You wuz doin’ all right till you got mix up wif dat white man an’ his tricks. De trouble wuz dat dis dream of youahs wuzn’t a good dream. MADISON Yes, but not all of my dreams is bad ones. All, I wants is room to dream my good dreams an’ make my own music. CURTAIN SIMON THE CYRENIAN NOTE.—Although Cyrene was in northern Africa, the wall-paintings in the vast Cyrenian tombs depict black people instead of brown. That Jesus’ cross-bearer was a black man, as the early painters represented him, is a fact that holds a certain suggestion bearing upon a phase of modern society. It has been the author’s design that all the characters in this play should be represented by persons entirely or partly of Negro blood; and this intention has been carried out in the original stage production. Simon is a full-blooded Negro, Battus is a little less dark, Acte is a mulatto as were most Egyptians of the later dynasties. Her attendants comprise both mulattoes and Negroes. The Roman characters are played by persons of slighter negroid strain. SIMON THE CYRENIAN And as they led him away they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, ... and on him they laid the cross that he might bear it after Jesus. Luke 23, 26. PERSONS OF THE PLAY PROCULA, the wife of Pilate DRUSUS, a young Roman ACTE, Princess of Egypt BATTUS, a Libyan prince, a boy SIMON PILATE, governor of Judea BARABBAS, an insurrectionist THE MOCKER WITH THE SCOURGE THE MOCKER WITH THE SCARLET ROBE THE MOCKER WITH THE CROWN OF THORNS A CENTURION LONGINUS, a soldier PROCULA’S ATTENDANTS ACTE’S ATTENDANTS SOLDIERS TIME—The day of the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth SCENE: _A garden of Pilate’s house at Jerusalem. The whole scene is strictly Roman, softened by its eastern location and by the beginnings of Rome’s decadence, but there is no trace of Judean influence. At the back there is a gallery or raised portico reaching entirely across the garden. It is roofed but open and beyond it the morning sky is seen. This passageway, which will be called the portico, leads from the Praetorium on the left to other buildings on the right. The garden has entrances toward the back at both left and right. At the left, near the front, a narrow portion of the façade of Pilate’s house is seen, with a doorway reached by three steps. At the right of the garden, near the front, there is a wall fountain. There is a marble seat at back centre. All the architecture is of mellow marble as dark as alabaster._