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THE COLLEGE NEWS

Page Five





Court. Not Important

In May Day Until 1928



Theresa Helburn, ’05, is Second
Alumna Noted Theatrically
To be Queen

, >
COURTIERS CERTIFIED





Although the early planners of a
Bryn Mawr May Day wanted particu-
larly to make the pageant typical of

’ the rural festivals of sixteenth ¢en-

tury England, ‘they decided, to have
Queen Elizabeth and her ladies pres-
ent, if not actively participating. The
plays and dances were not to be of
the formal court tradition, but they

‘were to be presented for the entertain-

ment of the queen. There was -evi-

dence that Elizabeth really had wit-
nessed at least one “county” May
Day during her reign, in the year
1559; and itis recorded that her
favorite country dance was the popu-
lar Sellinger’s Round. Nevertheless,
interest in that first pageant, when all
the Greene was taken care of by
freshmen, was not centered in the
court. It did not become the im-
portant feature that it is today until
1928, when Mrs. Chadwick-Collins
conceived the idea of a procession built
about the dais of the queen.

The Fortnightly Philistine, which
printed a short general write-up of
the 1900 celebration, described Queen
Elizabeth as sitting “aloft” with her
maidens who were scattering rosebuds
on the crowd. In 1906, ’10 and ’14,
the queen and her court wandered
around campus-watching the different
plays and dances, but they were not
regarded as important enough to have
their names in the program.

In 1920, after an interval of six
years, the queen’s court was revived
along with May Day, and included
five ladies of the faculty as ladies-in-
waiting, six men as courtiers and five
children as pages. Acting Dean Hilda
W. Smith played the part of Eliza-
beth. In the 1924 May Day, a senior,
Miss Martha Cook, was given the role.
Her court consisted of four ladies,
two courtiers, three guards (all played
by students), and two children as
guards. Her dais was borne by four
stalwart men of the faculty, and the
1924 class book reported that although
“Good Queen Bess was most impres-
sive. - more admiration fell: on
hcr princely bearers.” A member of
the audience was heard to congratu-
late one of the latter for looking so
much like a man.

The bigger and better court of the
queen planned by Mrs. Chadwick-Col-
lins in 1928, was presided over by an
alumna of the college, Mrs. Alfred B.
Maclay (Louise Fleischman, ’06). Her
splendid retinue included ten ladies,
nine courtiers (played by faculty
members), six heralds and two pages
(which were portrayed for the first
time by students), a Queen’s Cham-
pion and a Rider of the Cock Horse.
' The ’32 May Day is regarded as
having started another tradition which
will add to the prestige of the court
group in May Days yet to come; for
it was then that the part of Elizabeth
was played by an alumna _ distin-
guished as an actress, Cornelia Otis
Skinner (ex-’22). Moreover, the court
was even larger than before; eleven
courtiers followed the throne, and be-
sides two foot pages, the queen was
also attended by two mounted pages.

Mr. Frank Markoe, who reviewed
the 1932 May Day for the College
News admired the progress of the
queen, but remarked that the court
costumes were “obviously from the
costumers” and looked drab in the
afternoon sun. He noticed also that
they were more in the style of the
reign of Henry VIII than that of
Elizabeth.

The committee for the 1936 May
Day is ready to yield no such points
to erudite revieWers. Not only are
the costumes as authentic as possible,
but the names of the members of the
court were chosen after much careful
research in the Library. It was thought
essential ‘that the lords and ladies
represented by the faculty members
be those who, in reality, were all alive
and in good favor at the same time, so
that it would be at least probable that
they should have attended Elizabeth
at some fete in the country. The
Great Britain Calender of State Pa-
pers and the Progresses of Queen
Elizabeth by Nichols were consulted,
and Miss Terrien did some research

>
oon

Ene ae by fone

on Nae

Mrs. Huger Elliot Creates N ew Drawings
Of Figures, Motifs to Decorate Program



That this year’s May Day program
is more authentic and more attractive
than ever before, is due in large part
to the excellent work of Mrs. Huger
Elliott, a well-known illustrator. Her
husband, who is the director of-.edu-
cational work at the Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art in New York, is also an
architect and ‘helps her with, that
part of her work which involves land-
scaping, such as the sketch in the
program showing the whole campus
and the location of each play.

From 1902 until 1925, when” it
ceased to be an illustrated magazine,
Mrs. Elliott did the romantic and ‘cos-
tume drawings for Harper’s. In 1922
she illustrated an edition of Lamb’s
Tales from Shakespeare, edited by
David McKay. She uses the black
and white line particularly in her
work.

