ABSTRACT
On 8 March 1877 the children of George MacDonald, the Scottish Nonconformist minister famous for his children's books, gave the first public performance of their family's dramatic production of John Bunyan's Puritan allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. John Bunyan's book carried associations for Vaughan Williams dating probably from his nursery days, and continuing through all his musical reactions to it, large and small, especially the seminal Reigate version. Vaughan Williams had little say in the overall dramatic structure of the work although he made a number of crucial smaller suggestions. In Vaughan Williams's own considerable 'progress' The Pilgrim's Progress represents a danger not identified by Bunyan: the pitfalls of nostalgia. Vaughan Williams's characteristic stylistic traits were familiar to audiences throughout Great Britain and carried strong associations of essential Englishness. Vaughan Williams's attitude toward Christianity was ambivalent. Vaughan Williams cannot be criticized per se for abandoning Bunyan, but he does not replace Bunyan's vision with a strong vision of his own.
