THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Kenneth MacKenna
 
 COMEDIANS ALL
 
 BOOKS BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN 
 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 MR. GEORGE JEAN NATHAN PRE- 
 SENTS 
 
 EUROPE AFTER 8:15 (in collaboration 
 with H. L. Mencken) 
 
 BOTTOMS UP 
 
 A BOOK WITHOUT A TITLE 
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 COMEDIANS ALL
 
 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 GEORGE JEAN NATHAN 
 
 New York ALFRED A KNOPF Mcmxk
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 
 
 PRINTED IN THK UNITED STATES OT AMERICA
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 A BOOK OF 
 CONTRADICTORY CRITICISM 
 
 -'r> : 
 A>* *-*<%**
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CRITICISM 11 
 
 THE DRAMATIC CRITIC 11 
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 13 
 
 THE NEW SCENERY 28 
 
 THE MATTER OF ADAPTATION 29 
 
 SKATING ON THIN ICE 36 
 
 THE ACTOR-MANAGER 38 
 
 ON OBSERVATION 39 
 
 MAETERLINCK AS DRAMATIST 40 
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND THE ACTOR 52 
 
 THE ONE-ACT PLAY 54 
 
 THE JAPANESE PLAY 55 
 
 THE BIBLICAL PLAY 57 
 
 THE FOREMOST AMERICAN PRODUCER 58 
 
 ON SENTIMENTALITY 68 
 
 THE BIOGRAPHICAL PLAY 69 
 
 THE REPERTORY SYSTEM 69 
 
 BELASCO 70 
 
 ON BANALITY 72 
 
 THE MODERN FRENCH DRAMA 73 
 
 HARRY WATSON, JR. 76 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 78 
 
 THE AMERICAN DRAMATIC CRITICISM 85 
 
 DRAMA 94 
 
 ROOF SHOWS 94
 
 CONTENTS 
 AVERT HOPWOOD 106 
 THE POTBOILERMAKERS 111 
 THE DRAMA OF IDEAS 116 
 HOKUM 118 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 119 
 THE AMERICAN NEGRO 133 
 THE SHAW IMITATION 134 
 ON DRAMA AND ACTING 135 
 SUBTERFUGE 135 
 WAR, PEACE AND THE DRAMA 136 
 THE CRITICAL STRICTURE 137 
 THE ACTOR PLAY 142 
 THE DRAMA OF AUGUSTUS THOMAS 143 
 SENTIMENT AND AVOIRDUPOIS 144 
 THE RELIGIOUS PLAY 145 
 LA Voix o'OR 147 
 PLAYS OF CASTE 148 
 THE PROTEAN PLAY 149 
 ON AESTHETIC DANCING 150 
 W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 151 
 THE RISQUE BRITISHER 154 
 VAUDEVILLE 155 
 
 Two CELEBRATED AMERICAN CHARACTER ACTORS 155 
 THE JOURNALISTIC HAZLITTRY 157 
 TRUE SENTIMENT AND FALSE 162 
 PERSONALITY AND THE ACTOR 163 
 DOUBLE ENTENTE 167 
 J. M. BARRIE 169 
 
 EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF A CRITIC OF THE DRAMA 169 
 HADDON CHAMBERS 174 
 THE PALAIS ROYAL NATURALIZED 176
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SATIRE 177 
 
 THE AMERICAN SENTIMENTALITY 178 
 
 THE ARTIFICIAL PLAY 178 
 
 THE END OF A PERFECT DANE 178 
 
 AMOUR IN THE THEATRE 188 
 
 THE BROADWAY "LITERARY" PLAYWRIGHT 189 
 
 EUGENE WALTER 190 
 
 THE WELL-MANNERED PLAY 192 
 
 ON BEAUTY 192 
 
 TOUJOURS PERDRIX 195 
 
 THE CHEWING GUM DRAMA 196 
 
 J. HARTLEY MANNERS 198 
 
 THE COMIC MOTION PICTURE 199 
 
 ART VIA THE SIDE-STREET 202 
 
 THE CENSOR 202 
 
 ON CRITICAL PREJUDICE 203 
 
 THE COMMERCIAL THEATRE 204 
 
 EDWARD SHELDON 207 
 
 MIXED IDENTITY 209 
 
 UNFROCKING THE PRETENDER 209 
 
 THE PROFESSOR 210 
 
 LAUGHTER AND THE ONION 211 
 
 THE BROADWAY CURTAIN SPEECH 211 
 
 THE REALISTIC DRAMA 215 
 
 ACCOUNT OF A SAMPLE MASTERPIECE BORN OF THE GREAT 
 
 WAR 215 
 
 THE BELASCO TECHNIC 217 
 THE COMMERCIAL PUBLIC 218 
 ON NOMENCLATURE 219 
 OPERA COMIQUE 224 
 DRAMATIC PARADOX 226
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE FRENCH AND AMERICAN TASTE 226 
 TEMPERATURE AND THE DRAMA 229 
 THE MARIONETTE 233 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 236 
 THE CROOK PLAY 249 
 THE THEATRICAL WISE MEN 251 
 WILLIAM WINTER 254 
 SEX APPEAL 256 
 THE PIGEON-HOLE PLAY 258 
 THE ACTOR AND THE TRAINED SEAL 258 
 THE MIDDLE-CLASS TASTE 261
 
 "There is always a place for protests against the 
 main convention, for rebellion, paradox, partisan- 
 ship and individuality, and for every personal taste 
 that is sincere. Progress comes by contradiction. 
 Eddies and tossing spray add to the beauty of every 
 stream and keep the water from stagnancy." 
 Gilbert Murray.
 
 1 
 
 Criticism. Criticism is the art of appraising 
 that which isn't in terms of what it should be, and 
 that which should be in terms of what it isn't. 
 The rest is mere hand-shaking. 
 
 2 
 
 The Dramatic Critic. The notion that a dra- 
 matic critic may most easily attract attention to 
 himself and cut his way to celebrity by expressing 
 opinions directly the opposite of those held by the 
 overwhelming majority is ridiculous. The reverse, 
 indeed, is true. The late William Winter was in 
 his lifetime, and remains after his death, the most 
 conspicuous figure in American dramatic criticism ; 
 and he never once in all his career said or wrote 
 one single thing about the theatre that nine hundred 
 and ninety-nine out of every one thousand Ameri- 
 cans did not themselves stoutly believe. The 
 theory that Shaw achieved notoriety as a critic by 
 standing counter to the general is the theory of 
 
 those alone who either have never read his criti- 
 
 11
 
 12 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 cisms, or have read them carelessly. In his entire 
 critical incumbency, Shaw never expressed an opin- 
 ion that was not fully concurred in by the great 
 majority of his public. The only difference be- 
 tween Winter and Shaw the only essential differ- 
 ence, that is is that Winter became famous by ex- 
 pressing the mob opinion in terms of the mob, and 
 that Shaw became famous by expressing the mob 
 opinion in terms of the few. But, at bottom, the 
 opinions of both were and are the opinions of the 
 multitude. 
 
 If Winter was absurdly full of such adjectives 
 as "detestable" and "indecent" when a Pinero sex 
 play crossed his eye, so was Shaw as you may find 
 for yourself by turning, for example, to his 
 "Dramatic Opinions and Essays," Vol. I, page 44. 
 If Winter was enchanted by mere empty mob mush, 
 so too was Shaw as you may find for yourself 
 by turning, for example, to his Vol. I, page 70. 
 And if Winter believed that morals were a part of 
 art, so also did Shaw as you may find for yourself 
 by turning, for example, to his Vol. II, page 449. 
 The technique and aesthetic of Winter, in the expo- 
 sition of these typical mob attitudes, were the tech- 
 nique and aesthetic of Dr. Parkhurst; the tech- 
 nique and aesthetic of Shaw, in the exposition of 
 what were intrinsically the same mob attitudes,
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 13 
 
 were the technique and aesthetic of Gaby Deslys. 
 But, sharp showmen both, their materials, however 
 diametrically opposed the manner of their mer- 
 chanting, were fundamentally the same, and funda- 
 mentally of like mob echo quality. 
 
 In short, the surest way for a dramatic critic to 
 remain in oblivion is to do exactly that which the 
 theorists prescribe to the contrary, viz., contradict 
 the opinions of the majority. Some excellent 
 critics, fellows of sound sense and searching 
 theatrical philosophy, have died thus the death of 
 public inattention. Who of you, for example, has 
 ever heard of Dr. Louis Allard, sometime of Har- 
 vard College, of E. Fordham-Spence of The West- 
 minster Gazette, of Judge Parry and his "Judg- 
 ments in Vacation," of acute Theodore Lessing, 
 of C. E. Vaughan, Gustav Rickelt, Maximilian 
 Harden as Ibsen critic, Joscha Savitz, or D. E. 
 Oliver? 
 
 3 
 
 Destructive Criticism. Of the numerous and 
 fecund fallacies concerned with criticism, doubtless 
 the most unremittingly enceinte is that which holds 
 it a vastly more easy business to blame than to 
 praise. "Any fool can find fault" has been the
 
 14 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 cornerstone of protestant retaliation to so-called 
 destructive criticism for something over two cen- 
 turies. Upon it have been reared the most sar- 
 donic animadversions of the Balzacs, Landors, 
 Coleridges, Shelleys, Addisons, Lambs, Drydens 
 and Disraelis, the very acuteness and hence lon- 
 gevity of whose destructive criticism of destructive 
 criticism might possibly suggest to the more wag- 
 gish logician that the exceptionally gifted dispara- 
 gers in point by proving both what they set out to 
 prove and, automatically, the reverse swung the 
 punitive cowhide so far around their heads that it 
 nipped their own ears. 
 
 That any fool can find fault is, of course, per- 
 fectly true. But that any fool can find fault ac- 
 curately, soundly and searchingly is a horse of an- 
 other colour. So to find fault calls upon and com- 
 mands a decidedly uncommon talent. And so, 
 above this, to find fault with such a fault finder 
 calls upon and commands as the history of de- 
 structive criticism emphatically proves a down- 
 right genius. Any picturesque but empty dodo 
 like the late Nat Goodwin can toss off a four- 
 pound five-dollar book finding fault with every- 
 thing from the criticism of Dr. Johnson to Edna 
 Goodrich's mother, but it takes the talent of a Wil- 
 liam Archer to find searching fault even with a
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 15 
 single one of Brunetiere's dramatic theories, and 
 the genius of a Bernard Shaw to find sound fault 
 with what seemed to be the searching fault which 
 William Archer found. 
 
 The extraordinarily capric quality of the mass of 
 journalistic criticism in America is due, not as is 
 generally maintained, to the desire of its writers to 
 please by indiscriminate praise, but to the utter in- 
 capacity on the part of these writers to dispraise. 
 In the theatrical criticism that appears in the native 
 morning newspapers, the omnipresent note of 
 eulogy is attributable less to the commentator's wish 
 to eulogize than to the recognized fact that, given 
 less than an hour in which to confect an estimate of 
 a play, gush is immensely more simple of negotia- 
 tion than diatribe. Every critical writer knows 
 well the truth of this. When he is lazy, he writes 
 praise; only when his mind is alert and eager does 
 he feel himself capable of fault finding. The art 
 of the careful, honest and demolishing coup de 
 grace is an art calling, firstly, for an exhaustive 
 knowledge of the subject under the microscope, 
 secondly, for an original and sharply inventive 
 analytical turn of mind, and thirdly, for a wit and 
 power over words that shall make them whiz 
 through the printed page. The art of the equally 
 careful and honest hip-hooray, even at its highest,
 
 16 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 on the other hand calls upon at least the first two 
 of these attributes in considerably less degree. 
 
 That the art of penetrating fault finding or 
 "destructive criticism," as the jay misnomer has 
 it is a grant denied the considerable majority of 
 our journalistic luminaries may be clearly dis- 
 cerned not only in the lavish bravos and vivas al- 
 ready mentioned as constituting the bulk of the 
 daily reviews, but better still in the retrospec- 
 tive and more carefully pondered weekly reviews of 
 reviews published in the Sunday editions. In these 
 latter reviews one regularly observes a brave effort 
 at qualification of the morning-after doxologies 
 and joss-burnings, a sincere and upright attempt 
 to expose holes. But what the sum? Generally 
 little more than a faint barking of amiable dachs- 
 hunds suddenly disguised as ferocious bloodhounds 
 with Eliza already twenty miles away. The no- 
 tion that this daily journalistic criticism is dis- 
 honest a theory cherished by most playwrights 
 who compose dramas in which the heroine, when 
 the detective's back is turned, cleverly substitutes 
 a railroad time-table for the warrant for her lover's 
 arrest, and by most actors whose eyes have been 
 alleged by the critic for the Mercure de Hoboken 
 to be not quite so dreamy as Chauncey Olcott's, 
 or Louis Mann's this notion is absurd. The
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 17 
 
 American journalistic criticism, whether morning 
 or evening, is, save in a few notorious instances, 
 not dishonest; it is, save in a few equally notorious 
 instances, merely disqualified. It is disqualified 
 because it honestly essays, when the occasion hon- 
 estly presents itself, to write razor-keen destructive 
 criticism and finds itself, because of the supreme 
 difficulty of the job and its own dialectical short- 
 comings, sorely confounded. Its toe, eager, well- 
 aimed and valiant, is poised trembling abaft the 
 breeches, yet condemned by inhibitory tendons to 
 lift gingerly and rest content merely to flick a bit 
 of lint off the coat-tail. 
 
 Consider, for example, such a paper as the pres- 
 ent New York Globe. The perspirations of this 
 gazette to compose incisive destructive criticism 
 when the occasion demands are typical of the per- 
 spirations of at least three quarters of our Ameri- 
 can newspapers. And the result of these perspira- 
 tions is destructive criticism that may be described 
 as being approximately as destructive as the erup- 
 tion of a Kiralfy card-board volcano. Even simple 
 fault finding, fault finding that more or less ac- 
 curately finds the fault, evades such journalistic 
 enterprise. In concrete instance whereof, take 
 some such review as this, culled from the columns 
 of the journal named :
 
 18 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 " 'A Sleepless Night' is a farce comedy of the familiar 
 Long Island bedroom type, but it achieves something 
 farce is not supposed to achieve. Jack Larric and 
 Gustav Blum, who are responsible for the night of in- 
 somnia, have managed to write much that is satirical 
 into their farce comedy, and that is inimical to the 
 piece. Folks that go to see farces don't want to giggle; 
 they want to laugh out loud, and blush." Etc., etc. 
 
 Here, indubitably, was a perfectly honest at- 
 tempt to write honest destructive criticism that was 
 honestly merited. But observe the result. The 
 exhibit in point failed to provoke laughter and, 
 since laughter is the chief end necessarily sought 
 by such an exhibit, failed of effect. The com- 
 mentator appreciated this typically and accurately 
 enough, yet when he tried to get at the reason for 
 the failure when he essayed even the simple busi- 
 ness of getting whatever thoughts he had about 
 the case onto paper he became as one utterly 
 bewildered and began metaphorically to chase him- 
 self 'round in circles. Thus, while in his very first 
 sentence he says that the piece is a farce comedy, 
 he finds fault with the farce comedy because the 
 farce comedy achieves something that farce is not 
 supposed to achieve. Which, obviously, is not 
 far removed from criticizing "A Wife Without 
 a Smile" because it achieves something that
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 19 
 "Charley's Aunt" is not supposed to achieve. 
 Granting even that the Olympiodorus in point had 
 not here become somewhat twisted, what is the 
 "something" which one observes him astutely fig- 
 uring out as being inimical and alien to farce? 
 One observes him astutely figuring that satire is 
 inimical and alien to farce, thus sagaciously prov- 
 ing to the doubtless vastly embarrassed Shaw that 
 his "Androcles" is a gloomy and ill-advised hybrid, 
 and that such Continental satirical farces as "The 
 Fat Caesar," "Donatello" and the like are mournful 
 affairs. 
 
 The fault finding which the gentleman now and 
 eventually negotiates, to wit, that the particular 
 farce with which he is concerned was not laughable 
 because while satire may make "folks" giggle, it 
 cannot make these "folks" laugh or blush, shows 
 even more clearly the blind and vain critical grop- 
 ing for the play's actual fault. That satire can- 
 not make persons laugh aloud (as, for example, 
 in the demonstrated case, among a hundred or 
 more others, of de Caillavet's and de Flers' "The 
 King") or blush (as, for example, in the mayhap 
 demonstrated case, among a hundred or more 
 others, of the unexpurgated satirical farce on the 
 French petty bureaucrat, "La Presidente") is in- 
 deed by way of being high news.
 
 20 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Is it any wonder, therefore, that appreciating 
 the difficulty of achieving anything approaching 
 destructive criticism, or even remotely sound fault 
 finding, the majority of newspapers very frankly 
 heave a sigh, throw up the sponge and cover their 
 confusion by the simple expedient of shooting off 
 very easily contrived volleys of Pollyanna oil? To 
 be fair to the Globe reviewer, one must at least 
 praise him for his effort to do the right thing, for 
 his hard sweating to get at the faults of the play 
 he was engaged to appraise, for his attempt, how- 
 ever ill-fated, to brew an appropriately destruc- 
 tive criticism. But for one Dred Scott who suc- 
 ceeds even in getting so far with destructive criti- 
 cism as this Globe Dred Scott has more or less 
 brilliantly succeeded, one finds a multitude of 
 Evening Telegram cupids who correctly appreciate 
 the labyrinthine embarrassments of the job and 
 genially pass them up with such facile constructive 
 slow music as 
 
 "Mr. Glendinning's attempts to extricate himself from 
 his sad predicament, into which he fell guiltlessly, thus 
 seeming to bear out the contention that it is only the 
 innocent who get caught, were screamingly funny, as 
 explanations usually are to unfeeling auditors. It could 
 not be otherwise. Any youth put under the necessity 
 of clearing up the mystery and doubt aroused by the
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 21 
 
 discovery of one pink-pa jamed beauty under the bed- 
 clothes in his apartment, would be funny just because of 
 the foolishness of the idea that it could be done. But 
 two! Oh yes, the other one wasn't in pajamas. No, 
 she sort of wrapped herself in a flowered kimono and 
 looked self-conscious. As one of the other characters 
 delivered the line, 'two was much too much.' 
 
 " 'A Sleepless Night' was written by Jack Larric and 
 Gustav Blum. The dialogue is clever and there are 
 times when it approaches the brilliant. There is a 
 rapid-fire effect to it that helps in holding interest and 
 bridges the gaps where the action lags a little. It also 
 possesses the virtue of not appearing to have been written 
 merely for the effect of being smart. The spoken words 
 are all germane to the story. The play is ideally cast. 
 The various actors did their roles to perfection. The 
 production was staged under the capable direction of 
 Oscar Eagle." 
 
 These assiduously sweet fellows who look in- 
 variably upon the theatre as a June bride looks 
 at a lily-bud are, however, comparatively not al- 
 ways so droll as they would seem. After all, the 
 species of reviewing which they espouse is not 
 a whit less trumpery than that practised by the 
 equally assiduous journalistic Eumenides who 
 would seem to look not infrequently upon the 
 theatre (save when it concerns itself with the works 
 of Percy Mackaye and other representatives of the
 
 22 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 eighteenth century) as a ravenous bus boy looks 
 upon the free lunch. The mock destructive criti- 
 cism of this latter school is fully as jocund as 
 the mock constructive criticism of the former. As 
 an example, take on this particular occasion a 
 single slice from the critical opus in the Evening 
 Post anent the same farce, "A Sleepless Night." 
 After a very fierce and savage preliminary charge 
 upon the absurdly trivial little dingus with tanks, 
 ten-ton pile drivers, iron shillelahs, large-bore can- 
 non, dum-dum spears, howitzers and assafcetida 
 bombs, this mortal pot-shot: 
 
 "The story which it endeavors to tell is too silly and 
 preposterous to come within even the elastic limits of 
 farce." 
 
 This, the Post Garcilasso Vega's carefully calcu- 
 lated climacteric fetch. But the story, alas, hap- 
 pens to be fundamentally much the same story as 
 that of Mr. William Hurlbut's comedy, "Saturday 
 to Monday," which, upon its presentation by Win- 
 throp Ames in this very theatre the season before, 
 was unless I am very greatly in error highly 
 praised as interesting and reasonable by this same 
 forgetful commentator. 
 
 But to argue in defense and explanation of de- 
 structive criticism as a high form of art that its
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 23 
 
 absence from the columns of our newspapers is 
 often chiefly predicated on want of leisure wherein 
 carefully to weigh, ponder and reflect, and wherein 
 to interpret the findings pointedly and with skill 
 and cunning, is plainly as droll as arguing that 
 genius is merely a capacity for taking infinite time. 
 The question is not one of lacking leisure, but one 
 of lacking expertness. Turning from the news- 
 papers to the American periodicals and books of 
 dramatic criticism all granted time and to spare 
 for studious reflection one encounters, with very 
 few exceptions, a similar disability in the art of 
 sound fault finding. Apparently appreciating, as 
 the newspaper commentators appreciate, that sharp 
 destructive criticism is a rooster too difficult of 
 winging, our critics of the drama for the more 
 leisurely brochures take no chances, but sedulously 
 devote themselves to an attempted concealment of 
 their shortcomings in enthusiastic articles on such 
 impressive and safe yokel-magnets as community 
 theatres, Maeterlinck, the esprit of Yvette Guilbert, 
 and the value of repertory companies. That these 
 enthusiasms are often grounded infinitely less upon 
 calm observation and sound deduction than upon 
 an unacquaintance with the topic in hand so great 
 that it makes fault finding or so-called destruc- 
 tive criticism out of the question, is fairly ob-
 
 24 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 vious to any one who casts an eye at these bland 
 uplift professors and their essays. Take, for ex- 
 ample, Mr. Clayton Hamilton, critic to Vogue. 
 And take, for example, his recent amorous critique 
 of Henri Lavedan, a few illuminating passages 
 from which I herewith make bold to quote: 
 
 "Throughout the last three decades, Henri Lavedan 
 of the French Academy has been recognized as one 
 of the foremost representatives of contemporary French 
 dramatic authorship; and, though his work is intimately 
 national, he has enjoyed a quite unusual success in the 
 commercial theatre of this country. The first of his 
 plays to be presented in America was 'Catherine,' which 
 was produced by Annie Russell in 1898. Otis Skinner 
 produced "The Duel' in 1906, and 'Sire' in 1911. In 
 1918, Mrs. Fiske presented 'Service'; and the latest item 
 on the list, The Marquis de Priola,' has recently been 
 added by Leo Ditrichstein. Of these five plays, three 
 have run for not less than an entire season in this coun- 
 try, and the others have been played for many weeks. 
 What is the reason for this remarkable success of M. 
 Lavedan with a theatre-going public that rejects so 
 many European dramatists of even larger reputation 
 on the ground that they are 'foreign,' and therefore 
 not immediately comprehensible? 
 
 "The reason is that Henri Lavedan is to be admired 
 mainly as a painter of portraits. . . . The American 
 public is, no doubt, unconsciously attracted by the fact 
 that M. Lavedan is more sincerely and emphatically
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 25 
 
 moral in his work than any other of his French contem- 
 poraries, with the single exception of Eugene Brieux. 
 . . . His method is similar to that of one of the most 
 honourable authors of our recent English drama; and it 
 would not be at all beside the mark to describe M. Lave- 
 dan as the French equivalent of Henry Arthur Jones." 
 Etc., etc. 
 
 What have we here, gentlemen? We have if 
 you will forgive me the insuavity flapdoodle. 
 For what we read is something that should rightly 
 have been destructive criticism but that has been in- 
 stead shrewdly palmed off on the layman as "con- 
 structive" by a critic slick enough to understand 
 that there is nothing like extravagant praise to 
 cover and hide inaccuracies. Examining the 
 Hamilton composition even casually, one finds it a 
 mass of gushing inexactness progressing with a gay, 
 jazzy crescendo to a sweet-sour whack on the cow- 
 bell. 
 
 By no first-rate critic in or out of France has 
 Lavedan ever been recognized as of the company of 
 Rostand, de Curel, Hervieu, Donnay, Lemaitre 
 or even de Caillavet and de Flers. He belongs 
 rather, as every first-rate critic without exception 
 has agreed, to the second group containing such 
 names as Bernstein and Bataille. (We will omit 
 Brieux and Porto-Riche and even Capus for
 
 26 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 whatever one's personal regard for their eminence, 
 their positions have been open to debate and let 
 us be fair to the Vogue philosopher.) Thus, to 
 say that Lavedan is one of the foremost repre- 
 sentatives of contemporary French dramatic author- 
 ship is relatively as exact as to say that Ludwig 
 Fulda (though a very talented man) is one of the 
 foremost representatives of contemporary German 
 dramatic authorship. Furthermore, Lavedan's 
 plays, contrary to Mr. Hamilton, have with a 
 single exception not only not "enjoyed a quite 
 unusual success in the commercial theatre of this 
 country" but as Mr. Hamilton may learn if he 
 will engage the records of the late Charles Froh- 
 man have lost a fine pot of money. And the 
 single exception, "Catherine," will be found from 
 the same easily accessible records to have achieved 
 a comparative success less on its own merits than 
 by virtue of the excellent showmanship and sen- 
 timental hokum slyly practised in the casting of the 
 play a hokum whose adroit press-agenting will 
 be unfolded to the Vogue commentator by any 
 theatrical manager of the day. But the reliability 
 of our impulsive critic is even more simply to be 
 plumbed in his record that "The Marquis de 
 Priola" "has been played for many weeks." 
 Whatever the prosperity of its future, the fact re-
 
 DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM 27 
 
 mains that when Hamilton wrote this, "The Marquis 
 de Priola" had been playing exactly two weeks. 
 
 Let us go on. We now find Hamilton contend- 
 ing that this quite unusual commercial success (sic) 
 of Lavedan is due (1) to his ability as a painter 
 of portraits, and (2) to his moral accent. Yet 
 "Catherine," Lavedan's one American money- 
 maker, will be admitted even by Hamilton himself 
 to contain one of his very weakest portraits, not 
 only not in any degree to be compared with the 
 portraits painted by him in the instances of "Le 
 Prince d'Aurec" and "Le Nouveau Jeu," but 
 more not to be compared even with those ex- 
 hibited by him in his commercial failures, "Le 
 Duel" and "Sire" and possibly "Servir." Again, 
 to argue that "the American public is no doubt 
 unconsciously attracted (and here, again, sic) by 
 the fact that M. Lavedan is more sincerely and 
 emphatically moral in his work than any other of 
 his French contemporaries, with the single excep- 
 tion of Eugene Brieux" is (1) evidently to have 
 contrived to read an esoteric lewdness into such 
 a contemporary as Rostand, for instance, and (2) 
 to believe that the American public was no doubt' 
 unconsciously attracted to so many enormously lu- 
 crative French plays of "The Girl from Rector's" 
 order because of their sincere and emphatic Sun-
 
 28 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 day School aspect. . . . The whimsey of the 
 Henry Arthur Jones comparison, after the prelim- 
 inary ecstatic cornet solo and cheek-kissing, I need 
 scarcely expand upon. 
 
 4 
 
 The New Scenery. The theory of the so-called 
 New Scenery falls to pieces once one takes a sharp 
 eye to it. The sponsors of the neo-cheesecloth 
 movement maintain that the best way to fix the at- 
 tention of the audience upon the play itself is to 
 subordinate the scenery, and that the best way, in 
 turn, to subordinate the scenery is to simplify it 
 to the furthest degree compatible with beauty. 
 The fallacy lies in believing that stark simplicity 
 may not be quite as distracting as overburdened 
 elaboration. Compare the effect upon the atten- 
 tion of a bleak, empty stretch of gray sea and the 
 same stretch of sea dotted with myriad gulls and 
 ships of all descriptions. Which diverts one 
 hypnotically the more; which the more greatly 
 cultivates insensibility and inattention to whatever 
 is passing before one in one's immediate environ- 
 ment?
 
 MATTER OF ADAPTATION 29 
 5 
 
 The Matter of Adaptation. Despite the not un- 
 common assumption that approximately all that is 
 necessary to the adaptation of the Continental play 
 is to set the second-act clock back six hours, take 
 out the bedstead and cast Mr. John Barrymore for 
 the husband instead of the lover, it is reversely 
 true that this business of adaptation calls for the 
 very highest playwriting sagacity and talent. 
 And it is equally true, by reason of this, that not 
 more than one such adaptation in every twenty- 
 five is worth a hoot; and true, further, that what 
 holds of American-made adaptations holds equally 
 of the attempts at adaptation made by the Eng- 
 lish, the Germans, the Austrians, and the French. 
 
 It is, with reservations, almost as difficult to 
 translate a play from one language into another, 
 and from the viewpoint of one people into that of 
 another, and from the favour of one nation into 
 the prejudice of another nation, as it is to write 
 the play in the first place. A careful scrutiny of 
 the statistics of the world's theatre for the last ten 
 years discovers astonishingly few adaptations that, 
 whether from the artistic or even the commercial 
 orthodoxy, have been fully successful. And the 
 figures seem all the more surprising when one ob-
 
 30 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 serves the very large proportion of failure in the 
 matter of the adaptation of plays which even in 
 their original form would appear to have been 
 automatically pre-adapted, and easily to have been 
 made ready for an alien audience by a mere scratch 
 or two of the pen. As, for example, Margaret 
 Mayo's "Baby Mine," intrinsically a farce to the 
 French taste, which even the adroit Maurice Hen- 
 nequin foozled in French adaptation and, for 
 further example, Eugene Walter's "Paid in Full," 
 intrinsically a comedy-drama to the German taste, 
 (vide Rudolf Lothar's "I Love You"), which even 
 the equally adroit Schmieden funked in German 
 adaptation. 
 
 There is surely something more than mere 
 theatre chance behind the fact that ten more or less 
 celebrated Continental plays failed in quick succes- 
 sion in their adapted form when brought to the 
 American stage, several years ago, by the late 
 Charles Frohman. For all Mr. Belasco's excep- 
 tional astuteness as a showman, the "Fable of the 
 Wolf' ("The Phantom Rival") and "The Lily" 
 baffled his most shrewdly selected translators. In 
 France, Synge's "Playboy" (adapted by Maurice 
 Bourgeois for the Theatre de 1'Oeuvre in the 
 Antoine), Wedekind's "Awakening of Spring" 
 (adapted by Robert d'Humieres), Moody's "Great
 
 MATTER OF ADAPTATION 31 
 
 Divide" (adapted by the Cazamians), Pinero's 
 "House in Order" (adapted by Bazalgette and 
 Bienstock), to say nothing of Shaw's "You Never 
 Can Tell" and "Mrs. Warren," Hebbel's "Marie 
 Madeleine," Jose Godina's "In the Gardens of 
 Murcie," and scores of other such interesting plays 
 have regularly gone astray. In Germany and 
 Austria, this has been equally true in the case of 
 innumerable plays like Gorki's "The Last," Bar- 
 rie's "What Every Woman Knows," Stephen Phil- 
 lips' "Paola and Francesca," C. M. S. MacLellan's 
 "Leah Kleschna," Pinero's "House in Order," 
 Shaw's "Androcles," and Haddon Chambers' 
 "Passers-By." And true, as well, has the situation 
 been in England with a vast number of plays by 
 the better known among alien dramatists plays 
 such as "The Happy Island" (adapted by James 
 Bernard Fagan from Lengyel), "The Right to 
 Kill" (adapted by Gilbert Canman from Pierre 
 Frondaie), "The Turning Point" (adapted by 
 Peter le Marchant from Kistemaekers), "The 
 Bread of Others" (by J. N. Duddington from 
 Turgenev), "The Head of the Firm" (by Leslie 
 Faber from Bergstrom) the plays, beyond and 
 above these, of Hauptmann, Schnitzler, Guimera, 
 Molnar, Guitry, Bjornson, Sudermann, Di 
 Giacomo, Strindberg, et al.
 
 32 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 When an adapted play fails, whether in this 
 country or in England or on the Continent, it is 
 the habitual critical pastime to lay blame for the 
 demise not upon the adaptation, but upon the 
 original play: the blame usually taking flower in 
 the theory that the theme and development of the 
 original are alien to the philosophy, taste and whim 
 of the national audience immediately concerned. 
 In the majority of cases, this is, of course, a mere 
 braying and wiggling of ears. When a respect- 
 able piece of dramatic writing fails in adaptation, 
 the philosophy, taste and whim of the alien audi- 
 ence are often less at fault than the philosophy, 
 taste and whim of the adaptor. For example, the 
 failure in America of the Hungarian Imre Foldes' 
 "Hallo," adapted by Mr. George Broadhurst as 
 "Over the 'Phone," and without exception laid by 
 the critics to the difference in moral attitude on 
 the part of Viennese and American audiences, was 
 actually due not to the difference in moral atti- 
 tude on the part of Viennese and American audi- 
 ences, but to the difference in moral attitude on the 
 part of the original author of the play and the 
 adaptor. How in God's name the difference in sex 
 moral 'attitude 'twixt the European and American 
 audiences could be brought forward as an argu- 
 ment to account for the local failure of the play
 
 MATTER OF ADAPTATION 33 
 
 when the adaptor by deleting the adultery motif 
 and substituting therefor a kiss motif had com- 
 pletely removed any preliminary ground for this 
 difference in sex moral attitude, is pretty hard to 
 understand. The failure of the play was due, not 
 to the fact that an American audience is unsympa- 
 thetic to gay adultery, but, very simply, to the fact 
 that the adaptor believed an American audience 
 was unsympathetic to gay adultery. The effect 
 and the result were precisely the effect and the re- 
 sult that would automatically be achieved were 
 "Peg o' My Heart" to be adapted for French audi- 
 ences by, say, Pierre Veber and Maurice Remon 
 and were the MM. Veber and Remon to think to 
 enchant their Gallic public by deleting the art- 
 less innocence of the heroine and making her, in- 
 stead, a fille de joie. 
 
 Apart from this adjudging the failure of adap- 
 tations in terms of the box-office, we observe an 
 even more striking failure in terms of artistic and 
 intelligent enterprise. Bernstein's "The Thief," 
 for example, though it achieved a considerable 
 commercial success in its American adaptation, 
 was in this local reincarnation little more than a 
 senseless yell potage. The entire meaning and in- 
 tent of the play the strychnia of lingerie, to wit 
 was slashed out of the text by the adaptor, with the
 
 34 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 result that what remained was nothing but a ten- 
 cent detective story culminating in a noisy Bertha 
 M. Clay love scene. 
 
 If Mr. Granville Barker were entrusted with the 
 job of bringing Albrecht Diirer's painting of the 
 "Adoration of the Trinity" to London from Vienna, 
 it is reasonable to suppose that he would exercise 
 the greatest care in transit to see that no nicks got 
 into it. But when Mr. Granville Barker is en- 
 trusted with the job of bringing Arthur Schnitz- 
 ler's word painting of "Anatol" to London from 
 Vienna, what does he do? He does exactly what 
 nine-tenths of the adaptors do when a work of art 
 is given into their care. He nicks it up with his 
 own petty morals and petty prejudices until little 
 more remains of the original than the frame. 
 Thus also does an American adaptor like Mr. Leo 
 Ditrichstein even though he is one of the best 
 slash to pieces Molnar's "Fable of the Wolf," does 
 an English adaptor like Mr. Cosmo Gordon Len- 
 nox slaughter de Caillavet's and de Flers' "L'Ane 
 de Buridan" to make a Frohman holiday and one 
 like Mr. Arthur Bourchier mutilate Lavedan's 
 "Duel" beyond recognition, do French adaptors 
 like the MM. Germain and Trebor scuttle the Ger- 
 man Robert Reiner's "War" and a German adaptor
 
 MATTER OF ADAPTATION35 
 
 like Rudolf Presber the French Hennequin's and 
 Bilhaud's "Best of Wives." 
 
 The trouble with the majority of adaptors, wher- 
 ever one finds them, is a very simple trouble: they 
 imagine that adaptation consists primarily in adapt- 
 ing an alien play to the different taste of a local 
 audience, where, in reality, adaptation should con- 
 sist rather in adapting the different taste of a 
 local audience to the alien play. 
 
 Take, for instance, a French farce-comedy like 
 "Le Rubicon." To adapt this diverting play in 
 such wise that it would not colour the cheek of an 
 Anglo-Saxon audience would be utterly to ruin it. 
 There would be nothing left of it and it would 
 unquestionably fail with the first or second per- 
 formance. But to adapt the Anglo-Saxon audi- 
 ence to "Le Rubicon" by some such device, say, as 
 having a squad of supers in policemen's uniforms 
 rush down the aisle at the final curtain and, after 
 a denunciatory speech by the jackass captain, pre- 
 tend to raid the theatre on the ground that the play 
 was immoral and not fit for an Anglo-Saxon audi- 
 ence, would be to preserve the play and probably 
 pack the streets with ticket-boosting Blumbergs, 
 Rosenblatts and Cohens. By such a process, the 
 prejudice of a local audience might be simply
 
 36 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 adapted to the alien play and all ends aptly 
 served. For what we thus should have would be, 
 obviously, the audience brought into impact with 
 the play rather than, as is general, the play 
 brought into impact with the audience. What 
 such an alien audience demands is not, as the 
 adaptors seem to think, that the characters in the 
 play shall not condone things which to the alien 
 audience are base and immoral, but, to the contrary, 
 that it (the alien audience) shall not condone or 
 seem to condone those things. This is the point 
 the adaptor more often than not confuses, or over- 
 looks entirely. 
 
 ' 6 
 
 Skating on Thin Ice. One of the droll delusions 
 of our American dramatic critics is that the French 
 farce writer is without a peer in the form of exer- 
 cise known as skating on thin ice. The truth of 
 the matter, of course, is that it is not the French 
 farce writer that is without a peer in the enter- 
 prise, but rather the French language. And par- 
 ticularly the French language in the department of 
 its daring phrase, simile and metaphor. Skating 
 on thin ice requires no mental nor inventive dex- 
 terity or balance when the medium of expression 
 is already automatically suited to the manoeuvre.
 
 SKATING ON THIN ICE 37 
 And yet, even with this immense advantage, the 
 French farce writer often reveals himself a clumsy 
 fellow in the handling of delicate situations. The 
 American Hopwood, working in a stiff and flinty 
 language, has nonetheless skated over thin ice more 
 gracefully than such French farceurs as Verneuil, 
 de Bassan, Gandera, Hennequin, Mars, Basset, 
 Leon Xanrof, Jean Martet, and the jocose Giafferi 
 and Jean d'Aguzan. Bracco, the Italian, has at 
 his best glided over thin ice more adroitly than 
 Feydeau, the excellent Frenchman, at his best. 
 Schnitzler and Bahr, the Austrians, working in 
 one of the baldest of languages, have equalled, if 
 not actualy excelled, the best modern French 
 skaters at their own game. And even such inferior 
 craftsmen as the German Lothar Schmidt, in a 
 language balder still, since unlike the Viennese it 
 is untouched by French breezes, have in such 
 pieces as "Only a Dream" turned the trick with 
 a high prettiness. To any one acquainted with 
 the ready-made subtleties of colloquial French, 
 the enormous initial advantage enjoyed by the 
 French writer over the writers in other languages 
 must be apparent. Let an American like Hop- 
 wood write in French and a Frenchman like Coolus 
 write in English, and we should soon enough see 
 which was the more expert skater.
 
 38 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 7 
 
 The Actor-Manager. The career of the actor- 
 manager in the English-speaking theatre has be- 
 come so largely a matter of stencil that it may, 
 almost without exception, be safely predicted in 
 terms of three stages. The first stage finds the 
 actor-manager at fifty still vastly intrigued by his 
 personal beauty given to presenting himself in 
 sentimental drawing-room comedies wherein, by 
 virtue of an elegant morning coat and a gift for 
 polite repartee, he succeeds magnificently in win- 
 ning the affections of the lovely ingenue from the 
 juvenile. The second stage finds him nearing 
 sixty and now reluctantly intrigued somewhat less 
 by his manly beauty than by his cosmic eminence 
 given to presenting himself in biographical 
 plays wherein, by virtue of an illustrious historical 
 name, a gray wig, a red plush suit, and alternately 
 witty and heroic sentiments culled from the mouth 
 of the dramatized deceased, he succeeds in win- 
 ning for himself at second-hand all the plaudits 
 withheld from the poor dead genius in his lifetime. 
 And the third stage finds him beyond sixty and 
 fat, and hence perforce brought to abjure his mir- 
 ror and think of himself primarily as an actor
 
 ON OBSERVATION 39 
 
 given, with but minor excursions for old times' 
 sake, to Shakespeare. 
 
