Granny Maumee; The Rider of Dreams; Simon the Cy
Ridgely Torrence's three plays, collected here as Granny Maumee, The Rider of Dreams and Simon the Cyrenian, each follow a Black character at a moment of moral crisis. In Granny Maumee, a blind and very old woman, burned long ago in the fire that killed her son Sam, prepares her cabin in a red dress to receive the great-grandchild her granddaughter Sapphie is bringing. Her great granddaughter Pearl helps her. Granny fiercely hates white blood, which she blames for Sam's death, and believes the baby will be a pure-blooded boy. Sapphie arrives secretly and shows Pearl the truth: the baby is white, fathered by Young Lightfoot, the white man she works for. Pearl hides it from Granny. Granny takes the child, then lights two charred sticks from Sam's pyre and prays for her sight. She sees for a moment and finds the baby white. She cries out against devils and refuses the money Sapphie offers. She learns that Lightfoot is coming that night, and she turns to conjuring. She fills the flower stand with live coals, burns herbs, takes out the chains that bound Sam, and puts Sapphie and Pearl into a trance. Over a wax figure made from Lightfoot's money she speaks a curse. She sees a vision of Sam, who bids her forgive. When Lightfoot knocks, she sends him away unharmed, says the child shall be named Sam, and tells Sam they will stay together. She sinks to the floor, and the frightened sisters run out crying that she is dead. In The Rider of Dreams, Lucy Sparrow, a washerwoman, drills her small son Booker in the catechism and punishes him for taking mush. Her husband Madison comes home with a guitar and a story of a dream in which a white horse told him to buy low and sell high. Lucy recognizes the guitar as Ezekiel Williams' own, the one he would never sell. She learns Madison drew all the money from the bank on a forged paper written by the white man Wilson Byrd, money she had saved for twelve years to buy their house. Old Williams arrives and plays at feebleness. He pretends to demand payment, then reveals he has the money himself, having caught Byrd stealing the guitar and forced a written confession. The eight hundred dollars was paid to him for the guitar. He will sell Lucy the house and spare Madison the grand jury, on conditions. Madison must keep the guitar and make something of it, give lessons, obey Lucy, and give up drink. Williams tells him to report at eight o'clock to teach his boy. Madison, humbled, plays the guitar and says all he wants is room to dream his good dreams and make his own music. In Simon the Cyrenian, set on the day of the Crucifixion in Pilate's garden at Jerusalem, Procula, Pilate's wife, is tormented by a dream. She sends for Simon the Cyrenian, a Black insurrectionist leader, hoping he will rouse a riot and save Jesus of Nazareth. Acte, Princess of Egypt, arrives with the boy Battus, a Libyan prince. She urges Simon to remain faithful to the African cause and not be drawn aside by this Judean. Simon says he saw Jesus seized in a garden two nights before, and his eyes have haunted him since. Pilate condemns Jesus and washes his hands. Mockers bring a scourge, a scarlet robe and a crown of thorns. The gaunt Barabbas, freed in Jesus' place, will not fight. Simon draws his sword and rushes out to free Jesus. A voice tells him to put up the sword and not to resist evil. A Centurion seizes him, and Simon declares himself a follower. The soldiers strip and mock him. When he lifts his sword again the Voice bids him forgive his enemy, and he submits. The legionaries lay the cross upon him, and he puts the crown of thorns on his own head, saying he will bear it until Jesus comes into his own.
By Ridgely Torrence · First published 1917 · Genre: Drama, Tragedy, Verse drama · 3 chapters · 19,214 words
First lines
SCENE: _Living room in an old cabin with walls blackened by age. Red cotton curtains and red covers on the chairs and table. In left corner back, an open fire smoulders in a great rough fireplace. There is a door at back leading out of doors. There are also doors left and right. A bed at left covered with a white counterpane. The room is neat and there are many growing flowers about potted in rude wooden boxes. Toward the right is an iron flower stand consisting of a basin mounted on a tripod. This stand is filled with a mass of bright red geraniums. A large chest against the wall at right is covered with red. A table near centre bears candles. Beside the table in a high-backed chair sits GRANNY MAUMEE. She is seen to be blind. She is black and thin, with white hair and a face so seared by burns that it masks her great age. Her great granddaughter PEARL, a girl of nineteen, is moving briskly about the room straightening chairs and rearranging flowers._
Similar titles
- The Monk And The Hangmans Daughter by Ambrose Bierce
- The Walls Of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher
- A Noble Sacrifice by Emily Grace Harding
- A Forfeited Right by Ambrose Bierce
- A New Story And A New Character by George Bernard Shaw
- The Christian Serpent by Ambrose Bierce
Genres
- Drama — All three works are written as stage plays, with cast lists, stage directions, scene settings and dialogue throughout.
- Tragedy — Granny Maumee ends in a cursed death and ruined lineage, and Simon follows a doomed revolutionary who takes up the cross, so both works follow tragic arcs of suffering and downfall.
- Verse drama — Rider of Dreams and Simon the Cyrenian use rhymed ballad lines, chants and indented verse passages, giving the plays a poetic, incantatory form.
- Folk drama — The works draw on African American folk belief, folk tale, a dream-horse fable, conjure rituals and the spiritual Walk Together, Children, rooting them in folk tradition.
Tags
African American drama · one-act plays · Black characters · African American dialect · racial identity · colorism · racial violence · blindness · conjure and folk magic · curse · visions and dreams · rural Southern life
What this Textopian page supports
Granny Maumee; The Rider of Dreams; Simon the Cyrenian is listed on Textopian as a play by Ridgely Torrence, dated 1917 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Play
- Author: Ridgely Torrence
- Date: 1917 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Drama, Tragedy, Verse drama, Folk drama, African American literature
- Length: 19,214 words
- Structure: 3 chapters, 1,275 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Granny Maumee; The Rider of Dreams; Simon the Cyrenian by Ridgely Torrence
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph