The Lost Colony by Paul Green

First published: 1937

First produced: 1937, at the Waterside Theater on the grounds of the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, near Manteo, North Carolina

Type of plot: History

Time of work: July, 1584-Christmas, 1588

Locale: London and Roanoke Island, North Carolina

Principal Characters:

• John Borden, farmer and leader of the Roanoke settlement
• John White, governor of the settlement
• Eleanor Dare, his daughter
• Captain Ananias Dare, Eleanor’s husband
• Manteo, young Croatoan chief
• Old Tom, English beggar and drunkard
• Elizabeth I, queen of England, sanctions the Roanoke settlement
• Walter Raleigh, English explorer

The Play

The Lost Colony eloquently recounts the story of the 117 men, women, and children of the doomed English settlement at Roanoke Island, North Carolina, who disappeared without a trace in 1588 after a yearlong struggle to settle the coastal wilds. Far from dwelling on the failure of the enterprise, the play offers an uplifting retelling that connects the daring of these first New World settlers (the Roanoke community predated Plymouth by more than thirty years) to the eventual success of the American experiment.

The prologue begins with a thundering organ solo followed by a sweeping choral rendering of “O God That Madest Earth and Sky.” A minister in full vestment intones a prayer recalling the heroic Roanoke settlers and reminding the audience that this seaside amphitheater is, in fact, on the very site of that original settlement (the play was written to be performed at a specific site). The stage then comes alive with the vivid spectacle of the harvest dance of the native Roanokes, interrupted by the arrival of the initial English scouting cortege, who claim the land for the queen. An exchange of gifts and gestures of friendship promise cooperation.

The action shifts to London, specifically the happy confusion outside a tavern by the queen’s gardens. Old Tom, a beggar and drunkard who, like the Shakespearean fool, is given to witty insights, anticipates the arrival of Sir Walter Raleigh. With great pomp, the queen herself arrives and, after listening to Raleigh and sampling the New World curiosity known as tobacco, sanctions a settlement. Amid the celebration, John Borden, a dashing tenant farmer, exchanges tender words with Eleanor White, whose father owns the lands he farms. She is, however, already promised to Captain Ananias Dare, a union more appropriate to her social position.

The disastrous first attempt at settling the island by a military contingent dispatched in 1585 is rendered dramatically in scene 5. The English ambush the unsuspecting Indians during a dance ritual and kill their chief. After a period of escalating hostilities, the chorus explains, the settlement’s leaders returned to England, leaving only fifteen soldiers behind to maintain the crude fort. Raleigh persisted in his dream, however, and outfitted a ship with more than one hundred men, women, and children, largely from the lower rural class, to start a permanent colony. John White is appointed governor. Act 1 closes at the Plymouth wharf on the day of their departure. Despite whisperings of the doomed nature of an enterprise designed only to make Raleigh richer, John Borden rallies the hesitant people. As the first act closes, the settlers, singing bravely, gather their meager belongings and head off.

Act 2 begins with the settlers’ arrival in July, 1587. The fifteen men left behind have disappeared; the fort is in disrepair. The Roanokes are now implacably opposed to the English incursion. The settlers, nevertheless, vote to stay. Initially, the settlement bodes growth as the settlers are helped by the Croatoans, an indigenous tribe to the south. Indeed, in a comic subplot, Old Tom finds himself the object of the unrequited love of a squaw who follows him in exaggerated adoration. Scene 2 recounts the August, 1587, birth of Virginia Dare, the daughter of Ananias and Eleanor Dare, the first English child born in the New World. Yet even as the minister offers thanksgiving, the stage is rocked by a savage raid. The following Sunday, while the settlers celebrate the baby’s baptism, a contingent headed by Governor White departs for England to secure provisions for the colony’s survival, promising to return before Christmas. That promise gives the closing scenes their haunting poignancy. The audience watches as the imminent invasion of England by the Spanish Armada compels the queen to rescind her support for the New World empire and to marshal all ships for the defense of the English mainland, effectively dooming the settlement. The settlers themselves can only guess why the ships never return.

With Captain Dare’s dramatic onstage death during a raid in scene 5, the play darkens. The action moves to the settlement’s second Christmas. In tatters and walking feebly, the settlers, facing starvation, gather nevertheless to celebrate, the glad message of hope in their carols starkly ironic. Old Tom enters with his squaw, their comic relationship having matured into a marriage of mutual support. Amid the prayers, a child’s plaint, “I’m hungry, mommee,” underscores the reality of the slowly failing colony. Hysteria wells up (heightened by the chorus, singing of suffering) until John Borden, returning from a scouting expedition, fires his rifle to quiet the panic.

