The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Mackaye, Percy

MACKAYE, Percy, American dramatist and poet: b. New York, 16 March 1875. He was graduated from Harvard in 1897 and studied at the University of Leipzig in 1899-1900. He engaged in European travel in 1898-1900, residing in Rome, Switzerland, Leipzig and London. He was an instructor in a private school in New York in 1900-04, after which time he joined the Cornish Colony in New Hampshire and devoted his time entirely to dramatic work. He has lectured on the theatre at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and other American universities, and is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is a leading exponent of poetic dramatic art in America and handles both tragedy and comedy with grace and surety of touch. Author of ‘The Canterbury Pilgrims,’ a comedy, 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, Mass., 4 Aug. 1909 (1903); ‘A Modern Rendering into Prose of Chaucer's Tales’ (1904); 'Fenris the Wolf,' a tragedy (1905); ‘Jeanne d’Arc,' a tragedy, produced by Julia Marlowe and E. H. Sothern in America and England in 1906-07 (1906); ‘Sappho and Phaon,’ a tragedy (1907); ‘The Scarecrow’ (1908); ‘Lincoln Centenary Ode’ (1909); ‘Mater,’ an American comedy (1906); ‘The Playhouse and the Play,’ essays (1909); ‘A Garland to Sylvia’ (1910); ‘Anti-Matrimony,’ a satirical comedy produced and acted by Henrietta Crossman (1910); ‘The Civic Theatre’ (1912); ‘Uriel and Other Poems’ (1912); ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ a lyric drama (1912); ‘Sanctuary, A Bird Masque,’ produced for President Wilson at Meriden Bird Club Sanctuary, New Hampshire (1913); ‘The Immigrants,’ a lyric drama (1915); ‘The Evergreen Masque’ (1917), etc. See Scarecrow, The.