Caliban

MacKaye, Percy, 1875-1956Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 231K words
Chapters: 24

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Caliban by the Yellow Sands: A Community Masque of the Art of the TheatreAuthor: MacKaye, Percy, 1875-1956,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 11, 2018

Editor's review

This is a masque written for community theater. Its author, Percy MacKaye, brings Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest to center stage and makes him the guide to a celebration of theatrical art itself. The work is highly formal: choruses, processions, symbolic scenes, and collective performance interweave, so that it reads more like a performance text than a traditional plot-driven play. Its value lies in presenting the ideals of the early twentieth-century American community theater movement: drama is not merely a commodity of the professional stage but can be an artistic ritual in which ordinary people take part together. For the reader, the pleasure lies not in following a plot but in seeing how the author's poetic language weaves stage, audience, and performers into a whole, and in the symbolic meaning newly given to the classic figure of Caliban. It will suit readers interested in theater history, adaptation studies, or the reception history of Shakespeare, and drama groups looking for performance material.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in theater history and the community theater movement
Readers studying adaptations and the reception history of Shakespeare's The Tempest
Members of drama groups seeking scripts for collective performance
Readers who enjoy poetic texts and are open to non-plot-driven reading

Not a good fit for

General fiction readers seeking a coherent plot and character arcs
Readers expecting dialogue and conflict in the manner of Shakespeare's original
Readers impatient with masque, chorus, and symbolic form

Reading tips

Familiarize yourself with Caliban's basic image in The Tempest before reading this play; the purpose of the adaptation will then be clearer.
Read it as a performance text, imagining staging, chorus positions, and audience movement as you go.
Read in sections and mark the choral and soliloquy passages, noting how collective performance and individual speech function differently.
If you organize a script reading, assign roles and try out passages to feel the stage rhythm of the text.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can I understand this masque without having read The Tempest?

You can read it, but your understanding will suffer. Caliban is a classic figure from The Tempest, and this play reshapes him and gives him symbolic meaning. It is best to learn the basic plot and characters of The Tempest first; the author's artistic ideas, expressed through Caliban, will then be easier to grasp.

What kind of drama is a "community masque"?

A masque typically features song and dance, chorus, symbolic scenes, and collective participation, and does not depend on tight plot conflict. A community masque emphasizes the shared participation of ordinary residents and treats drama as a community celebration. This play was written for exactly that kind of performance, so reading it feels like browsing a combination of production plan and poetic script.

Is this a complete script or an excerpt?

This is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg and contains the work's content. As an early electronic text, the exact arrangement should be checked against the actual file. Read it as a performance script rather than a modern scholarly edition with detailed stage directions.

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About the author

MacKaye, Percy, 1875-1956 Author

Percy MacKaye (1875–1956) was an American poet and playwright. Public information about him is limited, and many details of his life remain obscure. Four of his works are held in the collection: Sanctuary: A Bird Masque, Fenris, the Wolf: A Tragedy, Caliban, and The Scarecrow or The Glass of Truth: A Tragedy of the Ludicrous. These works show him writing in the forms of masque, verse drama, and tragedy, often drawing on myth, legend, and fable and using symbolism to explore moral and human questions. Sanctuary is a bird masque with a conservationist dimension; Fenris, the Wolf draws on Norse mythology; and Caliban echoes the figure in Shakespeare's The Tempest. His plays are notable for their poetic language and stage imagery and had some influence on early modern American drama.