Theatre
Margaret Fleming
James A. Herne · 1890
Synopsis
In Canton, Massachusetts, Margaret Fleming has just had a daughter and is waiting for her husband, a factory owner, who is coming home two hours late. That very morning the family doctor told him that a young German immigrant gave birth during the night to a child of whom he is the father. Now the young woman's sister is the Flemings' nursemaid, and the only thing she knows about the seducer is that he is a rich man of the town. The doctor is also worried about Margaret's eyes.
Context
The play is tried out in Lynn, Massachusetts, in July 1890. When the managers of New York and Boston refuse to stage it, Herne himself rents Chickering Hall in Boston, where it is performed from 4 May 1891, then again in October, before an audience in which William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland are noticed; historians see in it the first American little theatre. The manuscript burned in 1909 with the Hernes' house. The known text is the one that Katharine Herne rewrote from memory in 1929, published in 1930; it differs from the 1891 version, which had five acts and ended differently.
Who it is for
A prose drama in four acts, in the text reconstructed in 1929, never translated into French; the version performed in 1891 is known only through reviews.
Prizes and reception
Often credited with having opened up modern drama in the United States, it was a commercial failure and found its audience only in 1907, in Chicago, with Chrystal Herne.
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