The Moth and the Flame (play)

The Moth and the Flame is a play in three acts by Clyde Fitch. It was adapted into a 1915 silent film of the same name.

The Moth and the Flame began its life on the stage with Fitch's earlier one act play The Harvest which was given its premiere performance by the Theatre of Arts and Letters company at the Fifth Avenue Theatre on Broadway on January 26, 1893.^[1] This play told the story of a bride who discovers during her wedding ceremony that her husband-to-be has fathered a child out of wedlock with another woman. It became the second act of The Moth and the Flame;^[2] and this three act play premiered on Broadway at Steele MacKaye's Lyceum Theatre on April 11, 1898.^[3] The premiere production was directed by Daniel Frohman and performed by the Herbert Kelcey—Effie Shannon Theatre Company with Shannon in the role of Marion Wolton and Kelcey as Fletcher;^[4] roles which these actors had portrayed earlier in The Harvest.^[5]

The Moth and the Flame received mixed reviews from critics, but was a popular and financial success. The Kelecey and Shannon Theatre Company toured the play nationally for many years.^[6] The play was published in Montrose Jonas Moses's Representative Plays by American Dramatists, Volume 3 (1918) and was later digitized by Project Gutenberg.

• Bell, Archie (1909). The Clyde Fitch I Knew. The Broadway Publishing Company.
• Dearinger, Kevin Lane (2016). "Chapter Ten: Born Differently". Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre: An Olive in the Cocktail. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 9781611479485.
• Moses, Montrose Jonas, ed. (1918). Representative Plays by American Dramatists, Volume 3. E. P. Dutton.
• Vorenberg, William (1949). Steele Mackaye's Ideas and Theories as Incorporated in the Lyceum Theatre. Stanford University Press.

• The Moth and the Flame at Project Gutenberg
• ​The Moth and the Flame​ at the Internet Broadway Database

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