rites,
Mary Coyle Chase's work is characterized by human comedy, intensified by a delicate fantasy applied to the most unlikely situations and people. Tales of Irish folklore told to her by an uncle introduced her to the Celtic pookas and banshees which appear in her writings (Commire 45).
The most famous of all pookas is certainly Harvey. The six-foot invisible rabbit seen and heard only by the gentle eccentric Elwood P. Dowd stands as a lesson to the viewer not to be too judgmental and not to assume that a person's fantasy is false simply because you cannot share it. The play won a Pulitzer Prize for drama.
The play is a human comedy as Commire notes, and it involves the delicate fantasy she refers to as well. The crisis in the play involves the attempt to have Elwood P. Down committed as if he were a danger because of his belief in his invisible friend. His relatives have concerns because he has
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