 8 
 
 On Observation. What passes for sharp obser- 
 vation on the part of even the best of our comic 
 playwrights is actually most often a mere appre- 
 hension of some trivial and entirely negligible 
 phenomenon the novelty of which the critics mis- 
 take for genuine percipience. Thus, were I, turned 
 showmaker, to remark in a play that it always 
 looks like rain through a screen, or that the most 
 uncomfortable thing in the world is trying to eat 
 dinner without a napkin, or that there is always 
 something that sounds drunk about a hansom cab 
 late at night, or that there are probably not two 
 persons in the whole United States who know 
 Little Eva's last name I should be swallowed as 
 a playwright with a more or less acute eye to the 
 idiosyncrasies of the world. Of such perfectly 
 simple things a dozen of which occur to the 
 veriest blockhead every hour is the so-called 
 "observation" of our play makers composed. 
 Thus, Mr. Avery Hopwood, probably the best 
 writer of farce we possess, has achieved, in all his
 
 40 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 farces from beginning to end, little more authentic 
 observation of, and comment on, contemporary life, 
 persons, institutions and manners than is contained 
 in his "Fair and Warmer" line to the effect that 
 however late one gets to "Siegfried" there is al- 
 ways one more act. Thus, Miss Margaret Mayo, 
 in all her otherwise capable work, from first to 
 last has vouchsafed an eye that has observed little 
 save that a fire at night seems always to be just 
 around the corner. All the farce writers we have 
 and we have some good ones have in all their 
 farces combined presented less genuine sharp ob- 
 servation of life and less genuine sharp criticism 
 of that life than is contained in a single news- 
 paper cartoon of John T. McCutcheon, W. E. Hill 
 or H. T. Webster. 
 
 9 
 
 Maeterlinck as Dramatist. The pretensions of 
 Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian Madame Bla- 
 vatsky, long since brilliantly stripped in the dis- 
 cerning essay of Andre Tridon, once more brazenly 
 unveil themselves in the sequel to "The Blue Bird" 
 and pirouette before the jury in all their droll 
 nudity. This sequel, called "The Betrothal," is, 
 like its stem-play, intrinsically little more than a 
 George V. Hobart or Walter Browne Broadway
 
 MAETERLINCK 41 
 
 morality show much more suavely and restrain- 
 edly written, true enough, yet still of a but slightly 
 higher level in the way of genuine imagination, 
 philosophy, beauty, or sound art. It vouchsafes 
 the same immature vagueness (promiscuously mis- 
 taken for mysticism), the same gaunt literalness 
 (likewise confounded with designed simplicity), 
 and the same dialectic diabetes (similarly confused 
 with sweetness of viewpoint) that its predecessor 
 vouchsafed. And it convinces all who in such ap- 
 praisals are not given to mistaking beautiful 
 scenery for beautiful drama that its creator is the 
 most greatly overestimated dramatic writer of our 
 place and time. 
 
 Dealing with the adventures of the adolescent 
 Tyltyl incidental to his search for an appropriate 
 mate, "The Betrothal," like "The Blue Bird," 
 leaves in one the feeling that something is missing 
 when at the fall of the final curtain one isn't in- 
 vited downstairs for strawberries and cake. The 
 air of a Sunday School entertainment albeit a 
 very proficient one is difficult to get rid of. For 
 Maeterlinck is the de luxe Sunday School superin- 
 tendent of the modern drama: an amalgam of an 
 European John D. Rockfeller, Jr., and Charles 
 Rann Kennedy, with one of his eyes fastened 
 piously upon the Aldobrandini Madonna and
 
 42 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Sacre Coeur and the other rolling slyly at the Mile. 
 Arlette Dorgere and the Bouffes Parisiens. He 
 has written phrases and passages of sheer and com- 
 pelling beauty into the bulk of his work, but with 
 minor exception hereinafter to be noted he has not 
 to this day in that entire work written a single thing 
 that has had a single thought in it, or a single won- 
 der, or a single dream, much above the pitch of his 
 own Tyltyl's metaphysic. Beside even J. M. Bar- 
 rie, and the imagination and fancy of Barrie, he 
 is mere advanced vaudeville: a literate song and 
 dance man vainly endeavouring to clog to Mozart's 
 G Minor symphony. 
 
 The true artist is ever a true critic of his own 
 work. Somewhere in his heart there is a bit of a 
 critical snicker, a trace of a smile at himself. In 
 the heart of Maeterlinck, as that heart is revealed 
 to us, there is only a silk badge and a high hat. 
 Where a Barrie, say, in a "Peter Pan" which 
 Maeterlinck at his best has not approached 
 winkingly trots out a tot of two to claim the play 
 as her own, the Belgian Mrs. Rasputin sets out his 
 "Betrothal" (a fuddled effort at a kind of "Peter 
 Pan") with all the deadly soberness of a Method- 
 ist picnic. The body of this "Betrothal" is re- 
 lated in terms of the dream dreamt by Tyltyl and 
 the amateurish content and literality of the writ-
 
 MAETERLINCK 43 
 
 ing might thus be attributed as in the instance 
 of "Peter Pan" to the deliberate and eminently 
 appropriate attack of the dramatist. But never for 
 an instant can one believe this in the case of Maeter- 
 linck. The amateurish content and literality of the 
 dreamless coda to "The Blue Bird" and omega to 
 this sequel have taught one too much for that. 
 The amateurish content and the literality of the 
 writing of "The Betrothal" are not the result of de- 
 liberation and relevant treatment; they are the re- 
 sult, purely and simply, of an amateurish and 
 become sterile mind. Tyltyl awake in "The Be- 
 trothal" and Tyltyl a-dream in "The Blue Bird" 
 are the same, and their adventurings are the same, 
 and the philosophies and imaginations that moti- 
 vate them are the same. And all are barren, puny, 
 third-rate. The symbolism of a Destiny that 
 shrinks to nothingness as life's affairs, by the very 
 theme of the play, abide by the decisions of this 
 same Destiny the magic cap that sees into the 
 soul of a fanatical miser and discerns in that soul 
 a great prodigality and charity the philosophy 
 that the true worth and profundity of a man's love 
 for a woman is conditioned on the approval of the 
 children that are to be born to them of such im- 
 penetrable bosh and quack sentimentality is such 
 a Maeterlinck work as this "Betrothal" all compact.
 
 44 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 The truth about this Flemish Ekdal pere is that, 
 aside from his three little one-act plays, "L'ln- 
 truse," "Interieur" and "Les Aveugles," he has 
 written nothing for the stage that might contribute 
 legitimacy to the exalted estate in critical and ar- 
 tistic favour to which he has attained. And these 
 little plays the two best, in particular were the 
 fruit of his earlier dramatic years. Founding the 
 theory of the symbolist drama, he was to reveal 
 himself incapable of the strength to build higher 
 upon the cornerstone; and the progressing years 
 have disclosed him more and more in the light of 
 a half-squiffy and extraordinarily moony female 
 Joseph Conrad wildly tossed about and regularly 
 ship-wrecked on the allegorical high seas. The 
 Maeterlinck of 1902 and on, the Maeterlinck of 
 "Monna Vanna" and "Maria Magdalene," of "The 
 Blue Bird" and "The Betrothal," the Maeterlinck of 
 Sunday supplement uplift sermons on the lovely 
 life after sweet death, the Maeterlinck wistfully 
 smelling at a rosebud while being interviewed in 
 his ruined castle, the Maeterlinck photographed 
 atop a hill at sunset looking out to sea like a 
 moving picture fade-out, the Maeterlinck of the 
 carefully mussed gray hair and the sad Marie 
 Doro look carefully cultivated in his eyes this 
 is the soul of the true Maeterlinck, the true soul
 
 MAETERLINCK 45 
 
 of the Belgian Belasco, the mark of an artist who 
 started forth nobly and not without splendour on 
 the highway of literature and, finding the road 
 long and winding and full of rocks, calmly sat him- 
 self down and decided to make easy and com- 
 fortable winks at the box office, at Mr. Hearst's 
 opulent pocketbook, and at Dodd, Mead and Com- 
 pany. 
 
 Maeterlinck's neo-romanticist fame, when closely 
 analyzed, is found to have been the result of a 
 critical confusion of dramaturgic novelty with 
 artistic integrity. On the higher plane, Maeter- 
 linck profited by the delusion much the same as 
 did, on the lower, the author of the tin-pot "On 
 Trial." His valiant attempt to disengage art from 
 the details of actuality, as the phrase has it, has 
 succeeded in the main only in disengaging himself 
 from the details of art. If he has divorced him- 
 self from the details of actuality, he has made the 
 actual moonlight of the world into a mere spot- 
 light stage moonlight, and the actual mysterious 
 stars of the heavens into so many mere miniature 
 incandescent bulbs. He is not a voice in the wilder- 
 ness; he is a wilderness in the voice. Words, 
 words, words many of them singing and lovely 
 but still mere words, words, words. If he knows 
 the effects he desires to create, his skill is insuffi-
 
 46 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 cient to permit him to obtain them. His rains im- 
 press one as falling from shower-baths, and one 
 detects the stagehand hiding between his printed 
 lines and obligingly shaking the sheet of tin and 
 rolling the peas 'round the drum-head to create his 
 storms. He is, as most always he has been, a poet 
 sitting bravely and rather splendidly astride the 
 wooden horse on a merry-go-round, riding in blind 
 and dogged confidence to a destination in the next 
 block. He is Beethoven on a mandolin; Rosetti 
 in passe-partout. 
 
 Not long ago, there appeared in one of the maga- 
 zines a little sketch called "The Master Mind." 
 
 "The ghostly darkness of the room" it went 
 "served to heighten the effect of the seance. A 
 sense of weirdness pervaded everything. The pale, 
 calm face of the medium contrasted with the awe- 
 struck countenances of the spectators as the table 
 rose in the air. Diabolism, mysticism, reigned 
 supreme. Only one face, boredly indifferent, 
 seemed out of place. It belonged to the gentle- 
 man who manipulated the piano wire." 
 
 Here, unintentionally, is the best impression- 
 istic criticism of Maeterlinck and the drama of 
 Maeterlinck and the audiences before that drama 
 that I have had the fortune to come across. 
 
 Taking Maeterlinck's dramatic writing from first
 
 MAETERLINCK 47 
 
 to last, I cannot resist the conviction that it is, with 
 the obvious exception of "Monna Vanna" and pos- 
 sibly "Maria Magdalene," the essay form gone 
 wrong. The poetic essay, that is. "The delicacy 
 of technic displayed," wrote the excellent Huneker 
 of his "Aglavaine and Selysette" back in the drink- 
 ing days, "is almost inconceivable." One is 
 tempted rather to say almost invisible. For 
 "Aglavaine and Selysette" is poetry of a sort run, 
 as the printers say, solid. There is no more 
 dramatic technic discernible in its manoeuvering 
 than there is in the "Anatomy of Melancholy." 
 The impression it leaves in the playhouse is of a 
 stained glass window considerably cracked mis- 
 placed in the wall of the late George Edwardes' 
 Gaiety; of a girls' choir tackling Moussorgsky. 
 
 In the critical school that detects in Maeterlinck 
 a divine fire which sees "the star in the grain of 
 wheat," I find myself, alas, wearing the dunce's 
 cap and sitting on a high chair in the same corner 
 with the Ashley Dukes who observes of Maeter- 
 linck's advent: "This was the destined hour of the 
 magician, and Maeterlinck appeared. The ap- 
 parition was startling, and some critics, seeking 
 a pompous imbecility to cover their confusion, 
 named him 'the Belgian Shakespeare.' In this 
 fashion Tchekhov might be named 'the Russian
 
 48 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Ibsen,' or Hugo von Hofmannsthal 'the Austrian 
 Dante.' Such is the disintegrating force of the 
 new idea upon the mind of the expert labeller." 
 The technic of Maeterlinck in his vain attempt to 
 articulate the subconscious mood through sugges- 
 tion and symbolic speech an attempt generally 
 confused by his admirers with an accomplishment 
 is at bottom the technic of the Futurists and other 
 such current liberally spoofed art cults. Yet the 
 same critics who get up steam over the theories 
 and technic of Maeterlinck gallop to finger the 
 nose at the theories and technic of the Futurists. 
 Maeterlinck, in this general enterprise, amiably 
 recalls Mr. Strunsky's Puh, the Hindu Omega: 
 
 "Puh is," we are told, "ultimate. But he is far more 
 than the last word. He has banished the last word. 
 Puh is the writer who writes without words. He has 
 magnificently swept away the narrow conventions of 
 word-forms, outworn and outgrown traditions. His 
 thoughts are universal, not subject to time and space, 
 needing no elaborately false temporal mediums for mak- 
 ing them known. In fine, Puhism is the science of 
 awakening thought by suggestion. 
 
 "Flith! F-l-i-t-h! Don't you immediately hear in 
 those two magic words the concentrated autumn wind 
 sweeping truculently through the brown woods and the 
 sad scraping of raw limbs against each other? Don't 
 you see the gaunt tree-trunks scrawling against the
 
 MAETERLINCK 49 
 
 clouds and the shivering rabbit whisking through the 
 eddying leaves? Or does that picture fail to chime in 
 with your mood? Ah! Puh is adaptable. Flith! 
 F-l-i-t-h! Hear now a gentle breeze sighing senti- 
 mentally across the iris-beds along the river and one 
 pee-wee calling to another in the top of the nearest 
 willow; see the warm sunlight making patterns along the 
 hills and flicking the wave-tops with silver. 
 
 "Puhism is nothing more than the adaptation of litera- 
 ture to the personality of the reader. Besides saving 
 paper, the author never disagreeably accentuates him- 
 self, and each reader is left with his chance mood un- 
 directed and virginally pure. To each his own reac- 
 tion to Life. What more can we ask of an author than 
 that he provide his readers with thoughts? And what 
 more simple and natural than to supply them with their 
 own thoughts?" 
 
 In the aim of the technic of Maeterlinck, the sub- 
 conscious mood, previously expressed only in 
 terms of music, found words. But in the aim 
 alone. For "Pelleas" and "Ariane" and even 
 "Monna Vanna" have for the expression of that 
 mood deserted their step-parent and gone back 
 to their real birthplace, the orchestra, and to their 
 real fathers and mothers hiding in the throats 
 of the operatic stage. 
 
 But if "The Betrothal" roughly strips the 
 Maeterlinckian pretensions to what may be called 
 the musicless music-drama, "The Burgomaster of
 
 50 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Stilemonde," his latest work for the stage, even 
 more roughly tears the undeserved purple from the 
 Maeterlinckian pretensions to an imagination, a 
 passion and a vision powerful enough to act in the 
 presence of real prose catastrophe. This last play 
 is in the most liberal estimate merely second-rate 
 Broadway "war" melodrama. The name and 
 fame of its author, of course, have as usual taken 
 criticism by the nose and there has been the cus- 
 tomary attempt to ferret out absent virtues. Yet 
 the work is without dramatic or literary distinction. 
 Edward Sheldon, a Broadway playwright, could 
 have written the play better than Maeterlinck has 
 written it: not only from the point of view of 
 actable drama but, I venture to say, from the 
 point of view of literature. Had "The Burgo- 
 master of Stilemonde" been signed with the name 
 of some Max Marcin, for instance, it would have 
 been jestingly charged with all the manifold im- 
 perfections which, since it has been signed with 
 the name of the Belgian Amy Lowell, have been 
 stereotypedly and solemnly accepted as cardinal 
 excellences. 
 
 In conclusion, to repeat and sum up. What- 
 ever Maeterlinck's debatable eminence in the world 
 of letters, there can remain increasingly small 
 doubt that in the world of drama his position
 
 MAETERLINCK 51 
 
 save in the minor instances of the three one-act 
 plays already referred to has been absurdly over- 
 estimated. To this overestimate, various easily ap- 
 praisable things have conduced. Literary critics, 
 whose delusion that any short novel with the de- 
 scriptions printed in italics, the dialogue indented 
 and the names of the characters centered consti- 
 tutes an actable play, have mistaken such of his 
 typographically mis-set, if in this instance ex- 
 tremely praiseworthy, novels as "Pelleas and 
 Melisande" for effective theatre drama when, 
 presented as a play without the blood transfusion 
 of music, the composition actually constitutes act- 
 ing drama in the same degree that Fouillee's psy- 
 chological treatise, "Temperamente et Caractere," 
 constitutes a novel. Further, the sedulously cul- 
 tivated and craftily promulgated picturesqueness 
 of the man himself and of his life have operated 
 very much as the same thing operated on a much 
 smaller scale in the case of the late Richard Hard- 
 ing Davis toward the confounding of values that 
 habitually infects all the numerous impressible 
 swallowers of magnificent hocus-pocus. Again 
 further, the first and largely un weighed (if at the 
 time understandable) enthusiasms of such first-rate 
 literary critics as Huneker contrived to affect and 
 dazzle as is the wont of literary criticism much
 
 52 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 of the subsequent dramatic criticism. And 
 further still, the man himself struck almost at the 
 outset of his career the extreme good fortune of 
 falling in with, and being personally liked by, a 
 noteworthy group of French boosters. This group 
 literally "made" Maeterlinck in the same un- 
 critical way that, on a lower level in the England 
 of the moment, Swinnerton's and Merrick's close 
 friends are doing their damndest to "make" them. 
 
 10 
 
 Intelligence and the Actor. To argue that all 
 actors or, at least, the great majority of actors 
 are numskulls and to prove it is of a piece with 
 arguing, and proving, that all fat men or, at least, 
 the great majority of fat men perspire. To find 
 fault with an actor for being a numskull is to find 
 fault with a philosopher for being intelligent. 
 Numskullery is one of the essential attributes of 
 the actor; without it, he is an incompetent in his 
 profession, a fellow ill-equipped for his life's 
 work, a soul doomed to ignominious failure. 
 Imagine an intelligent man a man like Lincoln or 
 Gladstone, say rouging his lips and cheeks, black- 
 ening his bald spot, beading his eyelashes, dressing 
 himself up like the top of an old-fashioned mantel-
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND ACTOR 53 
 
 piece and, thus arrayed, swelling proudly at the 
 handclapping of a houseful of yokels when with a 
 tin sword he stands at the top of a papier-mache 
 stairway in a J. Stanley Weyman opus and, yell- 
 ing "For the glory of La Belle France!" at the 
 top of his lungs, chases three nervous college-boy 
 supers back into the wings. . . . 
 
 What is often mistaken for intelligence in an 
 actor is merely a talent for not reading incorrectly 
 the work of the dramatist. But it actually requires 
 no more authentic intrinsic intelligence to play, say, 
 the King in Shakespeare's "Lear" than it requires 
 to play the oboe in Beethoven's Op. 87. Applica- 
 tion it does require, yes and, with application, a 
 good pair of lungs, a clear speaking voice, a copy 
 of a pronouncing dictionary, a presence at least ap- 
 proximating that of Gimbel Brothers' chief floor- 
 walker, and a measure of experience in testing 
 these things out upon a brilliantly illuminated plat- 
 form. But intelligence? Hardly . . . The eight 
 most effective actors on our American stage 
 graduated to that stage from the respective pro- 
 fessions of shoe clerk, valet, dog trainer, dry goods 
 salesman, circus acrobatic clown, clothing-store 
 sidewalk puller-in, race-track tout and haber- 
 dasher's clerk.
 
 54 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 11 
 
 The One- Act Play. It is commonly argued, and 
 not without a measure of eloquence, that the one- 
 act form of playwriting is just one-third as difficult 
 of accomplishment as the three-act form. This, 
 like many contentions of a kidney, is open to 
 doubt. It is quite obvious, of course, that it is a 
 very much easier thing to write a one-act play like 
 one of Alfred Sutro's than a three-act play like 
 one of Alfred Sutro's, but it is of course quite 
 equally obvious that it is a much easier thing to 
 write a three-act play like one of Alfred Sutro's 
 than a one-act play like one of Lord Dunsany's. 
 The critic who appraises a play by its length is 
 the species of connoisseur who appraises a dinner 
 by the number of its courses or a shirt by the lib- 
 eralness of the portion that one tucks into one's 
 trousers. To judge a work of art by its length 
 is to believe Schnitzler's "Professor Bernhardi" a 
 finer thing than Schnitzler's "Christmas Shopping," 
 Puccini's "Girl of the Golden West" a more lovely 
 thing than Brahms' piano concerto in B flat major, 
 or Rembrandt's "Sortie of the Company of Frans 
 Banning Cock" a meaner work than the cyclorama 
 of the Battle of Lookout Mountain.
 
 THE JAPANESE PLAY 55 
 
 12 
 
 The Japanese Play. The delusion that a one-act 
 play is, by reason of its being a one-act play, ever 
 a less important creation than a three-act play is 
 a delusion as persistent as that other critical de- 
 lusion which has to do with the lack of poetry in 
 Japanese plays written by Occidentals. Let an Oc- 
 cidental compose some such play as "The Willow 
 Tree" and even the more discerning theatrical re- 
 viewers will find much in it to be cross with, will 
 lament the unconsonant Western prose of it and the 
 absence of congruous Japanese melody, will write 
 comparatively of it that in it (I quote a critical 
 sample) "not only is there no poetry, but, in the 
 employment of a device affording unusual oppor- 
 tunities, there is no original thought, no philosophic 
 comment upon life, no real satire, and very little 
 humour." Granting that all this may be quite true, 
 it remains that there is an equal absence of poetry, 
 original thought, philosophic comment upon life, 
 real safire and humour in the Japanese plays by 
 Orientals. The notion that the drama of Japan 
 is ever a drama of rare fancy and lovely word 
 music is a notion ill-founded. And while this, 
 true enough, may not excuse the Occidental when 
 he sets himself to the composition of a Japanese
 
 56 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 play, it is yet manifestly unfair to register against 
 the Occidental the complaint that his play misses 
 something in the real Japanese drama that the real 
 Japanese drama does not itself, save in rare in- 
 stances, possess. 
 
 A careful reading of the plays of the classical 
 stage of Japan (vide Marie Slopes' "Plays of Old 
 Japan"; Ezra Pound's notes on Fenollosa and the 
 Noh; etc.) reveals no more poetry, as you will dis- 
 cover for yourself, than the American-Japanese 
 play "The Willow Tree." (The criticism of the 
 latter play is not on this point, but rather that 
 it professes loudly to be a fantasy of the Japan 
 of Hearn and Loti and is in actuality rather a 
 fantasy of the Japan of Minnie Ashley and Julia 
 Sanderson, of Lionel Monckton and Leslie Stuart.) 
 The Occidental playwrights here concerned are 
 less deficient in the matter of poetry than in the 
 matter of catching the spirit of the Japanese 
 dramaturgy. For, as I have said, a survey of 
 such things as "Sandaihagi," "Kayoi Komachi," 
 "Shojo," "Kumasaka" and the like discloses, by 
 way of beautiful imagery, by way of musical simile 
 and mellow metaphor, a score of drab tones for 
 one such wistful and dulcet singing as "like the 
 bell of a country town 'neath the nightfall" (Suma 
 Genji), a score and more of flat and stereotyped
 
 THE BIBLICAL PLAY 57 
 
 "they are piled like the mountains" (Tamurd) for 
 one such bit as that describing the withering woman 
 Ono (Sotoba Komachi), "she is like a dull moon 
 that fades in the dawn's grip." So far as philoso- 
 phy is concerned, there is just as much in the Oc- 
 cidental "Willow Tree" as you will encounter in 
 any of the authentic Japanese plays. And if there 
 is no satire or humour in the former, I assure you 
 there is even less in the latter. 
 
 13 
 
 The Biblical Play. The belief that the more the 
 characters in a Biblical play act and talk like under- 
 takers the more reverential that play is, is some- 
 thing I have never been able to plumb. The surest 
 way in which to destroy the unmatched poetry of 
 the Bible, to callous the message it heralds and 
 make it go for naught, is to stage it with actors roll- 
 ing their eyes to the gallery, throwing back their 
 hands palms upward and moaning as if in the 
 throes of a terrible stomach-ache. This is the 
 Bible in terms of "Ingomar" and a tank-town per- 
 formance of "East Lynne"; this, reverence in terms 
 of a Georgia nigger camp meeting; but it is cer- 
 tainly neither in terms of simple beauty, simple 
 faith and simple common sense. The conventional
 
 58 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 theatrical notion that the Bible must ever be read 
 in the woe-is-me tone and that it were a gross 
 sacrilege to picture the good Lord God as speak- 
 ing in a voice not exactly like the coloratura basso 
 of Mr. James O'Neill or some other such Rialto 
 ham is the offspring of the producers' desire to 
 coddle the demands of clergymen, church-wardens, 
 Sunday School teachers and other such tender in- 
 telligences who never go to the theatre anyway. 
 
 14 
 
 The Foremost American Producer. He is a fat, 
 rosy little fellow in a droll double-breasted over- 
 coat that makes him look like Hi Holler begauded 
 for a Sunday call on his best girl. There is about 
 him always the suggestion that were his coat 
 pockets to be searched, one would discover in each 
 of them a large red apple. His aspect and de- 
 meanour are generally those of a surly small boy 
 whose teacher has just slapped his hand for laugh- 
 ing out loud. When perchance this mien passes 
 and he uncorks a guffaw, the detonation is like the 
 roar of the shirt-sleeved Irish lions in a Wilson 
 Barrett play. He makes himself grand with 
 creamy-coloured doeskin gloves which if I have 
 spotted him accurately he would seem not to re-
 
 AMERICAN PRODUCER 59 
 
 move even at the supper table; and he is to be 
 beheld riding around the town in an automobile as 
 bawdy as a moving-picture actor's. Between the 
 acts of premier performances he goes out and 
 stands alone on the curb and diverts himself by 
 aiming expectorations at distant holes in the pave- 
 ment. His vanity inspires him to derby hats so 
 rakishly tight that when he takes them off they 
 leave on his forehead deep and apparently pain- 
 ful maroon rings. He seems seldom to open his 
 mouth to say anything and what he does say so 
 far as I am able from personal observation to re- 
 port is not especially interesting nor important. 
 Where he comes from or whither he is going, I 
 haven't the faintest notion but I have a notion 
 that in that round and as-if rural pate of his there 
 are at this moment the finest ideals, and bravest 
 ambitions, and most vigorous analytical and critical 
 virtues to be found in the American theatre. 
 
 And I have this notion for all his periodic pro- 
 mulgation of what seem to me personally to be dull 
 plays, for all his arch practice of such immemorial 
 whimsies as the averment that he never reads the 
 criticisms of his work, for all his having believed 
 it the thing to invite me to dinner after I had written 
 a highly favourable foreword to a book of his, 
 for all the things he does that to my own way of
 
 60 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 looking at the theatre are not the right things to 
 do. And why have I this notion of this Arthur 
 Hopkins? I have it because never once so far in 
 his career of independent production has he 
 stooped deliberately to a cheap and shoddy thing; 
 because his aim, whatever his score as I see it, has 
 always been the aim of a conscientious artist; be- 
 cause in pursuit of the achievement of this aim he 
 has been unwavering and has courageously taken 
 many a hard smash between the eyes some, it 
 seemed to me, deserved and more not deserved; 
 because he has set himself the goal of a vital drama 
 vitally staged and vitally played and to reach that 
 goal has sidestepped many an obviously inter- 
 mediate and tempting bed of roses with a stead- 
 fastness and determination not given to many men 
 in his nation. 
 
 In every production that he makes, the man's 
 ideal is clearly discernible in his good and bad 
 alike. The single sound stylist of our theatre, 
 there is in the plays he chooses and in the manner 
 of presentation which he schemes for those plays 
 the one uniform suspicion of accurate form that 
 reaches the native critical ear. By no means al- 
 ways so effective a popular producer as, say, 
 Belasco, his sense of composition is yet intrinsically 
 of a threefold artistic integrity, delicacy and sound-
 
 AMERICAN PRODUCER 61 
 
 ness. This precise sense of composition, true 
 enough, is not entirely original with him: it has 
 heen borrowed by him very largely from Reinhardt. 
 But with the latter's producing technic he has 
 adroitly combined the tactical practices of such men 
 as Victor Barnowski and has filtered what he has 
 thus appropriated through the sieve of his own judg- 
 ment and personality. The result has vouchsafed 
 to us some of the finest productions of the present- 
 day American stage and where on occasion a play 
 and his technic have by the generic nature of the 
 play made noses at each other some of the weak- 
 est. But good or bad, the effort to do the fine 
 thing at the expense of the hokum thing is ever 
 apparent. And ever apparent, too, are the effort 
 at beauty, and the effort at something just a trifle 
 finer than the next man's effort, and the effort to 
 lift the American play and the American stage 
 above the level of the crook and sleuth and German 
 spy jabberwock on the one hand and the gilt piano 
 and Chinese sofa and Louis XV spit- jar aesthetic 
 on the other. 
 
 I often wonder where Hopkins gets all the money 
 to do the things he does after the conscientious and 
 cultivated fashion in which he does them. If he 
 has a silent partner, I should like to know the man's 
 name: he deserves to have the public hear of him.
 
 62 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 It is easy enough to get hold of a man to back a 
 French theatre for purposes of personal social ex- 
 ploitation, or to get hold of a man to back a musical 
 show for personal physiological purposes, or even 
 occasionally to get hold of a man to back a first- 
 rate play for purposes of personal puff as a patron 
 of the arts. But I have yet to hear and I want 
 to hear the name of this American who so deeply 
 and honestly loves the theatre that he is willing 
 anonymously to hold the bag for any number of 
 first-rate plays his partner desires to produce, for 
 any number of first-rate productions his partner de- 
 sires to make of them, and for any number of 
 failures that, because the work is first-rate, are 
 bound to ensue. But this, after all, may be said 
 to be not exactly my business. 
 
 Hopkins has staged Ibsen in the main more in- 
 telligently than any producer before whom I have 
 sat. And my poor old hinterspot has been ad- 
 justed into chairs before all sorts of Ibsen produc- 
 tions, big, little and medium, in three quarters of 
 the corners of the world. He is at the present 
 moment the one single producing manager in the 
 American theatre who has demonstrated himself 
 honestly eager to get hold of whatever genuine 
 playwriting the young American is doing or is 
 trying to do and who is honestly eager to defend
 
 AMERICAN PRODUCER 63 
 
 his faith in it, and who is honestly eager to give 
 it a fair and fighting chance. And in his hope and 
 effort to do this, he has received some of his 
 sorest bumps. Clare Kummer, turned down right 
 and left, came to Hopkins. Eleanor Gates came to 
 him. Moeller came to him. Rita Wellman came 
 to him. Reizenstein and Mclntyre and Brown and 
 Housum came to him. And other youngsters by 
 the score come regularly to him as they might come 
 to a sympathetic editor or publisher. Some of 
 them may be and are pretty bad, but each gets 
 a friendly attention. In my somewhat peculiarly 
 hybrid office of dramatic critic and magazine 
 editor, I am brought into almost daily touch with 
 that portion of literary young America whose eyes 
 are directed toward the theatre. And I have yet 
 to come across a single such aspirant who wasn't 
 hoping to pin the trust of his future to Hopkins. 
 And some of these, unless I am greatly mistaken, 
 are due to do sound work. 
 
 Already in his extremely short career, Hopkins 
 has rescued from the pigeon-hole of oblivion, and 
 has produced, the best and most imaginative 
 dramatic fantasy ("The Poor Little Rich Girl") 
 that this country has given birth to. He has 
 rescued from this same pigeon-hole, and has pro- 
 duced, the most skilful fantastic farce ("Good
 
 64 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Gracious Annabelle") and the most adroitly com- 
 posed biographical comedy ("Madame Sand") and 
 one of the most interesting of modern North Euro- 
 pean dramas ("The Deluge") and the most promis- 
 ing serious play come from an American hand in 
 the last four or five years ("The Gentile Wife"). 
 He is, in his presentation of "The Living Corpse," 
 the first to have brought to the American stage the 
 illuminating method followed by Reinhardt in 
 dramatic production. He is the first to have 
 brought over the adjustable proscenium (em- 
 ployed in "Evangeline"), the first producer to have 
 devised, by a process of editing, the transportable 
 pivotal stage (employed in "On Trial"), the first 
 to have brilliantly adapted to his needs the familiar 
 so-called sheet, or frontal proscenium, lighting of 
 Stanislawski (employed in the second act of "The 
 Gentile Wife"). His production of "A Successful 
 Calamity" was physically the suavest production of 
 social comedy our theatre has proffered. His 
 production of "La Cena delle Beffe," the finest in 
 the way of romantic drama. He has, with Robert 
 Edmond Jones, brought not in one production but 
 in the majority of his productions a new sim- 
 plicity and new beauty to American stage decora- 
 tive art, and for the first time a harmony of dress 
 and scene. He has brought out more hitherto
 
 AMERICAN PRODUCER 65 
 
 buried skill among young professional and amateur 
 actors and actresses than any other native pro- 
 ducer of comparative experience. And he has ex- 
 plored many of these players out of the wallows 
 of vaudeville and the recesses of tyro joints and 
 the morasses of cheap melodrama. And, while do- 
 ing all this, he has, of course, not omitted to make 
 more than his full share of mistakes, more than 
 his ample portion of very sour cracks. It is the 
 easiest thing in the world to find fault, eloquently 
 and justly, with Hopkins, but then it is always easier 
 to find fault with a man of ideals than with a man 
 without them. I can readily pick a hundred things 
 wrong with Hopkins where I find difficulty in pick- 
 ing one wrong with Al Reeves. Hopkins says to 
 me, in effect: "I am trying to do the best for the 
 theatre that I know how." And consequently Hop- 
 kins metaphorically bends himself down and 
 presents to my critical toe a tempting expanse of 
 rear pant. Reeves frankly says to me, in effect: 
 "I'm trying to do the worst for the theatre that I 
 know how." And consequently I find myself 
 balked. ... It is easy to miss the bull's-eye if the 
 target at which one essays to shoot is twenty times 
 as far off as one's neighbour's. 
 
 The producing theory of Arthur Hopkins, if I 
 may interpret it for him the critic at his best
 
 66 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 is merely the holder-up of a mirror is, generally 
 speaking, very simply to invest naturalism with as 
 much the quality of beauty as is reasonably to be 
 imagined a part of it. A rose may fall from the 
 window of a Pullman and light upon a New Jersey 
 dunghill a Cossack marching off to war may carry 
 in a locket the picture of his baby girl through 
 the skylight of the tenement one may glimpse the 
 stars. This producing theory, made by Hopkins 
 in his polysyllabic essay at self-criticism hight 
 "How's Your Second Act?" to take on a very pro- 
 found and esoteric air, is actually as simple as roll- 
 ing out of bed. And that, of course, is its chief 
 charm and the reason for its voltaism. Hopkins' 
 attempt to hocus-pocus it forth in his book as akin 
 to a black art of one kind or another is merely 
 that part of him that wears the creamy-coloured 
 doeskin gloves and rides around the town in the 
 peagreen gasolene bus. But taking it simply for 
 what it is, his theory and the accomplishments he 
 has wrought from it mark the biggest single step 
 forward that the artistic producing theatre of 
 America has taken in the last decade. 
 
 Here, again, however, have Hopkins and his ef- 
 forts been met with many a face-making from the 
 kind of critic whose finger was trained by President 
 Lowell to thumb his nose where God designed that
 
 AMERICAN PRODUCER 67 
 it should only pick it. In Hopkins' striving to give 
 his stage a grace, a style, a natural ease and beauty, 
 such critics have seen only an empty pose, only a 
 mumpsimus, only a trying to do something different 
 for the sake of its being different. It took twelve 
 long years for two of the greatest theatrical pro- 
 ducers of Continental Europe to gain first the at- 
 tention, then the sympathy, and finally the warm 
 and hearty approval of their already civilized 
 critics and audiences for the theory that it is con- 
 ceivable that an actor may sometimes properly 
 speak with his back to Mr. Alan Dale and Hop- 
 kins has fondly hoped to turn the trick with the 
 native Indians in four! But for all the yokel hoots 
 and rebuffs, he is sticking to the guns of his art 
 and, if the money behind him holds out, he will in 
 time succeed as surely as they in Europe have 
 succeeded. "Do things as they should be done," 
 he says on page 61 of his critical autobiography, 
 "and let the results take care of themselves. We 
 are not merely tired people with trained bears 
 anxious to hear the rattle of pennies in tin 
 cups. . . ." 
 
 There, gentlemen, sketchily, is your Arthur Hop- 
 kins. He is no "Master," no "Wizard." He is 
 just a young fellow with a dream, who fails twice 
 where he succeeds once, but who feels and knows
 
 68 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 that to succeed even once, bravely, finely and with- 
 out compromise, is worth failing fifty times for. 
 He has had, on several occasions, no harder critic 
 than I and he will continue to have no harder 
 but even on such several occasions I have felt, as 
 I shall doubtless continue to feel, the pull of an 
 uncritical prejudice for a man who as Mencken 
 has written in another direction of James Branch 
 Cabell is so largely thrown back upon his work 
 for his recompense; who has tried to produce sound 
 and beautiful plays and to get upon the stage the 
 point of view of a civilized man; and who, having 
 succeeded at the business perhaps better than any 
 other who has made the same trial, though he re- 
 mains still poor in actual worldly return, holds this 
 success a sufficient reward for a self-respecting 
 artist. 
 
 15 
 
 On Sentimentality. Why it is that we Ameri- 
 cans, a nation of sentimentalists, should demand 
 sentimentality in our theatre is not easy of de- 
 cipherment. The one fact does not dovetail with 
 the other so closely as some believe. The theatre, 
 first and last, is a harbour of diversion. Like can- 
 not divert like. An egoist hates an egoist. A 
 man's sweetheart does not look like his wife. A
 
 THE BIOGRAPHICAL PLAY 69 
 
 restaurant with home-cooking would fail in a week. 
 A soldier, on furlough, does not spend his time in 
 a shooting gallery. . . . The French, a nation as 
 sentimental as we, patronize most liberally plays 
 that are the reverse of sentimental. The Germans, 
 an unsentimental nation, cry copiously into their 
 Pschorrbrau when a modi in a cabaret hits the 
 quiver note in a barber-shop melody like "Pupp- 
 chen." . . . 
 
 16 
 
 The Biographical Play. The biographical play 
 is probably of all plays the easiest to write well, 
 since the playwright's philosophy and wit, attack 
 and resolution, characters and characterizations, 
 lay already full-blown before him and require but 
 the not difficult manipulation of theatrical wires 
 to set them to dancing. Such dramatic composi- 
 tion, however, always impresses persons pro- 
 foundly. Yet it is a more simple thing, I venture, 
 to write a play like "Madame Sand" (for all that it 
 approaches to the first-rate in its field) than to write 
 a tenth-rate play like "Up In Mabel's Room." 
 
 17 
 
 The Repertory System. The best argument 
 against the repertory system is that it elevates the
 
 70 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 actor over the play. It asks us at regular intervals 
 to view not a play interpreted by a group of actors, 
 but a group of actors interpreted by a play. The 
 repertory system thus fails in the same way that the 
 Y. M. C. A. athletic system fails. It strengthens 
 the anatomy at the expense of the soul. 
 
 ; 18 
 
 Belasco. The criticism commonly peddled 
 against David Belasco to the effect that he is sadly 
 content to devote his virtuosity to the mere further 
 begauding and merchanting of the established 
 hokums of the theatre is like most of the Belasco 
 criticism, whether pro or con, unwarrantable and 
 stupid. Whatever may be Mr. Belasco's short- 
 comings, the easy practice of tried hokums is cer- 
 tainly not one of them. For the Belasco talent, 
 quite other than being a mere slick exposition of 
 such tried and true hokums, is actually a talent 
 doubtless the most exceptional talent in the native 
 theatre for painstakingly nursing to life theatrical 
 devices that by all the rules should have been and 
 should be tried and true hokums, but devices that 
 mishandling on the part of other playmakers and 
 producers has caused to go for naught. It is in 
 this business of drawing the hokum essence out
 
 BELASCO 71 
 
 of hokums the hokum juices of which have previ- 
 ously eluded his confreres, that Mr. Belasco excels. 
 This is plainly to be detected in the Belasco trick 
 of turning failures, whose intrinsic hokums were 
 left by playmakers and producers to lie dormant, 
 into hokum-lively successes. There was just as 
 much hokum at the bottom of Edgar Selwyn's 
 failure, "Pierre of the Plains," as there is in Mr. 
 Belasco's success, "Tiger Rose," but Mr. Selwyn 
 didn't know how to pop it. "Tiger Rose" is merely 
 a successful version of "Pierre of the Plains," just 
 as Belasco's "Peter Grimm" was merely a success- 
 ful version of Cora Maynard's failure, "The 
 Watcher," and as Belasco's "Daddies" is merely 
 a successful compound of Francis Wilson's failure, 
 "The Bachelor's Baby," and H. V. Esmond's fail- 
 ure, "Eliza Comes to Stay." 
 
