Publisher's Synopsis
A Shaker Story The play takes place during the Shaker "awakening" of the 1830s and 1840s when there was a rich outpouring of songs and dance in connection with a spiritual upwelling. Some scenes in the play are loosely borrowed from events described by Hervey Elkins in Fifteen Years in the Senior Order of Shakers: A Narration of Facts, Concerning that Singular People published by Dartmouth Press, Hanover NH 1853. Herman Melville in Moby-Dick refers to the Shakers (whose services he had observed) in Chapter 71 "The Jeroboam's Story".It is he who warns Ahab in effect that the White Whale is sacred and hunting it will bring his doom.
