The Scarecrow or The Glass of Truth: A Tragedy of the Ludicrous

The Scarecrow; or The Glass of Truth: A Tragedy of the Ludicrous

But for a fantasy of Nathaniel Hawthorne, this play, of course, would never have been written. In Mosses from an Old Manse, the Moralized Legend Feathertop relates, in some twenty pages of its authors inimitable style, how Mother Rigby, a reputed witch of old New England days, converted a corn-patch scarecrow into the semblance of a fine gentleman of the period; how she despatched this semblance to play its part in the great world, where not one man in a hundred, she affirmed, was gifted with more real substance than itself; how there the scarecrow, while paying court to pretty Polly Gookin, the rosy, simpering daughter of Justice Gookin, discovered its own image in a looking-glass, returned to Mother Rigbys cottage, and dissolved into its original elements. My indebtedness, therefore, to this source, in undertaking the present play, goes without saying. Yet it would not be true, either to Hawthornes work or my own, to classify The Scarecrow as a dramatization of Feathertop. Were it intended to be such, the many radical departures from the conception and the treatment of Hawthorne which are evident in the present work would have to be regarded as so [Pg x] many unwarrantable liberties taken with its original material; the function of the play itself would, in such case, become purely formal,translative of a narrative to its appropriate dramatic form,and as such, however interesting and commendable an effort, would have lost all raison dtre for the writer. But such, I may say, has not been my intention. My aim has been quite otherwise. Starting with the same basic theme, I have sought to elaborate it, by my own treatment, to a different and more inclusive issue. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57156
Author: MacKaye, Percy
Release Date: May 13, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English