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• WORKS BY PERCY MACKAYE
• DRAMAS
• The Canterbury Pilgrims. A Comedy.
• Jeanne d’Arc. A Tragedy.
• Sappho and Phaon. A Tragedy.
• Fenris The Wolf. A Tragedy.
• A Garland to Sylvia. A Dramatic Reverie.
• The Scarecrow. A Tragedy of the Ludicrous.
• Yankee Fantasies. Five One-act Plays.
• Mater. An American Study in Comedy.
• Anti-matrimony. A Satirical Comedy.
• To-morrow. A Play in Three Acts.
• A Thousand Years Ago. A Romance of the Orient.
• The Immigrants. A Lyric Drama.
• MASQUES
• Caliban. A Shakespeare Masque.
• Saint Louis. A Civic Masque.
• Sanctuary. A Bird Masque.
• The New Citizenship. A Civic Ritual.
• POEMS
• The Sistine Eve, and Other Poems.
• Uriel, and Other Poems.
• Lincoln. A Centenary Ode.
• The Present Hour.
• Poems and Plays. In Two Volumes.
• ESSAYS
• The Playhouse and the Play.
• The Civic Theatre.
• A Substitute for War.
• AT ALL BOOKSELLERS
• Uniform with this volume
• SAINT LOUIS: A Civic Masque
• AS ENACTED BY 7,000 CITIZENS OF SAINT LOUIS

PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF SETEBOS, BY JOSEPH URBAN

BY
Percy MacKaye

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1916

ENDORSED BY THE DRAMA LEAGUE OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1916, by
Percy MacKaye

All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

All acting rights, and motion picture rights, are reserved
by the author in the United States, Great Britain
and countries of the copyright Union

SPECIAL NOTICE
Regarding Public Performances and Readings

[Pg xiii]

Three hundred years alive on the 23rd of April, 1916, the memory of Shakespeare calls creatively upon a self-destroying world to do him honor by honoring that world-constructive art of which he is a master architect.

Over seas, the choral hymns of cannon acclaim his death; in battle-trenches artists are turned subtly ingenious to inter his art; War, Lust, and Death are risen in power to restore the primeval reign of Setebos.

Here in America, where the neighboring waters of his “vexed Bermoothes” lie more calm than those about his own native isle, here only is given some practical opportunity for his uninterable spirit to create new splendid symbols for peace through harmonious international expression.

As one means of serving such expression, and so, if possible, of paying tribute to that creative spirit in forms of his own art, I have devised and written this Masque, at the invitation of the Shakespeare Celebration Committee of New York City.

The dramatic-symbolic motive of the Masque I have taken from Shakespeare’s own play “The Tempest,” Act I, Scene 2. There, speaking to Ariel, Prospero says: [Pg xiv]

“It was mine art”.... There—in Prospero’s words [and Shakespeare’s]—is the text of this Masque. [Pg xv]

The art of Prospero I have conceived as the art of Shakespeare in its universal scope: that many-visioned art of the theatre which, age after age, has come to liberate the imprisoned imagination of mankind from the fetters of brute force and ignorance; that same art which, being usurped or stifled by groping part-knowledge, prudery, or lust, has been botched in its ideal aims and—like fire ill-handled or ill-hidden by a passionate child—has wrought havoc, hypocrisy, and decadence.

Caliban, then, in this Masque, is that passionate child-curious part of us all [whether as individuals or as races], grovelling close to his aboriginal origins, yet groping up and staggering—with almost rhythmic falls and back-slidings—toward that serener plane of pity and love, reason and disciplined will, where Miranda and Prospero commune with Ariel and his Spirits.

In deference to the master-originator of these characters and their names, it is, I think, incumbent on me to point out that these four characters, derived—but reimagined—from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” become, for the purposes of my Masque, the presiding symbolic Dramatis Personæ of a plot and conflict which are my own conception. They are thus no longer Shakespeare’s characters of “The Tempest,” though born of them and bearing their names.

Their words [save for a very few song-snatches and sentences] and their [Pg xvi] actions are those which I have given them; the development of their characters accords with the theme—not of Shakespeare’s play but of this Masque, in which Caliban’s nature is developed to become the protagonist of aspiring humanity, not simply its butt of shame and ridicule.

My conception and treatment also of Setebos [whose name is but a passing reference in Shakespeare’s play], the fanged idol [substituted by me for the “cloven pine”]; of Sycorax, as Setebos’ mate [in form a super-puppet, an earth-spirit rather than “witch”], from both of whom Caliban has sprung; of the Shakespearian Inner Scenes, as brief-flashing visions in the mind of Prospero; of the “Yellow Sands” as his magic isle, the world; these are not liberties taken with text or characters of Shakespeare; they are simply the means of dramatic license whereby my Masque aims to accord its theme with the art and spirit of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s own characters, that use his words[1] in scenes of his plays, have then no part in my Masque, except in the Inner Scenes,[2] where they are conceived as being conjured by Prospero and enacted by the Spirits of Ariel. [Pg xvii]

The theme of the Masque—Caliban seeking to learn the art of Prospero—is, of course, the slow education of mankind through the influences of coöperative art, that is, of the art of the theatre in its full social scope. This theme of coöperation is expressed earliest in the Masque through the lyric of Ariel’s Spirits taken from “The Tempest”; it is sounded, with central stress, in the chorus of peace when the kings clasp hands on the Field of the Cloth of Gold;[3] and, with final emphasis, in the gathering together of the creative forces of dramatic art in the Epilogue. Thus its motto is the one printed on the title page, in Shakespeare’s words:

So much for my Masque in its relationship to Shakespeare’s work and his art. Its contribution to the modern development of a form of dramatic art unpractised by him requires some brief comment.

This work is not a pageant, in the sense that the festivals excellently devised by Mr. Louis N. Parker in England, Mr. Lascelles in Canada, or Mr. Thomas Wood Stevens in America have been called pageants. Though of necessity it involves aspects of pageantry, its form is more closely [Pg xviii] related to the forms of Greek drama and of opera. Yet it is neither of these. It is a new form to meet new needs.

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[Pg xix] 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 [Pg xx] 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. [Pg xxi]

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 [Pg xxii] 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.

The occasion of this preface is not one to discuss the details of that new technique further than to suggest to the public, and to those critics who might be interested to make its implications clearer than the author and director of a production has time or opportunity to do, that the exacting time limits of presenting dramatically a theme involving many dissociated ages, through many hundreds of symbolic participants and leaders, are conditions which themselves impel the imagination toward creating a technique as architectural as music, as colorful as the pageant, as dramatic as the play, as plastic as the dance.

That my own work has attained to such a technique I am very far from supposing. I have, however, clearly seen the need for attaining to it, whatever the difficulties, if a great opportunity for democracy is not to be lost. To see that much, at a time when the vagueness of amateurs, however idealistic in desire, is obscuring the austere outlines of a noble technical art looming just beyond us, may perhaps be of some service. [Pg xxiii]

As visual hints to the structure (Inner and Outer) of the present Masque, the charts here published may be suggestive to the reader. To the reader as such it remains to point out one vital matter of technique, namely, the relation of the dramatic dialogue to the Masque’s production.

Even more than a play [if more be possible], a Masque is not a realized work of art until it is adequately produced. To the casual reader, this Masque, as visualized merely on these printed pages, may appear to be a structure simply of written words: in reality it is a structure of potential interrelated pantomime, music, dance, lighting, acting, song [choral and lyric], scene values, stage management and spoken words.

Words spoken, then, constitute in this work but one of numerous elements, all relatively important. If no word of the Masque be heard by the audience, the plot, action, and symbolism will still remain understandable and, if properly produced, dramatically interesting. Synchronous with every speech occur, in production, effects of pantomime, lighting, music, and movement with due proportion and emphasis. Such, at least, is the nature of the technique sought, whether or not this particular work attains to it. [Pg xxiv]

A Masque must appeal as emphatically to the eye as a moving picture, though with a different appeal to the imagination.

Because of this only relative value of the spoken word, there are many producers [theoretical and practical] who believe that the spoken word should be eliminated entirely from this special art of the theatre.

Artists as eminent and constructive in ideas as Gordon Craig, and many whom his genius has inspired, advocate indeed this total elimination of speech from the theatre’s art as a whole. For them that art ideally is the compound of only light and music and movement. The reason for this, I think, is because the sensibility of those artists is preëminently visual. Moreover, they are relatively inexpert, as artists, in the knowledge of the technique and values of the spoken word. Being visually expert and creative, they have, by their practical genius, established a world-wide school of independent visual art [assisted only by mass sounds of music].

For them this art has well nigh become the art of the theatre. Yet it is not so, I think, and can never be so, to that watching and listening sensibility for which all dramatic art is created—the soul of the audience. That soul, our soul, is a composite flowering of all the senses, and the life-long record of the spoken word [reiterated from childhood] is an integral, yes, the most intimate, element of our consciousness. [Pg xxv]

The association of ideas and emotions which only the spoken word can evoke is, therefore, a dramatic value which the art of the theatre cannot consistently ignore. It is chiefly because those artist-experts in word values, the poets, who might contribute their special technique to the theatre’s art, turn elsewhere creatively, that the field is left unchallenged and open to the gifted school of the visualists. The true dramatic art—which involves ideally a total coöperation—does not, and cannot, exclude the poet-dramatist. Shakespeare and Sophocles lived before electric light; if they had lived after, they would have set a different pace for Bakst and Reinhardt, and established a creative school more nobly poised in technique, more deeply human in appeal.

Now, therefore, when the poets are awaking to a new power and control of expression, here especially in our own country, if they will both learn and teach in this larger school, there rises before us the promise of an art more sensuous, sane, and communal than the theatre has ever known.

So, in the pioneering adventure of this Masque, which seeks by experiment to relate the spoken word to its larger coöperation with the visual arts, I have devised a structure in which the English language, spoken by actors, is an essential dramatic value.

Why, then, take pains [as I have done] to make it relatively non-essential in case it should not be heard? [Pg xxvi]

For this reason: that now—at the present temporary and still groping stage of development of community Masque organization and production—there can be, in the nature of the case, no complete assurance beforehand of adequate acoustics in setting, or of voices trained to large-scale outdoor speech.

But, if this be so, would it not be the wiser part of creative valor to adapt my structure wholly to these elementary conditions, risk nothing, and devise simply pantomime?

No, for by that principle no forward step for the spoken word could ever be taken. If we are to progress in this new art, we must seek to make producing conditions conform to the spoken play, even more than the play to those conditions.

And this can be done; it has been done.

