Page:Representative American plays.pdf/860



The Scarecrow represents the romance of the fantastic, with its basis in American history. It was suggested by Hawthorne's story of "Feathertop," published originally in 1852 and afterwards included in the Mosses from an Old Manse. Mr. MacKaye has modified the nature of the characters decidedly, has added characters, and, as he says in the preface to the published play, has substituted the element of human sympathy for that of irony.

Percy MacKaye was born in New York City, March 16, 1875, the son of Steele MacKaye and Mary Medbery, who herself dramatized Pride and Prejudice. He grew up in the atmosphere of the theatre and before entering Harvard College in 1893 he had written a series of choral songs for his father's projected "Spectatorio" at the World's Fair in 1893. He graduated from Harvard College in 1897. During his junior year, he wrote a poetical play Sappho, which was acted by Harvard and Wellesley students. After two years of European travel and study he returned to New York and taught in a private school, continuing to write plays. The turning point in his career came when his Canterbury Pilgrims was accepted by E. H. Sothern in 1903. Since 1904 he has devoted himself entirely to dramatic work, living at Cornish, New Hampshire. Mr. MacKaye stands in our drama for high standards of dramatic writing. He represents the movement for a civic and national theatre, untrammelled by commercial considerations, and he has brought into recent prominence the idea of the community masque or pageant, in itself one of the most significant dramatic movements of the time. At the same time he is not simply a theorist, but has proved his ability to write plays that succeed upon the stage.

He has written sixteen plays, ten masques or pageants, and four operas. His plays have been performed except the first, A Garland to Sylvia, and Fenris the Wolf, a masterly study of the mutual effects of purity and passion, laid in a setting of Northern mythology. The acted plays, arranged in the order of their composition and with their dates of publication indicated in parentheses, are: The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903), a dramatization of the relations between Chaucer and his characters, first performed at the Park Extension Theatre, Savannah, Georgia, April 30, 1909; The Scarecrow (1908); Jeanne d'Arc, an historical play (1906), first produced at the Lyric Theatre, Philadelphia, October 15, 1906; Sappho and Phaon (1907), a Greek play with the theme of the contrasted influence of family ties and sexual love, first performed at the Opera House, Providence, Rhode Island, October 14, 1907; Mater (1908), a comedy based on American politics, first performed at the Van Ness Theatre, San Francisco, California, August 3, 1908; Anti-Matrimony (1910), a clever satire upon the influence of