 In this "Daddies," the Belasco hokum nursery 
 is to be appraised with an especial pregnancy. 
 Every device that failed to register in the Francis 
 Wilson play, and every device that failed equally 
 of effect in the Esmond play, Mr. Belasco has here 
 carefully poulticed and hot-water-bagged and pilled 
 into commercial robustness. Stratagems that in the 
 two failures had all the earmarks of healthy hokum 
 but that suffered from directing cramps have been 
 taken over, rolled vigorously across a barrel, had
 
 72 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 their Little Marys massaged and their toes wiggled, 
 until the Belasco osteopathy has put them firmly 
 upon their legs. And the result, of course, is one 
 of the usual Belasco money-makers which, while 
 characteristically of an utter literary and artistic 
 worthlessness, is still an equally characteristic 
 Belasco caesarian sure-fire operation. 
 
 19 
 
 On Banality. There is room for banality in the 
 theatre. It is less a thing for critical groan and 
 frown than one is often persuaded to believe. The 
 theatre is an institution wherein one seeks sanctuary 
 from the furors and stressful inconstancy of life, 
 wherein one may sit before the doings of a mock 
 world and sigh oneself into a pleasurable tem- 
 porary forgetfulness and reverie. Life itself, and 
 the outside world, thrill and torment the individual 
 with their ceaseless changes and mist enwrapt ad- 
 ventures and somnabulisms a shifting panorama 
 of art, loves, business, coincidences, triumphs, de- 
 feats, fears and hopes. From all this the theatre 
 offers a refuge. And that refuge may, obviously 
 enough, be had only in spectacles of an antithetical 
 dulness, flatness and stupidity. 
 
 One may amuse and divert oneself only by more
 
 MODERN FRENCH DRAMA 73 
 
 or less violent contrasts. Napoleon, after the 
 battle of Abukir, forgot himself in watching a cock 
 fight. 
 
 20 
 
 The Modern French Drama. The modern 
 French play as represented, among others, by 
 Bataille and Bernstein, remains a triumph of 
 technical skill over drama. Disclosing an excep- 
 tional hand for the technique beloved of the pro- 
 fessors, these pieces, for all the passion of their 
 content, leave the beholder cold. Spectator at one 
 of them, one is in the mood of the outcast who 
 stands shivering in the snow looking through the 
 window of a room wherein burns alluringly a hot 
 grate fire. It is a favourite practice of the pro- 
 fessors to blame this chill not upon the overly 
 meticulous technique, but upon the theory that the 
 Anglo-Saxon is intrinsically alien to the meta- 
 physics and emotions of the Gallic text and hence 
 unable to comprehend and sympathize with the 
 thoughts and actions of its characters. This, of 
 course, is for the most part absurd. The Anglo- 
 Saxon, whatever his antecedents, is today certainly 
 no more ulterior to the Gallic processes of thought 
 and act than he is to the Teutonic, yet the latter 
 drama, as typified by such not far removed writers
 
 74 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 as Sudermann, is easily comprehensible to him, as 
 are its characters and the thoughts and actions of 
 those characters. If, indeed, the American can- 
 not encompass the philosophy of passion as it is 
 expounded in the French drama of Bataille, Bern- 
 stein, et al., how comes it, on the other hand, that 
 he is able to grasp it as it is expounded in the 
 French drama of de Caillavet and de Flers, 
 Tristan Bernard, Capus, et al.? Whether in the at- 
 titude of farce or in the attitude of the so-called 
 problem play, the fibre of this philosophy is, at 
 bottom, the same. If an alien can comprehend the 
 French way of taking passion lightly, why can he 
 not comprehend the French way of taking it seri- 
 ously? The divergence from the American ap- 
 proach to the subject is in each case equally broad. 
 The truth, of course, is that this has nothing to 
 do with the successlessness in America of the 
 serious French drama. Generally speaking, this 
 type of Gallic drama fails in America not so much 
 because of its subject matter as because that sub- 
 ject matter is treated to a technique so rigid, so 
 extravagantly corseted and so unremittingly 
 metronome-like that the evening is deleted of all 
 those qualities of grace and ease, of flexibility and 
 digression, that go to make the quality known 
 locally as "theatre," and in their absence substi-
 
 MODERN FRENCH DRAMA 75 
 
 tute the smell of the drama course lecture room 
 for the smell of the "show." Like the sight of a 
 woman wearing velvet in the early morning, this 
 drama attracts the attention, true enough, but at 
 the same time induces in one a sense of aesthetic 
 nausea. The Anglo-Saxon success of such so- 
 called serious Gallic plays as "Camille" and 
 "Zaza" has undoubtedly been due to their less 
 formal technical manner, to their comparative 
 warmth, in short, to their technical crudities. 
 Some such more recent play as Bataille's "Les 
 Flambeaux," on the other hand, tells an interest- 
 ing story with a great feeling for dramatic 
 technique and small feeling for theatrical tech- 
 nique. And some such one as Bernstein's "L'Ele- 
 vation" suffers from the same shortcoming. Both 
 put one in mind of a college professor endeavour- 
 ing to tell a story at a Seeley dinner. The story 
 is good enough, and the telling of the story is well 
 thought out; but the effect is as nil. The teller 
 and the place of telling are not in harmony. 
 
 Against plays of this kidney, we have the more 
 authentic feeling for the cosmopolitan theatre as 
 instanced in the case of the Caillavet-Flers "Le 
 Roi." In such things, the French writer is at his 
 best. His, then, all the sharp nonchalance and 
 sagacity that secede from him when his brows
 
 76 CO MEDIANS ALL 
 
 wrinkle. French farce of this school is genuinely 
 merry stuff not the French farce more generally 
 known as such in the Broadway playhouses, the 
 machine-made stuff of Soulie, Veber, Nanteuil, 
 Faverne, Nancey and Armont and that lot but 
 French farce as represented by the collaborators 
 upon the piece in point, and by such witty fellows 
 as the admirable Feydeau, Sacha Guitry, Rip and 
 Bousquet and Romain Coolus. 
 
 21 
 
 Harry Watson, Jr. That Mr. Harry Watson, 
 Jr., is one of the finest comic artists of the Ameri- 
 can stage is demonstrated anew with each succes- 
 sive year. An alumnus of the same burlesque 
 troupe that graduated that other excellent corned : an, 
 Mr. George Bickel, Watson's authentic talents, like 
 those of his colleague, have long been overlooked 
 or if not entirely overlooked, greatly disparaged 
 by annalists of the stage who vouchsafe to low 
 comedy merely a casual and then grudged atten- 
 tion. Yet the fact doubtless remains that this Wat- 
 son is an actor of uncommon quality, not a mere 
 slapstick pantaloon, an assaulter of trousers' seats, 
 a professor of the bladder, but a mimic of excep- 
 tional capacity, a pantomimist of the very first
 
 HARRY WATSON, JR. 77 
 grade and a comedian of real histrionic parts. 
 Watson's depiction of the tenth-rate prize fighter, 
 with its suggestion not simply of such obvious ex- 
 ternals as speech, walk, et cetera, but with its subtle 
 revelation of the pug's mind, thoughts and general 
 singularities, is as admirable a bit of acting as 
 the native stage has conceded in years. The thing 
 is searching, vivid, brilliant; it measures with the 
 best work, in more exalted dramatic regions, of 
 such capable actors as Arnold Daly or the late 
 Robert Fischer or Ditrichstein. To see it is to 
 look into the soul of the cheap bruiser as that 
 soul has rarely been transcribed to paper. The 
 half -droop of the one eye, the intermittent Maude 
 Adams toss of the neck, the setting of the far right 
 tooth, the disdain of the lip, the nervous knee 
 these Watson negotiates with a diplomacy as far 
 removed from the usual and patent tactic as his 
 negotiation of the portrayal of the telephoning 
 commuter is removed from the level of the vaude- 
 villes. 
 
 For some reason or other, the work of such 
 comedians as Watson is held generally in artistic 
 and critical disesteem. Why, God and the Eve- 
 ning Post alone know. For among these come- 
 dians one finds a sensitiveness, an eye to human 
 nature and a schooling in projection that one en-
 
 78 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 counters with extreme rarity on the dramatic stage. 
 The scorn these fellows suffer is part of our na- 
 tive theatrical snobbery. In England, George 
 Robey is recognized for the artist he is; in France, 
 Germain and others like him have received their 
 portion. But in our country the actor is rated not 
 so much according to his intrinsic ability as accord- 
 ing to the ability of the playwright who supplies 
 his roles. And yet such a comedian as Bickel re- 
 mains at bottom a more susceptive and penetrating 
 comic artist than any half dozen Leo Carrillos, 
 and such a comedian as this Watson a more strik- 
 ing adventurer in the gallery of human nature and 
 its portrayal than any double dozen of Russ 
 Whytals, Robert Edesons, Richard Bennetts and 
 Howard Kyles. 
 
 22 
 
 Brander Matthews. In a uniformly entertain- 
 ing, if uniformly inaccurate, lecture before the stu- 
 dents of Barnard College, Professor Brander Mat- 
 thews not long ago brewed the following up-to-the- 
 minute philosophies: 
 
 "Just as grammar has its conventions," observed the 
 Professor, "so the drama, too, has its conventions. In 
 Japanese tragedy each performer has a (supposedly) 
 invisible attendant clad in black. They hand a fan,
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 79 
 
 lift a cloak and by the middle of the play you do 
 not see them. The Mexicans always have the devil 
 dressed in a United States Cavalry officer's uniform. Is 
 this any more peculiar than, as I have seen in Irving's 
 productions, buildings coming down from the sky and set- 
 tle down on the stage for a change of scene during an act? 
 Certain conventions are necessary, but some are non- 
 essential, and these the new scenery is trying to do away 
 with. There are conventions also of costume it took 
 Sir Walter Scott to remove the tall ostrich plumes from 
 Kemble, playing Macbeth, and replace them with a 
 single plume. But there are some inescapable conven- 
 tions. You always expect to leave the theatre in two 
 hours and a half. Playwrights, therefore, always con- 
 dense. The characters say just the right things in the 
 right order, which is absolutely untrue to life. More- 
 over, every character always understands everything the 
 first time it is said! The convention of condensation 
 leads to that of wit, where every one is as witty as the 
 author. Take the convention of Shakespeare, where 
 every character speaks blank verse. This would not be 
 so in life!" 
 
 Let us present the Professor with an examina- 
 tion paper on these announced conventions of the 
 drama. And, at the same time, with a convenient 
 "crib." 
 
 First Professorial Convention: "In Japanese 
 tragedy, each performer has a (supposedly) in-
 
 80 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 visible attendant clad in black. They hand a fan, 
 lift a cloak and by the middle of the play you do 
 not see them." 
 
 Question: Is it true, or is it not true, that the 
 Japanese stage has to a large extent sometime since 
 abandoned this convention? 
 
 Answer: It is true. 
 
 Second Professorial Convention: "The Mex- 
 icans always have the devil dressed in a United 
 States Cavalry officer's uniform." 
 
 Question: Name more than one or two plays 
 in which the Mexicans have presented the devil in 
 such guise. 
 
 Answer: The circumstance that the Mexicans 
 have once, or twice or even three times pre- 
 sented the devil as a United States Cavalry of- 
 ficer makes the dido a convention of the Mexican 
 stage no more than the circumstance that the Amer- 
 icans have once, or twice or even three times 
 presented the Italian as a white-slaver makes it a 
 convention of the American stage that Italians must 
 always be presented as white-slavers. 
 
 Third Professorial Convention: "Is this any 
 more peculiar than, as I have seen in Irving's pro- 
 ductions, buildings coming down from the sky
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 81 
 and settle down on the stage for a change of scene 
 during the act? Certain conventions are neces- 
 sary, and some are non-essential, and these the new 
 scenery is trying to do away with." 
 
 Question: See above. 
 
 Answer: The visible descent of scenery from 
 the flies was due to no scenic convention, but 
 merely to bad lighting arrangements. The new 
 scenery is often lowered into place from the flies 
 just as was the old scenery. 
 
 Fourth Professorial Convention: "There are 
 conventions also of costume it took Sir Walter 
 Scott to remove the tall ostrich plumes from Kem- 
 ble, playing Macbeth, and replace them with a 
 single plume." 
 
 Question: Was it an invariable and absolute 
 convention to play Macbeth with tall ostrich plumes 
 or was not this merely an idiosyncrasy of Kem- 
 ble? 
 
 Answer: It was no more an invariable and 
 absolute convention to play Macbeth with tall 
 ostrich plumes in Kemble's time simply because 
 Kemble so played Macbeth, than it is a convention 
 to play Macbeth with a St. Louis round haircut in 
 James K. Hackett's current time simply because 
 James K. Hackett so plays Macbeth.
 
 82 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Fifth Professorial Convention: "But there are 
 always some inescapable conventions. You al- 
 ways expect to leave the theatre in two hours and 
 a half. Playwrights, therefore, always condense. 
 The characters say just the right things in the right 
 order, which is absolutely untrue to life." 
 
 Question: Is this absolutely untrue to life? 
 
 Answer: No, this is not absolutely untrue to 
 life. For example, many conversations in actual 
 life between (1) two diplomatists, (2) a good news- 
 paper reporter and, say, a sharp politician or 
 lawyer, (3) the hostess and her guests at a formal 
 dinner, (4) a military officer and his aide. Or a 
 conversation on a definite subject as in dramatic 
 dialogue between some such actual persons as, 
 say, Frank Harris and Shaw, or Huneker and 
 Richard Strauss, or even Browning and King. 
 The notion that conversations in actual life are 
 invariably full of stutterings, evasions, you-don't- 
 means, hem's and er's is of a piece with the no- 
 tion, held by the same theorists, that an expensive 
 cigar is always stronger than a cheap cigar and that 
 an intelligent prize-fighter is more likely to win a 
 ring battle than a first-rate bonehead. Further, 
 equally erroneous is the theory that in drama the 
 characters always say just the right things in the 
 right order. More often, of course, are they made
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 83 
 
 by the playwright arbitrarily to say just the wrong 
 things in the right order that the consequent be- 
 fuddlement may institute and prolong the mis- 
 understandings, et cetera, essential to the dramatic 
 action. Examples are at once obvious and plenti- 
 ful, and range all the way from Hauptmann's "Be- 
 fore Sunrise" to Richard Harding Davis' "The 
 Galloper." If the Professor refers to the direct 
 and consistently relevant dialogue of a play in its 
 relation to the telling of a single and definite dra- 
 matic story, he is equally in error when he observes 
 it to be in striking opposition to actuality. What 
 play written in recent years has developed a story 
 more directly than was developed in actual life 
 the story, say, of the recent Grace Lusk murder 
 case? To argue that the story of this case, if 
 turned to the purposes of the stage, would never- 
 theless be boiled down and reduced to two and 
 one-half hours is to argue that one may read Ar- 
 nold Bennett's Clayhanger series in two and one- 
 half hours if one only skips the "descriptions." 
 
 Sixth Professorial Convention: "Moreover, 
 every character always understands everything the 
 first time it is said!" 
 
 Question: Is this even half-way true? 
 
 Answer: No.
 
 84 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Supplementary answer: If by "understand" 
 you mean "thoroughly comprehend," there are con- 
 tradictory instances to be found in hundreds of 
 plays. A few examples: "The Poor Little Rich 
 Girl," Schnitzler's "The Hour of Recognition," 
 Perez-Glados' "Duchess of San Quentin," Sutro's 
 "The Two Virtues," Mitchell's "The New York 
 Idea," etc. If, on the other hand, by "understand" 
 you mean merely that the ear of this character 
 always catches what that character says the first 
 time he says it a more likely interpretation 
 there are contradictory instances also to be found 
 in hundreds of plays. A few examples: 
 "Grumpy," "The Professor's Love Story," "The 
 Gay Lord Quex," "Letty," etc. 
 
 Seventh Professorial Convention: "The con- 
 vention of condensation leads to that of wit, where 
 everyone is as witty as the author." 
 
 Question: Is this even one-third true? 
 
 Answer: No. The author more often makes 
 all of his characters, save one, dolts or semi-dolts, 
 that his wit, placed in the mouth of the one char- 
 acter, may appear by contrast to be of an excep- 
 tional quality. A few examples: Chesterton and 
 the character of the Stranger in "Magic," Shaw 
 and the character of Tanner in "Man and Super-
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 85 
 man," Bahr and the character of Esch in "Prin- 
 ciple," Schnitzler and the character of Bernhardi 
 in "Professor Bernhardi," Wedekind and the char- 
 acter of Hetmann in "Hidalla," Capus and the char- 
 acter of Mme. Joulin in "The Two Schools," 
 Tchekov and the character of Trigorin in "The 
 Seagull," etc. 
 
 Eighth Professorial Convention: "Take the 
 convention of Shakespeare, where every character 
 speaks blank verse. This would not be so in life!" 
 
 Well, credit where credit is due. Let us admit 
 that here the distinguished Professor negotiates a 
 real torpedo! For five solid minutes I have tried 
 to think of someone who in actual life speaks al- 
 ways in blank verse, and, by all the gods, I con- 
 fess it freely, I'm stuck! But perhaps only tem- 
 porarily. Something tells me, has long told me 
 that is to say, I have a suspicion indeed more 
 than a suspicion, a definite feeling that the Pro- 
 fessor himself. . . . 
 
 23 
 
 The American Dramatic Criticism. Dramatic 
 criticism in America, estimating it by and large, 
 falls currently into either one of two classifications,
 
 86 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 each classification being in turn subdivisible into 
 three further classifications. 
 
 The first classification is what may be called the 
 college professor dramatic criticism. The three 
 subdivisions of this classification are (1) the col- 
 lege professor dramatic criticism which maintains 
 that dramatic art and morals are inseparable; (2) 
 the college professor dramatic criticism which 
 maintains that dramatic art and the structural 
 technic of Augier, Sardou, et al., are inseparable; 
 and (3) the college professor dramatic criticism 
 which maintains that dramatic art and validity and 
 integrity of thematic idea are inseparable. 
 
 The second classification is the newspaper dra- 
 matic criticism. The three subdivisions of this 
 classification are (1) the journalistic dramatic criti- 
 cism which maintains that dramatic art and morals 
 are inseparable; (2) the journalistic dramatic criti- 
 cism which maintains that a drama is a meritorious 
 drama in the degree that it impudently breaks away 
 from the accepted technical traditions of Augier, 
 Sardou, et al., and (3) the journalistic dramatic 
 criticism which maintains that a play is a good 
 play in proportion as the so-called "message" or 
 propaganda of that play is an opportune one. 
 
 Let us consider the theories and practices of 
 each of these representative schools in turn.
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 87 
 
 First, under the college professor school of criti- 
 cism the school of such as the Professors Brander 
 Matthews, Richard Burton, et al. the theory that 
 dramatic art and morals are inseparable. Under 
 this theory of the inevitable matrimony of art and 
 morals, we find what? The unintentional and 
 obviously preposterous contention that, since morals 
 are often geographical, dramatic art similarly must 
 often be geographical. Thus, since the college pro- 
 fessor school of criticism holds, from the American 
 point of view, that a justification of adultery is 
 under all circumstances immoral where the French 
 point of view holds the reverse, its criticism obey- 
 ing this localized attitude must necessarily hold 
 a play like Henry Bernstein's "L'Elevation," 
 which justifies adultery, a work of dramatic art 
 relatively and distinctly inferior to a play like 
 Edwin Milton Royle's "The Unwritten Law," which 
 condemns adultery. What is art to a Frenchman 
 is not always art to an American. This, the crit- 
 ical standard of the professor. Art, to the latter, 
 is a thing sectional like baseball, gondola push- 
 ing or throwing girl babies to the alligators. A 
 fine drama, like a fine piece of sculpture or a fine 
 piece of music or a fine painting, may not possess 
 universality. Thus, in this first theory, we have 
 the criticism of the Puritan, the chief exponent of
 
 88 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 which and the father of which in America was that 
 college professor on an unending Sabbatical year, 
 the late Mr. William Winter. 
 
 Second, the college professor school of criticism 
 which maintains that dramatic art and the play- 
 building technic of Augier and Sardou are insepar- 
 able. This, the school that elevates the stereotyped 
 drama of Henry Arthur Jones and Augustus 
 Thomas above the independently imagined drama 
 of Shaw, Andreyev, Hauptmann, and Galsworthy: 
 that apotheosizes "The Silver King" over "The Sil- 
 ver Box" and "The Model" over "Caesar and Cleo- 
 patra." To this critical school the inanimate archi- 
 tecture of a house is ever of more importance than 
 the animate persons who live in the house. It 
 gauges a man's condition by looking at the set-up 
 of his body, never by investigating carefully his 
 lungs, heart and bowels. It is, in a word, the the- 
 ory of pigeon-holes brought to literature, the busi- 
 ness of pasting old labels on new bottles, the blind 
 effort to make the modern davenport adhere to the 
 standards of the ancient horse-hair sofa. 
 
 And third, the college professor school of criti- 
 cism which maintains that dramatic art and valid- 
 ity and integrity of thematic idea are inseparable. 
 Here we engage a critical ethic that, stripping it 
 to the bone, would ask us believe that art and fact
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 89 
 
 are indissoluble, that no man may work out a 
 beautiful tapestry from a premise unsupported by 
 the Magna Charta, the law of gravity and the Mann 
 Act. At one swoop are thus devoured the Haupt- 
 manns of "Before Sunrise" (vide Professor Frank 
 Wadleigh Chandler, of the University of Cincin- 
 nati, opus I, pg. 36) and the Pineros of "The 
 Thunderbolt" (vide Professor Charlton Andrews 
 of the State Normal School, Valley City, N. D., 
 opus III, pg. 120). At one swoop are thus 
 chewed to artistic death the great artists who are 
 guilty of treating only "an incomplete section of 
 life" ' as opposed to those who, like Mr. Max 
 Marcin in "Cheating Cheaters," treat of the whole 
 majestic panorama, and the great dramatists who 
 are guilty of "weak and, though reasoned, unreason- 
 able logic" 2 as opposed to those who, like Mr. 
 George Hobart in "Experience," are as persist- 
 ently and desperately logical as a lesson in ele- 
 mentary addition. 
 
 So much, for the moment, for this first of our 
 two critical academies. Now for the second, the 
 school of newspaper criticism. 
 
 Where, under the initial classification, this jour- 
 nalistic school is in the mass found to maintain, 
 like the college professor school, that dramatic art 
 
 1 See the latter. 2 ee t h e former.
 
 90 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 and morals are inseparable, the reasons for the 
 attitude are here doubtless somewhat more extrin- 
 sic than intrinsic and so more readily comprehen- 
 sible. These reasons are not difficult of decipher- 
 ment. It is manifestly impossible for a generally 
 circulated newspaper to toy, however legitimately 
 from the viewpoint of art, with doctrines which are, 
 in the current phrase, 1 not compatible with the 
 policy of journals "intended for the home." It 
 is certainly an impossible business policy that 
 would permit the printing of a review extolling the 
 theme, viewpoint and treatment of, say, Wedekind's 
 "Earth Spirit" in the column alongside the big ad- 
 vertisements of Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, 
 Grand Rapids double beds, and felt slippers. 
 Where one newspaper like the estimable Boston 
 Transcript possesses the independence to dissociate 
 the morals of art from the morals of Fairy Soap 
 and Libby's Home Salad Dressing and permits 
 the devil to chase his tail as best he may there 
 are fifty who quake in their goloshes at the mere 
 thought of what N. W. Ayer and Co. would think 
 of a favorable review of the locally immoral but 
 universally very beautiful art of Dr. Arthur 
 Schnitzler. 
 
 1 Invented and assiduously expounded by the advertising de- 
 partment.
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 91 
 
 Coming to the second journalistic classification, 
 we encounter the school of newspaper criticism that 
 runs violently counter to the college professor in 
 hailing enthusiastically almost any play that 
 brazenly flouts the conventional technic and sub- 
 stitutes for it a technic that has the air of novelty 
 or a technic that is a liberal negation of tech- 
 nic. This journalistic school, composed largely 
 of recent college graduates eager to demonstrate 
 to their erstwhile professors their vigorous inde- 
 pendence of judgment, holds the Shaw technic 
 superior to the Pinero for no other reason than that 
 it breaks away from tradition; and the flash-back 
 technic of young Mr. Reizenstein's "On Trial" and 
 the flash-forward technic of young Mr. Guernon's 
 "Eyes of Youth" superior to the technic of De 
 Curel for the same reason. This critical group 
 confounds mere superficial novelty with artistic 
 progress and, though vastly more applaudable 
 than the campus critical group by virtue of its 
 greater openness and hospitality to innovation and 
 experiment, is yet found to lean so far and so gym- 
 nastically forward that it is continually touching 
 its nose to its toes. 
 
 In the third classification we have the journal- 
 istic school of criticism which maintains, often with 
 superlative gusto, that a play is a good play in the
 
 92 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 degree that the "message" of that play is oppor- 
 tune. In other words, that a work of art is bounded 
 this time not by geographical frontiers, but by the 
 frontiers of time. In short, that a play like the 
 Messrs. Shipman's and Hoffmann's "Friendly Ene- 
 mies," or Mr. Thomas' "The Copperhead," is by 
 virtue of the acute timeliness and hence strong 
 emotional syringing-power of its thesis a more 
 deserving work of art than some such play as 
 Brieux's "Les Hannetons" which, while a good 
 play, has yet nothing in it to stir such emotions as 
 have been brought by the trend' of current events 
 immediately into the foreground. 
 
 These, then, briefly and roughly, are the divisions 
 and sub-divisions of the bulk of dramatic criticism 
 as we of the American today observe it. Founded 
 on the college professor side, upon (1) an almost 
 complete lack of knowledge of the actual theatre 
 and the changes wrought therein in the last decade, 
 (2) a stern disinclination, confounded with poise 
 and dignity, to accept new things and new stand- 
 ards, and (3) a confusion of the stage with the 
 tabernacle pulpit and founded, on the journalistic 
 side, upon either (1) a desire to attract notice 
 through the eloquent championship of a drama- 
 turgic under dog or (2) a desire to earn salary in 
 peace and comfort by championing all the upper
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 93 
 
 dogs this native criticism reveals a bizarre coun- 
 tenance. It is, on the campus side, a mere very 
 pale reflex of the criticism of William Archer and, 
 on the journalistic, a mere equally pale reflex of 
 the criticism of Clement Scott. I doubt if I ex- 
 aggerate unduly when I say that neither of these 
 critical schools has in the last dozen years ex- 
 pressed a single thought, a single philosophy or a 
 single recommendation that has assisted an Ameri- 
 can producer or playwright, however eager and 
 willing, to improve upon his labours or to elevate 
 his standards. If our native theatre has in these 
 dozen years made progress and that it has made 
 substantial progress there is doubtless none unwill- 
 ing to grant that progress has been made, very 
 largely, in spite of the so-called constructive criti- 
 cism that has been visited upon it. These dozen 
 years have witnessed the birth of the Hopkinses 
 and the Stuart Walkers, the Washington Square 
 Players, the Theatre Guilds, the Provincetown 
 Players and other small theatre groups, in the 
 cradle of the newer and finer American stage. 
 And these births have come about in the face of 
 the dramatic and theatrical race suicide persist- 
 ently, if not intentionally, urged by the frowzy- 
 tradition celebrating campus critics on the one hand 
 and the surface-novelty celebrating journalistic
 
 94 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 critics on the other. What the American theatre 
 needs is not more intelligent producers it has a 
 goodly share of them but more intelligent critics. 
 In all the colleges and newspaper offices of the 
 land, there are today not more than two or three 
 men writing professional dramatic criticism who 
 can write as sound, as sober, and as searching criti- 
 cism as was expounded in the young producer 
 Hopkins' vest-pocket pamphlet named "How's 
 Your Second Act?" 
 
 24 
 
 Drama. A theatrical composition which treats 
 of a variable number of characters at that point in 
 their lives when they have all just bought them- 
 selves new clothes. 
 
 25 
 
 Roof Shows. That such roof music shows as 
 Mr. Ziegf eld's "Midnight Frolic" and Mr. Gest's 
 "Century Whirl" would be more advantageously 
 placed were they moved downstairs into the theatres 
 proper and that such theatre productions as, say, 
 Mr. Morosco's "Gappy Ricks" and Mr. Belasco's 
 "Daddies" would similarly be benefited were they 
 moved upstairs onto the roof, I begin to persuade
 
 ROOF SHOWS 95 
 
 myself. I speak, of course, not so much from the 
 purely critical point of view as from that of the 
 practical theatre: for from this latter point of view 
 the gain in such a shuffling of the deck is not diffi- 
 cult of deduction. 
 
 Let us consider, first, the roof music shows. 
 After reviewing a dozen or more of these ami- 
 able pastimes in the last few years, I have on each 
 occasion been brought to the conclusion that they 
 largely defeat themselves in the very business of 
 polite aphrodisiac wherewith they seek to cater. 
 The reason is simple enough. The success of the 
 music show stage the stage of the "Black Crooks" 
 of yesterday and the "Follies" of today is pre- 
 dicated on the polite sensual allure of that stage. 
 And the polite sensual allure of that stage is pre- 
 dicated, in turn, on the eternal allure of what seems 
 to be remote and unattainable. Or in another 
 phrase, what seems to be illusory and esoteric. 
 What we engage here is the same thing that the late 
 Charles Frohman accurately appreciated as ob- 
 taining in a measure in the dramatic theatre; the 
 same thing, indeed, that the equally astute Mr. 
 Belasco appreciates today. It was Frohman's in- 
 junction to his leading women players, as it is 
 Belasco's in this day, ever to keep themselves 
 aloof from the public eye and thus ever to make
 
 96 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 of themselves piquing and mysterious figures. 
 "Never allow yourself to be seen on the street 
 above all, never on Broadway. When you go out, 
 use a closed cab. Do not allow yourself to be 
 seen in public restaurants. But if you must dine 
 out, make it Sherry's. And never allow yourself 
 to be seen with an actor." That was, in part, the 
 shrewd Frohman's dictum. That, in essence, is 
 the dictum, in part, of the equally shrewd Belasco. 
 When one young leading woman one day disre- 
 garded the Frohman edict and hoofed Broadway, 
 Frohman promptly got rid of her. (She has never 
 since, incidentally, been successful.) When one 
 somewhat older leading woman one day disobeyed 
 the Belasco command and became fiancee to an ex- 
 actor, Belasco promptly released her from his 
 management. (And she, too, incidentally, has 
 never since been successful.) 
 
 The sensual horse-power of a music show is ob- 
 viously diminished in the degree that the girls are 
 brought into proximity with the gentlemen sitters. 
 In the downstairs theatres this is very clearly to 
 be observed in a comparison of the "Follies" and 
 its distant New Amsterdam stage with the Winter 
 Garden and its relatively intimate runway. In 
 the roof theatres, this horse-power is reduced to 
 what approaches a vanishing point by bringing
 
 ROOF SHOWS 97 
 
 the girls so close to the audience that barely a trace 
 of illusion remains. The girls who adorn the re- 
 mote stage of the Ambassadeurs in Paris get the 
 snooping American pew-holder by the ear; the same 
 girls, dancing familiarly at close range in the gar- 
 den between the acts, merely bring him to uncork 
 a blue chuckle. A stage of the Hofoperntheater * 
 of Vienna, commonly agreed by visiting connois- 
 seurs to hold the fairest and most fetching wenches 
 in the world, is farther removed from the audi- 
 ence than any other operetta stage in the world. . . . 
 Any music show, however poor, is a certain 
 success the male members of whose audience go 
 their several ways at the fall of the final curtain 
 individually wishing that they had the telephone 
 number of this or that particular girl. (I appre- 
 ciate that this isn't precisely the sort of criticism 
 deeply admired by the Drama League Iliodors but, 
 as every music show producer knows, it is true.) 
 And the hankering for this connection is plainly 
 more fully cultivated by the distance-lends-en- 
 chantment stratagem of the downstairs stage than 
 by the present misguided roof move of bringing 
 the pseudo-lovely one within such close range that 
 the Louisville and Allentown admirers may cruelly 
 
 1 1 of course speak of this theatre at such times as its stage 
 deserts opera for the lighter music play.
 
 98 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 assess the mirage in terms of devastating grease 
 paint, moles, gilt teeth, loud perfumery, stocking 
 seams and hooks and eyes. The most beautiful 
 woman's beauty diminishes in the degree that it 
 comes toward the male eye; the most beautiful 
 woman in the world, scanned nose to nose, betrays 
 previously unsuspected and discordant blemishes. 
 And "les illusions ne sont-elles pas la fortune 
 du cceur?" 
 
 But where this intimacy is highly damaging to 
 the music show, it is precisely the reverse in the 
 instance of drama. If the remote Hofoperntheater 
 stage has been an extraordinarily prosperous oper- 
 etta stage by very reason of its remoteness from the 
 stalls, the remote late New Theatre stage was an 
 extraordinarily unprosperous dramatic stage by 
 very same reason of its equal remoteness from the 
 stalls. And since the modern practical dramatic 
 theatre has increased its fortunes as it has more 
 and more increased the intimacy of its dramatic 
 stage and auditorium going back, in this, to the 
 auspicial principles of antecedent centuries one 
 cannot but believe that, still speaking practically, 
 this theatre might not augment its financial for- 
 tunes even more by developing the intimacy to an 
 even greater degree.
 
 ROOF SHOWS 99 
 
 When Mr. Belasco produces a dramatic piece 
 like "Daddies," it is assuredly reasonable to as- 
 sume that Mr. Belasco does so purely and simply 
 to make money. To believe that Mr. Belasco be- 
 lieves that a play like "Daddies" is an art-work 
 and that its presentation will enhance his standing 
 in the art world, is a gooseberry too sour to suck. 
 Therefore, since the question is primarily one of 
 boodle, it is an eminently safe assumption to be- 
 lieve that "Daddies," were it presented on a roof, 
 would prove not only a much more amusing show 
 than it proves to be downstairs, but that, hence, by 
 way of predicate, it would make much more money 
 than it makes downstairs. And why? Firstly, 
 because it would on the roof still appeal to all the 
 same sentimentalists who admire it in the more 
 austere nether confines of Thespis and, secondly, 
 because it would on the roof further appeal to all 
 those who have no relish for its diabetic pollyan- 
 naism as it is currently presented. And why 
 again? Because while those persons who pres- 
 ently admire it downstairs would admire it equally 
 upstairs, those persons who presently do not admire 
 it downstairs would find it a great diversion up- 
 stairs where following the Ziegfeld and Gest roof 
 idea they might throw balls at the actors, ring
 
 100 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 bells when the dialogue became too swashy, and 
 squirt siphons at the diabolically cute stage chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Aside from the undeniable facts that such plays 
 as "Daddies" and there are regularly dozens of 
 them along Broadway would profit more with 
 roof audiences who were somewhat squiffed than 
 with the cold sober downstairs shoppers, would 
 make a better impression, and would hence be 
 doubly successful, these plays were they moved 
 up to the roofs and made the subject of character- 
 istic roof divertissement would by this change in 
 projection draw to them the large number of per- 
 sons who cannot stomach their idiotic uplifterei in 
 its current condition of presentation. A man who 
 presently couldn't be drawn in to see a piece like 
 "Daddies" with a halter would be delighted to 
 see it on the New Amsterdam or Century roof 
 where, when Mr. John Cope, cetat fifty-one, comes 
 out in the role of a college boy, he might stop eat- 
 ing his chop suey long enough to throw a cane 
 ring over Mr. Cope's ear or where, when Mr. Bruce 
 McRae as a great novelist observes that he must 
 hurry up work on the last chapters of his serial 
 since otherwise George Horace Lorimer will have 
 to hold up the presses of the Saturday Evening Post, 
 he might, in the playwright's absence, in-curve one
 
 ROOF SHOWS 101 
 
 of the cotton balls against the M. McRae's aft- 
 pant. 
 
 Look at the situation honestly, without hypocrisy, 
 and tell me if eight out of every ten of the so- 
 called straight plays annually uncovered along 
 Broadway might not thus be made much more en- 
 joyable and profitable. I do not refer, plainly 
 enough, to the respectable play that every once in 
 a while contrives to show its head above the Rialto 
 slopjar, but to the omnipresent exhibition of purely 
 commercial showshop accent. Thus, such a play 
 as "Just Around the Corner" that lasts a scant 
 week in the dramatic rathskeller and induces a 
 mental morbus might upstairs prove a gay diver- 
 sion and last many months. For here was excel- 
 lent roof material gone to waste. Picture the 
 pleasure that the theatregoing public might gain 
 by ringing the table gongs on such venerable Ho- 
 bart mots as the best book to be had in the small 
 town being a mileage book back to New York, al- 
 luding to the sheriff as Mr. Marshall and, upon one 
 character's mistaking Pompeii for a man, causing 
 another to observe that he died of an eruption! 
 Picture the immense enjoyment to be procured from 
 using the little wooden hammers on such goatee'd 
 hokums as the man kissing the wrong girl in the 
 dark, the repentant youth from the Reformatory
 
 102 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 upon whom suspicion of robbing the safe is made 
 cruelly to rest, and the climacteric nosing out of 
 the rich villain by the poor pure young heroine! 
 True enough, one would wear out one's right arm, 
 but think of the fun. 
 
 Take other downstairs plays. Even a play of 
 infinitely better grade, such as "Moliere," would 
 be improved by the change. For in the instance 
 of a play of this better kidney the performance on 
 the floor in the very midst of the roof audience 
 would relieve the present performance of much of 
 its hurtful chill. The effect, on the intimate roof 
 floor, would be to bring the audience out of its 
 present twentieth century mood and, by the curious 
 familistere potency of theatricalism, make it in 
 spirit part of the court about the fourteenth Louis. 
 There would be no loss of respect for the text, 
 but a subconsciously provoked gain in respect. 
 This trick, in small measure, was utilized by Gran- 
 ville Barker in his staging of the induction to 
 Shaw's "Fanny's First Play." Reinhardt, on a 
 large scale, executed the same plan with great 
 success in his Kammerspielhaus when, on one 
 occasion seven years ago, by carrying the scenic 
 decorations and lighting out into the auditorium he 
 literally contrived to lift his audiences bodily over 
 into the milieu of the dramatic characters. In
 
 ROOF SHOWS 103 
 
 Japan, of course, the scheme is familiar. And 
 William A. Brady, in this country, tried out the 
 idea very happily in the last act of "Pretty Peggy" 
 when, by filling a portion of the orchestra chairs 
 with supers in costume, he converted the balance 
 of the audience into actors in the scene. 
 
 Some years ago, I read in an Italian periodical 
 devoted to the stage a somewhat analogous sugges- 
 tion as to vaudeville. The critic here contended 
 that the trouble with vaudeville was that the vaude- 
 ville audience was ever short-sightedly regarded 
 as of the same complexion as the dramatic audi- 
 ence, whereas it must be plain even to the most 
 eminent Drama Leaguer that the two audiences are 
 of as diverse species as jackass and owl. The 
 Italian critic maintained, therefore, that since 
 vaudeville audiences are very largely of a piece 
 with the kind of yokels who, in our country, merrily 
 spend their holidays in the so-called Steeplechase 
 Parks getting deathly sick on roller coasters, frac- 
 turing their ribs in revolving barrels and catching 
 pneumonia by standing agape in a mechanically 
 operated blast of wind that blows hats off and skirts 
 up that since this is the case, vaudeville audiences 
 should be handled in a similar vein by the vaude- 
 ville impresarios. To make vaudeville doubly en- 
 joyable to these persons, argued the critic, the
 
 104 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 chairs in a vaudeville dive should be so built that 
 they would drolly collapse when sat upon, that the 
 hat holders under the seats should impart electric 
 shocks, that the ventilators under the chairs should 
 at unexpected intervals squirt streams of water into 
 the faces of the sitters, and so on. 
 
