Though Mr. MacKaye’s play has been written appropriately in English verse, aptly varied in its forms to be spoken by the modern actor, the reader should remember that this drama is designed to appeal more emphatically to the eye than to the ear. It should be regarded as a modification of that type of Decorative Drama which was exhibited by Professor Reinhardt in his masterly production of the pantomime of “Sumurûn.” For his background, Mr. MacKaye has chosen an old tale of the Arabian Nights which is hung before the eye as a fantastic bit of oriental tapestry; and in the foreground he has exhibited in silhouette the sharper colors of the prancing figures of his group of Italian comedians.
More subtly, this play may be conceived as a parabolic comment on a problem of the theatre at the present time. The histrionic disciples of Carlo Gozzi, the eighteenth century champion of traditional romance, are depicted as having lost their fight in Venice against the dramatist Goldoni, who, as a follower of Molière, was regarded at that time as the leader of the realistic movement; and, despairing of being accepted any longer in the country of their birth, these romantic outcasts have sought refuge in the distant orient, an orient to be considered in no sense as historic or realistic, but as purely fantastic. At the present time, our theatre has been conquered (for the moment) by sedulous recorders of the deeds of here and now; we find the drama in the throes of a new realism, more potent in its actuality than the tentative and groping realism of Goldoni; and our romantic playwrights, like these old adventurous and tattered histrions of Carlo Gozzi, have recently sought refuge in the fabulous and eye-enchanting orient. Hence the success, in recent seasons, of such romantic compositions as “Kismet” and “Sumurûn” and “The Yellow Jacket.” To escape from the obsession of Broadway and the Strand we now turn eagerly to the gorgeous east, just as these discarded comedians of Gozzi’s sought a new success within the enchanting and alluring gates of the city of Pekin.
Furthermore, by restoring to our stage the old European tradition of masks in his group of “Maskers,” Mr. MacKaye flings a prophetic shaft in the age-long tourney between symbolism and naturalism in the arts of the theatre.
Clayton Hamilton.