Grotesques I [Turning front.] Am a Grotesque; we will no longer bow, [He destroys the altar. A pause.] They have no answer-ha! Nor power. They can only stare. Hear, O ye gods who brought us into life, We fling defiance: give us freedom! Oh! Capulchard. They shall have freedom, even as they wish, We'll pause, merely to mend the broken rhythm. Woman. . . I cannot save you. No. [Capulchard brings the Sprite from the right edge of the decoration. At Capulchard's direction, the Sprite bends towards the Girl.] Girl. [As the Sprite seizes her.] Ah, catch me not so! Sprite. I have you for myself! Capulchard. [With a glance at the Man.] Thus far: forever, if there come no help. [A silence that brings the design to complete stagnation. A pause. The lights of the auditorium are very slightly illuminated. A pause. The lights diminish and go out.] Man. Mercy!-not mercy from them: hate! 1 Capulchard. [Himself awed, in a whisper.] At last the gods! [Capulchard looks at the Grotesques. He smiles.] What matter? Let the end be dexterous; Then to new canvas and a different theme. Girl. Pray to the gods. Woman. [Gently.] Yes; offer them a prayer. Capulchard. Now like a daemon of dread power, vast To their small eyes, but small to me myself, Lo, I take down the moon, erase the stars. [He does so. There is no less light.] Man. It is the end: I love you. Woman. We have loved. Capulchard. Caught in the void: we'll sweep the canvas clear. New decoration, say, by Alastair. For naught is permanent-excepting change. [He tears away the background and goes out, leaving the stage a void filled by a strange diminishing light, which penetrates beyond into the surrounding nowhere-an emptiness in which the Grotesques, including the Crone, whom he flings forward with the others, move vaguely. A pause.] Girl. Have mercy upon us! [A long silence. Curtain.] Cloyd Head NOTE ON GROTESQUES Mr. Cloyd Head's brief tragedy, which we have the honor of presenting this month to our readers, was first produced on the evening of Tuesday, November sixteenth, 1915, at the Chicago Little Theatre; the director, Mr. Maurice Browne, enacting Capulchard. Our illustrations are from photographs of this production, and they are published through the courtesy of the Chicago Little Theatre. The play ran three weeks, the initial cast being as follows: Mr. Maurice Browne Capulchard The Woman-motive The Man-motive Miss Gwendolen Foulke Mr. Knowles Entrekin Miss Miriam Kiper (In printing the play, the word motive has been omitted to avoid the monotony of repetition.) As POETRY said editorially last January: One could hardly say too much for the beauty of the presentation. But that was to be expected, for Mr. Browne, poet and dramatic artist that he is, is perhaps the only manager who could work out with complete delicacy the pictorial and theatrical subtleties of the theme. Already those of us who love the poetic drama are deeply in his debt. An enthusiastic word should be added for the beauty of Mr. Raymond Johnson's part of the production. Scenically this play was a new and difficult problem, whose fit solution required a man of daring vision and delicate instinct for line and balance in decorative design. In many earlier Little Theatre productions Mr. Johnson had shown rare ability and originality as a scenic designer, as well as extraordinary taste and ingenuity in producing new and strange effects with fixed or changing lights. Grotesques might have been ruined by a scenic artist less sensitive to conventionalized rhythms in background, costumes, and the posing of figures. The author, the director, the assistant director (Mrs. Maurice Browne) and the scenic designer, all artists of creative and adventurous imagination, had the joy of working in perfect harmony, the vision of each inspired and fulfilled by the others. And the actors, thus led and inspired, worked in perfect harmony with these four, emphasizing, by every pose and intonation, the delicate conventionalized rhythms of action and dialogue. The result was a memorable performance. If some of the spectators were disconcerted by the strangeness of itunable to dissociate their minds from ordinary theatrical experiences so far as to enter into the poet's mood, others found in it that rarest and most poignant of all delights-an experience of complete poetic beauty, one never to be forgotten so long as life endures-or so long, perhaps, as art preserves her annals. H. M. The author adds the following word: I wish to say two things with regard to this play: first, to add my own high appreciation of the artistry and insight which the Chicago Little Theatre brought to the making of the production; and, second, to ask the indulgence of the reader for certain obscurities inevitable to a play designed wholly for the theatre. The episodes are conceived as pantomime, the words being often a rhythm superimposed upon that pantomime. C. H. EDITORIAL COMMENT THE FUTURE OF THE MAGAZINE OUR years ago this month POETRY began. At that time the magazine was an experiment, a lone adventurer into a new field. A great art was neglected, even ridiculed; was in need of, not only a defender but an aggressive spokesman, an organ. Whether POETRY has fulfilled this function we will leave to its friends, or even to its enemies. The most casual observer cannot fail to admit the extent of the change during these four years, both in the spirit of the art and in its position before the critics and the public. And no informed person can fail to admit that the new movement, the new vitality, has been stimulated chiefly by this magazine and the currents of influence which have issued from it. It is therefore a question of immediate importance whether the magazine is to continue after its initial period is over. The financial arrangement which made the experiment possible was a five-year guarantee fund of a little over five thousand dollars a year, donated to the cause by more than an hundred lovers of the art. This fund, which still amounts to more than one-half of our annual income, has enabled us to pay our contributors, and to keep abreast of office expenses, the rising cost of printing and paper, an everincreasing correspondence, and all the incredibly numerous details of publication. |