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+