As the settlers disperse, Borden, now married to Eleanor, confides that they have been invited to follow the Croatoans south, where the game will be more plentiful. When a messenger arrives to announce that a marauding Spanish man-of-war has anchored with the intention of attacking, the settlers decide to abandon the fort, despite the discontented few who argue that surrender would ensure food. Encouraged by Borden’s brave words (“Let the wilderness drive us forth as wanderers across the earth, scatter our broken bones upon these sands, it shall not kill the purpose that brought us here”), they head into the Carolina wilderness, departing into the woods bordering the amphitheater, singing the hymn that began the play, “O God That Madest Earth and Sky.” In opting for this conjecture about the settlers’ fate, Green closes with an uplifting sense of affirmation.

Dramatic Devices

As the first and longest-running example of what Green termed a “symphonic drama,” The Lost Colony represents a revolutionary genre that recalls the outdoor theatrical rituals of the ancient Greeks, the lavish medieval community pageants (notably the Oberammergau Passion Play), the staged spectacles of Wagnerian opera in Bayreuth, Germany, and the stylized pageants of seventeenth century Japanese kabuki theater. Begun as a local community effort to address what residents regarded as the long neglect of the historic events at Roanoke, the drama, planned for a single summer run, was commissioned in April, 1936, by the Roanoke Historical Association to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Virginia Dare. Yet, under Green’s visionary direction, the production found a receptive audience and has run every summer six nights per week since 1937 (except during World War II).

While on a Guggenheim Fellowship to Europe in 1928-1929, Green was inspired by German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s antirealism—with its unconventional strategies for involving the audience in a performance—and by Russian playwright Alexis Granowsky’s experiments in introducing music into episodic drama. Green pioneered the return of drama to the outdoors, with its implicit invitation to enlarge the audience emotionally. The Lost Colony, with a chorus and pipe organ providing its sonic backdrop, deliberately aims for the impact of religious ritual. Many elements must work together to create this experience (hence the term “symphonic” to suggest how disparate elements must cooperate like the sections of an orchestra creating a symphony). Among its dramatic devices, the play coordinates poetic dialogue, choreography, lighting, costuming, sound effects, a score of period music (including hymns, carols, organ works, and dances), a cast of more than one hundred actors and a chorus of twenty voices, pyrotechnics, dramatically staged action sequences (including brutal raids), and lavish sets deployed across a main stage measuring more than two hundred feet across, as well as two smaller movable stages. Behind the scenes, teams of technicians maintain the spectacle, monitoring banks of computer equipment, state-of-the-art sound and lighting boards, and even Doppler weather radar.

Critical Context

When Green was first approached to work on a pageant based on Roanoke, he was already disillusioned with conventional theater. His first full-length drama, In Abraham’s Bosom (pr. 1926, pb. 1927), a controversial play that boldly examined race relations, had won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize but had found little commercial success. Green, teaching philosophy at the University of North Carolina, then began to explore the folk stories and African American music of his rural east Carolina upbringing. As he evolved his interpretation of the Roanoke settlement and found broad support for his vision of a people’s theater (the original staging was largely funded through President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs), Green wrote extensively of his conception of outdoor drama as an opportunity not only to mine regional history for its narrative appeal but also to bring theater to a new audience.

After the stunning success of this initial project, Green would spend the remainder of his considerable professional career (nearly thirty years) creating sixteen other outdoor dramas, staged largely in southern venues, where, Green argued, there runs a deep sense of regional history. Some, like The Lost Colony, recount the settling of the new continent by particular ethnic groups—including Scots, Spaniards, and British—while others re-create the struggles of settlers—in Texas, Florida, and Georgia, among other places—to create a community amid the wilderness. Green has been criticized for emphasizing spectacle and action, for rejecting the subtler, often pessimistic, thematic nuances of traditional theater, and for offering instead larger-than-life characters who are given to declaiming inspirational messages of faith in common humanity. Yet, Green’s outdoor dramas, as well as the numerous productions inspired by their success, became one of the most successful original American dramatic genres of the twentieth century and have given Green an audience that often exceeds the more recognized playwrights of his era.

Sources for Further Study

Avery, Laurence G. “The Lost Colony”: A Symphonic Drama of American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Avery, Laurence G. A Paul Green Reader. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Free, William J., and Charles B. Lower. History into Drama: A Source Book on Symphonic Drama, Including the Complete Text of Paul Green’s “The Lost Colony.” New York: Odyssey Press, 1963.

Kenny, Vincent S. Paul Green. New York: Twayne, 1971.

Rabkin, Gerald. Drama and Commitment: Politics in the American Theatre of the Thirties. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.