The Piper

   Josephine Preston Peabody's verse dramatization of the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin opened at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, on 26 July 1910, having won the Stratford prize for the best play (among 315 submissions) with action set before 1800. Peabody, wife of an English-born Harvard University professor, had taken up the subject at the suggestion of actor Otis Skinner, who sought a legitimate play on the subject even as De Wolf Hopper was touring in a musical Pied Piper. Skinner was unavailable when she completed it, so she submitted The Piper to the English competition. The New York premiere, on 30 January 1911 at the New Theatre, was produced by Winthrop Ames with Edith Wynne Matthison. It was quickly published and widely translated, although the large number of children in the cast, including five child speaking roles, precluded frequent productions.