At Saint Louis the vast amphitheatre for my Masque was at first considered, by nearly all who saw it, to be utterly unsuited to the spoken word; yet, after careful study, experiment and technical provision for its use, the speech of actors was heard each night by at least two-thirds of the hundred and fifty thousand listeners. Of the seven thousand actors only about fifteen spoke, but these conveyed the spoken symbolism and drama of the action.

In the present Masque I have focussed the spoken word on the raised constructed stage of wood [A. and B. in the Chart], confined it to the speech of eight principal acting parts, and about twenty other [Pg xxvii] subordinate parts, whose speaking lines [from Shakespeare’s plays] are still further focussed at the narrower inner stage [A. in the Chart], provided with special sounding boards.

On the other hand, for the ground-circle of the “Yellow Sands” [C. in the Chart], where the thousands of participants in the Interludes take part under an open sky, I have provided no spoken words, but only pantomime, mass movements, dances and choruses.

To the reader, then, I would repeat, that the words of this printed Masque are an essential, though not an exclusive, part of its structure, and are meant primarily to be spoken, not primarily to be read.

As in the case of my Civic Ritual “The New Citizenship”[7] this Masque can only have its completely adequate production on a large and elaborate scale. Like the Civic Ritual, however, which—originally designed for the New York stadium—is being performed on an adapted scale in many parts of the country, in schools and elsewhere, this Masque may perhaps serve some good purpose in being made available for performance in a smaller, simpler manner, adapted to the purposes of festivals during this year of Shakespeare’s Tercentenary. At the invitation, therefore, of Mr. Percival Chubb, President of the Drama League of America, who first suggested to me the writing of a Memorial [Pg xxviii] Masque to Shakespeare, the publishers have made arrangements with officers of the Drama League for making known its availability as stated in their announcement printed at the back of this volume.

The accompanying stage-designs are the work of Mr. Joseph Urban, the eminent Viennese artist and producer [who has recently become an American], and of Mr. Robert Edmond Jones, designer of the scenes and costumes for Mr. Granville Barker’s production of “The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife.”

At the date of this preface, Mr. Arthur Farwell has nearly completed his compositions for the lyric choruses and incidental music of the Masque. The choruses will shortly be made available, published by G. Schirmer, New York.

With all three of these artists I am fortunate in being associated in preparations for the Masque’s New York production next May.

These preparations have met with many complex difficulties of launching and organization; the time remaining is very brief to accomplish the many-sided community task for which the Masque is designed; only the merest beginnings of so vast a movement can be attempted; but, with coöperation and support from those who believe in that task, the producers look forward hopefully to serving, in some pioneering degree, the great cause of community expression through the art of the theatre.

Percy MacKaye.

 New York, February 22, 1916.

[Pg xxix]

The Action

The action takes place, symbolically, on three planes: (1) in the cave of Setebos (before and after its transformation into the theatre of Prospero); (2) in the mind of Prospero (behind the Cloudy Curtains of the inner stage); and (3) on the ground-circle of “the Yellow Sands” (the place of historic time).

The Time

The Masque Proper is concerned, symbolically, with no literal period of time, but with the waxing and waning of the life of dramatic art (and its concomitant, civilization) from primitive barbaric times to the verge of the living present.

The Interludes are concerned with ritualistic glimpses of the art of the theatre (in its widest, communal scope) during three historical periods: (1) Antiquity, (2) the Middle Ages, and (3) Elizabethan England.

The Epilogue is concerned with the creative forces of dramatic art from antiquity to the present, and—by suggestion—with the future of those forces.

The Setting

The setting of the entire Masque is architectural and scenic, not a background of natural landscape as in the case of most outdoor pageants. Being constructed technically for performance, on a large scale, by night only, its basic appeals are to the eye, through expert illusions of light and darkness, architectural and plastic line, the [Pg xxx] dance, color, and pageantry of group movements; to the ear, through invisible choirs and orchestra, stage instrumental music and voices of visible mass-choruses [in the Interludes only].

As indicated by the accompanying diagram [Time Chart][8] of its Inner Structure, the Masque Proper is enacted by a comparatively few [about thirty] professional actors, who use the spoken word to motivate the large-scale pantomime of their action; the Interludes [which use no spoken word, but only dance, pageantry, miming, and choruses] are performed by community participants [to the number of thousands]; the Epilogue utilizes both kinds of performers.

Corresponding to this Inner Structure, the Outer Structure consists of three architectural planes or acting stages [all interdependent]: a modified form of Elizabethan stage, [here called “the Middle Stage—B”] consisting of a raised platform [to which steps lead up from a ground-circle, eight feet below] provided with a smaller, curtained Inner Stage [A—under a balcony, on which the upper visions appear, and above which the concealed orchestra and choirs are located]. This Inner Stage is two feet higher than the Middle Stage, from which ramps lead up to it. Shutting it off from the other, its “Cloudy Curtains,” when closed, meet at the centre; when they are open, the inner Shakespearean scenes [visions in the mind of Prospero] are then revealed within.

Between the raised Middle Stage and the audience lies the Ground-Circle—in form like the “orchestra” of a Greek theatre. Here the community Interludes take place around a low central Altar, from which rises a great hour-glass, flowing with luminous sands. This ground-circle is the place of the Yellow Sands, the outer wave-lines of which are bordered by the deep blue of the space beyond. The circle itself, representing the magic isle of Prospero [the temporal place of his art], is mottled with shadowy contours of the continents of the world.

Beneath the middle stage, and between the broad spaces of the steps which lead up to it from the ground-circle, is situated, at centre, the mouth of Caliban’s cell, which thus opens directly upon the Yellow Sands.

All of these features of the setting, however, are invisible when the Masque begins, and are only revealed as the lightings of the action disclose them.

GROUND·PLAN

FOR·AUDITORIUM·AND·STAGE
OF·SHAKESPEARE·MASQUE

A·INNER·STAGE·SHAKESPEARE·SCENES
B·MIDDLE·STAGE·ACTION·OF·MASQUE·PROPER·
C·OUTER·STAGE·(ON·THE·YELLOW·SANDS)·ACTION·OF·INTERLUDES·

[Pg xxxi]

I. OF THE MASQUE PROPER[9]

Speaking Persons

[Pg xxxii]

II. OF THE TEN INNER-STAGE SCENES

[Enacted by the Spirits of Ariel.]

See Appendix: Pages 159-161.

Of these scenes eight are spoken scenes taken from plays of Shakespeare; one (the sixth) is a pantomime devised from a descriptive speech in “Henry the Eighth,” Act I, Scene I; one (the fourth) is a tableau scene symbolic of the early Christian Church. Those taken from Shakespeare are printed in black-faced type.

III. OF THE INTERLUDES

See Appendix: Pages 162, 166, 172, 184, 187, 190, 195.

IV. OF THE EPILOGUE

• Speaking Persons
• The Spirit of Time
• Shakespeare [as Prospero]
• Pantomime Groups[12]
• Theatres [with Musicians, Dancers, Designers, Producers,
• Inventors, etc.: Creators of the art of the theatre]
• Actors
• Dramatists
• Spirit Trumpeters [Announcers of the Groups]

STAGE·FOR·SHAKESPEARE·MASQUE·

BEHIND THE CLOUDY CURTAINS IS STAGE A OF INNER SCENES (SEE GROUND PLAN)
IN FRONT OF THE CURTAINS IS STAGE B OF MASQUE PROPER (SEE GROUND PLAN)  
AT CENTRE, CALIBAN’S CELL OPENS UPON STAGE C OF INTERLUDES (SEE GROUND PLAN)

[Pg 3]

[Pg 34]

FIRST INNER SCENE

SECOND INNER SCENE[15]

THIRD INNER SCENE

[While he cries aloud, the Powers of Setebos come forth from the cell beneath, clad as Roman men, women, and slaves and, joined by the Roman Interlude Pageant on the ground-circle, raise the Emperor on a palanquin upon their shoulders, and bear him up the steps to the middle stage, shouting “Caligula!” [Pg 69]

Here a scene of mingled riot and orgy follows:

Women dancers with golden bowls, slaves shackled and driven with whips, rabble groups scrambling for bread loaves flung them by heralds, armed soldiery, and gorgeous patrician lords: these swarm in a sordid saturnalia, from the midst of which the masked form of Caligula rises dominant in splendor. At his gesture, slaves tear the Muses from their shrine, and give them over to the revellers.

High above all, clutching the staff, his huge limbs rioting grotesque from his silken garments, Caliban dances on the throne of Prospero.

Below, bass voices of invisible choirs chant through the din:

“Setebos! Setebos! Thou art Setebos!”

Seized from the throne with the Muses, Miranda—at the centre—is borne in faint dread to the reaching arms of Caligula, who is about to place upon her his crown, when a sudden pealing of silvery trumpets strikes silence over all. In awe the revellers gaze upward, and turn toward the background, listening.

Above them there, from the darkness, appears a colossal CROSS, burning with white fire.

Caligula drops his crown.

Shadow falls on the colorful pageantry, and all sink slowly to their knees, as the Spirits of Ariel appear again [Pg 70] above—their luminous wings outspread like seraphim.

At either end one blows a slim tapering trumpet.

High and clear, then, their choirs chant in Gregorian unison:

And now, to faint organ music, the Cloudy Curtains, parting, reveal the INNER STAGE hung like an early Christian shrine in a catacomb—with primitive tapestries of dusky blue and gold. Against these in the glow of candles, an image of haloed Saint Agnes holds a white lamb, which silent shepherds are adoring. This group remains motionless as a tableau.

Then silently from either side two priests come forth with swinging censers. Passing forward and down the steps to the ground-circle, they are followed in the dim light by the Roman revellers, who rise and pass off through the Interlude gates.

Last of all rises Caligula, who pauses hesitant, looking back where Miranda still kneels, now grouped about by her Muses.

As he stoops to lift his crown from the earth, two Figures in the INNER SCENE—a Shepherd Boy, and a Shepherd wrapt in a hide mantle—stir from the still picture and come forward in a circle of light, while

THE CLOUDY CURTAINS CLOSE

behind them, and above the white cross vanishes.

Speaking from the place of light to the Emperor’s form in shadow, the Shepherd calls to him:]

[Now, when the Italian Interlude is concluded, the light—passing to the middle stage—illumines at centre the lone figure of Caliban, where he squats above his cell. Gazing out over the ground-circle, he calls aloud his yearning thoughts:]

FIFTH INNER SCENE.

On a platform at Elsinore, by blazing starlight, three Figures are seen pacing the cold.

SIXTH INNER SCENE

SEVENTH INNER SCENE

In the glow and gloom of Italian night, as high clouds intermittently obscure the moon, a palace garden lies in deep shadow. Emerging only partly into view, where soft light-floodings fall on moss-stained statue, marble bench, and balcony, there is revealed at first [on the left] nothing but a glimpse of garden wall, before which flash in the dimness two pied figures [Benvolio and Mercutio]. Calling shrilly, their young voices rain showers of fluting laughter.

PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR SEVENTH INNER SCENE: JONES

[Pg 99]

[Still, after the curtains’ closing, the music continues, but now more faint, changing the idyllic strains of the dance rhythm to a minor sadness, which gradually takes form as a drear, monotonous processional. Through the faint music, Miranda speaks to Ariel.]

[Pg 111]

[At the conclusion now of the English Interlude, out of the shadow a roseate glow suffuses the cell of Caliban, from which the green-clad Spirits of Ariel come running forth, bringing in their midst Miranda. Leading her in daisy chains, they mount with her the steps toward Prospero, singing in glad chorus:]

THE EIGHTH INNER SCENE

A place of dappled shine and shadow in the forest. No boughs or trees are visible, but only a luminous glade of color, where falling sunlight filters a swaying glow and gloom from high, wind-stirred branches above. On the edges of the scene, the semi-obscurity half conceals forms of the forest company [Jacques, the Duke, etc.] who, seated about their noon-time meal, sing their chorus:

THE NINTH INNER SCENE

The gigantic trunk of an oak rises in moonlight, surrounded by the glimmering purple of the obscure forest. [Pg 128]

Trooping from the left, enter the disguised Fairies, following their leader Sir Hugh Evans.]

THE TENTH INNER SCENE

Before high mediæval walls, partly shattered, to pealing of trumpets, appear in their armor, King Henry the Fifth, and his nobles, surrounded by soldiers, with cross-bows and scaling-ladders.

Standing above on a parapet, the King is exhorting them with vehement ardor.

PRELIMINARY SKETCH FOR TENTH INNER SCENE: JONES

[Pg 139]

[Pg 142]

As the Spirit of Time ceases to speak, the light passes to the entrances of the Greek ground-circle, where now—from either side—enters a Pageant of the great Theatres of the world—from the ancient Theatre of Dionysus to the Comedie Francaise—in symbolic groups, with their distinctive banners and insignia. The names of these are blazoned on their group standards, and the groups themselves [like those that follow] are announced from either end of the high balcony above the inner stage by two spirit Trumpeters, the one beneath a glowing disk of the sun, the other beneath a sickle moon.

While these, below, have ranged themselves on the ground-circle and steps above—the groups of War, Lust, and Death have dwindled away in the background darkness—leaving only Prospero, Miranda, and Ariel, grouped in light at the centre.

Then on either wing of the stage, at right and left, appears luminous a colossal mask—the one of Tragedy, the other of Comedy. Through the mouths of these, now come forth, in national pageant groups,[20] the creators of the art of the theatre from antiquity to the verge of the living present: the world-famed actors, dramatists, producers, musicians, directors, and inventors of its art. [Pg 144]

First come the great Actors, in the guise of their greatest rôles—from Thespis and Roscius of old to Irving, Salvini, Coquelin, Booth, of modern times, the comic actors tumbling forth from the Mask of Comedy, the tragic from the Tragic Mask.

They are followed by national groups of the great Dramatists from Æschylus to Ibsen, who pass in review before Prospero.

Among these, with the Elizabethan Dramatists, grouped with Marlowe, Green, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and others, appears the modest figure of Shakespeare, at first unemphasized.

For one moment, however, as Shakespeare himself approaches Prospero, he pauses, Prospero rises, and the two figures—strangely counterparts to their beholders—look in each other’s eyes: a moment only. For Prospero, slipping off his cloak, lays it on the shoulders of Shakespeare, who sits in Prospero’s place, while Prospero moves silently off with the group of Dramatists.

Finally, when these pageants of Time have passed, and the stately Spirit of Time vanished in dark on the Yellow Sands, the only light remains on the figure of Shakespeare—and the two with him: Ariel tiptoe behind him, peering over his shoulder; Miranda beside him, leaning forward, with lips parted to speak. [Pg 145]

Then to these, out of the dimness, comes forth Caliban. Groping, dazed, he reaches his arms toward the dark circle, where the stately Spirit has vanished. In a voice hoarse with feeling, he speaks aloud.

[Pg 148]

[Pg 149]

[Pg 150]

[Pg 151]

The actors of a Community Masque being members of the community, it becomes the function of the Masque-director to reverse the traditional order of theatrical procedure and—so far as possible—to take the public, as participants, into the confidence of “behind the scenes” beforehand.

If this were a play only [in the Broadway sense], I should gather together my staff and company for a preliminary reading, assign parts, devise plans of rehearsal, and get personally in touch with the comparatively few persons involved in its production. Being, however, a new kind of drama, involving some thousands of persons as actors, and some scores of leaders as a projected staff, it becomes practically necessary to print and publish, before production, not only the foregoing spoken and sung Masque-Proper, but the sketched-in outlines of the nonspeaking Interludes which follow.

In the nature of the case, these outlines are preliminary and [though necessarily printed here] are still plastic and susceptible to various modifications. Thus publication at the moment in New York is [Pg 152] essentially for the purpose of rendering each of the hundreds of participants more intimately familiar with his or her special relationship [as group participant or group principal] to the work as a whole.

To this is also added the need for making its text and stage-directions available to communities outside of New York, which have already expressed their desire to organize for its production after next May.

An interesting American phase of the New York production is the problem of carrying its community meaning to the still polyglot population, so that steps have been taken for the immediate translation of the Masque into Italian, German, and Yiddish.

By referring to the chart inner structure, the reader will see that it offers a technical solution for the participation of about a dozen national and civic groups within the time limits of the festival, without disintegrating the organic unity of the plot and action of the drama, with which the actions of the various groups are fused and synthesized. This form of technique [the result of some years of thought and experiment in this field] contributes a basis for the future development of the outdoor community art of the theatre, on a scale adapted to modern cities. [Pg 153]

The Masque thus becomes, so to speak, a Masque of Masques. For example, the seven-minute Don Giovanni pantomime scene-plot of the Spanish and Italian Action in Interlude II [of which Mr. Ernest Peixotto is the community group-chairman] is being enlarged, under Mr. Peixotto’s direction, into the spring festival of the MacDowell Club, performed locally at its clubhouse, lasting an hour and a half, for the Prologue of which the author has written the dialogue.

So each of the other Interlude Actions, necessarily brief in time-limit, is itself a potential Masque or festival, capable of being developed locally into larger proportions. And this is being done in New York in the case of several other of the Interlude Actions.

At the present date, among those who are actively interested in the production side of the Interludes, are the Misses Lewisohn, and their associates of the Neighborhood Playhouse, for interpreting the Egyptian; Mr. Franklin Sargent of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in association with members of the Greek Colony, for the Greek; Mr. Arturo Giovannitti [who, as poet, is also translating the Masque into Italian] and members of the Italian colony, for the Roman; Mr. Otto J. Merkel, and members of the German University League, for the German; Mr. Charles A. Donner and members of the Alliance Francaise, [Pg 154] for the French; Mr. Rene Wildenstein, Mr. Peixotto, and members of the Spanish-speaking community, for the Spanish-Italian; the New York Branch of the English Folk-Dance Society, under direction of Mr. Cecil Sharp, for the Interlude of Elizabethan England; the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters [Chairman, Mr. William Dean Howells], for the Epilogue.

As indicated in the Inner Structure Chart, an Action of ancient India[21] was originally planned for the beginning of Interlude I. This was chiefly devised, in conference with the author and director, by the director of the community Interludes, Mr. Garnet Holme, who has brought to this New York production his very valuable experience in directing outdoor festivals in California and England. Owing, however, to brevity of time and the pressure of organization details, this Action has been omitted from the production in May.

• SHADED: MASQUE PROPER:
• SPEAKING ACTORS (ABOUT 30)
• MUTE FIGURANTS (ABOUT 300)
• INVISIBLE CHOIRS
• ACTION ON STAGES A & B OF GROUND PLAN
•  
• WHITE: INTERLUDES & EPILOGUE:
• NON-SPEAKING PARTICIPANTS (ABOUT 2,000)
• VISIBLE CHORUSES
• COMMUNITY DANCES
• PANTOMIME ACTING
• MASS MOVEMENTS
• ACTION ON STAGE C OF GROUND PLAN

[Pg 155] Of the other members of the producing staff of the Interludes, Mrs. Robert Anderson contributes to her direction of the community dances her admirable knowledge of the subject, and Mrs. John W. Alexander to the Interlude costuming [in association with Mr. Urban and Mr. Jones] the excellent insight and artistry which contributed so much [with the work of her husband, the late President of the Academy] to the impressiveness of the “Joan of Arc” stadium performance at Harvard, and other productions of Maude Adams and Charles Frohman.

In the following descriptions of the Interlude Actions, the numbers of community actors are based on an arbitrary computation [at this date] of a total of 1,500, at least double which number will require to be enlisted to make sure of sufficient persons for the five New York performances. The numbers here printed, however, are purely tentative and are subject to modification. Of the terms used for community actors, the term Participants means those who take part in the Interludes only; Figurants those who also take part in groups of the Masque Proper; Specials those who take part only in the special group, or groups, designated.

In the projected tour of the Masque outside of New York, a modified performance of the Masque, on a smaller scale, when acted without the Interludes, will require, in local community actors, only the Figurants. [Pg 156]

It will be evident, I think, to the reader, that the organization of a community for a Masque performance on so large a scale is a special technique, only recently in process of development. As a contribution to this technique, the appended Community Organization Chart has been drawn up by my sister, Hazel MacKaye, who has brought to it her experience, of several years, in organizing and directing community pageants and masques, some of them of her own authorship.

Space and time do not permit of further comment in this Foreword on many important social relationships and reactions involved in this new community art. The accompanying photograph, however, of a Community Masque audience—150,000 citizens of Saint Louis gathered in May, 1914, to witness the Pageant and Masque of Saint Louis, in which over 7,000 of their fellow-citizens took part—may be suggestive to the imagination of the reader. On the background may be seen, at centre, the thousand-foot stage, and, at left and right, the tents of the community actors, men and women.

Space and time also do not permit of any adequate emphasis upon the enormous importance, and contribution to this growing art-form, of music in its community aspects. In this respect, the splendid pioneering work of Mr. Harry H. Barnhart in creating community choruses in Rochester and New York City is fundamentally significant. In the creative field of composition, rich in its manifold promise, Mr. Arthur Farwell, director of the New York Music School Settlement, and composer of the music of this Masque, has devoted probably more attention than any other American composer to this community type of musical art.

