ficient title. I have wavered for a
month.

But now my efforts seem rewarded.

There is a wharf in London below the Tower, not far from the India
docks. It has now sunk to common week-day uses, and I suppose its
rotten timbers are piled with honest, unromantic merchandise. But once
pirates were hanged there. It was the first convenient place for
inbound ships to dispose of this dirty, deep-sea cargo. Doubtless
hereabout the lanes and building-tops were crowded with an idle
throng as on a holiday, and wherries to the bankside and the play
paused with suspended oar for a sight of the happy festival. Did
Hamlet wait upon this ghastly prologue? Shakespeare himself, unplayed
script in hand, mused how tragedy and farce go hand in hand. In those
golden days with which our comedy concerns itself, a gibbet stood on
Wapping wharf and pirates stepped off the fatal cart to a hangman's
jest. We may hear the shouts of the 'prentice lads echoing across the
centuries.

I cannot hope that many persons--except dusty scholars--will know of
the district's ancient ill-repute, yet Wapping wharf figures often in
my dialogue as the somber motif of a pirate's life. It conveys to the
plot the sense of mystery. It needs but a handful of electric lamps.

If no one offers me a better title I shall let it stand.

[Illustration]

Wappin' Wharf

_A Frightful Comedy of Pirates_

[Illustration]

First produced in January, 1922, at the Play House, Cleveland, under
the direction of Frederic McConnell. The settings and costumes were
designed by Julia McCune Flory. The cast was as follows:

THE DUKE _William C. Keough_

PATCH-EYE _Howard Burns_

THE CAPTAIN _Ewart Whitworth_

RED JOE _K. Elmo Lowe_

DARLIN' _Mary Gilson_

BETSY _Jeanette Geoghegan_

OLD MEG _Emma Tilden_

SAILOR CAPTAIN _Ganson Cook_

SAILORS _Vance Stewart_, _Alvin Shulman_, _Arthur Kraus_

[Illustration]

Wappin' Wharf

_A Frightful Comedy of Pirates_

ACT I

_Our scene is the wind-swept coast of Devon. By day there is a wide
stretch of ocean far below. The time is remote and doubtless great
ships of forgotten build stand out from Bristol in full sail for
western shores. Their white canvas winks in the morning sun as if
their purpose were a jest. They seek a northwest passage and the
golden mines of India. But we must be loose and free of date lest our
plot be shame