One-Act Plays Part 33

PIERROT. Pierrette, let us sit by the fire and put our feet on the fender, and live happily ever after. [_They have moved slowly to the settle. As they sit there, PIERROT sings softly:_]

"Baby, don't wait for the moon, The stairs of the sky are so steep; And mellow and musical June Is waiting to kiss you to sleep."

[_The lamp on the hood of the chimney-piece has burned down, leaving only the red glow from the fire upon their faces, as the curtain whispers down to hide them._]

GETTYSBURG[31]

_A WOOD-SHED COMMENTARY_

By PERCY MACKAYE

[Footnote 31: Copyright, 1912, 1921, by Percy MacKaye. All rights reserved.

SPECIAL NOTICE

This play in its printed form is designed for the reading public only. All dramatic rights in it are fully protected by copyright, in the United States, Great Britain, and all countries subscribing to the Berne Convention. NO PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PERFORMANCE--PROFESSIONAL OR AMATEUR--MAY BE GIVEN WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR AND THE PAYMENT OF ROYALTY. As the courts have also ruled that the PUBLIC READING of a play, for pay or where tickets are sold, const.i.tutes a "PERFORMANCE," no such reading may be given except under conditions above stated.

Anyone disregarding the author's rights renders himself liable to prosecution. PERSONS WHO DESIRE PERMISSION TO GIVE PERFORMANCES OR PUBLIC READINGS OF THIS PLAY SHOULD COMMUNICATE DIRECT WITH THE AUTHOR, AT HIS ADDRESS, HARVARD CLUB, 27 WEST 44 STREET, NEW YORK CITY.]

Percy MacKaye was born in New York, March 16, 1875, the son of Steele MacKaye, a well-known dramatist and theatrical inventor of his day.

"My own early dramatic training," writes the son, "was in the theatre in relation with my father's work there as dramatist, actor, and director." In another place he says: "I have not sought to conceal, or to put aside, the grateful enthusiasm I feel, as a son and comrade of Steele MacKaye, for those examples of untiring devotion to the theatre and of constructive achievement in its art, by which his life has been an inspiration to my own, to follow--however haltingly and through different means--the trail of his large leaders.h.i.+p." Percy MacKaye was graduated from Harvard in 1897 and later spent a year studying at the University of Leipzig. After travel abroad, he returned to New York in 1900 and taught there in a private school till 1904. He spent some time in the next five years lecturing on the Drama of Democracy and the Civic Theatre at various American universities. In 1904 he joined the colony of artists and men of letters at Cornish, New Hamps.h.i.+re, the home of Saint-Gaudens, Maxfield Parrish, Winston Churchill, and others. Since that date Percy MacKaye has devoted himself wholly to poetry and the drama, writing community masques, plays of various kinds, and operas.[32] It is interesting to note that one of the latest products of his pen, _Was.h.i.+ngton, the Man Who Made Us, A Ballad Play_, was translated into French and presented by M. Copeau's players, at the Theatre du Vieux Colombier, during their second season in New York, and later acted in English by Walter Hampden, the scene designs being made by Robert Edmond Jones. In October, 1920, he was invited to Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, not to teach but to continue his own creative work, quite untrammeled, filling there the first fellows.h.i.+p in creative literature ever established in this country.

[Footnote 32: A list of his works is given in the latest _Who's Who in America_.]

_Yankee Fantasies_, a collection of five one-act plays of which _Gettysburg_ is one, is the expression of Percy MacKaye's belief that the American dramatist may find "north of Boston," or, in fact, in almost any rural neighborhood, material for "quaint and lovely interpretation of our native environment now ignored." These plays, published in 1912, testified also to his conviction that the time had come for the development of the one-act play in this country, not only because this form is distinctive and capable of expressing what the full-length play cannot, but also because a receptive audience was already organized. He found even then that amateurs in schools, colleges, and elsewhere were clamoring to perform one-act plays, to see them performed, and to read them. At that date Little Theatres were just beginning to be, but in the preface to _Yankee Fantasies_, the author advocated the establishment of Studio Theatres, in essence experimental, many of which have since come into existence under different names, wherein playwrights might practice the new craft of the one-act play as in a workshop. The one-act play may be said to have arrived in the nine years that have elapsed since _Gettysburg_ was published.

