About the Play:

The Shirkers is a one-act drama by C.M.S. McLellan. A shepherd, driven to despair by loneliness and sorrow, stabs his wife and returns to his humble cabin exactly one year later to find her body, warm and freshly bleeding, precisely where he left it. The Shirkers examines what for many is the ultimate terror – extreme loneliness.

The Shirkers is a tense tragedy that revolves around a shepherd who thinks he has killed his wife by stabbing her in a moment of rage and despair. After leaving the scene and staying away for over a year; he returns to find her body alive and in the exact position that he left it. Fate and desire are mingled with a bleak and dreary existence to examine lives that may or may not be worth living.

The Shirkers premiered in 1907 at the Berkeley Theatre on Broadway in New York City and was met with the most enthusiastic commendation.

Cast: 1 female, 2 male

What people say:

"As of this date, it is the most amazing work of its kind ever written in English. With a cast of only three people and a setting which could not be simpler, it evokes pity and terror with almost unbearable power." — The Craftsmanship Of The One-Act Play

"It is a powerful little narrative, and it is also a lesson to those who in abject slavery to their moods shirk the duties of life." — Current Literature

About the Playwright:

Charles Morton Stewart McLellan (1865-1916) was a London-based American playwright and composer who often wrote under the pseudonym Hugh Morton. Born in Bath, Maine, he was a newspaperman before turning his hand to the theatre.