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 TUCS'ON HHJH SCHOOL LIBRARY 
 
 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 LEAVES FROM A 
 CRITICS SCRAPBOOK 
 
 by 
 
 WALTER PRICHARD EATON 
 
 author of 
 
 "The Idyl of Twin Fires," "The Bird House Man" 
 "The American Stage of Today," etc. 
 
 Preface by 
 BARRETT H. CLARK 
 
 CINCINNATI 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 1916
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY 
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 All rights reserved 
 
 COPYRIGHT IN ENGLAND
 
 TO 
 A. E. THOMAS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN AMERICA 
 
 The question has often been asked in this country, 
 Can there be absolutely free and untrammelled 
 criticism of the drama in the daily newspaper"? The 
 recent case of the New York Times and the Shu- 
 berts aroused a vast amount of discussion, some of 
 which it may not be amiss to resuscitate with a view 
 to arriving at a more or less definite conclusion as to 
 the status of newspaper criticism. 
 
 A year ago last March Alexander Woollcott, 
 dramatic critic of the Times, reviewed "Taking 
 Chances," a Shubert production; in his review, he 
 spoke of its being "not vastly amusing," of its plot 
 being "quite absurd," the second act "vulgar and 
 tedious," and characterized the whole as a "bed- 
 room farce." The review called forth a public 
 statement from the Shubert office to the effect that 
 "some of the critics, lacking in humor, may try to 
 make you believe that somewhere there is something 
 just a little bit off the line in 'Taking Chances.' " 
 The managing editor of the Times was the recipi- 
 
 Vll
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 ent of the seats for the next Shubert production, but 
 it was stipulated that Mr. Woollcott should not be 
 permitted inside the theater. Mr. Van Anda, the 
 managing editor, a man who, in the words of Samuel 
 Hopkins Adams, "holds to the old-fashioned creed 
 that a newspaper should be edited by the editors and 
 not by the advertisers," returned the tickets forth- 
 with. A short while after, Mr. Woollcott pur- 
 chased seats at the Maxine Elliott Theater, was re- 
 fused admittance, and at once brought suit against 
 the management to establish his right to enter a 
 theater after having bought tickets. And the Times 
 therewith refused to take all Shubert advertisements, 
 and for nearly a year to mention any Shubert play, 
 actor or production. The deadlock remained, then, 
 until the Shubert office, of its own accord, invited 
 Mr. Woollcott to return to their theaters, and the 
 Times^ in turn, resumed its relations with them by 
 accepting advertisements and press "stories." 
 
 The whole case may at first appear very much in 
 the same light as the cases of other critics of Wal- 
 ter Prichard Eaton and the New York Sun, of 
 Channing Pollock, of Percy Hammond; but there 
 are two highly significant points to which attention 
 must be directed. First, contrary to the usual cus- 
 tom, it was not the Shuberts who withdrew their ad-
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 vertising from the Times, but the Times that re- 
 fused to accept Shubert "copy"; and, finally, it was 
 the Shubert office that came to the Times, after the 
 courts had given the Shuberts the right to exclude 
 Mr. Woollcott from their theaters, and invited Mr. 
 Woollcott to return; and this in spite of Lee Shu- 
 bert's statement that "During all this period that 
 this man has been writing these things about our 
 plays and of the plays that were produced at our 
 theaters, the New York Times received on an average 
 of from $600 to $700 a week for advertising the 
 very plays which this man condemned. We paid 
 the paper on an average of $35,000 a year." 
 
 The law, many times tested, is clear: the man- 
 agement of a theater can exclude whom it likes; it 
 is a private concern, not a public institution. And 
 yet, the Shuberts invited Mr. Woollcott to return to 
 their houses. They lost no love for Mr. Woollcott : 
 they needed the paper. 
 
 Now, the New York Times happened to be able 
 to afford to do without the $35,000 a year from the 
 Shuberts; had it, however, like some New York 
 newspapers, and most others, been unable to sustain 
 the loss, it would have had to discharge Mr. Wooll- 
 cott. In that event, the Times would have found it 
 necessary to heed the credo of the Shubert office:
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 "If it becomes known that any production that is 
 made in one of our theaters is sure to be condemned 
 by one of the leading papers in this city, that pro- 
 ducer will not bring his production to our theater 
 unless we exclude the dramatic critic of that news- 
 paper from the attraction. I have been threatened 
 that unless I get fair commented [!] criticism for 
 a production made in my theaters, that the produc- 
 tion will be taken elsewhere." 
 
 The simple method of the Times, employed with- 
 out malice, with no threatenings, without blare of 
 trumpets, has triumphed. It is not moral, it is not 
 exactly pleasant to reflect upon, but it is efficacious ; 
 it is the only possible weapon with which to combat 
 the decidedly unethical weapons of such managers 
 as declare that (referring to the Times critic) 
 "The plaintiff, from the commencement of his em- 
 ployment with the New York Times ', has shown his 
 bitter feeling and animosity against the defendants 
 and has uniformly written scathing articles con- 
 cerning the productions made by the defendants and 
 each of them." 
 
 There are perhaps half a dozen New York news- 
 papers able to do what the Times did, and possibly 
 a few more than that outside the metropolis. A 
 great many of the weeklies and most of the monthlies
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 are likewise free to say what they please, but these 
 last are valuable chiefly as leisurely comments, and 
 not as critical estimates directly affecting audiences 
 from day to day. 
 
 The first important step has been taken: a rich 
 newspaper can stand behind its critic, against the 
 manager ; but what of the paper that must depend on 
 the revenue from each of its heavy advertisers? Ob- 
 viously, and unfortunately, it must bow down to the 
 dictates of those advertisers. 
 
 The whole situation as I have reviewed it in the 
 above-cited example, is considered solely from the 
 point of view of business; the dignity and impor- 
 tance of dramatic criticism as a part of the make-up 
 of our daily newspaper I have not touched upon. 
 Until criticism can be at least fairly free, it is use- 
 less to prate of it as an art; "criticism," dictated by 
 the theater manager or the advertising manager, 
 cannot rise even to the height of good reviewing. 
 This is why we cannot afford to think of true dra- 
 matic criticism before we make way for true dra- 
 matic reviewing and reporting. So long as it is 
 still possible for a manager to quote, "It is clean. 
 We recommend it," for "It is clean. We have no 
 hesitation in recommending it to the three little girls 
 of 'Alice in Wonderland' who lived at the bottom of
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 the treacle well," just so long shall we remain where 
 we are. 
 
 And lest I be suspected of the vice of pessimism, 
 let me hasten to state that there are in this country 
 to-day a few dramatic critics endowed not only with 
 first-rate powers of perception and wide knowledge 
 and experience, but with true literary distinction. 
 These critics, for the most part, have been forced to 
 write for magazines and special issues of newspapers ; 
 the remaining few could continue writing for the 
 daily papers because they have been able to establish 
 for themselves a real following of intelligent readers. 
 It is to the critics of these two categories and, for- 
 tunately two or three belong to both that we 
 must look for a future in the art and practice of 
 dramatic criticism. It is with the hope that the 
 present collection of varied papers, documents of 
 contemporary interest and specimens of true criti- 
 cism, will arouse a more genuine interest in and love 
 for this difficult and somewhat neglected art, that I 
 have induced Mr. Eaton to allow me to re-print 
 these essays. 
 
 BARRETT H. CLARK.
 
 Almost all of the reviews and essays in this 
 volume have previously been printed in newspapers 
 or magazines, the majority of them being part of a 
 weekly record of the New York stage, contributed 
 during the past six years to the daily press. They 
 are reprinted here without change or addition ; even 
 the occasional prophecies have been left, if only to 
 show the danger of donning Cassandra's robe. 
 There is no pleasure for the critic in trying to doctor 
 an old review, and no profit for the reader; he is 
 almost sure thus to deprive it of its only value that 
 of an immediate and fresh impression. The writer's 
 thanks are extended to the editors of the Boston 
 Transcript, the Indianapolis News, the Chicago Her- 
 ald, the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, the New 
 York Times, the American Magazine and the Cen- 
 tury, for their kind permission to reprint. 
 
 W. P. E. 
 
 Stockbridge, 
 Massachusetts.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION I 
 
 AMERICAN PLAYS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PLAYING THE PIPER 3 
 
 "KINDLING" AN HONEST PLAY 12 
 
 WARFIELD IN THE SPIRIT WORLD . ... . . 17 
 
 As AUGUSTUS THOMAS THINKS . . ... .25 
 
 BROADWAY DISCOVERS THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ... 34 
 
 CHEWING GUM AND REFORM 44 
 
 A QUAINT TALE FROM THE ORIENT . . . . . .50 
 
 BELASCO AND HYPNOTISM . 59 
 
 WHAT BISHOPS Do IN THEIR YOUTH 66 
 
 ADVENTURES OF A SOUL AT THE WINTER GARDEN . . 75 
 
 HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO ART 82 
 
 MR. COHAN'S BELIEF IN MIRACLES 90 
 
 A VICTORY OF UNPRETENTIOUSNESS 98 
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS, WHICH is SHELDON'S . . .104 
 THE POOR WORKING GIRL SUFFERS AGAIN . . .110 
 
 "THE UNCHASTENED WOMAN," A REAL CHARACTER 
 
 STUDY 116 
 
 THE EASY LOT OF THE STAGE HERO 123 
 
 DON JUAN REDIVIVUS 128 
 
 MRS. FISKE AMONG THE MENNONITES 134
 
 CONTENTS 
 SECTION II 
 
 FOREIGN PLAYS 
 
 PACK 
 
 A LITTLE SIDE-STREET IN ARCADY 141 
 
 A LITTLE FLYER IN JOY 148 
 
 AN INTIMATE THEATER AND AN UNUSUAL PLAY . .155 
 BERNSTEIN AND BELASCO AT THEIR BEST ..... 165 
 
 MAUDE ADAMS AS A MURDERESS 172 
 
 "THE PHANTOM RIVAL" AND Miss CREWS . . .179 
 BARKER BRINGS THE NEW STAGE-CRAFT .... 188 
 A FEW MORALIZINGS FROM "THE WEAVERS*' . . 1Q5 
 A TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGEDY 202 
 
 SECTION III 
 
 SHAKESPEAREAN REVIVALS 
 
 ON FINDING THE JOKE IN "OTHELLO" . . . .211 
 
 Miss ANGLIN AND THE BARD 217 
 
 Do You BELIEVE IN GOLD FAIRIES? 234 
 
 "THE TEMPEST" WITHOUT SCENERY 241 
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 PLAYS, PLAYERS, AND ACTING 
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 249 
 
 THE REAL FOES OF THE SERIOUS DRAMA .... 265
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACT 
 
 GEORGE ARLISS A STUDY IN ACTING 277 
 
 WHAT is A GOOD PLAY *? 291 
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS AND THE NEW ART OF THE 
 
 THEATER 307 
 
 WHAT is ENTERTAINMENT ? 326 
 
 A QUIET EVENING IN THE THEATER 343 
 
 MIDDLE- AGED MORALIZING FOR YEASTY YOUNGSTERS 351 
 
 ON LETTING THE PLAYERS ALONE 358 
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE IN THE SCHOOLS . 365 
 THE VEXED QUESTION OF PERSONALITY .... 379 
 THE LESSON OF THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS . 396
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Return of Peter Grimm (set) . . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PACK 
 
 The Return of Peter Grimm 17 
 
 Kismet 34 
 
 Broadway Jones 44 
 
 The Yellow Jacket 50 
 
 Romance 66 
 
 The Show-Shop 82 
 
 The Song of Songs 104 
 
 Pomander Walk 141 
 
 The Pigeon . > .: .. : ..-. . >: :.. . . . . 155
 
 SECTION I 
 AMERICAN PLAYS
 
 PLAYING THE PIPER 
 
 "The Piper" New Theater, January 30, 
 
 One of the most common of tragedies on this 
 somewhat imperfect planet results from lack of 
 proper adjustment or the meeting at the right time 
 of the right elements. A man who might have been 
 a fine actor is born of Puritan parents and wastes 
 his life peddling life insurance, while the daughter 
 of his easy-going neighbors enters on a stage career, 
 thus robbing the world of a perfectly good stenog- 
 rapher. An East Side gutter snipe, with a genius 
 for finance, is left to shift for himself, without train- 
 ing or guidance, and ends his brief career in Sing 
 Sing, while many a business, besides the railroads, 
 is crying for efficient management. 
 
 And Josephine Preston Peabody of Cambridge, 
 Mass., writes a poetic drama called "The Piper," 
 which takes a prize in England, only to have it pro- 
 duced at the New Theater with a woman in the title 
 part, and thus what might have been a valuable 
 object lesson to the public of the fact that a poetic 
 
 3
 
 drama is not necessarily a dull and lifeless thing, 
 is robbed of its chief appeal. 
 
 We are not inclined easily to forgive the New 
 Theater for casting a woman, even Miss Matthison, 
 as the Piper. We are not at all inclined to take 
 any stock in the assertion that nobody else could be 
 found for the part. We happen to know that Wal- 
 ter Hampden originally held the American rights to 
 this drama, and we shrewdly suspect that his services 
 could have been secured, even if Mr. Skinner, for 
 whom the part was written, had declined to play it. 
 Furthermore, we are not at all convinced that 
 Jacob Wendell of the New Theater Company could 
 not have played it. At least Mr. Wendell is a man. 
 At least he has a sense of humor, blitheness, dash, 
 charm. It was essential, at any rate, for a proper 
 presentation of the play that some man should as- 
 sume the title part. 
 
 That is as plain as A B C. The Piper was a man. 
 He was not a ladylike man. He was not a somber, 
 plaintive, sobby man. He was free, roving, humor- 
 ous, kindly, shrewd, combative. He was as male 
 as Chantecler. And there is no more reason why 
 Miss Matthison should have been assigned to the 
 part than why Miss Adams should have played 
 Rostand's rooster. Indeed, there is less reason, for
 
 PLAYING THE PIPER 5 
 
 the New Theater is not under a strictly "commer- 
 cial" management. 
 
 It is rumored that Miss Matthison, like Miss 
 Adams, is enamoured of the masculine roles. Such 
 a phenomenon is not new among actresses. The 
 female Hamlets have been legion. Miss Matthi- 
 son, it is reported, aspires to play the title part in 
 her husband's drama, "The Servant in the House.'* 
 But that is no reason for letting her do it. Prob- 
 ably she puts altogether too much stress on the power 
 of her elocution. Her delivery of exalted speech 
 is, indeed, beautiful and impressive, though inclined 
 to become exceedingly monotonous at times. But 
 the delivery of exalted speech is not the only, nor 
 even the chief, means to the creation of illusion in 
 a poetic role. 
 
 If that role be masculine the first and foremost 
 requirement for the creation of illusion is masculin- 
 ity. Any theater-goer knows this. A woman can 
 play a boy's part, because she can look as much, or 
 more, like a boy than a man can. But a woman can- 
 not play a man's part as well as a man, and on a 
 stage where for more than two centuries the sexes 
 have assumed each its own characters there is piti- 
 fully little sense in her trying. She may succeed in 
 creating something strange and wonderful, but for
 
 6 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the normal audience she will never create the char- 
 acter intended by the dramatist. 
 
 And another requirement of any role, more im- 
 portant for illusion than a musical elocution, is the 
 personal attribute of humor, if that role be humor- 
 ous, of pathos if it be pathetic, and so on. Now, 
 the character of the Piper in Miss Peabody's play 
 is full of humor. It is not farcical humor, to be 
 sure. It is the glimmering, half wild humor of a 
 rover down the windy world, of a lover of freedom 
 and the open air, of a hater of shams and meanness. 
 Did you ever know a hater of shams who did not 
 grin in the midst of his most passionate denunci- 
 ations, or a lover of children who had a sob in his 
 voice? Can you think of the Pied Piper of Hame- 
 lin Town with a sob in his voice? A ring of 
 defiance, of righteous rage, yes. But a sob never ! 
 
 Yet Miss Matthison, to whom was entrusted the 
 part of the Piper, has no humor in her playing. She 
 never has had. In all her impersonations she has 
 never once convincingly played a humorous role. 
 She may smile and smile, but you are unpersuaded. 
 Moreover, her monotonous manner of delivery has 
 of late been growing into something perilously akin 
 to lachrimosity. Constantly through "The Piper" 
 she has as distinct a sob in her voice as Caruso in
 
 PLAYING THE PIPER 7 
 
 the famed finale to Act I of "Pagliacci." This is 
 not the Pied Piper. This is neither the Piper of 
 tradition, to whom, of course, Miss Peabody must 
 to a certain extent bow, so fixed is he in our imag- 
 inations, nor is it the particular Piper of Miss Pea- 
 body's play. This is a plaintive woman reading 
 the lines which belong to a full-blooded, defiant, yet 
 deeply humorous man. 
 
 When, for instance, Miss Matthison, as the Piper, 
 plays to the children in the cave whence "he" has 
 lured them, "he" dances among them, piping the 
 while, and they are supposed to clap their hands en- 
 raptured. Now, Miss Matthison dances amid the 
 little folks most gracefully. Every move she makes 
 has feminine charm, poetic rhythm. And every 
 move she makes destroys by so much more the illu- 
 sion. The Pied Piper didn't dance according to 
 the approved methods of Delsarte or Miss Duncan. 
 The chances are he didn't dance at all. If he did 
 he probably hopped grotesquely, giving as close an 
 imitation as he could of the inimitable steps of Fred 
 Stone. 
 
 You never in your life saw a child enraptured by 
 Isadora Duncan, but there never was a child yet who 
 wouldn't follow Fred Stone to the ends of the world. 
 
 In other words, Miss Matthison here is doing
 
 8 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 exactly what has been done so often before in the 
 poetic drama, making it seem absurd to the average 
 audience. She is taking the life, the naturalness 
 out of it. She is making it artificial, "artistic" and 
 hence unillusive. She can do more harm by five 
 minutes of such pretty posing than she can do good 
 by a whole evening's musical recitation of the verse. 
 
 Now, all this comment wouldn't be worth the 
 time it takes to read it, let alone the time it 
 takes to write it, were "The Piper" one of 
 those ordinary "poetic dramas" which have been 
 turned out with the regularity of clockwork for 
 many a year, only to fail on the stage, if they ever 
 reached the stage, not because they were poetic, but 
 because they were not human, vital, interesting and 
 uncontaminated with pose and the straining after 
 "literary" speech. 
 
 But "The Piper" is not such a play. It is a 
 human and an interesting narrative, badly con- 
 structed, to be sure, in its central portions, so that 
 the second and third acts "sag," but full of life, 
 color, simple emotions, and the talk of human 
 beings. 
 
 Because the dramatic interest is not sustained in 
 the central portions, "The Piper" can never rank 
 as a completely successful play. The author has
 
 PLAYING THE PIPER 9 
 
 made the grave error of building up her leading 
 "clash of wills" not between two persons seen at the 
 struggle, but between the Piper and the figure of 
 Christ on a roadside cross; that is, in the brain and 
 heart of one character, revealed through soliloquy. 
 Save with a poet of great genius and an actor of 
 equal force such a method is hopeless. But none 
 the less her play does have enough sheer dramatic 
 value and enough popular interest to win a wide 
 public, to charm them by the music of its verse and 
 the human quality of its story. 
 
 It is important, then, that such a play reach a 
 public only too ready to scorn the poetic drama, 
 under the best possible conditions that is, with its 
 human appeal telling at the full value, its direct, 
 simple emotional quality made the most of. 
 
 To put a woman in the title part is to strike at 
 the roots of its human appeal, to rob it of natural- 
 ness, of illusion; to fill it with pose and affectation. 
 We prefer as a people to-day the realistic drama 
 of contemporary life. Would we endure for a mo- 
 ment seeing a woman play the leading male role 
 in "The Boss," or "The Man of the Hour," or 
 "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford" ? Of course we 
 would not, and of course we should not. But by 
 some crazy process of reasoning some of us seem to
 
 10 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 suppose that the poetic drama can be treated in quite 
 a different manner, that it may be "artistic" for a 
 woman to play male roles in such drama, though 
 everybody is perfectly well aware that it is totally 
 inartistic and futile for her to play male roles in the 
 drama of the hour. 
 
 After all, this attitude not only is an insult to the 
 poetic drama, since it presupposes a kind of un- 
 reality and lack of sanity in that form, but it is the 
 greatest possible foe to the popular acceptance of 
 the poetic drama. That drama, to succeed with the 
 mass of theater-goers, must seem real, human, inter- 
 esting, close to the life of the people. It never suc- 
 ceeded in any nation, at any time, when it was not 
 real and vital to the people. It never succeeded 
 when it was treated as an exotic, as something remote 
 and "artistic," and it never will. 
 
 There is no reason why it should. 
 
 If it is something exotic, remote, then it isn't 
 worth doing at all. If it is to be treated any dif- 
 ferently from the drama which is real and vital to 
 us, there is no reason on earth why we should go 
 to see it. The poetic drama is of value only in so 
 far as it can persuade us that it is just as much drama 
 as the prose form, with the added beauty of height- 
 ened speech and a more exalted spiritual outlook.
 
 PLAYING THE PIPER 11 
 
 It is the great superiority of "The Piper 1 ' over 
 most of the recent attempts at poetic drama that it 
 can persuade us of this. Even at the New Theater, 
 in a production admirable in nearly all respects save 
 the sex of the leading player, it in no small degree 
 persuades us. But the persuasion might have been 
 complete and the play a popular success had the 
 mistake not been made of casting a woman in the 
 title role. Hence that error is of considerable im- 
 portance, for it vitally concerns the spread of poetry 
 on our stage.
 
 "KINDLING" AN HONEST PLAY 
 
 "Kindling" Daly's Theater, December 5, ign 
 
 Two or three weeks ago, when four women stars 
 all came to town at once, it was remarked that the 
 two more popular and expert players, Miss Barry- 
 more and Nazimova, were exploited in presumably 
 the best foreign plays to be had. The other women, 
 Miss Illington and Miss Ferguson, had to fall back 
 on untried, native material. 
 
 Behold, of the four plays, "Kindling," in which 
 Miss Illington is appearing at Daly's, is by far the 
 most effective for American audiences, and next to 
 it in interest ranks "The First Lady of the Land," 
 in which Miss Ferguson is appearing. We hardly 
 need better proof of the waning of adaptations on 
 our stage, or of the English play which has nothing 
 to recommend it above our own product except a 
 London run. 
 
 "Kindling" is the work of a California newspaper 
 writer, Charles Kenyon. It is said that Mr. Ken- 
 yon has previously written several vaudeville 
 sketches, but that this is his first long play. It has 
 
 12
 
 "KINDLING" AN HONEST PLAY 13 
 
 much of the crudity and alternate stiffness and 
 naturalness of the first play of a promising writer. 
 But, like Joseph Patterson's "The Fourth Estate," 
 it has in combination with the crudity, or rather be- 
 hind the crudity, a certain quality of sincerity and 
 directness that make it worth attention, and that lift 
 it at times above all considerations of technique. 
 
 "Kindling" is the story of Maggie Schultz, wife 
 of a stevedore, and the scene is her miserable home 
 in a tenement. Maggie's husband is one of those 
 German laborers who reads and goes to meetings 
 and has social theories, and is consequently called 
 "dangerous" by the master class, which doesn't want 
 any theories except its own. One of his theories 
 which, if it is often held in the slums, is certainly 
 seldom practiced is that people like him and Mag- 
 gie should not bring children into the world, to grow 
 up to almost inevitable illhealth in the gutters 
 human kindling. This theory he dins into Maggie's 
 ears, and he is aided by certain settlement workers 
 who trail their silk gowns a little too ostentatiously 
 through this play. 
 
 But Maggie represents the dumb, irrepressible 
 maternal instinct of the female of the species. She 
 accepts the doctrine, but her answer is that if it is 
 wrong to bring children into a slum world, then the
 
 14 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 way out is to escape from the slum world- not to 
 have no children at all. 
 
 She and Heinie want to get out to Wyoming. 
 Heinie hasn't the money. There is a strike on, and 
 he cannot earn money. But, as Mr. Kipling has in- 
 formed us, the female of the species is more deadly 
 than the male. There is no passive resistance in 
 Maggie's maternal code. Besides, it is a secret be- 
 tween her and the audience that the baby is already 
 more than theoretical. Maggie steals to get money, 
 so that he may be born in the pure air of Wyoming. 
 
 A good deal of the dramatic machinery by which 
 this theft is accomplished, and by which it finally 
 becomes known to the husband, is plausible enough. 
 It is simply not fitted together into a smooth-work- 
 ing engine. Again, after Maggie confesses to her 
 husband that a baby is really expected, and he 
 realizes the true reason for her theft and sturdily 
 stands by her, the final act is not quite firmly knit 
 to sustain the suspense as to Maggie's fate, though, 
 of course, in the end the rich people whom she has 
 robbed drop their charge against her and presumably 
 realize a little better the dread problems of poverty. 
 In spite of these defects, however, the second and 
 last acts of the play are poignant and sincere, and 
 it is a very hard-hearted theater-goer indeed who
 
 "KINDLING" AN HONEST PLAY 15 
 
 can hear Maggie say, as the final curtain leaves her 
 in her husband's arms, "Maybe there are roses in 
 Wyoming," without a choke in the throat. 
 
 It happens that Miss Illington was last seen in 
 New York in "The Thief." In that drama she 
 played the part of a woman who stole, not from 
 sheer dishonesty, but to dress well enough to keep 
 the "love" of her husband, as love is understood in 
 the French drama. Technically the Bernstein play 
 is as far superior to Mr. Kenyon's piece as the great 
 traditions of French playwriting are older than ours. 
 But yet the crude American drama has something 
 for us the other has not. It has a spiritual quality, 
 it has honest and unaffected sympathy for the poor, 
 it has a fair and square recognition that social rela- 
 tions go out beyond the boudoir into the slums and 
 tenements. It thrills us less than "The Thief," it 
 pleases less by well ordered action and suspense, the 
 delight of craftsmanship; but what it loses thus it 
 more than makes up in sympathy. It came unher- 
 alded and undescribed into New York. It won its 
 way on its merits. These are the merits of honest 
 purpose, warm sympathy and a deep, if crude, emo- 
 tionalism. 
 
 Bernstein is interested in drama, Mr. Kenyon in 
 human beings.
 
 16 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Miss Illington, as Maggie, has never played bet- 
 ter. She does not, to be sure, attempt to reproduce 
 a German dialect; she does not carry her character 
 acting that far. But neither does she "talk tough." 
 She strives for, and usually she achieves, a kind of 
 rough, honest speech which marks well enough the 
 social and intellectual level of her supposed Maggie, 
 and then it appears to be her whole object to make 
 Maggie a type of the maternal instinct struggling 
 with whatever primitive weapons it may against the 
 grim inhibitions and injustices of our modern in- 
 dustrialism. She never "shows off" in her acting 
 in this play. She has no fine clothes to wear, and 
 she acts the better without them. She slumps down 
 into a rather dumpy, corsetless figure, and carries 
 conviction to the eye as well as the ear. Her con- 
 fession to her husband is a simple, sincere, touching 
 piece of work. If the preceding scene of cross-ques- 
 tioning is not so effective, that is rather the drama- 
 tist's fault. Her final moments in the play are truly 
 touching and beautiful. The part is a good one, 
 an honest one, and one which appeals to the ele- 
 mental sympathies of an audience. She has been 
 wise enough to realize it, and has tried for no fire- 
 works.
 
 THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM 
 Act I
 
 WARFIELD IN THE SPIRIT WORLD 
 
 "The Return of Peter Grimm" Belasco Theater, 
 October 17, 1911 
 
 Occasionally David Warfield lays aside "The 
 Music Master" long enough to produce a new play. 
 He has done so to celebrate the advent of 1911, 
 producing in Boston a new drama signed by David 
 Belasco, called "The Return of Peter Grimm." 
 The present writer dared the east wind to see this 
 new play. His trip to Boston was rewarded by an 
 evening of rare and curious theatrical interest, even 
 excitement. But it was not rewarded by any new 
 revelations in David Warfield' s art, nor, indeed, by 
 any very vivid character delineation even along the 
 familiar lines of Warfield's past achievements. 
 "The Return of Peter Grimm" is interesting rather 
 as a play, almost as a problem in stage management, 
 than as a character picture painted by the actor. 
 It is tremendously worth doing. But it is not worth 
 doing for two seasons to the exclusion of everything 
 else. Mr. Warfield should have it in a repertory. 
 
 17
 
 i8 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Mr. Warfield is one of those rare players who is 
 greater, or more interesting, than most plays. It 
 is such men who owe it to the world to play many 
 parts, to search out as variously as they can all cor- 
 ners of character and experience. 
 
 In his new drama, Mr. Belasco has deserted the 
 realms of realism and of conventional emotion. 
 Seeking always to be abreast of the hour, he has 
 based a play on the alleged compact between the 
 late William James and another scientist, that 
 whichever died first should try his best to communi- 
 cate with the living one if individuality persisted 
 after death. 
 
 Peter Grimm, played by Mr. Warfield, is a very 
 well-to-do and very amiable and lovable old tulip 
 and orchid grower in a Hudson River town, settled 
 by his Dutch ancestors. He evidently has a heart 
 trouble. His old friend, Dr. Andrew MacPherson, 
 enters into a compact with him similar to that which 
 Professor James is said to have made. At the end 
 of the first act Peter Grimm dies after he has, in his 
 stubborn Dutch way, made his orphan ward, Kath- 
 rien, promise to marry his nephew, Frederik, in order 
 to preserve the Grimm name and the Grimm tulip 
 industry. 
 
 Now, Kathrien did not love Frederik, who was a
 
 WARFIELD IN THE SPIRIT WORLD 19 
 
 no-good fellow anyway, though her loving old 
 guardian, in his pig-headedness, could not realize 
 either fact. You saw tragedy impending for her. 
 But so does Peter, apparently, as soon as he is dead. 
 For in the second act he comes back, and the entire 
 act is devoted to his efforts to communicate with the 
 living in order to persuade the girl to break her 
 promise and to follow rather the real dictates of her 
 heart. 
 
 This is sheer supernaturalism. And in the man- 
 ner in which it is put on the stage lies the chief 
 interest and value of the play. It is a fascinating 
 problem, and before the success of its solution the 
 most skeptical and unimaginative must bow. 
 
 The supernatural is handled with the least pos- 
 sible use of conventional agencies. Peter Grimm's 
 first entrance, to be sure, is effected on a dark stage, 
 made plausible by a thunder shower outside and 
 the coming of night. The living people in the room 
 gradually have a kind of uneasiness; finally they 
 light a lamp. Peter Grimm stands there in their 
 midst, just as in life. 
 
 But they do not see him. 
 
 He talks to them and they do not hear him. He 
 cries to them, and they do not heed. He cannot 
 "get across," as he puts it. Only occasionally he
 
 20 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 seems to affect their thoughts, to stir them to a vague 
 unrest, and once his nephew fancies that he sees him, 
 brushing the thought from his brain with a laugh. 
 
 Poor Peter beholds the preparations for the mar- 
 riage going on in spite of him. He cannot, dead, 
 undo the work he did while quick. He cannot in- 
 duce Kathrien to break her bitter promise. 
 
 But there is in the house a little boy, Willem, the 
 grandson of Peter's old housekeeper. Nobody 
 knows who Willem's father was. His mother 
 would never tell, and Willem was too young when 
 his mother's betrayer left her to remember. Willem 
 now has a fever. He is a sensitive child at all times. 
 Now, in his fevered condition, he is doubly so. It 
 is through him that Peter finally communicates. 
 
 Gradually, in a tense hush in the auditorium, 
 Peter's words are felt to reach the boy's ear; grad- 
 ually he speaks in reply. The doctor comes in, and 
 Kathrien. The child tells them Peter has been in 
 the room. The doctor struggles with him for proof. 
 Peter urges him to tell who his father was, calling 
 to his memory. The child answers the voice, seem- 
 ing to the rest on the stage to address the empty air. 
 Finally he tells those about him that his father was 
 Frederik. 
 
 Now whether this was due to Peter or to a sudden
 
 WARFIELD IN THE SPIRIT WORLD 21 
 
 rising to the "threshold" of his consciousness (as 
 Professor James would say) of a subconscious mem- 
 ory, is a moot point, very cleverly left by Mr. Bel- 
 asco as a loophole of escape from any charges that 
 he accepts spirit phenomena as proved. At any rate, 
 the child's confession frees Kathrien from her hate- 
 ful marriage, and Peter has accomplished his pur- 
 pose. 
 
 The act is more than an hour long. It deals al- 
 most entirely with a supernatural situation, which 
 might very well make the skeptic smile. Yet it is 
 staged with such nice regard to what might be called 
 a hypothetical possibility, and it is so replete with 
 theatrical suspense and the emotional poignancy of 
 a suffering soul the soul of Peter Grimm suffering 
 because he cannot communicate with his loved ones 
 in the land of the living that it holds the interest 
 almost unflaggingly, after the first few moments of 
 the tiresome Belasco comic relief are over, and for 
 many will undoubtedly be fraught with a strange, 
 uncanny thrill. 
 
 With this act, the play, as it at present stands, 
 really ends. The last act is as mawkish as the death 
 of Paul Dombey. Willem dies, and Peter Grimm 
 takes him. It is better that he should be dead, bet- 
 ter for all, poor little chap, says Peter. And Wil-
 
 22 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 lem appears to want to die. Inasmuch as in act one 
 he had been wild with joy at the prospect of a cir- 
 cus, and in act two had been eating cakes to his 
 heart's content, there seemed no real reason either 
 why his spirit should desire death or his body yield 
 to it. But Peter makes his final exit with Willem 
 on his shoulder a modern Reaper with a frock coat 
 and high hat while the doctor contemplates a wax 
 replica of the boy stretched out on the couch, after 
 the style of the Eden Musee. 
 