 But to return to the roof music shows. That 
 these shows would be measurably better placed in 
 the downstairs theatres must be apparent to any- 
 one who has sat critically before them. One goes 
 to a music show, obviously enough, not to hear, as 
 in the case of a dramatic piece, but to see. There- 
 fore, where in the potential instance of a roof- 
 presented dramatic piece like, let us say, "The 
 Burgomaster of Belgium," it would not matter 
 much whether one saw the actors or not so long 
 as one could hear what they were up to, in the in- 
 stance of one of the current roof -presented music 
 shows it quite as certainly does matter. That 
 these music shows would be better placed in a 
 downstairs theatre where one's view of Lillian 
 Lorraine was not periodically cut off by the migra- 
 tory hinter anatomy of a fat Swiss waiter and one's 
 pleasurable appraisal of Mollie King every other 
 minute interrupted by the moving across the vision 
 of the ambulatory person of a Roumanian bus boy, 
 no one can well contradict. When as I have
 
 ROOF SHOWS 105 
 
 often written I am courteously invited by the 
 management of a roof music show to inspect Mar- 
 tha Mansfield or Rosie Quinn and then, just as the 
 lovely virgin shoots out onto the floor, my eye 
 meets instead with the enormous posterior of a 
 roving gargon, I am intelligibly provoked. 
 
 When I visit a roof show and I presume that 
 I am not much different from other men I visit 
 it primarily not to hear the so-called music, nor 
 listen to such accompanying rhymes as "A sweet 
 French grisett-a, whose name it is Yetta," nor en- 
 visage tableaux disclosing a scowling chorus man 
 in a red undershirt and placarded "The Spirit of 
 Anarchy," but merely and purely, plainly and sim- 
 ply, to look over the girls. And when my eye is 
 caressed by a creature sufficiently fetching to take 
 my thoughts for the moment off such of my habitual 
 ruminations as the occulsion of the aqueduct of 
 Sylvius in relation to hydrocephalus, or the ques- 
 tion of orokinase and ptyalin in the saliva of a 
 horse, I don't wish to be interrupted. It is dis- 
 tressing to go to a roof with the notion of getting 
 the little Quinn and her chemise dance to rid the 
 tired mind of speculations on the phenolsulphone- 
 phthalein test and its application to surgical dis- 
 eases of the kidneys, or with the intention of get- 
 ting the Mile. King's pretty legs to make one agree-
 
 106 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 ably forget for the nonce such workaday problems 
 as the genetic study of plant height in phase- 
 olus vulgaris, to say nothing of the notion of sum- 
 mability for the limit of a function of a contin- 
 uous variable, and then find that at the Miss King's 
 very first knee expose or the Miss Quinn's second 
 wiggle a nomadic chow main butler, cigar vivan- 
 diere or winepail porter is shutting the gentle houri 
 from view. 
 
 The august Professor Richard Burton may rather 
 look at Holbrook Blinn than at Marilynn Miller, 
 but I call upon such of my somewhat softer 
 arteried friends as the Professors William Lyon 
 Phelps and Archibald Henderson to lift their right 
 hands to the ceiling, smack the Book, face the jury, 
 and solemnly on their sacred words of honour 
 swear that they would do likewise. 
 
 26 
 
 Avery Hopwood. In the concoction of suavely 
 risque farce, Avery Hopwood usually stands head 
 and shoulders above his perspiring American ri- 
 vals for the simple reason that while any number 
 of the latter probably know just as much about 
 writing risque farce as he does, there isn't one 
 who knows, as he knows, how to write risque Eng-
 
 AVERY HOPWOOD 107 
 
 lish. There are probably a dozen American farce 
 writers who can evolve better ideas for their farces 
 than Hopwood is able to evolve for his; and there 
 are many who are considerably more fertile in 
 devising original and more comically impudent 
 characters and situations. Yet not one of them 
 can write a farce half so good as Hopwood, since 
 not one of them understands his native language, 
 and the acrobatics of that language, so well as Hop- 
 wood. 
 
 It is this virtue that Hopwood's even most 
 friendly critics habitually overlook. To praise 
 Hopwood, as he is generally praised, for his inven- 
 tion in the way of politely risque situation, is to 
 praise him very largely for a talent that is not espe- 
 cially his, since more than one such excellent situ- 
 ation has been bodily appropriated by him from the 
 work of this and that European writer. The 
 amusing Hopwood calendar situation in "Sadie 
 Love," for example, is a literal borrowing of the 
 same amusing situation from Sacha Guitry's farce, 
 "La Prise de Berg-op-Zoom." And the Hopwood 
 bed-moving situation in "Fair and Warmer" is a 
 brother to much the same situation in Jean Mar- 
 tet's farce "Les Ingrats," as the servant situation 
 in "Our Little Wife" is to the servant situation in 
 Rip's and Bousquet's "L'Habit d'un Laquais."
 
 108 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Thus, also, to praise Hopwood, as he is generally 
 praised, for the originality of his farcical themes 
 is equally to miss the mark. The soul swapping, 
 astral body conceit of his poorest farce, "Double 
 Exposure," for example, was already long familiar 
 in the German von Scholz's farce, "Exchanged 
 Souls." But the general failure to praise Hop- 
 wood for his high cunning in the writing of naughty 
 English, for his happy knack of selecting precisely 
 the proper word for precisely the improper place, 
 is to miss the mark even more widely. For it is in 
 this gymnastic that Hopwood excels every other 
 American writing for the farce stage and not only 
 every other American, but, as I have hereinbefore 
 pointed out, a number of the talented Frenchmen 
 as well. 
 
 Hopwood knows how to write this risque English 
 because, first, he knows how to write English. Un- 
 like his Broadway farce-making competitors, he ap- 
 preciates that good farce is not to be manufactured 
 by walking the floor like a caged hyena and shoot- 
 ing dictation at a stenographer out of the edge of 
 the mouth. He understands that writing is writing, 
 and not merely the recording of extemporaneous 
 conversation. He knows that it is as absurd to sup- 
 pose that, since a play is to be spoken by actors, the 
 spoken word of the actors is best to be made to seem
 
 AVERY HOPWOOD 109 
 
 natural through the author's experimental speak- 
 ing instead of writing that word, as it would be to 
 suppose that since a waltz is to be danced by 
 dancers, the leg-work of the dancers is best to 
 be made to seem graceful through the composer's 
 experimental dancing instead of writing that waltz. 
 (That the Mozarts of modern farce, de Gaillavet 
 and de Flers, are an exception in this is a contradic- 
 tion not especially more pertinent than the circum- 
 stance that Mozart improvised a strict fugue on the 
 clavichord at fourteen is a contradiction of the fact 
 that fugues are made and not born.) In almost 
 every word that he writes, Hopwood's discrim- 
 ination and care are apparent. Like Langdon 
 Mitchell, he seeks his audience's laughter less 
 through an intricate joking sentence than through 
 a single joking adjective. As Mitchell, in his 
 comedy "The New York Idea," brews a good round 
 chuckle merely by dropping the adjective "mis- 
 cellaneous" into an apt place, so Hopwood in some 
 one of his farces like "Sadie Love," say, turns the 
 same trick by dropping the little adjective "first" 
 into an equally apt place. And where one of the 
 sweating Broadway farce heavers like Mr. Mark 
 Swan, for instance, works tooth and nail to get a 
 laugh by laboriously combining a joke from the 
 Birmingham Age-Herald with the spectacle of a fat
 
 110 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 actress in green pajamas, Hopwood contrives to get 
 a tripled laugh by the much simpler expedient of 
 selecting carefully a single peppery, appropriate 
 verb. 
 
 However greatly one of his farces may happen 
 to vary from the standard he has set for himself 
 personally, I believe his "Our Little Wife" to be 
 his best work there is little Hopwood writes that I 
 do not experience a pleasure in contemplating. 
 Like Victor Herbert, he never does anything with- 
 out its touch of quality. There is always a cosmo- 
 politan twinkle of eye, a gay phrase, an amusing 
 if, in truth, entirely superficial hitting on this 
 or that human idiosyncrasy. Taking his farce writ- 
 ing by and large, I suppose he intrinsically re- 
 sembles the young Guitry more than he resembles 
 any other Continental. Like Guitry, his comment 
 on life is most frequently negligible; and like 
 Guitry, his satiric sense, if he has such a sense, 
 remains largely invisible; but like Guitry, too, he 
 can take a sheet of gay tissue paper and with a 
 fancy adroitness twist it into an exceptionally 
 jocund foolscap. Born in Ohio, I believe, and 
 graduated from the college at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 
 he is paradoxically as Parisian in his writing as this 
 Guitry. And he is the only man writing risque
 
 THE POTBOILERMAKERS 111 
 
 farce in America whose work has any finish, any 
 style, or any metropolitan flavour. 
 
 27 
 
 The Potboilermakers. In the world of modern 
 dramaturgy, the English hack takes categorical pre- 
 cedence over the hacks of Europe and America in 
 the enterprise of writing bad plays as dully as is 
 by human effort possible. The American hack at 
 his worst is always a cut or two above the English 
 hack at his worst: however empty his play there 
 is generally a touch of sharp Americanism, a dash 
 of vulgar honesty, that catches the ear. And the 
 French hack or German hack, the Italian or the 
 Austrian, contributes to his dismal masterpiece at 
 least a flash of phrase or dim suggestion of quasi- 
 philosophy. But the English hack reaches heights 
 of virtuosity in stenciled balderdash unsealed by his 
 drivelling contemporaries. This is true not only 
 in the instance of dramatic writing, but in the other 
 forms of literature; for the English hack novels 
 of such as the immensely popular Nat Gould are 
 as far inferior to the American hack novels of such 
 as the equally popular Harold Bell Wright, or to 
 the French hack novels of such as the equally
 
 112 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 popular Henri Bordeaux, or to the German hack 
 novels of such as the once almost equally popular 
 Heinz Tovote, as the English hack plays of such as 
 Horace Annesley Vachell are triumphantly inferior 
 on all counts to the American hack plays of such as 
 William Hurlbut, or the French hack plays of such 
 as Lucien Gleize, or the German hack plays of such 
 as Rudolf Holzer, or the Austro-Hungarian hack 
 plays of such as Vajda Szinhaz, or the Danish hack 
 plays of such as Carl Gjellerup, or the Italian hack 
 plays of 
 
 But no need to continue the tedious catalogue. 
 Nothing in all the modern writing for the stage at- 
 tains to the dull splendour of an Englishman writ- 
 ing at his dullest. At his worst the Englishman is 
 as difficult of matching as at his best. Search the 
 records of current theatrical writing the world over 
 and one will be at pains to discover equals in the 
 art of sheer inanity for such British masters of 
 bavardage and twattle as Jennings, Porter, 
 Devereux, Worrall, Morton, Hemmerde, Vansittart, 
 Nielson, Howard, Brandon, Lonsdale, Dunn, 
 Coleby, Martindale, Pleydell, Fenn, Thurston, 
 Terry, Raleigh, Hodges, Percival, Harwood, 
 Vernon, Owen, Parry, Stayton, Frith, Gibson, 
 Hamilton, Jeans, Lion, Merivale, Chilton, Ellis, 
 Carr, Denny, Fernald. . . .
 
 THEPOTBOILERMAKERS 113 
 This last, though American born, is by personal 
 vote, long residence, activity, taste and training, as 
 English as a mutton chop or tight shirt, and a typical 
 example of the contemporaneous English rubber- 
 stamp professor. Twenty years ago, this Mr. 
 Chester Bailey Fernald, then living in the land of 
 his birth, wrote a first-rate short story and a second- 
 rate, though rather diverting, one-act play. But 
 in the nineteen years elapsed he has composed not so 
 much as a single phrase touched with grace or 
 originality, with resonance or wit, with melody or 
 observation or philosophy. The plays he has 
 written, from "The Moonlight Blossom" to "The 
 Married Woman," from "98-9" to "The Day Be- 
 fore the Day," from "The Pursuit of Pamela" to his 
 most recent "Three for Diana" out of "The Third 
 Marriage" of Sabatino Lopez, are in each instance 
 illuminatingly representative of British hackdom on 
 the flying trapeze. 
 
 I do not mean to single out Fernald as the worst 
 of this sour school, or even the second worst. He 
 is by no means the worst. But he combines in him- 
 self so many of the deficiencies and absent qualities 
 of the present-day British drama drudge that, as 
 well as any other, he may be selected by way of 
 horrible example. It is a characteristic of Fernald, 
 as of his colleagues in the arts of unimaginative
 
 114 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 writing, that he works almost entirely in terms of 
 the platitudes, treadmills, stock phraseology and 
 stale literary baggage of the stage. And this habit 
 is so deeply ingrained that it operates even when 
 he gives himself over to the transposing of a play 
 manuscript from one language into another, just as 
 it operates in like situation in the instance of such 
 of his fellow doctors of stencil as Fagan, Hicks, 
 Farquarson Sharp, Bithell, et al. In example 
 whereof, I append a few examples from the adapta- 
 tion by Fernald of the aforementioned Italian "II 
 Terzo Marito" examples of the substitution of so 
 many coccygine vaudeville-sketch cackles for what 
 might, by the simple and obvious means of direct 
 translation, have been retained as somewhat less 
 banal and moth-eaten stuff: 
 
 1. "The mere sight of you makes me grow younger. 
 It's like a breath of the sea air!" 
 
 2. "You are free; / am free! What is the use of hav- 
 ing freedom if one cannot make happiness out of 
 it? Marry me and the world will be just big 
 enough to hold our happiness!" 
 
 3. "I have (dropping her eyes) something to tell you. 
 When you have heard me, probably you will want 
 to reconsider your proposal." 
 
 4. "I decided to talk the matter over with her once 
 again. She had insisted that we should not refer 
 to it again."
 
 THE POTBOILERMAKERS 115 
 
 5. "But under that moon, under those silent stars, with 
 the music of the waves beneath us. . . ." 
 
 6. "How she has changed in a year! She was a child 
 then; now she is a woman!" 
 
 7. "I wrote you not to come until now because I 
 wanted to give you a chance to think. I wanted 
 you to be prepared for (pause) what we shall have 
 to say to each other." 
 
 8. "What do you know of life? Nothing! There is 
 a great, beautiful world still to be opened to you!" 
 
 9. "You have had no experience. You are a beautiful 
 unwritten page." 
 
 10. "When I looked into your eyes I can see your eyes 
 every night whenever I close my own in the dark 
 the first time I looked into them and every time since 
 something has happened in my heart." 
 
 11. "If I talk lightly about the most serious things in 
 the world, it does not mean that I am frivolous. I 
 was never so serious in my life. And you are not 
 going to tell me (gulping) that there is another?" 
 
 12. "If you send me off, I shall never get over it as 
 long as I live!" 
 
 13. "My own feelings were a trifle hurt, at first; but 
 when you explained, I saw that your intentions were 
 as kindly as they always are." 
 
 14. "And what, pray, do you know about me?" 
 
 Add to these sentimentalized stencils the injec- 
 tion of an alien dose of morals, the joke about the 
 practise of exchanging duplicate wedding presents, 
 the joke about the climate of England, the joke
 
 116 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 about married persons fighting with each other, and 
 the joke about woman's habit of changing her mind, 
 and one achieves a fair idea of the Fernald opera- 
 tions in adaptation. I have seldom laid eyes on 
 a sadder job. The Italian original, true enough, 
 is in the most liberal accounting a third-rate effort, 
 but Fernald has dexterously plunged it thirty pegs 
 farther down the scale. He has changed the in- 
 calescent Italian lover into a cool cockney 
 cucumber; he has turned the saucy widow into a 
 dour Prince of Wales's Theatre clothes-horse; he 
 has removed the gin from the cocktail in Acts III 
 and IV; he has written over the Italian phraseology 
 into the phraseology of the commonplace London 
 curtain-raiser. In the original, a kind of high- 
 comedy matrimonial "Baby Mine" though in no 
 sense and in no degree so adroit or humorous a 
 work as Miss Mayo's the play is revealed in this 
 typical British hack adaptation as a windmill turn- 
 ing furiously in a dead calm. 
 
 28 
 
 The Drama of Ideas. The theatre, for all the 
 whoops and hopes of its academic whifflers, is 
 actually the last place in the world for the exposi- 
 tion of ideas. The so-called drama of ideas using
 
 THE DRAMA OF IDEAS 117 
 the word idea in its strictest sense is as much an 
 anomaly as California Rhine wine. Imagine even 
 the tremendous genius of a Shakespeare deducing 
 from the influence of the conception of evolution on 
 philosophy a sober play that wouldn't put its 
 audience to sleep. Imagine Hauptmann a Newton, 
 de Curel a Haeckel, Dunsany a Thomas Hobbs 
 and then imagine sitting through their dramatic 
 stage conclusions. The drama of ideas must be 
 in fact, is merely a drama of inklings. It must 
 be, by its intrinsic soul, even in its highest forms, 
 less a substantial projector of such ideas as Vernon 
 Wollaston's on the variation of species, Lange's on 
 the emotions, Durkheim's on the division of labour 
 or Tarde's on anti-naturalism than an amiable 
 juggler of such easy speculations and second-hand 
 quasi-philosophies as Andreyev's on the burden of 
 religion, as Dunsany's on fate, as Brieux's on 
 heredity and Galsworthy's on social economics. 
 One genuine idea, expounded soberly and soundly 
 without the hocus-pocus of stage tinsels, would 
 suffice to crowd the nearest blind pig to the doors 
 fifteen minutes after the rise of the first curtain.
 
 118 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 29 
 
 Hokum. Probably nowhere else do the popular 
 playmakers of Broadway reveal their imaginative 
 shortcomings so clearly as in the employment of 
 what is known colloquially as hokum. In particu- 
 lar, comedy hokum. This species of hokum, or 
 positively provocative comic antic, these play- 
 makers scarcely ever embellish, scarcely ever 
 elaborate, scarcely ever trick out in fresh gauds or 
 overhaul. Year in and year out, and (though still 
 largely sure-fire) become drably stereotyped and 
 threadbare, this hokum of tripping over the door- 
 mat, throwing an imaginary object into the wings 
 and having the stagehand thereupon strike a gong, 
 and the like, is promulgated in all the glory of its 
 venerable whiskers. The rubber-stamp hokum of 
 the guignol who gets his hand stuck in the decanter, 
 who under the guise of camaraderie gives his com- 
 panion a staggering whack across the shoulder 
 blades, who emphasizing a point stamps on his 
 confrere's toe, who bends himself in at the middle 
 as if anticipating a boot from the rear, who peeking 
 into a window painted on the back-drop winks over 
 his shoulder at the audience as if he were spectator 
 of saucy didoes transpiring within these play- 
 makers provide season after season. And yet more
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 119 
 
 novel hokum, and doubtless by virtue of its com- 
 parative freshness more telling hokum, were readily 
 improvised. For example, the droll mule who 
 moves aside his finger-bowl and dips his fingers 
 grandly in the demi-tasse. For example, the gabby 
 Polonius who, just as he has worked up to full 
 eloquence, drops his pince-nez in the soup. For 
 example, the vengeful hanswurst who very, very 
 slowly lifts up his foot in order to bring it down 
 hard on his neighbour's great toe, suddenly with a 
 seraphic grin lets it fly, and, while still grinning, 
 feels it descend with an awful crack on his own. 
 For example, the vir borealis who lifts the telephone 
 receiver off the hook and, without calling a number, 
 enters forthwith into the midst of a very intimate 
 conversation. . . . 
 
 30 
 
 The Star System. Some fifteen years ago and 
 still in the critical egg, it was one of the major di- 
 versions of my almost ceaseless indignation regu- 
 larly to deride and pummel the so-called star system 
 of the American stage. Against this system and its 
 personages I was wont to discharge profoundly 
 manufactured dialectic and abuse, supported by 
 what then seemed to me to be exceedingly san- 
 guinary epigrams, deadly mots and bomb-like
 
 120 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 similes and metaphors. Let a physiologically 
 choice young woman, newly graduated to stage 
 eminence from some managerial love sofa, show 
 herself in anything more than the merest eight-point 
 advertisement, and promptly I had at her with some 
 such very ironical definition as "Star: A heavenly 
 body." And let a Figaro somewhat less capable 
 than Forbes-Robertson or Moissi, but possessed of 
 two-inch eyelashes, be elevated overnight by some 
 astute impresario from the part of the butler to any- 
 thing more important than friend to Bassanio, and 
 I was upon the poor fellow with something like "A 
 proficient actor is one who is successful in com- 
 pletely immersing his own personality in the role 
 he is playing; a star actor, one who is successful in 
 completely immersing the role he is playing in his 
 own personality." And having thus performed 
 upon these poachers and depredators, I would 
 chuckle myself to sleep and arise early the next 
 morning to detect the death rattles and watch the 
 star system roll over, gasp, and die. But each 
 morning, much to my chagrin and utter incompre- 
 hension, the impersuasible stars and their system 
 for all my seemingly unsurmountable objections 
 appeared to get stronger and rosier. For the more 
 assiduously and sarcastically I would lay to the 
 night before with cutlass, machine gun, cup custard,
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 121 
 
 broom handle, dynamite, axe, old slipper, field 
 pieces and pea-blower, the more would I hop out at 
 suncrack to view the enormous stacks of corpses and 
 be dumfounded to hear only a peaceful, rhythmic, 
 and apparently very comfortable snoring. 
 
 But I was young then, and not disheartened. 
 For two three years, I kept at the job, hurling 
 soft puddings and bricks, fashioning biting pro- 
 nunciamentos, installing secret wireless stations on 
 the roof, brewing devastating repartees, and shoot- 
 ing off thousands of lethal things like "Why these 
 extravagant hymns to Madame Sarah Bernhardt be- 
 cause she possesses the courage to appear on the 
 stage with a wooden leg? A leg is approximately 
 but a one-sixth part of the human body. There are 
 therefore any number of star actresses amongst us 
 who, in the matter of woodenness, have the Madame 
 beaten six to one." And not only did the stars 
 themselves daily come in for my mortal comments 
 as for example, "An actor is one who cannot act; 
 a star actor, one whose exceptional virtuosity in 
 this direction has brought him recognition from a 
 manager" but also the audiences who, against my 
 expressed wish, seemed to rush to see the stars in 
 such numbers that I was compelled to take a side- 
 street to get to my home. Of the women who went 
 to make up these audiences I would caustically ob-
 
 122 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 serve that they fell into two classes: those who 
 thought that James K. Hackett was too grand for 
 words, and those who thought that James K. Hackett 
 would be too grand for words if he got his hair 
 cut. And of the masculine element, that the three 
 greatest star comedians in America were (1) Dan 
 Daly; (2) Thomas Q. Seabrooke; and (3) the man 
 who could laugh at Frank Daniels. And of the 
 programs handed to these audiences (nothing was 
 out of the range of my pig-balloon), that they were 
 devices subtly employed by theatrical managers to 
 persuade the audience to believe that the play it 
 was about to see was going to be acted or, again, 
 that they were pamphlets circulated by the producer 
 to assure the audience that the theatre was dis- 
 infected of germs with C N Disinfectant and the 
 play disinfected of drama with actors. 
 
 To reinforce this epigrammatic front line, I 
 would then hustle up from the rear a heavy 
 artillery of smoking similitudes and analogies, 
 among them such cartouches as the likening of this 
 star actress' carriage to a buckboard and that star 
 actor's vehement articulation of grief to a long train 
 of freight cars in the act of unbuckling. But the 
 more I performed, the longer grew the lines at the 
 box-offices of the houses wherein the stars were 
 playing and the more the newspapers gave over
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 123 
 their pages to the public's insistent demand for 
 interviews in which the star actresses explained how 
 difficult it was for inexperienced and innocent 
 women like themselves to act sophisticated roles of 
 the Camille and Zaza type and how (business of 
 shuddering) it was therefore necessary for them to 
 take up with one of these creatures in order closely 
 to watch and study her. And so great presently 
 became the popularity of the heterogeneous stars 
 and the public's relish for them that it was a rare 
 Sunday newspaper that gave one-tenth the space to 
 the Philippine muddle and the Nan Patterson case 
 that it devoted to this star's confession that she was 
 originally a well-known society girl of Roanoke, 
 Va., or to that star's opinion that women should not 
 smoke in public. Photographs of star actresses' 
 Chinese hounds and star actors' "country homes" at 
 Bay Shore, Long Island, edged the pictures of 
 James R. Keene's Sysonby, Adlai E. Stevenson's 
 birthplace and the hotel clerk who had discovered 
 that Maxim Gorky and the lady were not married, 
 off the first page and interviews in which star 
 actresses told how much moral good was being done 
 by the play in which they were acting crowded 
 Delmas' remarks back opposite the Siegel-Cooper 
 advertisement. Thus, of an already lusty seed, did 
 the star system of the popular theatre for all the
 
 124 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 hogsheads of vinegar I poured upon it blossom 
 to its present sweeping proportions. And why? 
 Very simply, because in spite of such amiable 
 clowns as the Nathans of a decade and a half ago 
 and the Hamiltons of the present day, this star 
 system is not the pox claimed for it, but actually 
 a very valuable, a very sound, and very prophylac- 
 tic institution. 
 
 The steadily increasing success of the star system 
 is a tribute to the superior critical sagacity which 
 the mob, as opposed to the so-called cultivated 
 minority, on very rare occasions evinces. It was 
 the American mob that got the proper measure of 
 Maeterlinck while the minority was still extolling 
 him as a second Shakespeare. It was this same 
 mob, that, on another level, detected the photo- 
 graphic virtues in Charles Hoyt and George Ade and 
 George Cohan while the minority saw in the first 
 only a cheap farce writer, in the second only a 
 slangy buffoon and in the third only a very cocky 
 young man who was given to singing about the 
 American flag through his nose. And it was this 
 mob again, and not the minority, that first soundly 
 appraised at their correct values such diverse 
 native artists as Mark Twain and Montague Glass. 
 The theatre mob of Washington, in the very teeth 
 of its critical minority, first detected the virtues in
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 125 
 
 Barrie's "Peter Pan." The theatre mob of Phila- 
 delphia, in the teeth of its critical minority, first 
 detected the vitues in Eleanor Gates' "Poor Little 
 Rich Girl." The theatre mob of New York, in the 
 teeth of its critical minority, measured accurately 
 the virtues of Sheldon's admirable dramatization 
 of Sudermann's "Song of Songs." It sometimes 
 happens! And one of these sometimes is vouch- 
 safed us in the mob's acute realization that, far 
 from being a damaging vice, the star system has 
 been one of the most trenchant forces working 
 toward the prosperity of a better American, or 
 American-presented, drama and a more elevated 
 American cabotinage. 
 
 Let us consider the situation. Not theoretically, 
 but in terms of available fact. In the first place, 
 then, is the star system, even as we at present rather 
 absurdly have it, inimical to the sound presentation 
 of good drama? I reply to the question by ask- 
 ing another. Are such plays as Galsworthy's 
 "Justice" and "Silver Box," for instance, in any 
 way deleted of artistic force by the starring in them 
 even of such variable actors as the Barrymores, 
 frere et soeur? Are these dramas not actually in- 
 vested with a greater artistic force by this mana- 
 gerial emphasis of the leading roles? (When the 
 dramatist places his emphasis upon a certain role
 
 126 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 as he does four times in five why should it be 
 held an artistic error for the dramatist's producer 
 to do likewise?) Is the same author's "Strife," 
 presented (as it has been) without the stress of 
 stars, relatively more forceful or more soundly 
 composed and presented? And are not stars in 
 such instances of an actual tonic advantage, since 
 they frequently attract to worthwhile drama many 
 susceptible persons who might otherwise remain 
 away? 
 
 Again, consider the effect of the star system upon 
 acting. Germany, Austria and, in considerable 
 measure, France know no such greatly and ap- 
 parently ridiculously elaborated starring system 
 as the American. As a consequence, for all one 
 reads to the contrary in the learned books on the 
 drama written by the two-building-college pro- 
 fessors of Mechanical Engineering and Botany, the 
 general average of the acting in the American 
 theatre is at present of a quality quite as good as, 
 if not superior to, that on any of the stages named. 
 In the entire theatre of Germany and Austria in 
 the year of the late war's outbreak there were a 
 number of actors like Schroth, Albert Heine, 
 Moissi, Grube, Lindemann and Kayssler of a vivid 
 and exceptional talent; but the absence of an en- 
 couraging and inspiriting star system had left the
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 127 
 
 rank and file in a sorry state of under-development. 
 Moissi is a very much better tragedian and char- 
 acter actor than our star system has developed and 
 Schroth a better performer of the average straight 
 role, but for every other Germano-Austrian actor 
 of any authentic grade it is not difficult to name 
 at least two and in some cases perhaps as many 
 as three American or naturalized American or 
 Anglo-American actors. Similarly, while the 
 French actor like Guitry fils, say, is of course a 
 vastly more proficient farceur than the American, 
 he is on the whole inferior to the latter in the 
 other instances of dramatic interpretation. For 
 one Max Dearly the American stage can boast three 
 or four equally good, if not better, low comedians. 
 For one Guitry pere, the American stage gives you 
 a twofold correlative talent. Try, for example, 
 relatively to match French actor for American star 
 in the instances of Arnold Daly, John Drew, 
 William Faversham, Walter Hampden, David 
 Warfield, Lew Fields, Leo Ditrichstein, Fritz 
 Leiber. . . . 
 
 Coming to the women, the case is even more 
 illuminating. And it is not necessary to support 
 one's contention with the names of the American 
 women whose right to stardom has been or is 
 uncontested. Take the cases of those whose
 
 128 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 status has not been, is not, so fully agreed upon. 
 And on this plane search Germany or Austria or 
 France for an actress capable of giving a better, 
 sounder and more artistically telling performance 
 than such as-if-too-suddenly manufactured and 
 professorially scoffed at stars as the Fenwick of 
 "The Song of Songs," the Ulrich of "Tiger Rose," 
 the Starr of "The Easiest Way," the Jolivet of 
 "Where Ignorance is Bliss," the Stevens of "The 
 Unchastened Woman," the Reed of "Roads of 
 Destiny," the Keane of "Romance," the Ferguson 
 of "The Strange Woman," the Taylor of "Mrs. 
 Dakon's Daughter." . . . Was Ethel Barrymore's 
 talent corrupted was it not rather encouraged to 
 fructification by Frohman's starring of her when 
 she was still an artistically immature and merely 
 very pretty girl? Would the comedic talent of 
 Margaret Lawrence, say, be in any way encom- 
 passed and made sterile if the Selwyns were to 
 make a star of her tomorrow? 
 
 The objection to the star system is convention- 
 ally based upon two assumptions both of which 
 are false. The first of these assumptions is that 
 it tends to destroy smooth ensemble performances. 
 What it actually does in the majority of instances 
 is precisely the opposite. In example whereof, 
 take at random any ten or twelve of the more re-
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 129 
 
 cent companies with and without stars, and com- 
 pare the ensemble performances of those contain- 
 ing stars with the performances of those minus 
 stars. On the star side take, for instance, "Tiger! 
 Tiger!" "The Saving Grace," "A Successful 
 Calamity," "Why Marry," "The Very Minute," 
 "Redemption," "The Copperhead," "Mr. Laz- 
 arus," "Kismet," "Madame Sand," "Getting 
 Married" and "A Marriage of Convenience." 
 And on the non-star side, for example, "Three Wise 
 Fools," "Daddies," "The Gypsy Trail," "Hush," 
 "A Little Journey," "Polly With a Past," "Magic," 
 "The Betrothal," "The Devil's Garden," "The 
 Happy Ending," "Toby's Bow" and "The In- 
 visible Foe." Compare the one side with the other 
 and cast your vote, a vote that will assuredly go to 
 the star productions and one that will be all the 
 more confirmatory since a fair number of produc- 
 tions in both lists were made by the same directors 
 and since, further, a number of the productions 
 listed on the star side were purposely selected for 
 the comparatively mediocre quality of the stars 
 who appeared in them. Thus, unless I am greatly 
 mistaken in your ballot, one discovers that the 
 weakness in ensemble acting, where it exists, has 
 often less to do with the star system than with the 
 director responsible for the production.
 
 130 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 The second characteristic assumption is that the 
 system, as we have it, is an evil since it is in the 
 occasional habit of elevating to stardom young 
 women whose histrionic virtuosity is alleged to be 
 confined principally either to a pretty face or to 
 an openness to managerial amour that amounts 
 almost to Southern hospitality or to both. This 
 assumption seems to me to wear two false-faces. 
 In the first place, to argue that the star system is 
 intrinsically an evil because certain of the young 
 lady stars it has manufactured are neither 
 actresses nor virgins, is, as I see it, of a piece 
 with arguing that the non-star system is intrinsically 
 an evil because certain of its male performers are 
 neither actors nor satyrs. And in the second place, 
 to believe that it is improbable that a young woman 
 may be possessed simultaneously of a talent for 
 concubinage and for acting is to bring into the 
 argument a morality as alien to an appraisal of 
 histrionic skill as it is to an appraisal of literature. 
 The simple truth, of course, is that in America, 
 as well as in England, and, more especially, on the 
 Continent, a number of the most proficient actresses 
 of the present years to say nothing of the past 
 have been graduated to their estate of granted pro- 
 ficiency out of managerial embraces. 
 
 To object to the American star system as a
 
 THE STAR SYSTEM 131 
 
 menace to acting and drama on the ground that it 
 occasionally (as within the last few months) pops 
 into stardom a talentless young woman who 
 achieves star eminence for herself by the simple 
 means of putting up half the money for the show 
 or a talentless actor who illuminates Broadway 
 with his name in Matkowsky capitals by laying out 
 twelve thousand dollars is to object to American 
 book publishing as a menace to art and literature 
 on the ground that it occasionally (as within the 
 last few months) pops into absurd prominence by 
 means of extravagant newspaper and book-jacket 
 advertising a talentless young man who pays for 
 his own book and writes personally the high praise 
 of himself or an equally talentless young woman 
 who does likewise. The star system, at bottom, 
 is a sound and serviceable, a logical and natural, 
 institution. And its frequent abuse may as I see 
 it no more be brought as an argument against 
 its fundamental worth, validity and integrity than 
 the frequent abuse of the eyes may be brought as 
 an argument against the practice of reading. The 
 star system has proved itself of undeniably sound 
 commercial design and whatever brings the 
 theatre to prosper must in the end, though the end 
 be far off, be viewed with critical satisfaction. 
 And if on the more relevant side of artistic design
 
 132 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 the star system has been not always quite so uni- 
 formly successful, its measure of comparative 
 artistic success has at least outweighed its measure 
 of comparative artistic failure. Regarded from 
 any plane of criticism higher than that from which 
 one appraises the art of the Sells Brothers, the 
 art of even the best actor is of course approxi- 
 mately as authentic an art as that practiced by 
 Duveen, Knoedler or any other such merchant in 
 the retailing of masterpieces. But estimating it 
 merely for what it is, what it stands for, and what 
 it seeks to accomplish, the star system, for all its 
 absurdity, is as valuable to the theatre as a pocket- 
 ful of iron crosses and croix de guerre is to the 
 general of an army: it is a spur to effort, a teaser 
 to glory, a something to transfix the gaze of the 
 great crowd on the line of parade. 
 
 Mr. Thomas A. Wise is, in sound criticism, a 
 not particularly able actor, yet as a star his Fal- 
 staff is an immeasurably better Falstaff than that 
 of Wilhelm Diegelmann, who, because he is not 
 starred in Germany, gives the native professors 
 an excuse to declaim omnisciently against the 
 American star system. Madame Nazimova is 
 similarly a not particularly illustrious actress, yet 
 as a star her Ibsen performances are immeasur- 
 ably better than those of Ida Wiist, of Brahm's
 
 THE AMERICAN NEGRO 133 
 
 famous Lessing-Theater company, who not be- 
 ing starred in Germany provides the local 
 Brunetieres with still another excuse. Come down 
 the list a bit, and you will find analogously that 
 such a local and artistically debatable star as 
 Ruth Chatterton is, though debatable, yet pos- 
 sessed of an actually greater skill than such a 
 French non-star as the Mile. Sylvie who plays in 
 Paris the same kind of parts that the Chatterton 
 plays in New York. And the same thing holds 
 true in the cases of Billie Burke and Marthe 
 Regnier. If Desjardins isn't starred in France 
 and Henry Dixey is starred in America, it is, 
 quite properly, because Dixey is really the better 
 and more deserving actor. And if Brule isn't 
 starred in France and William Gillette is starred 
 in America in the same kind of roles, it is simi- 
 larly because Gillette, being the more effective 
 performer, deserves to be starred. 
 
 \ 31 
 
 The American Negro. It is one of the com- 
 monest delusions that the American negro is by 
 nature a musical fellow. The truth, of course, 
 is that he is not at all musical, but rather merely 
 rhythmical. He has an acute feeling for rhythm,
 
 134 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 but of music he knows nothing. It is, indeed, as 
 rare to find a black American who knows anything 
 about music as it is to find a white American. . . . 
 The negro, with his unusual sense of rhythm, is 
 no more accurately to be called musical than a 
 metronome is to be called a Swiss music-box. 
 
 32 
 
 The Shaw Imitation. The average imitator of 
 Shaw appears to believe that the best way to write 
 a Shaw play is first to write one's own play and 
 then without changing a line of dialogue by 
 transfering the names of the male characters to 
 the women characters and vice versa, to put the 
 male sentiments in the women's mouths and the 
 women's ideas in the men's; and, this done, to 
 cause one character to quote Schopenhauer and 
 then bring into debate with that character another 
 character who contrives to floor him with a wheeze 
 of W. S. Gilbert, soberly expounded. 
 
 The fault of Shaw's imitators is that they are 
 successful in imitating Shaw's garrulity without 
 being successful in imitating the substance of 
 Shaw's garrulity. Anyone can easily and success- 
 fully imitate a dramatist such, for instance, as 
 Henri Kistemaekers, since the latter is merely ver-
 
 SUBTERFUGE 135 
 
 bose in a hollow, empty way ; but it is another thing 
 to imitate with any degree of closeness an agile 
 writer like Shaw. For the more closely a writer 
 imitates Shaw, the more apparent becomes the wide 
 difference between them. In example, where a 
 more successful imitator of Shaw than Wedekind, 
 or Ilgenstein, or Otto Soyka, or Freksa, or Gustav 
 Wied and where figures more distant each in 
 turn from the original? Or, to turn to Shaw him- 
 self, where a closer imitator (in "The Phil- 
 anderer") of the Arno Holz attitude in "Die Sozial- 
 aristokraten" yet where two men farther apart? 
 
 33 
 
 On Drama and Acting. Drama is the art of ex- 
 pressing artificially what is felt naturally. Act- 
 ing, the art of expressing naturally what is felt 
 artificially. 
 
 34 
 
 Subterfuge. It is the common custom of the 
 playwright who is desirous of exhibiting himself 
 in the light of a brilliant philosopher but who is 
 unable to think up anything brilliant to say, to 
 resort to the theatrical trick of trying to confound 
 criticism by putting the very best things he is able
 
 136 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 to think of in the mouth of his hero and then, upon 
 their being spoken by the hero, causing another 
 character to observe that the aforesaid hero talks 
 like a sophomore. 
 
 35 
 
 War, Peace and the Drama. Why a great war 
 should nine times in ten inspire the contem- 
 poraneous theatre to little more than the composi- 
 tion of trivial Phillips Oppenheim-Anna Katherine 
 Green fables must be explained by the same per- 
 son who can tell why a great historical figure should 
 nine times in ten generally inspire the theatre 
 to little more than washboiler melodrama (Lin- 
 coln in "The Ensign"), chasings after scraps of 
 paper ("Colonel Cromwell"), and superintend- 
 ings of ingenue amours ("Disraeli"). The war, 
 or military, play of respectable quality is born 
 not of war, but of peace. Where peace gives birth 
 to a Galsworthy's "The Mob" in England, war 
 gives birth only to spy-plot pot-boilers like "The 
 Man with the Club Foot" and "The Live Wire." 
 Where peace gives birth to Von Beyerlein's "Taps" 
 in Germany, war gives birth only to the same kind 
 of spy-plot pot-boilers on the stages to the north and 
 south of the Rosetheater. And for one peace- 
 time "L'Aiglon" in France, war breeds nothing but
 
 THE CRITICAL STRICTURE 137 
 
 countless spy yellow-backs like "Alsace," just as 
 for one peace-time Roda Roda's "Feldherrnhiigel" 
 in Austria, war belches forth nothing but trash of 
 the accent of Flamm's "Soldier's Child." 
 