A COMMUNITY MASQUE AUDIENCE

Copyright, 1914. By E. O. Thalinger, St. Louis

150,000 SPECTATORS OF THE PAGEANT AND MASQUE OF SAINT LOUIS,
IN WHICH 7,500 CITIZENS TOOK PART, MAY, 1914
[IN BACKGROUND, CENTRE, THE STAGE; RIGHT AND LEFT, TENTS OF ACTORS]

[Pg 157] To the Shakespeare Celebration of New York, since its origin last year in activities of the Drama League, Miss Mary Porter Beegle, of Barnard College, has contributed her unflagging zest and enthusiasm, Mr. Howard Kyle his disinterested, manifold services, Miss Kate Oglebay her remarkable thoroughness in organizing the Supplementary Celebrations.

In his original and deeply based work of experiment, through channels of the People’s Institute and the School for Community Centre Workers, Mr. John Collier has shown fundamental leadership in a field all-important to the community purposes of this Masque: the modern economics and organization of coöperative art.

As this Foreword goes to press, Prof. Richard Ordynski has joined Mr. Urban in the work of the Masque’s New York production.

To Mr. Everard Thompson, producers and committees alike are indebted for his unfailing, friendly resourcefulness. [Pg 158]

As references to the reader curious to study the art of the theatre in the eras touched upon in these Interludes, a lengthy Bibliography might well be submitted. For this Foreword, it may suffice to refer to three very useful works, in several volumes, viz: “The Drama,” Editor Alfred Bates, Historical Publishing Company [a dozen volumes]; “The Art of the Theatre,” Karl Manzius, Scribners, [5 volumes]; “The Theatre, Its Development in France and England, and a History of Its Greek and Latin Origins,” Charles Hastings, London, Duckworth, 1902 [and Lippincott].

The beneficial possibilities of community festival art and organization are, of course, commensurate with the time and opportunity afforded for their development. As mentioned in the Preface, the time for the New York production has, by unavoidable circumstance, become far too brief to accomplish, between the present date and the 23rd of May the deep social reactions potential in this festival. A year, instead, for the work of preparation would be none too much. It is hoped, however, that the production of this Masque may at least help to establish the festival movement in New York on a sound and perennial community basis.

Percy MacKaye.

 New York, March 26, 1916.

[Pg 159]

• FIRST INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Antony
• Cleopatra
• Charmian
• Eros
• PANTOMIME GROUPS
• Roman Soldiers
• Egyptian Populace
• Flutists
• Harpists
• Wine Bearers
•  
• SECOND INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Cressida
• Her Attendant
• Pandarus
• Boy
• Troilus
• MUTE PERSONS
• Hecuba
• Helen
• Æneas
• Antenor
• Hector
• Paris
• Helenus[Pg 160]
• PANTOMIME GROUPS
• Trojan Warriors
• Trojan Populace
•  
• THIRD INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Brutus
• Lucius, a boy
• Ghost of Cæsar
• MUTE PRESENCES
• Shapes in the Darkness
•  
• FOURTH INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Saint Agnes [An Image]
• A Shepherd [Impersonated by Prospero]
• A Shepherd Boy [Impersonated by Ariel]
• Other Shepherds
•  
• FIFTH INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Hamlet
• Horatio
• Marcellus
• MUTE PERSONS
• The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father
•  
• SIXTH INNER SCENE
• [Derivative from Shakespeare]
• PANTOMIME PERSONS AND GROUPS
• King Henry the Eighth, of England
• King Francis the First, of France
• Their Soldiers and Followers[Pg 161]
•  
• SEVENTH INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Benvolio
• Mercutio
• Romeo
• Juliet
• Lorenzo
• Florizel
• Perdita
• MUTE PERSONS
• Jessica
•  
• EIGHTH INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Orlando
• Jacques
• Duke
• Adam
• PANTOMIME GROUPS
• Foresters of Arden
•  
• NINTH INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS
• Sir Hugh Evans [as Fairy]
• Sir John Falstaff
• Mistress Ford
• Mistress Page
• Mistress Quickly [as Fairy]
• Pistol [as Hobgoblin]
• PANTOMIME GROUPS
• Fairies [Counterfeited by Followers of Sir Hugh]
•  
• TENTH INNER SCENE
• SPEAKING PERSONS AND GROUPS
• King Henry the Fifth
• His Soldiers and Followers[Pg 162]

THEME

Egyptian Worshippers of the god Osiris, B. C. 1000, celebrate his resurrection from death by a dramatic ritual, symbolizing how the seven portions of his rended body unite again at his rebirth.

ACTION

At the deep pealing of gongs, from each of the three entrances to the ground-circle, two diverging Processions issue forth, a seventh issuing from the cell of Caliban. All are dressed in robes and concealing masks of black.

Slowly, to the rhythmic beat of Egyptian drums [borne by the last five in each procession], by seven separate routes, they move out upon the Yellow Sands, and so converge toward the altar at the centre.

Within about a rod of the altar they pause, while their seven Priest-Leaders move forward—each bearing a fire urn—to the altar, on which an immense circular disk lies. On the disk, a prone Shape lies concealed beneath a black cloth.

Bowing before the altar, the seven Priests then rise and, mounting the steps, extend their arms to touch the rim of the disk. Thus—their black masks turned skyward—they raise their shrill voices in a mournful Egyptian chant. [Pg 164]

Moving then backward to the ground, they drop incense within their seven urns, from which rise seven pillars of smoke, lighted by the glow of fire beneath.

In this increasing glow, the black Shape on the disk stirs, slowly rises beneath its dark cloth, and extends upward its hidden arms. During this, the drums beat from a low muffled cadence increasingly to a loud rolling rhythm, to which now—at a shrill choral cry from all the worshippers—the black cloth on the central Shape sloughs to its feet, revealing—in a burst of radiant splendor—the flame-bright form of the god Osiris.

In tall shining mitre, he raises his ox-herd’s whip and shepherd’s crook. With these, to the joyous cries of his Worshippers, he bestows with archaic gesture a seven-fold sign of benediction.

Once more then mounting the altar steps, the Priests step forth from their black robes and masks in their own garments of yellow gold. Thus, touching again the rim of the disk, they begin to revolve it—at first slowly.[22]

And now at its first motion, Osiris begins to dance. [Pg 165]

In this dance he expresses the former beneficence of his life, the sufferings of his death, the rending of his body into seven parts and finally the joy of his resurrection.[23]

In rhythm to the primitive music, the Priests revolve the disk to the dancing movement of the god.

In this revolving movement his Worshippers below join in a dance on the ground (expressive of the blending of the seven parts of his body), where one by one successively the seven Processions encircle the altar and the dancing Osiris. As they do so, they slough off their dark garments, weaving thus a whirling movement in which the proportion of black ever diminishes while the golden yellow increases, until finally—in a blaze only of gold-yellow radiance—the Priests raise aloft on its pedestal the disk, still spinning, while the flame-red god, still dancing, is borne away in procession by his joyous Worshippers, shouting aloud their shrill cries of “Osiris!”

When all have disappeared through the south gate of the circle, Prospero on his throne speaks to Ariel,[24] announcing the Second Action of the Interlude—his art of the drama in Greece. [Pg 166]

THEME

Sophocles rehearses the Second Chorus of his drama “Antigone” in the Theatre of Dionysus, at Athens, B. C. 440.

ACTION

At the sounding of Interlude trumpets, the light passes to the great gates of the ground-circle, from which simultaneously two main groups enter.

From the right enter Athenian Citizens, accompanying Pericles and Aspasia. These move forward to the north portion of the Yellow Sands [between the centre of stage B and the altar] and there form the semicircle of an antique audience, which faces the altar and the modern audience. Among these, two seats are placed for Aspasia and Pericles.

From the left gate, meanwhile, has entered the Choregus [producer of the play], in conversation with Sophocles, followed closely by a group of twenty friends, among whom are Socrates, Aristophanes, Anaxagoras, [Pg 168] Alcibiades, and Euripides. These move toward the centre. There Sophocles summons the Chorodidaskalos [Chorus Master], and the Orchestrodidaskalos [Dancing Master] to confer with him and the Choregus. Returning part way toward the left gate, the Chorus Master calls aloud “Antigone!”

Enter, then [left], the Actor of the part of Antigone, followed by a group of Actors comprising the impersonators of Ismene, Creon, Haemon, Eurydice, Teiresias, a Watchman, and two Messengers. With these, who carry their classic masks in their hands, the Choregus confers in pantomime, directs them to join Sophocles at the altar, and then calls aloud: “Choreutai!”

Thereupon enter the Choreutai [Members of the Chorus], sixty in number, in four bands, fifteen in each band. Preceded by the Choryphaios [Stage Chorus Leader] and four Flute-players [one for each band], escorted by two Parastatai [Assistant Leaders], the Chorus march in military order first south [each band in three ranks of five men] till they are opposite the altar, then east [each band in five files of three men], till they halt near the altar.

Here, after Sophocles has greeted Pericles and Aspasia nearby in the impromptu audience [which his group of friends have now joined], after [Pg 169] he has chatted with Socrates, and been chaffed by Aristophanes and Alcibiades, he turns with the Choregus to conduct the rehearsal.

After giving directions to Antigone and Ismene, who rehearse in pantomime a snatch of their first scene together, and after a few instructions to Haemon, Euripides, and Teiresias, Sophocles now bids the Choregus direct the last few passages between Creon and the Messenger, just before the Second Chorus in the play.

They do so in pantomime; Creon, with final threatening gesture to the Messenger, makes his exit, and the Messenger—thanking the gods for his escape from Creon’s anger—also departs.

And now, by direction of Sophocles, the Chorus Master and the Master of Dance make signal to the Chorus and the Flute-players; Sophocles steps back near Pericles and his other friends: the Flutists begin playing and, under leadership of the two masters of choral song and of dance, the Chorus—with vigorous, rhythmic cadence of their athletic bodies—perform an austere dance about the altar, raising to its measure their choral song: [Pg 170]

CHORUS

The words of this chorus are translated here by the author from the Second Chorus of Sophocles’ play “Antigone.”

As they conclude, a runner comes hastening from the right gate, calling “Pericles!”

Pericles rises, receives in pantomime the message of the runner, and indicates to Sophocles that he must return to the city.

He and Aspasia and their followers depart [right gate]. With a gesture, then, to the Choregus, Sophocles dismisses the rehearsal; he and his friends follow the others; the Chorus forms again in files and ranks, moving off with the playing Flute-players to the right Interlude gate, where all disappear. [Pg 172]

THEME

The Emperor Caligula witnesses a farcical comedy in pantomime, enacted in a street of Rome, A. D. 40.

