Children of the Market Place

Children of the Market Place

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Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters

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293

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Children of the Market Place

By

5
(2 Reviews)
"This remarkable book is above everything else a study of Douglas, and as such it is not only able and fascinating, but strangely timely. ... A picture humanly attractive and far reachingly instructive." -- Edwin Bjorkman in The New York Herald

Book Excerpt

ound it on the Bowery and Elizabeth Street, bought a ticket for seventy-five cents and entered. The play was Othello, and I had never seen it before.

I could not help but overhear and follow the conversation of the people who sat next to me. They were wondering what moved Shakespeare to depict the story of a black man married to a white woman. Could such a theme be dramatized now? How could a woman, fair and high-bred, become the wife of a sooty creature like Othello? Was it real? If not real, what was Shakespeare trying to do? And much more to the same effect, together with remarks about negroes and that slavery should be let alone by New England, and by everyone else.

The play was dreary to me, played listlessly where it was not ranted and torn to tatters. I sat it through and then went back to my hotel.... The loneliness of that room as I entered it has never left my memory. For long hours I did not sleep. The city had 600 night watch, so the manual said, and I could hear some of the

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5
I only realized afterwards that it's not an autobiography but authentic fiction. The excellently written story of a remarkable life interwoven with slavery politics shortly before secession. Enlightening even if you're not US.