The one-act play has shown no tendency, however, to rival the short-story in the matter of local color. Kentucky, California, Iowa, Louisiana, to name but a few of the favored states which have served as rich backgrounds for many finely flavored narratives of American life, have been neglected as sources of dramatic material. But though Percy MacKaye may perhaps be matched with Mary Wilkins, there is no writer who has made notable use in the one-act play of localities, a.s.sociated, for example, with the art of George W. Cable, Bret Harte, James Lane Allen, or Hamlin Garland. One of the paths of glory for the American dramatist lies undoubtedly in this direction.

GETTYSBURG

CHARACTERS

LINK TADBOURNE, _ox-yoke maker_.

POLLY, _his grandniece_.

_The Place is country New Hamps.h.i.+re, at the present time._

_SCENE.--A woodshed, in the ell of a farm house._

_The shed is open on both sides, front and back, the apertures being slightly arched at the top. [In bad weather, these presumably may be closed by big double doors, which stand open now--swung back outward beyond sight.] Thus the nearer opening is the proscenium arch of the scene, under which the spectator looks through the shed to the background--a gra.s.sy yard, a road with great trunks of soaring elms, and the glimpse of a green hillside. The ceiling runs up into a gable with large beams._

_On the right, at back, a door opens into the shed from the house kitchen. Opposite it, a door leads from the shed into the barn. In the foreground, against the right wall, is a work-bench. On this are tools, a long, narrow, wooden box, and a small oil stove, with steaming kettle upon it._

_Against the left wall, what remains of the year's wood supply is stacked, the uneven ridges sloping to a jumble of stove-wood and kindlings mixed with small chips on the floor, which is piled deep with mounds of crumbling bark, chips and wood-dust._

_Not far from this mounded pile, at right center of the scene, stands a wooden arm-chair, in which LINK TADBOURNE, in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, sits drowsing. Silhouetted by the sunlight beyond, his sharp-drawn profile is that of an old man, with white hair cropped close, and gray mustache of a faded black hue at the outer edges. Between his knees is a stout thong of wood, whittled round by the drawshave which his sleeping hand still holds in his lap. Against the side of his chair rests a thick wooden yoke and collar. Near him is a chopping-block._

_In the woodshed there is no sound or motion except the hum and floating steam from the tea-kettle. Presently the old man murmurs in his sleep, clenching his hand. Slowly the hand relaxes again. From the door, right, comes POLLY--a sweet-faced girl of seventeen, quietly mature for her age. She is dressed simply. In one hand, she carries a man's wide-brimmed felt hat; over the other arm, a blue coat. These she brings toward LINK. Seeing him asleep, she begins to tiptoe, lays the coat and hat on the chopping-block, goes to the bench and trims the wick of the oil-stove, under the kettle. Then she returns and stands near LINK, surveying the shed._

_On closer scrutiny, the jumbled woodpile has evidently a certain order in its chaos: some of the splittings have been piled in irregular ridges; in places, the deep layer of wood-dust and chips has been scooped, and the little mounds slope and rise like miniature valleys and hills.[33]_

[Footnote 33: A suggestion for the appropriate arrangement of these mounds may be found in the map of the battle-field annexed to the volume by Capt. R. K. Beecham, ent.i.tled _Gettysburg_, A. C. McClurg, 1911.]

_Taking up a hoe, POLLY--with careful steps--moves among the hollows, placing and arranging sticks of kindling, sc.r.a.ping and smoothing the little mounds with the hoe._

_As she does so, from far away, a bugle sounds._

LINK [_snapping his eyes wide open, sits up_].

h.e.l.lo! Cat-nappin' was I, Polly?

POLLY. Just a kitten-nap, I guess.

[_Laying the hoe down, she approaches._]

The yoke done?

LINK [_giving a final whittle to the yoke-collar thong_].

Thar!

When he's ben steamed a spell, and bended snug, I guess this feller'll sarve t' say "Gee" to--

[_Lifting the other yoke-collar from beside his chair, he holds the whittled thong next to it, comparing the two with expert eye._]

and "Haw" to him. Beech every time, Sir; beech or walnut. Hang me if I'd shake a whip at birch, for ox-yokes.--Polly, are ye thar?

POLLY.

Yes, Uncle Link.

LINK. What's that I used to sing ye?

"Polly, put the kittle on, Polly, put the kittle on, Polly, put the kittle on--" [_Chuckling._]

We'll give this feller a dose of ox-yoke tea!

POLLY.

The kettle's boilin'.

LINK. Wall, then, steep him good.

[_POLLY takes from LINK the collar-thong, carries it to the work-bench, shoves it into the narrow end of the box, which she then closes tight and connects--by a piece of hose--to the spout of the kettle. At the further end of the box, steam then emerges through a small hole._]

POLLY.