Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1917.

This play in printed form is designed for the
reading public only. All dramatic rights in it
are fully protected by copyright in the United
States and Great Britain, and no performance
-professional or amateur-or public reading,
may be given without the written permission of
the publishers and the payment of royalty. Ad
dress all communications with reference thereto,
to Sturgis & Walton Company, 31-33 East 27th
Street, New York.

ΤΟ

MISS KATHERINE MACDONALD

In memory of many pleasant evenings spent at the theatre, and in especial of the night we witnessed Mr. Granville

Barker's production of “A

Midsummer Night's

Dream"

An antique fable, and thereto a preface on morals, such as Theseus, reputed sometime Duke of Athens, vowed he never could believe. And with good reason: poets, lovers and madmen have such seething brains, bodying forth the form of things unknown, giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. And yet, what's in a name? The first recorded William Shakespeare was hanged for robbery in 1248; the latest Cleopatra dances in burlesque. Mary Fitton or Mistress Davenant - what odds the name? A poet loved a woman and wooed her frailty into immortal rhyme. You are content to read his verses; then why not I? Why must I see all Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt? Because I know there is a world of romance in a name; and when you whisper "Guenevere" to me, my soul harks back to Arthur's court, mine eyes look on the queen, and in a dream I seem to see her walking 'mid the flowers of Camelot; I see her pause and raise her head as on the gravel-walk she hears the tread of Lancelot's mailed feet. And Mary? 'Tis the name of the Mother of God.