 This act is pretty poor stuff. We learn nothing 
 more about Peter Grimm. He evinces no sorrow 
 that, after all, while he has accomplished his purpose 
 in breaking off the marriage, he has not really talked 
 to his loved ones, save through Willem. He tells 
 us nothing of the compensating joys of the life here- 
 after. Perhaps, indeed, we should not expect that ; 
 we should hardly demand even of David Belasco a 
 solution of the mystery of the ages. But at least, 
 since we have been shown Peter's spirit returned to 
 the scene of his life, it would be permissible and in- 
 teresting to let us a little more into his sentiments 
 and emotions, to make him and not little Willem the 
 leading figure at the close. As the play stands now, 
 it concludes for the audience at the end of act two. 
 
 The same setting remains for all three acts, and
 
 WARFIELD IN THE SPIRIT WORLD 23 
 
 it is a thing of great beauty the interior of an old 
 cottage, wainscoted with oak and with oak beams in 
 the ceiling, hung with ancient Dutch portraits, and 
 dominated by an old Dutch chimney piece full of 
 niches and covered with crockery, pipes and a hun- 
 dred suitable relics. In one corner stands a what- 
 not bearing bowls of sprouting bulbs. By the fire- 
 place are bundles of shoots wrapped up in sacking 
 precious plants which have been the source of the 
 Grimm fortune, and really ought to be out in the 
 moist greenhouse or store room! There is an old- 
 fashioned square piano. The dining-room, off stage, 
 is seen in its completeness when the door is opened, 
 suggesting not the flies of a theater, but a real house 
 extending off indefinitely. The landscape without 
 has mellow charm. The house within has age and 
 home-likeness and Dutch flavor. And, more im- 
 portant than all, in spite of its brightness and cheer, 
 it is in some subtle way colored and shadow-filled 
 to comport with the mood of supernatural visitation. 
 It is a lovely setting for the lovely personality of 
 David Warfield, and it exactly fits the mood of the 
 drama. 
 
 But as this setting stands unchanged, it must be 
 admitted that after a certain point is reached in the 
 play, the character of Peter Grimm, which the actor
 
 24 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 impersonates, also becomes stationary, even a little 
 monotonous. After its purpose is accomplished of 
 showing the perhaps possible interference in the 
 affairs of the living by one dead, there is no longer 
 any interest in the emotional existence of the spirit 
 visitor. The play degenerates into mawkishness, 
 and loses its potential poetry. We are sure William 
 James would have had something more to say.
 
 AS AUGUSTUS THOMAS THINKS 
 
 "As a Man Thinks" jptk Street Theater, 
 March 7j, 1911 
 
 A new play by Augustus Thomas is likely to be 
 at once interesting and important. Mr. Thomas, 
 above our other native writers, combines technical 
 skill with a genuine wit, a sense of style, and in 
 recent years, at any rate, an intellectual purpose 
 that is to say, he keeps his story related to some 
 definite idea and makes it seem significantly con- 
 nected with what is taking place in the outer world 
 of actual events. 
 
 The first play put forward by Mr. Thomas in this, 
 his "later manner" if we may employ the sen- 
 tentious term was "The Witching Hour," and 
 that drama was remarkable for its skillful combina- 
 tion of an exciting theatrical story with a serious 
 depiction of telepathic phenomena. It enjoyed a 
 great success, with John Mason as the star. Mr. 
 Thomas followed "The Witching Hour" with "The 
 Harvest Moon," a less successful play, this time 
 
 25
 
 26 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 dealing with the dynamic power, for good or evil, 
 of suggestion. Now at the Thirty-ninth Street The- 
 ater in New York he is exhibiting a third drama, 
 called "As a Man Thinks," dealing still further with 
 this dynamic power of suggestion, with mental 
 health and sickness induced by our own habits of 
 thought. Again John Mason is the star. And 
 again the audiences are large. 
 
 Personally, we do not like this play so well as 
 "The Witching Hour," though others like it better. 
 It illustrates the extreme difficulties of the peculiar 
 form of drama which endeavors to set forth an in- 
 tellectual thesis in terms of a human and probable 
 story. Successfully handled, this is an immensely 
 stimulating form of drama, but it requires a man of 
 great dramatic skill, and unquestioned intellectual 
 authority as well, to handle it. Mr. Thomas dis- 
 closed no uncomfortable lack of either quality in 
 "The Witching Hour." In the new play we feel 
 a certain lack of the intellectual clarity needed. 
 The story is there, but the intellectual significance 
 of the story is not quite clear. The total effect is 
 cloudy. Mr. Thomas appears to be groping. That 
 is why we are a trifle surprised at the great popular- 
 ity of "As a Man Thinks." 
 
 To tell the story of this drama would be at once
 
 AS AUGUSTUS THOMAS THINKS 27 
 
 difficult and futile. Unlike the story of "The Har- 
 vest Moon," it is not simple, but extremely intricate, 
 and the intricate stage play is only too often made 
 to seem dull and confusing in narrative. Suffice it 
 to say that the leading character is an elderly Jew, 
 a noted New York doctor, and the plot concerns his 
 relation with a Christian family, and the relations of 
 other Jews and Christians with his own family, 
 particularly his daughter. Here is one point where 
 the intellectual clarity of the play is clouded. You 
 are never sure how far Mr. Thomas means to illus- 
 trate the interrelations of Jews and Gentiles, or how 
 far his emphasis is rather on the purely scientific 
 and entirely unracial teachings of the doctor regard- 
 ing mental health and right living and thinking. 
 Indeed, the trouble with the play is perhaps that it 
 possesses too great a wealth of material. Mr. 
 Thomas had too many interests pressing upon him, 
 each clamoring for exposition. In one act you feel 
 that he is trying to tell some wholesome truths about 
 Jewish character. In another you decide that he 
 is trying to teach that there is one moral code for 
 men, another for women, just as the world has long 
 assumed, except, however, that Mr. Thomas does 
 not teach this to extenuate the men, but still further 
 to elevate the women, and through them the family.
 
 28 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Then, finally, when his doctor preaches the poisonous 
 character of hate to the sick Christian lying on his 
 bed and refusing to forgive either his apparently err- 
 ing wife or the Jew with whom she has been indis- 
 creet, you are convinced that Mr. Thomas after all 
 is most concerned to teach once more his doctrine of 
 the healing or destructive power of thought. 
 
 Confusion is the inevitable result. But, let us 
 hasten to say, it is the confusion of wealth ; and for 
 that, at least, we may be thankful. 
 
 Another thing for which we may be thankful is 
 the style with which the exposition is handled, and 
 with which the play is mounted and acted. It is 
 seldom that an American drama reaches our stage so 
 genuinely distinguished by fine speech, by good man- 
 ners and by a natural, easy, seemingly artless exposi- 
 tion of the characters and motives of the drama, not 
 in terms of those terrible "Do you remember last 
 year in Paris" speeches, but in terms of actual 
 drama, which serves to explain all that has hap- 
 pened in the past without seeming at the moment to 
 be explaining anything. Here is exposition, in 
 other words, which at once explains the past and 
 leads toward the future, toward the second act. 
 This is style in playbuilding. 
 
 The opening act of "As a Man Thinks" is bound
 
 AS AUGUSTUS THOMAS THINKS 29 
 
 to rank high in American drama. Every budding 
 playwright should study it carefully. It is Con- 
 tinental in its finished ease and polish. When the 
 first curtain sinks, for example, you have seen the 
 drawing room of Dr. Seeling, the Jewish physician, 
 at afternoon teatime. You have made the doctor's 
 acquaintance, and accepted him as the finest type 
 alike of his own race and the skilled and broad- 
 minded doctor of the present day. You have fallen 
 quite in love with his young daughter, and with the 
 young Christian artist who you learn is in love with 
 her. You have seen the Jewish art critic to whom 
 she is engaged, felt the unpleasant quality which 
 resides in him (and which his fiancee feels, too) 
 that racial quality of clever, obnoxious intrigue and 
 callousness to a snub. You have seen the Christian 
 wife of a rich magazine proprietor, and learned how 
 she has been forced to forgive the amatory exploits 
 of her husband. You have even seen the husband, 
 a type of our American "self-made man who wor- 
 ships his creator," and are prepared to sympathize 
 with this wife in her subsequent foolish revolt. 
 You have heard all these people talking at an after- 
 noon tea, on the familiar terms of intimate acquain- 
 tance, and thus you have learned who and what 
 they are, but without seeming to have learned.
 
 30 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Rather have you seemed to remove one wall of the 
 room and watched them off guard. The acting is 
 good, the staging (by Mr. Thomas himself) excel- 
 lent; hence the air of breeding, of easy manners, of 
 correct speech and polite consideration and intelli- 
 gent wit, is maintained. When the curtain descends 
 you know these people. Many of them you like. 
 You are prepared to take a great interest in their 
 subsequent doings. This, we take it, is exposition 
 at its very best; this is style in dramatic technique. 
 
 If Mr. Thomas could have decided at the end of 
 this act which of several possible interests he wished 
 to make the predominant one, and then kept more 
 directly to that, he would have written a fine play, 
 even though the plot is somewhat ordinary and the 
 mere emotional interest lacking in tenseness. But 
 he drifted off into various by-channels, and clouded 
 its message. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that he did his 
 work so well in making his characters human in the 
 first act that one never entirely loses regard for any 
 one of them, and carries away from the theater, in 
 spite of a confused idea of why certain things were 
 done, a real sense of having intimately known the 
 people who did them. The play is annoyingly near 
 being a piece of genuine literature.
 
 AS AUGUSTUS THOMAS THINKS 31 
 
 And how good it is to hear the English language 
 well written and equally well spoken in our theater ! 
 John Mason is peculiarly fitted for his role of the 
 Jewish doctor. Here is a distinguished man of 
 science, and a man of the world as well, who lives 
 in a fine house, wears fine clothes and speaks fine 
 English. He is simple and quiet and authoritative 
 in his manner. He is actuated by the highest ideals 
 of his profession. And he never tries in any way 
 to repudiate his people. Though not an orthodox 
 believer, his whole manner is in keen contrast to the 
 other Jew in the play, who harps on "persecution" 
 and in general is that type we all know only too well 
 of the Hebrew who will not let us forget his race, 
 and who, we feel, is constantly ashamed of it. Mr. 
 Mason brings this finely to the front. We suspect 
 that along these lines Mr. Thomas might most profit- 
 ably have developed his play. As it is, he has but 
 sketched the possibilities. 
 
 Mr. Mason also has the power of clear-cut, fine 
 and sincere speech. His long professional talks to 
 his patients whom here he is treating mentally 
 are never mere sermons devised by the playwright. 
 They are actual talks of a physician to a needy 
 patient, delivered with earnest conviction and 
 fraught with significance. The character does not
 
 32 
 
 call for any particular display of emotion. It does 
 call for the suggestion of great intellectual distinc- 
 
 < >\j ^j 
 
 tion, a fine and tender heart, high professional and 
 racial ideals, and the speech and manner of a gentle- 
 man. Mr. Mason fits the role. With his long and 
 sound training behind him, he projects the ideal of 
 a character worth knowing and listening to. 
 
 Miss Charlotte Ives as the Jew's sprightly and 
 sensible daughter, Mr. Vincent Serrano as her young 
 Christian lover, and especially Miss Chrystal Herne 
 as the Christian wife who revolts from her husband's 
 "double code" and is led back by the old doctor's 
 advice to her, and by his doctrine of the poison of 
 hate preached to her husband, are most notable for 
 persuasive performances in a well-drilled cast. The 
 play is staged in the key of nature and acted with 
 well-bred distinction. 
 
 Certainly there is nothing in this latest product of 
 Mr. Thomas, incompletely realized as its good in- 
 tentions are, to make us regret his new absorption in 
 the "drama of ideas." Never have his people been 
 so human as in his latest play. Never have their 
 acts been so significant to the rest of us. Never has 
 his style been so polished, his dialogue so fraught 
 with the keen-edged wit of his own conversation. 
 Mr. Thomas has come to feel that he has something
 
 AS AUGUSTUS THOMAS THINKS 33 
 
 to say through the medium of drama. There are 
 those who think what he has to say is not particularly 
 important, though we personally are not of the num- 
 ber. But whether important or not, the fact re- 
 mains that in trying to say it in terms of stage story 
 he has been driven to pay a deeper attention to the 
 logic of that story, for a stage narrative that pre- 
 tends to carry a message is a hopeless failure if its 
 logic anywhere breaks down, or if its characters fail 
 to be human and recognizably real. 
 
 After all, "as a man thinks," so his work will be. 
 We are glad that Augustus Thomas is thinking about 
 interesting and stimulating problems of our con- 
 temporary life rather than about the peculiar equip- 
 ment of this or that star or about "what the public 
 wants." It has made a new man of him and added 
 a new distinction to our drama.
 
 BROADWAY DISCOVERS THE ARABIAN 
 NIGHTS 
 
 "Kismet" Knickerbocker Theater, 
 December 2$^ 1911 
 
 Broadway has discovered "The Arabian Nights." 
 It is immensely pleased with the discovery. To be 
 sure, Broadway is not entirely certain yet about 
 the new geography. One man at "Kismet" on 
 Christmas night was heard to inquire if Bagdad were 
 in Egypt. He was assured by his companion that 
 it was ! Still, there can be no doubt of Broadway's 
 delight upon first looking into Mr. Knoblauch's 
 Orient. And that delight will be shared by every- 
 body. 
 
 "Kismet," an "Arabian Night," as the author 
 calls it, was first mounted in London by that splen- 
 did six feet of histrionic vitality, Oscar Ashe. The 
 American production has been made at the Knicker- 
 bocker Theater by Harrison Grey Fiske, working 
 with the financial resources of his ancient enemies, 
 Klaw and Erlanger, to back him, and with the some- 
 
 34
 
 TUCSON HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 35 
 
 thing less than six feet of vitality known as Otis 
 Skinner to give life to the leading character. Mr. 
 Skinner is, in this country, the man of destiny for 
 the part abounding energy, triumphant clarity of 
 speech, romantic swagger, physical picturesqueness, 
 all are his. For once the right part has come to the 
 right player, the right play to the right producer, 
 and unlimited financial resources have been wisely 
 and well used, not squandered in sham and tinsel. 
 Here's a Christmas present worth while. 
 
 And what is "Kismet" like? It is like a tale 
 from the "Arabian Nights" oddly enough, since 
 that is what it pretends to be ! There is something 
 little short of genius in Mr. Knoblauch's inspiration 
 to make it so. We have had plays of the Orient 
 before and there is "The Garden of Allah" today. 
 But "Kismet" is not of them. Its ten scenes are in 
 the Orient, in the streets and bazaars and harems 
 of Bagdad. Its costumes are the costumes of the 
 Orient. But its "atmosphere" is not realistic. Its 
 spirit is not of today. It is a tale, wild, improbable, 
 barbaric, romantic, full at once of childish simplic- 
 ity and adult passions, out of the "Arabian Nights." 
 It might have been told by Scheherazade to her lord 
 and master with only a shade more spice in some 
 of the details had she supplied them!
 
 36 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 That is the touch of genius in Mr. Knoblauch's 
 achievement to dare to write a play in ten scenes, 
 to dare to make it primitive as a folk tale, bloody 
 and passionate and humorous and farther from the 
 present than when old Omar sang before his tent of 
 the modern unrest and doubt, a tale from the child- 
 hood of the race. Well, that is to show us, after 
 all, that we still are children who clamor round the 
 story teller's pack. 
 
 And what is the story of "Kismet'"? Reader, 
 you ask too much. It is nothing about fate, at any 
 rate. There is much told of fate in the "Arabian 
 Nights," but very little actual illustration of it. 
 Things happen very conveniently. Fate is Sche- 
 herazade's nimble fancy. So fate in "Kismet" is 
 Mr. Knoblauch's fancy, or, if you like, it is our 
 old friend, the long arm of coincidence. Of course, 
 this is no Sophoclean drama, though now and again 
 Mr. Knoblauch breaks out into rhymed couplets or 
 steals a phrase for a love scene from the Song of 
 Songs in an evident endeavor to tone up his work 
 to a "literary" plane. He doesn't harm its real lit- 
 erary merits thereby, which are deeper seated than 
 the mere garb of language. These merits, as we 
 have stated, are the nai've simplicity and the wild,
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 37 
 
 romantic, exotic flavor of a tale from the "Arabian 
 Nights." 
 
 But what is the tale? 
 
 Oh, very well. We'll do our best to enlighten 
 you. 
 
 Give ear, O king ! to the tale of Haj j the beggar, 
 who dwelt in Bagdad in the first year of the reign 
 of the Caliph Abdallah and begged upon a stone 
 hard by the door of the Mosque of Carpenters, clad 
 in filthy rags. Allah is great ! 
 
 Now, Hajj, the beggar, had an ancient enemy, the 
 sheik Jawan, who had robbed him of his wife and 
 murdered his son, and when the sheik tossed him (in 
 the first scene) a purse of gold he kept the purse to 
 buy him revenge, though he took good care to spit 
 upon it first. 
 
 Then rose Hajj, the beggar, and went unto the 
 market place, to the bazaar of the tailors, to buy 
 him fine raiment. And in the street of the bazaars 
 was much color and riot of tongues, and what with 
 the screams of shopkeepers and the bargaining of 
 buyers, a right brave noise. Then did Hajj, the 
 beggar, set one shopkeeper over against another in 
 quarrel and run away with their cloth stuffs. Allah 
 is good!
 
 38 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Glad therein he entered his own courtyard, where 
 his lovely daughter had been entertaining the Caliph 
 (who loved her, of course) under the impression 
 that he was the gardener's son. And, indeed, her 
 lips were like a thread of scarlet and her speech was 
 comely, and her temples like a piece of pomegranate 
 within her locks, though she was but the daughter 
 of Hajj, the beggar. Allah is great! 
 
 And unto her entered Hajj, perfumed with myrrh 
 and frankincense, with all powders of the merchants 
 which he had stolen. 
 
 And entered after him the merchants and the Bag- 
 dad police, and took him before the Wazir Mansur, 
 chief of police. Now, police departments were in 
 ancient Bagdad much like those of today. In a 
 word, graft! The Wazir was "in bad" with his 
 accounts, and he wanted the young Caliph out of 
 the way to avoid an investigation. Just as his beau- 
 tiful limbed ebony sworder was about to chop off 
 Hajj's thieving right hand, the Wazir had an in- 
 spiration. He would spare Hajj and marry his 
 daughter, if Hajj would murder the Caliph for him. 
 Now, Hajj loved his right hand. He consented. 
 
 So we see Hajj going back to his house in robes 
 more resplendent than ever to break the glad tidings 
 to his lovely daughter. But his lovely daughter
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 39 
 
 wanted none of the Wazir. She wanted the garden- 
 er's son. She was dragged away to greatness pro- 
 testing violently. 
 
 Now do we see the Caliph holding court before 
 the palace, overlooking the towers and minarets of 
 Bagdad, all red and golden in the sun, the sun of 
 Allah's tropic noon. We see the sheik, Hajj's foe, 
 cast temporarily into prison as a suspicious person. 
 Next we see Hajj, as a juggler, come with half- 
 naked dancers from Egypt to amuse the Caliph, who, 
 in all sooth, cares not for the dancers but smells of 
 a rose given to him by Hajj's daughter, herself the 
 Rose of Sharon. Hajj stabs the Caliph the beg- 
 gar is good for his bargain. But under these white 
 robes of state the Caliph wears oh, Allah be 
 praised ! is a shirt of mail. The blow is harmless. 
 Now is poor Hajj cast into a dungeon, deep and 
 dark. 
 
 But Allah is good ! Therein is his foe, the sheik. 
 Hajj breaks his chains and murders his foe with a 
 triumphant laugh. Then, when the gaoler comes 
 to release the sheik, who is pardoned, it is Hajj who 
 is carried out and the dead body of the sheik the cruel 
 gaoler kicks with his pointed shoe. Allah is all- 
 powerful ! 
 
 Goes Hajj now by a secret passage he has discov-
 
 40 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 cred praise be to Allah and one of the Wazir's 
 disgruntled wives ! to the Wazir's harem, to rescue 
 his daughter from the man he now realizes will be 
 overthrown and disgraced by the Caliph. We look 
 upon the harem, aye, upon the unveiled inmates 
 pass we masculine judgment. Unveiled? nay, 
 more, two or three undress completely and dive into 
 a pool, like small boys into the swimming hole when 
 a carry-all is heard coming up the road close by. 
 [It may be recalled, to come down to the current 
 year, that in Siam dramatic realism is carried to a 
 similar conclusion, ladies bathing on the stage when 
 no men characters are present, in total oblivion of 
 an audience. Thus do realism and romance touch 
 hands!] We see the Rose of Sharon brought pro- 
 testing in, and we see the Wazir gloat over her. 
 She is led out to be robed in state for the nuptial as 
 Hajj, none too soon, comes up through a trapdoor 
 in the stage pardon, through a trap in the floor of 
 the harem, under a real Turkish rug. 
 
 Ha, Ha! Hajj discovers that the Wazir is the 
 son of the sheik. He has killed the father. Now 
 for the son! The deed is done. The Wazir is 
 shoved into the pool where the harem inmates late 
 have bathed. Hajj holds him under and counts the 
 diminishing bubbles as they rise. Hamilton Re-
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 41 
 
 velle, the actor of the Wazir, appears no more upon 
 the scene. Hajj rises from the now bubbleless pool 
 and laughs a mocking laugh. His revenge is com- 
 pleted. Allah is good! 
 
 Now comes the Caliph seeking frantically for his 
 Rose of Sharon. He is in good time. He takes her 
 to be his bride, king and beggar maid, romantic pair, 
 starry lovers of fable since kings were, and their 
 places but ill supplied by the millionaires and tele- 
 phone operators of our latter day degenerate drama ! 
 
 But Hajj, poor Hajj, is banished from Bagdad, 
 though he be the royal father-in-law. He is to go 
 at sunrise of this night which now closes his one 
 stormy and romantic day of glory and revenge. As 
 the final curtain falls, he has thrown another beggar 
 from his stone before the mosque of carpenters, and 
 clad in his rags once more we see him where we saw 
 him first, and hear him say "Alms, for the love of 
 Allah ; for the love of Allah, alms !" And then we 
 hear him snore. The moonlight sleeps on Bagdad's 
 roofs and touches to silver the distant domes and 
 minarets. Hajj has had his day. Tomorrow 
 
 Tomorrow, we go down to Wall Street again. 
 
 The one part in this naive and romantic fable 
 which links its picturesque episodes together and 
 gives it a personal and dramatic interest is that of
 
 42 
 
 Hajj, the beggar, and, of course, Mr. Skinner is 
 amply able to fill the bill, the more as that slight note 
 of unreality in his acting which sometimes mars his 
 impersonations of seriously romantic roles or roles 
 in modern plays, here admirably blends with the 
 glamour of dreamlike fable. His impersonation is 
 consistently the beggar, though the part is rather 
 sketched broadly than characterized in detail. 
 Never for an instant is he anything else, be his bor- 
 rowed robes ever so grand. It is lit with a grim, 
 masculine humor, it is touched with tenderness for 
 his daughter and with fierce passions of revenge. 
 But humor, tenderness, passion, are all held in the 
 key of romantic fable, and so while he counts the 
 bubbles that arise from the drowning Wazir there 
 is no horror in the episode, and when he goes to sleep 
 again at last in his beggar's rags there is no sorrow 
 only a half smile for the round-the-circle logic of 
 it, and the pleasant finish to a good tale told. 
 
 And Mr. Skinner's speech is a perpetual delight. 
 He was trained in the days when the ability to speak 
 well was supposed to be a part of an actor's equip- 
 ment. 
 
 Alas! so much cannot be said for Hamilton Re- 
 velle. We suspect those bubbles were in his mouth 
 all along. Fred Eric, as the Caliph, however, spoke
 
 THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 43 
 
 beautifully if somewhat sentimentally. The cos- 
 tumes, by Percy Anderson of London, were rich, 
 harmonious, beautiful, and we fancy, from Mr. An- 
 derson's past records, probably not incorrect to 
 ancient Oriental life. The scenery was good, the 
 many changes made with astonishing speed and 
 smoothness, the crowds well handled, the "atmos- 
 phere" created. Perhaps we might cavil at the 
 entre-act music, which was Oriental chiefly by its 
 monotony. 
 
 But why cavil before a feast of so much good 
 fare? "Kismet" is what it claims to be, an Arabian 
 night on the stage. It has done what it set out to 
 do, and having arrived at something long, long ago 
 proved to be potent over the human spirit, its pop- 
 ular success cannot be doubted now. Human 
 nature hasn't so greatly changed since Scheherazade 
 told her tales. 
 
 Allah be praised!
 
 CHEWING GUM AND REFORM 
 
 "Broadway Jones" George M. Cohan Theater , 
 September 23* 1912 
 
 The good spirits who hover over babies' cradles 
 bearing gifts were generous with George M. Cohan. 
 They gave him nimble legs, and a knack of whistling 
 up tunes from the vasty void of memory, and con- 
 siderable comic ability as an actor, and finally the 
 born playwright's gift which can never be acquired 
 by purchase of setting upon the stage, in terms of 
 speech and action, exactly the episodes of a story 
 which the audience wishes to see. 
 
 More's the pity, then, that the good spirits could 
 not have a little further endowed him with the attri- 
 butes of good taste and a knowledge of life. If they 
 had he would be deserving of the praise which Arnold 
 Bennett recently heaped upon him. Mr. Bennett 
 admired his works because they were strictly Ameri- 
 can and "unpretentious." 
 
 That's so like Mr. Bennett! 
 
 Of course, what he meant was, that they were 
 
 44
 
 CHEWING GUM AND REFORM 45 
 
 American because vulgar, or without good taste, and 
 "unpretentious" because simple minded and super- 
 ficial. Mr. Bennett is typically an insular, middle- 
 class, educated Briton. Hence his unconscious pat- 
 ronage. Who but such a one could praise George 
 M. Cohan by insulting America? 
 
 However, this isn't to be about Arnold Bennett, 
 but Mr. Cohan. Cohan's latest play, "Broadway 
 Jones," is now current in New York, and success- 
 ful, and Mr. Cohan acts the leading part, while his 
 papa and mamma act other parts therein. It is Co- 
 han's second "straight" play, without music, the first 
 being "Popularity," which belied its title some years 
 ago. "Get Rich Quick Wallingford" was made 
 from somebody else's story, so does not count. 
 
 In "Broadway Jones" Cohan has deliberately set 
 out to write a comedy with some definite character 
 study in it, and character development, and to act 
 this character himself in a legitimate vein. More re- 
 markable still, he has to a considerable degree suc- 
 ceeded. His success up to a certain point, indeed, 
 is brilliant, and when he fails he fails for exactly 
 these two reasons his lack of good taste and his lack 
 of a real knowledge of the world. 
 
 "Broadway" Jones is a young sport who was born 
 in a "jay" town in Connecticut all towns which are
 
 46 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 not New York being jay towns to Mr. Cohan. 
 There his father ran a chewing gum factory. But 
 young Jones came to Broadway when his father died, 
 leaving his uncle to make the chewing gum, and pro- 
 ceeded to hit the high spots. When the play opens 
 we see "Broadway" coming home in the cold gray 
 dawn to his luxurious apartment, in a condition of 
 alcoholic fuddle which provides a comedy scene with 
 the butler. 
 
 Later, when "Broadway" has sobered up, we learn 
 that he is $50,000 in debt, and has, the night before, 
 engaged himself to a rich widow old enough to be 
 his mother, a horrible creature no less repulsive be- 
 cause she is more or less copied from an actual female 
 well known to the Broadway of reality. There is 
 something so inherently vulgar in the character and 
 the episode that we instinctively lose sympathy with 
 "Broadway" at once. He sinks below the level of 
 comedy. If Mr. Cohan had good taste he would 
 know this. 
 
 Scarcely have we seen the widow when the news 
 comes to "Broadway" that his uncle has died, leav- 
 ing him the chewing gum business, and hard upon 
 this news comes an offer from the chewing gum 
 trust to buy him out for a million. "Broadway"
 
 CHEWING GUM AND REFORM 47 
 
 smashes the furniture in his joy, and flies from the 
 widow to Connecticut. 
 
 The rest of the play takes place in the Connecticut 
 village, either in the home of a simple family there 
 or in the chewing gum works. Some of it is farce, 
 some of it is caricature, some of it actually succeeds 
 in being what Mr. Cohan evidently intended a 
 study in character development for young Broad- 
 way becomes sobered by the situation, realizes that 
 to sell out the business means the ruin of the town, 
 has his family pride and fighting blood aroused, and 
 finally settles down to marry a nice girl and run 
 the gum plant. 
 
 The skill with which Mr. Cohan has indicated the 
 humorous effect upon the young rounder of these 
 new ideas of responsibility is capital comedy. Par- 
 ticularly happy is "Broadway's" delight over his 
 first speech to his workmen, so that he goes out and 
 makes another speech every so often. Not only is 
 this well indicated in the play, but it is capitally 
 enacted by the author. Mr. Cohan has dropped his 
 nasal twang. Most of the time he stands up 
 straight. Only occasionally does he try to be hu- 
 morous with his legs; very frequently he talks like 
 a normal human being, and points his comedy by
 
 48 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 legitimate methods. You can laugh at him with- 
 out being ashamed of yourself, and you can enjoy 
 the genuine touches of character delineation from 
 curtain to curtain. 
 
 Yet the play leaves you emotionally quite cold. 
 It never gets below laughter. After all, as Kipling 
 might have said, "What do they know of Broadway 
 who only Broadway know 1 ?" Young Jones' slang 
 is very funny and bright. Mr. Cohan's situations 
 follow each other with rapid-fire and sure develop- 
 ment. Yet all the time we know in our hearts that 
 any youth who could have sold himself even tem- 
 porarily for money to such a creature as the Broad- 
 way widow here depicted is not lightly to be re- 
 formed; that all this midnight "sousing" where the 
 bright lights gleam is a more serious matter than Mr. 
 Cohan realizes; and, finally, that the interjection of 
 a stunted male actor in the part of a fat "boy" who 
 talks what is known as Reub dialect doesn't quite 
 adequately mark the difference between life on 
 Broadway and life in Connecticut. 
 
 In other words, Mr. Cohan's play is entirely super- 
 ficial. It is bright, it has the rapid and sure com- 
 plexity and development of farce, it is filled with 
 shrewdly caught touches of observation, both of 
 manners and superficial traits of character. But it
 
 CHEWING GUM AND REFORM 49 
 
 is lacking, naturally, in good taste and distinction, 
 and it is lacking in that deeper understanding of 
 men and of life which makes for true comedy and 
 gives reality and emotional glow to the puppets in 
 a play. 
 
 But it marks, nevertheless, a considerable step for- 
 ward for Mr. Cohan. Perhaps, if he should go to 
 a Connecticut village and live there an entire year, 
 never once visiting Broadway during his stay, never 
 once reading a copy of the Morning Telegraph, he 
 might write an even better play at the end of the 
 twelfth month. He might. On the other hand, he 
 might be too bored to write anything.
 
 A QUAINT TALE FROM THE ORIENT 
 
 "The Yellow Jacket" Fulton Theater, 
 November 
 
 It seems thrice a pity that there is not yet 
 organized in New York a branch of the Drama 
 League, or some kindred organization, which could 
 come to the rescue of "The Yellow Jacket," now 
 struggling for survival at the Fulton Theater. For 
 here is one of the most interesting, novel and well- 
 mounted plays of the season, suffering the usual fate 
 of the innovator. Yet those who do see it come 
 away delighted. It needs an "organized audience" 
 to give it a helping hand. 
 
 "The Yellow Jacket" is not a wasp. It is a real 
 Chinese play, or rather a mosaic of several Chinese 
 plays, adapted by George C. Hazelton and the actor, 
 Benrimo, and staged by the latter. Mr. Benrimo 
 came from the old San Francisco, and he has ob- 
 served the Chinese Theater for many years. It is 
 said he is more familiar with its methods than almost 
 any other American, at least any American connected 
 
 So
 
 QUAINT TALE FROM THE ORIENT 51 
 
 with our stage. We must therefore believe that 
 when he says he has staged "The Yellow Jacket" 
 in the Chinese manner he is telling the truth. Any- 
 how, he has staged it in a manner totally different 
 from our own, a manner quaint, childlike, nai've 
 and beautiful. It seems to us authentically Orien- 
 tal, different, primitive, and we yield to its spell. 
 That is the main thing. If he has also shown us a 
 true picture of Chinese theatrical customs and con- 
 ventions, so much the better. 
 
 We do not pretend to know the names of the 
 original sources of "The Yellow Jacket," nor 
 whether they were works of the Ming dynasty or 
 some other dynasty, whether they are six hundred 
 years old or six. The chances are they antedate 
 Shakespeare, of course. As the play has reached 
 us, it is a simple little story, with allegorical and fan- 
 tastic embellishments, of mother love and brave- 
 hearted youth triumphant over obstacles, and re- 
 warded at last by the lips of a lady fair. It is a 
 tale old as this old earth. 
 
 It seems that Wu Sin Yin, governor of a province, 
 had two wives. The first one had given birth to 
 an infant, Wu Hoo Git, who was regarded as ugly 
 by all save his mother, Chee Moo. Now Wu Sin 
 Yin wished to get her and the brat out of the way
 
 52 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 that he might have a beautiful heir by his second 
 wife, so he ordered a farmer to kill her. The 
 farmer, however, killed a flirtatious maid instead, 
 mutilating her features to escape detection, and little 
 Wu Hoo Git was carried off by the farmer and his 
 wife (Chee Moo having died) and raised secretly 
 as their foster child. 
 
