Percy MacKaye

Percy MacKaye (1875–1956) was an American dramatist and poet.

Biography

MacKaye was born in New York City into a theatrical family. His father, Steele MacKaye, was a popular actor, playwright, and producer, while his mother, Mary, wrote a dramatization of Pride and Prejudice, first produced in 1910. His brother James MacKaye was a philosopher, while brother Benton MacKaye was a forester and conservationist. His sister, Hazel MacKaye, became a women's suffrage leader and pageant director.

After graduating from Harvard in 1897, he traveled in Europe for three years, residing in Rome, Switzerland and London, studying at the University of Leipzig in 1899–1900. He returned to New York City to teach at a private school until 1904, when he joined a colony of artists and writers in Cornish, New Hampshire, and devoted himself entirely to dramatic work.

He wrote the plays ''The Canterbury Pilgrims'' in 1903, '' Sappho and Phaon'' in 1907, '' Jeanne D'Arc'' in 1907, '' The Scarecrow'' in 1908, '' Anti-Matrimony'' in 1910, and the poetry collection '' The Far Familiar'' in 1937. In 1950, MacKaye published ''The Mystery of Hamlet King of Denmark, or What We Will'', a series of four plays written as prequels to William Shakespeare's ''Hamlet''. His sister Hazel acted in or helped produce several of his early works.

He was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1914. In the 1920s, MacKaye was poet in residence at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He lectured on the theatre at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and other universities in the United States.

Percy MacKaye is considered to be the first poet of the Atomic Era because of his sonnet "The Atomic Law," which was published in the Christmas 1945 issue of ''The Churchman''.

Civic Theatre

In 1912, he published ''The Civic Theatre in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure; A Book of Suggestions''. Here he presented a concept of Civic Theatre as "the conscious awakening of the people to self-government in its leisure". To this end he called for the active involvement of the public, not merely as spectators, professional staff not dominated by commercial considerations and the elimination of private profit by endowment and public support. This idea is most apparent in his play ''Caliban by the Yellow Sands'' (1916). This concept was influential on Platon Kerzhentsev and the Soviet Proletcult Theatre movement.Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920
Accessed September 28, 2017

Works

Poetry

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Plays

* ''Beowulf: A Drama of Anglo-Saxon Legend'', c. 1899 (unpublished; posthumously performed at Texas A&M University on September 22, 2016)
*''The Canterbury Pilgrims'', 1903. This comedy was produced by the Coburn Players in the open air at Harvard, Yale and other universities in 1909–13, and given as a civic pageant in honor of President Taft at Gloucester, Massachusetts, 4 August 1909.
* ''Fenris the Wolf'', 1905
* Produced by E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe in the United States and England.
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* Produced and acted by Henrietta Crosman.
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* Produced for President Wilson at Meriden Bird Club Sanctuary, New Hampshire.
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* A community masque to commemorate the Shakespeare Tercentenary.
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* ''The Pilgrim and the Book''. 1920. A dramatic “Service” for celebrating the Pilgrim Centenary.
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Opera

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Non-fiction

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References

External links

Percy MacKaye papers, 1879-1956.
Houghton Library, Harvard University.
The Papers of the MacKaye Family
at Dartmouth College Library
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at 20m.com

at time.com

Percy MacKaye Letters from Wilson Family
at Dartmouth College Library

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackaye, Percy
1875 births
1956 deaths
20th-century American poets
Miami University faculty
Leipzig University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Writers from New York City
American opera librettists
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male poets
American male dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American male writers