 36 
 
 The Critical Stricture. That the wildest im- 
 probability may be taken for the postulate of a 
 play is a theory which regularly projects the 
 majority of our critics into something of a sweat. 
 They charge the air with gaudy dicta on the unity 
 of this or that, on the holding up of the mirror, 
 on the quality of reasonability in the initial pre- 
 mise and on many other such whim-whams about 
 which the person seeking amusement in a theatre 
 gives not a continental. Forgetting, as has often 
 been pointed out, that, from four hundred and sixty- 
 eight years before the birth of Christ when the 
 most successful play of the day ("CEdipus Rex") 
 showed its audience a hero who, when he came on 
 the stage, had been married for twelve years to his 
 own mother, who, in turn, throughout all that time 
 had never had a talk with him on the past which 
 might have given him any suspicion of her indentity 
 or of the fact that he had murdered his own father 
 down to the present time, when one of the sue-
 
 138 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 cessful plays of the day ("Justice") thoroughly 
 convinces its New York audiences of its local ap- 
 plicability despite its New York audiences' non- 
 recognition of section 887 of the Penal Law and 
 section 2,188 of the Penal Code, which make the 
 play, from the local and native point of view, 
 ridiculous forgetting, as I say, that improbability 
 has utterly nothing to do with a play's chances 
 for success and effectiveness, whether commer- 
 cially or artistically. 
 
 One of the most recent plays to come in for such 
 strictures is a farce, to boot, mind the "Good 
 Gracious Annabelle" of Clare Kummer, a deliber- 
 ately fantastic affair designed only, by a wild dis- 
 charge of artless humours, to jabberwock its audi- 
 tors and give them a bit of careless fun in the play- 
 house. These strictures are not difficult to expect, 
 since they are ever vouchsafed us by the pro- 
 fessors when a piece slightly different from the gen- 
 eral is brought to the community's attention. They 
 appeared in full force, it is interesting to recall, 
 when twenty-seven years ago "Paris Fin de Siecle" 
 was charming the French capital and when "The 
 Cabinet Minister" was crowding the theatres of 
 the British. And the critical strictures were in 
 these instances largely of a piece with the critical 
 strictures more recently visited upon the entertain-
 
 THE CRITICAL STRICTURE 139 
 
 ing play by Miss Kummer. To object, as objec- 
 tion is made, to the antic unreality of Miss Kum- 
 mer's little play, is to object to the final scene of 
 Augier's "Le Gendre de M. Poirier" the best 
 scene in the play and probably Augier's best frag- 
 ment of dramatic composition. Another recent 
 play, "Come Out of the Kitchen," by A. E. 
 Thomas out of a novel by somebody or other, 
 concerns itself with a story the same as that em- 
 ployed by Miss Kummer. And this same story 
 it handles with a precise regard for all those rule- 
 books of technic so close to the fancy of the grave 
 and literal-minded critic. And the result? The 
 play is not only not one-tenth so amusing as Miss 
 Kummer's play, but, into the bargain, it is a sub- 
 stantial fact that so far as the story goes "Come 
 Out of the Kitchen" actually isn't one-half so 
 convincing as the latter! Mr. Thomas elects to 
 treat the fable of the aristocrat turned servant as 
 rational comedy; Miss Kummer elects to treat it 
 as moonstruck farce. The theatrical value of the 
 latter approach must be at once patent. By initi- 
 ally assuring the audience that the theme is quite 
 absurd, Miss Kummer needs only, to achieve suc- 
 cess, concern herself with making her spectators 
 laugh. To the contrary, by initially assuring the 
 audience that the theme is a semi-serious one, Mr.
 
 140 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Thomas (being no Oliver Goldsmith) is com- 
 pelled through the rest of the evening not only to 
 devise ways and means to amuse his spectators, but 
 in addition must waste a considerable and valu- 
 able portion of his allotted two hours in per- 
 suading his audience periodically of the reason- 
 ability of his characters and his characters' ac- 
 tions. The difference 'twixt the two entertainments 
 is, therefore, the usual difference 'twixt local 
 comedy and farce. The former is more often 
 than not merely the latter without a sense of hu- 
 mour. 
 
 Again, contrary to the prevalent critical notion 
 that Miss Kummer's plays are (I quote the ga- 
 zettes) "diffuse," "formless," "loosely and care- 
 lessly knit" and "of an irresponsible and slipshod 
 technique," the truth is that for all their surface 
 appearance of formlessness and technical in- 
 felicity they actually follow a very definite and 
 symmetrical design. To say that the plays would 
 be better plays were they of a more symmetrical 
 construction is arbitrarily to say that the straight 
 street of a city is a more lovely place to linger 
 in than a crooked country lane. Miss Kummer's 
 plays, if the word formlessness must be used, are 
 formless not in the sense that a bad piece of 
 literature is formless, but in the sense that a good
 
 THE CRITICAL STRICTURE 141 
 
 piece of literature the "Professor Bernhardi" of 
 Schnitzler, say, or the "Weavers" of Hauptmann, 
 or the "Peter Pan" of Barrie, or the "Pasteur" 
 of Sacha Guitry, or, to descend in the scale, one or 
 two of the farces of Hoyt is formless. Formless- 
 ness is frequently not a fault, but a virtue of rich 
 blossom. Consider, in fine, Strindberg's "Dream 
 Play" . . . Chopin's sonata in B flat minor . . . 
 the poetry of Yeats. . . . The work of Miss Kum- 
 mer, if it lacks technique, lacks technique in the 
 sense that a little child dancing merrily to a spring- 
 time hurdy-gurdy lacks it and, contrariwise, in 
 the sense that Gertrude Hoffmann possesses it. 
 
 Not less ridiculous than these criticisms of Miss 
 Kummer's work are the majority of criticisms 
 directed against Langdon Mitchell's dramatization 
 of Thackeray's novel, "Pendennis." It has been 
 made the subject of vigorous critical objection that 
 Mr. Mitchell has, in his dramatization of the novel, 
 omitted all drama. Which, in view of the circum- 
 stance that in the novel itself there is no drama 
 (i. e., drama of the spasm sort that physics pleasur- 
 ably what Thackeray himself was fond of allud- 
 ing to as "that great baby, the public"), seems 
 just a trifle like lamenting that Rostand, in pre- 
 paring the story of Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac 
 for the stage, did not make the play more romantic
 
 142 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 for Coquelin's and Mr. Mansfield's lady admirers 
 by giving Cyrano a more lovely nose. 
 
 To object to a dramatization of "Pendennis" is 
 an objection truly not without a measure of com- 
 mon sense. But to object to an undramatic drama- 
 tization of "Pendennis" is to object to Paderewski 
 because he doesn't play the violin. Mr. Mitchell's 
 purpose was to lift Thackeray onto the stage. It 
 was apparently Mr. Mitchell's critics' desire that 
 he lift the stage onto Thackeray. The notion that 
 the stage, then, is not the place for an undramatic 
 story such as this, is the sort of notion that would 
 bar from the theatre all manuscripts like "Anatol" 
 and "Patriots" and welcome in their stead chiefly 
 such as "The Queen of the Opium Ring" and "The 
 Witching Hour." 
 
 37 
 
 The Actor Play. An actor views a play not in 
 terms of composite drama, but in terms of its in- 
 dividual roles. It is consequently not unnatural 
 that we find that when an actor composes a play 
 for his own use he more often than not writes a 
 luxuriant part for himself and completely forgets 
 to write a play around the part. When an actor 
 attempts the negotiation of satire, an especial 
 marasmus is on the world. Actors have written
 
 AUGUSTUS THOMAS 143 
 successful drama, comedy, burlesque, farce but 
 satire, the edelweiss of literature, has generally 
 been far above their reach. 
 
 38 
 
 The Drama of Augustus Thomas. The drama of 
 Augustus Thomas is the condensation of the pro- 
 tagonist's lifetime into two hours and the expan- 
 sion of the theatregoer's two hours into a lifetime. 
 The so-called technique of this playwright is so 
 perfect that it completely obscures his drama. 
 Every exit and entrance, every pince-nez that is to 
 be broken at a critical moment, every bandage that 
 is to be found germ-infected and bring about a 
 character's death, is planted with a so thorough as- 
 siduity that, once the first half of the preparation 
 is done with, nothing remains but to hang around 
 and watch the plants work. True, pastime may 
 be found the while in giving ear to such of the 
 playwright's tony Broadwayisms as "the chemistry 
 of motivation," "the chemistry of things spiritual," 
 and the like, and to his seriously intended love 
 scenes wherein the hero informs the heroine, in 
 voice a-thrill with fervour, that she is "an angelic, 
 delectable baby" (the quotation from "Rio 
 Grande" is literal!), yet in the main the evening
 
 144 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 reveals itself as a mere lecture by Thomas on 
 "How To Write A Play," a laboratorical evening 
 proving to the further satisfaction of the students 
 of Professor George Pierce Baker that, with pro- 
 tracted schooling and practice, one may become 
 sufficiently proficient in what is termed dramatic 
 technique to write anything for the stage but drama. 
 
 39 
 
 Sentiment and Avoirdupois. It is probable that 
 the refractorily comic aspect of many a play- 
 wright's sentimental work is often heightened by 
 the experienced lady to whom the playwright's 
 producer entrusts the leading role. The lady so 
 one on such occasions generally reads in the en- 
 thusiastic reviews of the play "is possessed of no 
 small histrionic skill" and, after witnessing her 
 performance, one is disposed emphatically to agree. 
 For so great, indeed, is generally the lady's his- 
 trionic skill that once she sits upon it during a 
 sentimental floor scene she is unable subsequently 
 to get to her feet again without the robust aid of the 
 leading man. 
 
 Sentiment demands slenderness. The moment 
 sentiment weighs one hundred and thirty-five 
 pounds, it becomes comedy; the moment it touches
 
 THE RELIGIOUS PLAY 145 
 
 one hundred and thirty-six, it becomes farce; the 
 moment it touches one hundred and forty, it be- 
 comes burlesque. The best piece of criticism ever 
 set to paper in this regard was written by the late 
 Charles H. Hoyt when he was the dramatic critic 
 of the Boston Herald. He wrote it after witness- 
 ing the performance, in a sentimental role, of Miss 
 Lily Langtry. And this one piece of criticism 
 doubtless did more for the future American drama 
 than any thousand pieces of criticism written pre- 
 viously or since. The day it appeared Hoyt was 
 promptly discharged and became a playwright. 
 
 40 
 
 The Religious Play. Since the average New 
 York audience is usually made up for the most part 
 of Jews, a religious or racial play that abstains 
 from an excessive adulation of Jewry is predestined 
 to failure. Such a play stands small chance of 
 financial success unless it brings down its big cur- 
 tain on a rosy piece of verbal fireworks in which 
 Jesus Christ, Disraeli and Jacob Schiff are pro- 
 claimed as belonging to the same race, and unless 
 it brings down its final curtain with the discovery 
 that not Milton Rosenbaum, but the low Patrick 
 McCarthy, was the man who actually stole the
 
 146 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 money. Any variation of the theme is bound to 
 offend the tender sensibilities of the theatregoing 
 Anglo-Oriental. And, further, any variation is 
 bound to come in for gamy cracks at the hands of 
 the newspaper play reviewers, since an enthusiastic 
 record of a play that handles the racial question 
 without thick gloves would not be likely to drive 
 crazy with joy the Messrs. Gimbel, Altman, Saks, 
 Stern, Greenhut, Abraham & Straus, and the rest 
 of the full-page advertisers. 
 
 This attitude on the part of audience and re- 
 viewer is instrumental in producing a hundred 
 "Melting Pots" and "Little Brothers" for one "Con- 
 sequences," a hundred "Houses Next Door" and 
 "Five Frankfurters" for one play like "The Gen- 
 tile Wife," a hundred fountains of hypocritical 
 pulvil for one decent piece of writing that ventures 
 to look upon its subject matter intelligently, calmly, 
 decently and fairly. . . . Our popular theatre, 
 however, is a bizarre institution in any direction 
 when its stage is occupied with a religious question 
 whether that question be Christian, Jew or Bud- 
 dhist. It sees nothing profane or blasphemous in 
 presenting the Saviour as a sizzling spotlight ("Ben 
 Hur") or as the inventor of a death-dealing sub- 
 marine (in the motion picture "Civilization") or as 
 an uncouth actor ("The Servant in the House"), yet
 
 THE RELIGIOUS PLAY 147 
 
 it shrinks particularly in its Mosaic managerial 
 departments from such reverent and gentle and 
 very beautiful things as Brieux's "Faith" and 
 Andreyev's "Savva." The obvious sacrilege of 
 such mossback diddlers as "The Terrible Meek" 
 and "Marie-Odile" exhibitions of evil taste 
 aimed directly at the box-office it hearkens to in 
 awe and in devout silence. It views a team of 
 asthmatic nags toting a papier-mache chariot over a 
 treadmill or a baby spotlight halo-ing a scheduled 
 ingenue or a number of stagehands mimicking the 
 roars of hungry lions as an exalting religious spec- 
 tacle, while it the meanwhile is somewhat puzzled as 
 how to conduct its feelings and attitudes toward 
 such a presentation as Shaw's "Androcles". . . . Re- 
 ligion, so far as the theatre is concerned, is much 
 like a cigar. A cigar, however good, is not palat- 
 able when smoked in the brilliant sunlight. A 
 religious theme, however sound, is distasteful when 
 aired in the brilliant glare of the footlights. 
 
 41 
 
 La Voix d'Or. That a rich low speaking voice 
 generally bespeaks generations of cultural breed- 
 ing and background is one of the commonest of 
 American-held social and critical fallacies. The
 
 14S COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 so-called rich low speaking voice is found in Amer- 
 ica to be regularly less the inheritance of aristoc- 
 racy than the inheritance of an engagement in 
 "The Lady of Lyons," a medical specialization in 
 women's diseases or a waiting on table in a first- 
 class restaurant. The speaking voice of Mrs. 
 Astor in infinitely less "aristocratic" than that of a 
 third-rate Broadway actress. The speaking voice 
 of Hamilton Fish, compared with that of a Ritz 
 headwaiter, sounds like a foghorn. 
 
 42 
 
 Plays of Caste. It is the general contention 
 of American critics of the drama that a play whose 
 theme relates to British class prejudice and seeks 
 to exhibit the results of an amorous collision of 
 caste and proletariat cannot possibly succeed in in- 
 teresting American audiences since I quote the 
 common observation "in this country there is no 
 such thing as caste," etc. Such critical flag-wag- 
 ging is the veriest gibberish. Not only, of course, 
 is there quite as much class distinction in this 
 country as in England if, indeed, not vastly more 
 but, what is more directly to the point, plays with 
 precisely the same basic theme have regularly suc- 
 ceeded in interesting American audiences. The
 
 THE PROTEAN PLAY 149 
 
 eternal "Iron Master" (with perhaps its American 
 derivative "The Boss"), "The Lost Paradise," 
 "Old Heidelberg," "Trelawney," ... the innu- 
 merable native plays wherein the family of wealth 
 and position opposes its son's marriage to a poor 
 working girl or its daughter's marriage to a young 
 commoner ... all are intrinsically of the class 
 versus mass posture. The Lords and Ladies of 
 Tom Robertson and the Misters and Missuses of 
 Owen Davis (vide "Forever After," which played 
 an entire season in New York alone) are brothers 
 and sisters under their skins. 
 
 43 
 
 The Protean Play. That a four-act play of the 
 nature, for example, of "Under Orders," acted in 
 its entirety by a cast composed of but two players, is 
 interesting is not to be denied. But that the quality 
 of interest aroused is precisely akin to that aroused 
 by a man playing a banjo with his toes and that, 
 incidentally, the quality of the resulting drama is 
 of a piece with the quality of the resulting music 
 is to be denied no less. Such a play is to drama 
 very largely what the vaudeville mind-readers 
 named the Zanzigs are to Sigmund Freud. Just 
 as with the Zanzigs a member of the audience is
 
 150 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 pricked up vastly less by being told that what he 
 is holding in his hand is a plumber's license than by 
 guessing how the Zanzigs did it, so with a play of 
 this kind is a member of the audience made curious 
 much less by the progress of the drama than by 
 speculating how two lone actors are going to fur- 
 ther the progress of that drama. That the play- 
 wright in such an instance writes a play for two ac- 
 tors less than he writes two actors for a play is, 
 of course, obvious. And while it is readily to be 
 allowed that he may maneuver his trick dexterously, 
 the fact remains that all that remains is this trick. 
 And a trick, alas, is no more profound drama than 
 pulling goldfish out of an ink-well is deep-sea fish- 
 ing. 
 
 44 
 
 On Aesthetic Dancing. The numerous schools 
 and cults of aesthetic dancing, interior and al 
 fresco, are doubtless grounded less on the honest 
 desire to make a beautiful art of the dance than on 
 the Freudian desire of unwanted vestals to play in- 
 directly, yet satisfactorily, with the masculine pas- 
 sions. A bevy of women running half naked 
 around Central Park is not nearly so intent upon 
 enthroning Terpsichore in her niche in the temple 
 of the beaux arts as upon watching the effect on the
 
 W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 151 
 
 park policeman out of the corners of its eyes. The 
 unloved woman with legs gnarled and knotted like 
 a rustic bench, galloping across the grass plots 
 in a sheet and a diaper, thus takes out her sinister 
 revenge. No women half-way admired by men, 
 and loved by men, go in for undressing in public, 
 whatever the artistic purport of their intentions, 
 save possibly upon the stage. The moment a 
 woman runs around Pelham in the daylight clad 
 only in a bed sheet, under the dubious impression 
 that she is Psyche in the Arcadian Wood, that mo- 
 ment is it certain that she has reached the conclu- 
 sion that her charms are unavailing against the for- 
 tress that is man. The schools and cults of aesthetic 
 dancing are filled with left-overs, wall-flowers. 
 These schools and cults are to art what the Japan- 
 ese punk stick is to an old maids' tea-room. 
 
 45 
 
 W. Somerset Maugham. It is one of the char- 
 acteristics of W. Somerset Maugham's so-called 
 epigrammatic comedies so painstaking and ob- 
 vious are the author's plants and cues for bright 
 lines that one knows in advance precisely what 
 his characters are going to say and that one then 
 finds that what one thought they were going to
 
 152 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 say is much brighter than what they really do say. 
 For example, when in his play, "Caroline," his 
 elderly and already somewhat skeptic lovers, dis- 
 cussing prosaically their forthcoming wedded life, 
 suddenly begin quarreling over their union, one 
 knows that what will follow will be the man's con- 
 ciliatory "There, there, dear Caroline; let us look 
 on our coming marriage merely as a disagreement 
 to agree." But what actually follows is the man's 
 "Let's not quarrel now, Caroline; we will have 
 plenty of time to quarrel after we're married" 
 a line favourite of every team of gas-house comed- 
 ians in the small-time vaudevilles. And so it goes. 
 That there is a certain graceful quality to 
 Maugham's writing, that he writes a more engag- 
 ing English than the majority of quill-drivers 
 who contribute to the stage of our own country, 
 is a matter scarcely open to question. But that he 
 is a wit or a writer possessed of even a facile 
 cleverness is a thing of another colour. The Amer- 
 ican newspaper comparison of his play, "Caroline," 
 with the comedies of Oscar Wilde is surely a some- 
 thing to jounce the humours. In all of the play, 
 from beginning to end, there isn't one-tenth the 
 wit of the American Tom Barry's "Upstart" which 
 was ridiculed out of court by the daily gazettes 
 after a few performances several years ago in the
 
 W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM 153 
 
 Maxine Elliott Theatre, one twentieth the wit of the 
 American George Bronson Howard's "Snobs" which 
 suffered a like fate at the Hudson Theatre or 
 one-fiftieth the wit of Mencken's recent brew of 
 speculations enclosed between the covers of "A 
 Little Book in C Major." If you are one to doubt, 
 compare Maugham's "Marriage doesn't change a 
 woman much. She remains just the same, only 
 more so," with Mencken's "The charm of a man is 
 measured by the charm of the women who think 
 that he is a scoundrel." Or Maugham's "Men 
 don't want to marry. It's not their nature. You 
 have to give them a little push or you'll never bring 
 them to it," with Mencken's "How little it takes to 
 make life perfect! A good sauce, a cocktail after 
 a hard day, a girl who kisses with her mouth half 
 open!" Or Maugham's "Women make such a dis- 
 tinction between the truth and the true truth" with 
 Mencken's "Since Shakespeare's day more than a 
 thousand different actors have played Hamlet. No 
 wonder he is crazy!" Or the former's "It is in 
 railway stations that a man shows his superiority 
 to a woman" with the latter's "The one unanswer- 
 able objection to Christianity is that the God it asks 
 us to worship, if the descriptions of its official 
 spokesmen are to be believed, is a vastly less vener- 
 able personage than Ludwig van Beethoven." Or
 
 154 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 the former's "Nothing is so pleasant as to think of 
 the sacrifices one will never have to make" with the 
 latter's "When a husband's story is believed, he 
 begins to suspect his wife." 
 
 But I prove here what is already perfectly known. 
 Maugham is merely a pretty juggler of pretty words 
 who blithesomely tosses them aloft and lets them 
 fall about him in indiscriminate, pretty little piles 
 that have plenty of cake-frosting but little meaning 
 and less humour. 
 
 46 
 
 The Risque Britisher. It is, generally, as diffi- 
 cult for an English playwright to be adroitly risque 
 as it is for a married woman. The Britisher who 
 essays to write an adroitly risque little play is most 
 often as light and devilish as a German dancing the 
 tango. With the exception of Pinero's "Wife 
 Without a Smile" I am unable to summon to mind 
 a single modishly naughty British play possessed 
 of that delicate touch so imperatively necessary to 
 such affairs. No sooner does the British author 
 affect a momentary mood of wickedness than he be- 
 comes nervously frantic immediately the moment 
 is over with to explain at great and serious length 
 that what went before was intrinsically impeccable 
 from any angle of morality from which his audi-
 
 CHARACTER ACTORS 155 
 
 ence may have elected to regard it. The moment 
 a bashful double entente peeks furtively around 
 the corner of the proscenium arch, out dashes the 
 playwright armed with swabbing instruments and 
 antitoxins. The evening, in brief, amounts to 
 three acts of apology interrupted at intervals by 
 pseudo-compromising situations of the sort that go 
 to make up the violent serials in the Ladies 9 Home 
 Journal. 
 
 47 
 
 Vaudeville. Vaudeville is a species of enter- 
 tainment derived from the dregs of drama and 
 musical comedy assembled in such wise that they 
 shall appeal to the dregs of drama and musical 
 comedy audiences. 
 
 48 
 
 Two Celebrated American Character Actors. It 
 is claimed by many of my colleagues that George 
 Arliss is America's most expert character actor. 
 And indeed, by this time, he should be. For he 
 has been acting that character for longer than I am 
 able to remember. True enough, now the character 
 has been named Zakkuri ("The Darling of the 
 Gods"), now the Devil, and now Disraeli (in the 
 plays so titled), now again Paganini and now still
 
 156 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 again Hamilton (in the plays so called), but what- 
 ever the designation, Mr. Arliss' interpretation of 
 the character is ever the same. The slit-eyed peer, 
 the nervous hands, the velvet tread, the Ralph Herz 
 delivery they never vary. The difference be- 
 tween Mr. Arliss' Disraeli and Paganini, as the dif- 
 ference between his Zakkuri and his Devil, is 
 merely a matter of make-up. A pleasant actor the 
 man is; but a versatile actor, or an actor possessed 
 of very real skill, certainly not. Otis Skinner, like 
 Arliss, is also a one-part actor. His characteriza- 
 tions vary only in the tint of grease-paint with which 
 he colours his face. The difference between his 
 Anthony Bellchamber, English actor, and his An- 
 tonio Camaradonio, Italian organ-grinder, for ex- 
 ample, is but the difference between Hess' No. 9 
 (healthy pink) and a grayish wig and Hess' No. 12 
 (healthy olive) and a black wig. Otherwise, all 
 is as one: the flourish of gesture, the cocking of 
 the eye, the slap upon the expanded chest, the ele- 
 vation of the right shoulder, the hat upon one ear, 
 the running of the scale with the speaking voice, 
 the posture debonnaire, the backs of the palms sup- 
 porting the chin, and the smiling of the whimsical 
 smile. . . . Whatever the role, the same bag of 
 tricks. Mr. Skinner never gets deeper into the soul 
 of the character he is playing than that soul is re-
 
 JOURNALISTIC HAZLITTRY 157 
 vealed to him in his dressing-room mirror. His 
 Italian organ-grinder is less an Italian organ- 
 grinder than an imitation of the late Maurice 
 Farkoa in a yellow sash. 
 
 49 
 
 The Journalistic Hazlittry. Not less interesting 
 than Dunsany's "The Laughter of the Gods" were 
 the journalistic critical performances visited upon 
 the work and its author on the occasion of the play's 
 initial revealment in the United States. By way of 
 assessing the kidney of criticism to which a play- 
 wright is subjected at the hands of New York jour- 
 nalism, let us undertake the completely bootless 
 business of criticizing one of the representative and 
 typical criticisms confected on this especial occa- 
 sion the criticism in point being that of Mr. J. 
 Ranken Towse, of the Evening Post, the dean of 
 metropolitan journalistic play reviewers. An ex- 
 cerpt from this critical estimate will serve. Thus, 
 then, this Mr. Towse: 
 
 "A close, critical scrutiny of the play reveals some 
 obvious weaknesses. In the first place, it is certain that 
 when an argument or a meaning is intended the exposi- 
 tion of it should be clear. In this particular case, for 
 instance, in which supernaturalism (whether Pagan or 
 otherwise is immaterial) supplies the energy of the whole
 
 158 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 dramatic scheme, the spectators ought to be left in no 
 doubt as to whether or not it is held up to ridicule. 
 Yet this is the condition in which a good many of them 
 must have found themselves the other evening if it oc- 
 curred to them to think at all. It is not probable that 
 Lord Dunsany deliberately set to work to puzzle his 
 audience with conundrums, but he has proposed several. 
 At whom or at what were the gods laughing? At the 
 jocose slaughter of a court which had refused to credit a 
 prophecy which they had themselves suborned or at 
 the priest whose lie they converted into a true and seem- 
 ingly inspired prediction? Or did the priest willingly 
 deceive his blackmailers by pretending that he was lying 
 when he knew that he was speaking the truth? Or was 
 he trying at the last to undo the mischief for which he 
 was mainly responsible?" 
 
 In the first place, the observation that "It is cer- 
 tain that when an argument or a meaning is in- 
 tended the exposition of it should be clear. In this 
 particular case, for instance, in which supernatural- 
 ism . . . supplies the energy of the whole dra- 
 matic scheme, the spectators ought to be left in no 
 doubt as to whether or not it is held up to ridicule," 
 etc. 
 
 In the first place as to this in-the-first-place, why 
 should it be desirable that the spectators be left 
 in no doubt as to whether the supernaturalism in 
 point is or is not held up to ridicule? Even grant-
 
 JOURNALISTIC HAZLITTRY 159 
 
 ing that some sort of argument or meaning is in- 
 tended which as Dunsany explicitly stated in an 
 article quoted in the Evening Post, among other 
 papers is not the case. This leaving of the spec- 
 tators in doubt is the very element that makes the 
 play the notably impressive thing it is. Chester- 
 ton has worked the same trick in "Magic." Brieux 
 has done largely the same thing in "La Foi." 
 Ibsen, if we are to listen to the opinions of Catulle 
 Mendes, Ahlberg, Jaeger and Georg Brandes, did 
 much the same in his "Comedy of Love." The 
 spectators at Ibsen's "Wild Duck" are left in doubt 
 as to where the thematic ridicule of satire ceases 
 and the bite of tragedy begins, and vice versa. 
 And so on without end. 
 
 "It is not probable that Dunsany deliberately 
 set to work to puzzle his audience with conun- 
 drums, but he has proposed several," continues the 
 reviewer, and proceeds to enumerate. 
 
 Dunsany despite the reviewer deliberately set 
 to work to do just that. If intrinsic proof be 
 needed, we have his published word for it. But 
 to this outside word it is not necessary to look. 
 "The Laughter of the Gods," plainly enough, is 
 deliberately a conundrum play as "The Lady or 
 the Tiger" was deliberately a conundrum story 
 and as "Mr. Lazarus" and the "The Thirteenth
 
 160 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Chair" were deliberately conundrum plays. Or, 
 on a higher level, as Schnitzler's "Bernhardi" and 
 Bahr's "Principle" and Galsworthy's "Strife" are, 
 in one sense, deliberately conundrum plays and 
 as, in another, are Shaw's "Getting Married" and 
 by stretching a point Dunsany's own "Glitter- 
 ing Gate." The thematic conundrum of "The 
 Laughter of the Gods" puzzles Dunsany's audi- 
 ence for the very simple reason that it also puz- 
 zles Dunsany. And being an artist, Dunsany has 
 none of the hack's wish arbitrarily to answer what 
 is intrinsically an unanswerable riddle merely that 
 his play may be the more toothsome to the yokel 
 appetite for "endings." This childish desire to 
 have everything explained, proved, settled, sealed 
 and labelled is the invariable itch of the What's- 
 Inside-the-Doll school of journalistic criticism to 
 which this Mr. Towse is a typical doctor. Of the 
 inscrutable mysteries and riddles of the universe, 
 the meaninglessness in the circlings of the globe 
 and of what transpires on it and above it and be- 
 low it, this criticism and its devotees demand a 
 facile and satisfactory solution. That the great 
 artists of the world, from Shakespeare and Bee- 
 thoven to Hauptmann and Anatole France and 
 from Ibsen and Balzac to Synge and Gorky and 
 Conrad, have been baffled in the face of the rid-
 
 JOURNALISTIC HAZLITTRY 161 
 
 dies means less to the Towses than that the Charles 
 Kleins and Charles Rann Kennedys have always 
 been quick to find soothing answers. 
 
 The utter fatuity of such criticism is to be per- 
 ceived in the questions which the reviewer would 
 have Dunsany and his work answer and which, 
 being not answered, greatly, in the reviewer's esti- 
 mation, weaken the play. 
 
 "At whom or at what were the gods laughing?" 
 the curious Towse demands to know. Or again 
 
 "Did the priest willingly deceive his black- 
 mailers by pretending that he was lying when he 
 knew that he was speaking the truth?" Or 
 again 
 
 "Was he trying at the last to undo the mischief 
 for which he was mainly responsible?" 
 
 Following an analogous train of critical reason- 
 ing, the good Towse might readily find fault with 
 "The Master Builder" (as, sure enough, did Pro- 
 fessor Frank Wadleigh Chandler, of one of the 
 numerous jitney Oxfords of the Middle West) be- 
 cause Ibsen has failed clearly to answer for the 
 Professor such questions (I quote the genial Pro- 
 fessor, who calls them "enigmas") as: 
 
 1. "Is Hilda a woman, like Hedda, or is she a mere 
 imaginative child?" 
 
 2. "Is Hilda the youthful aspiration of Solness re-
 
 162 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 turned to him in later life? If so, his death is a 
 triumph, not a tragedy!" 
 
 3. "Or, again, is Hilda, as his embodied aspiration, a 
 futile force? If so, the play is a tragedy!" 
 
 And, similarly and quite as relevantly, might 
 the good Towse find fault with Beethoven's Fifth 
 on the ground that it does not satisfactorily answer 
 for him such conundrums as why does a chicken 
 cross the road, how old is Ed Wynn, and how soon 
 will William Jennings Bryan die. 
 
 "The Laughter of the Gods," though consider- 
 ably inferior to "The Gods of the Mountain," is 
 a finely imaginative and compelling derisory satire. 
 It brings one to wonder, once again, why no one 
 has thus far looked to Dunsany for grand opera 
 material. What librettos his plays would make! 
 
 50 
 
 True Sentiment and False. Every once in so 
 often some playwriter addresses himself to achieve 
 again the spirit and romance of Meyer-Forster's 
 "Old Heidelberg," and every once in so often the 
 tilter comes unhorsed from the tourney. The sen- 
 timent of "Old Heidelberg" was brewed out of an 
 understanding of life and out of an understand- 
 ing of literary composition sufficient to translate
 
 PERSONALITY 163 
 
 that understanding of life to the stage. It was 
 not, like its imitations, a thing brewed rather out 
 of a misunderstanding of life and out of an under- 
 standing of the showshop sufficient to translate that 
 misunderstanding of life to the stage. Sentiment 
 is not to be projected through the proscenium arch 
 by a mere set representing a flower garden, a dim- 
 ming of the border lights, and Ethelbert Nevin on 
 an off-stage violin. 
 
 51 
 
 Personality and the Actor. On the vexed sub- 
 ject of personality and actor, one of my colleagues 
 a young man given to a profound admiration of 
 the cosmetic art has written: "Our critics always 
 have been a little bewildered by personality. 
 When they come upon a personality as vivid as 
 Mrs. Fiske's or Maude Adams', or Mr. Mansfield's 
 where it is recognizable as a common factor of 
 all the artist's performances we are sure to have 
 some wearisome paragraphs of protest from those 
 who are wont to confuse the art of acting with the 
 art of disguise. It is a little as though a music 
 lover might regret that, while Caruso was pleasing 
 enough in his way, he always sang tenor." My 
 young friend's employment of the word "art" to 
 designate the craft of putty noses and false whisk-
 
 164 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 ers should be a sufficient answer to his notion as 
 to the place of personality in the sun of the foot- 
 lights. Yet his contention is so nicely representa- 
 tive of the opinion of the professional layman that 
 one may be forgiven for plumbing it a little fur- 
 ther. 
 
 In the first place, let us set down that person- 
 ality is a matter of major importance to an actor: 
 that personality is nine points in the histrionic law. 
 To this, doubtless, every cool eye agrees. There- 
 fore, since personality is nine points in the his- 
 trionic law, it must follow that, in an appraisal of 
 the histrionic esthetik, art is but one point. Can 
 one picture, for example, Mrs. Fiske's "art" apart 
 from her physical tricks and peculiarities of per- 
 sonality? And if so, what is the bulk of the "art" 
 that remains? Lazaro's art remains art on the 
 phonograph record. Imagine Mansfield's "Cy- 
 rano" on the Victrola! Would it be Mansfield's 
 art or Edmond Rostand's that the machine repro- 
 duced? The notion that a bad actor reciting 
 Shakespeare is merely an actor, but that a good ac- 
 tor reciting Shakespeare is an artist, is akin to the 
 notion that Shakespeare in paper covers is a lesser 
 artist than Shakespeare in morocco. Take Brieux's 
 personality from "Les Hannetons" (there is none 
 of the man's generally accepted and recognized
 
 PERSONALITY 165 
 
 "personality" in the work), and a work of art still 
 remains. Take Maude Adams' personality from 
 her Peter Pan and what is left but J. M. Barrie? 
 When H. G. Wells wrote "Tono-Bungay," he was 
 proclaimed, and properly, an artist. But if H. G. 
 Wells were to write "Tono-Bungay" every year, 
 without variety, without change, would it be jus- 
 tifiable every year to proclaim him an artist of in- 
 creasing rank? Or Rodin; if, every year, he re- 
 peated his "Hand of God"? Yet year on year our 
 so-called actor artists repeat themselves, without 
 variety, without change, without diversity for all 
 the world as if they were dwelling still in those dis- 
 tant days when first the heated young journalists 
 of the epoch proclaimed them artists. Mrs. Fiske's 
 "Erstwhile Susan" is Mrs. Fiske's "Mrs. Bump- 
 stead-Leigh," just as Mrs. Fiske's "Mrs. Bumpstead- 
 Leigh" is Mrs. Fiske's "High Road" and "Servir." 
 Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman" is not Ber- 
 nard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra"; Brahms' 
 piano-concerto in D minor is not Brahms' piano- 
 concerto in B flat major. In a word, the so-called 
 art of acting has become, in its final deduction, 
 most often but the sustained art of acting and re- 
 acting a single role: the revolving disc of the por- 
 trayal of a role that once captivated the crowd. 
 That is, a successful catering to the mob. Hence,
 
 166 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 mere salesmanship. Hence save in a few sig- 
 nal instances something scarcely compatible with 
 authentic art. 
 
 As to my young friend's supplementary criti- 
 cism: "It is a little as though a music lover might 
 regret that, while Caruso was pleasing enough in 
 his way, he always sang tenor." The obvious re- 
 tort would seem to be, "It is a little as though a 
 music lover might regret that, while Caruso was 
 pleasing enough in his way, he always while sing- 
 ing tenor distracted one with periodic bizarre 
 movements of his ombligo." 
 
 Nothing, as agreed, is so important to an actor as 
 personality; yet nothing so instantly bounds his ca- 
 pacity and versatility. The actor with a marked 
 personality and here even a very great actor like 
 Salvini is found no exception to the rule is as a 
 Corot upon whose palette there is an unconsonant 
 carmine which is forever getting vexatiously into his 
 brushes. A dryness of voice in the limpid lines of 
 Romeo; a staccato utterance in the soft lips of a 
 Princesse Lointaine; an uncontrollable neck twist in 
 the tender passages of Hannele; an indelibly char- 
 acteristic semi-grunt in the great silences of Cyrano 
 these are the defects of personality that tear fine 
 moments of the stage into a thousand tatters. To 
 be effective, acting must interpret not so much the
 
 PERSONALITY 167 
 
 playwright's work as the audience's silent criti- 
 cism of that work. The actor who is most success- 
 ful is he who thinks less with his own mind than 
 with the mind of the theatregoing mob. And 
 this is why the thoughtful lover of drama, the 
 person who elects to use his own mind, has re- 
 cently taken himself in such large numbers to the 
 printed play. He appreciates the fact that a com- 
 fortable chair under a reading lamp is the only 
 place for worthwhile drama. And if, in sooth, you 
 are one to disagree with this man's notion and seri- 
 ously contend that good plays should be acted in 
 the theatre that the stage is the proper place for 
 them tell me what you think would happen to 
 Hauptmann's great Silesian play if, in the tremen- 
 dous climax to the fifth act, the child actress play- 
 ing Mielchen were accidentally to drop her panties? 
 Or, again, what would befall the superb art of 
 Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" if you were to 
 see it played by a Romeo who chanced unhappily 
 to be seized with the hiccoughs? 
 
 52 
 
 Double Entente. A theatrical piece by such rep- 
 resentative American virtuosi of thin ice as Mr. 
 and Mrs. Frederic Hatton ever suggests a French
 
 168 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 play written in Chicago. Invariably selecting 
 themes distinctly Gallic, the Hattons with equal reg- 
 ularity select treatments distinctly galline. That 
 this selection of treatment is, however, invol- 
 untary, that it proceeds automatically from the 
 collaborators' shortcomings, is apparent to any- 
 one who has passed an eye over their various 
 labours. Breathlessly pursuing the elusive double 
 entente and attempting a flying leap to the step 
 of its caboose, the Hattons are forever missing 
 and landing with a loud bump upon their joint 
 sit-spot. But such is the patent unshakable de- 
 termination of the good souls and so great their 
 ardour to be the Chicago de Caillavet and de Flers, 
 that a rub on the sore place and they are forever 
 once again up and at it. Does a double entente 
 perch upon the window sill of their chamber and 
 chirp, and the Hattons are out of bed at a jump 
 and off to the pantry after the salt-shaker. Does a 
 double entente show its head over the underbrush 
 and the Hattons dash wildly to the edge of the lake 
 and set sailing a decoy duck to lure it within range. 
 But nary a genuine double entente falls into their 
 clutches. For what they capture, when they cap- 
 ture anything, is less a double entente than a raw 
 smoking-car story, a mining-camp jape, a traveling 
 salesman's wheeze. And, further, not a ribald
 
 THE CAREER OF A CRITIC 169 
 
 plaisanterie swaggering unashamed in its ribaldry, 
 and so open to no charge of leer or hypocrisy, but 
 rather something that gives one the impression of 
 smut in a kimono, of dirt grinning at one from be- 
 hind a screen and crooking its finger. The double 
 entente of such Frenchmen as Guitry fils and 
 Picard, such Italians as Bracco, such transplanted 
 Swedes as Adolf Paul, such Germans as Thoma, 
 and such an American as Zoe Akins, is to be bred 
 not, as the Rations believe, merely by crossing smut 
 with cologne, but by the infinitely more difficult 
 trick of crossing wit with literary skill. Double 
 entente is not, as the Hattons present it, an 
 obstetrician in a dress suit; it is a well-bred young 
 woman in negligee. 
 
 53 
 
 /. M. Barrie. The triumph of sugar over 
 diabetes. 
 