 When next we see him, Wu Hoo Git has come to 
 man's estate. He is now a beautiful youth, going 
 forth to see the world and conquer back his kingdom 
 from the elegant Wu Fab Din, child of the second 
 wife. Wu Fab Din is called The Daffodil, and 
 he is a Chinese Bunthorne. On his quest of the 
 Yellow Jacket (emblem of his true rank), Wu Hoo 
 Git is accompanied by an aged philosopher, a sort 
 of Chinese Wotan, though less loquacious. He falls 
 into the trap of pleasure and is lured by the maids 
 who sell their love for gold. He crosses high moun- 
 tains, deep streams, endures snow and cold, meets 
 the thunder god and the great spider, but ultimately 
 he conquers his rival, aided by his mother's spirit 
 looking down from heaven, and by his sweetheart's 
 slipper his sweetheart, the lovely Plum Blossom. 
 
 Now, all this is but a simple, nai've folk tale, 
 played by Saxon actors and actresses dressed up in 
 Chinese robes, yet so quaintly is it presented and so
 
 QUAINT TALE FROM THE ORIENT 53 
 
 artlessly sincere have the adapters kept it that we 
 believe it all, even when we smile at it, and more 
 than once it touches our hearts. 
 
 The curtain rises on a second curtain, or pair of 
 curtains, embroidered with dragons, and between 
 these curtains comes the Chinese property man, who 
 is supposed to be invisible to the audience. He non- 
 chalantly sucks a cigarette and beats a gong. Props 
 is played by Arthur Shaw, a son of Mary Shaw, and 
 though he does not speak a word during the entire 
 performance, and is supposed to be invisible, his 
 complete indifference to the play and his perfunctory 
 performance of his various duties are irresistibly 
 comic. After Props has beaten his gong Chorus 
 comes forth, impersonated by Signor Perugini. 
 Chorus bows, although admitting it is a little below 
 his dignity, thanks the audience for assembling and 
 bids them, if they find anything amusing in the play, 
 to honorably smile. (Yes, he splits his infinitive.) 
 He does not disclose the authorship of the play, and 
 he is abruptly cut off in his urbanities by Props again 
 with his gong. 
 
 Now the curtains part, and we see the stage set 
 as a great, high interior of gold, evidently represent- 
 ing the interior of a Chinese theater. At the back, 
 center, is an alcove where the musicians sit. At the
 
 54 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 back, right and left, are two doors for the entrance 
 and exit of characters. The Chorus has a little table 
 in front of the band, where he sits and explains what 
 goes on. Props has a big box and a pile of furni- 
 ture at one side all the paraphernalia needed to 
 dress the stage for the various scenes. He has also 
 two or three assistants, whom he kicks about. 
 
 Now the first scene is a room in Wu Sin Yin's 
 palace, so Props puts a table in the center of the 
 stage, a stiff black chair on either side of it, and 
 stands behind one of the chairs with a cushion in his 
 hand, scornfully puffing his cigarette. Chorus tells 
 us this is a room in the palace, and Wu Sin Yin en- 
 ters, walks down the stage and informs the audience 
 who he honorably is. Then he goes to the chair, 
 Props puts the cushion under him, and he sits. As 
 the other characters enter they, too, tell who they 
 are. We speedily learn of Wu Sin Yin's plot to 
 have his first wife and baby killed, and the scene 
 changes to Chee Moo's garden a change accom- 
 plished merely by removing the chairs and table. 
 Chee Moo enters with a piece of wood dressed in a 
 baby dress. The audience, of course, laughs at this, 
 as it has laughed at much before. But she has not 
 spoken three words to this stick of wood before the 
 audience is listening attentively, the stick of wood
 
 QUAINT TALE FROM THE ORIENT 55 
 
 forgotten. After all, it is quite as real as the baby 
 dolls we use to represent infants in arms on our 
 western stage! 
 
 When Lee Sin, the farmer, slays Fancy Beauty, 
 the pert maid, instead of Chee Moo, there is another 
 laugh, because he cuts off her head by pulling a red 
 bean bag from under her kimono and holding it 
 aloft. Again, when Chee Moo dies, leaving her 
 babe in a garden, there is a laugh, because Props 
 brings a ladder, leans it against a balcony built over 
 the alcove where the band is stationed, and Chee 
 Moo climbs this to heaven. Yet, as she stands on 
 the balcony looking down upon her stick-of-wood 
 babe once more, you forget to laugh, your imagina- 
 tion catching you up. 
 
 Here ends part one of the play, and Chorus comes 
 out, delighted at the applause, and now confesses 
 that he himself wrote the drama and drilled all the 
 players. He honorably bows his thanks. 
 
 Part two shows the babe, Wu Hoo Git, grown a 
 fine young man, in the home of the farmer ; a hand- 
 some youth, full of fire, eager to learn of the world. 
 And he goes forth to learn. Now the false heir to 
 his father's province, the Daffodil, tries to thwart 
 him, and first sends the Purveyor of Hearts, a hunch- 
 back, to tempt him with pleasure. Four little maids
 
 56 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 not exactly from school are offered for his inspec- 
 tion, and he buys one, and together they go out on 
 the River of Love. Here Props gets busy. He 
 builds a boat by means of four chairs and a strip of 
 cloth. Two assistant props stand at the stern with 
 poles and pretend to row. One man in the orches- 
 tra rubs sand-paper to simulate the swish of waves, 
 and the two young people recline in the craft and 
 float down the stream. At first a snicker goes up 
 from the audience. But George Relph, who plays 
 Wu Hoo Git, is a good actor. So honest, so poetic 
 is his impersonation of this youth just captured by 
 the snare of love, and so honest and quaint is the 
 writing of the scene, that in a moment laughter 
 ceases. Another moment, and that is a boat up 
 there in the moonlight. This, of course, is not alone 
 the Chinese stage. It is the stage of Shakespeare 
 the platform stage of many a masterpiece ; and once 
 more it demonstrates how much of a convention, a 
 custom merely, is the realistic scenery of today. 
 
 Wu Hoo Git is soon disillusioned about his little 
 love-girl, and presently falls truly in love with the 
 maiden Plum Blossom. He falls in love with her 
 in a graveyard, where he is seeking for his mother's 
 tomb. Props makes a graveyard by hanging white 
 cloths, covered with inscriptions, over the backs of
 
 QUAINT TALE FROM THE ORIENT 57 
 
 chairs, and then standing bored in a corner himself, 
 holding up a bamboo pole to impersonate a weeping 
 willow tree. At the end of this act, of course, Wu 
 Hoo Git learns who he really is, and sets forth to 
 oust the Daffodil. 
 
 The Daffodil appears to have been a powerful as 
 well as elegant person. He had command over 
 magic. He is most wonderfully well played by 
 Schuyler Ladd, who smells of flowers held for him by 
 the "invisible" Props with languid grace, and speaks 
 with a diction and clarity rare on our stage. He 
 throws mountains and rivers and snowstorms in his 
 enemy's path. Props makes the mountain out of 
 two tables and four chairs, and Wu Hoo Git and the 
 old philosopher who accompanies him struggle up. 
 Props builds the great river by putting a plank bridge 
 across two chairs. Props makes the snowstorm by 
 scattering a few bits of torn paper. Now, this all 
 sounds like one of Everett Shinn's burlesques, but 
 the smile at Props at once gives way when the actors 
 come on, because they are playing sincerely a sincere 
 story, which captures you out of the ages and the 
 alien lands. As an illustration of the imaginative 
 touches in which this tale abounds we may cite the 
 death of the old philosopher, in the snowstorm. He 
 lies down to die, and Props kicks a red cushion under
 
 58 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 his head. Then the actor gets up, leaving his cloak 
 behind, and mounts the ladder to heaven. Wu Hoo 
 Git comes and lifts the cloak on the ground, speaking 
 to the dead "form" beneath it. That simple little 
 piece of primitive stage business has all the stab of 
 spiritual allegory. Of course Wu Hoo Git conquers 
 the Daffodil at last, and banishes him to a garden, 
 there to smell lovely odors forever, and marries his 
 sweetheart, Plum Blossom, as the Yellow Jacket is 
 put about his honorable shoulders. 
 
 A word must be said for the music which almost 
 incessantly accompanies this play. William Furst 
 wrote it. It is played on instruments approximating 
 the Chinese, and is made up of Chinese rhythms, 
 square-toed and monotonous. Yet this music never 
 obtrudes, it cleverly avoids monotony, and it con- 
 sistently heightens the scenes where it is employed. 
 It is another feature of this rich and rare entertain- 
 ment where perfect taste and artistic discretion and 
 restraint have been successfully employed. 
 
 "The Yellow Jacket" is a triumph for everybody 
 concerned including the Chinese authors of the 
 originals !
 
 BELASCO AND HYPNOTISM 
 
 "The Case of Becky" Belasco Theater, 
 October I, 1912 
 
 In "The Case of Becky," by Edward Locke, Mr. 
 Belasco has followed the lead he opened in "The Re- 
 turn of Peter Grimm," and has sought once more to 
 stage something "psychic." Just as in "The Return 
 of Peter Grimm," he based his tale on publications 
 of the psychic researchers, here the tale is based quite 
 evidently on the published records of cases of so- 
 called dual personality, particularly, we fancy, on 
 certain cases described by Dr. Morton Prince of 
 Boston. Of course, being Belasco, what he has 
 really sought to do is to give the old tale of Dr. 
 Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a scientific varnish, and an 
 element of novelty, also, supplied by making the 
 hero-villain a girl instead of a man. 
 
 The scene is laid in the sanatorium of Dr. Emer- 
 son, a noted specialist in psychotherapy. The Doc- 
 tor's pet patient is a girl named Dorothy, who is a 
 sweet, lovely maid as Dorothy, but who is constantly 
 
 59
 
 60 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 waking up to find herself Becky, a nasty little bag- 
 gage who hates Dorothy and all her ways. In short, 
 when this heroine is Dorothy she is very, very good, 
 but when she is Becky she is horrid. It seems that 
 hitherto Becky has resisted all efforts of the Doctor 
 "Old Owl Eyes," she calls him to hypnotize 
 her, and so to suggest to her that she is dead and can 
 never come back any more. But the time is ap- 
 proaching when the Doctor feels he is going to 
 master her. That is the beginning of the action. 
 
 Now, the Doctor has never been able to learn cer- 
 tain facts in his patient's past life, which is rather 
 an odd state of affairs for a famous psychotherapist. 
 He has not discovered that as a child Dorothy was 
 the "subject" of a travelling hypnotist, a profes- 
 sional showman who claimed to be her father, and 
 in that life learned all the evil talk and thoughts 
 which she exhibits as Becky. He does know, how- 
 ever, that many years ago his own wife fell under the 
 influence of a travelling hypnotist, and ran away 
 from him. Does not the plot begin to emerge*? 
 
 Yes, it is even as you suspect. A travelling hyp- 
 notist appears in the first act and he is the man who 
 once led Dorothy round the country and from whom 
 she ran away. He wants her back. He "calls" to 
 her and she comes down the winding stairs. The rest
 
 BELASCO AND HYPNOTISM 61 
 
 of the play is a battle for the possession of the girl's 
 mind, as it were, between these two men, doctor 
 and hypnotist. We scent the end from afar. The 
 last act shows the doctor's laboratory at night, a 
 fascinating piece of Belascan realism, with white 
 walls and strange machines, such as the lullaby in- 
 strument which croons like the wind and sings on 
 three sweet notes, and the static machine with its 
 crackling, leaping spark, and that curious machine, 
 of which we know not the name, which seems to be 
 composed of a small electric fan blade, brilliantly 
 illuminated, into which the subject looks as it re- 
 volves till the hypnotic sleep comes. 
 
 It is into this strange room that the doctor lures 
 the hypnotist, conquers him by the aid of the ma- 
 chine, and while he has him in his power learns what 
 he has suspected that it was he who robbed him of 
 his wife. Of course, he further learns that Dorothy 
 is not the hypnotist's daughter, but his own child. 
 His revenge is strictly scientific. He takes away the 
 showman's powers, thus depriving him of all means 
 of a livelihood, and sends him forth a ruined man. 
 
 Science and the dear old sentimental melodrama 
 are curiously jumbled in this essentially improbable 
 fabric. It is sometimes Mr. Belasco's triumph to 
 make us forget the essential triteness of his themes in
 
 62 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the magic of his narration. Here we do not feel 
 that he has succeeded. He has failed, too, in another 
 respect, very strange for him. In a play written to 
 exploit a star, the star's part sinks to a secondary 
 place. This drama is far more a struggle between 
 the two men than it is a tale of Dorothy's dual per- 
 sonality. The good little Dorothy and the bad 
 little Becky are both shown to us, and Miss Starr has 
 a chance to make the change from one to the other 
 before our eyes, as Mansfield did in "Dr. Jekyll and 
 Mr. Hyde." (We cannot truthfully say that it in- 
 spired us with quite the same sensations of delicious, 
 shivery horror.) But our interest is far less in her 
 than in the struggle between the two men for pos- 
 session of her. Miss Starr is the pawn in her own 
 play. 
 
 However, that is only Miss Starr's and Mr. Belas- 
 co's concern. We are just as ready to enjoy a drama 
 about two men as about one girl. What concerns us 
 is the illusion created, or not created, in the telling. 
 For the present writer, illusion was not created, nor 
 did it appear to be for many in the audience with 
 him. The causes of failure are interesting, and they 
 seemed to lie deeper than the acting, or even the 
 staging. They seemed to be inherent in the material 
 of the play.
 
 BELASCO AND HYPNOTISM 63 
 
 In the course of the play, Dr. Emerson explains 
 it was not really the magic drug which turned Dr. 
 Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, but auto-suggestion for which 
 the drug pulled the trigger, as it were. Dr. Jekyll's 
 was really a case of dual personality, a case for the 
 pathologist. So be it, but so long as the case of 
 Dr. Jekyll is kept in the regions of romance and 
 mystery, so long as it is a strange kind of fairy tale, 
 we in the theatre are ready to believe it. It be- 
 comes true for us. Reduce it to the scientific terms 
 of pathology and it loses its romance and its wonder, 
 it becomes just an unusual hospital case, so unusual 
 that it fails to appeal to our experiences, and so 
 seems somehow untrue. 
 
 Just so "The Case of Becky" seems to us, by try- 
 ing to establish itself on a purely scientific basis, to 
 acquire that curious unreality which inheres in any 
 fact that is strange and outside our normal experi- 
 ence of daily life. There is much hypnotizing in the 
 play, in full view of the audience. It may all be 
 quite correct scientifically, though we are skeptical 
 on certain points. For instance, after the doctor has 
 put Becky into a hypnotic sleep, she still resists him. 
 But we shall not attempt to set up as an expert in 
 hypnotism. The point is that while an audience 
 knows very well people can be hypnotized, and are
 
 64 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 hypnotized every day by the doctors, nevertheless 
 it is something quite foreign to the actual experience 
 of the audience, and hence carries very little emo- 
 tional conviction. The doctor hypnotizes his rival, 
 and then tells him his power is gone. The rival 
 comes to, gets up, and lo, his power is gone! At 
 least he says it is. Somehow we don't feel a bit 
 sure of it. The whole scene has the curious effect 
 of seeming like a rather easy stage trick to bring 
 about the desired ending of the play. A little hyp- 
 notism we can stand upon the stage, but three mortal 
 acts of it are too much. It is neither frankly magic, 
 nor, for most of us, frankly fact. Of course, it is 
 fact, and with our heads we know that it is fact, or 
 that it can be fact. But it does not carry conviction 
 to our hearts in the theatre. That seems to be the 
 real trouble with "The Case of Becky," and not the 
 underlying triteness of the story and its straining of 
 coincidence, nor the acting, either. There is still 
 a mystery in death, which made "Peter Grimm" a 
 possible stage work for Mr. Belasco. In "Becky" 
 we feel he has tackled material which he cannot 
 handle by his pseudo-realistic method. If it were 
 done at all, it would have to be done by a mam 
 who cared less about the obvious story, and far more
 
 BELASCO AND HYPNOTISM 65 
 
 about a real exposition of medical practice. It may 
 be true that Dr. Jekyll was merely the victim of 
 auto-suggestion, but after seeing "The Case of 
 Becky" we still prefer to believe in the drug.
 
 WHAT BISHOPS DO IN THEIR YOUTH 
 
 "Romance" Maxine Elliott Theater, February /<?, 
 
 1913 
 
 In many respects Edward Sheldon's new play, 
 "Romance," marks a distinct technical advance over 
 his previous work. This drama, now visible at 
 Maxine Elliott's Theater, with Miss Doris Keane in 
 the leading woman's part, achieves, for one thing, 
 a consistent and unfailing atmosphere, or perhaps 
 it would be better to say mood. It is keyed to a 
 certain emotional note, and it does not slump at any 
 time into the merely sensational. 
 
 To be sure, some of the players, and more particu- 
 larly one player, Mr. William Courtenay, do their 
 best to make it sensational, to drop it to quite an- 
 other level., But we must do the play the credit of 
 laying the blame in this case on the actors. In the 
 second place, Mr. Sheldon has here, it seems to us,' 
 come nearer to consistent, plausible, and really hu- 
 man characterization than in any work he has so far 
 
 written. By human characterization we mean char- 
 
 66
 
 BISHOPS IN THEIR YOUTH 67 
 
 acterization felt by him, not merely reasoned out; 
 and so made more emotionally appealing and real 
 to an audience. We were never sure in "Salvation 
 Nell," for instance, how much we should have cared 
 about, or even believed in, Nell, had any actress but 
 Mrs. Fiske played her; and we felt the same way 
 toward Mary Page of "The High Road." 
 
 They are real people, humanly felt, in "Ro- 
 mance," and they behave according to their natures. 
 
 On the other hand, here, as occasionally elsewhere, 
 Mr. Sheldon has been too careless in his appropria- 
 tion of situations in past dramas to his own uses. 
 He has the excellent precedent of Homer and Shake- 
 speare, not to mention lesser lights; and doubtless 
 the deed is more or less to be judged by the success 
 with which the dramatist brings it off, bends the old 
 material to his own purposes. We do not question 
 for a moment Mr. Sheldon's success here in revamp- 
 ing the atmosphere of Fitch's "Captain Jinks" to 
 the new drama of "Romance." His play is in no 
 sense Fitch's play. The woman is differently stud- 
 ied and far more deeply studied. The whole tone 
 of the drama, its "message," if we may hazard the 
 word, is different. It is all unmistakably Sheldon. 
 Yet the fact remains that the heroine is an opera 
 singer in the palmy days of Mapleson and the old
 
 68 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Brevoort House, that this same old Brevoort House 
 furnishes one of the sets, and there is a distinct dupli- 
 cation of superficial atmosphere. Some people have 
 complained that Mr. Sheldon used devices in "The 
 High Road" which were used in "The Earth." 
 Many more have complained of this duplication of 
 Fitch's drama in "Romance." It would pay Mr. 
 Sheldon to be a little more careful, for complaints of 
 this sort may easily become nasty. He is not one 
 that needs to lean on anybody for his inventions. 
 
 But to the story. 
 
 "Romance" begins with a prologue and ends with 
 an epilogue, and the intervening three acts drop 
 back forty years in time, so that they come with the 
 misty glamour of a tale that is told. The charac- 
 ters in the prologue are old Bishop Armstrong and 
 his grandchildren, Suzette and Harry. Harry, it 
 seems, is engaged to an actress. He and his sister 
 break the news to the old man. She appears to be 
 a real actress, not a lady from the chorus. The only 
 charge against her is her profession. 
 
 It is night. By the light of the fire the old 
 bishop answers his impetuous grandson's plaint that 
 he, the bishop, can hardly know what such a passion 
 means to youth. And the tale that he begins in 
 the fire-light glow is a tale from his youth. In dark-
 
 BISHOPS IN THEIR YOUTH 69 
 
 ness the curtain falls, and rises soon but not soon 
 enough completely to sustain the illusion on a 
 room in Cornelius Van Tuyl's house, at 58 Fifth ave- 
 nue, on a November evening forty years ago. 
 
 That is where the real play begins the bishop's 
 story to his grandson is enacted before our eyes. 
 
 We find the bishop the ardent young rector of 
 St. Giles'. Mr. Van Tuyl, who is giving a ball, is 
 his leading vestryman. We are in the polite society 
 of the seventies, which George William Curtis poked 
 amiable fun at. A great Italian singer is to come 
 to the ball that night, Mme. Cavallini. There has 
 been much talk of her past, some of which the rector 
 hears. He is shocked and piqued. 
 
 She comes. But when the rector meets her he 
 does not know who she is, and she has fun with him ; 
 he is a strange type to her, this innocent Puritan, 
 and she to him. But through the scene of gay ban- 
 ter on her part and bewilderment on his is apparent 
 a rising mutual attraction. The rector does not 
 learn who his charmer is till later, when a voice in 
 the room below arrests him, and looking over the 
 rail he beholds this same woman singing "Know'st 
 Thou the Land?" from "Mignon" the air the 
 bishop's granddaughter in the prologue had wished 
 to put into the victrola, "as sung by Geraldine Far-
 
 70 
 
 rar." The old air comes up the stairs, from the 
 imagined glow of the ballroom below; the rector 
 stands gazing, his heart entangled in romance; and 
 the first curtain falls. 
 
 The next act is laid in the rector's study, and we 
 learn what his aunt thinks of his "carryings-on" with 
 this opera singer, we see him make love to her, pro- 
 pose marriage, we realize that she loves him, and 
 then the act tightens into sterner drama when to the 
 rector comes the inevitable revelation which we, in 
 the audience, have been expecting namely, that 
 Cavallini has been the mistress of Van Tuyl. Poor 
 little creature, taken up early into a strange and dan- 
 gerous life by the gift of her voice, out of a life 
 perhaps more strange and dangerous still, her love 
 for the rector is the best thing she has ever known. 
 To tell him of her past shame is the bravest thing 
 she ever did. Our sympathy goes out to both of 
 them. 
 
 The last act is the evening of the same day. 
 Cavallini has sung her farewell performance and is 
 being brought back to the Brevoort House in a coach 
 drawn by admirers, to a room full of flowers. But 
 she is sad of heart; her gayety is gone. Comes sud- 
 denly the rector, evidently fired by a mad, evangeli- 
 cal passion to save her soul. There is a stormy
 
 BISHOPS IN THEIR YOUTH 71 
 
 scene, ending in the rector's change of purpose, fired 
 by jealousy and desire, to an equally mad passion 
 to run off with her at once. But her love for this 
 good man has done its work. Cavallini repels him. 
 With a fine, pathetic dignity, she tells him that to re- 
 fuse him is the best atonement she can make. He 
 goes out humbled, never to see her again. She, like 
 the queen, goes away "to sin no more." 
 
 Then once more we see the bishop sitting before 
 the fire, and his grandson rising, now the tale is told. 
 He pats his grandfather affectionately on the back. 
 Where is he going*? He is going to the theatre to 
 get his heart's desire. They are not going to wait 
 any longer! 
 
 The old man smiles. It is Youth ! 
 
 Possibly for some people the fact that there seems 
 to be no particular moral analogy between the bish- 
 op's story and his grandson's affair will weaken the 
 coherence of the whole drama. But the grandson 
 is a nice boy, and we prefer it as it is. Certainly the 
 main story has coherence, charm, force and a real 
 touch of romantic glamour, and it provides a very 
 fine acting part for Miss Doris Keane. 
 
 Cavallini is wayward, capricious, alternate smiles 
 and moodiness, bright and alluring, full of gay fun, 
 and full, too, of the sadness which comes from our
 
 72 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 reflection on her pathetically predestined past. She 
 is a child of the streets and the opera, with all the 
 glamour and the strangeness of the great artist who 
 rises from such obscurity through such devious, un- 
 known ways. So Miss Keane plays her, with a be- 
 witching accent, with infectious fun, with delicious 
 capriciousness, with true tenderness, too. It is only 
 when the last act is reached, and Cavallini rises to 
 the pathetic dignity of redemption and renunciation 
 that Miss Keane falls short of the mark. Here the 
 note is beyond her. Here Mr. Sheldon is writing 
 for Mrs. Fiske's capacities, perhaps unconsciously, 
 not for Miss Keane's. But it must also be confessed 
 that Miss Keane receives too little aid from William 
 Courtenay, as the rector. 
 
 Mr. Courtenay, of course, plays first the bishop in 
 the prologue. Here the modern training (or better 
 the lack of training) of our actors is painfully ap- 
 parent. Dressed up as an old man, Mr. Courtenay, 
 who has so long "played himself," is lost. His 
 speech becomes stilted. He talks in a kind of sing- 
 song. He has no more of a mellow old bishop's 
 dignity and sweetness than the chair he sits in. To 
 be sure, the part is hardly written with the mellow- 
 ness an older playwright could have given it, such 
 mellowness as Mr. Thomas gave to his two judges
 
 BISHOPS IN THEIR YOUTH 73 
 
 in "The Witching Hour." But Mr. Courtenay does 
 not help. The prologue falls short of its possible 
 effect. 
 
 As the rector, Mr. Courtenay is more on his own 
 ground for a time, at least. He escapes a too easy 
 priggishness, and so long as Mr. Sheldon gives him 
 no speeches which rise above an ordinary conversa- 
 tional diction he talks quite naturally. When, how- 
 ever, the language is heightened to meet a mood (and 
 the author is striving with each new play for a 
 richer speech, and succeeding here, certainly, more 
 than in "The High Road" in escaping the pitfalls 
 of mere rhetoric) Mr. Courtenay becomes once more 
 sing-song and artificial. 
 
 His worst failure, however, is in the third act. 
 Here he simply lets go of the character altogether, 
 and rants all over the Hotel Brevoort. He becomes 
 first a Sam Jones in his effort to save Cavallini's soul, 
 and then a Caliban in his passion for her body. We 
 cannot think that Mr. Sheldon intended anything so 
 raw. Certainly the scene could be played in char- 
 acter and in keeping with the romantic dignity and 
 charm of the rest of the play. We lose altogether 
 in such playing the spiritual note on which the story 
 proper should end. 
 
 In striking contrast to Mr. Courtenay's undis-
 
 74 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ciplined exhibition is the acting of A. E. Anson as 
 Van Tuyl, a gem of a performance that actually 
 persuades us for the time into accepting this fine 
 gentleman, this pillar of St. Giles', at his face value, 
 and attributing his past relations with Cavallini to 
 that same extenuating glamour of romance which 
 all of us in our heart of hearts look upon with sym- 
 pathy. Yes, we make the confession boldly not 
 the confession, the charge! Mr. Anson's complete 
 command of the resources of his art is a treat to 
 all lovers of acting, and his suave ease upon the stage 
 a thing to be copied by many a player. 
 
 It only remains to add that George Foster Platt 
 has staged "Romance" with his usual skill in sur- 
 face illusion, and given us that gratifying sense of 
 every smallest thing done right.
 
 ADVENTURES OF A SOUL AT THE 
 WINTER GARDEN 
 
 "The Honeymoon Express" Winter Garden^ 
 February 6, 1913 
 
 If we accept Anatole France's definition of criti- 
 cism as "the adventures of a soul among master- 
 pieces," how is one to write criticism about a new 
 production at the Winter Garden 1 ? Henry W. Sav- 
 age has been having a fine time recently jumping 
 upon the critics. He complains that some of them 
 exploit themselves rather than the play they are 
 writing about. Yet occasionally that is not only the 
 inevitable, but the kindest proceeding. When you 
 send your soul adventuring, not among masterpieces, 
 but inanities, you prefer to talk about the protective 
 tariff or Bergson's metaphysical theories, or even 
 your own, rather than to discuss the experiences 
 through which you have just passed. 
 
 Walter Pater saw the Mona Lisa how fortunate 
 he lived before that lady was stolen ! and his soul's 
 adventure was recorded in one of the most languidly 
 
 75
 
 76 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 lovely passages in all the glorious procession of Eng- 
 lish prose. But it is doubtful if even Pater could 
 have created criticism which was also literature had 
 he been seeing a chromo-lithograph on a soap calen- 
 dar. Yet even your poor overworked newspaper 
 dramatic critic wants to write something as near 
 literature as his powers will permit, and he longs 
 with a more selfish passion, perhaps, but hardly a 
 less intense, than that of the Drama Leaguers, for 
 masterpieces. He has a soul yes, even the dra- 
 matic critic has a soul ; and when it can go adventur- 
 ing, whether at "Romeo and Juliet" or "Pinafore," 
 whether at "She Stoops to Conquer" or "Hindle 
 Wakes," the critic then has the materials out of 
 which he can himself create something which by the 
 grace of God may be not unworthy of print. 
 
 But when the critic has to check his soul in the 
 cloakroom and goes in to see not a masterpiece but 
 an inanity, he has no materials of adventure to work 
 with and if he then comes away and tries to make 
 bricks without straw, tries to create something at 
 least readable by Charles Lamb's method of chat- 
 ting about himself, of causerie, after all he is not so 
 much to be blamed. It is sometimes not vanity but 
 literary idealism which drives him to it. 
 
 If he himself, besides, were not more worth writ-
 
 ADVENTURES OF A SOUL 77 
 
 ing about than many of the "shows" he witnesses, he 
 would be totally unfitted for the post of critic. 
 You can hardly expect him to be so modest as not to 
 know that. 
 
 All of which is by way of informing the perspica- 
 cious reader that we found Gaby Deslys in "The 
 Honeymoon Express" at the Winter Garden in New 
 York a most desolate and deplorable form of enter- 
 tainment, in which view some thousands of well- 
 fed and over-dressed Broadwayites of both sexes 
 do not in the least concur. 
 
 For the opening night, speculators who have been 
 abolished in New York, by the way were asking, 
 and getting, as high as $6.00 a seat. We had 
 planned to go and see "Joseph and His Brethren," 
 but we could not resist our impulse to see why peo- 
 ple would give up six good dollars to watch and 
 listen to Gaby Deslys. 
 
 Nor do we know any better now. 
 
 The great auditorium of the Winter Garden, a 
 converted horse exchange, was crowded to the doors 
 with men, women and tobacco smoke. People even 
 stood six deep at the rear. It was not the kind of 
 an audience you see at "Peter Pan." It was a very 
 sophisticated audience. It had on its best clothes. 
 Some of the feminine head-dresses were remarkable.
 
 78 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Indeed, when the wearers had taken their seats, most 
 of their dressing seemed to be on their heads. There 
 was expectancy as well as cigar smoke in the air. 
 Something was going to be doing, without doubt. 
 
 The something turned out to be "The Honey- 
 moon Express," described as "a spectacular farce 
 with music, in two acts and six scenes." We de- 
 tected some farce, but a patient wait of nearly three 
 hours failed to disclose any music, though a large 
 orchestra was industriously at work most of the 
 time manufacturing syncopated sounds. Melville 
 Ellis played the piano, and numerous people fre- 
 quently opened their mouths and emitted strange 
 noises. 
 
 The whole affair was staged by Ned Wayburn. 
 As a result, nobody stood still for a second. The 
 choruses rushed back and forth in time to the syn- 
 copated noises, waved their arms, skipped, made 
 lines across the stage, and went off each with her 
 hands on the hips of the girl in front, kicking up the 
 leg toward the audience. The principals shouted 
 and rushed about. The din and the meaningless 
 movement were incessant, till the brain was beaten 
 into a kind of quiescent stupor. 
 
 And through it all Gaby glided in about twelve 
 remarkable gowns and one perfectly good set of em-
 
 ADVENTURES OF A SOUL 79 
 
 broidered French underwear. Every time she en- 
 tered the stage she wore a new dress, and in the 
 second act she took her dress off and put on a night- 
 gown. Occasionally she essayed to sing, and fre- 
 quently she danced in a kind of wild, clumsy aban- 
 don. Then there was a -black-faced comedian 
 named Al Jolson who interrupted the proceedings 
 at periodic intervals to regale the audience with 
 somewhat dubious witticisms and strange songs sup- 
 posed on Broadway to be negro. Through the hub- 
 bub a brave little plot struggled for existence, and 
 won admiration more for its courage than its re- 
 finement. 
 
 Yet, in spite of the best efforts of the industrious 
 Gaby, in spite of Al Jolson's reputation and Mel- 
 ville Ellis's costumes, in spite of the "augmented or- 
 chestra" and the ragtime of Jean Schwartz, the final 
 glory went to the scenery and the electrician, aided, 
 of course, by the brave little plot. 
 
 Gaby's husband was off to Paris to get a divorce. 
 Gaby missed the train. A motor was called into 
 service that she might catch another train, the Hon- 
 eymoon Express, at Rouen Junction, sixty miles 
 away, and forestall his action. Moving pictures of 
 the real players, in a real motor, were first thrown 
 on the screen, to show the start for Rouen, up Pel-
 
 8o PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ham Parkway, the Bronx, New York. Then the 
 curtain rose on Rouen Junction, with the Matter- 
 horn and Mont Blanc on the back drop. The stage 
 was nearly dark, the mountains dim. 
 
 Suddenly we saw the lights of the train crawling, 
 winding, down the mountains, like a golden cater- 
 pillar. A moment, and the tiny headlights of a 
 motor appeared. It was a race between them! A 
 race on the scenery! The audience bubbled with 
 delight. The lights of the train grew larger and 
 nearer, the lights of the motor larger and farther 
 spaced. Finally the stage was darkened completely, 
 we heard the train, we heard the motor. The engine 
 headlight streamed out into the auditorium; so did 
 the twin lamps of the motor, growing larger rapidly, 
 and wider apart. With a cough and a roar, a real 
 motor dashed upon the stage out of the dark, side by 
 side with a big locomotive, not so real. Out leapt 
 Gaby just in time. The whole race was con- 
 ducted with great mechanical ingenuity and was 
 greeted with cheers. 
 
 Then the electrician went cheerfully home. 
 Gaby put on a new dress, and the "augmented or- 
 chestra" once more went at their sweaty task of 
 sawing ragtime. 
 
