A Masque of Mercy, the signed limited edition, copy 717 in the original slipcase.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1947. The Signed and Limited issue of the first edition. Hardcover. This is the first, limited, numbered, and signed edition of one of iconic American poet Robert Frost’s precious few dramatic works. This limited edition was printed for the publisher, Henry Holt and Company, by The Spiral Press in September 1947 and is given publication precedence over the first trade edition. 751 copies of this first and limited edition were produced, each signed by Frost on the hand-numbered limitation page. This is copy “717” signed “Robert Frost”. This limited edition was bound in quarter dark blue linen cloth over tan paper-covered boards with gilt rule transitions, the front cover with an inset dark brown, gilt-stamped title and author panel. The contents were printed on white laid paper. The volume was issued in an unadorned tan paper-covered card slipcase.
This copy is in very good plus condition, retaining the original slipcase. The binding is square, clean, tight, and sharp-cornered with mild, superficial abrasions to the bottom corners and edges. The contents are bright, retaining a pleasingly crisp feel with no previous ownership marks. The sole interior defect is spotting, which appears entirely confined to the endpapers. The binding is now protected beneath a clear, removable mylar cover that fits within the slipcase. The original slipcase is intact, with some wear to extremities occasionally exposing the card beneath the tan paper and superficial moisture stains to the top and bottom edges.
Iconic American poet Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) is “generally not known as a dramatist despite his lifelong love of the theater and despite the fact that many of his best poems owe a large part of their greatness to their dramatic nature… Frost’s most important ‘plays,’ however, may be his two masques, A Masque of Reason (1945) and A Masque of Mercy (1947). Though both pieces have been staged, they are best considered as closet dramas in which distinctly human, American, and modern prototypes engage in theological/ideological debate via colloquial blank verse…. A Masque of Reason concerns itself chiefly with the individual’s treatment of God, A Masque of Mercy focuses more on God’s treatment of the individual. Specifically, the masque probes the prophet Jonah’s difficulty in reconciling Old Testament justice with New Testament mercy. Jonah believes that, in offering mercy to unbelievers, God is failing to dispense justice properly… The merits of Jonah’s position are debated in a contemporary New York City bookstore by Paul the Apostle (the primary author of New Testament mercy) and My Brother’s Keeper (a proponent of social justice through ‘New Deal’ programs of wealth redistribution… Again, Frost emphasizes the limitations of humanity’s knowledge of God.”
A Masque of Mercy was published at a time when Frost’s stature had risen to an apex sufficient for publishers and his reading public to indulge his literary experiment. By 1947, Frost had already won all of his still-unrivaled four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry (1924, 1931, 1937, and 1943). Frost spent the final decade and a half of his life as “the most highly esteemed American poet of the twentieth century” with an accumulating hoard of academic and civic honors. Two years before his death he became the first poet to read in the program of a U.S. Presidential inauguration (Kennedy, January 1961).
Reference: Crane A27; Tuten and Zubizarreta; New York Times; ANB. Item #008590
Price: $300.00