 54 
 
 Episode in the Career of a Critic of the Drama. 
 Two days before the opening of the new Selwyn 
 Theatre in West Forty-second Street, the manage- 
 ment by uniformed special messenger sent me, in 
 the stead of the reviewer's conventional paste- 
 board tickets of admission, a box from Tiffany's
 
 170 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 wherein, amid a wealth of tissue paper, lay a hand- 
 some leather case (also from Tiffany's) wherein 
 in turn, amid more tissue paper, lay a magnificent 
 sterling silver plate (also from Tiffany's) engraved 
 with my name, a number of gorgeous scrolls and 
 circumbendiba, and the legend "Admit two." 
 Obviously, said I to myself, on gazing upon this 
 costly boon obviously, said I, the MM. Selwyn are 
 about to open their new musee with an especial 
 piece de resistance, a true goody, a something 
 extra-fine. This must be, I said, since for such 
 things as Forbes-Robertson's "Hamlet" and 
 "Caesar and Cleopatra" the Shuberts had sent me 
 by the mere mails the ordinary stereotyped card- 
 board tickets, since for Bernhardt's "L'Aiglon" the 
 Frohman office had merely scribbled on a somewhat 
 dirty scrap of paper the figure 2, and since for 
 Duse's "Heimat" in Paris, I well recalled, the 
 manager had simply shouted to one of the ushers 
 to give me whatever decent seat he could find 
 vacant. In view of all this, repeated I to myself 
 as I gazed upon the MM. Selwyn's dazzling grant, 
 in view of all this, said I, the MM. Selwyn must 
 have something vintage, some impeccable bijou, 
 some great ruby, to set out before me. Here, 
 whispered I, would be no merely fine drama, but
 
 THE CAREER OF A CRITIC 171 
 
 something literally to floor and stun: a drama to 
 remember when other dramas had long gone, a 
 drama to thunder its echoes down the esplanade 
 of time. 
 
 So came the night of the event. Impressed and 
 not a little bouleverse by the handsome leather case 
 and my magnificent sterling silver ticket, I dressed 
 with unwonted and scrupulous care, essaying full 
 half a dozen ties until one suited punctiliously the 
 contour of my chin and a half dozen pairs of pumps 
 until the leather of one matched precisely the shade 
 of my trousers' braid. A bit of pomade upon my 
 hair, a boutonniere, a flip to the topper and the 
 glass satisfied me I was appropriate to the great 
 occasion. To Delmonico's then, the handsome 
 leather case and my magnificent sterling silver 
 ticket in my pocket, for a properly preparatory re- 
 past. A slice of Honey Dew, consomme Sultan, 
 a timbale a la Conde, red-snapper a la Venitienne, 
 a cotelette de Chevreuil, a sorbet, chapous truffes, 
 poires a la Richelieu, gateau Baba aux fruits and 
 en passant a Taverne cocktail, a pint of Perier 
 Jouet, a bit of Johannisberger Blue Seal 1862 and 
 a few tablespoons of cognac to wash it down. A 
 Partagas Extremoso Delicioso, a victoria the 
 handsome leather case and my magnificent sterling
 
 172 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 silver ticket would deign to abide no mere taxi- 
 meter cab and, heigho cocker, I was arrived at 
 the MM. Selwyn's propylon! 
 
 I was, I confess it, agog. The lobby flooded the 
 night with a thousand brilliant lights. The MM. 
 Selwyn, dressed to kill, stood beside an immense 
 horseshoe of pink roses and, beaming spacious 
 beams, addressed to me words of welcome. The 
 aged keeper of the door bowed meekly as I flashed 
 him with my handsome leather case and my 
 magnificent sterling silver ticket. The elegant 
 head usher, glimpsing my handsome leather case 
 and my magnificent sterling silver ticket, saluted 
 me a la militaire. The but slightly less elegant 
 assistant head usher followed suit and hastened to 
 signal one of the menial ushers to escort me to my 
 chair. Grandly was I led by this menial through 
 an Italian Renaissance promenoir unstintedly em- 
 bellished with gilt Byzantine griffins, silver As- 
 syrian hippogriffs, still lifes by Candido Vitali, the 
 flags of the Allies, a Greek urn or two, several Louis 
 XIV tapestries, a Roycroft library table, a number 
 of baskets of artificial poppies and goldenrod, and 
 four or five of Lewis and Conger's sociable brass 
 spittoons and waved into the fauteuil desig- 
 nated on my magnificent sterling silver ticket. 
 
 I was breathless with the grandeur of it all.
 
 THE CAREER OF A CRITIC 173 
 
 And profoundly moved and expectant. Haupt- 
 mann at the very least! mused I. And, even so, 
 this Hauptmann fellow would under the circum- 
 stances be at his best none too good. Or mayhap 
 Rostand! Yet this Rostand also would under the 
 circumstances be something of a disappointment 
 even at his best. The MM. Selwyn's plum was un- 
 questionably a more juicy one. I looked at the 
 handsome leather case and my magnificent sterling 
 silver ticket (allowed in my keeping as a souvenir 
 of the high event), and was certain. 
 
 The big orchestra boomed out "The Star 
 Spangled Banner" and, with the audience to its 
 feet, the national emblem was flung proudly in 
 dedication across the proscenium. . . . Andreyev 
 or von Hof mannsthal ! One or the other, I was 
 now sure. Nothing less! . . . The big orchestra, 
 the audience again seated, was at the overture, the 
 "Mireille" of Gounod. ... At least de Curel or 
 Bjornsterne Bjornson, I would have bet my shirt! 
 Or perchance some posthumously discovered MS. 
 of Strindberg. Or something of Schnitzler or 
 Tchekhov. Or even though this was under the 
 circumstances unthinkable a vulgar descent to 
 Gorki or Heijermans or Gabriele D'Annunzio. 
 . . . The orchestra became silent. ... A lung- 
 filled hush swept the auditorium. . . . The lights
 
 174 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 became very, very slowly dim. . . . The luxurious 
 
 plush curtain rose. 
 
 "Don't she look just like a picture!" ecstatically 
 exclaimed a fat actress in a maid's costume, peer- 
 ing through some pink curtains at the left of the 
 stage. 
 
 The pink curtains were then pulled apart and re- 
 vealed the leading woman in a pink nightgown 
 trimmed with dyed pussy languishing in a 
 pink bed and making winks at the friends out 
 front. 
 
 I seized my gorgeous program in seven colours 
 print upon vellum. And this is what I saw: 
 
 Jane Cowl 
 
 in 
 "Information, Please!" 
 
 by 
 Jane Cowl 
 
 55 
 
 Haddon Chambers. In my perhaps sometimes 
 unjust critical canon, a dramatist is held always 
 to be as strong as his weakest banality. It is be-
 
 HADDON CHAMBERS 175 
 cause of this and because in the midst of even the 
 best of his good writing he descends now and then 
 to the most doggrel showhouse platitude, that I hold 
 Mr. Haddon Chambers in less than the common 
 esteem. If a man writes a distinctly first-rate play, 
 but somewhere and however briefly in that play 
 makes a small joke on Watt Street or Swiss cheese 
 or Yonkers, my prejudice, for all his otherwise 
 distinctly first-rate work, dispatches the fellow with- 
 out further ado. Thus, though in a play like "The 
 Saving Grace" Mr. Chambers exhibits a consider- 
 able measure of finished writing, polished humour 
 and occasionally dexterous characterization, the 
 resident impression I take away from the piece is 
 of the butler sneaking the usual two drinks of 
 sherry on the sly and, upon the sound of foot- 
 steps, gliding away from the decanter, the mean- 
 while whistling in innocent nonchalance. 
 
 Were minutes hours or even half-hours, Mr. 
 Chambers would be a precellent dramatist. In his 
 almost every piece of writing for the stage, he dis- 
 closes various minutes of sound worth. But these 
 separate minutes, save possibly in his "Tyranny of 
 Tears," are ever drowned in overwhelming waves 
 of inconsequent observation and the more or less 
 manifest theatrical dodges. There are several 
 such valuable minutes in his "Saving Grace."
 
 176 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 But they, as in his other plays, are surrounded and 
 riddled to the death by overtures in which two 
 typical Jerome K. Jerome servants set the table and 
 identify the characters presently due to appear, by 
 the bewhiskered whangdoodle of the faithful family 
 retainer who gulps and nobly declines to desert his 
 financially distressed employer, by the equally 
 bearded platitude of the last moment telegram 
 that turns the hero's fortunes, and similar dramatic 
 crutches. 
 
 56 
 
 The Palais Royal Naturalized. Were Brieux's 
 "Damaged Goods" to be adapted in terms of Ger- 
 man measles and George Moore's little Luachet 
 in terms of Little Red Riding Hood, the result 
 would not be more confounding than the invariable 
 local conceit of presenting the bed of Palais Royal 
 farce in terms of mistletoe. The notion, com- 
 monly suffered by the native writer for the theatre, 
 that an American audience will not stomach 
 adultery in light farce is absurdly ill-founded, as 
 the first adapter who sees through the current super- 
 stition will amply prove. The general practice of 
 adapting this adultery out of a play and convert- 
 ing it into a pinch on the arm, or something equally 
 lubricious, not only of course makes the theme of
 
 PALAIS ROYAL 177 
 
 the play perfectly ridiculous, but sorely damages 
 the box-office values to boot. When a loose fish 
 goes into a young woman's bed-chamber late at 
 night and without opposition remains in it until 
 early the next morning, there isn't an audience in 
 the whole of the United States that can be per- 
 suaded to believe for a single moment that all the 
 fellow did in there was to play post-office. And 
 while such an audience is willing for the sake 
 of the tradition forced upon it against its will and 
 common sense good-naturedly and temporarily 
 to overlook the preposterous equivocation around 
 half-past nine, it plainly begins to lose patience 
 when the equivocation is thereafter insisted upon 
 every other minute and when, in the midst of the 
 insistence, it suddenly develops that the young 
 woman who voluptuously held hands with the 
 Lothario is enceinte. 
 
 Ten years ago, the American audience may have 
 held, with commendable steadfastness of faith, that 
 adultery was confined to milk, but in the meantime 
 its suspicions may be said to have become some- 
 what aroused. 
 
 57 
 
 Satire. The seat of the trousers pursuing a 
 slapstick.
 
 178 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 58 
 
 The American Sentimentality. A proof of the 
 incurable sentimentality of American theatregoers 
 is to be had in the case of Mr. Bert Williams. 
 Williams, seven or eight years ago, showed promise 
 as a comedian. But, each year since, he has re- 
 vealed himself as an increasingly inept and un- 
 imaginative performer. Yet each year he is pro- 
 claimed a better and better comedian, and ap- 
 plauded the more and more, merely because he 
 happens to be a negro. 
 
 59 
 
 The Artificial Play. To the composition of even 
 the most artificial of comedies, an intrinsic sense 
 of touch and go with life is patently essential. 
 Without this, the result is a play artificial not in 
 the intentional and appropriate sense, but artificial 
 in the sense of a street-light left unwittingly to 
 burn after dawn. 
 
 60 
 
 The End of a Perfect Dane. Every once in a 
 while the gentlemen who manufacture dramatic 
 criticism for the New York newspapers and maga-
 
 END OF A PERFECT DANE 179 
 
 zines achieve a performance in the slapstick and 
 seltzer siphon so brilliant that it must fetch a tear 
 of envy to the entrepreneurs of burlesque, small- 
 time vaudeville and the pie film. In considerable 
 part the species of dramatic commentators who 
 believe that when Al Jolson falls with a thud upon 
 his pelvis the spectacle is vulgar, and that when 
 Falstaff falls with a thud upon his it is Art, these 
 gentlemen rarely allow a month to pass without 
 applying the bilbo to their own hinter-pant and 
 squirting themselves in the ear with the mechanical 
 carafe. By archaeologists of the bean feast, such 
 periodic critical rendezvous with the loaded stogie 
 are recognized as of a piece with the finest low 
 comedy of the actual stage, and as such are prop- 
 erly eulogized to their niches in the ante-chamber 
 of the temple of the beaux arts. 
 
 The late war doubled up the sheets on the local 
 Hazlittry with a persistent and sardonic waggery 
 and augmented at least fiftyfold the unwitting 
 metropolitan critical comedy. For the war 
 patently made the German, Austrian and Hun- 
 garian dramatist as popular in the Anglo-Saxon 
 theatre as a loud, wet sneeze and an indulgence in 
 left-handed stratagem was hence made necessary 
 when producers and adapters desired to present 
 the work of these enemy craftsmen in that theatre.
 
 180 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 The result, as observed, was a critical wayzgoose 
 of truly magnificent proportions: a dazzling stand- 
 ing upon heads and tripping over mats and danc- 
 ing of the bump-polka the like of which even two 
 such proficient critical comedians as Mr. J. T. 
 Grein, of London, and Mr. J. Ranken Towse, of 
 the New York Evening Post, have with all their 
 virtuosity in unconscious monkeyshine been in the 
 past unable to equal in even an entire quarter 
 column of theatrical comment. 
 
 Among the most extravagant capers cut by the 
 local guerinets during this period of managerial 
 war-time subterfuge will be recalled the now cele- 
 brated instance of the unanimous acceptance of 
 "Such Is Life," a play produced in the Princess 
 Theatre and credited to the British playwright, 
 Harold Owen, as a typical example of modern 
 English comedy. This "Such Is Life," as will co- 
 incidentally be recalled, was actually a word-for- 
 word translation of "The Book of a Woman," a 
 well-known and typical modern German comedy by 
 the well-known Berlin playwright, Lothar Schmidt. 
 A tutti of not less imposing sweetness, as con- 
 noisseurs of the more refined cheese wheezes will 
 remember, was brought on with the presentation 
 of a play called "Grasshopper," in the Garrick 
 Theatre. This play was the work of von Keyser-
 
 END OF A PERFECT DANE 181 
 
 ling, the German, whose dramatic writings are com- 
 paratively as familiar to Munich audiences as are 
 those of George Broadhurst to New York. The 
 play was duly credited to von Keyserling but, by 
 way of safeguarding the box-office against the 
 omnipresent and alert Mrs. Jays, the management 
 prudently dropped the von and gave out that Mr. 
 E. Keyserling, as they dubbed him, was a Russian 
 dramatist. This news the critical gentlemen of 
 the metropolitan brochures promptly swallowed, 
 with the result that the reviews of the play were 
 rich in profound comparisons of "The Moscow 
 Keyserling's" writing with that of such of his fel- 
 low Russian dramatists as Ostrovsky, Griboyedov, 
 Gogol and Turgenev and such of his fellow Rus- 
 sian poets as Tyntchev and Pushkin. In this enter- 
 prise, the Beaumarchais of The Times (the young 
 Professor Dr. Woollcott) was especially informar 
 tive and, if I remember rightly, devoted consid- 
 erable extra space in his Sunday edition to an il- 
 luminating feuilleton in which he commented ex- 
 tensively and instructively upon Keyserling's proud 
 place in modern Russian dramatic literature. 
 
 Another if possibly not so mouth-watering 
 delicacy was the concerted critical promulgation of 
 "The Blue Pearl" as a typical specimen of the 
 American crook melodrama, the play credited on
 
 182 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 the playbill to Miss Anne Crawford Flexner be- 
 ing actually a translation of Arnim Friedmann's 
 and Paul Frank's Viennese sex triangle comedy, 
 "The Blue Crocodile." And still another al- 
 though the war had no share in this drollery 
 was the extravagant praise of the actor, H. B. 
 Warner, for his "fine art in holding the stage dur- 
 ing a fifteen minute soliloquy" in "Sleeping 
 Partners" (I quote the Globe Aristobulus by way 
 of sample), when the truth was that the actor's 
 art was so extraordinarily fine that Guitry's 
 original soliloquy, with all its sly fancy and 
 humour, had to be cut exactly in half to meet the 
 Warner deficiency in talent for holding the stage. 
 The original soliloquy, incidentally, was read in 
 full in the London presentation of the play by a 
 performer even so lacking in fine art as Mr. Sey- 
 mour Hicks. 
 
 But with all this and all this is as nothing be- 
 side the bible of critical foot-slippings and ker- 
 flops that in the early war years entertained the 
 archdeacons of joy the real piece, the cake for the 
 birthday, the plat filled with the maraschino, was 
 yet to come, since the last war year was to bring 
 with it the most truly beautiful flower of journal- 
 istic criticism, the most truly lovely bloom, that has 
 thus far blossomed out of the show pews of
 
 END OF A PERFECT DANE 183 
 Broadway. For in this year there was presented in 
 the Harris Theatre a play, and the play was called 
 "The Riddle: Woman," and here follows the 
 jocund tale. 
 
 This play was written about ten years ago 
 by Rudolf Jakobi, the well-known Hungarian 
 dramatist, and was produced under the same title 
 in the seasons directly following both in the Volks- 
 theater of Vienna and the Deutschestheater of 
 Berlin. The Messrs. Shubert, subsequently plan- 
 ning to exploit in this country a Danish actress 
 named Betty Nansen, purchased the American 
 rights to the Hungarian play and employed their 
 play-reader, Miss Charlotte Wells, to make a 
 translation of the play in collaboration with Miss 
 Dorothy Donnelly. These ladies took the Hun- 
 garian manuscript in hand and, by way of injecting 
 an atmosphere into it that might the better suit the 
 Danish actress, changed the locale from Austria- 
 Hungary to Copenhagen and such character names 
 as Julius Schebitz, Hermann Dunkel and Lena 
 Wegenstein to Lars Olrik, Erik Helsinger and Thora 
 Bertol. Meanwhile, however, the Messrs. Shubert 
 decided not to exploit the Danish actress and re- 
 linquished their rights to both the original Hun- 
 garian play and the translation. For several years 
 the play rested in the translators' desk drawer; and
 
 184 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 then one day along came Bertha Kalich, the push- 
 cart Bernhardt, with her black eye peeled for a 
 Broadway vehicle. And out from its nest came the 
 dusty adaptation of Rudolf Jakobi's opus. 
 
 The Kalich blood-pressure jumped sixty points 
 when she read the adaptation, and she decided to 
 present it instanter. But care must be exercised! 
 the adapters warned her. For the war, as has been 
 said, made it a risky box-office-busting business to 
 put on a play from the pen of an enemy dramatist. 
 The Wagner-chuckers and Kreisler-grabbers and 
 Muck-rakers were ever snooping around in gum 
 boots! Well, why not throw them off the scent; 
 why not drop the suspiciously beery Rudolf and 
 substitute for it simply the initial C C might be 
 taken to stand for something Copenhagenish like 
 Copnus; why not spell Jakobi as Jacobi; and why 
 not, finally, announce this C. Jacobi on the play- 
 bills as a Danish playwright and "The Riddle: 
 Woman" as a Danish drama? A rich idea; and 
 no sooner conceived than executed. And thus it 
 came about that Bertha Kalich opened one fine 
 night at the Harris Theatre in the celebrated Danish 
 play, "The Riddle: Woman," by the eminent Dane, 
 Mr. C. Jacobi. 
 
 Now for the criticisms of this famous Scandina- 
 vian work.
 
 END OF A PERFECT DANE 185 
 
 Thus, the learned Sir Isumbras to the World: 
 "The play's foreign manner is easy to detect. The 
 program's acknowledgment was hardly necessary 
 that Charlotte Wells and Dorothy Donnelly, who 
 made the present version, went as far afield as Den- 
 mark to find the original in a drama by C. Jacobi. 
 This Danish play is as danksome as the emanations 
 of the Scandinavian dramatists usually are." 
 
 Ah, Isumbras, the danksome Budapest of ten 
 years ago! 
 
 Thus, the Pupienus Maximus to the Globe: 
 "It is evident from the first of this Danish drama 
 that C. Jacobi knows well his Scandinavian temper- 
 ament." 
 
 So, the Eumolpus to the Sun: "The play is an 
 offshoot of the Scandinavian school of drama . . . 
 of the sort that Ibsen might have thrown off. The 
 Scandinavian characteristics are more than super- 
 ficial. The story is one of seething passions, of the 
 volcanic emotions of descendants of the Vik- 
 ings. . . ." 
 
 Thus, the Theodorus Gaza to the Evening World, 
 who as will be noted evidently read the play 
 in the original Danish: "Charlotte Wells and 
 Dorothy Donnelly have taken the Danish play of 
 C. Jacobi and made it an interesting sex drama. 
 It was all of that and a bit more perhaps in its
 
 186 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 original form. There is no particular reason for 
 considering the work that Miss Wells and Miss 
 Donnelly have done. The main fact is that the 
 play suggests . . . the thought of Ibsen. The first 
 act brings back Hedda Gabler and Mrs. Elvsted 
 " etr 
 
 , t U . 
 
 So, the Giuseppi Fiorelli to the Herald, who was 
 apparently also privy to the original: "The 
 adapters acknowledge indebtedness for their idea 
 to the Danish play by C. Jacobi. It might be wiser 
 to acknowledge even more than the idea, since the 
 Danish names of the characters are retained . . .", 
 etc. 
 
 And thus, with firm finality, the profound M. 
 Towse, Titus Livius to the Evening Post: "The 
 simple fact is that in this case, as in a very large 
 proportion of the modern Scandinavian drama, the 
 main material . . . . ", etc. 
 
 Again, to turn to the periodicals, so the omnis- 
 cient M. Metcalfe, Ippolito Rosellini to Life: 
 "The Mesdames Wells and Donnelly seem to have 
 translated 'The Riddle: Woman' almost literally 
 from a Danish play by C. Jacobi." 
 
 And so, again, the ordinarily sagacious M. 
 Lewisohn, Alonso de Ojeda to Town Topics: "As 
 Danish libertines are more picturesque than those 
 of other countries with which we have been sur-
 
 END OF A PERFECT DANE 187 
 
 feited the adapters have not transplanted the 
 locale of the original play." 
 
 And so, still again, the pregnant M. Clayton 
 Hamilton, Rasmus Rask and Acusilaus to Vogue: 
 "The piece was adapted from the Danish of C. 
 Jacobi . . . and we should be duly thankful to his 
 two American adapters for drawing attention to his 
 prowess . . .", etc. 
 
 I need not go in for more. Without exception, 
 whether in the instance of newspaper or weekly or 
 monthly magazine, was the lay public fully en- 
 lightened by its critical savants on the "modern 
 school of Scandinavian drama of which 'The 
 Riddle: Woman' is a typical example and of 
 which C. Jacobi is a typical exponent." . . . 
 
 The incurable fancy, promiscuously held and 
 fostered by the local professors of criticism, that 
 the Danish drama is insistently and invariably a 
 sour drama, a drama of passion, abnormality and 
 low lights, should dally in passing with a number 
 of such familiar Danish plays as Gustav Wied's 
 "2X2 = 5," or "Thummelumsen," or Gustav 
 Esman's "Father and Son." For, contrary to be- 
 ing a typical specimen of the modern Scandinavian 
 problem drama, "The Riddle: Woman" is a typical 
 example of the modern Austro-Hungarian problem
 
 188 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 drama. For one Austro-Hungarian like Schnitzler, 
 or Sil Vara or Molnar who writes with charming 
 sophistication in the twilight mood, there are two 
 dozen who annually grind out naive morning-after 
 yokel-yankers in the glowering mid-Pinero mood. 
 No twelvemonth passes in the Austro-Hungarian 
 theatre without its ample procession of "Riddle 
 Women," without its long series of reboiled Tan- 
 querays and Irises. In the half season directly 
 preceding the war, precisely twenty-eight such 
 ancient and artless boudoir explosions were set be- 
 fore the public in question. And for the full 
 season of 191314, the easily accessible Kiinast 
 and Knepler statistics reveal a doubled dose. . . . 
 It therefore grieves me sorely to report that Mr. 
 "C. Jacobi" is approximately as Danish as 
 Chauncey Olcott. 
 
 , 61 
 
 Amour in the Theatre. The basic difference be- 
 tween a comic opera libretto and a drama is gen- 
 erally this: In a libretto the interest of everybody 
 on the stage and of nobody in the audience is 
 centered on the successful culmination of the hero's 
 love affair. In drama the situation is the reverse.
 
 "LITERARY" PLAYWRIGHT 189 
 
 62 
 
 The Broadway "Literary" Playwright. The 
 technique of the Broadway "literary" playwright 
 consists (1) in expressing the simplest thought in 
 the most complex manner possible and (2) sup- 
 planting any monosyllabic word that may crop up 
 in the expression with a word at least four inches 
 long. Thus, if in one of his plays he desires a 
 character to observe that it is time for tea, the 
 Broadway "literary" playwright goes about the en- 
 terprise something like this. He writes, first, the 
 simple line, "It is time for tea." Scrutinizing 
 the line closely, and detecting its baldness, he then 
 changes the line to read, "The hour for the serv- 
 ice of tea has arrived." This line he ponders, 
 deems a trifle too bourgeois, and presently converts 
 into "The appropriate period for the distribution 
 of tea has overtaken us." Nor is the line yet pre- 
 cisely to his Corinthian palate. And slowly it be- 
 comes "The meet moment of God's beautiful day 
 for the social custom of distributing tea has dawned 
 upon the conscience." So much for the first step 
 in the technique. It now but remains to take out 
 the little words and supplant them with as many 
 true beauties. And so, at length, the line that
 
 190 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 the character speaks is not the merely plebeian 
 "It is time for tea" but the vastly more delicat and 
 impressive "The consentaneous conjuncture in the 
 Infinite and Eternal's tesselated nonce for the homi- 
 letical punctilio of dispensing the brew of the 
 Camellia theifera has dawned upon the acroama- 
 tism." The impression one consequently takes 
 away from such a play is of having been present 
 at a discourse by the debating team of the Tuskegee 
 Institute on the one side and Montague Glass' Henry 
 D. Feldman, Mr. Thorstein Veblen and a Baume 
 Analgesique circular on the other. 
 
 63 
 
 Eugene Walter. The technic of Mr. Eugene 
 Walter in the achievement of stage melodrama 
 would appear to be as follows: first, to take a 
 story instrinsically devoid of melodrama; second, 
 to write that story on the smallest possible num- 
 ber of Western Union Telegraph blanks; third, to 
 throw away half the blanks; and, fourth, by way 
 of making the remaining blanks then pass for tense 
 melodrama, to cause what is written on them to 
 be recited by a company of actors in a rapid, ner- 
 vous and confused whisper. Mr. Walter's method 
 may be concretely impressed upon the reader by
 
 EUGENE WALTER 191 
 
 asking him to think of some such jingle as, for in- 
 stance, 
 
 Mary had a little lamb 
 
 Its fleece was white as snow, 
 
 And everywhere that Mary went 
 
 The lamb was sure to go. 
 
 Here, the reader will grant, may be inherent many 
 things, but assuredly no great amount of melo- 
 drama. Now, however, for Mr. Walter's secret. 
 First, imagine a darkened stage. Then, 
 
 Detective X 
 
 (Quickly flashing a pocket-light around the dark room, 
 taking three rapid strides toward the door at left centre, 
 and speaking in a rapid, quivering undertone) : 
 Maryhadalittlelamb. 
 
 Detective Y 
 
 (Stepping quietly to Detective's X's side, placing a 
 restraining hand upon his wrist, and speaking in a 
 breathless whisper) : 
 
 Itsfleece waswhiteas snow. 
 
 Detective X 
 
 (Glancing quickly to the right and extinguishing the 
 pocket-flash. In a voice shaking with suppressed excite- 
 ment and scarcely audible) : 
 
 Andevery wherethatmary went. 
 
 Detective Y 
 
 (Handing Detective X his revolver. In a tense 
 vibrating pianissimo) : 
 
 The lambwas suretogo !
 
 192 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 and you have the Walter system. A pocket- 
 flash, a revolver, a dark stage, and the most inno- 
 cent lines spoken as if the actors had lost their 
 voices and were victims of palpitation of the heart 
 and you have the necessary air of mystery, fore- 
 boding and suspense. 
 
 64 
 
 The Well-Mannered Play. All that seems neces- 
 sary to persuade the average play-reviewer that a 
 play and production are well-mannered is for the 
 producer to direct that the play be enacted in a very 
 slow and deliberate tempo, that the actors speak 
 softly, and that the chairs on the stage be uphol- 
 stered in some colour other than red or green. 
 
 65 
 
 On Beauty. My favourite and oft-repeated con- 
 tention that one good-looking girl is sufficient to 
 make almost any kind of music show thoroughly 
 enjoyable, is once again eloquently proved in the 
 case of such an Anglo-Saxon production as "Over 
 the Top," and at the same time even more elo- 
 quently disproved in the case of such a Latin pro- 
 duction as "A Night in Spain." In the first direct
 
 ONBEAUTY 193 
 
 instance, what is otherwise an entertainment of 
 modest pressure is given a tripled fillip through 
 the presence on the stage of the arch tit-bit known 
 as Justine Johnstone, and in the second indirect in- 
 stance, what is otherwise an entertainment of su- 
 perior pressure is deleted of not the slightest fillip 
 by the presence on the stage of a company of ladies 
 even the most beautiful of whom fails signally in 
 ambrosial approach to a cow. 
 
 The Spanish type of beauty, of which these latter 
 ladies are somewhat remotely representative, is, 
 for all the democratic affectation of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Lothario, as much below the American type 
 of beauty as the American is below the Japanese. 
 Beauty, after all, in its general world sense, is de- 
 terminable very largely in accordance with its de- 
 gree of delicacy, as Nietzsche and numerous others 
 have pointed out. The Spanish beauty is the 
 beauty of the ripe tomato ; the American, the beauty 
 of a slice of tomato on a lettuce leaf; the Japanese, 
 the utsukushiki of the lettuce leaf. To the true 
 connoisseur, whether Spanish or American, the 
 Spanish bloom has about it something too much 
 of the quality of the tube-rose, of a parade with 
 the brass bands too close together, of a Hofbrau 
 carte du jour: it is, in a word, too excessive, too 
 luxuriant. And when, as in the case of the "Night
 
 194 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 in Spain" ladies, the exhibited beauty is as far re- 
 moved from the flower of Spanish beauty as is the 
 beauty exhibited in the Avenue des Acacias from 
 the flower of French beauty, the nature of the 
 aesthetic sensation imparted may be imagined. 
 But, as I have in the beginning suggested, it is 
 this very lack of beauty in these senoritas that pre- 
 sents us with our embarrassing paradox. Where 
 the merely half-way homeliness so common to the 
 New York stage chills or, at best, leaves one in- 
 different the very amazing homeliness of these 
 ladies, by virtue of its sheer magnitude and unaf- 
 fected splendour, enchants completely. Where the 
 average moderately personable Broadway music 
 show creatures fail to divert the eye a second time 
 after the first chorus, these gorgeously unlovely 
 things attract and hold immobile that same eye as 
 absolutely as and in the same way as Cyrano 
 de Bergerac and the Elsie de Wolf scenery, Cour- 
 bet's "Les Baigneuses" and green stockings, the 
 Fifth Avenue residence of Senator Clark and Jo- 
 jo the Dog-Faced Boy, a Boston bull and the nudes 
 of Paul Cezanne, or Madame Polaire and Youngs- 
 town, Ohio. Miss Johnstone is to the Senorita 
 Marco, true enough, as Aquavit is to beer; but, as 
 any more civilized Scandinavian will assure you, 
 there are paradoxes in tipples no less than in ass-
 
 TOUJOURS PERDRIX 195 
 
 thetics, and the two, though you believe it or not, 
 may yet be mixed to the charm of the palate and 
 the complete satisfaction of the judge of fine arts. 
 
 66 
 
 Tou jours Perdrix. One of the legitimate objec- 
 tions to the dramatic critic is that he always thinks 
 in terms of the theatre. When an undertaker falls 
 in love with a woman, he does not visualize his 
 beloved as a corpse. When a chemist falls in love, 
 he doesn't appraise his fair one in terms of so much 
 hydrogen, chlorine and Johann Hoff's Malt Extract 
 or whatever is the combination that goes to make 
 up human life. But the dramatic critic is always 
 odiously saturated with the things of his trade. 
 The critic being, obviously, at least one hundred 
 times more a theatregoer than the man to whom 
 theatregoing is not a trade but a diversion, is at 
 least one hundred times more thoroughly imbued 
 with the things of the theatre. Visiting a great 
 man-o'-war on a gala day, he is impressed not so 
 much with the thing itself as with the notion that 
 it looks like the second act of "Pinafore." . . . 
 Wall Street is not Wall Street to him: it is merely 
 the big scene in "The Pit." . . . The voluminous 
 and exotic bill-of-fare in a German restaurant
 
 196 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 looks to him exactly like the cast of "Ben Hur." 
 . . . How then does the dramatic critic justify 
 his existence? He believes that there is room for 
 experienced opinion on the drama and that the 
 best man to voice such opinion is himself the man 
 who gets free seats since it is impossible to ex- 
 pect any opinion worth hearing from anyone so 
 imbecile as to pay two dollars and a half to get 
 into the average American theatre. 
 
 67 
 
 The Chewing Gum Drama. In the program of 
 each New York theatre there has been appearing for 
 years a conspicuous advertisement of the Adams 
 Chewing Gum Company which in heroic type so in- 
 forms the audience: "All those who have to make 
 good and understand that no excuse goes, chew 
 gum. It is the one ideal habit of the alert!" 
 
 Since the Adams Chewing Gum Company is un- 
 questionably an astute concern and one that 
 shrewdly sees to it that its advertising is placed 
 where it will most impress and convince, there fol- 
 lows the syllogism (1) that the Adams Chewing 
 Gum Company must have a pretty good idea as to 
 the precise quality of the New York theatre audi- 
 ence, (2) that whereas one has heard not so much
 
 CHEWING GUM DRAMA 197 
 
 as a suspicion of facetious comment on the adver- 
 tisement from a member of a New York theatre 
 audience, the meat of the advertisement must be 
 concurred in by that audience or, at least, not 
 found bizarre, and (3) that, therefore, the New 
 York theatre audience which the dramatist and pro- 
 ducer must please is made up of a group of per- 
 sons who believe that Dr. Beeman is a greater man 
 than Beethoven. 
 
 With a few distinguished exceptions, the drama 
 divulged in New York year by year hence con- 
 tinues to be of the chewing gum brand. For one 
 presentation like the sprightly "Le Roi" of de Cail- 
 lavet, de Flers and Arene, there is ever the usual 
 plenitude of dramatic opera of the kidney of 
 "Broken Threads," in which the hero, cross-ex- 
 amined by the heroine, admits that there is another 
 woman whom he has loved and will never forget, 
 only to confess finally, after an appropriate 
 amount of quivery dialogue on the E string, that 
 he has been referring to his mother. And for one 
 representation of Pinero's genuine comedy romance 
 "Quex," ever a full measure of bogus romances 
 after the fashion of "The Pipes of Pan," in which 
 the Stars, the Moon, the Boul' Mich', the Call of 
 Spring and the rest of the hackneyed blubber 
 troupe are trotted out on their alpenstocks and
 
 198 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 wheel-chairs to make calves' eyes at the Philistine 
 tear duct. 
 
 68 
 
 /. Hartley Manners. The philosophy of J. 
 Hartley Manners, as typically revealed in such of 
 his plays as, for example, "The Harp of Life," 
 has all the efficiency of a bloodhound with a cold. 
 Seizing in this instance upon the theme maneu- 
 vered by Wedekind in "The Awakening of Spring," 
 by Cosmo Hamilton in "The Blindness of Virtue," 
 by Ludwig Thoma, satirically, in "Lottie's Birth- 
 day," and by writers on end fore and aft, Mr. 
 Manners contrives by a masterly application of 
 cerebral infelicities to make of that theme a thing 
 of serio-comic fluff. Mr. Manners believes that a 
 young boy's curiosity in matters of sex may best 
 be stifled by telling him plainly about such mat- 
 ters, a theory somewhat akin to a belief that the 
 best way in which to keep a young boy from de- 
 siring to taste champagne is to open a bottle in his 
 presence. Mr. Manners is respectfully referred 
 to Havelock Ellis. Mr. Manners should know that 
 temptation and warning are twin sisters. To this, 
 the admonitory "wet paint" placard and the pro- 
 voking impulse to touch a finger to the paint to 
 see if it actually is wet offer some testimony.
 
 J. HARTLEY MANNERS 199 
 So, too, by way of testimony we have keep-off- 
 the-grass signs, prohibition and married women. 
 Mr. Manners also believes that a boy's mother, for 
 the prosperity of his future manhood, should be 
 his sole playmate (the Oberon complex), and that 
 the way in which best to make him respect and be 
 faithful to one woman is to be told suddenly that 
 another woman whom he has respected and fallen 
 in love with has been faithful to some half dozen 
 men. Mr. Manners is, in fine, the sort of dramatist 
 who pours the sugar on the coffee instead of the 
 coffee on the sugar. 
 
 69 
 
 The Comic Motion Picture. The popular Mr. 
 Charles Chaplin's latest motion pictures provide 
 a still further testimonial to the versatility of the 
 fellow as a low comedian. A touch of Chaplin 
 now and again is a serviceable diversion against 
 the laboured unfunniness of the posturing artists 
 of Broadway. He is, however, to be taken in 
 small doses, like a few leaves of an artichoke 
 or a sip of Vieille Cure. Too much of him dulls 
 the palate, impairs the taste. And yet, for all the 
 splendour of the fellow's estate in this fair re- 
 public, it is but true that not only is he not nearly 
 so good a comedian as his brother, Mr. Sidney
 
 200 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 Chaplin (whose "The Plumber" is by all odds the 
 most adroitly conceived and cleverly executed mo- 
 tion picture thus far revealed to the public I 
 offer here less my personal and very largely un- 
 substantial opinion of such things than a consensus 
 of more authentic judgments) but more, not nearly 
 so genuinely happy a pantaloon as several un- 
 identified and tough-bottomed fellows who cavort 
 through the so-called Keystone screen comedies di- 
 rected by a Mr. Mack Sennett. This Sennett is 
 probably the most fecund inventor and merchant 
 of the slapstick masque the civilized world has 
 yet seen. A spectator of but very few of his pic- 
 tures, I am yet fascinated by the resourceful 
 imagination of the fellow. An erstwhile chorus 
 man in the Casino music shows, Sennett has done 
 the work he set out to do with a skill so complete, 
 with a fertility so copious, that he has graduated 
 himself as the foremost bachelor of custard-pie 
 arts, the foremost conductor of the bladder. He 
 is, in short, the very best entrepreneur of low 
 comedy the amusement world has known. He has 
 made probably twice as many millions laugh as 
 have all of Shakespeare's clowns and all the music 
 show comedians on earth rolled together. And 
 laughter knows no caste, no altitude of brow. I 
 do not know whether this Sennett imagines all his
 
 COMIC MOTION PICTURE 201 
 
 scenarios. But whether he imagines them all or 
 only a few, whether a portion of the credit goes 
 to his writing staff or not, Sennett himself is with- 
 out doubt the inspirational spring. There is more 
 loud laughter in his picture showing the fire-hose- 
 flooded house with the bathtub containing a flapper 
 working loose from its moorings and starting on 
 a mad career down the stairs, out the door and 
 down the turbulent gutters to the Pacific Ocean, 
 and with the populace in avid pursuit, than there is 
 in a hundred farces by Brandon Thomases. And 
 there is as large an intestinal glee in his picture 
 showing the wind-storm blowing the nocturnal 
 pedestrian into a strange house and into a strange 
 bed already occupied by the person of a sweet one 
 as there was in a single serious drama by the late 
 Steele Mackaye. These Sennett things, too, must 
 of course be used sparingly. One can no more 
 endure them often every week, say than one 
 could endure every week a new book of Ade's 
 fables in slang or a new farce by Bernard Shaw. 
 It is the nature of such things excellent as they 
 individually are that their zest departs when ap- 
 proached too frequently. But a farce by Shaw or 
 a fable by Ade or a trouser sonata by Sennett is 
 each in itself a distinctive, albeit remotely related, 
 work of art.
 
 202 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 70 
 
 Art Via the Side-Street, That the stage intro- 
 duction to America of the rare and imaginative 
 work of Dunsany would eventually have to be 
 vouchsafed by amateurs was, of course, to be ex- 
 pected. Just as it is a tradition on the part of our 
 professional managers that, in a military play, no 
 matter where a soldier is wounded he must always 
 wear a bandage around his forehead, so is it a 
 tradition of our theatre that either amateurs or 
 Arnold Daly must finally be entrusted with intro- 
 ducing to the American public all the really worth- 
 while dramatists. Thus, Shaw had to be given his 
 first American hearing up a side-street. So, too, 
 Echegaray (at Mrs. Osborn's Playhouse). So, too, 
 Strindberg. So, too, Bjornson. So, too, St. John 
 Ervine, and Bergstrom, and Tchekhov, and An- 
 dreyev, and all the rest. 
 