 Now, if Colonel Savage had produced this con-
 
 ADVENTURES OF A SOUL 81 
 
 traption (which, by the way, he would never have 
 done), he would doubtless object in his tactful way 
 to this alleged criticism of it, as being quite unfair. 
 If we were fair according to managerial standards, 
 we should say that a huge audience enjoyed it, that 
 it is likely to have a long run, that the gorgeous cos- 
 tumes cost a heap of money, that Al Jolson elicited 
 roars of laughter, and so forth, ad nauseam. 
 
 But, if we may be permitted to say so, we are 
 not concerned with the length of its run, nor with the 
 cost of its costumes, nor with the attitude toward it 
 of the kind of people who like that kind of thing. 
 We are not concerned with anybody's attitude to- 
 ward it save our own. There was a time, perhaps, 
 in our hopeful youth, when we thought that it was 
 our duty to make other people feel as we did, and 
 even held them in some contempt if they didn't. 
 But that time has passed. We have grown weary 
 of effort and weary of contempt. If anybody likes 
 "The Honeymoon Express," finding it amusing and 
 stimulating, why, we rejoice now that it exists for 
 him to see and hear. 
 
 But we still reserve the inalienable right to state 
 that we personally got nothing out of it except a 
 headache.
 
 HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO ART 
 
 "The Show Shop" Hudson Theater, 
 December 75, 1914 
 
 "The Show Shop," by James Forbes, author of 
 "The Chorus Lady," "The Traveling Salesman" and 
 other comedies, has been produced at the Hudson 
 Theatre, where* for many years Mr. Forbes was the 
 press agent, and it is pleasant to report that it is 
 not only the best play Mr. Forbes has yet written, 
 but one of the cleverest, brightest, most satisfying 
 plays displayed on Broadway this season. In fact, 
 it is so good that it almost restores a lagging faith 
 in the American theatre. It is acted as well as it is 
 written, and the whole production might come from 
 Vienna without a blush. 
 
 "The Show Shop" is somewhat difficult to classify. 
 It constantly skates the line between satiric comedy 
 and burlesque, never in its burlesque losing sight, 
 however, of its legitimate story, yet never in the 
 telling of that story forgetting its burlesque purpose. 
 
 At once too kindly and too farcical to be called an 
 
 82
 
 HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO ART 83 
 
 out-and-out satire of theatrical life, it constantly 
 pokes such delicious fun at this life that it cannot 
 be classed with Pinero's "Trelawney of the Wells," 
 where a romantic element after all prevailed. 
 Moreover, "The Show Shop" is complicated by a 
 novel act containing a play within the play, cleverly 
 woven into the story. In Mr. Forbes' other come- 
 dies he has tried to pass from the comic to the serious 
 (as in "The Chorus Lady") and achieved only crude 
 sentimentality. His transitions were like those of 
 a poor singer from one register to another. But in 
 this latest work he has tried for no changes of mood, 
 cutting his work all of a piece, writing it all in the 
 same spirit of kindly burlesque, and the result is 
 happy artistic unity. For once we have an Ameri- 
 can play, so American that it would almost call for 
 a glossary, which we could yet show to a cultivated 
 European without a single blush of apology. 
 
 The first act is laid in a theatrical manager's office 
 in New York, the second act in a cheap hotel on the 
 road (in Punxatawney), the third act on the stage 
 of a New York theater and the last act in the rooms 
 of the hero. The hero is the only person in the play 
 who isn't professionally connected with the theatri- 
 cal game, and he is dragged into it in Act I. He 
 is a rich young fellow, dreadfully in love with Bet-
 
 84 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 tina Dean, who is a sweet little actress with a really- 
 truly mother, who also was an actress once, and 
 who won't let Bettina marry Jerome Belden (the 
 hero) till her child has made her debut on Broad- 
 way and had a fling at a "career." Max Rosen- 
 baum, the manager, is about to send Bettina out in 
 a play called "The Punch," and Jerome, in order 
 to be near her, signs up to play the part of a youth 
 about town. Of course, he knows nothing about 
 acting, but he "looks the part," he is the "type," so 
 the manager engages him at once. In the second 
 act we see the manager and his company on the road, 
 after the play has failed, the manager telling these 
 footlight children in words that are said to be remi- 
 niscent of a certain Broadway dramatic Napoleon, 
 the sad news. Of course, Jerome is much cut up, 
 because if the play doesn't come into New York his 
 chance of marrying Bettina is just so much longer 
 put off. Therefore he suggests to Max that he will 
 put up the money for a new production, and further 
 guarantee Max $5,000 if the play fails, which is, 
 of course, what he wants it to do. 
 
 "I don't believe I could pick a failure," says the 
 manager. 
 
 But Jerome, the amateur, is confident that he can, 
 so he puts a dozen mss. on the table, shuts his eyes
 
 HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO ART 85 
 
 and counts them out, eeny, meeny, miny, mo. The 
 ms. called "A Drop of Poison" is "it." Mother 
 Dean, when she hears that Max is to star her daugh- 
 ter in it (of course, she doesn't know of the real 
 plan), promptly changes the name to "Dora's Di- 
 lemma," because she says the name of the star char- 
 acter should always appear in the title. 
 
 The girl, however, positively refuses to act in the 
 play unless Jerome is her leading man. She will 
 not make love to anybody else, even on the stage, 
 so poor Jerome, who has had all the acting he wants, 
 is forced into this job. 
 
 The third act shows first the dress rehearsal of 
 "Dora's Dilemma," of the big climax, where Jerome 
 is supposed to have a fight in the dark with a police- 
 man, with incriminating papers in his pocket. He 
 is supposed to take his coat off, however, so the 
 heroine can get the papers, and when the lights are 
 switched on she holds the papers in her hand and 
 cries, "I am the thief." This rehearsal is one long 
 scream for the audience, even for persons who have 
 never seen a real rehearsal. Douglas Fairbanks, 
 who plays the hero, is of course supposed to act very 
 badly, and he does, to the queen's taste. The 
 poor author figures chiefly by moaning and wailing, 
 as his play is slaughtered. The stage manager
 
 86 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 fumes. Mother Dean interferes. Max, the little 
 Jew manager, acts the diplomat. All the players 
 exhibit vanities, and the chaos of the whole affair 
 is very comically rendered. Perhaps the best com- 
 edy of all is the rehearsal of the curtain calls. Then 
 the curtain falls for a moment, and rises again to 
 show the actual performance that night. 
 
 For this scene Max sits in a real box in the actual 
 theater, with Mother Dean. All goes well till the 
 hero enters. Then he forgets everything, forgets to 
 take his coat off, has the fight in the dark, and when 
 the lights come on, lo, the poor heroine has no papers 
 to hold up, the play is ruined ! No, for Jerome has 
 an inspiration ! He climbs up over the desk, he falls 
 on the policeman, he really knocks him down, he 
 bowls out the other characters, none of whom has 
 been rehearsed for this impromptu climax, he seizes 
 the heroine in his arms, and exits with her through 
 the window, amid the applause of the astonished 
 audience. 
 
 The last act takes place the next morning. Bet- 
 tina comes to Jerome's rooms, weeping. Hasn't he 
 seen the papers'? The play is a hit! The unex- 
 pected climax is praised. Jerome is praised for his 
 unconventional acting, his freedom from the usual 
 routine technique.
 
 HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO ART 87 
 
 "What is technique?" the bewildered youth asks. 
 
 "Technique," replies the actress, "is something 
 you work all your life to get, and the public doesn't 
 want." 
 
 At first Bettina and Jerome refuse to go on with 
 the play, insisting that they are going to get mar- 
 ried at once. Of course, Max has a terrible mo- 
 ment at this threat. They mustn't marry the 
 public wouldn't come to see either of them then! 
 They must not stop playing, either, because then 
 all the company would be out of work. The 
 thought of the really nice people in the company de- 
 cides Jerome. He will go on with the agony the 
 season out and then for Europe or a farm. But 
 he insists on a secret wedding, none the less, and im- 
 mediately. He and Bettina are leaving for the 
 Little Church Around the Corner as the curtain falls. 
 
 This bare outline will show the satirical scheme of 
 the play, the clever burlesque of the hit-and-miss 
 of theatrical production. It can not, however, even 
 suggest the constant snap and sparkle of the shop 
 slang; the keen bits of character observation; the 
 amiable fun poked at managers, actors, authors and 
 even audiences. For once an author has had a first 
 rate idea, and clothed it in first rate garments of 
 dialogue and character. It is acted, too, in the same
 
 88 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 spirit. Douglas Fairbanks is the "star," on the 
 program, but in reality he is merely one of a well 
 balanced company. From Miss Edna Aug, who 
 gives a delicious performance as the manager's fresh 
 stenographer in Act I, to William Sampson, who 
 plays an old-time actor in love with his old-time 
 wife, played by Olive May, every player is capital. 
 It is, to be sure, a play of character parts, and such 
 parts can always be better filled in America than 
 "straight" parts. One of the very best perform- 
 ances is given by an actor named George Sidney. 
 We are told that for years he has played nothing 
 but Jew character roles in such cheap burlesques as 
 "Busy Izzy," but here, as the little Jew manager, 
 there is nothing to suggest such a bad training. He 
 looks exactly like a composite picture of Abe Er- 
 langer and Charles Frohman, and he acts with a 
 quiet skill and an unforced feeling for comedy which 
 is a delight. The part does not call for any of Mr. 
 Erlanger's prize fighter moods, but does call for 
 much of Mr. Frohman's sweet kindliness. An ig- 
 norant little vulgarian, with a good heart and the 
 soul of a gambler that is Max, and that is how 
 Mr. Sidney plays him. Ned Sparks, also, as the 
 lank, weary, nasal stage manager, is marvelously true 
 to life. Play and performance are alike capital,
 
 HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO ART 89 
 
 both jolly entertainment and, beneath the fooling, 
 good-natured but really keen and intelligent satire. 
 You don't have to check either your brains or your 
 taste in the coatroom when you go to see "The Show 
 Shop."
 
 MR. COHAN'S BELIEF IN MIRACLES 
 
 "The Miracle Man" Astor Theater^ 
 September 21^ 1914 
 
 George Cohan has dramatized a book by Frank 
 L. Packard, called "The Miracle Man," and by so 
 doing he has, as it were, thrown down the gauntlet 
 to more serious criticism. He has endeavored to 
 write a play of spiritual forces, a drama in which 
 the protagonist is Faith. No doubt he has also sup- 
 plied the hope, and trusts to his audiences for the 
 charity. But, truth to tell, Mr. Cohan is over his 
 depth. We have not read the book from which his 
 play takes its theme and title, but we shrewdly sus- 
 pect that the author of that book was over his depth 
 also. 
 
 The play is not the first attempt to make a drama 
 out of the phenomena of faith healing. A similar 
 attempt was made by the late William Vaughn 
 Moody, and Henry Miller endeavored to persuade 
 Forbes Robertson to act "The Faith Healer," Mr. 
 Moody's drama. Failing that, Mr. Miller himself 
 acted it for a single performance at Harvard Uni- 
 
 90
 
 MR. COHAN'S BELIEF IN MIRACLES 91 
 
 versity. "The Faith Healer" was the work of a 
 poet, and of a man who thought deeply and felt 
 profoundly. Yet it was not successful on the stage. 
 Not long before, Henry Arthur Jones had produced 
 a play called "The Evangelist," which was not, to 
 be sure, a drama of faith healing, but which de- 
 pended upon the analogous phenomenon of conver- 
 sion which is faith healing of the spirit instead of 
 the body. That play also failed. 
 
 Into the probable reasons for such failures there 
 is scarcely time nor space to go now. It is sufficient 
 to say that the phenomena depicted, especially the 
 phenomenon of bodily healing, lie so far beyond the 
 experience of the ordinary person today that they 
 can with difficulty carry emotional conviction. In 
 a credulous age faith healing might have been as 
 readily accepted by every one as witchcraft was in 
 Salem, or ghosts in Shakespeare. But not so today. 
 In most alleged cases now you and I instinctively 
 feel that an element of fraud probably enters; and 
 in all cases where a genuine cure appears to have 
 been effected we demand an inquiry as to the nature 
 of the disease, whether functional or organic, and 
 we are led from our contemplation not to blind 
 "faith" but rather into a still more curious and 
 scientific investigation of the mysterious connection
 
 92 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 between the brain and the rest of the body. 
 "Miracles" once built shrines. Now they build 
 psychotherapic laboratories. Even in the case of 
 "conversion," what was once a common experience 
 of nearly every Protestant believer is now to a very 
 great extent something we must go to the Salvation 
 Army rescue missions to observe first hand. 
 
 But these considerations have not troubled Mr. 
 Cohan, or not enough to deter him from his attempt 
 to make a play out of "The Miracle Man." We 
 are glad that they didn't, for the main idea of the 
 story and, of course, of the play, is a striking one; 
 and because Mr. Cohan has far too much good sense 
 and theatrical taste not to handle it seriously the 
 public has a chance to see him in a new role. If 
 the play enjoys a moderate degree of prosperity 
 and that seems probable Cohan's place as a man 
 of serious ambitions will be more firmly fixed, and 
 it will be easier for him to make his next advance 
 forward. Moreover, every time he handles a theme 
 with spiritual values in it he unquestionably must 
 react to these values, for he is an Irishman. He 
 must broaden his personal outlook. We are glad 
 he had the courage to step over his head into this 
 deep water. 
 
 Here is the scheme of "The Miracle Man." An
 
 MR. COHAN'S BELIEF IN MIRACLES 93 
 
 old fellow called the patriarch lives in a small Maine 
 village, and effects cures, or so the whole village 
 believes. A sharper from New York sees in him a 
 chance to make money. Though the patriarch will 
 take no fees, he would take money for the sake of 
 his grand-niece, his only relative, if she could be 
 found. The sharper pretends himself to be cured 
 of his "vocal troubles." Next he steals enough evi- 
 dence to palm off his "queen" successfully as the old 
 man's lost niece. Next he brings up two other 
 crooks from New York, one a professional "flopper," 
 who pretends to be a cripple, and the other a "dope 
 fiend," who pretends a terrible cough. The scheme 
 is to have these cases cured, to publish the fact to the 
 world, and then to fatten on the fees which will 
 come in, for the old man will turn all the money 
 over to his "niece." 
 
 All goes well for a time, but the sharper reckoned 
 without the old man's genuine power. Gradually 
 the girl falls under the spell of his benignity, the 
 dope fiend falls in love with a country girl in an 
 honest way, and finally, when the flopper is cured of 
 his pretended malady, a small boy, who is a real 
 cripple, is cured also, and even the flopper collapses 
 at this. With his two male pals converted into hon- 
 est citizens, and his "queen" on the verge, the sharper
 
 94 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 is hard put to hold his own. Finally the girl re- 
 fuses point blank to have anything more to do with 
 him unless he reforms also, and between her atti- 
 tude and the death of the patriarch even he is finally 
 converted, and the last curtain falls on a picture of 
 wholesale regeneration. 
 
 It is, assuredly, a pretty big pill to swallow, this 
 story. In the first place, it is hard to fancy these im- 
 postors being able to carry off their bluff, especially 
 in the case of the girl. A crook's mistress is usually 
 not the sort who can go into a rural community and 
 successfully pose as a pattern of virginal sweetness 
 and modesty. Mr. Cohan here, as usual, oddly 
 underestimates the intelligence of all those be- 
 nighted souls who do not dwell on Manhattan 
 Island. In the second place, the character of the 
 miracles is so vaguely indicated, the nature of the 
 old man's philosophy so shadowy, that he tends to 
 become a mere deus ex machina, a theatrical device, 
 not a breathing, living force of mind and spirit. 
 Finally, this sudden and complete conversion of four 
 crooks from wickedness not only to honesty but to 
 a desire for a bucolic existence with rural spouses in 
 a Maine village is indeed a miracle, when all that 
 they have done is to look upon a sweet old man with 
 white whiskers and see a cripple walk. Of course,
 
 MR. COHAN'S BELIEF IN MIRACLES 95 
 
 great things have taken place within their souls 
 nothing less than complete revolution, in fact. But 
 Mr. Cohan has neither the technique to portray that 
 inner revolution nor the knowledge, perhaps, to 
 understand it. We see merely the unconvincing 
 externals of the conversion. The real meat of it 
 escapes entirely and would, indeed, escape almost 
 any dramatist, for it is well nigh impossible to 
 dramatize a soul-state. 
 
 Of course, it may be urged that such people as 
 these crooks are the very ones most susceptible to 
 the forces which make for a complete conversion, 
 and we readily grant it. We, too, have read "Twice 
 Born Men." And we even knew it before that book 
 appeared. It is also a fact that truth is stranger 
 than fiction; but a great many stories, which are 
 justified by being based on fact, are none the less 
 quite unconvincing in an art form. The truths told 
 of in "Twice Born Men" are stranger than the fic- 
 tions of "The Miracle Man" ; everything in Cohan's 
 play might have a basis of fact; but it wouldn't be 
 a bit more convincing as an art product. In art 
 form a story must not only be true, it must seem true, 
 it must let us see the processes going on within the 
 characters at all times, so that we can understand 
 and be convinced. This task is too much for Mr.
 
 96 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Cohan. He has neither the skill nor the necessary 
 knowledge of the human soul. The nearest he 
 comes to it is in the case of the "queen," because 
 her conversion is less a matter of "faith" (and just 
 what Mr. Cohan means by faith he seems to have 
 only the vaguest idea) than of the sweet influences 
 of a quiet home and a gentle, loving old man, whom 
 she grows to respect and love. Such influences are 
 understandable to author and audience alike. 
 
 The present writer has been accused of attacking 
 Mr. Cohan unkindly. He hopes he has done 
 nothing of the kind. Nobody can be blind to Mr. 
 Cohan's exceptional merits and abilities. What- 
 ever he does acting, writing, staging he does 
 efficiently, remarkably efficiently, up to a certain 
 point. He knows most of the tricks of the trade, 
 he knows what the public likes, he knows how to pick 
 actors, he knows how to keep a story moving briskly, 
 plausibly; he knows how to write farce better than 
 anybody else in America. But one thing he does 
 not know the human soul. His plays have never 
 yet gone below the surface of emotion, they have 
 never probed human conduct, whether seriously or 
 comically, they have never reached the level of dra- 
 matic literature, any more than the plays of Dion
 
 MR. COHAN'S BELIEF IN MIRACLES 97 
 
 Boucicault did, who in his generation was as prolific 
 and successful as Mr. Cohan. 
 
 While we are hailing Cohan as the "leader" of 
 our stage, because he gives us so many successful en- 
 tertainments, aren't we by way of forgetting that 
 leaders are made of sterner stuff than this? Because 
 "The Miracle Man" so well illustrates Cohan's 
 failures as a dramatist, as well as some of his con- 
 spicuous merits (for the story is told, on the ob- 
 jective side, with genuine narrative art), it is worthy 
 of this considerable consideration, though as liter- 
 ature it is nil. It also illustrates his ambitions and 
 for that reason we hope it succeeds. The ambition 
 is honorable and may lead to better things. 
 
 The chief part in "The Miracle Man" is adroitly 
 played by George Nash. Miss Gail Kane is the 
 "queen." She would be more effective if she had 
 not assiduously cultivated a round shouldered stoop 
 and forward thrust of the head which perilously sug- 
 gests a giraffe.
 
 A VICTORY OF UNPRETENTIOUSNESS 
 
 "Too Many Cooks" jpth Street Theater^ 
 February 25, 1914 
 
 It is always a tendency of drama to run to ex- 
 tremes, to strong contrasts. If it seeks romance, it 
 seeks it in China or Persia, in the Ireland of a cen- 
 tury ago, in the mythical kingdom of Zenda. In 
 these latter years it seeks sex problems in the brothel. 
 Striving to be lowly or bucolic, it turns to Sag Har- 
 bor or the state of Maine. Any city life portrayed 
 must be New York City life, with a strong emphasis 
 laid on the terrible business strain undergone by the 
 men and the terrible temptations to extravagance re- 
 sisted in vain by the women. There is no play about 
 Atlanta, Ga., or Indianapolis, Ind., and, we were 
 going to say, Pawtucket, R. I. though Gus Thomas 
 did write "The Earl of Pawtucket," with the scene 
 laid in the Waldorf-Astoria, New York. When we 
 think what our country is, what myriad problems 
 its various peoples face, our native drama seems 
 sometimes a pitifully tiny scratch on the surface. 
 
 98
 
 VICTORY OF UNPRETENTIOUSNESS 99 
 
 And now a young actor, Frank Craven, who be- 
 came somewhat famous as Brother Jimmy in 
 "Bought and Paid For," has appeared with a new 
 play called "Too Many Cooks," and without any 
 flourish of trumpets, without any proclamation of 
 purpose, without any literary pretensions whatso- 
 ever, has made a scratch in a new place, and we are 
 disposed to think a deeper scratch than he knew, or 
 the "literary'* dramatists will admit. 
 
 "Too Many Cooks" is written in the bald ver- 
 nacular, with the brisk and picturesque slang of 
 bright, middle-class young men enlivening it. But 
 even this slang is not the sort you can come away 
 quoting. It grows from the situation, and dies with 
 it. The fun of the play, like the language, is born 
 out of the plot at any given moment. None of the 
 characters aspires to a "philosophy," or would recog- 
 nize such a thing if he met it. There is no preacher 
 in the cast. 
 
 Yet the play is real, it sets before us in its quiet, 
 luminous way a cross section of American life and 
 with typical American disregard for any niceties of 
 expression shows us the nai've ideals of the suburbs. 
 In the truer sense of literature if we must apply a 
 word meant for the printed page to the acted drama 
 "Too Many Cooks" is literature, because it is a 
 true picture with the power to win our interests and
 
 ioo PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 sympathies, and by winning them to make us see 
 a little plainer and understand a little better a phase 
 of our national life. If this isn't literature in the 
 best sense, as applied to stage performance, we do 
 not know what is. It is not great literature, to be 
 sure, which will always have style and philosophy. 
 But it is far better than the weak imitations of the 
 "near-highbrows." 
 
 The hero of "Too Many Cooks," who is played 
 by Mr. Craven (like Gillette and Cohan, he acts as 
 well as writes his pieces), is a genial, bright young 
 middle-class clerk who has fallen in love with a 
 pretty little stenographer, and is going to marry her. 
 His name is Albert Bennett, hers Alice Cook. She 
 is a third generation Irish-American with a good 
 high school education, and all the earmarks of her 
 fiance's class. Just how her Hibernian parents 
 achieved the name Cook is not explained. These 
 parents are only second generation, and her innumer- 
 able Cook relatives have not gone so far as she has 
 along the social path. Albert hadn't seen many of 
 the relatives during his courtship, since in his walk 
 of life courtship consists of being left alone with 
 your "girl" in the parlor. If he had, he would 
 simply have said he was marrying her, not her "rela- 
 tions" which is American, surely!
 
 VICTORY OF UNPRETENTIOUSNESS 101 
 
 That, of course, was his mistake and hers. 
 Trouble comes soon after the rising of the first cur- 
 tain. 
 
 The first set shows the brick foundations of the 
 little home they are building amid the suburban 
 fields somewhere outside of the city. They have 
 saved hard to buy this little plot of ground and erect 
 this tiny cottage. It represents the best dreams and 
 ideals life holds for them. Hopping over the foun- 
 dations, Albert points tenderly into the vacant air, 
 indicating where each room is to be. But he has 
 brought a friend with him a bachelor friend, who 
 makes the kind of remarks bachelors do make on such 
 occasions and Alice doesn't like him. Alice has 
 brought a friend, too, who at once tells Alice that 
 Albert's "den" ought to be her sewing room instead. 
 Albert doesn't like this girl, you may be sure. Then 
 Alice's relatives descend. They are, after all, her 
 relatives, and she loves them. But, alas ! they strike 
 terror to the heart of Albert. They begin at once 
 to call the house "our" house, talk about what "we" 
 are going to do, and the clouds gather. 
 
 In Act 2 we see the frame of the little home all 
 up. Albert's uncle, who is wealthy and unmarried, 
 has arrived on the scene. In a burst of generosity 
 he tells Albert and Alice he will give them the house.
 
 102 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Then he decides to come and live with them in 
 it, and begins to plan alterations. Alice weeps. 
 Her relatives again appear. It seems her maiden 
 aunt was going to have the room chosen by Albert's 
 uncle (the only spare room in the house). Albert 
 doesn't weep, but he goes around the corner. The 
 act ends with the engagement broken off. To cap 
 Albert's woes, the carpenters go on strike, and we 
 see him at the close trying to lug a bunch of shingles 
 up a ladder, to complete the job himself. 
 
 In the last act the house is finished with the 
 shingles crooked and Albert is nailing a "For Sale" 
 sign on the street side. He finished it because it 
 was his dream and because he had his dander up. 
 But now he has no use for it. Still, he has planted 
 those rose bushes Alice had planned for, and one of 
 them has borne a single small white blossom, which 
 he contemplates ruefully. We need scarcely add 
 that Alice comes back, and at the close the pair of 
 little dreamers have packed off all the relatives and 
 friends, and realized that they have, first of all, their 
 own lives to live in their own way. 
 
 This is a simple tale and it is simply told. But 
 the setting is novel, the working out fresh and bright, 
 and the spirit of it is so human, so wholesome, so 
 sane, the commonplace folks who are its characters
 
 VICTORY OF UNPRETENTIOUSNESS 103 
 
 so naturally realized from a class which seldom 
 figures in our drama, that its appeal is quite irresist- 
 ible. 
 
 Mr. Craven plays the part of the young clerk with 
 admirable restraint, quiet humor, and a total free- 
 dom from sentimental taint. His dream of a little 
 home is human, not sentimental, and Albert doesn't 
 belong to a class which can make fine speeches. He 
 cloaks his feelings in slang. "Too Many Cooks" is 
 funny, it is wholesome, it is true and, best of all, 
 it is unconsciously and thoroughly American.
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS, WHICH IS 
 SHELDON'S 
 
 "The Song of Songs" Eltinge Theater, 
 December 22, 1914 
 
 The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, which 
 is Sudermann's, and which is now Sheldon's. A 
 sibilant fate seems to follow it! 
 
 But Solomon need not concern us, the more as 
 he probably had nothing whatever to do with the 
 original song. The play by Edward Sheldon, based 
 on the novel by Hermann Sudermann, is our con- 
 cern. "The Song of Songs," in an English trans- 
 lation, has gone into a good many editions and is 
 doubtless familiar to many readers of this review. 
 It is a striking novel, full of that "admirably subtle 
 psychology" which characterizes the continental 
 novelists when they analyze sensual passion, and 
 developing its theme slowly, with a wealth of neces- 
 sary but unpleasant detail, till it builds up a con- 
 vincing picture of a certain type of woman or, let 
 us say, a certain woman in whom a sensual nature 
 
 104
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS 
 Act IV
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS 105 
 
 and a passionate seeking for ideal love work to- 
 gether for her undoing. Since Sudermann is a 
 dramatist as well as a novelist, it may be supposed 
 that he considered this theme one essentially adapted 
 to the novel rather than the play form. At any 
 rate, he wrote it as a novel, not a play. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon, however, has made it into a play. 
 In doing so he has achieved five acts of hifalutin. 
 
 This isn't wholly his fault, by any means. In 
 the first place, he has, no doubt in accordance with 
 managerial suggestion, removed the scene of the play 
 from the Continent to America to Atlantic City 
 and New York. That alone was a fatal error. 
 Certain stories can be shifted from land to land with- 
 out any harm befalling them. But stories which 
 are told in the realistic manner, with their effect de- 
 pending so largely on accumulated detail and their 
 truth being so largely a matter of local conditions, 
 cao not be so transplanted. You can not transplant 
 Gorky's "Night Refuge" to a Mills hotel, nor "Anna 
 Karenina" to New York City, nor "Hedda Gabler" 
 to Indianapolis. Neither can you transplant "The 
 Song of Songs." You might, to be sure, select some 
 American character who would correspond in tem- 
 perament to Lily, and then tell her story. But it 
 would be quite a different story, and your play or
 
 106 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 your novel would not be Sudermann's. Suder- 
 mann's story is essentially continental. It is so es- 
 sentially continental that the present writer, who 
 saw the play before he read the book, was constantly 
 uneasy in the theater, declaring to himself over and 
 over, "This thing is not so, this thing is not so." 
 The moment the scene and characters were labeled 
 American they stepped out of the world of reality 
 into the world of pasteboard. 
 
 A very good case in point is furnished by the end- 
 ing to the second act. In the play Lily marries a 
 man who is considerably less of a degenerate than 
 the colonel in the book, and marries him because her 
 lover in the first act, Richard Laird, a member of 
 the Knickerbocker Club, if you please, leaves her 
 without asking for a word of explanation when he 
 finds she knows the old roue, who is a senator instead 
 of a colonel. A year has passed, and Lily has been 
 a good girl. There has been no affair with anybody, 
 as there was with Walter in the novel. But Richard 
 still loves her, and he comes to her room when he 
 thinks the senator is absent from home. The sen- 
 ator surprises him there, and orders Lily out of the 
 house. Now, in the play, she has done nothing 
 wrong, and there has been nothing to suggest that she 
 is that sort. The lover is a young American, a mem-
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS 107 
 
 her of a fine old family. She beseeches the senator 
 not to throw her out, not to "make her a bad 
 woman," not to drive her into the arms of the other 
 man. He is relentless, and she goes, and we find 
 her in Act III as the gay mistress of Richard, drink- 
 ing cocktails four years later and kissing all her men 
 visitors. 
 
 Why? As Americans we resent this. We have 
 not been shown any reason for such a degeneration 
 in her character, perhaps because the limits of a play 
 do not permit of such intricate psychology as Suder- 
 mann used in the novel. But, still more, there is 
 no reason for it in the situation. Richard is repre- 
 sented as an American. Would not his first instinct, 
 then, have been to take Lily to some home where 
 she could remain till she had her divorce, and then 
 have married her? He is not represented, certainly, 
 as seeking her at the beginning with any less honor- 
 able intent. She had not sinned. There was no 
 bar an American recognizes. Moreover, her trou- 
 bles were all due to his foolishness. No, in this 
 American setting, with the lack of subtlety in the 
 character drawing to make matters worse, the latter 
 acts of Mr. Sheldon's play do not belong to the first 
 two acts at all. They do not follow inevitably. In 
 fact, they inevitably do not follow. They are a
 
 io8 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 mere arbitrary concession to the plot of an alien 
 story. The play, which up to that point was in- 
 telligible at least, becomes false, and the picture of 
 Lily going about with her Song of Songs hugged to 
 her bosom and babbling about ideals as she turns 
 from one amour to another, becomes ridiculous. 
 Ideals, we say, do not make a woman a strumpet. 
 Of course, they did in Sudermann's novel, because 
 we were carefully led to understand how they were 
 unsupported by reasoning faculties, how they were 
 combined with a nature deeply sensuous to the point 
 of sensuality, and how they were debased in a web 
 of terrible circumstances that are almost inconceiv- 
 able in our American civilization meaning, of 
 course, a Saxon civilization, not the narrow world 
 of Broadway, where an alien life prevails amid a 
 chaos of races strongly Semitic. 
 
 Accordingly, the play never gets to our emotions, 
 in spite of some very excellent acting. Miss Irene 
 Fenwick sustains the role of Lily with considerably 
 more success than might be expected. Of course, 
 nobody who didn't look very young and pretty and 
 virginal could carry it off, and yet any actress with 
 these qualifications is almost sure to lack the powers 
 of subtlety required. Possibly Laurette Taylor 
 could play it, but hardly another. John Mason is
 
 THE SONG OF SONGS 109 
 
 the old senator; Ernest Glendenning the young 
 student whom Lily loves toward the end; Tom Wise 
 the old uncle who makes her drunk; and other ex- 
 cellent players are also concerned. But they can 
 not achieve a moving play. Every effort has been 
 made to put on the stage as much of the sexual ele- 
 ment as it is believed the public will stand. No 
 doubt this is what the manager calls "the punch." 
 But the public prefers that appeal in the form (or 
 forms) of the Ziegfeld Follies. "The Song of 
 Songs," which is Sudermann's, is a novel, and a Ger- 
 man novel. It refuses to become an American play. 
 Thus truth again triumphs, as it has a way of doing.
 
 THE POOR WORKING GIRL SUFFERS 
 AGAIN 
 
 "Common Clay" Republic Theater^ 
 August 26, 1915 
 
 Mr. Cleves Kinkead, while a special student in 
 Prof. Baker's course in playwriting, won the Craig 
 prize with a drama called "Common Clay," which 
 was produced in the spring of 1915 by Mr. Craig's 
 stock company at the Castle Square Theater, in Bos- 
 ton. Slightly altered during the summer, it has now 
 been produced at the Republic Theater in New 
 York, with a verse from Kipling misquoted on the 
 program. 
 
 In this play, Mr. Kinkead teed up a fine idea and 
 got off a good drive which, however, developed a 
 slice into a bunker. He made a splendid recovery 
 to the edge of the green, but flubbed his chip shot, 
 and then ended disastrously by taking three putts. 
 He might possibly have done a stroke better with 
 some other manager than A. H. Woods for a caddie, 
 but anyway you look at it he isn't down to par yet. 
 
 no
 
 THE POOR WORKING GIRL ill 
 
 (We write in this fashion because The New York 
 Tribune has made its baseball reporter the dramatic 
 critic. We see no reason why golf shouldn't be 
 recognized as well.) 
 
 "Common Clay" has two great assets to popular- 
 ity the long arm of coincidence and a ruined fe- 
 male. The public dearly loves them both. It has 
 one asset to more serious consideration it pleads for 
 the proper satisfaction of the normal instinct of 
 youth to get out and have a good time. In that plea 
 we feel that the author was perfectly sincere. In 
 his attempt to weave that plea into a stage narrative, 
 however, his sincerity frequently ran amuck of prob- 
 lems beyond his skill, and the result is, for the most 
 part, in spite of all the good words said for it, a 
 rather false and artificial melodrama, with a few 
 very curious perversions of ethical fundamentals. 
 