She has been connected with Bryn
Mawr since 1901, when she and Jessie
Wilcox Smith illustrated.a calendar,
published to raise money for building
purposes. In the next year ‘this was
repeated; and in 1903 Mrs. Elliott,
alone, illustrated a songbook, the
cover of which—two heralds blowing
trumpets and holding a scroll between
them—has since become traditional
and has been used on all May Day
posters and leaflets. From the 1924
May Day to the present she has illus-
trated the programs.

Every decoration and drawing
in the program is new, with the
exception of certain heraldic devices
and insignia of Queen Elizabeth,
which of necessity are used again.
There are many more drawings this
year, because the program has been
changed to include a small drawing
accompanying each character in the
order of the pageant. These figures
are so arranged on the page that they
appear to be moving from left to right
in a long procession. This arrange-
ment is much more attractive than
that of the last May Day program, in
which a single picture of the main
character only headed the cast of each
play; but it involves much more work.

Each figure is as authentic in detail
as possible. Mrs. Elliott is an author-
ity on the costumes of the period, and
in making these drawings she has
consulted many originial sources. For
the figure of the faleoner she used a
seventeenth century book on falconry
for the detail of the apparatus on
which the birds were carried. The
standard on the cover is upheld by
the lion and the dragon, since the uni-
corn used on former programs did not
exist in Elizabeth’s day, but was added
to the royal coat of arms on the ac-
cession of James I.

In the printing this program comes
closer than any of the preceding ones
to the Elizabethan type, of which an
exact reproduction is neither attain-
able nor desirable. The type used at
that time was very large and black,
with irregular and fairly illegible let-
ters. A very good copy of this can
be obtained if a hand-blocked type is
used; but as this is extremely expen-
sive, the best reproduction from the
printer’s font was used: Baskerville,
which, when translated for the lay-



in the subject of the holders of the
office of Lord Steward from 1559 to
1580. Not only is the Queen followed
by some twenty-one certified lords and
ladies, but she also is attended by six
heralds, three mounted pages, five foot
pages and numerous archers and beef-
eaters. Two new additions to the
retinue are the Chief Herald and the
Queen’s Fool.

Theresa Helburn, of the Class of
1908, will play Queen Elizabeth. She
is the second of the May Day Queens
who is an alumna distinguished in the
theatre; she is Executive Director of
the Theatre Guild in New York, and
Casting Director and a member of the
Board of Managers, as well as an
executive of Columbia Pictures Cor-
poration. In college she was Editor-
in-Chief and Managing Editor of
Tipyn O’Bob, an editor and contribu-
tor to the Lantern. She was a gradu-
ate studefit at Radcliffe and the Sor-
bonne in Paris (1908-09, 1913-14).
She received her present position with
the Theatre Guild in 1920,-and in ad-
dition to her responsibilities there, she
has found time to write plays, verse
and magazine articles, and to lecture
on drama and poetry.





man, means large ‘black letters. . A.
certain amount of red. is combined with

the black ‘in the program, and the
color is remarkably close to the an-
tique red used at the time.

The fact that Gammer Gurton’s
Needle and both of the wagon plays
are performed in three different places
during the course of the afternoon,
presented a problem in making a
sketch of the campus to show where
each play is given. This difficulty was
solved by lettering the three different
places and then putting a key at the
t| bottom of the sketch, giving the time
opposite the letters.

‘WITCHES ARE REPUTED .
TO SAIL IN EGGSHELLS



The one Bryn Mawr witch in the
pageant has a long history of magic
powers and superstition behind her,
and her craft is one about which many
books have been written and _ into!
which many investigations have been
made. During the Elizabethan period
witches were classified into three
types: ,black witches, white witches
and grey witches. White witches
cured the sick and helped find lost
‘property, but the black witches were
given wholly to evil, and it was they
who, high in their profession, made
wax images of those they planned to
harm, which they burned or stuck with
| Pins. The grey witches were rather



a indeterminate, doing good or evil as
it chanced. —

The two most common means of
witch transportation were sieves and
eggshells., There is an ancient story
of a French farmer who picked up a
| sieve in his cornfield, was immediately
confrontéd by a young girl who sud-
denly appeared from nowhere, cry-
ing, “My poor mother in England!”

In his surprise, the farmer dropped :
|the sieve, whereupon both it and the
girl disappeared with astonishing
rapidity. From the belief that witches
sailed in eggshells arose the habit of
breaking | empty eggshells so_ that
neither fairies nor witches could make
use of them. (The egg-woman in the
pageant had best be on the lookout
lest her wares suddenly disappear!)











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