 71 
 
 The Censor. How like a hair the line that sepa- 
 rates respect and ridicule! What if, at the height 
 of his moral crusading power, a waggish theatrical 
 manager could have got hold of a photograph of 
 Anthony Comstock taken at the age of two show-
 
 ON CRITICAL PREJUDICE 203 
 
 ing him as was the genial mode in those days 
 stark naked! 
 
 72 
 
 On Critical Prejudice. The dramatic critic who 
 is without prejudice is on the plane with the gen- 
 eral who does not believe in taking human life. 
 He is unfit for his job, out of place, a strayed buf- 
 foon. To be without prejudice is to be without 
 learning, without viewpoint, without philosophy, 
 without courage; in short, a mental neutral. The 
 ideal critic is he who venerates like a Turk, who 
 hates like a Corsican and who knows no compro- 
 mise on middle ground. His estimate of art is 
 his estimate of Madeira: it is either good or bad. 
 There is neither such thing as fair art nor fair 
 Madeira. His business is not to encourage signs of 
 talent. His business is simply with talent or lack 
 of talent. He is not a school teacher: he is the 
 school teacher's husband. He is not a youth, open 
 to this change and to that, but a man whose mind 
 has walked the Louvres of the world and is just 
 a bit tired. He is not a judge: he is that which, 
 being the lingering bloom of judgments long since 
 withered, is harsher, more relentless than judge: 
 he is reverie and reminiscence.
 
 204 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 73 
 
 The Commercial Theatre. As only a million- 
 aire, whatever the depth or quality of his artistic 
 appreciations, can buy the finest art treasures, so 
 can only a rich theatre buy the treasures of new 
 dramatic art and present them as they should be 
 presented. There is much nonsense written con- 
 trariwise by amiable souls who agreeably believe 
 that the best dramatists are glad to give away their 
 plays for nothing if only to serve the cause of art 
 and who believe, further, that these plays may be 
 presented with rare beauty in side-street little 
 theatres by amateurs who are occultly able to make 
 thirty-eight dollars' worth of cheese-cloth look like 
 three thousand dollars' worth of Gordon Craig. 
 The notion gained from reading breathless arti- 
 cles by visiting school-teachers to the effect that 
 the greatest art theatre in Russia if not in the 
 world was operated with the few dollars taken in 
 from the small audiences is a notion more pretty 
 than true. The greatest art theatre in Russia 
 if not in the world enjoyed from its very incep- 
 tion the fat and liberal sustaining purse of a 
 wealthy champion, without which it could never 
 have existed. Reinhardt and his fine enterprises in 
 Berlin were financed by wealthy social pushers.
 
 THECOMMERCIAL THEATRE 205 
 The Odeon of Antoine, and the National of Stock- 
 holm, and the Espanol of Madrid, were subven- 
 tioned theatres. And even our own Washington 
 Square Players, though it is not generally known, 
 were compelled to rely for all their noble ef- 
 fort to make cheese-cloth look like satin on the 
 bank-book of a Wall Street banker. And though 
 these young impresarios did much excellent work, 
 the fact persists that when this banker withdrew 
 his life-giving purse in order to devote that purse 
 to the institution in America of Copeau's Theatre 
 du Vieux Colombier, the art theatre of the Wash- 
 ington Square Players had to throw in the towel 
 and close its doors. 
 
 The most grasping dramatists are generally not 
 (as is commonly supposed) the hack playwrights 
 of Broadway, the Strand and the Boulevards, but 
 the best or at least the most famous drama- 
 tists. Rostand, with the help of shrewd counsel- 
 lors, practised upon Charles Frohman's French 
 agent an auction sale of the American rights to 
 "Chantecler" so adroitly manipulated that Froh- 
 man was compelled to pay an exorbitant price for 
 those rights. Shaw's contract, which he has written 
 himself and caused to be printed at his own ex- 
 pense, is three feet long and, in addition to de- 
 manding a flat fifteen per cent of the gross re-
 
 206 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 ceipts (the customary percentage is five, seven and 
 one-half, and ten per cent on the first five thousand, 
 seven thousand five hundred, and ten thousand dol- 
 lars respectively) clairvoyantly demands a share 
 of all tickets sold to hotel agencies and speculators 
 at an advance over the box-office price. To obtain 
 the plays of such dramatists as these takes not mere 
 "art talk," as the Rialto phrase has it, but cold 
 hard cash and a great deal of it. And to obtain 
 even the good theatre plays of such considerably 
 lesser playwrights as Sacha Guitry, it is necessary 
 to put up a substantial bonus of from five to ten 
 thousand dollars. The American rights to Knob- 
 lauch's "Kismet" had to be bought from Oscar 
 Asche, its English producer, with an advance pay- 
 ment of many thousands of dollars; and for the 
 American rights to the spectacle "Chu Chin Chow" 
 the local impresario was compelled to lay out to 
 the same British producer an advance of so much 
 as fifty thousand dollars. 
 
 A theatre may have Shakespeare and Moliere 
 for the asking, but it cannot have the best in 
 modern drama unless its purse is well lined. A 
 poor theatre, further, though it may have Shake- 
 speare and Moliere for the mere taking, cannot 
 present Shakespeare and Moliere beautifully, sat- 
 isfactorily, however much one may pretend,
 
 EDWARD SHELDON 207 
 for the brave poor theatre's sake, that it can. 
 74 
 
 Edward Sheldon. Were Edward Sheldon com- 
 missioned to touch up, for example, Ibsen's 
 "Ghosts" for the contemporary stage, it is an 
 eminently safe wager that he would go about the 
 enterprise something like this: 
 
 OSWALD 
 
 (Sits in the arm-chair without moving. Suddenly, as 
 in the distance a street-organ is heard playing "0 
 Parigi" from "Traviata") 
 
 Mother, give me the sun. 
 
 MRS. ALVING 
 
 (By the table, starts and looks at him.) 
 What do you say? 
 
 OSWALD 
 
 (Repeats, in a dull, toneless voice as the street-organ 
 dies away and there is heard, from a neighbouring house, 
 the voice of a young girl humming Johann Strauss' 
 "Blue Danube" waltz.) 
 
 The sun. The sun. 
 
 MRS. ALVING 
 
 (Goes to him.) 
 
 Oswald, what is the matter with you? 
 
 OSWALD 
 
 (His muscles relax; his face becomes expressionless; 
 his eyes take on a glassy stare. . . . In the next room
 
 208 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 a phonograph begins to play "Sempre Amar" from 
 "Faust.") 
 The sun 
 
 MRS. ALVINC 
 
 (Quivering with terror.) 
 
 What is this? (Shrieks) Oswald! What is the 
 matter with you? (Falls on her knees beside him and 
 shakes him) Oswald! Oswald! Look at me! Don't 
 you know me? 
 
 OSWALD 
 
 (Tonelessly as before. The phonograph stops. 
 There is a pause. In the distance is heard faintly a 
 church choir singing Rheinberger's Requiem for Soldiers 
 of the Franco-Prussian War.) 
 
 The sun the sun! 
 
 MRS. ALVING 
 
 (Springs up in despair, entwines her hands in her hair 
 and shrieks.) 
 
 I cannot bear it! (Whispers, as though petrified.) I 
 cannot bear it! Never! (Suddenly) Where has he 
 got them? (Fumbles hastily in his breast) Here! 
 (Shrinks back a few steps and screams.) No, no, no! 
 Yes! No, no! 
 
 (She stands a few steps away from him with her hands 
 twisted in her hair and stares at him in speechless 
 horror. As she stands so, there is heard approaching 
 in the street below a party of merrymakers with a band 
 playing Parry's "The Prodigal Son") 
 OSWALD 
 
 (Motionless as before) 
 
 The sun the sun!
 
 MIXED IDENTITY 209 
 
 (The band gradually dies out in the distance. There 
 is a long pause. From some place far away come the 
 strains of Tschaikowskis "Pathetique" as the curtain 
 slowly falls.) 
 
 Mr. Sheldon's inordinate affection for piccolos, fife 
 and drum corps, hautboys, love-birds, harps, choirs, 
 music-boxes, military bands, street and church or- 
 gans and Victrolas in the wings is instanced anew 
 in his every play. "Music off" is to the Sheldon 
 faith what clothes off is to the Ziegfeld. As a 
 result his plays and his revisions of plays generally 
 give one the impression that the theatre in which 
 they happen to be presented is situated always 
 next door to Aeolian Hall. 
 
 75 
 
 Mixed Identity. When plays having mixed iden- 
 tity as their theme fail, they fail not because 
 the audience is unwilling to grant that a man 
 might conceivably be unable to distinguish his 
 wife from her delectable twin sister, but because 
 it is unwilling to grant that the man would con- 
 ceivably try. 
 
 76 
 
 Unfrocking the Pretender. In view of the in' 
 creasing prevalence of the Jftzy and detrimental
 
 210 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 custom of so many of our lady players to per- 
 mit expensive and magnificent toilettes to substi- 
 tute for talent and hard work, I have a sugges- 
 tion to offer our more sincere and serious pro- 
 ducers, a suggestion which will they carry it out 
 cannot, I believe, fail in time to improve to a 
 very considerable degree the quality of acting 
 in the native theatre. 
 
 My suggestion: Make the ladies rehearse their 
 roles in the altogether. 
 
 77 
 
 The Professor. One of the cardinal rules 
 preached and insisted upon by the doctors of play- 
 writing is that no play can possibly succeed and 
 prosper if its ending is not precisely that ending 
 whether "happy" or "unhappy" for which the 
 audience has been made to hope. "Peter Pan," 
 with its audience invariably disappointed in the 
 hope that Peter may remain forever with the 
 youngsters the audience has been drawn to love, 
 was the late Charles Frohman's most lucrative 
 property, has made a fortune for Maude Adams 
 and Barrie, has brought a thousand dollars a week 
 for the St. Louis, Missouri, stock rights, and 
 has thus far been vainly sought from Barrie by
 
 LAUGHTER AND THE ONION 211 
 eager moving picture impresarios on a bid of 
 $200,000. 
 
 78 
 
 Laughter and the Onion. Why should the men- 
 tion of an onion infallibly provoke laughter in a 
 popular theatre audience? Because the onion has 
 a grave bouquet? Hardly, since the jimson-weed 
 (Diplotaxis muralis), which has a far graver, pro- 
 vokes not the slightest laughter. Because the onion 
 makes tears come to the eye? Impossible, since 
 smelling salts, which distil tears twofold, brew 
 not even a faint snicker. Because the onion, when 
 eaten, imparts to the breath a flooring sachet? 
 No, since Torreya nucifera food-oil, which imparts 
 even more mortal zephyrs, extracts nary a weak 
 chuckle. Because onion is a word of comic 
 sound? Scarcely, since union, which makes no 
 one laugh, is a word of equally comic sound. 
 Well then, simply because an onion is an onion? 
 Again impossible, since a scallion, which is 
 equally an onion, doesn't elicit so much as a gig- 
 gle. 
 
 79 
 
 The Broadway Curtain Speech. While it is 
 quite true that the art of a playwright is not al-
 
 212 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 ways soundly to be measured by the sort of cur- 
 tain speech the playwright makes on the opening 
 night of his play, I yet know of no surer brief and 
 estimate of the art of such a Broadway Sardou 
 as Mr. Willard Mack than that automatically pro- 
 vided by the august gentleman himself in his con- 
 duct and oral manifestations on such high occa- 
 sions. I have heard Mr. Mack address the flock 
 on at least a half dozen proud evenings and on each 
 such memorable moment Mr. Mack has summed 
 up Mr. Mack and the Mack art very much more 
 pungently and illuminatingly than the most acute 
 of his critics. 
 
 The most recent indulgence in self-appraisal 
 on the part of this Mr. Mack occurred not long ago 
 after the curtain in the Forty-eighth Street Theatre 
 had come down on the third act of his newest art- 
 piece, a serio-comic war composition hight "The 
 Big Chance." The applause liberal, the master of 
 the asbestos was constrained to yank the curtain 
 up and down some nine times. On the first yank, 
 Mr. Mack resplendent in the outfit of a brigadier- 
 general, for the Mack virtuosity extends to his- 
 trionism as well as to literature was beheld bow- 
 ing with elaborate and cavalierly deference at 
 Miss Nash, the leading lady. On the second yank, 
 the modest Mack bent himself so far in at the
 
 THE CURTAIN SPEECH 213 
 
 diaphragm in his humble obeisance to Miss Nash 
 that he almost lost his balance. On the third 
 yank, Mr. Mack, growing elated over the enthusi- 
 asm of the stalls, gave Miss Nash a loud con- 
 gratulatory slap upon her decollete back. On 
 the fourth yank, Mr. Mack, his elation growing 
 visibly, imparted to the Nash back with his palm 
 still another whack that made a hollow reverber- 
 ating sound as if the lady were just getting out of 
 a bathtub. On the next hoist, Mr. Mack, now nigh 
 unable to contain himself over the tribute of the 
 art lovers out front, grabbed Miss Nash and im- 
 printed a loud smack upon her hand. Thrice 
 more was the curtain then lifted and thrice more 
 did the overjoyed Mack pay sonorous osculatory 
 homage to the Nash fingers, wrist and forearm. 
 And now, the curtain up again, the applause wax- 
 ing hotter and his innate modesty overcome by the 
 demonstration, Mr. Mack, with the reluctance of a 
 pop-gun, stepped to the footlights. 
 
 "Speech! Speech!" cried someone in the back 
 aisle, presumably under the impression that Mr. 
 Mack had stepped to the footlights to get a hair- 
 cut. 
 
 At the cry, it was plainly obvious that Mr. Mack 
 was taken completely aback. Surprise was written 
 clearly upon his every feature. Surprise and an
 
 214 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 overwhelming sense of flattery. Mr. Mack de- 
 murely dropped his eyes. That one should be 
 paid so great an encomium! But again the cry 
 resounded from the back aisle. Plainly enough, 
 whether he willed it or no, it was now necessary 
 for Mr. Mack, however consuming his disrelish, 
 to say a few words. A hush. ... A pause. . . . 
 Out in the lobby, a pin dropped. . . . And pres- 
 ently Mr. Mack spoke. As hitherto and always, 
 not in laudation of himself, but of another. This 
 time, of Mr. A. H. Woods who produced his opus, 
 the liberal and unshakably confident Mr. A. H. 
 Woods whose dogged financial plunging in the 
 matter of this particular production by many con- 
 demned to failure Mr. Mack so greatly admired. 
 To this habit of dogged plunging, Mr. Mack 
 wished to pay tribute. He cleared his throat for 
 the purpose. Then 
 
 "I want to call your attention, ladies and gentle- 
 men, to Al Woods," spake he eloquently and feel- 
 ingly "Al Woods whose dogmatic plundering has 
 made this play possible!" 
 
 And this is why I have observed that while it is 
 quite true that the art of a playwright is not al- 
 ways soundly to be measured by the sort of curtain 
 speech the playwright makes on the opening night 
 of his play, I yet know of no surer brief and esti-
 
 A SAMPLE MASTERPIECE 215 
 
 mate of the art of such a Broadway Sardou as Mr. 
 Willard Mack than that automatically provided 
 by Mr. Mack himself in his conduct and oral mani- 
 festations on such high occasions. 
 
 80 
 
 The Realistic Drama. If, as many of the so- 
 called constructive critics maintain, it is true that 
 our realistic American drama is eminently success- 
 ful in holding the mirror up to nature, it must 
 follow as a logical corollary that nine-tenths of 
 the important events in our national life occur 
 in the libraries of private houses, and that, what- 
 ever their nature, they are never without their love 
 interest, comic relief, and display of the latest 
 styles in women's frocks. 
 
 81 
 
 Account of a Sample Masterpiece Born of the 
 Great War. It is called "Lilac Time." It was 
 written by the Mesdames Murfin and Cowl. It 
 is a thing of pretty actors in soldiers' suits, peri- 
 odic off-stage bass drum beats bursting in the air, 
 promiscuous fervent handshaking of the bowed- 
 head, I-understand-old-man species, leading man
 
 216 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 with cheeks tanned by the make-up weather who 
 swallows when he makes love and who at great 
 length in each act is eulogized as a hero for hav- 
 ing performed some feat of bravery in the wings 
 during the preceding act, leading lady in peasant 
 girl's dresses by Lady Duff-Gordon who digs into 
 the old trunk and sentimentally draws forth her 
 mother's wedding veil, the playing of national airs 
 as four stagehands make appropriate sounds be- 
 neath the window as of a regiment marching off 
 to battle, the usual I-knew-your-father-young-man 
 sympathetic old Major, and veteran of the Franco- 
 Prussian war now old and gray who gives an imi- 
 tation of Henry Irving playing "Waterloo" and 
 who, after suffering a sudden and complete phy- 
 ical collapse following an hysterical reminiscence 
 of valorous bygone days, sinks into a chair and 
 promptly crosses his legs. . . . 
 
 The scene of it is laid in Berlitz, France, and 
 the time is the war year 1918. Judging from the 
 numerous outbursts of song on the part of the sol- 
 diers, now in solo, now in barbershop quartet 
 grouped around a drinking table, it would seem 
 that the authors' conception of war is that it is 
 something like going to college. Described upon 
 the program as "a play of youth and springtime," 
 like so many other "plays of youth and spring-
 
 THEBELASCOTECHNIC 217 
 
 time," it presents us in the theatre with the spec- 
 tacle of a mere lad of forty-seven and his love 
 for a slip of a girl of thirty-six or so, their moist- 
 eyed animadversions on "the lilac time of youth" 
 in the old garden at purple gelatine-slide time, 
 the summoning of the lad to his country's service, 
 the necessary postponement of the wedding that 
 was to have been performed that very morning by 
 the village Cure and the lowering of the curtain 
 for a moment to indicate the impromptu passing of 
 the young lady's virginity, the wistful looking out 
 of the window for the lover's return with one hand 
 clasping the baby clothes upon which the young 
 lady has been sewing, the message that tells of 
 the lover's home-coming, the bromo-seltzer ingenue 
 jumpings up and down, the second message that 
 tells of the lover's fall in battle, the young lady's 
 tearful eyes and nose. . . . 
 
 82 
 
 The Belasco Technic. It is the general produc- 
 ing technic of David Belasco first to pick out as 
 poor a play as he can find and then assiduously to 
 devote his talents to distracting the audience's at- 
 tention from its mediocrity.
 
 218 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 83 
 
 The Commercial Public. How many, after all, 
 the pleasant and meritorious moments in our so- 
 called commercial theatre, moments that have been 
 permitted by a dense or careless public and an 
 equally dense or careless professional criticism to 
 pass comparatively unnoticed; or else have been 
 deliberately snickered out of court. Consider the 
 lonely, orphaned scene in Augustus Thomas' "The 
 Ranger," the scene between the two characters in 
 the beleaguered stockade and the recollection by 
 one of them of a similar situation in "The Girl 
 I Left Behind Me." Recall the final curtain of 
 Tom Barry's "Upstart," with the descending asbes- 
 tos abruptly cutting off the flow of the young up- 
 lifter's passionate rhetoric. What, too, of the 
 Chopin motif through Molnar's "Where Ignor- 
 ance is Bliss" and the caretaker's tag, "They've all 
 gone to the moving pictures," in Lennox Robin- 
 son's "Patriots." Consider the bit in Gillette's 
 "Clarice" when the doomed man tears up the little 
 sketches over which the girl has so bravely and 
 painstakingly laboured. And the resigned smile 
 of the husband and father at the close of Harold 
 Chapin's little tragedy, "The Dumb and the Blind." 
 And the scene between the ageing bachelor, still
 
 ON NOMENCLATURE 219 
 
 striving to be young, and the life-filled flapper 
 in the second act I believe it's the second of 
 Hubert Henry Davies' "A Single Man." And the 
 scene between the suffragette and the faun in 
 Knoblauch's play. And the "But we thought you 
 didn't believe in marriage" and the "Oh, but my 
 case is different" scene in Fulda's translated 
 "Our Wives." These are but the handful that 
 come to mind at the moment. And they occurred, 
 all of them, in commercial failures. 
 
 84 
 
 On Nomenclature. While it may be true that 
 a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, 
 it is more or less certain that it wouldn't seem to 
 smell as sweet if it so happened that it was called 
 a rosenberg. And while the Constitution of the 
 United States theoretically maintains that any 
 American-born citizen may possibly become Presi- 
 dent, it is equally more or less certain that a man 
 with a name like Bruno Gintz or Ambrose Wiffel 
 would stand a very poor chance of seeing the in- 
 side of the White House. Even if, indeed, the 
 rival candidate were Josephus Daniels. 
 
 What's in a name? The question may be an- 
 swered very simply. Say you are a stranger in
 
 220 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 the city, are seized upon a remote highway with 
 a sudden cramp, and desire to consult a physician 
 forthwith. A mile down the street, you come upon 
 a building in the front windows of which are 
 visible the shingles of three doctors. The first 
 shingle reads: "Dr. Ignatz Loos." The second 
 shingle reads: "Dr. Hugo Gula." The third 
 shingle reads: "Dr. John J. Smith." Which of 
 these three doctors would get the trade of your 
 cramp? Plainly enough, the last. Why, you will 
 have to answer for yourself. But, however you 
 answer, you come finally to the conclusion that the 
 fundamental impulse that propelled you and the 
 cramp into Dr. Smith's office was little else than 
 the comfortable sound of Dr. Smith's name. 
 
 For those persons who believe that names mean 
 absolutely nothing, let us make another experi- 
 ment. Take, for example, a very popular ro- 
 mantic play like the "Romance" of Edward Shel- 
 don. The principal characters in this play are 
 named, respectively, Thomas Armstrong, Cornelius 
 Van Tuyl and Margherita Cavallini. Keep the 
 manuscript intact, with not so much as a syllable 
 altered, but change the Thomas Armstrong into 
 Chplmondely Tootle, the Cornelius Van Tuyl into 
 Ralph Sprinz, and the Margherita Cavallini into 
 Filomena Piu. What success would the play have
 
 ON NOMENCLATURE 221 
 
 in the way of sentimental, romantic appeal? 
 Imagine the love scenes! 
 
 Why do theatre audiences laugh at a cheese 
 named Gorgonzola and not at the doubly puis- 
 sant cheese named Miinster? For the same reason 
 that they laugh at a reference to Weehawken and 
 not at one to a neighbouring New Jersey village 
 like Rutherford, a village intrinsically every bit 
 as jocose as Weehawken. Why is Kalamazoo 
 funny and the just as funny Michigan town of 
 Marshall not funny? What makes people snicker 
 derisively at Oshkosh and on the other hand treat 
 with silent respect the nearby and equally comic 
 Wisconsin hamlet of Appleton? Doubtless 'the 
 same thing that caused Amelia Bingham to ap- 
 preciate that if she remained Millie Smilley, as 
 she was baptized, no one would ever accept her 
 as an actress capable of histrionic heights more 
 elevated than hitting a comic Irishman in the eye 
 with a New York Herald. 
 
 It is as ridiculous to believe that a name means 
 nothing to a man or woman as it would be to be- 
 lieve that a name means nothing to a dish of 
 food. What theatrical producer would engage for 
 the role of Romeo an actor, however talented, who 
 was known to the world as Julius Katzenjammer? 
 What restaurant patron would enjoy the dish half
 
 222 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 as much if it weren't named mountain oysters? 
 Imagine giving three lusty cheers for General 
 Claude Vivian Pershing! More feats for the imag- 
 ination. Imagine being impressed by a woman 
 with a fireside name like Carrie Dudley (alias 
 Mrs. Leslie Carter) in the role of Du Barry. 
 Think of being impressed by Irish impersona- 
 tions on the part of a girl named Blanche Min- 
 zesheimer (alias Belle Blanche). Imagine hav- 
 ing collected cigarette pictures of Pauline 
 Schmidgall (Pauline Hall). What if Jerome K. 
 Jerome spelled out his middle name Klapka? 
 Why has Elsie Janis persistently denied with a 
 suspicious indignation that she was born Bier- 
 bauer? How many bottles of Mary Garden Per- 
 fume would they sell if they had named it, in- 
 stead, Schumann-Heink? What if the Oriental 
 Theda Bara had stuck to her real Cincinnati, Ohio, 
 name of Miss Goodman? Who would have 
 listened to Billy Sunday if his name had been Max 
 Blitz? Jacob Beer, even though he changed his 
 name to Giacomo Meyerbeer, remains fodder for 
 the vaudeville comics. What girl, however hand- 
 some the man and however opulent he was in the 
 goods of the world, would enthuse over marrying 
 him if he happened to enjoy such a name as Eli- 
 phalet Gilgal, or Joel Pecos, or Kosciusko Saus?
 
 ON NOMENCLATURE 223 
 Rex Beach and Jack London, signed to stories of 
 wild Alaska, are names more or less convincing. 
 But say there were a woman who could write 
 stories of wild Alaska very much better than these 
 twain whose name happened to be Gladys Dar- 
 ling or Mae Sunshine. What serious considera- 
 tion would the poor girl get? Or say the maga- 
 zine writer named Bonnie Ginger, whose work ap- 
 pears regularly in the Street and Smith publica- 
 tions, had chanced to write Andreas Latzko's 
 "Men in War" who would have been disturbed 
 by it? What if the actress named Trixie Fri- 
 ganza had been in Edith CavelPs place, or the 
 motion-picture girls named Arline Pretty and 
 Louise Lovely in the places of the Congressional 
 Jeanette Rankin and the Suffragette Pankhurst! 
 
 The theory that a name means next to nothing, 
 and that it exercises little or no bearing upon the 
 fortunes of its owner, is a theory akin to that 
 which would stoutly maintain that a girl named 
 Minnie Ohio would be as likely to impress Co- 
 vent Garden as Marguerite, despite her equal 
 talents, as the one named Mignon Nevada. There 
 are exceptions, of course, but they prove little. 
 For one Leo Ditrichstein who has succeeded in en- 
 chanting the matinee girl despite the influenza of 
 his name, there have been several dozens who,
 
 224 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 afraid to take so great a chance, have astutely 
 turned the natal Simon into Selwyn, Lepper into Ab- 
 ingdon, and something or other considerably less 
 harmonious into Courtenay. And for one Lud- 
 wig Rottenberg who has succeeded in the musical 
 world in spite of the patronymic odour, there have 
 been a score or more who, sensing the danger, 
 have changed themselves from Nachtigall into 
 Luscinius. What chance did poor Mr. 0. U. 
 Bean, who produced "An Aztec Romance" in 
 the Manhattan Opera House six or seven years 
 ago, stand? Even if he had revealed himself a 
 new Gordon Craig or Reinhardt? What serious 
 attention, in turn, would Gordon Craig ever have 
 attracted had his name been 0. U. Bean? Hash 
 called emince tastes twice as good. A firm call- 
 ing itself the Royal-Imperial Corset Company will 
 sell its wares to twice as many women as it would 
 were it to call itself by the names of its proprietors, 
 Bierheister and Pluto, Inc. And finally, what if 
 Rigo, the eye-rolling, lady-killing fiddler, had pos- 
 sessed the name Herman or Gus? 
 
 85 
 
 Opera Comique. The formula of opera co- 
 mique: Act I "The Boar's Head Tavern" with
 
 OPERA COMIQUE 225 
 
 the fat-legged chorus of female villagers, the King's 
 Guard as stiff as ramrods, the hero with his shirt 
 open at the neck, the daughter of the poor inn- 
 keeper who hugs the footlights, closes her fists 
 upon her bosom and blinks her way through a 
 song called "Love is a Rose," the low comedian 
 with the funny legs, plug hat, red nose and joke 
 about matrimony-alimony; Act II "The Court- 
 yard of the Palace" with the fat-legged villagers 
 now appearing as red-and-green gipsies, the 
 frowzy old stock company actress with a velvet 
 portiere attached to her bustle (thus depicting a 
 Queen), the Prince incognito, the separation of 
 the lovers by the cruel librettist, and the low come- 
 dian with the funny legs, plug hat, red nose and 
 joke about germs coming from Germany; Act III 
 "The Throne Room of the Palace," with the 
 fat-legged first-act villagers and second-act gipsies 
 now wearing long white sateen skirts and walking 
 across the stage as if a loved one had just died 
 (thus vouchsafing the yokels a regal "coronation 
 scene"), the reunion of the lovers through the 
 news that the hero has been pardoned, and the 
 low comedian with the funny legs, plug hat, red 
 nose and joke about Pittsburgh. . . .
 
 226 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 86 
 
 Dramatic Paradox. Why is that theatrical 
 audiences always laugh at the blunders of the in- 
 nocently ignorant characters in drama and are 
 moved to compassion by the blunders of the in- 
 telligent? Is this not directly opposite to the 
 practice in actual life? 
 
 87 
 
 The French and American Taste. One has only 
 to compare such a play as Harry James Smith's 
 "The Little Teacher" with such a play as Alfred 
 Capus' "The Little Postmistress" to sense (1) the 
 difference between the tastes of an American and 
 a French playwright, and (2) the difference be- 
 tween the tastes of an American and a French 
 theatre audience. I doubt whether in the dramatic 
 literatures of the two nations there are two plays, 
 of whatever quality, that may more exactly il- 
 luminate the respective postures of these nations in 
 their playhouses. Both plays proceed from the 
 adventures of a spotless virgin come to earn a 
 livelihood in a small village and each play in its 
 subsequent progress pronounces clearly, and at 
 every turn, the stereotyped characteristics of the
 
 TASTE 227 
 
 audience for which it was designed. The Capus 
 play is a brightly written, sophisticated, good- 
 natured and droll comedy of live and living per- 
 sons. The Smith play is an amalgam of all the 
 mildewed hokums of the Broadway showshop ex- 
 pounded through the figures of all the mildewed 
 puppets of the one-night-stand opera houses. 
 This Smith work is, indeed, a veritable tour de 
 force in the so-called sure-fire devices that are 
 ever successful in the diteggiatura of the keyboard 
 of the native playgoing yokel's emotions and the 
 pawing out of his moods doloroso, infervorato, 
 vivace con furioso and /. quanta possibile, a tour 
 de force in the yap-traps and old reliables of stage 
 commerce that has not been matched for sheer 
 virtuosity since George M. Cohan's "Hit-the-Trail 
 Holliday." 
 
 The story of the play is the autobiography of 
 the brazen popularity stratagems of the American 
 folk stage. The picture of George Washington 
 decorated with American flags; the picture of 
 Woodrow Wilson beside it; drawings of the Star 
 Spangled Banner upon the blackboard by the 
 school children with coloured chalks; the creeping 
 down the stairs of a small tot in its little white 
 nightie; the sprig of Spring blossoms which the 
 heroine gives to the hero and which the hero
 
 228 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 tenderly presses in a book for sweet memory's 
 sake; the drunken father who beats his children 
 until the "purple welts" show on their backs; the 
 twain of sour old maiden ladies who seek to stir 
 up the community against the little school teacher 
 because they believe her relations with the hero 
 are not so innocent as they seem; the uncouth but 
 whole-hearted lumber-jack to whom the little 
 school teacher teaches the A B C's and with whom 
 she falls in love; the head of the village school 
 board whose bandanna protrudes from the tails 
 of his coat ; the heroine's wistful playing of the 
 organ in the candle-light with the children in their 
 nighties cuddling beside her the organ that 
 hasn't been played, it's nigh on thirty years now, 
 sence the baby died . . . they are all here. And 
 with them, the village beau in the loud red vest 
 who wets his fingers and creases his trousers; the 
 hero who fells with a blow the knave who casts an 
 aspersion upon the little school teacher's fair name ; 
 the kettle of boiling water with the real steam com- 
 ing out of it; the joke about Jersey City; the dis- 
 covery that the ill-used children were kidnapped 
 from their cradles and are in reality the heirs of a 
 rich New York family; the comic old rube who 
 goes on talking forgetting that he has a lighted 
 match in his hand and burns his fingers; the hero
 
 TEMPERATURE 229 
 
 who says "damn" and then, when the heroine 
 raises her eyebrows, elaborately begs her pardon; 
 the pale little girl child who observes pathetically 
 that she "never had no muwer" ; the longing to be 
 back again in "wonderful little old New York"; 
 the final vision of the hero in khaki . . . and you 
 have, in small part, an idea of the night's in- 
 dubious traffic. 
 
 When one sees "The Little Teacher," one sees 
 synchronously the history of our American pop- 
 ular stage. It is a vaudeville of American 
 audiences since 1870 and, as such, the best unin- 
 tentional theatrical satire I have ever seen. 
 
 88 
 
 Temperature and the Drama. Of the numerous 
 delusions that enwrap the theatre, not the least 
 amusing is the hypothesis that the summer season 
 is suited vastly better to music shows than to 
 drama because the former, in warm uncomfortable 
 weather, place considerably less strain upon the 
 attention of the spectator than the latter. The 
 truth, of course, despite its regrettable air of 
 flippancy, is quite the opposite. A music show 
 like "The Follies," say, with its seventy or eighty 
 comely girls, with its every fifteen minute change
 
 230 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 of multicoloured costume and brilliant scenery, 
 and with its quickly shifting panorama of dance, 
 tune and spectacle, invites the attention with a ten- 
 fold more close alertness than a drama like St. 
 John Ervine's "John Ferguson," for instance, with 
 its seven or eight characters, its very slow action, 
 its leisurely development of thesis. 
 
 The managerial assumption that the music 
 show provides the better form of hot weather en- 
 tertainment because it calls for a lesser sense- 
 organic agility on the part of the spectator than 
 does the dramatic show vouchsafes us a not in- 
 accurate measure of the peculiarly bogus 
 managerial metaphysic. Placing the cart before 
 the horse with his accustomed perspicacity, the 
 manager argues from the success of the music show 
 in hot weather and from the reciprocal failure 
 of drama in the same weather that the music 
 show is successful because it appeals to the 
 spectator's indolent hot weather mood, when the 
 fact is that the music show appeals to the spectator 
 in hot weather as the drama does not purely 
 and simply because in hot weather the average 
 man is of twice as active a disposition and of twice 
 as alert a nature as in cold weather, and because 
 the music show thus satisfies his doubly acute 
 senses. In the summer months the average man
 
 TEMPERATURE 231 
 
 who in the winter months hugs the radiator and 
 the easy chair is fond of exerting himself. The 
 activity he abjures in the cold season he adopts 
 with a furious suddenness and enthusiasm in the 
 warm season. Though he may be anything but 
 athletic, the warm weather sees him golfing, walk- 
 ing, swimming, bathing in the surf, playing tennis, 
 gardening, climbing hills and mountains, hurrying 
 to and from railroad stations, fishing, commuting 
 twice a day, working like a dog cooking his own 
 meals and washing dishes in some sort of "camp," 
 going on long bucolic hikes, spending weeks stalk- 
 ing the mythical bear in the Maine woods, rowing 
 his arms lame at Lake Mahopac, falling out of 
 canoes into the Hudson River or pitching hay for 
 diversion in Westchester County. The very men- 
 tion of such exotic didoes would make him grunt 
 a sour grunt during the winter; but, come summer 
 with its wilting heat, and he becomes abruptly and 
 surprisingly as active as a cootie. It is this 
 grotesque and wayward hot weather zeal that 
 brings him to the desire for a more lively form of 
 theatrical entertainment than slow-paced drama. 
 When the warm weather comes, his peculiarly 
 restless nature wants action, change, something to 
 rivet the attention, to provoke the emotions and 
 the senses, to hold the eye. And the music show
 
 232 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 serves this end. He strains his too long inert 
 body by day and, suddenly avid of life, he wishes 
 to balance the strain by a hard pull at his other 
 faculties by night. And if he is not of the sort 
 that relishes the physical strain of sport, he 
 naturally relishes doubly, and wants doubly, the 
 equivalent and compensatory emotional strain pro- 
 vided by the theatre. Drama would rest him and 
 cause him to relax, and he doesn't want rest or 
 relaxation. He wants to have a smashing colour, 
 a dazzling parade, a ceaseless movement, litho- 
 graphed upon the combined bichromated gelatin 
 and albumen of his nervous and vigilant brain. 
 He wants, not an inert, passive and too easily as- 
 similated depiction of the tragic psychoneurologi- 
 cal phenomena underlying filial and maternal love 
 as set forth in some such drama as Hervieu's 
 "Passing of the Torch," but the active, absorbing 
 and every-moment intriguing and riveting kaleido- 
 scope of bewildering motion. 
 
 The problem is a simple one in practical psy- 
 chology, familiar to every Harvard sophomore. 
 It is fully explained by Wundt, Kiilpe and James 
 in their respective writings on the nature and forms 
 of attention, and by Ribot ("Psychologic de 1' At- 
 tention"), A. J. Hamlin in the American Journal 
 of Psychology, Flournoy ("L'Annee Psycholo-
 
 THE MARIONETTE 233 
 
 gique"), and the very sagacious Exner. . . . This, 
 therefore, the reason why "The Follies" is in- 
 evitably twenty times as prosperous a hot weather 
 show as would be the best drama Pinero ever wrote. 
 
 89 
 
 The Marionette. For the dramatist, the marion- 
 ette surpasses the living actor in the same way 
 that, for the composer, the violin surpasses the liv- 
 ing singer. For all the wood out of which the 
 marionette, like the violin, is fashioned, that wood 
 contains in each instance the potential voice of the 
 thousand and one inspirations of the creative 
 artist. Unlike flesh and blood and the whims and 
 idiosyncrasies and contumacies that go more or 
 less inevitably with flesh and blood, it serves the 
 creative artist with all the obedience and docility 
 of his pen, with all the expository force of the 
 lead that is in cold type. The critic of the marion- 
 ette is the critic who believes that the human voice 
 of Schumann-Heink is capable of bringing as great 
 a glory to the "Heidenroslein" of Schubert as the 
 wooden voice of Antonio Stradivari, or that the 
 visible nose, Adam's apple and Chianti-bottle 
 figure of Mr. Robert B. Mantell constitute a 
 grander and more beautiful funnel for the majestic
 
 234 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 verse of Shakespeare than the shrewdly negotiated 
 
 combination of a trained and mellifluous larynx 
 
 in the wings and a visible wooden figure finely 
 
 carved by the painstaking hand of an artist of 
 
 Bologna. 
 
 The "Scheherazade" of the Russian ballet, the 
 richest flower of pantomime and in its silence as 
 vibrantly dramatic as the most strepitantly voiced 
 drama, is in essence drama expounded by marion- 
 ettes. The "Voice in the Wilderness," the off-stage 
 voice of God, in the dramatic presentation of the 
 Biblical "Book of Job," contributes at once the 
 most effective and dramatic note of the play. Is, 
 then, the theory of the marionette drama in- 
 trinsically a combination of these twain so 
 absurd as some contend? . . . What living, 
 speaking actor could be half so effective, half so 
 revelatory, half so eloquent as Pinero's little 
 marionette that gayly dances down the curtain to 
 the second act of "A Wife Without a Smile"? 
 What living, speaking actress could conjure up for 
 the imagination the vision of a Jenny Mere as that 
 vision might be conjured up by a delicate waxen 
 doll responding to the golden, always-sixteen off- 
 stage voice of a shrivelled Bernhardt of sixty? 
 
 If there are certain plays that, in good truth, 
 cannot perhaps be so electrically played by ma-
 
 THE MARIONETTE 235 
 
 rionettes as by living actors plays of sex emo- 
 tionalism, for instance there are no less certain 
 plays that cannot be so electrically played by liv- 
 ing actors as by marionettes. The so-called drama 
 of ideas, for example, is essentially and properly 
 a marionette drama: the living actor not only 
 contributes nothing to it; he actually by his pres- 
 ence detracts from it. Lucien Guitry as Pasteur 
 in the play of that name is less Pasteur than the 
 familiar Lucien Guitry playing Chantecler in a 
 Prince Albert. It thus becomes necessary for the 
 proper effect of the play that the spectator, in 
 Coleridge's phrase, strain to support the illusion 
 not by judging Guitry to be Pasteur, but by re- 
 mitting the judgment that Guitry is not Pasteur. 
 This "temporary half-faith supported by the 
 spectator's voluntary contribution," this mental 
 ruse and imaginative tug this a marionette in the 
 role of Pasteur would not call for, since (1) the 
 role of Pasteur as written by the younger Guitry 
 is primarily a mere spigot for the projection of 
 scientific ideas and contentions, since (2) a living 
 interpreter of the role, however able, by virtue of 
 his familiar and largely inalienable aspect and 
 comportment serves as a somewhat grotesque sieve, 
 and since (3), therefore, the marionette, being 
 obviously a marionette, would rid the spectator of
 
 236 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 the devastating sieve consciousness and, interpos- 
 ing no alien physiological element and call for 
 temporary half-faith, would bring the spectator 
 without ado into direct contact with the aforesaid 
 scientific ideas and contentions. The difference, 
 somewhat less gaseously expressed, is the differ- 
 ence between watching August Fraemcke excite the 
 F minor concerto of Chopin on a Steinway and 
 listening to the ghost of Paderewski perform the 
 same composition on a Welte-Mignon. 
 
