


Produced by David Widger





DR. JONATHAN

By Winston Churchill


A Play in Three Acts





PREFACE


This play was written during the war. But owing to the fact that several
managers politely declined to produce it, it has not appeared on any
stage. Now, perhaps, its theme is more timely, more likely to receive
the attention it deserves, when the smoke of battle has somewhat
cleared. Even when the struggle with Germany and her allies was in
progress it was quite apparent to the discerning that the true issue
of the conflict was one quite familiar to American thought, of
self-determination. On returning from abroad toward the end of 1917
I ventured into print with the statement that the great war had every
aspect of a race with revolution. Subliminal desires, subliminal fears,
when they break down the censor of law, are apt to inspire fanatical
creeds, to wind about their victims the flaming flag of a false
martyrdom. Today it is on the knees of the gods whether the
insuppressible impulses for human freedom that come roaring up from the
subliminal chaos, fanned by hunger and hate, are to thrash themselves
out in anarchy and insanity, or to take an ordered, intelligent and
conscious course. Of the Twentieth Century, industrial democracy is
the watchword, even as political democracy was the watchword of the two
centuries that preceded it. Economic power is at last realized to be
political power. No man owns himself, no woman owns herself if the
individual is not economically free. Perhaps the most encouraging omen
of the day is the fact that many of our modern employers, and even our
modern financiers and bankers seem to be recognizing this truth, to
be growing aware of the danger to civilization of its continued
suppression. Educators and sociologists may supply the theories; but by
experiment, by trial and error,--yes, and by prayer,--the solution must
be found in the practical domain of industry.





DR. JONATHAN




ACT I

SCENE:   The library of ASHER PINDAR'S house in Foxon Falls, a New England
   village of some three thousand souls, over the destinies of which
   the Pindars for three generations have presided. It is a large,
   dignified room, built early in the nineteenth century, with white
   doors and gloss woodwork. At the rear of the stage,--which is the
   front of the house,--are three high windows with small, square panes
   of glass, and embrasures into which are fitted white inside
   shutters. These windows reach to within a foot or so of the floor;
   a person walking on the lawn or the sidewalk just beyond it may be
   seen through them. The trees bordering the Common are also seen
   through these windows, and through a gap in the foliage a glimpse of
   the terraced steeple of the Pindar Church, the architecture of which
   is of the same period as the house. Upper right, at the end of the
   wall, is a glass door looking out on the lawn. There is another
   door, lower right, and a door, lower left, leading into ASHER
   PINDAR'S study. A marble mantel, which holds a clock and certain
   ornaments, is just beyond this door. The wall spaces on the right
   and left are occupied by high bookcases filled with respectable
   volumes in calf and dark cloth bindings. Over the mantel is an
   oil painting of the Bierstadt school, cherished by ASHER as an
   inheritance from his father, a huge landscape with a self-conscious
   sky, mountains, plains, rivers and waterfalls, and two small figures
   of Indians--who seem to have been talking to a missionary. In the
   spaces between the windows are two steel engravings, "The Death of
   Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham" and "Washington Crossing the
   Delaware!" The furniture, with the exception of a few heirlooms,
   such as the stiff sofa, is mostly of the Richardson period of the
   '80s and '90s. On a table, middle rear, are neatly spread out
   several conservative magazines and periodicals, including a
   religious publication.

TIME: A bright morning in October, 1917,


   GEORGE PINDAR, in the uniform of a first lieutenant of the army,
   enters by the doorway, upper right. He is a well set up young man
   of about twenty-seven, bronzed from his life in a training camp, of
   an adventurous and social nature. He glances about the room, and
   then lights a cigarette.

   ASHER PINDAR, his father, enters, lower right. He is a tall,
   strongly built man of about sixty, with iron grey hair and beard.
   His eyes are keen, shadowed by bushy brows, and his New England
   features bear the stamp of inflexible "character." He wears a black
   "cutaway" coat and dark striped trousers