I have called this work a Masque, because—like other works so named in the past—it is a dramatic work of symbolism involving, in its structure, pageantry, poetry, and the dance. Yet I have by no means sought to relate its structure to an historic form; I have simply sought by its structure to solve a modern [and a future] problem of the art of the theatre. That problem is the new one of creating a focussed dramatic technique for the growing but groping movement vaguely called “pageantry,” which is itself a vital sign of social evolution—the half-desire of the people not merely to remain receptive to a popular art created by specialists, but to take part themselves in creating it; the desire, that is, of democracy consistently to seek expression through a drama of and by the people, not merely for the people.
For some ten years that potential drama of democracy has interested me as a fascinating goal for both dramatist and citizen, in seeking solution for the vast problem of leisure.[4] Two years ago at Saint Louis I had my first technical opportunity, on a large scale, to experiment in devising a dramatic structure for its many-sided requirements. There, during five performances, witnessed by half a million people, about seven thousand citizens of Saint Louis took part in my Masque [in association with the Pageant by Thomas Wood Stevens]. In the appendix of this volume a photograph gives a suggestion of one of those audiences, gathered in their public park [in seats half of which were free, half pay-seats] to witness the production.[5]
That production was truly a drama of, for, and by the people—a true Community Masque; and it was largely with the thought of that successful civic precedent that the Shakespeare Celebration first looked to Central Park as the appropriate site to produce their Community Festival, the present Masque, as the central popular expression of some hundreds of supplementary Shakespearean celebrations.
In so doing, they conceived the function of a public park—as it is conceived almost universally west of the Eastern States, and almost everywhere in Europe—to be that of providing outdoor space for the people’s expression in civic art-forms.
The sincere opposition of a portion of the community to this use of Central Park would never, I think, have arisen, if New York could have taken counsel with Saint Louis’s experience, and its wonderfully happy civic and social reactions. The opposition, however, was strong and conscientious; so that, on the same principle of community solidarity which was the raison d’etre for their informal application to use Central Park, the Shakespeare Celebration withdrew their wish to use it. To split community feeling by acrimonious discussion was contrary to the basic idea and function of the Celebration, which are to help unite all classes and all beliefs in a great coöperative movement for civic expression through dramatic art.
One very important public service, however, was performed by this Central Park discussion; it served clearly to point out a colossal lack in the democratic equipment of the largest and richest metropolis of the western hemisphere: namely, the total lack of any public place of meeting, where representative numbers of New York citizens can unite in seeing, hearing, and taking part in a festival or civic communion of their own. New York, a city of five million inhabitants, possesses no public stadium or community theatre. Little Athens, a mere village in comparison, had for its heart such a community theatre, which became the heart of civilization. Without such an instrument, our own democracy cannot hope to develop that coöperative art which is the expression of true civilization in all ages.
Happily for the Shakespeare Celebration and its aims, a large measure of solution has, at the date of this preface, been attained by the gracious offer of the New York City College authorities, through President Mezes, to permit the use of the Lewisohn Stadium and athletic field, temporarily to be converted into a sort of miniature Yale Bowl, for the production of the Shakespeare Masque on the night of May 23rd and the following four nights.
By the brilliant conception and technical plans of Mr. Joseph Urban for joining to the present concrete stadium of Mr. Arnold Brunner its duplicate in wood, on the east side of the field, and so placing the stage on its narrower width to the north, there will be created a practical outdoor theatre, remarkable in acoustics, qualified to accommodate in excellent seats about twenty thousand spectators, and some two or three thousand participants in the festival.
If such a consummation shall eventually become permanent there, it will complete the realization of a practicable dream already rendered partly complete by Mr. Adolf Lewisohn’s public-spirited donation of the present concrete structure. Referring to that practicable dream, I wrote four years ago in my volume “The Civic Theatre”:[6] “One day last spring, traversing with President John Finley the grounds lately appropriated, through his fine efforts, by the City of New York for a great stadium at the City College, I discussed with him the splendid opportunity there presented for focussing the popular enthusiasm toward athletic games in an art dramatic and nobly spectacular.”
This new dramatic art-form, then—a technique of the theatre adapted to democratic expression and dedicated to public service—I have called by the name Community Masque, and have sought to exemplify it on a large scale in two instances, at Saint Louis and at New York.