ACTION

As the last of the Greeks disappear right, the Interlude trumpets sound at the left gate. There immediately resounds a great shout and clamor of voices, crying aloud: “Caligula! Salve, Imperator!” The gate is thrown open, and the Roman populace throng in, accompanying—in varied groups of squalor and poverty—the gorgeous Patricians that escort the Emperor Caligula, borne in a chariot, behind which follow a troupe of Roman Pantomime Actors and Mimes who carry a light platform with curtain, which they set up [centre, north], facing the altar.

The curtain is painted to represent the street exterior of a house, in the Pompeian-Roman style. In the centre, set in a lintel frame, is [Pg 174] depicted a wide squat door, the stage platform forming its sill. Above the door is a window casement. Both door and window are devised to open and close practically. The top of the curtain is designed as an over-jutting tiled roof.

With the Pantomimists come a group of Musicians, consisting of players on flutes, shields and cymbals, citherns and lyres, and two who wear fastened to their ankles pairs of scabilla, a kind of cymbal for the feet.

The Populace and Patricians meantime cross to right of centre [further southwest].

In the chariot beside Caligula rides Naevoleia, a female Mime, whom Caligula—with amorous playfulness—kisses and crowns with gold laurel as she alights. Alighting with her, he himself helps to attire her in the garments worn in her part of the nymph Omphale in the stage pantomime to follow. Doing so, he thrusts aside—with a glance and gesture of jealous anger—the Chief Actor, who [in the part of Hercules] approaches to assist.

Caligula then escorts her to the improvised stage where she teasingly parts with him to play her rôle in the Comedy. Caligula returns to his chariot. [Pg 175]

And now the Comedy is announced by the appearance [through the curtain door] of Pantomimus, a particolored figure, garbed antiquely as a harlequin, wreathed and masked.[26]

Behind Pantomimus, enter [on either side of him] two little Pantomimi, half his height, exactly resembling him in every particular. These, as with skipping step and motion Pantomimus makes his introduction, imitate his every movement of wand and gesture.

By his action, which is accompanied by flute, cymbal, and scabilla players, Pantomimus describes very briefly the plot of the comedy which is to follow, viz:

THE SPHINX AND HERCULES[27]
THEME

Hercules, lured by the nymph Omphale to live with her a woman’s way of life, becomes terribly bored, rebels, and vows to a statue of the Sphinx to resume his manly exploits. By the help of the satyr Silenus, however, who makes Hercules drunk, Omphale—in guise of the Sphinx—wins Hercules back and marries him. [Pg 176]

ACTION

As Pantomimus concludes this dumb-show exposition, he signs to his two Assistants, who run out and bring back two stage properties, which they place on either side: the right-hand one represents a squat pillar, on the top of which is the sitting figure of a bronze Sphinx; the left-hand—a set-piece of foliage and shrubbery.

All three then make their exit.

Enter, then, on the ground plane, from behind the stage platform, Servus, a house-slave, masked as such. He places on the platform a low seat and, beside it, a heap of wool and spinning materials. Then he prostrates himself toward the left ground entrance, as enter there—dancing to cymbal music—a group of young girl-mimes [without masks], dressed as Nymphs and carrying distaffs.

In the midst of these—preceded by most of them—enter Hercules, in grotesque mask, which depicts a comic-dejected expression. He is wadded after the manner of the comic histrionic vase-figures of antiquity, and walks downcast. Instead of his legendary lion’s skin, there hangs from his shoulder the wooly pelt of a sheep; in place of his knotted club, his hand holds a huge distaff; and for the rest he is dressed like a Greek woman. [Pg 177]

He is accompanied by Omphale, masked as a beautiful and amorous nymph. Over her shoulders she wears his lion’s skin; in one hand she holds his massive club; with the other she caresses him.

With coquetting wiles, the Nymphs in their dancing draw the two toward the centre, where they sit beside the wool—Hercules, with heavy sighs, beginning to spin, while Omphale, posing in the lion’s skin, approves his labor. Here the Nymphs, reclined about them on the platform and the ground, execute a rhythmic dance with their arms and distaffs, singing to their movement:

At the culmination of this, Hercules, who has been repelling the [Pg 178] attentions of Omphale, at first with feeble ennui, but afterward with increasing determination, now rises in grandiose disgust, and—snatching from her his lion’s skin and club—repudiates her and the Nymphs.

Flinging down the sheep’s pelt and setting his foot upon it, he breaks his distaff in pieces and, threatening Omphale, drives the Nymphs off the scene, left. [During this excitement, Servus—who has been standing aside—seizes the heap of wool, and exit with it in flight.] Turning then to the image of the Sphinx, Hercules expresses in dumb-show how, lured by the riddle of the Sphinx, he aspires to fight and conquer the world for her sake. Laying his club and lion’s skin devoutly at the foot of the column, he kneels, embraces it, and raises then his arms in supplication to the Sphinx.

Thus kneeling, he is watched furtively at a distance by Omphale, who, at his outburst, has run to the edge of the foliage, right. Hercules, rising, puts on his lion’s skin, and brandishing his club heroically for the benefit of the immovable Sphinx, goes off, left.

Immediately Omphale seizes from amid the foliage a sylvan pipe, and blows on it a brief, appealing ditty. At this, from behind the foliage, run out boy-mimes, in the guise of Fauns; she gesticulates to them beseechingly. They run back and presently return, advancing to [Pg 179] pipe-music, accompanying and leading a goat, astride of which sits Silenus, an old grotesque Satyr, in mask.

Omphale greets him joyfully and helps him down from the goat. She then describes to him in pantomime the late outburst of Hercules—his breaking the spindle, his enamoration for the Sphinx, etc., and prays his aid and advice.

Silenus pauses an instant in philosophical absorption, then gives a leap and skip. Omphale, seeing that he has hit on some plan, expresses her pleasure and inquires what his plan may be. Silenus bids her call a slave. Omphale claps her hands toward the left entrance. Servus enters. Silenus signs to him. Servus goes back and returns immediately, rolling in a wine-cask, from which he fills an antique beaker. From this Silenus sips and approves. He then points to the Sphinx and asks if be that of which Hercules is enamored. Omphale assents. Silenus then directs Servus to lift the Sphinx down from the pillar. Servus does so, revealing its hollow interior as he carries it. Silenus, drawing Omphale’s attention to this fact of its hollowness, opens the door in the curtain, and commands Servus to bear the Sphinx within. Servus does so. Silenus, then, pointing to the window above the door, whispers in the ear of Omphale, who, delighted, enters the door after Servus. Silenus closes the door as Hercules reënters, left. [Pg 180]

The hero has discarded his woman’s garb, and comes forward now dressed as a man, with lion’s skin and club—his mask changed to one of an exultant and martial expression.

Silenus greets him with obsequious and cunning servility and offers him wine. Hercules, with good-natured hauteur, condescends to accept the cup which he offers. While he is drinking, the window above in the curtain opens, and Omphale thrusts her head out, revealing [within] beside her own, the Sphinx’s head. Silenus secretively motions her to be cautious. Seeing his gesture, Hercules looks up, but not swiftly enough to detect Omphale, who withdraws. Again looking forth, as he turns to drink again, Omphale mocks Hercules below, dropping wisps of wool on his head, the source of which, however, Hercules fails to detect. Silenus explains that the wool is really feathers, which fell from a bird flying overhead.

Hercules now, under the sly persuasions of the old Satyr, grows more pleased with the wine, and becomes drunk—as he becomes so, expressing to Silenus, with increasing familiarity and descriptive force, all the mighty exploits he intends to accomplish in the service of the incomparable Sphinx, whose living prototype he declares he will immediately set forth in search of. [Pg 181]

Starting now, humorously drunk, to depart [right] he is detained by Silenus, who points upward to the window, where now the blank, immovable face of the Sphinx looks forth at the sky. Hercules, bewildered, asks Silenus if it is really the Sphinx herself and alive? Silenus assents and proves his assertion by pointing to the deserted pedestal. At this, Hercules addresses the Sphinx, with impassioned gestures. The Sphinx remains immovable. Hercules becomes discouraged. Silenus then puts a pipe in his hand, and tells him to play it. He does so, and is rewarded by a slow, preternatural look from the Sphinx. At this he plays more vociferously and, surrounded by the little piping Fauns, performs a serenade beneath the casement, while Silenus, looking on from a distance, rubs his hands with sly delight.

The serenade ends by Hercules, on his knees, imploring the Sphinx to come down. The Sphinx at length consents and the casement closes. Silenus calls his Fauns away to the edge of the foliage, and Hercules goes to the door.

For a moment nothing happens and Hercules knocks on the steps impatiently with his club. Then the door opens and enter the Sphinx—dressed below in the Greek garments of Omphale, but from the waist upward consisting of the sitting image of the Sphinx, beneath [Pg 182] whose closed wings the arms of Omphale are thrust through and have place for motion.

The Sphinx, its tail swinging behind, descends the steps, reticent and impassive, attended by Hercules, drunk and enamored.

Then at the foot of the steps, to the accompaniment from the foliage of the piping Fauns, who play softly a variation of the serenade theme, Hercules woos the Sphinx, who, at the proper moment, succumbs to his entreaties. After embracing him amorously, she extends her hand to him. He seizes it to kiss; she withdraws it and signifies that he must put a ring on the ring-finger. Hercules hunts about him in vain for the ring. Calling then to Silenus and the Fauns, he explains to them the situation.

Silenus, producing a ring, hands it to Hercules, who puts it on the finger of the Sphinx.

Instantly a clash of cymbals is heard from the left, and a clapping of palms from the right, and re-enter the dancing Nymphs, who encircle the scene just as Servus removes from the bride the great mask of the Sphinx, thereby revealing her to the astounded Hercules—as Omphale, who embraces him, exulting in her ring. [Pg 183]

Just as she is embracing and kissing him, the scene is interrupted by a cry of jealous rage from Caligula who springs from his chariot, calling: “Hercules!” At his gesture slaves run before him, seize Hercules, and hale him toward Caligula, who bids them whip him. Frightened, for an instant, Omphale [the Mime Naevoleia] then hastens as if to intercede, but, seeing Caligula’s expression, taunts him with toying bravado, and finally as he kisses her makes him burst with her into laughter, as Hercules is dragged off through the hooting crowd, flogged by Caligula’s slaves. [During the latter part of this Roman Action, LUST has appeared at the mouth of Caliban’s cell and looked on. His voice now joins the loud laughter of Caligula.]

Dispersing in confusion, the Pantomime Actors remove their curtain and platform [right] into the darkness, which now envelops also Caligula and the Roman populace.

