The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays by Gordon Bottomley et al. (best books to read .TXT) 📕

of the Yiddish Theatre, First Series: Luce.

+Hugo von Hofmannsthal+

MADONNA DIANORA: Fearsome tragedy of the Ring-and-Book sort, beautifully and poignantly presented.

Translated by Harriett Boas, Badger.

+Stanley Houghton+

THE DEAR DEPARTED: Somewhat precipitate haste for advantage in dividing grandfather's effects is fittingly rebuked.

In Dramatic Works, vol. i. French, New York; Constable, London.

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT: A mother finds being an "imaginary invalid" excellent for checkmating her daughter's plans, but inconveniently in the way of her own.

Ibid.

+Laurence Housman+

RETURN OF ALCESTIS: A modern poetic view of the spirit of
Alcestis returning to Admetus after her sacrifice and rescue.
Edwin Arlington Robinson has also handled this theme lately.

French.

BIRD IN HAND: A pedantic old scholar is mysteriously plagued by an illusion of faery, but in time conquers the obsession.

French.

BETHLEHEM: A nativity play.

Macmillan.

THE CHINESE LANTERN: Pleasantly effective scenes in a Chinese studio.

Sidgwick and Jackson.

+William Dean Howells+

THE SLEEPING CAR; THE REGISTER; THE MOUSE TRAP; THE ALBANY DEPOT; THE GARROTERS:

Amusing but somewhat worn farces, several of them introducing the voluble Mrs. Roberts and her family.

+Henrik Ibsen+

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE: A scientist who insists on making known, and setting to work to remedy, the evils and wrongs of his community has to reckon with the people; compare The Mob, by John Galsworthy.

Boni and Liveright.

THE DOLL'S HOUSE: Nora Hjalmar, who has always been petted and shielded, at last has to face and solve certain difficult problems for herself. She thus discovers just how much her husband's love and indulgence are worth. Her solution of the difficulty is presented, not as necessarily the right thing to have done, but as what such a woman would do under the circumstances.

Boni and Liveright.

THE LADY FROM THE SEA: Ellida Wrangel, wife of the village pastor, feels the call of the sea; she feels she must go with the rough sailor to whom she was once betrothed. When Wrangel sincerely offers her liberty to choose, she "seeks the security of a familiar home, and the wild lure of the great sea spaces can trouble her no more." (Lewisohn.)

Boni and Liveright.

+W.W. Jacobs and Others+

ADMIRAL PETERS; THE GRAY PABKOT; THE CHANGELING; BOATSWAIN'S MATE: Jolly farces of sailors and watchmen and their families, based on Jacobs's stories in Captains All, Many Cargoes, and the rest.

French.

THE MONKEY'S PAW: A most fearful and gruesome play, based on Jacobs's story, in the vein of the Three Wishes, and the Foot of Pharaoh, by Gautier.

French.

+Jerome K. Jerome+

FANNY AND THE SERVANT PBOBLEM: The new Lady Bantock is surprised to discover both her real rank and her strange relationship with her twenty-three servants. An interesting character study.

French.

+William Ellery Leonard+

GLORY OF THE MORNING: The pathos of two civilizations contending for the children of the Indian woman, Glory of the Morning; they must go with their father to France or stay with their mother. Dr. Leonard has newly completed another powerful tragedy, Red Bird, as yet unpublished.

In Wisconsin Plays, First Series, 1914, B.W. Huebsch.

+Justin McCarthy+

IF I WERE KING: A romantic play, in the vein of De Banville's Gringoire, in which Villon becomes Marshal of France, for a brief time and with a fearful condition stipulated by the spider-king, Louis XI.

Heinemann.

+Edward Knoblauch and Arnold Bennett+

MILESTONES: Three different generations, with their different ideas and ideals, confront similar problems with different views, and arrive at various conclusions.

Doran.

+Percy Mackaye+

THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS: Mr. Mackaye, translator with Professor Tatlock of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, has written here a clever play of the travelers' adventures. The Wife of Bath is of course the ringleader in mischief.

Macmillan.

CALIBAN BY THE YELLOW SANDS: A masque for the Shakespeare
Tercentenary Celebration, New York City.

Doubleday.

JEANNE D'ARC: A tragedy made up of incidents in the life of the
Maid.

Macmillan.

SAM AVERAGE: A Silhouette. A soldier of 1812 is kept true to the cause by a vision of Sam Average, the spirit of his nation.

In Yankee Fantasies, Duffield.

THE SCARECROW: A lively dramatization of Hawthorne's Feathertop, from Mosses from an Old Manse.

Macmillan.

+Mary MacMillan+

THE SHADOWED STAR: Portraying the cruel suffering of two Irish peasant women who wait in a city tenement for Christmas as they remember it.

In Short Plays, Stewart and Kidd.

+Maurice Maeterlinck+

ARDIANE AND BLUEBEARD: A resolute wife finally defies Bluebeard and rescues his wives; but they refuse to forsake their unfortunate and beloved husband.

Dodd, Mead.

A MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY THE INTRUDER; THE DEATH OF TINTAGILES; INTERIOR (OR HOME):

Poignant and mystical tragedies expressing the unseen and inescapable forces surrounding and closing in upon men's lives.

Boni and Liveright; Dodd, Mead.

THE BLUE BIRD: Two peasant children, accompanied by their friends Dog, Cat, Bread, Sugar, and others, search everywhere for the blue bird of happiness. They visit among other places the realms of the dead, where their grandparents are, and of the unborn. Finally they look in the last and likeliest place.

Dodd, Mead.

THE BETROTHAL: Further adventures of Tytyl.

Dodd, Mead.

+John Masefield+

PHILIP THE KING; TRAGEDY OF POMPEY THE GREAT:

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.