 The play opens in the "reception room" of the 
 Fullerton house in "any large American city in the 
 middle west." The Fullertons are giving a recep- 
 tion. They are very rich. Mrs. Fullerton lets it 
 be known that she has trouble in keeping domestics. 
 A look at the wall paper provided by the scenic artist 
 convinces us of the reason. Anyhow, she has just 
 acquired a new domestic, Ellen Neal, played by Jane 
 Cowl. Some twenty years or more before the play
 
 112 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 opened Mrs. Fullerton also had acquired a son, who 
 in turn acquired a taste for well, for domestics. 
 He is at home just now from college, where we hear 
 he is an athlete. (All college men are athletes in 
 the drama, which is why they -are played by soft 
 looking actors like Orme Caldara.) He learns from 
 another man at the party that Ellen hasn't been 
 "straight" in the past, so, of course, that eases his 
 conscience and he proceeds to make love to her. 
 
 Act II, nearly a year later. There has been a 
 baby a boy. Ellen demands that he have his 
 share of young Fullerton's fortune, even if he doesn't 
 bear his father's name. The old family friend, 
 Judge Filson, is called in as counsel. Of course, you 
 must realize that John Mason plays this part. 
 Dear, dear, the matter must be kept out of court, 
 to avoid a scandal on the fair name of the Fuller- 
 tons. The judge faintly suggests to Fullerton pere 
 that son Hugh might offer to marry the girl. The 
 reason he has this absurd idea, it seems, is because 
 years ago he, Judge Filson, loved a daughter of joy, 
 and she, when about to become a mother, drowned 
 herself rather than hamper his career. This has 
 tended to soften his sympathies as well it might- 
 The case does get into court, however, and the court 
 scene makes the "big act," for in it Ellen tells why
 
 THE POOR WORKING GIRL 113 
 
 and how she first went wrong. The story she tells 
 is very human and true, and it is a pity the author 
 had not been literary artist enough to tell it in Ellen's 
 own language, and not a language made up of street 
 slang, "fine writing" and special pleading mixed in 
 equal parts. 
 
 Then comes in the long arm of coincidence. Lo 
 and behold, the judge's mistress gave birth to a 
 daughter before she died, and Ellen is the daughter ! 
 In the name of Melpomene, why*? So there could 
 be a father and daughter scene 1 ? The judge, broken 
 in spirit, overwhelmed with emotion, tries to tell 
 Ellen he is her father, and she thinks he is trying to 
 make love to her. That is a good moment. Then 
 she realizes the truth of what he says, and from there 
 on the play falls into the feeblest of convention- 
 alized situation. The judge sends her to Paris to 
 study, and in ten years she returns a radiant prima 
 donna, and falls into the arms of the penitent Hugh 
 Fullerton, who has never ceased to wonder where she 
 is, and has joined the Progressive party. This is 
 told in an epilogue, which for unadulterated mush 
 and sentimental mawkishness and falsity very nearly 
 takes the cake. 
 
 It is conceivable that if the play had been done 
 by a more intelligent manager a certain amount of 
 its present crudeness could have been rubbed off.
 
 1 14 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Since the managers brand their names all over the 
 programs, we feel no hesitation in giving them a 
 share of praise or blame, and, of course, A. H. Woods 
 is not the man to put on a play with a serious pur- 
 pose. Woods, doubtless, saw in the play a raw 
 appeal. But this raw appeal here is tempered by 
 the author's purpose and pity, so that it to a con- 
 siderable extent fails of Mr. Woods's intention. 
 "Common Clay" remains a curious mixture of the 
 good and the bad at times almost a fine success, at 
 times merely a creaking melodrama. 
 
 Miss Cowl gives a fairly good performance, 
 though in a curiously monotonous and single key. 
 Of course John Mason can handle his role without 
 trouble. The "hero" is played by Orme Caldara, 
 a poor choice. In the early acts he should look like 
 a healthy young animal of two and twenty, and his 
 sin with Ellen should be as much the fault of nature 
 as of himself. Mr. Caldara plays the role like a 
 typical seducer. He puts a blush where no blush 
 should lurk or is it a leer? 
 
 If Mr. Kinkead is going to continue writing 
 sociological dramas, however, he will need more than 
 a better cast and a wiser manager. He will need 
 to learn that the simple problems of good and evil
 
 THE POOR WORKING GIRL 115 
 
 are enough to make a play of, without dragging in 
 ridiculous coincidences, and that the only eloquence 
 on the stage is the eloquence of natural speech, spon- 
 taneously flowing from the characters.
 
 "THE UNCHASTENED WOMAN," A REAL 
 CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 "The Unchastened Woman" jptk Street Theater, 
 October p, /p/5 
 
 To realize what a childish and trivial thing our 
 drama has been, in the main, for many moons, one 
 has only to see Louis K. Anspacher's new play 
 "The Unchastened Woman," which was produced 
 in Los Angeles last year by Morosco, and has now 
 been brought into New York by that enterprising 
 manager. The very fact that "The Unchastened 
 Woman" is in no sense a great play; that it is re- 
 markable neither for wit and charming narration, 
 nor cleverness of construction, nor depth of emo- 
 tional appeal, makes it all the better a test of our 
 dramatic triviality. For, in spite of its lack of any 
 superlative qualities, the spectator, nevertheless, 
 finds himself watching and listening with a vast 
 sense of relief that here, at last, is a play which says 
 something, and something about people. 
 
 In short, "The Unchastened Woman" is a char- 
 116
 
 "THE UNCHASTENED WOMAN" 117 
 
 acter study and if you will go through the painful 
 process of recalling to mind all the American plays 
 you've witnessed in the last few years, how many 
 can you honestly say reached the dignity of a charac- 
 ter study? Yes, there was "Romance" we thought 
 of that, too. There was "The Easiest Way." There 
 was "The Concert." No fair we are talking about 
 American plays. "The Concert" was Teutonic. 
 "Potash and Perlmutter" ? Well, have it your own 
 way, but that isn't what we mean by character study. 
 These two gentlemen were genre portraits, perhaps. 
 They were what the average actor means by a "char- 
 acter part." Oh, well, the hour is late. Of course, 
 there was "The Girl With the Green Eyes," by 
 Fitch, and the heroine of his best play, "The Truth" 
 but poor Fitch has been dead these many years and 
 we who called him a butterfly would now be dis- 
 posed to call him something considerably more burky. 
 At least, he was big enough to put real characters 
 on the stage and devote a play to depicting their 
 insides. The best some of the soaring eagles who 
 have followed him can do is to grind out farces and 
 melodramas, and crown G. M. Cohan king. 
 
 Mr. Anspacher (who is the husband of Katheryn 
 Kidder) in his new play has followed in Fitch's foot- 
 steps, to the extent of making his heroine his chief
 
 u8 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 concern and picking her from the ranks of the idle 
 and frivolous urban society. His play is centered 
 around this character study; it is the unfolding of 
 this character and the effects wrought by this char- 
 acter on other people which make the interest for 
 the spectator. The character chosen being an inter- 
 esting (if unusual) one, and the exposition being 
 conducted in the main with skill and fidelity to 
 nature, the comedy has the dignity of real dramatic 
 literature, and, of course, it is popular. We say "of 
 course," because a good play is almost always pop- 
 ular when it is a clear-cut character study. 
 
 The Unchastened Woman of the title is a certain 
 Mrs. Caroline Knollys, wife of Hubert Knollys, and 
 she is perhaps Mr. Anspacher's idea of what Hedda 
 Gabler would be like if Hedda lived in East Sixty- 
 first street, New York. That, of course, is hardly 
 fair either to Mr. Anspacher or Hedda but the idea 
 we wish to convey is that he has attempted the study 
 of a woman who is incapable of being a true and 
 normal wife because of her essentially selfish and 
 trivial nature, and who is equally incapable of being 
 an ultimately unfaithful wife because of her lack of 
 real passions, and still more her fear of the shell of 
 convention. This feline female he has endowed 
 with a kind of perpetual youth, a purring charm, a
 
 "THE UNCHASTENED WOMAN" 119 
 
 dominant will, a pretty wit, and the manners of her 
 luxurious class. Here is meat for the actress, and 
 the promise of trouble enough to keep a story on 
 the jump. 
 
 Of course, the trouble comes through Caroline's 
 attempts to win another man away from his wife. 
 He is an architect, and she wishes to emancipate his 
 soul, so she tells him. What she wants to do, of 
 course, is to make as much mischief as she can with- 
 out herself being scorched. Once, she caught her 
 husband in actual unfaithfulness, and she has that 
 whip over him. She herself has never gone that 
 far and they live in New York State. Therefore 
 she keeps the protection of his name. 
 
 The play would be much more interesting if Caro- 
 line had picked out a more interesting victim than 
 Lawrence Sanbury, struggling architect. He is, as 
 her own husband says, pretty feeble game. Yet the 
 author, by choosing him, has nevertheless been able 
 to make use of certain phases of New York life, 
 which, so far as we recall, have hitherto lacked ex- 
 pression. For instance, Lawrence's wife is one of 
 those strong, energetic, idealistic, radical young 
 women who just now are so numerous in New York 
 (and elsewhere) and are often actually accomplish- 
 ing so much in organization of the garment workers,
 
 120 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 in industrial reform, in charities and even in liter- 
 ature. To throw into strong contrast such a woman 
 as this and such a product of the parasitic rich as 
 Caroline Knollys is to create instantly a living, vital 
 dramatic situation. Moreover, Caroline would have 
 Lawrence get on in his profession, as so many archi- 
 tects and artists do get on, by kotowing and boot- 
 licking to the rich his wife would have him get on 
 by her ideals instead, by being uncompromisingly 
 himself. When the play begins, it is she who is 
 earning the family living, and they dwell in a 
 "model tenement" on the East Side, among the rad- 
 icals and the realities. When Caroline comes to 
 this tenement, again we have a striking contrast 
 created. There is no question but Mr. Anspacher 
 has chosen sound material for his play, worth while 
 material, true material. 
 
 We do not propose to attempt a narrative of the 
 plot. It is sufficient to say that Caroline goes a little 
 too far with Lawrence, evidently because for once 
 something approximating a human passion stirs in 
 her, and her husband is able to get a whip hand over 
 her based, to be sure, on evidence he knows really 
 does not mean actual guilt, but which would ruin the 
 conventional reputation she needs for her worldly 
 position. With that aid, he and Mrs. Sanbury be-
 
 'THE UNCHASTENED WOMAN" 121 
 
 tween them save Lawrence from her clutches, though 
 by this time Mrs. Sanbury has realized that her hus- 
 band is hardly in her class for manhood, and you 
 wonder, rather, whether Mr. Anspacher really ex- 
 pects you to accept their final reconciliation as a 
 happy ending. Meanwhile, after humiliating Caro- 
 line by forcing her publicly to apologize for certain 
 things she has said, the rest of the characters have 
 to see her make a final exit quite unchastened, with 
 a smiling and rapierlike innuendo on her lips. She 
 isn't regenerated. She is never sympathetic. Un- 
 like Hedda, she isn't even tragic. Yet she is the 
 heroine and pivot of the play and it is packing 
 the theater. 
 
 The part is played by Miss Emily Stevens, and 
 it is quite the best performance she has ever given. 
 To be sure, it is quite the best part she has ever had. 
 She talks more than ever like her relative, Mrs. 
 Fiske. And, too, she is allowing certain mannerisms 
 of facial contortion, and the like, to set. Neverthe- 
 less, she has conceived the character as a whole, and 
 executed her portrait with minute fidelity. The 
 charm of the woman, the vampire allure, the worldly 
 ease, the ready wit, the restless, neurasthenic vacancy 
 of life, the selfish cruelty, are all indicated surely, 
 easily and vividly. If the performance has one
 
 122 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 fault more than another, it is a fault also inherent 
 in the play the note of a real passion for Lawrence 
 is not clearly enough indicated. The play is lackr 
 ing here, and Miss Stevens's art also is lacking in 
 that suggestion. In this degenerate age of acting, 
 however, it is wisest to be grateful for a true char- 
 acter study, and not cavil. 
 
 Others in an excellently trained cast who deserve 
 mention are H. Reeves Smith, as Caroline's middle- 
 aged, ironically humorous and politely worldly hus- 
 band, and Miss Christine Norman as the wife of the 
 young architect, who wears flat-heeled boots be- 
 cause she insists on the union label and is a woman 
 of poise, intellect, deep feeling, and profound ideals. 
 Miss Norman's performance is, in its way, a gem of 
 quiet force and suggestiveness. The mere physical 
 contrast between the two women, as they appear on 
 the stage, vividly paints the theme. 
 
 The dialogue of the play, contrary to what we 
 might expect from some of Mr. Anspacher's pub- 
 lished works, is not verbose, and it is colloquial with- 
 out losing dignity and gracefulness. All in all, he 
 is to be congratulated on a sound piece of work well 
 produced and acted, and most deservingly popular.
 
 THE EASY LOT OF THE STAGE HERO 
 
 "Hit-the-Trail Holliday"Astor Theater, 
 September ij, 1915 
 
 One of the British scientists of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury Grant Allen, was it not 1 ? said that a man 
 with a first-class mind never wanted to go to "the 
 serious drama" of an evening. He wanted the com- 
 plete relaxation of the music hall. The serious 
 drama, said this scientist, is for middle-class intel- 
 lects his idea no doubt being that reality is of so 
 much more importance than the usual little apings 
 of it in the playhouse that the man who sees reality 
 with large vision can only be bored in the theater. 
 
 This is an extreme point of view, but it is one most 
 of us have now and again shared. Against the stu- 
 pendous reality of the Great War now raging in 
 Europe, for example, how petty, how futile, how al- 
 most insulting the war plays of the hour seem; yes, 
 even "Moloch," though it is head and shoulders 
 above the rest. A little harmless flash-light powder 
 
 exploded, the "props" knocked out from under some 
 
 123
 
 124 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 pasteboard, a few actors falling down and playing 
 dead and this in the face of the red shambles of 
 the Marne ! The vaudeville performer balancing a 
 billiard ball on the end of his nose is at least doing 
 something that von Hindenberg probably can't. 
 His achievement is real. 
 
 Nor is it only at war plays that we sometimes 
 know this feeling toward the stage; nor do we have 
 to be "first class minds" to know it. Darwin 
 couldn't endure Shakespeare, which may have been 
 rather a sign that even first-class minds have their 
 limitations. The middle-class mind which can en- 
 joy Shakespeare has just so much advantage. Yet 
 even the middle-class mind experiences its periods of 
 annoyance at the puerilities of drama; only it asks 
 that the drama rather measure up to Shakespeare 
 than down to the music halls. Even the middle- 
 class mind knows moments of doubt, when it seems 
 as if the conventions which rule in the playhouse are 
 really too childish to endure, when it seems as if 
 popular appeal in the drama is based on something 
 so far removed from reality that it isn't worthy of 
 attention. Perhaps a critic shouldn't make these 
 confessions, but there are times when it is impossible 
 not to. 
 
 Consider the case of George Cohan's new play,
 
 EASY LOT OF THE STAGE HERO 125 
 
 "Hit-the-Trail Holliday." Mr. Cohan, we are told, 
 is a veritable superman in knowing what the public 
 wants, and giving it to them. In fact, he knows 
 what the public wants when the public doesn't, and 
 makes 'em want his brand! Billy Holliday, the 
 hero of the play, is a barkeeper. But he is more 
 than that. He is a Sandow, a Romeo, a Demos- 
 thenes, a Lloyd George, a Dwight L. Moody, and a 
 George Ade. In short, he is a Cohanesque hero. 
 To be sure, we have to accept his possession of the 
 attributes of all these great men largely on faith, 
 but how gladly we do so ! Externally, Billy Holli- 
 day doesn't even look like a bar-keeper. He looks 
 like a prosperous young actor from the Lambs Club. 
 But we are assured that he is a bar-keeper who gets 
 $100 a week for mixing drinks. We assume that 
 he is a Romeo, because by the second act the min- 
 ister's daughter is letting him hold her hand. We 
 assume that he is a Sandow because he pulls the 
 villain all over the stage by the nose. We are con- 
 fident that he is a mixture of Demosthenes and Neil 
 Dow because between Acts I and II he makes a mag- 
 nificent temperance oration which gets reported with 
 six-column scarehead lines in the New York 
 Tribune. That he is Lloyd George is readily proved 
 by the ease with which he quells a riot of brewery
 
 126 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 employees and gives them all a dollar a day more 
 to work in a new temperance drink factory, which 
 he organizes over night and makes a howling success 
 in a week. 
 
 How magnificently easy it all is! How every 
 situation, every character, in the play "feeds up" 
 this hero! Everything comes his way. Opposi- 
 tion? Pff a snap of the finger, a dental smile, a 
 slang phrase and it is crushed, obliterated, wiped 
 out of existence, and our hero goes on his triumphal 
 way. He never really has to fight, he never really 
 has to possess the weapons of brain and heart to 
 fight with. He is a stage hero. Events and people 
 all feed him up. He basks in an eternal spot light, 
 with a wreath upon his brow. 
 
 That is the kind of part an actor dearly loves to 
 play, and we assume it is the kind of part the public 
 dearly loves to see played. Sometimes, on witness- 
 ing such a performance, even the middle-class mind 
 may be forgiven a preference for the vaudeville per-, 
 former who balances a billiard ball upon his nose. 
 He is really overcoming opposition. The firm de- 
 termination of a billiard ball not to remain on the 
 end of the human nose is something not easily to 
 be altered. The man who can conquer this oppo- 
 sition is at least endowed with steady nerves and
 
 EASY LOT OF THE STAGE HERO 127 
 
 infinite persistence. Nobody feeds him up. His 
 struggle is more like the struggle of life itself. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, it boils down to this that the 
 public doesn't really want to see life itself in the 
 playhouse, but something as different as possible, 
 while retaining the external semblance to make it 
 look as if life might be that way. Perhaps the 
 scientist, who dealt daily with realities, felt this, and 
 looked upon the theatre as a sham and a delusion. 
 Perhaps the star-actor who demands a play in which 
 all the other characters feed him up is following a 
 right instinct right, at least, from the point of 
 theatrical success. We would all like to be heroes: 
 The golfing duffer puts himself to sleep planning 
 how he might possibly do his course in even fours. 
 (Owen Johnson once made it even threes and then 
 next day wrote a story about it.) We all love to 
 dream of wealth acquired at a stroke and fame 
 achieved by some spectacular performance. And, 
 just as the golf duffer does once in a blue moon pull 
 off a long hole one under par, so life taunts us all by 
 now and then throwing the limelight of fame on an 
 easy achievement. It keeps the duffer playing golf, 
 and it keeps the rest of us in the theatre, perhaps, ap- 
 plauding the representation of the puerile and the 
 impossible.
 
 DON JUAN REDIVIVUS 
 
 "The Great Lover" Longacre Theater, 
 November 10, 
 
 The Hattons, of Chicago, collaborating with Leo 
 Ditrichstein, have dramatized the male opera star, 
 the great tenor only in this case he is the great bary- 
 tone, the Don Giovanni of his generation. The 
 original Don came to his end at the hands of the 
 commander's ghost; but this reincarnation, called 
 Jean Paurel, comes to his end merely by losing his 
 voice, and his tragedy is that he faces a long life of 
 recollections of past performances, rather than an- 
 ticipations of performances to come. We refer, of 
 course, to performances in the court of love no less 
 than on the stage of opera. The play is called "The 
 Great Lover," and the leading part is taken by Mr. 
 Ditrichstein himself. The production was an in- 
 stantaneous success and will likely be in New York 
 for the balance of the winter. 
 
 Three factors contribute to the chances of success 
 
 for a play with this theme. 
 
 128
 
 DON JUAN REDIVIVUS 129 
 
 First, the stars of the music world, especially of 
 opera, seem always to live a life apart, and with them 
 we unconsciously always associate the glamour of 
 great auditoriums alive with lights and jewels, the 
 throb of orchestras, the peal of song. They are pre- 
 destined characters of romance. 
 
 Second, the tragedy of the middle-aged artist, the 
 failing of voice, the vanishing of charm, is a tragedy 
 which appeals peculiarly to the interest and the com- 
 passion of laymen, especially of the gentler sex. It 
 is a tragedy for any woman to find the wrinkles 
 round her eyes, and she knows how keen a tragedy 
 it must be for the beautiful actress to realize on some 
 gray dawn that she is no longer beautiful, that her 
 day is over. Perhaps there are more of us males 
 than admit it who know the pangs of sorrow at our 
 failure any longer to attract the female smile, and 
 we can understand the tragedy of Don Giovanni 
 we who in our secret hearts have always envied him ! 
 
 Third, a play about the opera, with the scene laid 
 in New York, with a set reproducing exactly the 
 director's room in the Metropolitan Opera house, 
 with the leading character called Paurel (one letter 
 changed would make it Maurel, who was the great- 
 est impersonator of the Don in his generation), and 
 with much of the acting duplicating what we have
 
 130 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 read about the rows between singers, the trials and 
 tribulations of directors in dealing with these tem- 
 peramental children such a play is sure to attract 
 curiosity in New York. It seems, somehow, pe- 
 culiarly our own. Romantic though it is, it answers 
 our need for a play about ourselves. 
 
 So "The Great Lover," granted a good cast, a 
 good director, and a bit of skill in the writing, was 
 about as sure fire as anything can be in the theater. 
 It got the good cast, it got one of our best stage man- 
 agers in Sam Forrest, general stage director for 
 Cohan & Harris, and it is written with skill and 
 briskness. The result is a packed house at every 
 performance. 
 
 The first act is the liveliest, and is largely given 
 over to a picture of the troubles of the- manager of 
 the opera house. Singers to right of him, singers to 
 left of him, conductors behind him and in front of 
 him, volley and sputter. The major portion of the 
 drama occurs in the second act, in Paurel's dressing 
 room between acts of "Don Giovanni." Paurel is 
 in love with Ethel Warren, a young American girl, 
 a soprano in the company. She, is turn, is really in 
 love with Carlo Sonino, a young American-born 
 barytone, understudy to the great Paurel. But 
 Sonino is jealous of her, and in a fit of pique she says
 
 DON JUAN REDIVIVUS 131 
 
 she will marry Paurel. But Sabittini, Italian so- 
 prano, an old flame of Paurel, is to be reckoned with. 
 In the excitement of the scene she causes, Paurel 
 shouts and storms and suddenly his voice leaves 
 him. At the end of the act he stands sobbing by 
 the door while his youthful understudy is heard out 
 on the stage, singing gloriously the music of the 
 world's most glorious opera. 
 
 In the last act Paurel learns that he will never 
 sing again. He also realizes that Miss Warren does 
 not really love him, and he makes the one sacrifice 
 he has ever made in his pampered life, and gives 
 her up. Then he is left alone with his old servant 
 and his love letters twenty years of love letters, 
 catalogued by seasons. The old servant gets them 
 out. They are his version of Leporello's list ! Yet 
 the telephone rings at the end, and it is a woman. 
 He is making a date with her as the curtain falls. 
 Thus should Don Giovanni pass game to the finish. 
 
 Mr. Ditrichstein's performance of Paurel is super- 
 ficially a vivid characterization, touched with whim- 
 sical eccentricity, full of childlike vanities, delic- 
 iously Latin in its suavity and Latin, too, in its gusts 
 of temper. It is superficially so vivid, indeed, that 
 perhaps many people will not realize that it is lack- 
 ing in genuine romantic charm and consequently
 
 132 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 lacking in what should be the closing note of the 
 play pathos. That the pathos would be ironic 
 does not alter our statement. When we pause to 
 think how Mansfield would have played that closing 
 act, we can see Mr. Ditrichstein's limitations. We 
 may well pause, too, to reflect how Mansfield would 
 have looked in his costume of the Don dressed 
 probably more as Renaud dressed him, than in the 
 conventional doublet and hose Mansfield with a 
 full if oddly stiff romantic swagger, with a style free 
 from all taint of the finicky, with gestures that were 
 not timid but seemed to sweep with the sweep of the 
 orchestral rhythm. It is a limitation of Mr. Dit- 
 richstein that he can not be truly romantic nor 
 pathetic, and that he can not quite measure up to the 
 grand style of an operatic hero. Since his perform- 
 ance, which is indeed a notable one, is now being 
 hailed as a supremely great one, it is wise to make 
 these reservations in the interest of truth. It is not 
 a great performance, any more than the play is a 
 great play. It is the kind of performance our stage 
 ought to be able to show half a dozen times a season 
 but, alas, in recent years doesn't furnish more than 
 once in every two or three seasons. 
 
 In such a play as this, where so many of the char- 
 acters must look foreign and splutter in German,
 
 DON JUAN REDIVIVUS 133 
 
 French and Italian, naturally the members of the 
 cast have been chosen for their fitness thus to splutter. 
 Where all the Italians came from we do not know, 
 but they seem to be quite as good actors as anybody 
 could wish for. Miss Beverly Sitgreaves, one of the 
 best players our native stage boasts, takes the part 
 of the Italian prima donna, however, and gives a 
 vivid and delightfully temperamental and vindictive 
 performance. She could not be more in the picture 
 if her name were really Sabittini. 
 
 The play is prefaced by the immortal overture to 
 "Don Giovanni," to which nobody pays the slightest 
 attention.
 
 MRS. FISKE AMONG THE MENNONITES 
 
 "Erstwhile Susan" Gaiety Theater, 
 January /<, 1916 
 
 The return to the New York stage of the most 
 brilliant actress now playing in the English tongue 
 attracted an exceptional audience to the Gaiety 
 Theater, and this audience was rewarded by an eve- 
 ning of exceptional enjoyment. Future audiences 
 may not have quite so good a time, because that first 
 assemblage was made up so largely of other players 
 and it takes a player to appreciate to the full, per- 
 haps, the extraordinary art of Mrs. Fiske. More- 
 over, there was in the air that night a rare feeling of 
 expectancy before she appeared and a warm glow of 
 welcome after she came out, which made the evening 
 memorable. Mrs. Fiske has not looked slimmer and 
 trimmer in many a year, and not in a long while 
 has she acted with such abundant vitality and such 
 infectious good spirits. 
 
 She has had better parts to play. Her present 
 role really makes very little demand upon her powers, 
 
 134
 
 AMONG THE MENNONITES 135 
 
 though it is doubtful if any other actress in the 
 country could have triumphed in it, except possibly 
 May Irwin, who, of course, would have played it 
 quite differently. What, however, is a slight de- 
 mand on Mrs. Fiske's powers may be a fatal drain 
 on many another's. The first, and the last, impres- 
 sion one takes away from "Erstwhile Susan," her 
 new play, is the impression of mastership. Stronger 
 than any impression of the story, any impression of 
 the character Mrs. Fiske plays, is this sense of a 
 personality vibrant with vitality, of a mind marvel- 
 ously alert, of a voice trained to every shade of feel- 
 ing and expression, of a technical mastery of all the 
 tricks of the trade which enables this player to pick 
 up a part, a play, and carry it smilingly off on her 
 little shrugging shoulders. The players who give us 
 this sense in the theater now are so few, their appear- 
 ance so infrequent, and, moreover, we have been so 
 satiated of late with the "silent drama," that Mrs. 
 Fiske swept back, after three years of absence, like 
 a cleansing wind, and the grateful audience on that 
 opening night simply rose to her joyously and un- 
 critically, and actually cheered. It was very much 
 as if a crowd of music lovers who had for years 
 heard nothing but ragtime ditties on a phonograph 
 were suddenly face to face with Melba in her prime.
 
 136 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 The play Mrs. Fiske has elected to reappear in is 
 a curious little concoction, made by Marian de Forest 
 from a novel of Pennsylvania Dutch life by Helen 
 Martin, called "Barnabetta." The Pennsylvania 
 Dutch are comparatively virgin material for the 
 American dramatist, and doubtless a folk comedy 
 as quaint as "Hobson's Choice" could have been 
 made about them. We are told that it was to be 
 found in the novel. But either the dramatist or 
 Mrs. Fiske has elected to follow another course. In- 
 stead of writing in a vein of folk comedy, the drama- 
 tist has written in a vein of burlesque, gentle bur- 
 lesque which preserves character outlines, to be sure, 
 but which is burlesque, none the less. In other 
 words, the play is not written in the key of the 
 modern Manchester school or Irish school, but rather 
 in the key of the American character comedies of an 
 earlier day. This would be a great pity if anybody 
 but Mrs. Fiske were the star. As it is, however, we 
 are inclined to think it was the wise course. Mrs. 
 Fiske was out for a romp, and when she is out for 
 a romp and has the license a touch of burlesque gives 
 her (as in "Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh"), there is no 
 living player who can furnish such delightful, such 
 side-splitting entertainment. So "Erstwhile Susan" 
 is dashed with American caricature, it is reminiscent
 
 AMONG THE MENNONITES 137 
 
 of the Florences, it has a primitive native tang. 
 
 The part Mrs. Fiske plays is that of an elocution- 
 ist from Iowa, a quaint creature who lectures on 
 woman's rights, bursts out into frequent quotations 
 from Shakespeare and other poets, dresses like a 
 freak and has, in short, a somewhat ridiculous self- 
 made "culture." It is ridiculous, but it is touching, 
 too. The woman's heart is so good, her ways so 
 brisk, her mind so alert, her sympathies so warm. 
 Her sympathies are so warm, in fact, that she an- 
 swers a matrimonial advertisement, and comes to 
 Reinhartz, Pa., to marry a Pennsylvania Dutchman 
 who has killed two wives already with overwork, 
 solely that she may mother his poor, overworked 
 daughter Barnabetta, and incidentally bring the up- 
 lift to the other down-trodden females of this com- 
 munity. 
 
 Mrs. Fiske enters on the scene after the character 
 of Barnaby Dreary, the Dutchman, is established, 
 and we have seen the slavery of his drudge of a 
 daughter, and the masculine selfishness of his two 
 lunking sons. The posture of circumstances may be 
 far fetched who cares? It gets Mrs. Fiske into 
 this household, and any reader with a spark of imag- 
 ination can gather the fun which ensues as she pro- 
 ceeds on her taming and uplifting process. It is a
 
 138 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 performance of extraordinary comic brilliance, done 
 in bold, strong outline, and its appeal is heightened 
 by the fact that Mrs. Fiske has put opposite her, in 
 the character of Barnaby Dreary, John Cope, an 
 accomplished and forceful actor. She is one of those 
 wise players who knows that a performance does not 
 really shine by contrast, in a poor cast, but by com- 
 petition, in a good cast. The climax of fun is 
 reached at the curtain of the second act, when Bar- 
 naby gets a whip to beat poor Barnabetta, and Mrs. 
 Fiske, to his utter amazement, snatches it from him, 
 throws it through the window, and then hurls at his 
 head these astounding words "You damn Dutch- 
 man!" 
 
 Mrs. Fiske is too fine an actress not to create a 
 real character out of the Iowa elocutionist. She is 
 consistent, and she brings out with consummate ease, 
 when necessary, the lurking woman's tenderness. 
 But the part, like the play, is none the less exagger- 
 ated, delicately burlesqued. It is a sort of comic 
 bravura, and executed with all the brilliance of a 
 Melba singing trills, a Kreisler with his magic bow. 
 The lovers of acting in America and the movies 
 have not destroyed them all will flock to this per- 
 formance, and they will be richly repaid.
 
 SECTION II 
 FOREIGN PLAYS
 
 A LITTLE SIDE-STREET IN ARCADY 
 
 "Pomander Walk" Wallaces Theater, 
 December 20, 
 
 A. B. Walkley said of "Quality Street," eight 
 years ago, "it makes us, like St. Augustine in his 
 youth, in love with love. It has laid us up in laven- 
 der." In much the same words might the critic 
 write to-day of "Pomander Walk," by Louis N. 
 Parker, now visible at Wallack's Theater in New 
 York. That play, too, is of the period and the per- 
 suasion of Jane Austen. It is King George's Eng- 
 land preserved in lavender and rose leaves for a cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Not, of course, that we quite agree that either "Po- 
 mander Walk" or "Quality Street" makes us in love 
 with love exactly after the manner of St. Augustine 
 in his youth! The search for literary illustrations 
 to adorn one's criticisms sometimes leads the critic 
 into unfortunate suggestion. Nor can we quite 
 truthfully say that "Pomander Walk" has laid us 
 away in lavender. Lavender there is, but mingled 
 
 141
 
 142 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 with its odor is the scent of the old Admiral Sir 
 Peter's good black 'baccy. We trust the ladies will 
 not object; indeed, we fancy that a whiff of the mas- 
 culine is not amiss in Arcady. But, like "Quality 
 Street," "Pomander Walk" puts forth the spell of 
 an old-world charm, the romance of a vanished day; 
 like Mr. Barrie's work, it breathes the charity and 
 simplicity and mellow, merry sympathy of a sweet- 
 souled author; like the old three-decker in Kipling's 
 poem, it's "taking tired people to the islands of the 
 blest." 
 
 Yet Mr. Parker's work is strangely deficient in 
 what the scholastic gentlemen who discover the laws 
 of the drama and embalm them in books would tell 
 us are the essentials of a good play. It has the 
 slightest of plots. The curtains do not descend upon 
 climaxes of the action. There are no climaxes in 
 the action. It is as quiet in movement as the works 
 of Jane Austen herself, and, though it does develop 
 skillfully and surely its little thread of story, it con- 
 quers not by that, but by its static qualities of charm 
 and sympathy. It conquers because, in an exquisite 
 pictorial setting, it shows us a group of charming, 
 old-worldly people, lets us hear their simple talk, 
 look into their simple breasts, and, ultimately, into
 
 LITTLE SIDE-STREET IN ARCADY 143 
 
 the tender, simple heart of Louis N. Parker. Before 
 such a revelation the relative importance of "the 
 well-made play" shrinks to insignificance. Charm 
 may cheerfully break all rules. Nothing happens 
 in "Pomander Walk" yet everything happens. 
 Men and women love and laugh and are happy. 
 The glow arises of romance. Life is sweeter for the 
 picture. The stage becomes more endeared to us 
 for the memory of this play. We hail it as the 
 most important contribution of the season. 
 
