MASCAGNI 



3678 



MASHONALAND 



having convinced her of the hopelessness of 

 her position, she fled to England to entreat 

 the protection of her cousin, the great Queen 

 Elizabeth. The English queen, who saw in 

 Mary a possible aspirant to the throne of Eng- 

 land, kept her a prisoner for nineteen years. 

 Finally she was accused of being one of the 

 conspirators in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, 

 and though Mary steadfastly declared her inno- 

 cence, she was found guilty and beheaded. The 

 serenity and dignity with which she met her 

 fate is beautifully described in Schiller's drama, 

 Maria Stuart, which treats her life and charac- 

 ter from a sympathetic viewpoint. B.M.W. 



Consult Mumby's Elisabeth and Mary Stuart; 

 Lang's The Mystery of Mary Stuart. 



MASCAGNI, mahskahn'ye, PIETRO (1863- 

 ), representative composer of the modern 

 Italian school, whose opera, Cavalleria Rusti- 

 cana, raised him in one night from .utter pov- 

 erty and obscurity to the height of fame. He 

 was born at Leghorn, of humble parentage. 

 Through the interest of an admirer, who early 

 recognized his talent, Mascagni was enabled to 

 enrol at the Milan Conservatory of Music; 

 but he soon left his studies to begin a tour with 

 an operatic troupe. Then began his struggles 

 against poverty, for his income from teaching 

 was very meager. Undaunted, however, he 

 kept up the fight until the joyous news came, 

 in 1891, that he had won the prize at Rome for 

 his Cavalleria Rusticana. He later started on 

 an operatic tour of America at the head of his 

 own company. Although he has produced a 

 number of other operas, Ratcliff, L'Amico 

 Fritz, Le Maschere, Iris and others, none has 

 approached his first success in merit or popu- 

 larity. 



MASE' FIELD, JOHN (1875- ), an Eng- 

 lish "poet of the people," whose life has brought 

 him into close 

 touch with the 

 poor and the 

 unfortunate, and 

 who writes of 

 these experiences 

 in an intensely 

 realistic, sympa- 

 thetic way. His 

 works are "hu- 

 man documents" 

 pages out of 

 the great book of 

 everyday life. . JOHN MASBFIBLD 



Masefield was born on a farm in Ledbury, 

 England. He ran away to sea when a boy of 



fourteen and voyaged all over the world, meet- 

 ing with many fascinating adventures, upon 

 which he has since drawn for his sketches, ro- 

 mances, and poems about the sea. Among 

 these are Salt-Water Ballads, A Mainsail Haul, 

 Captain Margaret, The Story of a Round- 

 House, and On the Spanish Main, all of which 

 have about them the spell of the sea. At one 

 time he worked as porter in a Sixth Avenue 

 saloon in New York. He has lived in the low- 

 est slums of London, and has associated with 

 men and women in nearly every walk of life. 

 During the War of the Nations he devoted 

 himself largely to Red Cross work, giving freely 

 of money and personal service. The interest 

 which American readers take in his writings 

 was greatly enhanced by a series of lectures 

 which he delivered in the United States and 

 Canada in 1915-1916. 



Masefield's poems are graphic pictures of 

 human experience. They read more like inter- 

 esting stories than poems, the narrative por- 

 tions being put in the rough, vivid, everyday 

 speech of the people whose story the poet is 

 telling. Naturally, therefore, the language is 

 sometimes coarse and irreverent; and this is a 

 feature that many readers object to on the 

 ground that it is out of place in poetry. 



The Widow in the Bye Street, The Ever- 

 lasting Mercy and The Daffodil Fields are 

 among his best-known longer poems, telling, in 

 verse that reads like a rhymed chant, pathetic 

 tales of love and tragedy among the simple 

 folk of Shropshire. His writings also include 

 Good Friday and Other Poems, a collection of 

 his later verse ; The Tragedy of Nan, Philip the 

 King and The Tragedy of Pompey the Great, 

 dramas ; and Jim Davis, a story for boys. 



MASHONALAND, masho'naland, a prov- 

 ince in the northeastern part of the British 

 colony of Southern Rhodesia (see RHODESIA), 

 in South Africa, between Matabeleland and the 

 Zambezi River. Matabeleland and Mashona- 

 land are the two political divisions of Southern 

 Rhodesia. Mashonaland is a fertile river- 

 watered plateau, high enough above sea level 

 2,000 to 3,000 feet to be healthful for natives 

 of temperate countries. It was formerly a rich 

 gold territory, and gold is still found there. 

 Though little is known of the early history of 

 the land, extensive remains of temples, forts, 

 altars, gold smelters, pottery, etc., found along 

 the gold reefs, indicate that at one time a 

 people of an advanced stage of civilization 

 dwelt in Mashonaland. The natives, who are 

 of the Bantu negro race, are peace-loving farm- 



