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1924: Drake's Drum

Drake's Drum Musical Score

Drake's Drum Musical Score

Credit: Thomas M. Swift '76. Permissive license.

Musical score for Triangle Club show 1923-1924.

According to Leitch:

Another star of the twenties was Wallace H. Smith '24, one of the finest comedians in the club's history. In his senior year he wrote "Drake's Drum," based on a poem about Sir Francis Drake by the English poet Alfred Noyes, a visiting professor at Princeton. Critics called this the best Triangle production ever; its book, dialogue, music, lyrics, costumes, scenery, acting, and dancing were all effectively combined to make it a standard by which succeeding shows were judged. Best known and longest remembered among several outstanding hits was "Ships That Pass In The Night," whose lyrics and music, by Smith, appear on the following page. Four other numbers in the show were written by Robert M. Crawford '25, who also did the orchestration and played the part of Sir Francis Drake.

A scan of the entire score of "Drake's Drum," along with the playbill, may be found at the Princeton University Archives

Score provided by Sev Onyshkevych '83 and copyright The John Church Company 1923. Text from Leitch, A Princeton Companion, 1978, p. 477.

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Drake's Drum Musical Score

Arts and Entertainment

Triangle Club

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Undergraduate Class of 1924