encouraged to see that every detail is true to fact. If Robinson Crusoe’s Island is attempted and rightly carried out, the family copy will be worn to tatters before it is done, as it certainly should be. The same kind of oiled and blue paper will again serve for the ocean; the sandy beach can be real sand, in which may be planted the tropical forest. The text itself must be studied for the location of the cave, the later huts, the boat, the animals and birds. In fact, the story must be made the foundation of it all and its directions followed to the minutest detail.

The Hiawatha story is used in some form or other by almost every primary teacher, and the working out of Hiawatha’s home is unfailingly interesting. Here clay or plasticine is especially desirable. All the characters mentioned in the poem are modeled in it and colored to barbaric splendor. Wigwams are set in the evergreen forest, canoes line the stony beach of the shining lake, while birds, squirrels, turtles and other creatures are fitted into their proper environment. Old Nakomis sits at the tent door; the fortune teller is in evidence; Hiawatha stands at his canoe, and all the other characters are employed as the story directs. The study for it and the making of Hiawatha’s home should offer occupation for a large part of a winter’s leisure.

The beginnings of American history are studied through the reproduction of a street in the Dutch village in which the Puritans took refuge from persecution in England. Its houses with red roofs, its wind-mills, its church, reproduce the character of the place, while in the street are groups of people clad in the costume of the times, the men with the broad-brimmed hats, the women with close bonnets.

The next step carries the Pilgrims across the water to the building of Old Plymouth. In the construction of this village small twigs can be used for the making of real log houses. Here, of course, must appear the homes of Priscilla, of John Alden and Miles Standish, the Common House and other places which any simple story of the Pilgrim Fathers will give. Someone must hunt in the yard or in the street for a real Plymouth Rock to place upon the seashore.

If possible, it is well to have two or three children work together if a village is attempted. The work then moves rapidly enough to escape discouragement, and the many discussions that are bound to arise over the right way of doing this or that are bound to be instructive.

There is a great interest among boys at this time in such toys as Meccano and the American Model Builder, in which materials are furnished for making miniature bridges and structures and machines. The great outdoor and cooperative games of baseball and football, which are intensely dramatic, are now played by boys, while both boys and girls enjoy more elaborate joint impersonations than ever before, in acting charades and playing Dumb Crambo.

The years beyond thirteen introduce a second period of imitation. The boy now thinks he is a man and the girl wishes to be a woman. This play-adultism manifests itself, of course, in the insistence upon wearing adult clothes and entering into adult experiences. Now is the time for the den or the clubhouse or the workshop, in which the maturing boy or girl entertains his friends and executes his craftsmanship projects. The would-be athlete now constructs his rude outdoor gymnasium. Indoors the amateur magician performs tricks to his more or less astonished family.

A valuable device, which is far more than a toy, for this period is the stereoscope. If supplied with stereoscopic photographs carefully selected and explained, the sense of perspective, size, and life which this optical instrument gives enables the imaginative youth, or adult even, to enter so vividly into foreign experiences and customs as to constitute, if but briefly, actual experiences of travel.

There is no material or device which has been mentioned above that is not available to the most modest household. The majority of them consist of articles already in the house and the others of tools or materials which are inexpensive and of permanent value.