[5] Mrs. Browne, in any case, has not been discouraged. In 1918 she instructed her class in the dramatic department of the University of Utah in the principles and methods of marionette play, developing possible puppeteers for the future. The next spring we find her assisting Mr. Sarg in directing and staging his little puppet drama, The Rose and the Ring.

[6] At the same time a less successful and quite unfinished dress rehearsal of another drama was performed; but this play on which the manipulators had labored for many months was abandoned because of too great difficulty in manipulating ... and because of other complications which shall be nameless.

[7] Mr. Alfred Kreymborg informs me that Lima Beans, one of his amusing little poem-mimes, was played by puppets in Los Angeles, under the direction of Miss Vivian Aiken. Mr. Kreymborg has written that he considers “the only possible approach to a Synthetic stage is derived from the marionette performance.” Of the puppeteers in Los Angeles, one would like to hear more.

[8] Mr. B. Pollock, 73 Hoxton St., London, writes: “I still publish Juvenile Plays and also supply foot lights and tin slides which are used with the theatre. I have now been carrying on the business for forty-two years and my father-in-law about thirty-eight years before me.”

[9] Mr. G. Bernard Shaw has written of England: “The old professional marionette showmen have been driven off the road by the picture theatre. I am told that on the Continent where marionettes flourish much more than here, they have suffered the same way from the competition of the irresistible pictures. And I doubt whether they will recover from the attack. I am afraid there is no use pretending that they deserve to.”

How consoling to turn to Mr. Gordon Craig, who has prophesied optimistically in The Marionette: “Burattini are magical, whereas Cinema is only mechanical. When a framework of a film machine is one day found by curiosity-hunters in the ruins of a cellar and marvelled over, the Burattini will still be alive and kicking.”

Index

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.