The thirty-first degree for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry typically includes an Egyptian setting. The popularity of for the exotic on the commercial stage carried over to the fraternal stage. This will be the topic for the next few posts.
Below is an example of an Egyptian source from Geis’ design book. It is a print titled, “Scene from the New Egyptian Drama of ‘Nitocris,” at Drury-Lane Theatre – the Coronation Procession.” This production premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1855 and was announced as “an original Egyptian play.” The image from Geis’ print was originally published in the Illustrated London News. The production and the creation of an historically accurate setting for both the commercial stage and the fraternal stage is worth comment.
The production of “Nitocris” was primarily intended to be amazing display of scenic illusion and effects, as well as depicting exotic locales. In “Punch” (London: January issue, October 20 1855, page 159) the author writes: “Antiquarian research has become fashionable among theatrical managers, who appear to be up to their eyes in the dust of the ages; and it will soon begin to be a question or rivalry as to which theatre lessee shall be regarded as a regular dust man of the past, and which theatre shall be looked upon as the original dust hole of antiquity.” The author further comments, “Nobody, we believe, claims literary merit for the piece itself which is merely a vehicle – a rather slow one – for the effects arising out of it.”
For me, one of the most interesting sections from the piece was the author using quotes from the theatre lessee in the following excerpt: “‘No research has been too trying’ for the patience and purse of the lessee, who has distributed his agents and money over every spot where anything was like to be found to aid the ‘reviving the associations of the Pharaonic Period.’ Everything bearing any pretensions to an Egyptian character has been ransacked, from a coffee-cup to a Colossus, and we dare say that even the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly – where the lessee of Drury Lane exhibited the African Twins was occupied in the hope that some Egyptian notions be got out of it.”
Geis’ image in his design book:
Here is an example from the setting originally produced for the Albert Pike Consistory of Little Rock Arkansa and currently housed in the Pasadena Scottish Rite, ca. 1920
And a few details from the backdrop…
Below I have included a variety of other early- to mid-twentieth century Scottish Rite scenes for the Thirty-first degree. The first is from Fargo, North Dakota
Winona, Minnesota
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Here is a mid-nineteenth century design sketch by Maj. Don Carlos DuBois (held in the University of Minnesota Performing Arts archives).
..and his realized scenery painted in Atlanta, Georgia.