 Pomander Walk (the very name is fragrant!) is, 
 according to the programme, "Out Chiswick way, 
 halfway to Fairyland." It comprises a little block 
 of five houses in the pretty Georgian style, facing on 
 a tree-shaded walk and flanked by the river. Be- 
 yond the river you see the English fields. Little 
 wrought-iron grills fence off each tiny garden plot 
 before the houses. Ivy clambers over the doors. 
 The period is 1805; the costumes those of the Em- 
 pire. The first house is inhabited by the Admiral 
 Sir Peter Antrobus, who lost an eye with Nelson. 
 He is a bluff, peppery, tender, lovable old chap, who 
 has great trouble suppressing his nautical vocabulary 
 in the presence of ladies. He has his own ideas of 
 humor. When he wishes to cheer some one up he
 
 144 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 says : "Let me tell you something funny how I lost 
 my eye!" He is pursued by the Widow Pamela 
 Poskett, who lives next door with her cat. 
 
 In the third house live the Misses Ruth and Bar- 
 bara Pennymint, with Barbara's parrot, Samuel 
 Johnson "named after the great lexicographer, you 
 know" and their lodger, a young violinist, who is 
 too shy to tell Barbara that he loves her. In the 
 fourth house lives a pompous, Pickwickian person, 
 Jerome Brooke-Hoskyn, Esq., with his family and 
 a lodger. Now, Brooke-Hoskyn has added the 
 "Brooke." In reality he is a retired butler. His 
 fine airs and pompous assumption of acquaintance 
 with noble gentlemen are a bluff to dazzle the 
 simple souls of Pomander Walk. Yet, for the life 
 of you, you can't wish that he be found out; you 
 rejoice when his secret is kept. He adds a broad, 
 sturdy touch of Dickens to the Jane Austen atmos- 
 phere of the piece. 
 
 In the last house dwells a widow, Mme. Lucie La- 
 chesnais, and her lovely daughter Marjolaine. Nor 
 must we forget the Eyesore, a ragged intruder who 
 continually sits fishing on the river bank and never 
 lands a fish. 
 
 And the story? The play progresses with simple, 
 pleasant, human talk, tinged with merriment, and
 
 LITTLE SIDE-STREET IN ARCADY 145 
 
 not, as in "Quality Street," attempting to reproduce 
 the stilted rhetoric of the period. Perhaps for such 
 literary subtlety Mr. Parker does not feel himself 
 fitted. We see Marjolaine fall into the wonder of 
 first love with young Lieutenant John Sayle, R. N., 
 who comes to visit his old commander, the Admiral, 
 and him into the wonder of love for her. We learn 
 how his titled father once loved Marjolaine's mother, 
 leaving her for a rich marriage at his father's desire, 
 just as he now desires young Jack to do. We see 
 the young lovers triumph gayly over parental oppo- 
 sition and we watch their parents reunited in the 
 autumn of their days. We learn how Barbara 
 catches her shy fiddler by the aid of Samuel John- 
 son, the loquacious. We see the old Admiral forced 
 at last to strike his colors before the artillery of the 
 Widow Poskett. We see Brooke-Hoskyn escape 
 detection. And as the moon rises and the lamp- 
 lighter puts out the lamps along Pomander Walk, 
 leaving the lovers, old and young, grouped in its 
 silvery rays, we see the Eyesore land a perch at last 
 a great, fat perch with shining scales. 
 
 Of course, for such a play as this, fine acting is 
 required, and fine stage management. It has re- 
 ceived both. The author himself was the stage 
 manager, and the choice of the company was left to
 
 146 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 him. George Giddens, a splendid actor of the "old 
 school," who has played Tony Lumpkin in America 
 in years past, plays the Admiral Sir Peter, and shows 
 us how ripeness and training may raise an imper- 
 sonation into rounded life. The author's daugh- 
 ter, Miss Dorothy Parker, on the other hand, makes 
 her very first stage appearance as Marjolaine, and 
 shows us how natural talent and unspoiled naivete 
 may contribute to a picture of youth and innocence. 
 All the other players are good and enter with willing 
 understanding into the idyllic mood of the comedy. 
 You feel it is no perfunctory task they are perform- 
 ing. In a play that breathes the spirit of love, they 
 act with loving care. 
 
 And some of us doubly rejoice that the play is 
 presented at Wallack's Theater. In the raw new- 
 ness of Broadway, Wallack's remains a landmark, 
 dingy perhaps and overlarge, but haunted with mem- 
 ories of the great comedian who gave it its name, 
 linking us with the past, with an honorable tradition 
 of dramatic art. Among the various elements which 
 must co-operate to create charm in the playhouse the 
 theater itself surely is one. The playwright is es- 
 sential, the manager with a real love of his business, 
 with something of the artist's devotion, the willing 
 and skillful actors, the stage director with imagina-
 
 LITTLE SIDE-STREET IN ARCADY 147 
 
 tion, taste and feeling. But the theater, too, is 
 needed, where memories awake, as we enter the por- 
 tal, of the vanished charm of other days, where our 
 affection is roused and our fancies stirred in antici- 
 pation. 
 
 All these elements have been combined in the 
 production of "Pomander Walk." To old theater- 
 goers it can bring no sighs for "the days that are 
 no more," for it breathes their very essence. For 
 young theater-goers it can only make the present 
 more delightful and the future more bright, for by 
 making us in love with love, with life, it makes us 
 thereby in love with the theater. It brings to the 
 playhouse in New York what that playhouse so 
 sorely needs, glamour and sweetness and charm.
 
 A LITTLE FLYER IN JOY 
 
 "Hindle Wakes," Maxine Elliott's Theater, Dec. 
 p, 1912 
 
 "Hindle Wakes" was for some weeks visible at 
 Maxine Elliott's Theater visible if not visited. It 
 then departed to tour the country. This drama, by 
 Stanley Houghton, is one of the genre productions of 
 Miss Horniman's Manchester Theater, and is acted 
 by players from her company, rehearsed by her 
 stage manager. It offers, therefore, a very fair op- 
 portunity to estimate something of the results Miss 
 Horniman is achieving in the English mill city of 
 Manchester, at first blush a rather sooty cradle, one 
 would say, for the arts. 
 
 We have nothing like Miss Horniman's repertory 
 theater in America. Its nearest counterpart with 
 which we are familiar is the Abbey Theater of Dub- 
 lin; but, of course, there is less national spirit to the 
 Manchester venture. Miss Horniman is not adver- 
 tising an English revival, but simply trying to de- 
 velop a repertory company in her city, and to 
 
 148
 
 A LITTLE FLYER IN JOY 149 
 
 encourage local playwrights. If somebody should 
 start a repertory theater in Pittsburgh, and local 
 playwrights there should have produced in it dramas 
 about the Pennsylvania Dutch and life in the oil 
 well and coal districts, we should have a fair an- 
 alogy. 
 
 "Hindle Wakes" is a tale of life among the weav- 
 ers of Hindle, a Lancashire town, and it is written 
 in Lancashire idiom, and spoken in Lancashire dia- 
 lect. It is acted by a company who seem in some 
 cases not very remotely removed from talented 
 amateurs, with the simplicity of gesture and move- 
 ment, the emphasis on text, characteristic of the 
 Irish players from Dublin. Unfortunately, the 
 text is much less attractive in sound than the dia- 
 logue of Yeats and Synge. The stage management, 
 too, is stiffer and more conventional. 
 
 But that is far less important than the fact that 
 the play has been written and produced at all. It 
 does not happen to be so large and gripping a play 
 as "Rutherford and Son," which is a piece of realism 
 about a similar district of England, nor is it nearly 
 so well acted as is "Rutherford and Son" by Norman 
 McKinnel and his London professionals. But, none 
 the less, "Hindle Wakes" has all the earmarks of 
 local authenticity, its very stiffness of presentation
 
 150 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 but betokening its authentic local origin the more. 
 What does that mean? It means that the drama is 
 alive in Manchester. It means that Manchester is 
 not simply sitting back and taking what second com- 
 pany crumbs are dropped now and again from the 
 London table, but is able to write and produce 
 dramas of its own, dramas good enough to send up to 
 London, and even across the pond to New York. 
 It means that the drama in Manchester, like the 
 tariff, is a local issue. 
 
 Think if that were the case in the United States ! 
 Think of the cities we have, far from New York, 
 which are at present utterly dependent on New York 
 for their dramatic fare, and which have a rich local 
 mine of material about them at present quite un- 
 worked either because nobody has been developed to 
 work it, or because it would not be palatable sup- 
 posedly on Broadway! The real New England 
 play, for example, has never been written. James 
 A. Herne scratched the surface in "Shore Acres," but 
 the "Way Down East" sort of by-gosh drama is no 
 more New England realism than it is Chinese. 
 Where is the Pittsburgh play? Why isn't Meredith 
 Nicholson writing the racy, homely comedy and ro- 
 mance of his beloved Indianapolis and its surround- 
 ing country, for a repertory theater there, where the
 
 A LITTLE FLYER IN JOY 151 
 
 audiences would understand*? Surely there is a 
 drama in Charleston, S. C. ! We could multiply 
 endlessly the opportunities. 
 
 But, as matters stand, the dramatist must be able 
 to come up to Broadway or Chicago (or now and 
 again, at most, Boston and Los Angeles), with his 
 wares, and he must be able to deliver goods which 
 will "get across" on Broadway. Is it any wonder 
 there is no authentic realism in our American genre 
 plays? What, for instance, did Broadway know, or 
 care, about the G. A. R. when Warfield produced 
 "The Grand Army Man'"? You have to go back 
 into what Meredith Nicholson loves to call provin- 
 cial America to find a general love for and under- 
 standing of the G. A. R. Of course, George Ade's 
 "College Widow" was a real genre comedy, even if 
 exaggerated. His sense of fun was great enough to 
 turn the trick. But he offers only the traditional 
 proof of an exception. The fact remains that the 
 theater is not a live issue in America, not a local 
 issue, outside of two or three of our largest cities. 
 Because this always has been so is no reason why it 
 always should be so as we seem to suppose. It al- 
 ways had been so in Manchester till Miss Horniman 
 came along. 
 
 What will be the first American city to wake up?
 
 152 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 They all have stock companies playing two and three 
 year old Broadway successes in the traditional stock 
 manner. There isn't a real repertory theater in the 
 whole land, nor half a dozen stock managers who 
 ever produce a new play unless some New York 
 manager pays them to do it. None of our stock com- 
 panies has so much as dreamed of developing local 
 playwrights. Isn't it stupid? Isn't it, when you 
 come to think the matter over, almost ridiculous? 
 The whole nation needs a new declaration of theat- 
 rical independence. 
 
 But now about "Hindle Wakes." The charm of 
 the play for it has a distinct charm to all who 
 possess sufficient imagination to enjoy a picture of 
 a life foreign to their own resides in the quiet and 
 seemingly quite unexaggerated and authentic de- 
 piction of the ideals and manners and habits of the 
 Lancashire weavers. The story is extremely simple. 
 Christopher Hawthorn is an old weaver, who is still 
 a weaver, with a full-blooded and high-spirited 
 daughter, Fanny, who is, like her father, a worker 
 in the mills. But Christopher's old boyhood friend, 
 Nathaniel Jeffcote, has risen from the loom to be the 
 owner of the mill, and his boy Alan is thus in a social 
 class above Fanny. We see here what money does 
 for the second generation.
 
 A LITTLE FLYER IN JOY 153 
 
 Well, during bank holiday when Hindle holds 
 its "wakes," Fanny goes off for a week-end holiday, 
 and so does Alan. They meet, and spend the holi- 
 days together. The fact is discovered by Fanny's 
 parents. To their simple code, the only possible 
 thing now is to have Alan marry Fanny. 
 
 Christopher goes up to the house of his old friend 
 Nathaniel and puts the case to that testy, canny, self- 
 willed, but honest and fair-minded man. He is 
 enraged, but agrees that Alan must marry Fanny, 
 even though it means breaking off a match with an- 
 other girl, daughter of a second mill owner, which 
 would unite the two properties. 
 
 Well, the subject is thrashed out from all sides, 
 and we get an insight into these people's lives in the 
 process and then Fanny has her say. It's about 
 time, she thinks! She won't marry Alan. She 
 doesn't want Alan. She doesn't care anything about 
 Alan. She was a passing fancy with him, just a 
 lark, was she? Men are built that way, are they*? 
 Well, he was just a passing fancy, a lark, with her, 
 too! Women can be built that way, also! When 
 she marries she proposes to get a man, she does, and 
 of her own picking. 
 
 And Fanny has her way. We must admit that 
 she has the audience's sympathy. It certainly
 
 154 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 wasn't going to mend matters to marry her off to 
 Alan, and somehow there was a force of character 
 in the girl as played by Miss Emilie Polini which 
 made you sure she would come out all right after 
 this little flyer in joy. Naturally, it was all some- 
 thing of a snap for Alan, as his fiancee forgave him. 
 But maybe that is realistic, too. The fiancee wasn't 
 a new woman, like Fanny, and she followed the easy 
 code of old-fashioned forgiveness. 
 
 The theme of the play is not very new, then, nor 
 perhaps important, in spite of the supposition in 
 some quarters that Fanny's outburst of belated self- 
 respect is a great blow for Feminism. What is im- 
 portant is the faithful, illuminating disclosures of a 
 race of people, a state of society, in a corner of Eng- 
 land of their speech, their habits, their ideals. Any 
 such faithful disclosure is always important and of 
 interest. This one is doubly so, because it was made 
 possible by the Manchester repertory theater, and 
 so shows us that similar disclosures might be made 
 in the United States, about the various interesting 
 subdivisions of our national society.

 
 AN INTIMATE THEATER AND AN 
 
 UNUSUAL PLAY 
 
 "The Pigeon" Little Theater, March //, 1912 
 
 One of the most interesting, and we are inclined 
 to think one of the most important, theatrical events 
 of the winter is the launching of Winthrop Ames' 
 Little Theater. The opening attraction was Gals- 
 worthy's new play, "The Pigeon," a fascinating 
 drama almost flawlessly acted. Mr. Ames has be- 
 gun his novel work with fortune smiling, and he has 
 deserved his success and our gratitude. 
 
 The Little Theater is one of the most beautiful 
 play houses in America. It is situated on Forty- 
 fourth street, just west of Long Acre Square. Two 
 old houses have given way to it. The front is no 
 higher than the old houses, but instead of remaining 
 brown stone, it is colonial brick, with a simple colo- 
 nial entrance in white, and old-fashioned wooden 
 window shutters. The wooden sign swings out over 
 the sidewalk like the sign of an ancient inn. The 
 interior is also colonial, or more properly Georgian, 
 
 i55
 
 156 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 but very rich. The auditorium has no balconies, 
 and seats but 300 people, in widely spaced, comfort- 
 able chairs. There are no boxes. The walls are 
 paneled half way up with quartered oak, and oak 
 pilasters continue to the ceiling, framing tapestries. 
 The ceiling is flat, white and embossed with a colo- 
 nial wreath design in very low relief. The chande- 
 liers are, of course, the old cut glass pendant type. 
 The stage opening is small. The lobbies are, like 
 the auditorium, intimate rooms, and downstairs is 
 a coffee-room, where refreshments are served gratis 
 between acts, quite like afternoon tea. The whole 
 atmosphere is that of social intimacy, exquisite taste, 
 quiet refinement, good breeding. There is no the- 
 ater like it in size and style, and only the Maxine 
 Elliott Theater can even compare with it in charm. 
 
 In such a house, of course, the plays must have 
 an intimate appeal, and they ought, as well, to have 
 distinct quality. It is a theater for the presentation 
 of exceptional drama, drama that of necessity is not 
 always well fitted to meet the diverse demands of 
 the larger playhouses. Such drama exists. A 
 theater to welcome it ought to exist. Mr. Ames has 
 provided such a theater and provided it with prodigal 
 hand. 
 
 "The Pigeon," his first bill, is an exceptional play,
 
 AN INTIMATE THEATER 157 
 
 a fascinating, thoughtful, human play (though full 
 of delightful comedy), and it is acted by an excep- 
 tional company, drilled into a flawless ensemble. 
 
 Mr. Ames has retained as stage director George 
 Foster Platt, who was his director at the New 
 Theater, a man who works at his best in an intimate 
 auditorium, and he has also retained Wilfrid North, 
 his assistant stage director at the New Theater. 
 Further, he still has in his company Miss Matthison 
 (though she is not in "The Pigeon"), Miss Pamela 
 Gaythorne and several minor players. The new 
 members of his staff, however, are not players who 
 have been spoiled by the star system, and they have 
 worked at the very start into the spirit of ensemble 
 playing. Among them are Russ Whytal, Frank 
 Reicher and Sidney Valentine, three fine actors, who, 
 in "The Pigeon," perform in a way to restore our 
 sometimes tottering faith in latter-day histrionic art. 
 Mr. Ames, obviously, gained experience at the New 
 Theater. He also achieved the nucleus of an or- 
 ganization, which he has brought over with him, and 
 so starts with a considerable advantage. 
 
 ^The Pigeon" is now available in book form. 
 We need not, therefore, describe it minutely, for 
 most people who are interested in the finer things in 
 the modern theater will undoubtedly procure it.
 
 158 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy describes it as a fantasy. It is not, 
 however, fantastic. Evidently Galsworthy's idea 
 of being fantastic is merely to smile while talking 
 tenderly and touchingly about sad or serious things. 
 That is characteristic of an author who comes so 
 modestly to New York to see his play that nobody 
 knew he was coming till the steamer arrived, and 
 who takes a walk in Central Park while his play 
 is being produced. Mr. Galsworthy inevitably 
 reminds one of Arnold Bennett he's so differ- 
 ent! 
 
 Superficially, and only superficially, "The Pigeon" 
 resembles "Passers-by." In each play waifs of the 
 London streets come into the action. But there the 
 similarity ceases. In "Passers-by" the real inter- 
 est was not in the waifs, but in the sentimental story 
 of the young London bachelor who invited them in. 
 "The Pigeon," on the other hand, has no sentimental 
 story. In a way, it is almost as neuter as "Strife." 
 Its interest lies in the problem of the waifs them- 
 selves, and its message, beautifully and tenderly 
 expressed by the action, is simply that to help such 
 folk at all effectively the essential thing is not a 
 public court nor an organized charity nor a soup 
 kitchen, but rather love and understanding. The 
 Pigeon of the title is an old artist who cannot help
 
 AN INTIMATE THEATER 159 
 
 loving these human wrecks, and who is called a pig- 
 eon because they pluck him. 
 
 His daughter calls them "rotters." All through 
 the play the poor girl makes determined effort to 
 keep her father from bringing these waifs into his 
 studio. Finally, she makes him move to a new 
 studio, up seven flights, without a "lift," in order to 
 avoid both the "rotters," and the philanthropic vicar, 
 and the professor with social theories, and the police 
 magistrate who believes in the reformatory value of 
 the workhouse. But, at the end, the poor old artist 
 gives his new address to all of them. "It's stronger 
 than me," he wails. It is his dissipation. His love 
 for them is his weakness. But it is also his strength. 
 It is he alone who gets to the waifs at all. The play 
 is not a plea for a social theory. It is a plea for love 
 and sympathy and understanding. 
 
 Russ Whytal is a sweet, benignant figure as the 
 old artist, who, the tramp says, can hardly be a 
 Christian, because he has such a kind face. The 
 three waifs are a London flower girl, who later goes 
 on the streets, played touchingly by Parmela Gay- 
 thorne, Timson, a tipsy old cabbie, played with irre- 
 sistible humor by Sidney Valentine, and Ferrand, a 
 tramp (a character out of one of the author's earlier 
 books), played by Frank Reicher. Ferrand is no
 
 160 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ordinary vagabond of the comic papers. He is a 
 cosmopolitan vagabond, French by blood, full of 
 quaint, racy idiom, with a strong vein of philosophy 
 a truly extraordinary man. He is a man who 
 would have been a considerable success in the world 
 if he had been differently balanced, if he had been 
 endowed with concentration instead of the wander- 
 lust. The type is not unknown. It is not even rare 
 (though people who have had no experience of the 
 underworld will not believe this). But no doubt 
 it is more common in Europe than America, and 
 for that reason Frank Reicher's German blood pos- 
 sibly enabled him to understand the character better. 
 He plays it, certainly, with wonderful feeling. All 
 the humor, all the philosophy, all the pathetic futil- 
 ity of this strange being are in his impersonation. 
 The character goes beyond the confines of the stage. 
 He is a real man. You wander with him over the 
 globe, see the world from his point of view, and 
 realize at last the grim futility of institutional char- 
 ity to catch and tame such a wild bird, to reform him 
 by giving him a bath. 
 
 "But," he cries to the artist, "are you really Eng- 
 lish? You treat me like a brother!" 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur," he says again, "I am loafer, 
 waster what you like for all that [bitterly] pov-
 
 AN INTIMATE THEATER 161 
 
 erty is my only crime. If I were rich, should I not 
 be simply veree original, 'ighly respected, with soul 
 above commerce, traveling to see the world? And 
 that young girl, would she not be 'that charming 
 ladee,' 'veree chic, you know!' And the old Tims, 
 good, old-fashioned gentleman, drinking his liquor 
 well. Eh, bien! what are we now 1 ? Dark beasts, 
 despised by all. That is life, Monsieur." 
 
 Strange, disquieting words, these, when you come 
 to think of them disquieting with the naked truth ! 
 
 The poor little flower girl had been taken after 
 act two, when her young husband refused to receive 
 her back, into an institution by the vicar. In act 
 three she had begun her life on the streets. "She 
 wanted the joy of life she chose the life of joy 
 not quite the same thing!" says the philosophical 
 tramp. She overhears some of the tramp's bitter 
 words, and tries to drown herself. But the police- 
 man, who admits she were better off dead, saves her. 
 Sobbing on the old artist's shoulder, she says the 
 people at the institution where she was placed looked 
 at her as if they wanted her dead. "I couldn't stop 
 there, you know." 
 
 "Too cooped up, eh*?" says the artist. 
 
 "Yes. No life at all, it wasn't not after sellin' 
 flowers. I'd rather be doin' what I am !"
 
 162 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Terrible words again! though the audience is 
 prone to laugh at them. 
 
 Then she is carried off to the station-house, to 
 be tried for the crime of trying to kill herself, by a 
 magistrate who believes that there is no hope for her, 
 and she'd be much better off dead. Even the vicar 
 has admitted his belief in the "lethal chamber" as 
 her happiest resting place. The poor, simple- 
 minded old artist cannot see the logic in all this 
 you grasp how simple-minded he is"? Only the 
 vagabond rises to the occasion. 
 
 "Do not grieve, Monsieur," he says, "this will give 
 her courage. There is nothing that gives more 
 courage than to see the irony of things." 
 
 The irony of things that is the play. Under its 
 wit (for it is witty) and its comedy (for it is full 
 of comic situations), runs the undercurrent of irony, 
 the irony of our poor, feeble institutions to deal with 
 so individual and wild a thing as the human soul. 
 The irony is not lessened by the fact that the only 
 person in the play who reaches the hearts of these 
 waifs is the poor pigeon, whose love for them is re- 
 garded as an amiable weakness by everybody else. 
 
 Of course, there is one great point which Gals- 
 worthy has here ignored. There are men, thank 
 God, and women, too, whose love is no less than the
 
 AN INTIMATE THEATER 163 
 
 old artist's, who have his weakness, too, but who have 
 in addition a power of character to inject into other 
 souls something of their own faith and strength. 
 The Salvation Army understands this, and sends 
 men and women among the "rotters," who very often 
 cause a "new birth" in these folk, a mighty welling 
 up of strength from subconscious depths, a faith 
 which gives them the joy of life they crave, and the 
 steadfastness they need. Galsworthy, of course, is 
 absolutely right that this cannot be done by insti- 
 tutions or baths, that such souls can only be reached 
 by personalities who love them and who, above all, 
 sympathetically understand them. But it is not 
 true that such souls are only loved and understood 
 by men and women in whom sympathy is a weakness, 
 and that the only persons who really want them to 
 live are persons who do not know how to give them 
 something to live for. 
 
 The present writer knows today a business man in 
 America who has handled dozens of cases of men 
 and women in worse plight than these waifs in 'The 
 Pigeon," and made them all good members of so- 
 ciety. He loved them. They knew it, and loved 
 and trusted him. He let them pluck him, too, if 
 they wanted to. But very soon they didn't want to, 
 because he inspired in each a new conception of the
 
 164 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 joy of life. He did not chain them. He simply 
 substituted for an old motive a new and better one. 
 In some cases it took him months, or even years. 
 But he did it, and is doing it every day. It is this 
 constructive side of love and sympathy Mr. Gals- 
 worthy ignores. 
 
 But, none the less, "The Pigeon" touches not the 
 conventional stuff of the drama, but real life ; to see 
 it is to feel that you have enlarged your human ex- 
 perience. It is bitter with irony, yet tender with 
 sympathy, and lambent with humor. And it is 
 here acted with exquisite and understanding art. 
 No season can be called vain which has given us 
 the Little Theater and "The Pigeon."
 
 BERNSTEIN AND BELASCO AT THEIR 
 BEST 
 
 "The Secret" Belasco Theater, December 23* /p/J 
 
 Our younger actresses seem to be growing ambi- 
 tious. Miss Barrymore has apparently joined the 
 ranks of the serious artists now, and Miss Elsie 
 Ferguson, by her performance in "The Strange 
 iWoman," has proved that her ambition to play 
 Rosalind is not to be taken lightly. Miss Billie 
 Burke has just appeared in a serious drama by 
 Somerset Maugham. And, finally, Miss Frances 
 Starr has essayed the most difficult role of her career, 
 that of the leading figure in Henri Bernstein's latest 
 play, "The Secret," beautifully produced by Mr. 
 Belasco. It is a role almost totally devoid of the 
 traditional "sympathy," for it is that of a cross be- 
 tween lago and Hedda Gabler; and it is set in a play 
 as remarkable for its absence of the usual Gallic sex 
 appeal as it is remarkable for its superb craftsman- 
 ship and its suspensive march. Probably it will not 
 be popular, therefore. It is "unpleasant" without 
 
 165
 
 166 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 being salacious, and truthful without being "sympa- 
 thetic." To hope that it will succeed because it is 
 a splendid play, splendidly acted, is a feat of op- 
 timism the facts of our theater hardly warrant. 
 Nevertheless, it is one of the most important pro- 
 ductions of the season, and if it does not succeed we 
 should count it a double misfortune, because when 
 Mr. Belasco does apply his genius as a stage manager 
 to worthy material he should be given every encour- 
 agement. 
 
 The most striking feature of the play, perhaps, is 
 the technical method of the author. In the first act 
 he shows us Gabrielle Jannelot and her husband Con- 
 stant living in a beautiful apartment in Paris, a most 
 respectable, happy and likable couple, with several 
 good friends, one of them being a young widow (who 
 had been unhappily married) named Henriette and 
 another being a curious, shy, sensitive little man 
 named Denis le Guern. The Jannelots are anxious 
 to bring about a match between these two, and can 
 not understand why Denis does not propose. This 
 is made clear when Denis has an interview with Ga- 
 brielle. He explains to her that he has a torturing 
 imagination, which he knows would cause him to be 
 very jealous of a woman whose past he did not 
 share, and therefore he has always determined to
 
 BERNSTEIN AND BELASCO 167 
 
 marry a young girl with no past. Yet, alas, he 
 has fallen in love with Henriette. Gabrielle as- 
 sures him that Henriette was never happy with her 
 husband, and has had no other affair. Thus reas- 
 sured, he determines to propose. Then we see 
 Gabrielle warn her friend that she should confess to 
 Denis a serious affair she had, just after her husband's 
 death, with a certain Charlie Ponta Tulli, who, we 
 gather, was rather a rake, and jilted Henriette. 
 
 Henriette, however, does not confess. She real- 
 izes that if she does Denis will not propose. No- 
 body knows her secret but herself, Charlie and 
 Gabrielle, and Gabrielle, her best friend, of course 
 will not tell. She accepts Denis. After the happy 
 pair have departed, Gabrielle blurts out the secret 
 to her husband, and with great relish is telling him 
 the details of her friend's love affair as the first cur- 
 tain descends. We begin to see the claws, but we 
 cannot guess the motive. 
 
 Act two shows a house party, at which the guests 
 are Gabrielle and her husband, Henriette and Denis, 
 now married, and the mysterious Charlie. Of 
 course, his presence is quite terrible for poor Hen- 
 riette, the more as he takes a bitter pleasure in mak- 
 ing a fool of her trusting, commonplace little hus- 
 band at every turn. It seems at first as if Charlie's
 
 i68 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 presence there were an inevitable accident, but grad- 
 ually we learn otherwise. By a series of truly won- 
 derful scenes wonderful in their interwrought tex- 
 ture and their steady unfolding of surprise after 
 surprise we come to realize that Gabrielle brought 
 Charlie there, to make her friend miserable, and if 
 possible to betray the truth to her husband. We 
 learn that Charlie is not the rounder we had sup- 
 posed, but had been truly in love with Henriette, had 
 fully intended to marry her, and had always sup- 
 posed she broke off with him because she was tired 
 of him, whereas she broke off because Gabrielle had 
 intercepted his letters, and she had supposed he was 
 tired of her, had regarded her only as a mistress and 
 was abandoning her. By the time the end of the 
 act is reached, we see that Gabrielle has deliberately 
 made a horrible mess of all the lives about her, wan- 
 tonly done all in her power to wreck the happiness of 
 her best friends, even of her husband, for a break 
 between him and his sister is of her doing, also. 
 
 But still we have no motive. 
 
 Bernstein, even more here than in "The Thief," 
 saves his major revelation till the end. It comes in 
 the last act. Gabrielle has done it all because she 
 cannot stand seeing those around her happy, unless 
 she is causing their happiness. She is an exagger-
 
 BERNSTEIN AND BELASCO 169 
 
 ated specimen of a well known if not common type, 
 exaggerated, of course, to the point where she is 
 practically diseased, but perhaps no less interesting 
 on that account. She has made the breach between 
 her husband and his sister merely because she came 
 home one day and saw them sitting happily together, 
 getting on very nicely without her. She smashed 
 the love affair between Charlie and Henriette not 
 because Henriette, being miserable and lonely after 
 her unhappy marriage, had been rash enough to be- 
 come Charlie's mistress until such a time as they 
 could marry, and so had offended Gabrielle's moral 
 sense, but simply because Henriette was finding hap- 
 piness in this relation, not of Gabrielle's making. 
 And when Henriette was finally married to Denis, 
 and at last happy once more in the protection of a 
 good man, in spite of her friend's efforts to prevent 
 the marriage by a confession, Gabrielle brought 
 Charlie to the house party and sowed suspicion with 
 the devilish craft of an lago. 
 
 All this she tells to her husband in a weeping con- 
 fession, saying that she could not help it, that she 
 fought it, that her better nature revolted and gave 
 her hours of misery. But we are a little suspicious 
 of this last statement, and she does not win sym- 
 pathy. Our sympathy all goes to her stricken hus-
 
 170 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 band, who realizes after twelve years of happy mar- 
 riage that he has loved a shadow, and that hereafter 
 he must protect and try to cure one morally sick to 
 death. 
 
 He behaves very well at the end, and so do 
 the rest, especially Charlie, who goes quietly away 
 when he knows the truth, and leaves the woman he 
 has loved and her husband to work out their salva- 
 tion on a new basis of understanding. 
 
 Such is "The Secret." To all theatergoers who 
 accept an author's subject matter for what it is 
 worth, whether it happens to be personally pleasant 
 or unpleasant to them, and who rejoice in fine crafts- 
 manship and dramatic style, this play will bring un- 
 alloyed delight. To the mass of theatergoers, per- 
 haps, who, after all, are incapable of a detached 
 point of view toward any work of art, it may prove 
 caviare. 
 
 It is acted up to the hilt by the majority of the 
 company, and it is staged by Mr. Belasco better than 
 any translated French drama has been staged in 
 America, save Simone's production of "The Return 
 from Jerusalem," in many, many years. Miss Starr, 
 of course, is not authoritative in the emotional stress 
 of the final act. She is never likely to be. But in 
 the earlier acts, in spite of her propensity to climb all
 
 BERNSTEIN AND BELASCO 171 
 
 over the furniture like a playful kitten, she is a sweet, 
 charming little woman with hidden claws that more 
 and more creep out from the velvet and scratch. 
 The finest performance, however, is given by Frank 
 Reicher as Denis, the shy little husband, who has a 
 little man's pathetic dignity and consciousness of 
 commonplaceness, who has a super-sensitive imag- 
 ination, but who never loses our respect, who is al- 
 ways at bottom a gentleman, with all that implies. 
 Mr. Reicher, with not much external aid from the 
 author in filling in the part, yet contrives to make 
 a distinct and vivid character creation of Denis. A 
 sister of Martha Hedman, Miss Marguerite Leslie, 
 plays Henriette excellently, and without any of her 
 sister's foreign accent. 
 
 But the real triumph of the production, aside from 
 its unity of key and life-like smoothness, is the pro- 
 nunciation of the French names and terms. Every 
 player speaks them correctly. In an American pro- 
 duction of a Gallic drama, this is little short of mi- 
 raculous. The two interior settings are models of 
 beauty and good taste. Mr. Belasco has here ap- 
 plied his genius to material worth while, and the 
 result is an evening of keenest enjoyment.
 