END OF INTERLUDE I

[Pg 184]

THEME

On a street of Nüremberg, in their Shrovetide festival, a band of Apprentices enact, on a wheeled stage, a pantomime scene from an early version of “Doctor Faustus.” Time: Sixteenth century. [Pg 185]

ACTION

At Prospero’s final words in Act I, the playing of pipes is heard at the right Interlude Gates, where enter a band of Apprentices, accompanying a wheeled street-stage, drawn by donkeys with bells and set with a three-fold scene of Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Some of the Apprentices are masked, some disguised as fools. They enter, singing an old German folk song, and march to the centre of the ground-circle (between the altar and the south entrance), where the stage pauses. Before them has hastened a forerunner (Einschreier), blowing a horn and shouting: “Schauspieler! Doctor Faustus!”

Along with them, Pipers accompany their singing. Behind them follow folk of Nüremberg, gaping peasants and merry-making young people.

From the left gate, meanwhile [in obscurer light], enters a graver group, clad symbolically as Doctors of Learning, Priests, and Artists, accompanying another wheeled vehicle, the stage of which is wholly curtained from view.

These stop at some distance from the former group, and look on from a place of shadow. [Pg 186]

And now, where the first stage has paused in a place of brighter glow, the Actors appear and begin their pantomime.

Doctor Faustus appears on the Middle Stage, Earth. There, amid his astronomical instruments, he greets the gaping crowd and points a telescope toward the place of Heaven. Suddenly a comet flashes above the stage. An Apprentice inquires the reason. Doctor Faustus explains it by revealing its two fathers—the Sun and the Moon, which now appear shining simultaneously in Heaven.

At this sorcery, Lucifer comes from Hell, signifies to Faustus that his hour has come, and that he must follow him. Faustus begs a last wish, which Lucifer reluctantly grants. He begs to see once more his beloved Helena of Troy.

Then in Heaven appears Helena, who comes to Faustus on Earth and embraces him. But now Lucifer—summoning two tailed devils with pitch-forks—bids them drag Faustus from the arms of Helena, who flees back to Heaven, disappearing there, as Faustus is prodded and haled to the up-bursting flames of Hell, amid the exultant laughter of Lucifer.

At this finale, the stage and its audience moves off through the left gate, while the graver Symbolic Group—crossing right in deep shadow—pauses at the centre. [Pg 187]

There, for a moment, the curtains of their pageant stage are drawn, revealing—in mystic light—a dim-glowing tableau of Albrecht Dürer’s Melancholia.

As this pales into darkness, the Group with its curtained stage moves vaguely off, and vanishes through the right gate of the Interlude.

[Pg 188]

THEME[28]

To celebrate Peace between their nations, after long war, Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England meet on the Field of the Cloth of Gold [A. D. 1520], and hold a tournament.

ACTION

After the mystic tableau of the Melancholia has departed, a peal of trumpets from the Interlude gates [right and left] ushers in a pageant of contrasted splendor.

In the left gateway appear the Heralds of the French, in the right, of the English.

Then [to music of the unseen orchestra, above, playing the instrumental music only of the Chorus “Glory and Serenity,” which later is sung by voices in Act II], enter, on horseback, the two Kings, Francis I and Henry VIII, accompanied by their Nobles and Servants.

All are clad in golds and yellows.

On the banners of the English is depicted St. George and the Dragon; on the banners of the French—the lilies of France. [Pg 189]

The servants set up at centre [just south of Caliban’s cell] a gorgeous canopy with two thrones, in which the two Kings, dismounting, take their seats, the French followers grouped on the left, the English on the right.

Then to the royal presence, a Herald summons, by trumpet call, two Tourney-riders [French and English], who come riding in armor, from the south gate, on horses caparisoned with their national colors and symbols.

Taking their places, at signal again of the Herald, to shouts of the spectators, they ride at each other with set lances, in a mock battle—which comprises two actions.

In the first action, the French rider is unhorsed, in the second, the English rider.

During both actions, the English cry “St. George for England!” the French “Vive la France!”

Between the two actions, the French King rises and toasts the English King, to acclamations of the French.

After the second action, King Henry compliments King Francis, to acclamations of the English.

Then, as the two Kings clasp hands, both sides shout aloud: “God save the King!” and “Vive le Roi!” raising aloft their banners and emblems. [Pg 190]

At the climax of this demonstration, the invisible orchestra resumes the march of “Glory and Serenity,” to which the Kings, remounting their horses, ride off side by side, followed by their English and French suites, now commingled, disappearing through the south gateway.

THEME

On the plaza of St. Marks in Venice [A. D., about 1630], a troop of Improvised Comedy Actors [of the Commedia dell’ Arte] enact before [Pg 191] the Doge and the Spanish Ambassador, amid the populace, during a festa, a pantomime scene depicting an adventure of Don Giovanni.

ACTION

When the last of the gold-clad French and English have departed through the South Gate, a chiming of church-bells from the gates of the north [right and left] gives signal for the entrance there of an Italian Festa.

From the right, enters the Doge with his Venetian nobles, accompanied by the Italian populace; from the left, the Spanish Ambassador and his Suite, accompanied by a troop of Improvised Comedy Actors, who set up a platform on wooden horses before the Doge and the Ambassador where they meet and greet each other, at right of centre [north].

Here six Actors mount the platform, at the back of which is a curtain, divided in the middle.

These are Il Capitano [the Captain], Arlecchino [Harlequin], Il Commandatore [the Commander], Pantalone [Pantaloon], Brighella, and Columbina [Columbine]. They all pass behind the curtain, through the folds in the middle.

After a moment’s prelude of stringed instruments, then, the Pantomime begins. [Pg 192]

First, in semi-darkness, Harlequin appears, carrying a lighted lantern on the end of a sword. At a noise of laughter from behind the curtain he stops and trembles. The laughter sounds again, deep and harsh; Harlequin trembles so violently that the lantern falls and goes out.

In the dimness, enter Il Capitano in the part of Don Giovanni, muffled in an immense cloak. Harlequin falls on his back, feigning death, but keeping his sword pointing upward. Stumbling against him, Don Giovanni draws his sword and strikes the sword of Harlequin, who leaps up. They begin a duel, in the midst of which they suddenly recognize each other as friends and embrace.

Enter now [bringing lanterns, which illumine the stage more brightly] Pantaloon and Brighella. Both are wrapped in cloaks.

Greeting Don Giovanni, who returns the greeting, Pantaloon explains that he has a rendezvous with a beautiful young lady [the head of Columbine having peered momentarily through the curtain]; that he will make a certain sign to call her; that he must be cautious, as she has a fierce and suspicious father. Don Giovanni becomes very interested, and confides that he, too, must attend a rendezvous, for which he needs a disguise. For this, he persuades Pantaloon to change cloaks with him. They do so, their servants also exchanging cloaks. [Pg 193]

Exeunt then Pantaloon and Brighella.

Don Giovanni now, approaching the curtain, makes the aforesaid sign described by Pantaloon. At this, enter Columbine, who mistakes him for Pantaloon and approaches him lovingly. He allows her to do so, but soon—opening his cloak—he terrifies her by his wrong identity. However, he is handsomer than Pantaloon, and quickly wins her for himself. In this Harlequin delightedly assists him.

Finally, just as Columbine succumbs and goes to his arms, her father, The Commander, enters. Seeing her in Don Giovanni’s arms, he bursts into terrible anger, draws his sword, and attacks the lover. Harlequin tries to prevent him but fails.

Putting the frightened Columbine behind him, Don Giovanni returns the attack with his sword, fights and suddenly kills the Commander, who falls motionless.

In terror, Columbine and Harlequin scream and run out [through the curtain], leaving Don Giovanni standing with one foot and his sword-point prodding the dead body.

To screams and shudderings also from the horrified onlookers of the populace, darkness falls on the stage. [Pg 194]

Then, as suddenly—in a burst of light—the Actors come trooping forth all together in laughter, make faces and comic gestures at the people, remove their curtain and stage, and run off [right], to merry twanging of instruments, followed by the Doge, Ambassador, and populace.

END OF INTERLUDE II

[Pg 195]

In the New York production in May, 1916, the performance of this Interlude will be arranged by members of the New York City Centre of the U. S. A. Branch of the English Folk Dance Society, under the personal direction of Mr. Cecil J. Sharp, who has devised the Action of this Interlude, and has worded the description of it—in conference with the author—as here printed.

ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

Action Continuous, in 8 Successive Episodes

COMMUNITY ACTORS [about 400]

Comprise

[Pg 196]

THEME

Celebration of an Elizabethan May Day Festival on the outskirts of an English town.

ACTION

1: CONTEST BETWEEN SPRING AND WINTER

A group of 25 young men, representing Winter, all dressed in close-fitting black garments, enter from Caliban’s cell. They carry a ball and, commanded by one of their number—Frost—advance slowly and dejectedly and lie down near the centre of the ground guarding the ball. A group of 25 young men, dressed in tight-fitting green garments, representing Spring, enter through the right Interlude Gate. Headed by one of their number—Sun—they come forward running and shouting. Winter[29] rise and stand in defence of the ball. A scuffle ensues and the ball [Pg 197] is released from the scrimmage. It is then kicked about by both sides, Spring trying to force it toward the water,[30] Winter repelling it therefrom. Sun and Frost encourage their respective supporters but do not touch the ball. Groups of villagers come in, by twos and threes [20 to 25 in number], and join the ranks of Spring, who are thus enabled to overpower Winter. Eventually, one of the Spring group secures the ball, holds it aloft and, surrounded by his followers, runs toward the water. Winter follow, fatigued and languid. As the Spring man approaches the water, maidens, 10 or 12 in number, enter from various quarters and swell the group. The ball is then raised and ceremonially thrown into the water; whereupon, the girls join Spring in hunting Winter back again into their cave.

2: PROCESSIONAL DANCE THROUGH VILLAGE

While Winter is being driven off the arena, a procession of Villagers, comprising 50 couples [i. e., partners], enter through South Interlude Gate and dance the Tideswell Processional Morris. The dancers include men, women, and children of all classes and are dressed in their holiday clothes, plentifully bedecked with flowers and ribbons. Each carries two handkerchiefs, one in each hand, or, if preferred, boughs of May blossom. They dance round the arena in a spiral until the front couple reach the centre; whereupon, all raise their arms and shout on the last chord of the tune. Spring and all the actors already on the ground join in the procession at the rear, or wherever they can squeeze in. [Pg 198]

3: REVELS AND AMUSEMENTS

Upon the completion of the dance, the dancers disperse noisily all over the ground. The children play Singing Games, e. g., “Oats and Beans,” “Here We Come Gathering Nuts (i. e. Knots) in May,” “Old Sir Roger,” etc., in different parts of the ground—not too close together. Booths and stalls are brought in, a rustic stage[31] is set up, tumblers and jugglers, surrounded by groups of spectators, give their performances, and all unite in a scene of general merriment. Couples, each consisting of a boy and a girl, carry May garlands, sing May day songs, and solicit offerings. The young men chase the girls and kiss them “under the green,” i. e., while raising the boughs of green over their heads.

