Portland Stage Company Debuts Longfellow, a One Act Play

Longfellow is a play, recently written by Daniel Noel, about the life and times of one of America's great literary figures, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Actually Mr. Noel should probably be referred to as the creator of the play, as all the words come from either Mr. Longfellow, himself, or the various other characters that appear in the theatrical production. Noel has done a thorough job of researching the archives of the Maine Historical Society for the letters of Henry Longfellow to his family members and his literary peers of the day, which include the likes of Emerson, Dickens and Twain, just to mention a few. He has combined words from these letters and weaved them together with excerpts from his poetry and memoirs to create a moving tribute to this exceptional American writer.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a child prodigy, who entered Bowdoin College at only fourteen years of age. At age eighteen he graduated and subsequently spent several years in Europe, studying various contemporary languages. After mastering the languages of French, Spanish and Italian he returned to Bowdoin, where he became the first professor of modern languages at that institution. In 1836 Harvard University hired him to the post of professor for French and Spanish. He moved to Cambridge and remained there until his death in 1882. Many of his poems became American classics that are still studied in most schools across the nation. In his own day he was also immensely popular, achieving something close to cult status during his own lifetime.