 MAUDE ADAMS AS A MURDERESS 
 
 "The Legend of Leonora" Empire Theater, 
 January 5, 1914 
 
 J. M. Barrie's latest play is making a lot of trouble 
 just now. Miss Maude Adams is playing it at the 
 Empire Theater, hence the trouble. If she were 
 not playing it, the perplexed souls would stay at 
 home with The Outlook or The Cosmopolitan, and 
 then they wouldn't be perplexed. That's the way 
 they did when "Little Mary" was produced at the 
 Empire Theater some years ago. Of course, as a 
 result, "Little Mary" failed. But the circulation 
 of The Cosmopolitan is still going up, no doubt. 
 
 However, Miss Maude Adams is acting "The Leg- 
 end of Leonora," so her admirers (and they are 
 legion), of course feel called upon to go to the 
 theater. Poor things ! What they behold is enough 
 to turn the hair gray. "Peter Pan" was pretty hard 
 to swallow, but, of course, the children liked it, and 
 one has to sacrifice something for the children. 
 But not even a child could make head or tail out 
 
 of "The Legend of Leonora." It is very sad. 
 
 172
 
 MAUDE ADAMS AS A MURDERESS 173 
 
 Yet this play starts off innocently enough. Cap- 
 tain Rattray, R. N., just home in England after 
 years of remote exploration, is invited to dinner by 
 an old friend, who tells him six or seven women 
 will be there, and, without naming them, runs over 
 their characteristics. One has too little humor; one 
 has too much; one is a clinging vine; one a suffra- 
 gette, who gets angry if you pick up anything she 
 drops (and she's always dropping things) ; one is 
 just a mother; one a hopeless coquette; finally, one 
 is a murderess. Left alone by his host, a woman 
 guest enters. Which one is she? The captain has 
 learned none of the names. He is left to find out 
 which she is by her actions. It is a scene of deli- 
 cious comedy, as the reader can fancy, with Barrie as 
 the author. Of course, the poor captain guesses first 
 one and then the other, constantly on the track and 
 off again. He tells a funny story and gets a stare, 
 yet the next moment he himself is being laughed at. 
 He thinks her all mother, only to learn that she tan- 
 goes till a late hour, and so on. 
 
 But at last he learns that she is the murderess. 
 This is something of a shock to him and to the audi- 
 ence. Miss Adams a murderess, indeed! How 
 dare the author do such a thing ! But Leonora has- 
 tens to explain. She was in a railroad carriage with
 
 174 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 her little girl, and a horrid man wouldn't shut the 
 window when she asked him to, so she pushed him 
 out on the track (the train was going at high speed) 
 and shut the window herself. Of course, anybody 
 can realize there was nothing else for her to do, be- 
 cause her little girl had a cold one of those mean, 
 sniffy colds. 
 
 Now, for some utterly unaccountable reason, the 
 average auditor doesn't seem to regard this as a 
 complete justification for murder any more than the 
 astonished captain did. Not even the fact that it 
 was a sniffy cold seems, to the average person, to 
 excuse the deed. Confusion enters the audience's 
 mind at this point. They apparently think they are 
 in for a trial scene a la "Madame X." At any rate, 
 they are so flabbergasted that they do not enjoy the 
 closing revelation of this act which is that there 
 were not to be seven guests at all, but only one. 
 Leonora herself was all those kinds of women. (Of 
 course, what Mr. Barrie is trying in his poor, stupid, 
 blundering way to tell us is that every woman is all 
 those kinds of women, including, no doubt, the mur- 
 deress, provided her little girl had a sniffy cold and 
 a horrid man wouldn't close the window.) 
 
 The next two acts are unique in the English 
 drama. They depict the trial of Leonora for mur-
 
 MAUDE ADAMS AS A MURDERESS 175 
 
 der, and they are at once as wild a burlesque of 
 courts as was Gilbert's "Trial by Jury," and, at the 
 same time, as warmly human, as mellow, at times 
 as tender, as any of Mr. Barrie's more serious work. 
 Alas! the average admirers of Miss Adams seem to 
 scent the tenderness, but to be completely baffled 
 by the burlesque. The present writer heard one 
 woman declare, with a deep expulsion of breath, 
 "Oh, dear, I wish this play was more probable !" 
 
 It would be about as sensible to wish "Engaged" 
 more probable, or "The Mikado," for "The Legend 
 of Leonora" is more Gilbertian than any of Barrie's 
 other plays. Yet it differs from Gilbert's work in 
 this important respect it uses burlesque not so much 
 for satire, which implies scorn, as a roundabout way 
 of praising what it is not now popular to praise, the 
 "old-fashioned woman." 
 
 To Barrie the old-fashioned woman is just woman, 
 and she includes the new and the old, a creature 
 infinite and lovely, who can vote if she wishes, 
 bless her, and rear children, and flirt, and go into 
 business, and always triumphantly overthrow man 
 and his poor, logical systems by her potent weapon 
 of charm what, in an earlier play, he called "that 
 damned charm." If Barrie chooses to say all this by 
 means of quaint burlesque, why not 1 ? What is more
 
 176 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 delightful than good burlesque, just for its own 
 sake"? And when it is burlesque with such a pur- 
 pose added, to some of us it becomes doubly de- 
 lightful. 
 
 But, alas, to others it seems to become doubly 
 perplexing. It isn't probable. But, for that mat- 
 ter, what is? 
 
 Words are quite inadequate to describe the trial 
 scene. A learned judge sits high aloft at the rear. 
 The jury sit along the footlights, their backs to the 
 audience. The prisoner sits at the left, the witness 
 box is to the right. And what goes on reminds you 
 at times of the famous trial of the Knave of Hearts, 
 on the charge of grand larceny, as witnessed by 
 Alice. Leonora is defended by the captain (who, 
 of course, has fallen in love with her, and proposes 
 in open court). She won't keep still. She talks at 
 any and all times. She makes the judge smell her 
 flowers. She pities the crown prosecutor, when a 
 point goes against him. She discusses the culture 
 of delphiniums with one of the jury, and the care 
 of children with another. When she wants tea, the 
 court takes a recess. When she takes the witness 
 chair she promptly says all her lawyer's case is a lie 
 (he had proved she wasn't even in that train), and 
 bases her case on the fact that her little girl had a
 
 MAUDE ADAMS AS A MURDERESS 177 
 
 cold a sniffy cold. When the jury retire to delib- 
 erate, they send back word that they are lonesome 
 and request that Leonora come and sit with them 
 while they debate. She goes. They promptly re- 
 turn a verdict of not guilty. 
 
 All this takes two acts. They are two acts of 
 delicious topsy-turvy, with not a little sly fun poked 
 at British court procedure, and a great deal of im- 
 plied faith in "that damned charm." To play them 
 effectively, of course, you must have an actress who, 
 herself, has a personality full of charm, a personality 
 which everybody loves, to whose spell everybody 
 yields. There are a score of actresses who could 
 have played Act I of this comedy better than Miss 
 Adams who, indeed, plays it very badly, for she 
 does not suggest the seven different kinds of a woman 
 at all. But she and she alone could play the court- 
 room scene and deliver its full message. If the play 
 fails with her as Leonora, it can never succeed 
 which is, indeed, a pity. 
 
 The last act doesn't amount to much. It shows 
 the coming of happiness to Leonora (who, by the 
 way, is a widow; perhaps we forgot to state that) 
 and the captain, and gives the puzzled a loophole of 
 escape, by the suggestion that maybe maybe 
 Leonora never pushed anybody out of a window, but
 
 178 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 was just one of those women capable of doing it for 
 the salvation of her baby. 
 
 Personally, we hope this isn't so. We hope she 
 did push him out. It served him jolly well right. 
 The little girl had a cold a horrid, sniffy cold. We 
 have one just now ourself.
 
 "THE PHANTOM RIVAL" AND MISS 
 CREWS 
 
 "The Phantom Rival" Belasco Theater, 
 October 6, 1914 
 
 Ferenc Molnar, Hungarian playwright, was first 
 made known to America when two versions of his 
 play, "The Devil," were acted here some seven years 
 ago, one by George Arliss and one by Edwin Stev- 
 ens. "The Devil" did not suggest a dramatist of 
 importance, but "Where Ignorance Is Bliss," pro- 
 duced last year by Mr. Fiske, though a failure, 
 showed the discerning that Molnar is an artist. 
 
 Now Leo Ditrichstein has adapted and Mr. Bel- 
 asco has produced his play, "The Phantom Rival," 
 and no one can longer doubt Molnar's claim to real 
 distinction. "The Phantom Rival" is highly ef- 
 fective theatrically, it is based on an idea, it has 
 charm and wit and subtlety, pith and point and pur- 
 pose. In short, it has dramatic style. Whenever 
 Belasco applies his great gifts of management to the 
 
 production of such a play he turns out an entertain- 
 
 179
 
 i8o PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ment of sheer delight, as in the case of "The Con- 
 cert." It is only because the same fulsome praises 
 have been showered on his productions of bunkum 
 as on his productions of stage literature that the judi- 
 cious have come to dread his effect on our theater. 
 "The Phantom Rival," however, can have but one 
 effect that of splendid stimulation. 
 
 Not the least interesting feature of the produc- 
 tion is the fact that Mr. Ditrichstein has adapted a 
 play in which his is far from the major part (he does 
 not even act the role given generally in Europe to 
 the leading actors), and Mr. Belasco has picked for 
 the major part a woman who has not Billie Burke's 
 kittenish charm nor somebody else's lovely eyelids, 
 but who does possess the ability to act Miss Laura 
 Hope Crews. For many years Miss Crews has 
 watched other girls of her age go forward into stellar 
 roles by virtue of this, that, or the other personal at- 
 tribute which the public liked, while she herself re- 
 mained, like the late Frank Worthing, a better 
 player in a lesser place. But she has, to a degree 
 possessed by almost no other player of her age on 
 our stage, the technical command of her trade. She 
 still has the charm of youth, too, and she can be as 
 kittenish as the youngest of them. But she can top 
 them all when it comes to real impersonation. And
 
 'THE PHANTOM RIVAL" 181 
 
 it was she whom Mr. Belasco selected to play the 
 leading role in "The Phantom Rival" a wise 
 choice, for her performance ranks with Mrs. Camp- 
 bell's in "Pygmalion"; they are the high points in 
 the season. 
 
 The scene of this play opens in a restaurant. An 
 author is talking with an actor. He says that every 
 woman, at the back of her head, carries the memory 
 of her first love, whom she has glorified into an ideal, 
 an ideal by which she measures even her husband. 
 Then Frank Marshall, a middle-aged lawyer, and 
 his young wife Louise come in and sit at another 
 table. They have evidently been quarreling, and 
 they continue to quarrel. He is a bundle of nerves, 
 jealous, irrational, and in Mr. Ditrichstein's adap- 
 tation he seems rather harsh and brutal one of 
 those horrid, nagging husbands. The trouble is, of 
 course, that he is peculiarly a continental type of 
 husband, and doesn't "adapt" well into an Amer- 
 ican setting. The quarrel grows worse when a man 
 (a foreigner, evidently) enters, whom his wife is 
 startled to see. Marshall makes a scene he be- 
 comes almost a table d'kofe Othello. Returning to 
 their home, he drags a confession out of his angry 
 and sore-tried wife that ten years ago she met this 
 Russian in Brooklyn, and he loved her. Yes, he
 
 182 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 wrote her a note when he left. No, he didn't kiss 
 her. Yes, the note is in her desk. Did she love 
 him? Did she? Mrs. Marshall, woman-like, does 
 not tell all ! 
 
 The husband reads the note. It is very juvenile, 
 rather mushy. Sascha Tatischeff will come back, 
 he says, to claim her, when he is either a great 
 soldier or a great diplomat or a great singer. Even 
 if he is a poor tramp he will return. The husband 
 laughs at the note, laughs long and loud. He has 
 been cured of his jealousy. But the wife winces 
 as from a blow. He is making fun of her first love 
 ideal, which is sacred, even from a husband. 
 
 They are to go to a ball later that evening, where 
 the husband is to meet a prominent Russian diplo- 
 mat and put through a traction deal. Mrs. Mar- 
 shall lies down to rest before dressing, and as she 
 rests she dreams, and in her dream she is at the ball, 
 and first a great soldier comes to claim her, and it 
 is Sascha. Then the great diplomat comes, and it 
 is Sascha. Then a great singer, a tenor, comes, and 
 sings to the guests, and he is Sascha. Then, out- 
 side, she meets a poor tramp, and he is Sascha. (In 
 the original it was not a tramp, but a waiter and 
 such a waiter, the paragon of grace and ease ! Mol- 
 nar kept his play quite free from any sentimental
 
 "THE PHANTOM RIVAL" 183 
 
 touch.) Each incarnation of Sascha is glorious in 
 her sight, and with each she promises to flee and 
 then she wakes screaming, and it is time to dress. 
 
 But before they leave for the ball the real Sascha 
 enters. He is a mere secretary to the diplomat, an 
 errand boy. He has almost forgotten Louise. He 
 was in the army, but only in the commissary depart- 
 ment. His rich uncle got him that safe berth ! He 
 gave up his singing it was too hard work to prac- 
 tice. He is looking now for a rich wife. He is, 
 in short, a brutal contrast to the hero of the dream. 
 In the original play Louise, disillusioned completely, 
 goes back "to her humdrum life and begins ironically 
 to check off a grocery list. In the American version 
 she becomes illusioned, as it were, regarding her hus- 
 band, which is a sentimental touch that is out of key 
 with the comedy and illogical, considering the kind 
 of man the husband was. But evidently it was sup- 
 posed that the other ending would be a bit too 
 cynical for us and doubtless it would ! 
 
 Miss Crews plays Louise, the wife, with a skill, 
 a variety, a force and a charm that delight the soul. 
 Dignified and womanly under the torture of her hus- 
 band's jealousy, she wins absolute conviction for the 
 character, makes us believe this little woman could 
 carry an ideal ten years in her memory, and makes
 
 184 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 us sympathize with her dream besides. When the 
 hour of the dream comes Miss Crews rises from her 
 couch and with a strange light in her eyes comes 
 toward the footlights as if groping with a vision, 
 and she sends a shiver down every spinal column in 
 the theater, just as Mansfield used to do; she pre- 
 pares, with her eyes and a smothered cry or two, for 
 the illusion of the dream, and makes Belasco's task 
 of shifting the actual scene to the dream-gray ball- 
 room comparatively easy. All through the dream 
 she maintains a strange air of passionate unreality; 
 and after the waking, in the last act, when the real 
 Sascha comes and the two talk together, she manages 
 the effect of ever-increasing disillusionment with 
 wonderful skill. There is no pathos about it. A 
 sly sense of humor makes her alive to the ironies of 
 the situation. She is the woman ten years married 
 to another man, with a son asleep in the next room. 
 It is no present happiness that is vanishing, but a 
 fond memory, a lovely dream; the wraith of her girl- 
 hood is going wistfully from the room. It is seldom 
 that any player on our stage lays hold so firmly on 
 a character, and at once makes that character live 
 and carries the mere theatrical situations at the same 
 time so triumphantly along. The soul and the me- 
 chanics of the drama alike are held every moment
 
 "THE PHANTOM RIVAL" 185 
 
 firmly in the grasp of this young woman. Mr. Bel- 
 asco showed his wisdom in picking her for the part. 
 Mr. Ditrichstein himself plays the role of Sascha. 
 It is not a difficult one, but it offers him, in the dream 
 episode, an opportunity to appear in four different 
 incarnations, and in the first and last acts in yet a 
 fifth. As the soldier lover and as the great diplo- 
 mat of the dream, he lacks romantic charm and au- 
 thentic dignity. As the singer, however, he is 
 capital; and as the real Sascha at the close, when 
 he unconsciously smashes Louise's ideal by the dis- 
 closure of the more than common clay of which he 
 is made, Mr. Ditrichstein plays with an ironic edge, 
 a deft delicacy, a sense of the picturesque and the 
 subtle, which makes that scene between actor and 
 actress one of the most delightful bits of high com- 
 edy acting seen on our stage in many a long day. 
 Mrs. Fiske and George Arliss, Grace George and the 
 late Frank Worthing, or Ferdinand Gottschalk, 
 might give us a similar pleasure in a similar scene. 
 But who else could do it? They are not many, 
 surely. And where would they find such a scene? 
 Plays with the underlying subtlety of psychology of 
 "The Phanton Rival" are not written every day, 
 nor plays with its deftness of development and force 
 of imagination. It is one of the treats of the season.
 
 i86 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 In the staging of this work Mr. Belasco has in- 
 dulged in much less than his usual elaboration of 
 details and slowness of minor action. The result 
 is the better for it. There is no less care for surface 
 illusion, of course. Every exit and entrance is man- 
 aged with the utmost lif elikeness ; the waiters in the 
 restaurant are like real waiters; the room in the 
 Marshall house, pretty and tasteful, exactly reflects 
 the sort of woman Mrs. Marshall is, and, moreover, 
 it has that illusive quality of homelikeness Mr. Bel- 
 asco knows so well how to impart and most other 
 directors know so little. The ballroom scene, which 
 is the setting for the dream, on the other hand, is 
 all in gray, with lights half dimmed in white wrap- 
 pings, and is as simple as it can well be. Probably 
 it would be more effective if it had no reality at all 
 if it were half a flight of stairs and shadowy cur- 
 tains but we do not so stage our plays in America, 
 and Mr. Belasco has done wonders with our con- 
 ventional type of "realistic" setting. 
 
 The one error in the production is the casting of 
 Mr. Marshall, the husband. This part is played 
 by Malcolm Williams, and while he definitely holds 
 to an ideal of the character, it is not in his power to 
 portray the right ideal. He is too large, too force- 
 ful, too downright. Not only is this a play of subtle
 
 'THE PHANTOM RIVAL" 187 
 
 psychology and real high comedy, but the husband's 
 jealousy must be convincingly the result of strained 
 nerves and a temperament given to brooding. Mr. 
 Williams is not a high comedy actor; he lacks the 
 finish. And he cannot suggest a man given to nerves 
 and brooding. Therefore his scenes with Miss 
 Crews suggest the constant clash of conflicting keys 
 in a duet; they are not playing on the same plane 
 one is acting on the high comedy level, the other 
 somewhere below it. And, moreover, Mr. Williams, 
 by his inability to suggest the frazzled nerves and 
 the self-torture of a man genuinely given to brood- 
 ing, loses sympathy for the husband. He becomes 
 a brute. His wife ought to hate him. You can't 
 understand how she could ever have married such a 
 man, even without her first love memory as a de- 
 terrent. 
 
 But perhaps it is too much to ask for perfection.
 
 BARKER BRINGS THE NEW STAGE 
 CRAFT 
 
 "Androcles and the Lion" Wallaces Theater, 
 January 27, 1915 
 
 Granville Barker, playwright, actor, and man- 
 ager, a man of strong original talent and in sympa- 
 thy with radical experiments in stage craft, has 
 begun an American season at Wallack's Theatre, 
 with a production of Shaw's "Androcles and the 
 Lion" preceded by Anatole France's "The Man 
 Who Married a Dumb Wife." 
 
 There was a great hue and cry raised, when Bar- 
 ker announced his coming, by American actors who 
 said that in these hard times the American stage 
 should be for goods made in America, by Americans. 
 But such talk is silly. The American dramatists 
 and the American actors deserve patronage only in 
 proportion to their merits, and if Barker can give us 
 something better, why, they will either have to go 
 into the movies or else find work at other occupa- 
 tions. That is a law of nature, as well as of art. 
 
 1 88
 
 THE NEW STAGE CRAFT 189 
 
 And Barker did give us something decidedly better. 
 He gave us, for a start off, two fascinating plays, 
 beautifully mounted and acted according to the 
 picturesque and suggestive style of the new stage- 
 craft. 
 
 The first thing he did on taking possession of Wai- 
 lack's theater was to build the stage out over the 
 orchestra pit and the first two rows of seats, with 
 entrances made through the former stage boxes. 
 At the front of this almost Shakespearean platform 
 stage were neither footlights nor rail. People in the 
 front row of seats could literally touch the feet of 
 the actors when they came to the edge. The next 
 thing he did was to install arc lamps for illumina- 
 tion, combined with white spots from the balconies. 
 Thus all the light comes from overhead, and is as 
 nearly pure white as possible. The next thing he 
 did was to build a small revolving stage twenty feet 
 back of the proscenium opening, for use in "Andro- 
 cles and the Lion." 
 
 "Androcles and the Lion" is a screamingly funny 
 skit on the early Christian martyrs, by G. B. Shaw, 
 which shocked the British public, and will not shock 
 us in the least. It was printed in full in Every- 
 body's Magazine last September. The first scene 
 shows Androcles and his wife in the jungle, where
 
 190 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Androcles finds the lion and removes the thorn from 
 its paw, in a scene of hilarious mirth. For this act 
 an entirely conventional double curtain, of green, 
 ragged strips, is let down just inside the proscenium, 
 to represent the jungle, and all action takes place on 
 the platform stage over what was once the orchestra 
 and rows A and B. For the next scene this curtain 
 goes up, and we see a set of arches just behind, of 
 grayish-white, presumably the walls of Rome. In 
 front of them are the Roman soldiers and the Chris- 
 tian martyrs being led to the city. All groupings 
 and colored costumes make striking pictures against 
 this background of simple shadowed arches. 
 
 Next the arches vanish, and we see the full stage 
 set, the gladiators' room in the Coliseum, with the 
 grated door leading to the arena in the center, and 
 over it the door to Csesar's box. This set goes across 
 the stage and is painted a yellowish white, like old 
 marble. It is very thick and solid, but very simple. 
 The wings are masked out on either side merely by 
 tall gray screens, after Gordon Craig. Those who 
 have read the play will remember that after the 
 scene in this room Androcles goes through the door 
 into the arena to be devoured by the lion, and in the 
 next scene we see him coming out of the door on the 
 other side, and see the lion recognize him and begin
 
 THE NEW STAGE CRAFT 191 
 
 to kiss him instead of eating him, much to Caesar's 
 amazement. Then the scene changes back into the 
 gladiators' room, and the lion comes in with An- 
 drocles and chases everybody, including the emperor 
 himself. Thus we see the reason for Mr. Barker's 
 revolving stage. The scene is built so that the back 
 side shows the reverse of the door and the wall 
 and the emperor's box; and when the first epi- 
 sode is played, and Androcles starts through the 
 door to his martyrdom, the lights go out, the stage 
 revolves in less than a minute, and when the lights 
 flash on we see Androcles coming through the other 
 side of the door. The illusion is perfect, and the 
 time consumed in making the change so very brief 
 that it does not delay the play at all. The same 
 thing is repeated while the audience is still rocking 
 with laughter over the absurd antics of the lion when 
 he recognizes the man who pulled the thorn from 
 his foot. 
 
 The advantages of Mr. Barker's settings are 
 many. First of all, there is the intimacy which the 
 platform stage gives. Next, there is the pictorial 
 quality of the simple backings, the overhead white 
 light and the consequent prominence of the costumes 
 and groupings. Finally, there is the great advan- 
 tage of speed gained by the revolving stage and the
 
 192 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 great solidity which this stage makes possible in the 
 construction of the one wall which comprises the 
 whole Coliseum setting. A single bit of wall, heav- 
 ily built, solid, picturesque, is far more suggestive 
 than acres of flapping canvas. Also, it throws the 
 actors into far more prominence, for it does not dis- 
 tract the eye to a hundred different details, and it 
 forms a plain background against which the rich 
 costumes can group in lovely combinations. On our 
 old stages this skit would be played in five scenes, 
 with consequent waits, totaling at least half an hour. 
 Barker plays it practically as a one-act drama. 
 
 Of course, these settings would avail little with- 
 out intelligent acting and a play adapted to such 
 treatment. But Mr. Shaw's skit is entirely adapted 
 to such treatment, being fantastic in mood and far 
 removed from the present in time. And Mr. 
 Barker's company acts it to the hilt without any 
 star performers, even though his wife, Lilian Mc- 
 Carthy, is featured on the program and with a 
 speed and zest and team play that is beyond praise. 
 One has only to note, for instance, how every player 
 considers his position with relation to the groupings, 
 the stage pictures, not the spotlight. If there is a 
 star performer, it is Phil Dwyer as the lion. More 
 comical and expressive roars were never emitted by
 
 THE NEW STAGE CRAFT 193 
 
 human nor feline throat. The part of Androcles 
 is delightfully played by O. P. Heggie, in a mild, 
 wistful, long suffering, early-Christian-martyr vein, 
 with the necessary hint beneath of dogged will and 
 a dream triumphant. 
 
 "Androcles and the Lion" is preceded by "The 
 Man Who Married a Dumb Wife," a farce trans- 
 lated by Professor Curtis Hidden Page from the 
 French of Anatole France. It is not, however, a 
 piece of subtle irony like "Thais" or "Penguin 
 Island," but apparently a very frank imitation of 
 those old French farces which used to be written 
 when Columbus was discovering America, such as 
 the famous "Master Pierre Patelin." Mr. Barker 
 has given it a Reinhardt setting designed by an 
 American artist, Robert E. Jones a setting in black 
 and white on the style of the relief stage, with cos- 
 tumes in heavy reds and oranges and strong yellows. 
 Even so, however, appreciation of the play can 
 hardly come without an historical sense. It tells 
 the tale of a man who had a dumb wife, got a famous 
 doctor to restore her voice, and then was driven so 
 nearly mad by her prattle that he had the s3me doc- 
 tor put a powder in his ear to make him deaf. This 
 tale is so childish in its humor that you can enjoy 
 it only by regarding it not as a modern work, but
 
 194 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 as a medieval farce. The stage settings, however, 
 and the costume groupings and the street processions 
 passing across the platform stage over the very heads 
 of the front row of spectators are a delight to the 
 senses, whether you are interested in history or not.
 
 A FEW MORALIZINGS FROM "THE 
 WEAVERS" 
 
 "The Weavers" Garden Theater, December 14, 
 
 The present dramatic critic of the New York 
 Tribune (we say "present" because The Tribune 
 seems to believe that variety is the spice of criticism) 
 is a young man, and when he witnessed the first 
 American performance of Hauptmann's play, "The 
 Weavers," acted at the Garden Theatre by Emanuel 
 Reicher and an excellent company, his enthusiasm 
 did him credit. He said next morning that the pro- 
 duction might very possibly mark an epoch in the 
 American theatre. We only wish that we were ten 
 years younger ourself, and had therefore escaped ten 
 years of theatrical disillusionment, and could agree 
 with him. But we are not ten years younger, and 
 we have not escaped disillusionment. The Amer- 
 ican stage will go right on much as if Mr. Reicher 
 had never mounted "The Weavers." That play 
 will no more affect the current of our drama than 
 
 195
 
 196 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the Russian novelists have affected the art of Robert 
 W. Chambers and Gene Stratton Porter. 
 
 Nor is "The Weavers" the first play of the kind 
 which has been produced, and well produced, in 
 America. To be sure, it was written over twenty 
 years ago and belongs among the pioneer works of 
 sheer naturalism in the theatre, but it never had a 
 production on our English speaking stage (so far as 
 the records show) till this month. In actual pro- 
 duction it was preceded by several other purely 
 naturalistic plays, notable among them being Gals- 
 worthy's "Strife," also, curiously enough, a drama 
 of industrial conflict. "Strife" was put on, and put 
 on with rare skill, at the New Theatre, and played 
 by the New Theatre company in various parts of 
 the country. But does anybody venture to affirm 
 that "Strife" has marked an epoch in our playhouse? 
 Has the naturalistic drama made any perceptible 
 strides among us as a result 1 ? Alas, nary a stride! 
 
 Personally, we felt at the first production of 
 "Strife" exactly what Mr. Broun of The Tribune 
 felt at the first production of "The Weavers" 
 namely, a great sense of mental exhilaration, a sense 
 that at last the stage was showing something more 
 than the eternal battle of sex and the eternal per- 
 sonal narrative; that it was illuminating a whole
 
 A FEW MORALIZINGS 197 
 
 section of life and creeping very close to realities. 
 We fancy we even wrote, in our enthusiasm, that 
 the production of "Strife," an English naturalistic 
 play, would perhaps mark an epoch in the history of 
 our playhouses. 
 
 And Cohan goes marching on. Megrue is to the 
 front. Ethel Barrymore plays "Emma McChes- 
 ney." Grace George falls back upon revivals. 
 Elsie Ferguson turns to Hall Caine for a new play. 
 
 Nothing could be farther from our wish than to 
 detract one jot from Mr. Broun's enthusiasm, or even 
 to suggest that he desist from his efforts to urge all 
 New Yorkers into the Garden Theatre to see a vivid 
 and truthful performance of a truly splendid play, a 
 play in which naturalism is raised to eloquence and 
 sincerity is more soul-searching than sentiment. 
 Every audience that "The Weavers" can reach is 
 so much gained. But the sad fact remains, we fear, 
 that the naturalistic drama is foreign to American 
 taste and understanding, and each production of it 
 marks not an epoch but an "impossible loyalty" 
 one of those impossible loyalties, perhaps, which 
 caused Matthew Arnold to think so tenderly of Ox- 
 ford. A certain type of artist, a certain type of 
 critic, a certain very limited section of the public, 
 will always admire this kind of drama above all
 
 198 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 others, at least in certain moods. But for the great 
 majority it will, apparently, remain, in America, 
 caviar; which is to say, an expensive luxury. 
 
 Who can say why this is? Is it because of some- 
 thing in the national temperament? Is it because 
 of our dramatic training for audiences are trained, 
 just as much as artists'? Is it a racial convention, or 
 a racial limitation? 
 
 Think back over the American dramas coincident 
 with "The Weavers" (which was produced first in 
 1893). At about that time Herne wrote "Shore 
 Acres," which was considered a great step forward 
 in realism. But how far that play is from the 
 naturalism of "The Weavers" ! One, after all, is 
 a conventional narrative of personalities, the other 
 is a picture of a people, a class, a community. Since 
 Herne, we have had Fitch, Gillette, Klein, Moody, 
 Thomas, Eugene Walter, Edward Sheldon, Percy 
 MacKaye, and so on not a one of them really being 
 more than superficially affected by naturalism. 
 Better technique, closer observation, greater intel- 
 lectuality, enabled some of these men to write much 
 finer plays than their American predecessors. But 
 none of them has produced a play in the style of 
 "The Weavers," or of "Strife," or even attempted 
 such a play. Each, in his way, has snatched a bit
 
 A FEW MORALIZINGS 199 
 
 of personal story out of the web of life, usually, if 
 not invariably, a story of sex, or greatly involving 
 sex, heightened it by every possible device, and set 
 it before us in the terms of the conventional drama. 
 There is less sign today of a naturalistic drama in 
 America than there was when Walter wrote "The 
 Easiest Way." Possibly, also, there is less of such 
 drama in Germany than when Hauptmann wrote 
 "The Weavers." 
 
 There is, however, one fact to be considered which 
 probably has a decided bearing on the case. Except 
 in some happy land where all theatregoers enjoy 
 their drama seriously, the great majority of people 
 go to the playhouse in a holiday mood. This is 
 especially true of America. When people enter the 
 playhouse in a holiday mood it almost invariably 
 follows that they will, first of all, prefer comedy, 
 and, secondly, that if they are pleased by more tense 
 or serious drama, it will be drama with a strong story 
 interest, with the elemental "punch," with the power 
 to arouse sympathy in the concrete fate of human 
 characters. The naturalistic drama, taking life, as 
 it does, without beginning and leaving it without an 
 end, asking as it does of an audience that they draw 
 their own conclusions from the mere spectacle of 
 observed reality, has a peculiarly intellectual em-
 
 200 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 phasis, and is inevitably the chosen drama of the few 
 rather than the many probably even in Germany. 
 Moreover, the naturalistic drama, by the very laws 
 of its being, is a local affair primarily. Scribe and 
 Sardou go into any language, in any land. "The 
 Weavers" is Teutonic, and could no more be adapted 
 than you could adapt a photograph of von Hinden- 
 berg or turn Pilsener beer into Rheims champagne. 
 The truer it is to its artistic type, the truer it is to 
 some definite people or locality. 
 
 For these reasons, it seems fairly obvious that 
 under the conditions of production in the American 
 theatre there is little chance or encouragement for 
 a native naturalistic drama. Our plays here have 
 to be produced for a long run that is, for the 
 masses, not the few; and they have to be produced 
 for Broadway, which, we fear, isn't much interested 
 in the minutis of life in New England or the Ten- 
 nessee mountains. In spite of the tentative and 
 still amateur efforts to establish local theatres in 
 America provincial theatres in the true sense 
 they are still efforts with no real effect on the cur- 
 rent of our drama. At best they are only hopeful 
 signs on the low eastern horizon. We still produce 
 for Broadway, and we still produce not for theatres 
 where there is a system flexible enough to let the
 
 A FEW MORALIZINGS 201 
 
 few have their plays as well as the many, but for 
 theatres where only the drama which can attract the 
 crowds has any chance for survival. 
 
 In other words, even if there were a demand for 
 a native naturalistic drama in America, this demand 
 cannot, under present conditions, make itself felt, 
 and there is no encouragement to authors to try their 
 hand at this perhaps the most difficult of dramatic 
 forms. Such statements are rather platitudinous, 
 but it seems worth while to reiterate them. All 
 those who enjoy such a play as "The Weavers," who 
 would like to see our stage attempt the creation of 
 similar dramas, must fix firmly in their heads and 
 hearts the idea that our stage never can attempt this 
 creation till it is conducted under a different system ; 
 until there are standard provincial repertory houses. 
 And such houses must not be amateur "Little" the- 
 atres, but professional and of man's estate. The 
 problem, after all, is a practical one. A dramatist 
 can no more create a play without the physical 
 means than a painter can paint without colors and 
 brushes.
 