4: MAY POLE PROCESSION

The following procession enters from South Interlude Gate.

• [1] Two Jack-O’-Greens
• [2] Plough-boys with plough.
• [3] Sowers. [Pg 199]
• [4] Reapers.
• [5] Wagon, drawn by several yoke of oxen, carrying the tree.
• [6] Milkmaids.
• [7] Blacksmiths.
• [8] Wheelwrights.
• [9] Carpenters.
• [10] Butchers.
• [11] Shoemakers.

• [1] Hidden in bushes of green, surmounted by a
• May Garland.
• [2] White smocks, patched with pictures, in red
• and black cloth, representing farm-animals. Hats
• covered with flowers, their plough smothered with
• ribbons and flowers.
• [3] Carrying baskets of grain, pretending to sow.
• [4] With reaping hooks or sickles.
• [5] Wagon and oxen decorated with greenery and
• ribbons, the horns of the oxen with flowers. The
• carters, who walk on either side of the wagon, wear
• broad-brimmed hats, short smocks, breeches, all
• covered with ribbons and flowers, and carry whips
• or goads similarly decorated, with which they urge
• on the oxen.
• [6] Carrying pails and dishes; wearing short
• dresses, and sun-hats or bonnets, all covered with
• flowers and ribbons. [Pg 200]
• [7] With bare heads, leathern aprons, carrying
• implements of trade—hammers, anvils, tongs.
• [8] Carrying or rolling wheels.
• [9] With saws, planes, tools, etc.
• [10] Wearing blue blouses, carrying marrow bones
• and cleavers, and clashing them as they march.

When the wagon reaches the May-pit, the procession halts. The tree is ceremonially removed, ivy, laurels, and other greenery wound round it spirally, a large bunch of flowers placed at the top, and then, in dead silence, solemnly raised to position. Directly this is accomplished, the spectators raise a great shout and repeat it three times: “The Pole is up.”

5: ELECTION OF MAY QUEEN, AND MAY POLE DANCE

The men disperse in groups and, after some discussion and altercation, proceed in a body to the woman of their choice, present her with a wreath of May blossom, with ribbon streamers and rosettes for her dress, and escort her to a raised mound of grass where every one may see her. She is kissed “under the green” by the men, amid much laughter and merriment. The woman chosen is a regular “man’s girl,” jolly and of a romping kind, quite different from the conventional May Queen. [Pg 201]

A large group is formed round the May pole in a ring, alternately men and women, and all take hands. The May pole dance is then performed—“Sellenger’s Round” and “Gathering Peascods.”

6: HOBBY HORSE AND PADSTOW MAY SONG

The hobby horse is made in the following way: A wooden hoop, about 3 feet in diameter, is covered with black canvas with a hole in the centre, about the size of a man’s head. The canvas is edged with red and white ribbon round the circumference, and depends from the edges about 4 feet like a curtain. The hoop is then placed on a man’s shoulders, his head, hidden in a tall conical mask of many colors, passing through a hole in the centre of the canvas, the curtain hiding his body and legs. In the front of the hoop is a long, slender horse’s head, made of wood, and at the back of the hoop is attached a curly horse’s tail about 18 inches long. The horse is accompanied by the “Club-man” who is dressed in black, covered with rosettes and bows of colored ribbon, and wears a grotesque mask similar to that of the hobby horse. Throughout the proceedings, he faces the Horse and dances backward, holding in his right hand a stout, nobbed club, about 18 to 24 inches in length, colored like the mask.

The hobby horse enters from the left Interlude Gate, escorted by six or eight couples of men, gaily dressed and decorated with flowers, singing [Pg 202] the May song, in which the assembled spectators join. As they make their appearance, the crowd runs out, meets them, and surrounds them in a ring, in the middle of which the horse and its attendant dance, the former every now and again dashing out and trying to catch one of the maidens, who, with much laughter, usually succeeds in avoiding his clumsy embraces. When the tune has been sung a few times, a slight pause is made, the horse sinks down with his head on the ground, the club-man drops on one knee and places his club on the horse’s nose, while the crowd sing very solemnly the dirge-like strain, “O Where is St. George?” At the conclusion of this, a slight pause is made and then the riotous May song is suddenly taken up and the dance resumed. This may be repeated once or twice, when the proceedings are interrupted by the entrance of the

7: MORRIS DANCERS

The dancers, all of them men, are 16 in number and are accompanied by a King and Queen, Witch and Fool, and Hobby horses. The Witch and Fool head the procession, the former with his broom, and the latter with his stick, fox’s tail, and bladder clearing the way. The King and Queen march at the head of the Morris dancers, the King beating time with [Pg 203] his sword. The Hobby horses prance round and aid the Witch and Fool in clearing a passage. The dancers move forward, dancing the “Winster Processional Dance.” When the procession has reached a good position in the centre, the tune changes and without pause the dancers perform the “Winster Morris Reel,” “The Old Woman Tossed up in a Blanket.”

For the dresses of the dancers see photographs in The Morris Book [parts II and III]. The Witch is a man dressed in bedraggled woman’s clothes, with face blackened, and carries a short besom. The Fool has a pork-pie hat covered with flowers and feathers, tunic, to the hips, of bright multi-colored stuff edged with silver fringe, buckskin breeches, stockings of odd colors, and bells round the ankles. He carries a stick with a fox’s tail at one end and a bladder at the other. Sometimes he has a dinner-bell attached to the middle of his back. The King and Queen are serious characters, the latter being represented by a man dressed in woman’s clothes. The King carries a sword and should be dressed in the military dress of the period: the Queen is grandly dressed, with a touch of comic extravagance, in the garb of a court lady of the period. The Hobby horses—say half a dozen in number—are of the “tournament” variety, and carry sticks and bladders. [Pg 204]

8: COUNTRY DANCES AND RECESSIONAL

When the Morris dance is finished, the company disperses and amuses itself for a while until the pipe-and-taborers make their appearance. This is a signal for every one to find a partner for a country dance. Groups are formed all over the ground and “The Black Nag” is performed, followed by a Longways dance, e. g., “Row well, ye mariners.” On the conclusion of the latter, the dancers, who are already in processional formation, dance off the ground to the “Helston Ferry Processional Dance,” disappearing in different groups through the several exits. [Pg 205]

EPILOGUE

ACTION: INTERNATIONAL AND SYMBOLIC

THEME

In three main, symbolic groups—Theatres, Actors, Dramatists—The Spirit of Time summons the creative forces of the art of the theatre, to defeat the destructive influences of War, Lust, and Death, and prophetically to survive them.

ACTION[32]

First, from the two gates [right and left] of the ground-circle, the Pageant of Theatres enters in two processions, which group themselves [right and left of Caliban’s cell] on the flight of steps and ramps leading to Stage B.

Secondly, through the mouth-entrances of the Masks of Comedy and of Tragedy, the Comic Actors [through the former] and the Tragic Actors [through the latter] enter upon stage B, cross before Prospero [Pg 206] and take their stations, with their respective Theatres, on the steps and ramps.

Thirdly, the Dramatists, of Comedy and Tragedy, do likewise.

In this procession of the Dramatists, occurs the pantomime and stage business of the meeting between Prospero and Shakespeare.

After the procession of Dramatists, all three main groups are enveloped by darkness, in which—after the final choir of Ariel’s spirits—they disperse, unseen.

[Pg 207] From the following lists of Theatres, Actors, and Dramatists, revised and modified, the final groups will be selected. The lists, as here given, are merely preliminary, and have been sketched in, during the printing of this Appendix, so as not to be wholly omitted from the publication of this edition. As far as they concern the New York production of the Masque, they are not to be construed as anything more than suggestive material for the necessarily impressionistic pageant-groups of the Epilogue.

THEATRES

ANCIENT GREECE

Theatre of Dionysus at Athens, Epidaurus, Ephesus, Sicyon.

ANCIENT ROME

Theatre of Pompey, Scarrus, Balbus Cornelius, Marcellus.

Provincial Theatres

Antioch, Lyons, Herculaneum, Orange.

CONSTANTINOPLE

Hippodrome, of Emperor Septimius Severus.

ITALY

PORTUGAL

Lisbon San Carlos

FRANCE

Hotel du Burgoyne, Comedie Francaise, Palais Royal, Odeon, Porte St. Martin, Antoine.

AUSTRIA

Vienna Burgtheater

GERMANY

Weimar, Deutsches, Lessing.

RUSSIA

Art Theatre, Warsaw; Kremlin, Moscow.

AMERICA

New York

Booth’s, Bowery, Wallack’s, Daly’s.

Boston

Federal Street, Boston Theatre, Boston Museum. [Pg 209]

Philadelphia

Arch Street, Walnut Street, Chestnut Street.

Chicago

McVicker’s.

San Francisco

California.

Washington

Ford’s.

New Orleans

St. Charles.

ENGLAND

Globe, Bankside, Bear Garden, Hope, Swan, Drury Lane, Haymarket, Covent Garden.

Dublin

Smock Alley.

ACTORS

GREECE

Thespis, Polus [of Aegina], Aristodemus, Neoptolemus, Thessalus, Athenodorus, Cleander, Mynniscus [of Chalcis], Callipides, Timotheus.

ROME

Esopus, Roscius, C. Publilius, Ambivius Turpio, Haitilius Praenestinus, Bathyllus, Pylades, Publilius Syrus. [Pg 210]

ITALY

[Actors] Domenico Biancolelli, Luigi Riccoboni, Nicola Barbieri, Francesco Andreini, Fiorelli, Tommasino, Salvini, Madena, Rossi.

[Actresses] Sedowsky, Isabella Andreini, Ristori.

SPAIN

[Actors] Lope de Rueda, Navarro of Toledo, Alonso de Olmedo, Sebastian de Prado, Isidoro Maiquez, José Valero, Julián Romea, Rafael Calvo, Antonio Vico.

[Actresses] La Baltasara, La Calderona, La Pacheca, La Tirana, Rita Luna, Matilde Diez.

FRANCE

[Actors] Jodelet, Harduin, Rodogune, Talma, Got, LeKain, Molé, Fréville, Baron, Montfleury, Lemaitre, Coquelin, Mounet Sulley.

[Actresses] Dangville, Rachel, George, Mars, Des Oeillets, Bejart, Champmeslé, Lecouvreur, Dumesnil, Clairon, David.

HOLLAND

[Actors] Louis Bouwmeister, Willem Haverkorn, Johannes Haverkamp, Andries Snoek.

