The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays - Part 84
Library

Part 84

THE POST OFFICE: "A poetic and symbolic play."

Macmillan.

+Anton Tchekhov+

THE BOOR; THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL; THE WEDDING FEAST; THE TRAGEDIAN IN SPITE OF HIMSELF:

Comical farces of extravagant conversation and action, and apparently real studies of Russian character.

In _Plays, Second Series_ Scribner's.

+William Makepiece Thackeray+

THE ROSE AND THE RING: One of the most delightful of puppet-plays is based on the favorite story.

Smith, Elder and Company, London; Macmillan, New York.

+Augustus Thomas+

OLIVER GOLDSMITH: A very engaging play, introducing Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick in several amusing roles, Dr. Johnson, and others in his circle, and presenting (in Act II) a dress rehearsal of _She Stoops to Conquer_.

French.

+Frank G. Tompkins+

SHAM: A SOCIAL SATIRE: Of a most superior burglar, who takes only genuine objects of art, disdains the imitation stuff that litters Charles and Clara's home, and reads them a severe lecture on reality and sham in this and other departments of life.

Stewart and Kidd.

+Ridgley Torrence+

GRANNY MAUMEE: Highly tragic play of the blood-hatred of negroes for those who have tortured and killed, and of voodoo rites and miracles; power is given the play by a most human reversal of feeling at the last.

In _Plays for a Negro Theatre_, Macmillan.

THE RIDER OF DREAMS: A masterful mulatto who keeps his people obedient to a benevolent despotism.

_Ibid._

+Stuart Walker+

THE MEDICINE SHOW: Some amusing characters, shiftless but fertile of invention, and their device for getting rich.

In _Portmanteau Plays_, Stewart and Kidd.

NEVERTHELESS: A play which has interested high-school pupils and their friends in Better Speech programmes.

_Ibid._

SIX WHO Pa.s.s WHILE THE LENTILS BOIL: A quaint and pleasant comedy of a boy set to watch the lentils cooking, of a queen who is fugitive from execution for a violation of etiquette, and of other matters.

_Ibid._

+Percival Wilde+

THE TRAITOR: A traitor in the British camp is discovered by a ruse that is effective and perhaps plausible.

In _Dawn and Other One-Act Plays_, Holt.

+Oscar M. Wolff+

WHERE BUT IN AMERICA? Amusing small comedy in which a Swedish cook and her fiance have potent influence in an American household.

In Mayorga, _Representative One-Act Plays_, Little, Brown.

+William Butler Yeats+

DEIRDRE: The last scene in the tragedy of Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Macmillan.

THE GREEN HELMET: Dramatization of a most interesting Gaelic variant of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; it contains good character study.

Macmillan.

THE KINO'S THRESHOLD: A poet and singer, deprived of his rightful honor at the Irish King's court, makes effective use of the ancient traditional weapon of the hunger strike in order to secure to his art and its worthy practisers their due recognition.

Macmillan.

THE HOUR GLa.s.s: A mystical play of wisdom and folly and the approach of death.

Macmillan.

CATHLEEN NI HOOLIHAN: A moving dramatization of the compelling spirit of Love of Country.

Macmillan.

THE POT OF BROTH: An ancient story, pleasantly dramatized, of a witty wanderer who plays to his advantage on the credulity, greed, and love of flattery of a sharp-tongued peasant woman.