Excerpt from Joseph: A Drama for Children in One Act and Three ScenesThree years ago Professor Fletcher Harper Swift, an alumnus of Union Theological Seminary, and at that timea graduate student at Teachers College, was encouraged to make an experiment with children of acting the story of Joseph. He dramatized the story and enlisted for its production the boys and girls of the Seventh Grade of Speyer School, the experimental school of Teachers Col lege. He was ably assisted by Mrs. A. F. Carter, teacher of the Seventh Grade of the school. Six weeks of three hours each were spent in studying the biblical narrative. Acting it only deepened the impression already made. The policy of Joseph of taking merciless advantage of the straits of the Egyptian peasantry, monopolizing the farm lands for the crown and reducing the population to slavery, is wisely passed over in the drama prepared by Professor Swift.The manner of producing the play was very simple. The story was reduced to three scenes. The parts were divided between boys and girls, without regard to sex, and no attempt was made to disguise the sex of the girls in a play of only male characters. Pharaoh was a girl with her hair hanging about her shoulders, but she had a gilt paper crown on her head and sat upon a throne chair and held a scepter. The part of Joseph was given to a different child in each scene, so as to distribute the special benefits of acting the most important character. The play was staged in the gymnasium of the school, and a few pieces of the gymnasium apparatus served for the hanging of simple draperies for the scenes presented. The drama was acted before the parents of the children who played it, and was judged by them as an educational exercise. They agreed that it was a success.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.