HIGH TOR (in Four Verse Plays)
By Maxwell Anderson New York, Harcourt, Brace & World: 1959 812 AND
By Maxwell Anderson New York, Harcourt, Brace & World: 1959 812 AND
High Tor, the place, is just south of Haverstraw on the west bank of the Hudson, where the river is at its widest. Drenched in back story, it was Henry Hudson’s resting place on his way down the rover in 1609, after giving up his dream of finding a Northwest Passage. Here the eponymous traitor Benedict Andre met with Major Andre to plot the betrayal of West Point during the American Revolution. Here the fictional Rip Van Winkle slept for twenty years.
“Torr” is an old English word for a rocky peak.
“Torr” is an old English word for a rocky peak.
High Tor, a play in verse, dates from 1937. Anderson, who lived nearby, was aware of the renewed interest in American history, as embodied in the national government’s support of writers producing the WPA Guides to the States. From his home on South Mountain Road, he watched as the mountain’s owner, Elmer van Orden, resisted pressure to sell so that it could be quarried for stone, a job creator during the Great Depression. Van Orden died in 1943, and only then did the county step in to purchase High Tor for the Pallisades Interstae Park. In light of our current environmental problems, High Tor, the play, commands our renewed interest.
The Catskill Mountains possess magical properties, usually blue and purple, they attract wispy clouds of vapor even on sunny days. Against this backdrop Anderson created a fantastic comedy in verse. His protagonist is Van van Dorn, the man who owns the mountain that developers covet, and his fiancée Judith, who sees the price for the mountain as their fortune.
The Catskill Mountains possess magical properties, usually blue and purple, they attract wispy clouds of vapor even on sunny days. Against this backdrop Anderson created a fantastic comedy in verse. His protagonist is Van van Dorn, the man who owns the mountain that developers covet, and his fiancée Judith, who sees the price for the mountain as their fortune.
“They want to chew the back right off this mountain, the way they did/across the clove there. Leave the old palisades/ sticking up there like billboards, nothing left/ a false front facing the river”, van Orden tells Judith.
In response to Judith’s reminder that $10,000 is being offered, van Dorn says:
“Well, it’s Federal money/ Damn stiff evaporates. Put it in a sock/ along with mothballs, and come back, next year,/ and there’s nothing left but the smell.”
Art Biggs is a double-dealing developer who connives with Judge Skirmerhorn to push the deal through. Van Dorn sees portents of environmental destruction in the storms and the lightening that swirl around the mountain after the judge serves him with a court summons.Complications ensue after a bank robbery in a nearby town, when the robbers take refuge on the mountain and van Dorn is trapped there by a rockslide. A busy night ensues.
A master of the unlikely beginning, after graduating from the University of North Dakota, Anderson (1888-1956), moved to New York City where he wrote for the prestigious New Republic. His first play managed only 12 performances before closing, but Anderson went on to dominate the American theater for more than a quarter of a century with such plays as What Price Glory?, Key Largo, Knickerbocker Holiday, Winterset, Lost In The Stars, and Anne of the Thousand Days (like High Tor, a verse play). From Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks, Anderson absorbed the charm of setting your play far from home. For his own home in the Catskills of Rockland County, where he did most of his writing, he installed a sprinkler system on the roof, convinced that he did his best writing to the sound of rain.
In response to Judith’s reminder that $10,000 is being offered, van Dorn says:
“Well, it’s Federal money/ Damn stiff evaporates. Put it in a sock/ along with mothballs, and come back, next year,/ and there’s nothing left but the smell.”
Art Biggs is a double-dealing developer who connives with Judge Skirmerhorn to push the deal through. Van Dorn sees portents of environmental destruction in the storms and the lightening that swirl around the mountain after the judge serves him with a court summons.Complications ensue after a bank robbery in a nearby town, when the robbers take refuge on the mountain and van Dorn is trapped there by a rockslide. A busy night ensues.
A master of the unlikely beginning, after graduating from the University of North Dakota, Anderson (1888-1956), moved to New York City where he wrote for the prestigious New Republic. His first play managed only 12 performances before closing, but Anderson went on to dominate the American theater for more than a quarter of a century with such plays as What Price Glory?, Key Largo, Knickerbocker Holiday, Winterset, Lost In The Stars, and Anne of the Thousand Days (like High Tor, a verse play). From Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks, Anderson absorbed the charm of setting your play far from home. For his own home in the Catskills of Rockland County, where he did most of his writing, he installed a sprinkler system on the roof, convinced that he did his best writing to the sound of rain.
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