[Actresses] Mme. Wattier. [Pg 211]

GERMANY

[Actors] Possart, Bamay, Kainz, Iffland, Konrad, Ekkof, Dawison, Lewinsky, Döhring, Ackerman, Carl Bonn, Dalberg, L. Dessoit, Anschutz, Hasse, Beckmann, Gabillon.

[Actresses] Sonnenthal, Devrient, Schröder, Carolina Neuber, Charlotte Wolter, Julie Rettich, Julie Löwe, Carolina Bauer, Geistinger, Zitt, Raabe, Buske, Fleck, Brockmann, Matkowsky, Dingelstedt, Borchers.

[SCANDINAVIA]

DENMARK

[Actors] Ludwig Phister, Christen N. Rosenkilde, Nicolai Nielsen, Emil Poulsen, Michael Wieke, Michael Rosing.

[Actresses] Johanne Louise Heiberg, Anna Neilsen, Julie Södring.

SWEDEN

[Actors] Fredrik Deland, Ebba Hwasser, Pierre Deland, Karl Georg Dahlquist.

NORWAY

[Actors] Johannes Brun, Henrik Klausen.

[Actresses] Laura Gundersen, Lucie Wolf, Sophie Pavelius. [Pg 212]

RUSSIA

[Actors] V. Samoilov, N. Samoilov, Nikitin, Ershov, Lenski, Karatygina (family), M. S. Shchepkin, Krapivnitzki.

[Actresses] Fedotava, Vyera Samortova, Savina, Karatygina (family), Kommissaryhevskaya, E. P. Struyskaya.

AMERICA

[Actors] Junius Brutus Booth, Jas. Wallack, Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, Lester Wallack, Wm. Warren, John McCulloch, Lawrence Barrett, E. A. Sothern, Jos. Jefferson, Wm. Florence, James A. Hackett, John Gilbert, Edward L. Davenport, Wm. B. Wood, T. A. Cooper, Wilson Barrett, Rignold, Chas. Wheatley, MacKean, Buchanon, James Murdock, J. B. Roberts, Williamson, Whiffin, Tony Pastor, Hart, Harrigan, Stuart Robson, John T. Raymond, Denman Thompson, Maurice Barrymore, Richard Mansfield.

[Actresses] Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. John Drew, Modjeska, Matilda Heron, Mme. Ponisi, Laura Keene, Fannie Davenport, Ada Rehan.

GREAT BRITAIN

[Pg 213] [Actors] Burbage, Betteron, Colley Cibber, Garrick, Macready, Edmund Kean, Tyrone Power, Samuel Phelps, Buckstone, Charles Macklin, Samuel Foote, Tate Wilkinson, Barry, Quinn, Henderson, John Philip Kemble, Robert Wilks, Thomas Sheridan, Henry Mossop, John Liston, William Betty, Henry Irving, Lawrence Irving.

[Actresses] Nance Oldfield, Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Mountfort, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Nell Gwynne, Mrs. Siddons, Peg Woffington, Fanny Kemble, Hannah Pritchard, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Jordan, George Anne Bellamy, Helen Barry, Helen Faucit, Katherine Clive, Mrs. Farren.

DRAMATISTS

GREECE

[Tragedy] Aeschylus, Choerilus, Pratinas, Phrynichus, Sophocles, Euripides, Carcinus, Chaeremon.

[Comedy] Phormis [of Maenalus], Epicharmus, Susarion, Chionides, Aristophanes, Eupolis, Magnes, Philemon, Menander, Rhinthon, Apollodorus, Diphilus, Posidippus.

ROME

[Tragedy] Livius Andronicus, Accius, Pacuvius, Asinius Pollis, Varius, Ovid, Seneca, Curiatius Maternus, J. Cæsar Strabo.

[Comedy] Plautus, Terence, Ennius, Statius Caecilius, Lavinius, Naevius, Melissus, Afranius, Laberius, Pomponius, Atta. [Pg 214]

ITALY

[Tragedy] Ariosto, Manzoni, Alfieri, Nicolini, Tasso.

[Comedy] Metastasio, Martelli, Maffei, Gozzi, Pindemonti, Monti, Flavio, Goldoni.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

[Spain] Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, Alarcon, Gongora, Argensola, Moreto, de Hoz, Canizarez, Luzan, Huerta.

[Portugal] Saa de Miranda, Gil Vincente, Ferreira, Garcao.

FRANCE

Etienne Jodelle, Garnier, Larivey, Montcrétien, Hardi, Viaud, Scudéri, Corneille, Boisrobert, Chevreau, Scarron, de Bergerac, Quinault, Molière, Boursault, Racine, Voltaire, l’Hermite, Rotrou, Crébillon, Le Sage, Beaumarchais, Longpierre, Fontenelli, La Motte, Legrand, Destouches, Marivaux, Sardou, Hugo, Dumas, Scribe, Zola, Legouvé, Augier, Halévy, Le Maitre, De Vigny.

HOLLAND

Hooft, Brederoo, Vondel, Vos, Goes, Pels, Asselijn, van Focquenbroch, Bilderdijk. [Pg 215]

GERMANY

Hans Sachs, Gryphius, Gottshed, Klopstock, Wieland, Herder, Kozebue, Hafner, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Novalis, Arnim, Hoffmann, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, Kleist, Grillparzer, Schlegel, Freytag, Heyse, Gutzkow, Wagner, Werner, Körner, Klingemann, Uhland, Chamisso, Arndt, Heine, Grabbe, Immermann, Weise, Grinunelohausen, Klinger, Ludwig, Laube, Holm, Giebel, Wildenbruch, Angengruber, Nestroy, Raimund.

SCANDINAVIA

Holberg, Oehlenschläger, J. L. Heiberg, Bjornson, Wessel, Ewald, Hauch, Hostrup, Hertz, Paludan-Müller, Overskou, Ibsen, Lidner, Tegner, Runeberg, Blanche, Strindberg, Kielland, Lie.

RUSSIA

Sumarokoff, Catherine II, Von Viezin, Krilov, Astrovski, Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoi, Tchekhof, Griboyedov.

AMERICA

Royal Tyler, John Howard Payne, Boker, Longfellow, Wm. Young, N. P. Willis, Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Augustin Daly, Steele MacKaye, Bronson Howard, James A. Herne, Clyde Fitch, William Vaughn Moody. [Pg 216]

GREAT BRITAIN

Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, Shirley, Greene, Peele, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Middleton, Heywood, Lyly, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Dekker, Marston:—Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Otway, Etheredge, d’Urfey, Farquhar, d’Avenant, Sedley, Lacy, Shadwell, Crowne, Steele, Addison, Rowe:—Goldsmith, Sheridan, Fielding, Shelley:—Knowles, Lytton, Robertson, Tennyson, Browning, Reade, Taylor, Wilde:—Phillips, Synge, Hankin, Davidson. [Pg 217]

Information for Communities, Clubs, Societies, and Drama
League Centres throughout the Country about

Mr. PERCY MACKAYE’S

SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY MASQUE
Entitled
“CALIBAN: BY THE YELLOW SANDS”

Doubleday, Page & Company have pleasure in announcing Mr. MacKaye’s Masque, which in many respects has become the national tribute of the New York Shakespeare Celebration, the Shakespeare National Memorial Committee, and The Drama League of America for the anniversary of 1916.

The publication of the Masque has been hurried as much as possible in order to give communities, societies, colleges, and Drama League centres throughout the country an opportunity to read the text and thus arrange their celebrations in harmony with the Masque.

The first performances of the Masque will be given by the New York Shakespeare Celebration during the week of May 23d, when it will be [Pg 218] enacted out of doors, at night, in the City College Stadium adapted to seat about 20,000 spectators. There several thousand citizens of New York will take part in conjunction with a body of actors of national repute. It will then be released for use by other communities or societies on June 1st. Immediately after the close of the New York performances, a professional company will take the Masque on the road for presentation by them in conjunction with community and club groups throughout the country. The professional company will fill the leading parts and take with them a complete outfit of scenery and properties. For full particulars, address the Chairman of the National Circuit Committee, 736 Marquette Bldg., Chicago, Ill., or, Augustin Duncan, 50 West 12th St., New York City.

Amateur performances of the Masque may also be given after June 1st, without the aid of the professional company, by making proper arrangements for securing permission. Full directions for amateur performances, or for public readings where seats are sold, may be had from Miss Alice Houston, National Headquarters, Drama League of America, Chicago, Ill.

The Drama League of America strongly recommends to its centres the use of the Masque as the special League reading for April. The text will be [Pg 219] available in two editions: Paper at 50 cents and Cloth at $1.25 or thereabouts.

The Drama League hopes to establish in the near future a Pageant Series, similar to the Play Series, of which “Caliban” by Mr. MacKaye would be the first volume.

REMEMBER THESE POINTS

“CALIBAN: BY THE YELLOW SANDS”

By Percy MacKaye. A National tribute to Shakespeare for 1916. Endorsed by the Drama League of America.

FIRST PERFORMANCE

New York, May 23d, by citizens and notable group of professional actors.

RELEASED FOR GENERAL USE

June 1st. Acting rights may be secured as indicated below:—

PERFORMANCES BY COMMUNITIES OR
CLUBS WITH PROFESSIONAL COMPANY

Full particulars may be had by addressing Miss Alice M. Houston, Chairman Circuit Committee, Drama League of America, 1426 Forest Ave., Evanston, Ill. [Pg 220]

ALL-AMATEUR PERFORMANCES

Full particulars may be had by addressing Miss Clara Fitch, Chairman Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee, 736 Marquette Bldg., Chicago, Ill.

PUBLIC READINGS WHERE SEATS ARE SOLD

For particulars address Miss Houston (as above).

THE PRINTED BOOK OF THE MASQUE

Paper edition 50 cents. Cloth edition $1.25 net. For sale everywhere at book shops or by Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, New York. [Pg 221]

will present
in the Lewisohn Stadium of the College of the City of New York
on the nights of May 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 1916, at Eight O’clock

The Community Masque

CALIBAN
By the Yellow Sands

PRODUCTION STAFF

Author and Director
Percy MacKaye

Composer and Director of Music
Arthur Farwell

Producers
Joseph Urban
Richard Ordynski

Designer of Inner Scenes
Robert Edmond Jones

Director of Interludes
Garnet Holme

Director of Costumes
Mrs. John W. Alexander

Director of Dances
Mrs. Robert Anderson

Staff Assistant
Hazel MacKaye

Office of the Director: 529 Marbridge Bldg. (34th St. & 6th Ave.); telephone, Greeley 1137.

For particulars regarding Tickets, etc., communication should be made with the office of the Shakespeare Celebration, 10 East 43d St., New York. Telephones, Murray Hill 9745 and 4158. [Pg 223]

For the New York Shakespeare Celebration

OTTO H. KAHN, Chairman.

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THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.