Such an achievement is surely a foretaste of the eventual realization of the democratic ideal, where art will be made not only for the people, but also by the people, and the people will cooperate to make the common life more beautiful, until the communal life itself shall become a living work of art.
— New York American, May 28, 1916

Intensely concerned with the Spirit of America, Percy MacKaye was highly acclaimed before the age of film and electronic media as the inspired leader of the civic drama, which gave new meaning to life in America’s larger cities around the turn of the last century. His mythic masques unveiled this spirit before the eyes of his audiences and involved their complete participation, so that at times thousands filled his stages. Such community-participation masques uplifted drama to new levels, and became uniquely American cultural events. MacKaye’s impulse gains new vital importance today as people again seek for a more meaningful sense of community.

MacKaye tapped into the wisdom of the Native Americans as well as the folk culture of the early settlers. We see in the stories of Poog a rendering of the childhood magic of growing up in the Vermont countryside.

American in spirit, but cosmopolitan in scope, Percy MacKaye travelled widely and involved himself in many forms of literary expression. His poetry sings of love, grief, and spiritual universality. His deep friendship with Albert Steffen brought Anthroposophy into his heart, and each grew profoundly as they saw into each other’s worlds.Perhaps Percy’s crowning work was the Tetralogy he wrote, in prologue to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. MacKaye’s own soul had something of the younger Hamlet in it, and in his grappling with the mysteries Shakespeare left us, MacKaye offered his own penetrating dramas. Such a bold effort sounds dubious, yet in the end, MacKaye’s The Mystery of Hamlet, King of Denmark, or What We Will, met with considerable critical acclaim.

We hope you find in Percy MacKaye seeds for a renewal of American culture.
The Power of the Impossible
The Life Story of Percy and Marion MacKaye

ISBN 0-933858-16-7

710 pages, illustrated hardbound $39.95.

This engrossing biography and love story carries the reader into a wonderful world inspired by the power of the imagination. Aside from its extraordinary personal story with its zest, drama, and delightful word-portraits, this book adds new perspectives to the history of American literature during the early 20th century. MacKaye’s circle of friends included many of the writers, actors, inventors and statesman of his time, including Robert Frost, Kahlil Gibran, Isadora Duncan, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. His meeting late in life with Albert Steffen, and the death of his wife soon afterward, led him to the firm conviction of life after death and the reality of the spiritual worlds. No historical library of American culture is complete without this volume.

 

 

My Lady Dear, Arise!

263 pages, hardbound $12.95.

Percy and Marion MacKaye have set their feet firmly on the sacred path of Dante and Beatrice. (Thomas H. Dickinson)

Songs and sonnets in dedication to Marion Morse MacKaye. These passionate poems, born of grief and a triumphant love that transcends death, are a beautiful affirmation of the human spirit.

I Met God Walking Leisurely

21 pages, paperback $5.00.

Seven poems in dedication to Marion Morse MacKaye with German translations by Albert Steffen and Agathe Horst. These beautiful poems - English original and German trans-lation on opposite pages - show how the same content can be reborn, out of a poetic sense, in another language.

Percy MacKaye Poet of Old Worlds and New
By Henry Barnes

ISBN 0-932776-26-4

128 pages, illustrated paperback $12.50.

This beautiful little book presents a moving sketch of a poet awaiting rediscovery. Drawing on Arvia MacKaye’s longer biography, Henry Barnes gives a lively introduction to Percy MacKaye’s dramatic and inspiring life. A real gem hidden in the appendix is an astonishing account of an exchange between Percy’s grandfather and President Lincoln!

 

In May and July, 1916, Percy MacKaye’s civic drama Caliban was staged in Lewisohn Stadium in New York City and Harvard Stadium in Boston. Produced by a company of 5,000 citizens led by professional actors and enjoyed by audiences of 10,000 each night, this festive pageant brought these cities together in a creative celebration of their common humanity.

“These communal masques touch the bottom of that instinct of the Artist, latent in us all, and have offered thousands a chance of participating in the joy of actually creating beauty. Such an achievement is surely a foretaste of the eventual realization of the democratic ideal, when art will be made not only for the people, but also by the people, and all the people will cooperate to make the common life more beautiful, until the communal life itself shall become a living work of art.”
New York American, May 28, 1916

Poog’s Pasture The Mythology of a Child
A Vista of Autobiography by Percy MacKaye

187 pages, hardbound $10.50.

Mr. MacKaye has written an enchanting memory of the insights of childhood.... We smell again the arbutus bloom ... we hear the echoing voices of The Other People, and feel the wing beats of Pegasus himself. We feel again with Poog the mystical moment of revelation when truth is perceived at the heart of the universe.

–St. Louis Post Dispatch

Poog and the Caboose Man The Mythology of a Child
A Vista of Autobiography by Percy MacKaye

242 pages, hardbound $10.50.
Here we are introduced to an extraordinary folk character, a kind of guardian of childhood consciousness, in the person of Zodiac Cobb, the Caboose Man. Hints of Grimm’s fairy tales, Norse Mythology and mumble-de-peg are magically interwoven. Foreword by Padraic Colum.

The Mystery of Hamlet King of Denmark or What We Will
(The Story behind Hamlet’s Ghost) Four plays by Percy MacKaye

676 pages, paperback $17.50.

As the culminating achievement of MacKaye’s remarkable career, this tetralogy offers insight into the great mysteries left to us by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It sets forth events and conflicts shared by the chief dramatis personae of Shakespeare’s tragedy, throughout the thirty years preceding the death of King Hamlet and his portentous appearance as ghost on the ramparts of the Castle of Elsinore. There are few literary works woven of such fine, indeed sublime imagination.

 

MacKaye seems to have summoned all his considerable powers for a work which is not only an extraordinary creative expansion of the lives of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but a work of immediate meaning for our own tragic times in which strife and revenge seem to play two of the key notes.

~William Rose Benet

In the four plays he has wrought a massive drama of his own which will hold any sensitive reader in suspense and make thirty years seem one vivid afternoon and night.... The tetralogy stands high above anything Mr. MacKaye has previously done... one is inclined to feel that its soaring conception, its rich texture of utterance, and its dramatic sweep and strength promise a durability that few works in this generation will achieve.

The New York Times

One does not in the least feel that MacKaye rashly trespasses upon Shakespearean territory.... He has grandeur of his own.... His high seriousness is supported by unmistakable powers to deal with generalized concepts and with the heroic emotions that bind together humanity in time and make the existence of classics a reality.

Henry W. Wells
Saturday Review of Literatur