Percy MacKaye's "The Searecrow"

"The Scarecrow," reviewed below by Professor Neilson, is by Percy W. MacKaye '97.

He would be a bold man who would prophesy the fortunes of Mr. MacKaye's new play on the stage. It is so unlike anything that has been seen in the theatre these many years that parallels of any kind are hard to draw; and yet it has so much that is striking, even startling, in it that a theatrical sensation is by no means out of the question. "The Scarecrow" is a prose "tragedy of the indicrous," based upon a suggestion derived from Hawthorne's "Feathertop"; but the purely satirical purpose of the original story is replaced by an ethical significance vastly more profound; and an action that begins in grotesque comedy closes in genuine tragedy. The seen is laid in New England in the days of witchcraft, and the story turns on the transformation by a witch and her diabolical ally of a scarecrow into a supposed English lord, who keeps up a semblance of humanity so long as he continues to smoke. The daring of the conception may be imagined when it is said that this grotesquely ludicrous figure develops a realization of the moral bearings of the human situation in which his creators, for the paying of old grudges, have placed him; and finally, love begetting in him a soul, he renounces his precarious existence for the sake of others, and foils the devilish intent of the which and the fiend who produced him. It will be seen at once that such a change of tone between the beginning and the end, and so unexpected a call on the sympathy of the audience from a figure which at the outset was not even animate, create a situation the acting success of which it is all but impossible to surmise. But there is no doubt about the fact that, as a reading play, it holds the attention with a firm grip, that it is full of action, humor, and skillfully maintained suspense, and that, as we have come to expect in Mr. MacKaye's work, the lines contain, especially towards the close, much poetical thought and fine imaginative expression. Finally, the drama is marked by a quite extraordinary intensity,-an intensity which not only permeates and broadens the symbolism, but which gives to the flashes of wit an illuminating power raising even the lighter parts of the play to a level far above what is suggested by our summary of the action.