1912

Shaw built the Ragdale Ring, the outdoor theater where the Shaw family and friends staged several of Frances Shaw's plays for the Lake Forest community through the 1930s. With benches to seat an audience of over 200 and rows of evergreens to create the stage's wings, the Ragdale ring became a very popular entertainment spot of the day. Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay were friends of the Shaws and are said to have attended plays there. After Shaw's death, Frances wrote a poetic tribute to her husband and the Ragdale Ring.

In the Theatre

Early for the play
The lights are dim,
Lonely
In the theatre he built,
Lonely, I think of him.

These walls enfold
His living thought;
Here dwells the beauty
That his hand has wrought;
In every line his heart, his brain;
Here I am near him
And he lives again.