Dogtown Common

by Percy MacKaye. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1921. 12me, iv+ 110pp. $1.50.

MORE and more Ihe narrative form of poetry seems to be recovering its hold on both writers and readers. The vivid, enthralling stories of Mr. Masefield are read by thousands, both in England and in the Unted States. Mr. Robinson and Mr. Masters, each in his own way, are developing a more reflective and analytical type of narrative. Miss Lowell tells tales with the same bright vigor which she showered over lyrical themes. And now Mr. MacKaye returns to the primitive, fantastic New England of the Scarecrow and treats it in a narrative form.

There are in the poem much the same admirable qualities as in the earlier play. There is the energetic sense of dramatic moments, as when the gigantic Peter hurls himself into the church through the window, to accuse his rival, John Wharf, the minister, of a carnal sin as great as his own. There is the subtle suggestion of mysticism, the symbolical burden of spiritual meaning, ever ready to transfigure harsh, hard lineaments, brutal speech, and the stern, the trammeling conventions of Puritan thought and Puritan garb.

There is the high-wrought imaginative touch, the sensitive, permeating grace, which Mr. MacKaye has always at command, and which sets his figures and their passions and struggles in a background of serene beauty.

Also, in Dogtown Common, as in The Searecrow, there is the singular infusion of the grotesque, intended no doubt to emphasize by contrast the spiritual and material beauty, but in its violence of pun and rhyme and its occasional crudeness of speech perhaps carrying the contrast even to excess.

One of the most interesting things about Mr. Mac Kaye’s narrative is its form. All these poets who are telling stories are seeking, questing, for some medium, not by any means free verse, which will make the stories effective. The eighteenth century was perfectly content to tell tales in the one ever-repeated ten-syllabled couplet. But the wayward, restless ear and fancy of the twentieth demand an instrument more varied, more subtly and delicately responsive to all moods and all desires.

It cannot be said that the instrument has yet been found. Blank verse degenerates into prose, the couplet wearies, the stanza hampers. Mr. MacKaye has invented a stanza of his own, which is not unsuited to his purpose. It is too complicated, too broken, too in-growing, to fit a bold, swift, objective story. But it is entirely adapted for the subtle analysis , of old Massachusetts thoughts and souls. At any rate, by devising it and using it, Mr. MacKaye has combined form and matter to produce a most piquant and mordant revival of a ghostly past.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD.

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