Description
In addition to the pageant put on by Rev. Hugh Parry, the Mayflower tercentenary also saw the production of several original plays, including John Alden's Choice, performed in Southampton, and The Seed and the Fruit performed in Exeter. Probably the most widely performed new play was The Mayflower: a Play of the Pilgrim Fathers which premiered in Plymouth's Repertory Theatre. It was written by W. Edward Stirling and Alfred Hayes. Parts of it were read in Birmingham, Stirling's home city, but Plymouth was its debut. James Rendel Harris provided a prologue for the play, as he had done for the pageant. The Prime Minister, the American Ambassador, the American Consul-General, and a number of other British and American dignitaries lent their patronage to the play.
The text was published by Mills & Boon just before its initial run in Plymouth. According to the Birmingham Gazette, the play had to be judged by the more "limited criteria" of "occasional or pageant-drama", not as a typical stage play. And, in that limited way, it was likely to be satisfactory. However, citing the superficiality of the characterisation and the general anti-climax of the action, it was not likely "to stand the test of the footlights after the special occasion for which it was written has gone by." However, the play was pleasing enough for fireside reading and the language had "simple dignity".
The play itself was modelled heavily on Hugh Parry’s pageant, but relied less on large crowd scenes and instead took the form a more standard character-led drama. However, there was also less comedic leavening than in the pageant version (which had included an invented villain, a drunken sidekick, and a wise-cracking village maid called Meg who gets the better of them). The Stirling and Hayes play apparently stuck more rigorously to the dramatis personae of the historical original, though Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s love triangle between John Alden, Patricia Mullins, and Miles Standish was retained.
The play began its run at Plymouth in late August, where it received an enthusiastic response from an audience representative of various regions of England, but also America and the Netherlands.
The production eventually travelled to London, where the Mayflower ship collapsed on stage, which seems to have been the play's major impact on the metropolitan imagination.
Source
The Era, “The Mayflower”, 11 August 1920.
The Era, “The Mayflower”, 15 September 1920.
Morning Post, “The ‘Mayflower’ as a play”, 18 September 1920.
The Era, “The Mayflower”, 22 September 1920.
Clipping from the Birmingham Gazette, "A Mayflower Drama", n/d, but likely July 1920. James Rendel Harris Archives, Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.