Play Suggestions

[Inkell]

For a course I'm planning on running, I have been looking for different versions of Amphitryon. We have the Plautus and Moliere versions, and I have found a version by Dryden (with F's for S's and music by Purcell) and another by Heywood (part of a pair of plays called the Golden Age, The Silver age - which is the Amphitryon - and supposedly The Bronze and Iron Ages too.)

(Note - there is a 1929 version called "Amphitryon 38" - that being how many versions the author thought there were at that point. The English translation is not PD yet, sadly.)

https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_amphitryon-or-the-two-_dryden-john_1771/page/n1/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/goldenandsilver01heywgoog/page/n104/mode/2up

So I'll be starting these at some point this spring, I hope. (Along with more Pinero, Plautus, Cowley, Centlivre, and ....)

Thanks, Todd

Sounds good, Todd! Should be interesting to see how they compare as well... which might be the part of your course actually, always good to get more Ancient Greek/Roman stuff anyway

[ToddHW]

Started the Heywood play, The Silver Age.

viewtopic.php?t=102237

Thanks, Todd

[Peter Why]

I'd like to suggest "The Watched Pot", a three act play by Saki. The only problem is the date of the copy on archive.org, but it looks okay to me.

Wikipedia link for play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Watched_Pot

Text of play is in ...
The Novels and Plays of Saki, Vol. 1
Source: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.149119/page/n5/mode/2up

Published: 1922 (but "reprinted" through to 1949 ... that's the copy that's accessible through archive.org)

Author: Saki - Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1917)
Wikipedia link for author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saki#cite_note-7
Peter

[prosfilaes]

I'd like to suggest "The Watched Pot", a three act play by Saki. The only problem is the date of the copy on archive.org, but it looks okay to me.

https://archive.org/details/uc1-31210012804124-1678711911/page/188/mode/2up is a scan of The square egg and other sketches from 1924, with the "The Watched Pot" in it. (It is not in the Librivox reading of that book, so there may be multiple editions, but this one is marked 1924.)

[ToddHW]

Okay, maybe amongst y'all there is someone who can help me: a Public Domain script for a dramatization of Frankenstein. I know they exist, as described in Dramatizations of Frankenstein, 1821-1986: A Comprehensive List, by Steven Forry, at https://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/forry2.html.

* 1823: there was the first version - Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, by Richard Brinsley Peake. Supposedly resulting in the reissuing of the novel in a second and subsequent many editions. (The website above has a script online - but no PD indication or even any rights statement at all.)

* 1823 and 1826: Two versions by Henry M. Milner - The Demon of Switzerland and The Man and the Monster. (The website above also has a script of the latter one of Milner's online - but again no PD indication or even any rights statement at all.)

* and about 20 other versions in the List before 1928 that should be PD.

But I can't find any of them scanned in at Archive. There are recent books with edited reprints and commentary - the kind you can check out for an hour. But nothing we can use.

Can anyone else find one? I will run it if a script is found. The earlier the script the better (for comparison with the original book text - which we already have recorded here). And multiple finds could be good too.

Thanks, Todd

[Salvationist]

Okay, maybe amongst y'all there is someone who can help me: a Public Domain script for a dramatization of Frankenstein. I know they exist, as described in Dramatizations of Frankenstein, 1821-1986: A Comprehensive List, by Steven Forry, at https://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/forry2.html.

* 1823: there was the first version - Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, by Richard Brinsley Peake. Supposedly resulting in the reissuing of the novel in a second and subsequent many editions. (The website above has a script online - but no PD indication or even any rights statement at all.)

* 1823 and 1826: Two versions by Henry M. Milner - The Demon of Switzerland and The Man and the Monster. (The website above also has a script of the latter one of Milner's online - but again no PD indication or even any rights statement at all.)

* and about 20 other versions in the List before 1928 that should be PD.

But I can't find any of them scanned in at Archive. There are recent books with edited reprints and commentary - the kind you can check out for an hour. But nothing we can use.

Can anyone else find one? I will run it if a script is found. The earlier the script the better (for comparison with the original book text - which we already have recorded here). And multiple finds could be good too.

Thanks, Todd

Thanks for sharing this list link, Todd! It would be great to see one or more of these plays in the LibriVox catalogue.

I have a lead on a copy of The Magician and the Monster, one of the titles in the list you provided. I’ll let you know if I succeed in getting it digitized and up on the Internet Archive.

[redrun]

Unrelated, but we may find several nice plays among Glenn Hughes' bibliography, with thanks to LectorRecitator for finding them for us:
viewtopic.php?p=2330146#p2330146

[ToddHW]

Great list of one act plays!

Thanks, Todd

[InTheDesert]

Englishmen for My Money, or A Woman Will Have Her Will is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by William Haughton that dates from the year 1598. Scholars and critics often cite it as the first city comedy. Indeed, the play inaugurated a dramatic subgenre that would be exploited and developed by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and others in the following years and decades.

The play is set within the contemporary merchant class of London, the men who dealt on the Royal Exchange founded by Sir Thomas Gresham. The Portuguese-born merchant and moneylender Pisaro has three half-English daughters, Laurentia, Marina, and Mathea. The daughters face two trios of suitors, one foreign and one domestic. The foreigners are Delion, a Frenchman, Alvaro, an Italian, and Vandal, a Dutchman. Also a foreigner, Pisaro favours these candidates because of their wealth, but his daughters prefer their English suitors, Harvey, Heigham, and Walgrave. The play is rich in linguistic play, courtship scenes, and disguises and cross-dressing, and includes abundant comic material from the clown Frisco. In the end, as the title indicates, the Englishmen win their brides (which importantly helps to cancel the debts they owe to Pisaro).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englishmen_for_My_Money

https://archive.org/details/englishmenformym00hauguoft/
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46412/pg46412-images.html#FNanchor_476_476
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46412