Mary of Scotland

Mary of Scotland (1933), a play by Maxwell Anderson. [Alvin Theatre, 248 perf.] Because Catholic Mary Stuart of Scotland (Helen Hayes) represents a genuine political threat to England's Protestant Queen Elizabeth (Helen Menken), Elizabeth conspires with disaffected Scottish nobles to overthrow her. Mary is forced to flee to England, where she is captured and imprisoned and the two queens confront each other. Although she realizes that Elizabeth will have her killed, Mary is triumphant, pointing to her son and heir, and to the rich life she has led, while noting that Elizabeth is an unloved, bitter woman. John Mason Brown, writing about the Theatre Guild production in the Evening Post, hailed the blank‐verse tragedy as “the best historical drama that has been written by an American—a script which brings the full, flooding beauty of the English language back to a theatre in which its beauties are but seldom heard.”