Public-domain ebook
by Gerstenberg, Alice; Carroll, Lewis
Language: en2,792 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Children & Young Adult Reading·Plays/Films/Dramas·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #35688.
This edition is a stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking‑Glass, re‑imagined by Chicago playwright Alice Gerstenberg in 1915. The play opens in Alice’s home, where she and a caricatured Lewis Carroll discuss a chessboard that becomes a battlefield of Red and White queens. Their banter quickly turns into a whimsical game of mirrors, with Alice stepping through a looking‑glass that behaves like gauze, and the Red Queen demanding proper address. The opening scenes lay out a series of tableaux, chess‑board rooms, a garden of talking flowers, and a court of cards, each introduced through lively dialogue that blends Carroll’s nonsense with Gerstenberg’s theatrical flair.
The language is brisk and witty, echoing the Edwardian stage while preserving the original’s playful logic. Dialogue is punctuated by physical comedy, such as Humpty Dumpty’s egg‑like entrance and the White Rabbit’s frantic watch‑checking, giving the piece a lively, almost vaudevillian rhythm. Readers who enjoy theatrical renditions of classic fantasy, or who appreciate early‑20th‑century American drama that marries visual spectacle with Carroll’s wordplay, will find this dramatization both familiar and refreshingly inventive.
The opening · free to read
The scenery and the costumes were designed by William Penhallow Henderson of Chicago.
The music was written by Eric De Lamarter of Chicago.
The advertising posters and cards were designed by Jerome Blum of Chicago.
The illustrations of the characters of the play in this book were drawn by J. Allen St. John from photographs by Victor Georg of Chicago.
W. H. Gilmore staged the play with the following cast:
LEWIS CARROLL Frank Stirling ALICE Vivian Tobin RED QUEEN Florence LeClercq WHITE QUEEN Mary Servoss WHITE RABBIT Donald Gallaher HUMPTY DUMPTY Alfred Donohoe GRYPHON Fred W. Permain MOCK TURTLE Geoffrey Stein MAD HATTER Geoffrey Stein MARCH HARE Fred W. Permain DORMOUSE J. Gunnis Davis FROG FOOTMAN Walter Kingsford DUCHESS Kenyon Bishop CHESHIRE CAT Alfred Donohoe KING OF HEARTS Frederick Annerly QUEEN OF HEARTS Winifred Hanley KNAVE OF HEARTS Foxhall Daingerfield CATERPILLAR Walter Kingsford TWO OF SPADES Rule Pyott FIVE OF SPADES France Bendtsen SEVEN OF SPADES John A. Rice
Scene I--Alice's Home. Scene II--The Room in the Looking Glass. Scene III--The Hall with Doors. Scene IV--The Sea Shore.
Miss Gerstenberg's manuscript called for costumes after the illustrations of John Tenniel, and scenery of the simple imaginative type, the "new art" in the theater.
ALICE'S home. LEWIS CARROLL is discovered, playing chess. Golden-haired ALICE, in a little blue dress, a black kitten in her arms, stands watching him.
A red pawn took a white pawn; this way. You see, Alice, the chessboard is divided into sixty-four squares, red and white, and the white army tries to win and the red army tries to win. It's like a battle!
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