 Well, well, I probably exaggerate. Nor do I 
 pretend that I am myself yet convinced. But, 
 perusing the anti-marionette logic of the mummer 
 worshippers, my doubts and hesitations are some- 
 what moderated. If there is much to be said on 
 the one side, there is much also to be said on the 
 other. 
 
 90 
 
 The National Humour. Were I asked by a 
 foreigner to point out the most searchingly exact 
 and typical if true enough not always the best 
 specimens of the American national humour, I 
 should direct the inquisitor to the legend postcards 
 on sale for a penny apiece in corner cigar stores 
 throughout the country. Nowhere else, I con- 
 clude after considerable deliberation, is the unique
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 237 
 
 and characteristic humour of the United States so 
 clearly presented, so clearly illustrated, so clearly 
 summarized. Search the libraries of America 
 from end to end and one will be at pains to find 
 a shrewder and better anthology than is revealed 
 upon these mailing-cards. I quote a few more or 
 less familiar examples, selected at random: 
 
 1. "What! You never kissed any girl before? Then 
 you beat it! You are not gonna practise on me." 
 
 2. "After talking with some people, without mentioning 
 any names, I wonder at the high price of ivory." 
 
 3. "Don't criticize the butter yer may be old yerself 
 some day." 
 
 4. "I'm somewhat of a liar myself but go on with 
 your story; I'm listening." 
 
 5. "I'm so unlucky that if it was raining soup I'd be 
 right there with a fork." 
 
 6. "Some men will do more for a cheap cigar than they 
 will for a dollar." 
 
 7. "Don't spit. Remember the Johnstown Flood!" 
 
 8. "A tea-kettle sings when it's full of water. But who 
 the hell wants to be a tea-kettle?" 
 
 9. "Life is one damn thing after another. Love is two 
 damn things after each other." 
 
 10. "I've met both your gentlemen friends, and I don't 
 know which one I like the worst." 
 
 11. "Kiss me quick, kid; I'm going to eat onions." 
 
 12. "If you have nothing to do, don't do it here." 
 
 13. "Come in without knocking. Go out the same way."
 
 238 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 14. "If you spit on the floor at home, spit on the floor 
 here. We want you to feel at home." 
 
 15. "Take things easy. You can always go to jail." 
 
 16. "Don't swear while here. Not that we care a damn, 
 but it sounds like hell to strangers." 
 
 17. "If every man was as true to his country as he is to 
 his wife, God save the U. S. A." 
 
 18. "You can't fool nature. That's why so many pro- 
 hibitionists have red noses." 
 
 19. "The peacock is a beautiful bird, but it takes the 
 stork to deliver the goods." 
 
 20. "Don't say mean things to your mother-in-law. . . . 
 Kick her in the slats." 
 
 21. "What! You here again? Another half -hour gone 
 to hell!" 
 
 22. "Half the world is nutty the rest are squirrels." 
 
 23. "I ain't got nothing to live for ; nobody loves me but 
 the dog, and he's got fleas." 
 
 24. "A baby doesn't know much, but father can't wear 
 mother's nightgown and fool it when it's hungry." 
 
 25. "Calves may come and cows may go, but the bull 
 goes on forever." 
 
 26. "I love my patent leather, but oh you undressed kid." 
 
 27. "I may be no chicken, but I'm game." 
 
 28. "Any fool can go to bed, but getting up takes a 
 man!" 
 
 29. "Our eyes have met, our lips not yet, but oh you kid, 
 I'll get you yet." 
 
 30. "An Irishman dies everytime they're short an angel 
 in Heaven."
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 239 
 
 Not a tony, an elegant, humour perhaps but 
 nevertheless a humour sharply typical of the 
 present day American people: as typical in its way 
 as is the humour of Le Rire, Maillol and Rip of 
 the French, the humour of Seymour Hicks, Tit- 
 Bits and the New Cross Empire of the British, 
 or the humour of Busch, the side-street Tingel- 
 Tangel and Georg Okonkowski of the German. 
 The national humour of America, like that of any 
 other nation save Spain and possibly France, is 
 in the main its lowest and most vulgar humour. 
 Thus, the satirical humour of George Ade the fin- 
 est American humour of our time is no more 
 accurately the weather-cock of the American na- 
 tional chuckle than the high satirical humour of 
 Anatole France is the divining-rod of the French, 
 or the striking satirical humour of Ludwig Thoma 
 that of the German, or the smart satirical humour 
 of Max Beerbohm that of the British. The na- 
 tional humour is obviously enough the humour 
 not of the few, but of the mass the plurality 
 humour. And thus the humour most typical of 
 the American people is the humour of the beer 
 saloon, the scenic railway pleasure park, the 
 country fair, the day coach smoking car, the 
 street-corner, the chowder club picnic, the political
 
 240 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 rally, the baseball bleachers. The humour of any 
 nation is the humour of its leading bartender. 
 The humour of England is assuredly typified vastly 
 less by the reply of a W. S. Gilbert to the ques- 
 tion of what he thought of Dickens "He was, if 
 you understand me, a gentish person" than by 
 some such punning allusion of Arthur Wimperis 
 as General Haig and Haig or Admiral Jellycake. 
 The humour of Germany is not of the stuff of 
 Bismarck's reply when they asked him how he 
 would settle the Irish problem "I would have the 
 Irish and the Dutch exchange countries: the Dutch 
 would make a garden of Ireland, and in a year or 
 so the Irish would begin neglecting the dikes" 
 but of the stuff of some such music-hall "Jupplala" 
 lyric whence was derived the American "My wife's 
 gone to the country, hooray, hooray!" And the 
 national humour of France, though probably of a 
 suaver quality than that of the other nations here 
 considered, since France, after all, is metropolitan 
 Paris and metropolitan Paris France, is measur- 
 ably less the gorgeous humour of "The Revolt of 
 the Angels" than that of the well-known comic 
 boulevard picture with the appended inscription, 
 "Is this Monsieur Calchot that I have the pleasure 
 of addressing?" 
 
 In England and on the Continent, the character-
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 241 
 istic humour of a nation is the humour of its music- 
 halls. The humour of the Alhambra, the Victoria 
 Palace and the Camberwell Empire is as certain 
 a thermometer of the British humour as that of the 
 Folies-Bergere, the Olympia, the Bobino and the 
 Gaite-Montparnesse is a thermometer of the 
 French, and that of the Wintergarten, the Fleder- 
 maus cabaret platform and the Nollendorfplatz- 
 Theater of the German. But the representative 
 humour of the American people is, I believe, the 
 humour of the cheap vaudevilles and the bur- 
 lesque show. It is this humour that the post-cards 
 which I have described reflect: for in the cheap 
 vaudevilles and the burlesque shows one finds, in- 
 deed, this humour's provenience. The humour of 
 the burlesque show is a humour original with the 
 burlesque show: it is an even more original humour 
 than that of the cheap vaudevilles which is often 
 a mere slight polishing up of the burlesque humour 
 or a mere roughening and toughening up of the 
 already thrice distilled Broadway musical comedy 
 humour. And this burlesque humour therefore 
 doubtless places a more accurate finger upon the 
 national pulse. The loudest and most popular 
 laughter in the American theatres of today is pro- 
 voked by humour that has been graduated from 
 burlesque. The leading comedians of a dozen or
 
 242 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 more shows of uniformly high prosperity through- 
 out the country have come to the more august stage 
 from burlesque, and have brought their wheezes 
 with them. The exceptionally popular humour of 
 Irvin Cobb is substantially the humour of the bur- 
 lesque show, somewhat refined for the purposes 
 of general distribution in a periodical that rolls 
 a canny eye at the papa and his housewife. The 
 most popular mot negotiated by President Wilson 
 on his speech route of 1918, the joke about mak- 
 ing the world safe for the democratic party, 
 originated with the comedian in Charlie Baker's 
 "Gay Morning Glories" show. Helen Green's ad- 
 mirable actors' boarding house and telephone 
 girls' humour some of the very best native 
 humour an American has set upon paper was in 
 essence the purest burlesque show humour. 
 
 The satiric humour of George Ade, though, as 
 observed, probably the best American humour 
 since the time of Twain, is generically less an 
 American than a British humour. On the surface 
 it is as American as a catcher's mil; its general 
 form and style are as thoroughly American as 
 Stein-Bloch clothes; but in its amazingly sharp 
 satire it is British. Ade's training and upbringing, 
 contrary to the general notion, were I under- 
 stand from a source that seems thoroughly reliable
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 243 
 
 less along banks of the Wabash lines than along 
 banks of the Thames lines. (His father, so I hear, 
 was of English stock and stubbornly read no other 
 newspaper than the London Telegraph, for which 
 he regularly subscribed.) The fine English sa- 
 tiric note in the son's writings may thus be ex- 
 plained. Whatever the facts, the one fact remains 
 that the humour of George Ade is intrinsically no 
 more a symptom of the national humour than the 
 vastly less fine but partly satiric writing of Charles 
 Hoyt was, in his day, intrinsically a symptom of 
 the national humour. The present-day American 
 mass humour is not the sly humour of Ade, but 
 the somewhat less recherche humour of Billy Wat- 
 son ("baggy comedian's clothes, toothpick in his 
 mouth, red nose, cuffs tied with ribbons, hatchet 
 in his hip pocket," so Arthur Ruhl describes him 
 in that droll and excellent essay) of Billy Wat- 
 son and his venerable and deathless "Kraus- 
 meyer's Alley." Just as the twenty-year-ago sly 
 American humour of Hoyt was less the national 
 humour of its day than the somewhat less recherche 
 humour of this selfsame Watson and this selfsame 
 "Krausmeyer's Alley." (A nation's humour is in 
 general as unchanging as a nation's flag a few 
 more stars, or a few more asterisks, perhaps, but 
 Watson's current immensely popular addendum to
 
 244 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 "Krausmeyer's Alley," "A Gay Old Boy," is noth- 
 ing other than Harry Montague's famous "My 
 Uncle" of a quarter of a century ago, the lucrative 
 and nationally applauded standby of Waldron's 
 old Trocadero Burlesquers.) 
 
 The American national humour is not the de- 
 risory humour of the Twains and the Ades, but 
 the burlesque humour of the Petroleum V. Nasbys 
 and the Irvin Cobbs. The humour of Ring 
 Lardner comes nearer the national pulse than the 
 humour of Montague Glass, say, yet both these 
 humours are intrinsically of too fine and subtle a 
 left-handed quality, too sharp and incisive a power 
 of characterization especially the humour of the 
 latter to bring them into a plurality of popular- 
 ity. The national humour is the low, broad, easy, 
 vulgar humour that appeals alike to the Elk and 
 the member of the Union Club, the motorman and 
 the owner of a Rolls-Royce, the congressman and 
 the chiropodist, the Y. M. C. A. superintendent 
 and the brothel keeper, the artist and the shoe 
 clerk: the humour that tickles alike the ribs of 
 ignoramus and intellectual, of rich and poor, of 
 rowdy and genteel, of black, white and tan. And 
 where other than in burlesque do we find this 
 humour in America? Whether spoken humour 
 or physical humour, this burlesque humour reg-
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 245 
 ularly graduated to the more legitimate popular 
 stage, to the popular magazines, to the popular 
 songs and books and moving pictures, and so given 
 a thorough national circulation is more often 
 than any other form of American humour success- 
 ful in amusing the generality of the American 
 people. Thus, for one American who will laugh 
 at some such delicate mockery of Clyde Fitch's as 
 "Men are always hard on another man whom 
 women like," ten thousand will laugh at some such 
 burlesque show fancy as Krausmeyer's injunction 
 to Grogan to take his feet off the table "and give 
 the Limburger a chance." And for every Ameri- 
 can, rich or poor, black or white, Christian or 
 Quartermaster, who will be found to laugh at some 
 such literary drollery as Christopher Morley's ac- 
 count of the lecturer on Tennyson who by error 
 got into a home for female inebriates, there will be 
 found thirty thousand who will laugh at some such 
 burlesque drollery as Al Reeves' account of his ad- 
 ventures in urging the Salvation Army saver of 
 fallen women to save him two blondes and a 
 brunette for Saturday night. 
 
 The true fundamental national humour of 
 America as of any other nation rests, of 
 course, in its dirty story. The loose and ribald 
 anecdote of the Irishman and the minister's
 
 246 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 daughter, of what was seen through the opera- 
 glass from the veranda of the Hebrew golf club, 
 of the widow and the college boy, of the girl 
 who went to the masked ball as a certain playing 
 card, and the like, constitute the N toward which 
 the national popular humour compass needle con- 
 stantly and unswervingly directs itself. And it is 
 because the burlesque show humour more closely 
 and brazenly than any other public form of 
 American humour approaches to this shall we say 
 deplorable index, that it vouchsafes the most ac- 
 curate public picture of the American national 
 humour. This burlesque humour, further, is of 
 typical American accent and expression, as the 
 burlesque show itself is a typical American 
 product: one will not find the like of it anywhere 
 in the world. And this is why the alien in- 
 vestigator, would he know the best available 
 criterion of the American scherzo, would rightly 
 and most appropriately be directed to a study of 
 that form of American public entertainment whose 
 humour most intimately and unabashedly dances 
 the bump-polka with what is the actual national 
 humour. 
 
 The humour of the burlesque show the 
 genuine, full-blown and unaifected burlesque show 
 of Fourteenth Street, not the hybrid thing mani-
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 247 
 cured by the so-called burlesque wheel for the up- 
 town Columbia Theatre of Broadway this humour 
 is as representatively and intrinsically American, 
 in all the fine bloom of its vulgarity, as the humour 
 of the comic valentine, the pie cinema or the bush 
 league bleachers. Its essence is the essence of the 
 nationally most popular comic cartoons as, for 
 example, the "Boobs," "Simps," "Foolish Ques- 
 tions," "No Brains" and "Mike and Ike" of Gold- 
 berg, the Hallroom Boys of McGill, the Mutt and 
 Jeff of Bud Fisher, the "Bringing Up Father" of 
 George McManus, the "Abie the Agent" of Hersh- 
 field and the Yellow Kid of Outcault, and Foxy 
 Grandpa, and the Katzenjammer Kids, and the 
 various celebrated comic strips of the yesterdays. 
 For one American who laughs at the pungent, 
 satiric drawings of Webster or Hill or McCutcheon, 
 there are ten thousand who laugh at the low bur- 
 lesque stage sketches of Tad, of Opper, and of T. 
 E. Powers. 
 
 Puck was successful only so long as it stuck to 
 the barber-shop level: the day it attempted a more 
 elevated form of wit the office boy began figuring 
 how much the editor's spittoon would go for at 
 the auction sale. Life sticks sagaciously to 
 mother-in-law and Little Willie jokes and so keeps 
 alive. Judge sticks to yokel limericks about the
 
 248 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 man who lived in Siam and pictures of dogs with 
 cans tied to their tails and thus keeps its head 
 above water. The United States has not one 
 humorous periodical of one-half the quality of the 
 British Punch, or one-tenth the quality of the 
 French Vie Parisienne, the Russian Loukomorye 
 and Novi Satirikon and Boudilnik, or the German 
 Simplicissimus. The American comic paper re- 
 flects the highest popular level of the American 
 taste in humour as exactly as such a periodical as 
 the Saturday Evening Post, with its two millions of 
 circulation and its five millions of readers, reflects 
 the highest popular level of the American taste in 
 philosophy and esthetics. 
 
 As, theatrically, "Krausmeyer's Alley" may be 
 accepted as a typical example of the American 
 humour, so many "La Cocotte Bleue," the Cluny 
 Theatre riot, be accepted as an emblem of the 
 French humour, and "A Little Bit of Fluff," the 
 dismal American failure, as an emblem of the 
 British, and an eternally popular Laufs and Kraatz 
 collaboration as an emblem of the German. The 
 American humour, more than the British, or 
 French, or even German, is a slapstick and seltzer 
 siphon humour. It is the humour of "Dere 
 Mable," of "Speaking of Operations," of K. C. B., 
 of comedians speaking into telephones and receiv-
 
 THE NATIONAL HUMOUR 249 
 
 ing faces full of flour, of William F. Kirk, and 
 of Barney Gerard kicking Rose Sydell in the seat 
 of her tights. It is the humour of the Silk Hat 
 Harry cartoons, of such songs as "How're We 
 Gonna Keep the Boys on the Farm After They 
 Been to Gay Paree?", of postcards bearing the 
 inscription "Say, bo, get me! You're bughouse," 
 of Louis Robie and the bass drum and ratchet and 
 suggestively torn strip of muslin. It is, in brief, 
 less the humour of the ironic Harry Leon Wilson, 
 or of the observant Kin Hubbard, or of the J. L. 
 Morgan of the shrewd club lampoons, or of the 
 F. P. Adams of parody classic verse, or of the 
 quaintly philosophical E. W. Howe, or of the muse- 
 ful Clare Briggs than the humour of the Yonkers 
 Statesman, "Bugs" Baer, Dinkelspiel, the Charlie 
 Chaplin inserts, Joe Oppenheimer's "Broadway 
 Belles," Roy L. McCardell, Ezra Kendall, Bert 
 Leslie, and the one about the cigar drummer and 
 the blonde. 
 
 91 
 
 The Crook Play. The modern Broadway crook 
 play, commonly held to be as typical and 
 characteristic an American product as a Muhlen- 
 berg College bachelor of arts or the Mann 
 Act, is actually no more indigenously Ameri-
 
 250 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 can than Napravnik's "Dubroffsky." The mod- 
 ern Broadway crook play is a lineal descendant 
 of the Germane- Austro-Hungarian crook play: 
 its blood relationship is more or less visible 
 in its every feature. The American Carters 
 and Marcins with their "Master Minds" and 
 "Cheating Cheaters" were in each instance antici- 
 pated by the Austro-Hungarian Sawa Zez-Mirskis 
 with their "Super-Scoundrels" (Der Obergauner] 
 and "Cheated Cheaters" (Betrogene Betriiger), as 
 the American Armstrongs and McHughs with their 
 card-sharper "Greyhounds" and burlesque "Of- 
 ficers 666" were in each instance anticipated by 
 the Central European Karl Schiilers with their 
 "Card Sharpers" (Falschspieler] and Turzinsky- 
 Stifters with their burlesque "Don't Write Letters" 
 (Mann Soil Keine Brief e Schreiben) . The Broad- 
 way crook melodrama composer like Willard Mack 
 has always had a crook melodrama papa overseas 
 like Kurt Matull; the Broadway crook farce com- 
 poser like James Montgomery a crook farce papa 
 like Ferenz Molnar. The Americans have in none 
 of these cases been plagiarists this is not the 
 point but the species of crook plays which they 
 have written were in each case already familiar to 
 and popular with the Central European audience. 
 Not only in America but in Europe is the crook
 
 THEATRICAL WISE MEN 251 
 play, when it is done with a reasonable show of 
 skill, among the most prosperous and lucrative of 
 the numerous theatrical jay baits. The theory of 
 the local college critics that the high popularity of 
 the crook drama in America is a melancholy mark 
 of the inferior American theatrical taste is a theory 
 that suffers a swift bump when the Continental 
 (and particularly the French) statistics are 
 plumbed. 
 
 92 
 
 The Theatrical Wise Men. Probably no other 
 institution on earth is burdened with so many posi- 
 tive theories and rules of conduct as the theatre. 
 And in probably no other institution, save it be a 
 physical culture diet restaurant, are the positive 
 theories and rules of conduct so profitably to be 
 violated. The moment an oracular theory or law 
 is laid down in the theatre, that moment does it 
 become certain that by breaking it someone is due 
 shortly to make at least a quarter of a million dol- 
 lars. 
 
 A. H. Woods, probably the shrewdest com- 
 mercial manager in the American theatre, rejected 
 a ridiculously cheap advance offer of a sixty per 
 cent interest in the melodrama named "The Un- 
 known Purple" on the contention that the play con-
 
 252 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 tained a situation in which a wife failed to recog- 
 nize her husband after an absence of eight or ten 
 years, which situation, Mr. Woods informed the 
 author of the play, would never conceivably be 
 accepted as credible by a theatre audience. "The 
 Unknown Purple," with the situation, thereupon 
 proceeded to run for an entire theatrical year in 
 New York City alone. 
 
 When Arthur Hopkins announced that he was 
 about to produce "The Jest," this same canny Mr. 
 Woods voiced his conviction that so sombre a 
 tragedy could not conceivably draw more than a 
 very limited "highbrow" audience, as he termed it, 
 and could not consequently play to "big money." 
 The sombre "Jest" thereupon promptly turned out 
 to be the greatest financial dramatic success in 
 many years, playing to the astonishingly high box- 
 office sale of over nineteen thousand dollars a week. 
 
 George M. Cohan, who probably knows more 
 about popular playmaking than all the rest of the 
 popular American playwrights combined, has said 
 in answer to an interviewer's query: "If you want 
 to sell anything to Americans, sell them what they 
 want. That goes for pants or plays. And give 
 them what they want quick! Shoot it over fast! 
 Tell your story so sharply that it will keep your 
 audience awake all the time following you! Get
 
 THEATRICAL WISE MEN 253 
 
 a plot and get it going at once! Don't give the 
 audience time to think!" Mr. Cohan rejected the 
 manuscript of "Peg o' My Heart" on the ground 
 that it moved too deliberately, that its story was 
 not shot over with sufficient punch and speed, that 
 its plot maneuvering was so slow that an audience 
 would have too much time to think about it and 
 that, therefore, it would fail to hold an American 
 audience. "Peg o' My Heart" thereupon began 
 a record-breaking run that is still going on in the 
 remote tank towns and that has netted its author 
 and manager a great fortune. 
 
 Augustus Thomas, the leading American apostle 
 and professor of absolutism in dramatic technique 
 in the theory that in order to succeed a drama 
 must be written according to hard and fast, tested 
 and inviolable, formulae laboriously confected 
 "The Copperhead" according to the said formula? 
 and then found, upon the third night of its suc- 
 cessful New York presentation, that it was neces- 
 sary to the perpetuation of the play's success to turn 
 the chief principle of his main formula topsy-turvy. 
 Thus the first night enigma of Milt Shanks' loyalty 
 to the Federal government was on the third night 
 imparted to the audience in a hoarse down-stage 
 whisper by the rewritten Milt himself. 
 
 Daniel Arthur hesitated to produce Clare Kum-
 
 254 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 mer's "Good Gracious Annabelle" as a music show 
 libretto because it was, he maintained, too absurd 
 a fable too artificially handled. Hopkins there- 
 upon obtained the rights to the libretto from Arthur, 
 impudently produced the libretto as a straight 
 farce comedy without any music at all, and got 
 away with it. 
 
 These are five cases out of an available five 
 hundred. 
 
 93 
 
 William Winter. Re-reading the bulky opera 
 of the late William Winter, I am impressed more 
 than ever with the utter incompetence of the man as 
 a critic of the drama. A writer of many a felici- 
 tous phrase and fruity turn of sentence, he was yet 
 of the mind of a schoolboy, of the point of view of 
 a girl disappointed in love. Of his grotesque 
 morality and puritanism in matters of art, I do not 
 speak : these are of course familiar. What I speak 
 of was the man's almost complete lack of under- 
 standing of the fundamental requirements of crit- 
 icism. He was a critic of acting and drama in 
 precisely the same sense that the late William S. 
 Devery was a critic of sociology. His attitude was 
 generally the attitude of a Simon Legree without
 
 WILLIAM WINTER 255 
 
 slaves. Perpetually vexed, irritated, infuriated, 
 he would wildly brandish his cowhide about him, 
 would have at imaginary ghosts that were con- 
 stantly terrorizing him and, finding the ghosts 
 made of thin air, would suffer upon his own ear 
 the boomerang sting of the whip. Dancing then 
 and howling over the self-inflicted fetch, he would 
 seek to get even with the whip by loudly calling it 
 a rattlesnake. And it was this imprecation that 
 was duly set upon paper and called criticism. 
 
 If I seem to be indelicate in writing thus of a 
 dead man, I have no shuffling apologies to make. 
 The fact that Winter is dead doesn't increase my 
 respect for him in the slightest. And though I 
 hope that the good Lord God may rest the soul of 
 him in eternal peace, I can't resist the conviction 
 come upon me since carefully re-reading his works 
 that the mark of the man as a critic of the 
 theatre was best to be appraised in his acceptance 
 of public benefit alms, in the dour midnight of his 
 life, from the very actors whom he had labelled 
 dramatic maquereaux and the very actresses whom 
 his pale blue New England mind had denounced 
 as no better than harlots. It is to the credit of 
 Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske that she alone of all 
 who Were sought to play the hypocrite to such a
 
 256 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 man in his doddering, financially wrecked days 
 remained a sufficiently acute critic of critics to show 
 the committee the door. 
 
 94 
 
 Sex Appeal. The disappointingly small meas- 
 ure of popular success achieved by the woman who 
 is agreed to be the best actress on the native stage, 
 a regular topic for speculation where critics of 
 the theatre are gathered together, is not so diffi- 
 cult of explanation as it would seem to be. The 
 woman in question, an unusually able player and 
 one further endowed with a musical speaking voice 
 and more than the average share of comeliness, is 
 yet utterly devoid of the sex appeal essential to 
 success on the popular dramatic stage. This ob- 
 servation would, in faith, be trite enough were it 
 not for the fact that the deficiency (doubtless thor- 
 oughly recognized by the excellent actress herself) 
 has never to my knowledge been attributed to her 
 even by her least friendly critics. And yet, pin 
 down her admirers and disfavourers one by one, 
 riddle their elaborately profound professorisms, 
 and one finds that in the subconscious nook of each 
 there hides, politely veiled in academic flim-flam, 
 this simple icicle truth.
 
 SEX APPEAL 257 
 
 The actress who thus, albeit indirectly, impresses 
 an audience, though she be the greatest actress in 
 her nation, will ever remain a popular failure. 
 The yokel sees never the role interpreted by the 
 actress, but the actress interpreted by the woman. 
 It is nonsense to say, as they do say, that this or that 
 stage young woman is New York's or Cleveland's 
 or Kansas City's favourite actress. It is more ac- 
 curate to say that the young woman, whoever she 
 happens to be, is New York's or Cleveland's or 
 Kansas City's favourite stage young woman. 
 When the Senior Class at Yale or Harvard thinks it 
 is voting for its favourite actress, it is actually vo- 
 ting for the girl it would individually like best to 
 take out to supper. Allen and Ginter did not sell 
 cigarettes by putting in their packets pictures of ac- 
 tresses as actresses imagine the yokels collecting 
 photographs of Mrs. Sarah Cowell Lemoyne as the 
 Dowager Duchess de Coutras! but by putting in 
 pictures of actresses as women with good shapes 
 and as girls with naughty dimples and soulful eyes. 
 To believe that the yokel cuts out half-tones of an 
 actress and pastes them on the wall over his bed 
 because he venerates the actress for her histrionic 
 virtuosity is to believe that the editor scholastically 
 puts them in his magazine for the same reason.
 
 258 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 95 
 
 The Pigeon-Hole Play. The most ignorant criti- 
 cism visited upon a play in my memory was that 
 accorded Zoe Akins' "Papa" on its New York pre- 
 sentation. Confounded by something not duly 
 listed in the pigeon-holes, the gentlemen of the 
 press promptly concluded that the author had 
 failed in her attempt to write a kind of play that 
 was listed in the pigeon-holes when, of course, what 
 the author had tried plainly to do was to write a 
 kind of play that was not listed in the pigeon-holes. 
 Whether she failed to do this in sound fashion, or 
 whether she succeeded, is beside the point. The 
 point is that she was criticized not for what she 
 tried to do whether, as I say, the accomplishment 
 was good or bad but for what she deliberately 
 tried not to do. To take to the criticism of a play 
 like "Papa" a "Turn to the Right" mind and a 
 "Three Faces East" technical appraisal is to shop 
 at a florist's for beefsteak. It is much as if one 
 were indignantly to criticize Culmbacher for its 
 lack of palliative massage properties or a horse 
 liniment for its taste. 
 
 96 
 
 The Actor and the Trained Seal. I trust that I 
 am not unduly pessimistic, yet it seems to me that
 
 THE ACTOR AND SEAL 259 
 
 each year the quality of acting in the American 
 theatre grows progressively worse. Save in the in- 
 stance of a half-dozen or so men and a half-dozen 
 or so women, the bulk of acting becomes each sea- 
 son more slovenly, more uncouth, more absurdly 
 incompetent. That the actors themselves are 
 wholly to blame for this, I doubt. The average 
 actor, true enough, brings to his profession not 
 one-half the equipment that a fairly good barber 
 brings to his; and the average actress is ready to 
 call it quits when she has learned how to pronounce 
 three or four French words and to sit down with- 
 out automatically throwing her right leg over her 
 left. But despite this it seems to me that, though 
 the job were akin to driving nails into cobblestones, 
 these droll curios might yet be polished up a bit 
 and improved if there existed producers who knew 
 how to do the polishing and the improving. That 
 the average actor is willing to be helped, I haven't 
 the slightest doubt. But that the average producer 
 knows how to help him, I doubt seriously. 
 
 The producer makes the mistake of believing his 
 job done when he hires the actor. His job, in re- 
 ality, has then just begun. When the producer be- 
 comes indignant over the incompetence of the actor 
 he has hired, he becomes foolish. He has not hired 
 competence, though he is ever fond of deluding
 
 260 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 himself with the tradition and hope that he has; 
 he has hired merely a large hunk of more or less 
 sensitive and impressionable wax. To expect this 
 clod to perform its work of its own accord is to 
 expect a phonograph to play without a needle, a 
 record and considerable winding. If the acting on 
 the American stage grows worse year by year, it is 
 because the producers have taken more and more 
 for granted the theory that the average actor knows 
 something about his work. The average actor 
 knows no more about his work than the average 
 reader on the staff of a magazine knows about his 
 work. He knows that he mustn't stop to blow his 
 nose in the middle of a hot love scene, that he must 
 refrain from spitting on Aubrey Tanqueray's rug 
 and that he must look up the pronunciation of the 
 word "coniomycetus" just as the magazine reader 
 knows that he mustn't bother the editor with stories 
 about the beautiful, seductive, mysterious Fifi 
 Pommard, alias Sophie Bohnensalat, the Ger- 
 man spy but, like the reader, he knows very 
 little else. Of imagination, initiative, critical an- 
 alysis, artistic derring-do, neither vouchsafes a 
 trace. 
 
 If an actor gives a bad performance the fault is 
 the producing director's, just as if a trained seal 
 gives a bad performance the fault is the trainer's.
 
 THE ACTOR AND SEAL 261 
 
 The director who, upon finding an actor, perfunc- 
 torily takes for granted the actor's ability to do the 
 right thing at the right moment is akin to the trainer 
 who, upon finding a seal, perfunctorily takes for 
 granted the seal's ability to intertwine the French 
 and American flags at the right moment. The actor 
 is not an independent body and mind, a creature 
 of invention and resolve: he is a mere mechanical 
 instrument. He is the keyboard upon which the 
 producer plays the playwright's tunes. He is to 
 creative art what the nickelodeon is to De Pach- 
 mann. The producer who confidently regards him 
 otherwise is like the street urchin who fondly hopes 
 to start the slot piano going merely by shaking it. 
 
 97 
 
 The Middle-Class Taste. It is a common dud- 
 geon of the American professor-critics of the drama 
 that the low grade of American theatrical enter- 
 tainment is due to the low taste of the American 
 middle-class theatrical audience. Elevate the 
 taste of this middle-class, rid the auditorium of the 
 artistic and aesthetic predilections of our stock- 
 brokers, haberdashers, clothing salesmen, moving- 
 picture actors and other such mental and social oc- 
 toroons, and they say you will coincidentally
 
 262 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 and simultaneously elevate the quality of American 
 drama. 
 
 Let us suppose that this middle-class and its 
 plebeian taste were completely and summarily re- 
 moved from the American theatre and its erstwhile 
 loges occupied by, let us say, the aristocrats of 
 Europe and the aristocratic taste of Europe in 
 direct example, let us further say, the aristocratic 
 taste of Great Britain. What would be the result? 
 Surveying the statistics of royalty's attendance 
 upon the London theatre during the last twelve 
 years, we find that what this aristocratic and culti- 
 vated taste chiefly patronized and relished was as 
 follows: 
 
 Feb. 12, 1907 His Majesty the King, accom- 
 panied by the Queen, visited the Apollo and saw 
 "The Stronger Sex," a third-rate popular comedy 
 by John Valentine. 
 
 Feb. 19, 1907 The Royal couple went to Wynd- 
 ham's and saw "When Knights Were Bold," a 
 fourth-rate flash-back romantic play the success of 
 which was due to the low comedy, slapstick antick- 
 ing of the actor James Welch in the role of Sir 
 Guy de Vere. 
 
 June 26, 1907 They visited the Adelphi to see 
 the ancient rube ruffler, "The Corsican Brothers." 
 
 July 18, 1907 They went to the Vaudeville to
 
 MIDDLE-CLASS TASTE 263 
 
 see the adapted French farce, "Mrs. Ponderbury's 
 Past." 
 
 The King, while in Paris the same year without 
 the Queen, attended "Vous n'Avez Rien a De- 
 clarer" and "La Puce a FOreille," two particularly 
 hot ones, both at the Nouveautes, and Bernstein's 
 "The Thief." While the King was away, the 
 Queen took in Hall Caine's "The Bondman," 
 "Raffles," "Miss Hook of Holland," the variety 
 show at the Palace, "The Great Conspiracy," "The 
 Belle of Mayfair" and went a second time to see 
 both "The Stronger Sex" and James Welch's mon- 
 keyshines. 
 
 The Prince and Princess of Wales during this 
 season took in "The Stronger Sex" and "Sinbad the 
 Sailor," a Drury Lane extravaganza. 
 
 In 1908, I find that the aristocratic taste went in 
 for "A White Man" (called "The Squaw Man" in 
 this country) ; "Diana of Dobson's," the Cicely 
 Hamilton shopgirl romance; the naughty farce 
 "Dear Old Charlie"; the patriotic military flag- 
 wagger hight "The Flag Lieutenant"; "Marriages 
 of Mayfair," a Cecil Raleigh-Henry Hamilton 
 Drury Lane melodrama; "Lady Barbarity," an 
 R. C. Carton masterpiece; "Her Father" (twice), a 
 prototype of the Broadway play called "The Rain- 
 bow"; "The Gay Gordons," "The Belle of Brit-
 
 264 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 tany," "The King of Cadonia," "Havana" and 
 similar song and dance shows; the venerable 
 "Lyons Mail"; "The Sway Boat," by W. T. Coleby, 
 and "The Early Worm," a laborious farce by 
 Frederick Lonsdale. The command performances 
 in this year were "The Flag Lieutenant," "The 
 Corsican Brothers," "The Duke's Motto" and Al- 
 fred Sutro's "Builder of Bridges." 
 
 The following year saw the King twice taking in 
 the Drury Lane melodrama called "The Whip." 
 The King also went to see "An Englishman's 
 Home," a yellow journal melopiece; "Arsene 
 Lupin," a detective play; "The Woman in the 
 Case," a Clyde Fitch melodrama attributed to 
 Theodore Kremer; a third-rate farce named "Mr. 
 Preedy and the Countess," subsequently done at 
 the Maxine Elliott Theatre in this country; a couple 
 of obscure "society plays" by obscure writers; and 
 a couple of leg shows in which the pretty Phyllis 
 Dare was appearing. The taste of the Kins; was 
 concurred in by the Prince and Princess of Wales 
 and, save in the case of a vaudeville show at the 
 Alhambra, by the Queen. "The Lyons Mail" was 
 one of the command performances. 
 
 In 1910, the King elected Isabel Jav and "The 
 Balkan Princess," Lily Elsie and "The Dollar Prin- 
 cess," Gertie Millar and "Our Miss Gibbs," to-
 
 MIDDLE-CLASS TASTE 265 
 gether with "Alias Jimmy Valentine," "Dr. Jekyll 
 and Mr. Hyde," "The House of Temperley," 
 "Tantalizing Tommy" and a Chauncey Olcott opus 
 called "The O'Flynn." The next four years found 
 Royalty attending in the main Bulwer Lytton's 
 "Money" (a command performance in honour of 
 the visit of the German Emperor and the German 
 Empress!), the Robert Hichens Valeska Suratt 
 conte "Bella Donna," the Horace Annesley Vachell 
 potboiler "Jelf's," the coloured moving pictures at 
 the Scala, Charles Klein's "Third Degree" at the 
 Garrick, James Montgomery's Broadway crook 
 farce "Ready Money," the suggestive French farce 
 "The Glad Eye" (here called "The Zebra" in the 
 Paul Potter adaptation), Cicely Courtneidge in the 
 "Princess Caprice" music show, the song and dance 
 shows called "The Girl in the Taxi" and "The 
 Dancing Mistress," the movie "Quo Vadis," a va- 
 riety show, a revival of "The Silver King," the 
 Drury Lane extravaganza "Sleeping Beauty," the 
 Third Avenue plumber's delight "Mr. Wu," the girl 
 shows called "The Cinema Star" and "The Mar- 
 riage Market," a vaudeville bill at the Palace, and 
 "Grumpy" at the New Theatre. 
 
 The war year of 1915 saw Queen Alexandra, 
 Princess Victoria and Princess Maude of Fife for- 
 getting their troubles at a musical comedy named
 
 266 COMEDIANS ALL 
 
 "Betty" and the Queen and Princess Mary taking 
 in "Potash and Perlmutter" and the vaudeville 
 show at the Coliseum the King remaining away 
 from the theatre save on the occasion of war benefit 
 performances. In the subsequent war year of 
 1916, the Prince of Wales, accompanied by Prince 
 Albert, went to the Palace to lay an eye to the 
 cuties in "The Passing Show"; the Queen, accom- 
 panied by the Grand Duchess George of Russia, 
 took in "Puss in Boots" at Drury Lane; the same 
 ladies, joined by the Princess Victoria, the follow- 
 ing week (Jan. 18) went to a vaudeville show; 
 the same ladies the King still remaining away 
 from the theatre on May 29 took in "Peg o' My 
 Heart"; and the Queen, on July 10, sat alone 
 through a something called "The Bing Boys Are 
 Here." And the seasons of 1917-1919 saw the 
 movie called "Intolerance," Al Woods' "Friendly 
 Enemies," a couple of vaudeville shows, Edward 
 Sheldon's "Romance" and a revival of Sydney 
 Grundy's "Pair of Spectacles" the especial marks 
 of the aristocratic favour. 
 
 During these dozen years, while the aristocratic 
 eye was popping at the hack comedies of Carton, 
 the blood and thunder melodramas of Drury Lane, 
 the red-vest vaudeville acts at the Alhambra and 
 the shapely legs of the Adelphi chorus girls, there
 
 MIDDLE-CLASS TASTE 267 
 were being presented just around the corner and 
 passed up the great plays of the great dramatic 
 writers of all time, ancient and modern. In 1907, 
 with Hauptmann's "Sunken Bell" at the Waldorf, 
 His Majesty went instead to Somerset Maugham's 
 "Lady Frederick" at the Court. In 1908, with 
 D'Annunzio's "La Figlia di Jorio" at the Shaftes- 
 bury, Her Majesty elected instead a musical com- 
 edy by Adrian Ross and Leslie Stuart in which 
 Laurence Grossmith was springing comical jokes. 
 In 1909, with Galderon at the Aldwych and Oliver 
 Goldsmith at the Haymarket, the Prince and Prin- 
 cess of Wales voted for Gladys Cooper's rendition 
 of a Blanche Ring song in a Gaiety show and for 
 a vaudeville bill at the Empire. In 1910, with 
 Shakespeare at the Court and Shaw at the Duke of 
 York's, the royal family made instead for a Paul 
 Armstrong melodrama at the Comedy and a look at 
 Emmy Whelen at Daly's. With Synge, Schnitzler, 
 Galsworthy, Hervieu playing down the block, Buck- 
 ingham Palace has ever generally selected instead 
 a bedroom farce, a crook melodrama or a leg 
 show. 
 
 Let us therefore under the circumstances invite 
 our American professors to make dramatic criti- 
 cism somewhat safer for democracy. 
 
 THE END
 
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