As a dramatic production, The Lost Colony more than justifies the growing acclaim which its audiences accord it. Paul Green, with his fine understanding and his ability to interpret that which is at his doorstep, has created something which seems to have grown right out of the very ground on which it takes place. Laid in the sixteenth century, the play-pageant tells first of the discovery of the island and Raleigh's success in founding a colony upon it. The second half deals with the struggles of the colonists to survive and their eventual disappearance.

The events in the tragic history of Fort Raleigh lend themselves admirably to dramatization. The period being Elizabethan, Green is able to take much from Shakespeare's book. Life and death contribute their share of humor and pathos, while throughout the tale runs a thread of romance evolving between John Borden, the colonists' leader, and...