 A TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGEDY 
 
 "Justice" Candler Theater, April j, 
 
 John Galsworthy's play, "Justice," one of the 
 most striking examples of the modern naturalistic 
 drama, was first produced at the Duke of York's 
 Theatre, London, on February 21, 1910. It cre- 
 ated a profound impression in England, but for six 
 years it remained neglected by American profes- 
 sional managers, though there were occasional ama- 
 teur preformances. Finally Mr. John D. Williams, 
 after the formation of the theatrical firm of Corey, 
 Williams and Riter, resolved to make trial of this 
 noble work. Selecting a cast of exceptional excel- 
 lence, directed by B. Iden Payne, Mr. Williams and 
 his partners produced "Justice" in New Haven, on 
 March 2, 1916. Several representatives of New 
 York theatres were present on that occasion, and as 
 a result of their highly developed powers of ob- 
 servation, seven New York theatres refused to give 
 the production house room on Broadway. Curi- 
 ously enough, however. Mr. Williams still had faith 
 
 202
 
 TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGEDY 203 
 
 in Galsworthy's drama, and ultimately he found a 
 theatre in our metropolis which was willing "to take 
 a chance on gloom." Accordingly, "Justice" 
 opened at the Candler Theatre, New York, on April 
 3. It only remains to add that its success was im- 
 mediate and decisive; in a very few days it was play- 
 ing to the capacity of the theatre. 
 
 We record this bit of theatrical history because 
 it so well illustrates not only the obstacles which 
 confront a manager bent on doing fine and serious 
 things, but also the ready response to genuine sin- 
 cerity and power which is latent always in the public, 
 even the public of New York. Nor, perhaps, can 
 one wholly blame the theatre managers who refused 
 to book "Justice." They had all seen three of Gals- 
 worthy's other plays produced in New York with- 
 out causing a ripple of public enthusiasm, and here 
 was a fourth far more tragic and unrelieved than 
 the others. It didn't look like a hopeful gamble, 
 after all. 
 
 Why was it, then, that "Justice" became a great 
 popular success, when "The Silver Box" was a fail- 
 ure, and "Strife" and "The Pigeon" attracted only 
 moderate audiences'? Why should a stark tragedy 
 succeed, and a comparative comedy like "The 
 Pigeon" remain caviare to the general*?
 
 204 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 The answer probably is that in "Justice" Gals- 
 worthy's still white flame of spiritual sympathy has 
 for once set fire to the curtains of his reserve, and 
 he has burst into a blaze of passion. It may seem 
 curious to some to speak of "Justice" as passionate. 
 But in the finer sense of that noble and abused word, 
 it glows with a white heat of passion. Beside it, 
 "The Silver Box" is comparatively cold; beside it 
 "Strife," with its ironic vicious circle, so that the 
 play ends where it began, and "The Pigeon," with 
 its wistful inconclusiveness, are emotionally indefi- 
 nite. "Justice," after all, takes sides, it gets some- 
 where, and tugs at our hearts in the process. No- 
 body has ever questioned, or could question, the 
 sincerity of Galsworthy's sympathies for the out- 
 cast, the unfortunate, the oppressed, in any of his 
 works. But in his efforts to be fair, to keep his 
 judgments cool, and, furthermore, to preserve the 
 balance of life in all situations a purely technical 
 problem of the realist he has in his dramas, at 
 least, often erred on the side of restraint. He has 
 seemed not enough to take sides, or not enough to 
 drive for a definite conclusion. It is an error the 
 dramatist cannot make, and hope for a wide audi- 
 ence. It is a mistake he has not made in "Justice." 
 
 Yet this play has no hero, and no villain, or,
 
 TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGEDY 205 
 
 rather, it makes of every man and woman in the 
 audience the villain. The young clerk Falder (very 
 graphically and truly played by John Barrymore) 
 obeys a primitive instinct of self-preservation and 
 the preservation of the woman he loves, when he 
 raises his employer's check as the only means of 
 securing money. But he also no less surely breaks 
 one of society's necessary safe-guarding laws, and 
 society (which is you and I and all the audience) 
 has agreed that for our self-preservation we must 
 put such offenders away. So far, so good. But 
 after some thousands of years, the best place we have 
 supplied for the segregation of the law-breakers is 
 Sing Sing prison and its ilk. (Mr. Thomas Mott 
 Osborne pointed out to the Drama League, by the 
 way, that the cell of an English prison, represented 
 in "Justice," was a "palace" compared to the cells 
 in Sing-Sing.) Mr. Galsworthy doesn't believe 
 that society should rest content with such a solution. 
 He doesn't believe that society should take one of 
 its weak members (a man, mind you, who was not 
 base nor brutal, who was ironically obeying one of 
 the best impulses of his life to save the woman he 
 loved from vile persecution, when he obeyed one of 
 the worst) and put him through the prison mill and 
 then turn him out branded and doomed. All Gals-
 
 206 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 worthy's fairness of temper and skill in preserving 
 the cross purposes, the checks and balances of actual 
 life, are seen in his handling of the first two acts of 
 this play the arrest and trial of Falder. The lad 
 goes to prison with our pity, but he goes, we feel, 
 rightly. 
 
 But in the last two acts the author can at last 
 take sides. He has no defence for our present prison 
 system, and no need to place any checks upon our 
 passionate sympathy for poor Falder after his re- 
 lease, as the weak, helpless, branded creature strug- 
 gles and dies in the net that has been woven about 
 him. Here the author's own passion of sympathy 
 glows at white heat, and here is the secret of the 
 great success of "Justice." 
 
 Before a play of such profound and searching 
 social implications as this, the critic is loath to speak 
 of literary or technical excellencies. The power of 
 the drama, as acted in the theatre, over the emotions 
 of all beholders is sufficient commentary on its work- 
 manship and presentation. But it is not amiss to 
 point out at this season the tercentenary of Shake- 
 peare's death that the realistic tragedy of the early 
 Twentieth Century differs far more radically than 
 in mere literary form from the poetic tragedy of the 
 early Seventeenth. It has been said that Shakes-
 
 TWENTIETH-CENTURY TRAGEDY 207 
 
 peare never wrote a play with a hero, and the state- 
 ment is true. Neither has "Justice" a hero. But 
 Shakespeare never wrote a play in which the audi- 
 ence was the villain, which looked beyond the in- 
 dividual to the mass. By his very act in making 
 us the villain of "Justice" Galsworthy tacitly recog- 
 nizes a curative possibility in society itself; he 
 removes the blame from a vague Omnipotence and 
 by placing it on our shoulders bids us gird our loins 
 with hope and courage. It is hard sometimes in 
 this year of our Lord, 1916, to catch even the faint- 
 est hint of that "far off, divine event" toward which 
 the whole Creation is supposed to be moving. Yet, 
 to the present writer, Galsworthy's "Justice" is a 
 precious gleam in the darkness. 
 
 We hold to this in spite of the fact that the State 
 of New York is even now proposing to repeat in a 
 new structure the terrible cell-block system of Sing 
 Sing prison.
 
 SECTION III 
 SHAKESPEAREAN REVIVALS
 
 ON FINDING THE JOKE IN "OTHELLO" 
 
 Faversham's "Othello" Lyric Theater, 
 February p, igi6 
 
 William Faversham played lago exclusively dur- 
 ing the opening week of his brief New York engage- 
 ment. He had promised us "Romeo and Juliet" 
 with "futurist" scenery, but was forced to abandon 
 the plan, as he found the production as yet too rough 
 for submission to the metropolitan public. He 
 promises to improve it and launch it again next 
 year. His production of "Othello" is not "futur- 
 ist." It follows, scenically, the beaten track, though 
 with certain modifications of lighting and increased 
 simplicity due to the influence of the new stagecraft. 
 Of its kind, it is a very handsome production, how- 
 ever, one of the best we have seen. Where his 
 "Othello" differs from tradition is chiefly in Mr. 
 Faversham's own impersonation of lago, and the 
 consequent hue that gives to the entire play. It is 
 a novel, refreshing, stimulating impersonation, and 
 it gives the drama a new vitality, a new holding 
 
 211
 
 212 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 power. We think this ambitious actor has never 
 done anything better. 
 
 The keynote of his lago is humor. Unquestion- 
 ably, it sounds rather startling, this suggestion of 
 humor in relation to one of the grimmest and most 
 relentless of tragedies. But, after all, perhaps it is 
 even more tragic to murder your wife at the instiga- 
 tion of a humorist than a solemn plotter. Othello 
 was made quite as unhappy, and Desdemona was 
 no less surely slaughtered. We have, besides, the 
 bard's own authority that a man may smile and smile 
 and be a villain. 
 
 Every actor, however, must be conceded the right 
 to visualize a character for himself. Mr. Faver- 
 sham said recently, to the writer: "I have always 
 seen lago as a humorist. I have never been able 
 to conceive of him in any other way. Tradition 
 may declare that he should be made a Machiavellian 
 plotter, a subtle, sinister creature; but I could never 
 see him so. In the first place, it always seemed to 
 me that if he had been such a person, everybody 
 would have seen through him, even the honest, 
 stupid Moor. He couldn't have continued to fool 
 them all, to hold the title of 'the honest lago.' He 
 succeeded in his villainies, it always seemed to me, 
 because he was gay, humorous, light-hearted, you
 
 FINDING THE JOKE IN "OTHELLO" 213 
 
 might say dashing. I will confess that I've always 
 read 'Othello' with a smile. It seemed to me full 
 of comedy. Moreover, lago was an Italian an 
 Italian of the Renaissance. You've only to read 
 Cellini to realize something of the lack of conscience 
 in the gay days of the period. I have an idea that 
 my lago is really more truly Italian than most of 
 the lagos of tradition, whatever else may be said 
 for or against it." 
 
 Mr. Faversham might also have added, we fancy, 
 that he realized certain of his own limitations (for 
 every personality has its limitations), and knew that 
 he could play lago more effectively as a gay blade 
 of the Renaissance than as such a sinister creature 
 as we can fancy George Arliss making him, or such 
 a creature of darting, insinuating evil as Booth made 
 him. At any rate, he has chosen a definite concep- 
 tion of the character, and he has stuck to it. The 
 justification, after all, is the effect achieved. 
 
 That effect is vivid and admirable. The play, 
 indeed, as Mr. Faversham says it seems to him, 
 seems to the audience oddly sprightly. lago, in con- 
 trast to the slow, rather ponderous Moor, is a 
 creation Othello might well have failed to under- 
 stand. How could anyone so gay and gracious be 
 of evil mind*? It is small wonder Othello did not
 
 214 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 see through him. The audience does not see 
 through him for two acts, at least. It is only 
 gradually that we, out front, realize the evil of the 
 man, begin to get a clear conception of the character 
 Mr. Faversham is painting. He takes his own dia- 
 bolical wickedness so lightly! And yet, as we see 
 that wickedness working, as we behold the terrible 
 results on others, it is no less wicked, no less hor- 
 rible, in its tragic effect. This lago engages us, 
 wins our interest, almost charms us ; as he must have 
 done Othello, or the plot falls through. But we are 
 no more sorry to see his final fate than if he were 
 played like the villain of melodrama. It is an im- 
 personation which makes for tragedy without being 
 itself tragic, certainly without being theatrical. 
 And it is more Italian than any lago the present 
 writer has ever seen. It is graceful, picturesque, 
 fluent, cavalier a figure from the Renaissance. 
 
 The result of such an lago, as we have said, is to 
 make the whole drama seem curiously sprightly, 
 until, of course, the final momentum has been gath- 
 ered and we are rushing toward the end. There can 
 be no question but this is an advantage with a mod- 
 ern audience. To tragedy undiluted, especially in 
 verse, we are not attuned. When Shakespeare can 
 be thus "modernized" (to employ a perhaps mean-
 
 FINDING THE JOKE IN "OTHELLO" 215 
 
 ingless phrase ! ) without doing violence to his essen- 
 tial message, there can be no reasonable objection. 
 
 Mr. Faversham's stage direction, as well as his 
 lago, has contributed to this end. The action never 
 grows dull, never fails to bite. Each episode is 
 carefully handled for the full dramatic effect, not 
 slurred over to hurry on to the next virtuoso pas- 
 sage for the star. Cassio (well played by Pedro de 
 Cordoba) enacts his drunken scene, for example, 
 with as much realism as if he were G. M. Cohan in 
 Act I of "Broadway Jones." The scene is fully 
 "worked out." The result of such staging is that 
 the whole drama seems more alive, more vital. Vi- 
 tality, the power to hold the attention, are the 
 greatest merits, perhaps, of this production. 
 
 R. D. MacLean plays Othello, and plays him with 
 a certain slow-witted dignity which is an excellent 
 foil to lago's sprightliness. Mr. MacLean has real 
 personal distinction, a glorious voice (especially 
 when he isn't forcing it), a feeling for verse, and 
 a rare power of phrasing verse in such a way that 
 the sense is colloquial, while the sound is sheer music 
 that is, it is plausible human speech and poetry at 
 the same time. His chief lack is a certain distinc- 
 tion of enunciation, hard to define. He does not 
 mispronounce, but, none the less, his speech misses
 
 216 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the fine beauty of Forbes-Robertson's. Miss Loftus 
 is rather a colorless Desdemona (which is possibly 
 not unfitting). Miss Constance Collier, however, 
 as Emilia, supplies color for them both. We have 
 spoken already of Mr. De Cordoba's excellent Cas- 
 sio. This actor was at the New Theater. The 
 New Theater may have failed, but it is noticeable 
 that all the young players in its company have 
 gained greatly by those two years of repertory.
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 
 
 Spring, 1914. 
 
 If the ancient theatrical saw were true, that 
 "Shakespeare spells ruin," a composite picture of a 
 group of our leading players at the end of the cur- 
 rent season would closely resemble a photograph of 
 Pompeii. It is doubtful if even in the "palmy 
 days" (whenever they were) Shakespeare was so 
 frequently acted as in America during the winter of 
 1913-14. It has been often said that Germany sees 
 more Shakespeare in a season than England almost 
 in a decade; but this cannot be affirmed at present 
 of the United States and Canada. 
 
 During the season now closing, Sothern and Mar- 
 lowe, Margaret Anglin, William Faversham, Robert 
 B. Mantell, and the Benson Company have been 
 presenting Shakespearean dramas almost exclusive- 
 ly, and Forbes-Robertson has been devoting half 
 his repertoire to them, with his "Hamlet" probably 
 the most popular performance now on our stage. 
 
 If we give each company an average season of thirty 
 
 217
 
 218 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 weeks, eight performances a week, and add one hun- 
 dred and twenty performances for Forbes-Robertson, 
 we find that there will have been one thousand three 
 hundred and twenty performances of Shakespeare 
 in the United States and Canada during the season 
 just closing, without including a great many scat- 
 tered productions by stock companies, and possibly 
 some by actors of lesser note. The number of plays 
 performed was nearly a score. 
 
 Shakespeare may spell ruin, but there appear to 
 be a great many players and managers eager for de- 
 struction! Also, Germany may lead England in 
 the number of its Shakespearean productions, but it 
 will have to hustle to keep up with North America. 
 Without much question, the total number of such 
 productions on this continent during the current 
 theatrical year will be close to two thousand. The 
 figures are interesting, and they will come as an 
 awful blow to the melancholy Jaqueses of criticism, 
 who periodically wail the passing of the Bard of 
 Avon. 
 
 There are several reasons for this widespread pres- 
 entation of Shakespeare's plays, over and above the 
 fundamental reason that they are, all things con- 
 sidered, the best plays ever written. For one thing, 
 they have been played so long, and by so many dis-
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 219 
 
 tinguished actors, that they have become a standard 
 test of histrionic ability, and hence a challenge to 
 all ambitious artists. The actor who essays Hamlet 
 invites comparison at once with Garrick and Booth 
 and Forbes-Robertson with the greatest of his pro- 
 fession. Not only is he attempting a part which 
 calls for all the charm, all the depth, all the vocal 
 skill which he can command (and probably a great 
 deal more), and which richly repays his successful 
 accomplishment; but he is deliberately inviting the 
 severest of comparisons comparisons which by their 
 very severity palliate his failure and immensely 
 heighten his success. To the ambition of the actor, 
 Shakespeare is a perpetual allure. 
 
 Again, Shakespeare is an object of veneration to 
 the public, and a topic of study in all our schools. 
 There is always a large number of people who will 
 go to see his dramas acted almost as a matter of 
 principle, and to them the actor or actress who 
 mounts these dramas gains in dignity, is more highly 
 thought of. Indeed, there was a time, and not so 
 long ago, (nor has it entirely passed yet), when 
 many good people would admit that an actor was 
 respectable only when he played Shakespeare! 
 Similarly, because Shakespeare is studied in the 
 schools, there is a perpetually renewed audience of
 
 22O 
 
 young people for his plays, everywhere. It is re- 
 newed each year, in fact. No other dramatist has 
 so sure a body of auditors, nor one which awards 
 so much credit to the actor. Those players and 
 managers clever enough to realize this fact have seen 
 that Shakespeare, far from spelling ruin, is a capital 
 investment. 
 
 Then, too, of course the Shakespearean plays offer 
 almost endless possibilities (as well as perplexities) 
 of stagecraft, scene-painting, costuming, lighting. 
 Saturated as they are with poetry, glimmering with 
 romance or gloomed with tragedy, they give unlim- 
 ited scope to the imaginative producer. Written in 
 many scenes, for a stage practically bare, it is almost 
 impossible to play them now in their entirety unless 
 we either revert to the bare stage again or, like the 
 Germans, build stages which revolve or sink, mak- 
 ing the innumerable changes practicable. But they 
 are all the more a challenge, then, to the modern 
 producer. He wants to see how much of the text 
 he can preserve. He wants to see how far he can 
 simplify his scenery, still keeping it illusive, or else 
 how far he can make his stage pictures live up to 
 the demands of the poetry. He knows the material 
 he is to illustrate is the greatest in the world, and 
 if any plays can inspire him, these can. To him,
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 221 
 
 no less than to the actors, they are a challenge and 
 a spur. 
 
 These things considered then, it is small wonder, 
 after all, that Shakespeare flourishes on our stage 
 and ambitious players desire to act his dramas 
 (dramas which have the additional merit on the 
 road of familiarity, so that the suffering public can 
 know beforehand what they are going to see). This 
 year William Faversham has placed two more 
 Shakespearean roles to his credit lago and Romeo 
 and is now presenting "Romeo and Juliet" and 
 "Othello" in addition to "Julius Csesar." Follow- 
 ing his example, Miss Margaret Anglin (who, like 
 him, was once a member of the Empire Theater 
 Stock Company) has now joined the classic ranks 
 and in a single season, by labors which might well 
 stagger a player of the stronger sex, has achieved a 
 repertoire of four Shakespearean dramas and, more- 
 over, has mounted them according to the newer 
 stagecraft. Her achievement is truly remarkable, 
 and the toil involved must have been tremendous. 
 Probably no manager would ever have undertaken 
 it for her. But her reward will surely be great, also, 
 for she will now occupy a position of dignity and 
 leadership which nothing else could have brought 
 her.
 
 222 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Margaret Anglin was born in Ottawa, Canada, 
 in 1876. Her father was speaker of the House of 
 Commons, and her brother is now Chief Justice. 
 Needless to say, her family were not theatrical. 
 But she early faced her personal destiny, which 
 doubtless required some courage, and went to New 
 York to study for the stage. She made her first 
 professional appearance in 1894, as Madeline West 
 in "Shenandoah," and presently joined the company 
 of James O'Neill, where she played many parts, 
 including Ophelia. Later she played Rosalind in 
 her native Canada. It was in 1898 that a set of 
 curious chances made her the Roxane in Mansfield's 
 production of "Cyrano de Bergerac," and her New 
 York reputation began. She became the popular 
 leading woman of the Empire Theater Company, 
 where her Mrs. Dane in "Mrs. Dane's Defense" at- 
 tracted wide attention and seemed to doom her to 
 a career of "emotional" roles. Even her perform- 
 ance in "The Great Divide" but deepened the pop- 
 ular impression. 
 
 But Miss Anglin went to Australia, and tried out 
 her ripened powers in Shakespeare there. She came 
 back to America and played a little comedy part in 
 "Green Stockings," by way of contrast to a per- 
 formance of Sophocles's "Electra" at the Greek the-
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 223 
 
 ater of the University of California. Then she cut 
 loose from managers altogether, took up the reins of 
 her own destiny and early last autumn, in the West, 
 she produced "The Taming of the Shrew," "Twelfth 
 Night," "As You Like it," and "Antony and Cleo- 
 patra," with scenery and costumes designed by Liv- 
 ingston Platt, in strong contrast to the usual hack- 
 neyed settings. She was the stage manager for all 
 these plays, as well as the leading player; and she 
 brought this large and exacting repertoire back across 
 Canada to the Eastern seaboard last winter, in tri- 
 umph. The mere physical feat is impressive. We 
 think Miss Anglin is entitled to a vote ! 
 
 The present writer saw all four productions in as 
 many days, in Montreal. At that time Miss Anglin 
 herself was best as Katherine in "The Taming of the 
 Shrew," and the entire production of that irrepress- 
 ible farce was in the most consistently sustained key 
 a key of high spirits, innocent mirth, and blithe 
 romance. In Eric Blind, Miss Anglin had a Petru- 
 chio of rare physical charm, unflagging good nature, 
 and underlying tenderness. His chief fault is a 
 lack of vocal nimbleness and variety. She herself 
 is the best Shrew since Ada Rehan (who was never 
 Shakespeare's Shrew, but a very wonderful person, 
 none the less). She is brilliantly vitriolic, edged
 
 224 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 like a saber, and she is properly and convincingly 
 subdued, but only after a tussle that kindles the 
 blood. She is not so regal and magnificent as Miss 
 Rehan, but, unless our memory is at fault, she pos- 
 sesses a certain tart humanity the elder actress 
 lacked. 
 
 In staging the play, she followed the usual custom 
 of omitting the Induction, which is always regret- 
 table. 
 
 The acting of "Twelfth Night" by Miss Anglin 
 will probably cause some quarrel. She evidently 
 hasn't a very high opinion of Viola. There are 
 others, to be sure, who think of Viola as rather color- 
 less, at any rate as lacking in initiative and dash; 
 but it has been the custom to play her with more 
 gusto than Miss Anglin permits herself. We fancy 
 that the actress, in her desire to differentiate between 
 Viola and Rosalind, those two heroines in trousers, 
 tones down the former into a meekness the play did 
 not intend for, after all, it is a frolic. But her 
 impersonation is deliberate, and she does what she 
 sets out to do, though here, again, she falls some- 
 times into the error of sentimentalizing the verse, 
 instead of letting the beauty of it tell its own story 
 by the clearest and simplest of readings. "She 
 never told her love ," as spoken by Julia Marlowe
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 225 
 
 was a speech of marvelous and touching felicity and 
 pathos. Miss Anglin misses the lyric felicity, 
 and not a little of the pathos. Perhaps, after all, 
 the satisfactory impersonation of Viola comes down, 
 in the end, to a question of personality. 
 
 Miss Anglin's Rosalind can probably be imagined 
 by those familiar with her acting in lighter parts 
 in the modem drama. Rosalind has a certain ex- 
 ecutive directness (she was, after all, Mr. Shaw's 
 Ann three hundred years in advance of her times), 
 and a gay humor and self-confident poise which Miss 
 Anglin must find congenial. She gives every evi- 
 dence that she does, at any rate, and her charm, her 
 high spirits, her beauty, are infectious. 
 
 Miss Anglin's least successful performance was 
 of Cleopatra oddly enough the most emotional 
 role of the four. We fancy that she herself is least 
 satisfied with it, and probably will not hazard it in 
 New York till she has further developed it.* Her 
 performance at present is based on a conception of 
 Egypt's queen which hardly squares with the popular 
 idea. When all is said, Cleopatra was the supreme 
 harlot, and so far as the play is a love tragedy, it 
 is the tragedy of harlotry though glorified by im- 
 
 Miss Anglin presented only "As You Like It," and "The 
 Taming of the Shrew" in New York, at the Hudson Theatre, 
 in March, 1914.
 
 226 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 mortal verse and pageantried with armies and with 
 empires. Miss Anglin, however, does not so play 
 it. She keeps her vision fixed on Cleopatra, the 
 queen, and a certain haste and hectic heat, a certain 
 race of passion which is plainly enough indicated in 
 the mad alternations of the queen's moods and which 
 in reality makes the tragedy a swift one, are lacking 
 from her performance so lacking that the tragedy 
 becomes slow. The queen is as long a-dying as poor 
 Tristan in the opera, and Miss Anglin falls fre- 
 quently into an error which we would never have 
 predicted the error of intoning verse, the ancient 
 trick of "elocution." Alas, we fear there is truth 
 in the saying that no lady can play Cleopatra ! 
 
 The settings and costumes for all of Miss Ang- 
 lin's productions were made by Livingston Platt, 
 an American artist who studied abroad, and on his 
 return made his first designs for the amateur Toy 
 Theater in Boston, and then for John Craig's stock 
 company in the same city. Because his settings are 
 in themselves lovely, but still more because their 
 employment by Miss Anglin marks the first attempt 
 on a considerable scale to apply the newer stage- 
 craft to Shakespearean production in this country, 
 a somewhat extended discussion of them in this place 
 seems worth while.
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 227 
 
 The key to his scheme is found in the fore-stage. 
 Some six or eight feet back of the proscenium, on 
 either side, are hung negative, plain brown draperies. 
 Between them and the proscenium are thrust out two 
 entrance doorways, solidly built, one on either side. 
 Each play has its own set of doorways, and its own 
 border, running across above. For "The Taming 
 of the Shrew" and "Twelfth Night" these entrances 
 are Italian, for "As You Like It" nondescript, for 
 "Antony and Cleopatra" heavy and columnar. 
 Similarly, the four connecting borders are painted in 
 the corresponding architectural styles. 
 
 Now, for every "front scene" a drop is lowered 
 just behind these fore-stage doors, boxed in by the 
 doors, the brown hangings and the appropriate 
 border. For Italian rooms, the drops are large 
 tapestries, for outdoor sets sometimes a mere picture, 
 sometimes a double drop showing a landscape over a 
 wall, or through an entrance. The two proscenium 
 doors seem part of the proscenium arch in the outside 
 scenes and do not destroy illusion; and for the in- 
 teriors they aid illusion. They are extremely 
 effective. But their chief merit lies in this while 
 the "front scene" is being played in a really illusive 
 setting, so that it does not seem like a makeshift, 
 the large full scene to follow is always being put in
 
 228 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 place, and consequently there are no waits. Scene 
 follows scene, act follows act, with great speed, but 
 without the old-fashioned effect of makeshift set- 
 tings for alternate scenes. In reality, it is a glorified 
 version of the scheme so common in the old-time 
 melodrama. 
 
 When the drop rises behind the fore-stage the full 
 set is not only framed by the proscenium, but it is 
 matted, as it were, by the architectural entrances, the 
 brown hangings, the border. It is still further con- 
 fined, set off, by a framework exactly in its own 
 mood and period. Set a Greek scene directly behind 
 the rococo I'art nouveau of the New Amsterdam 
 proscenium, for example, and the contrast is ridic- 
 ulously sharp. But with Mr. Platt's scheme the 
 eye is led in past the theater proscenium, which is 
 forgotten before the real picture is reached. 
 
 As for those pictures, they are, for the most part, 
 extremely simple. Compared with a setting of 
 Shakespeare by Irving or Tree, or even Mr. Sothern, 
 they are sometimes a mere nothing. Yet they are 
 illusive and lovely, and several of them are genuine 
 works of art quite by themselves, pictures the eye 
 dwells on with pleasure, pictures which fire the 
 imagination, which at last live up to the magic of 
 the verse.
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 229 
 
 Such will be the duke's palace in "Twelfth Night" 
 when Miss Anglin gets to a theater with a modern 
 lighting plant (if one exists in America). It is 
 utterly simple nothing on the stage but a couch, 
 and behind that three gracefully arched windows 
 letting out on southern landscape with poplars afar 
 off. The color and lights are all a pearly room, 
 sunlight streaming in through the windows, the red 
 robes of the duke upon his couch, a flash of gold, and 
 then the gray of Viola. No foots, of course, should 
 be used here, though they had to be in Montreal. 
 The light should all stream in from the rear. A 
 similar room, better lighted, made the last scene of 
 "The Shrew." Here the light fell on the glass of 
 the banquet table, on a heap of yellow fruit, on the 
 rich Italian costumes of the courtiers, and it was 
 so bright, so colorful, so beautifully composed, that 
 it might almost have been a Paul Veronese painting 
 come to life. Again, in "Twelfth Night," we are 
 shown a scene at the palace consisting entirely of a 
 narrow back drop, not twenty feet wide, on which 
 is painted a garden shrine at the end of a poplar 
 alley, and which is flanked by great brown curtains. 
 On the stage is a couch, a tiny table, a small foun- 
 tain of exotic design, not over two feet high. There 
 is nothing else, not even a wing piece. Yet, in
 
 230 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Montreal, the audience applauded this set as the cur- 
 tain rose ! It is simplified scenery with a vengeance, 
 yet pictorially beautiful and entirely satisfying. 
 
 But it is in "Antony and Cleopatra" that Mr. 
 Platt has done his best work. His Roman scenes 
 are for the most part set on half stage and made by 
 hangings and a few Roman benches. They are, of 
 course, chiefly tents. A bit of wall with a drop 
 behind is Antony's garden. Behind them the great, 
 towering yellow screens, out of which Mr. Platt 
 builds his dream of Egypt, are - set up and left un- 
 disturbed. 
 
 Here again in his full sets he uses no wing pieces 
 and no sky borders. The screens (which by a simple 
 short panel set at right angles on either edge look 
 tremendously solid) both block the sides and tower 
 up suggestively out of sight, making sky borders 
 needless. They are shifted, as Craig shifted his in 
 the Moscow "Hamlet," to make either Cleopatra's 
 palace or the interior of her monument, though it 
 must not be supposed that with Mr. Platt the screens 
 are all. He also employs realistic furniture and 
 sections of scenery and painted drops. Pale yellow- 
 ish brown, like aged stone, they rear aloft in the 
 monument interior with a ghostly, dim blue radi- 
 ance in dagger blades between them, and amid the
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 231 
 
 shadows at their base the figures mysteriously come 
 and go, the reds and greens and purples of their 
 robes like dragon flies in the dusk. In the monu- 
 ment set the sides are boxed in, with a window on 
 the right admitting a blue radiance, and at the rear 
 two yellow walls, eight feet high, nearly meeting at 
 a flight of steps in the center. Dim incense burners 
 flicker at the feet of two gods upon these walls, and 
 at the base of them the red robe of Charmian is like 
 a splotch of blood. Cleopatra dies in the blue radi- 
 ance from the window, and the purple robe thrown 
 over Antony's body is like spilled wine. Out of the 
 mystery at the base of the towering screens comes 
 Csesar in scarlet and looks upon the scene. 
 
 But even more imaginative and simpler is the 
 setting for Cleopatra's palace roof, where the queen 
 receives her first messenger, which Miss Anglin 
 makes the first scene of Act II. Here there is abso- 
 lutely nothing on the stage but a dim, towering 
 screen at either side to mask the wings, a low wall 
 nearly across the back, made by laying one screen 
 on edge, a higher section of wall on the right, where- 
 on reclines a figure in black silhouette, and beyond 
 that the night sky. The illusion of height and of 
 desert sand below and far off an unseen horizon is 
 extraordinary. Cleopatra sits on the wall and the
 
 232 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 moonlight makes strange pools of color with her 
 robes and jewels. Mardian, the eunuch, shines 
 ebony in the silver illumination, and his gestures 
 are those of an Egyptian relief. The silhouette 
 raises up on its elbows and emits a long-drawn, start- 
 ling cry, answered from far off and far below by the 
 hail of the messenger. The scene, of course, de- 
 pends chiefly on the electrician, for the actual set- 
 tings are ridiculously simple and can be put in place 
 in forty-eight seconds three or four screens, with 
 no furniture whatever. Yet the audiences applaud 
 it instinctively. It is marvelously lovely. It drips 
 with the hot Egyptian night, it carries the beholder at 
 once up on the roof top above the desert plains. 
 
 Curiously enough, Mr. Platt has been least suc- 
 cessful with "As You Like It," the most romantic 
 of the plays. Here he has no architectural features 
 to work with or to use as wing screens, and, being 
 without a semi-circular horizon or sufficient height 
 of fly gallery for unscreened drops (height cannot 
 be depended on in provincial cities, and much of 
 Mr. Platt's scenery had to be cut down for the road), 
 he has had to resort in his forest sets to the clumsy 
 expedients of tradition, such as woodland wing 
 pieces and foliage lowered on a tennis net to "solid" 
 tree trunks above papier mache mossy stones. But
 
 MISS ANGLIN AND THE BARD 233 
 
 at least he has avoided stage grass and paper flowers ! 
 Perhaps his forests will be better when they can be 
 lighted, as he intended, from above. But it seems 
 to be a fact that the outdoor set is more difficult for 
 the new impressionists to manage than the interior 
 or partially outdoor. They have not yet solved the 
 problem in any production the present writer has 
 seen save in the case of a desert plain or other abso- 
 lutely waste space to a low, distant horizon. 
 
 However, the total impression of these four pro- 
 ductions is one of great beauty, poetic illusion, and 
 eminent fitness. Furthermore, Miss Anglin has pre- 
 served a goodly proportion of the texts, and still con- 
 trived to close the plays at a decent hour. She and 
 Mr. Platt have demonstrated that it is quite possible, 
 then, to mount Shakespeare with adequate scenery 
 and without long waits or textual slaughter, even 
 on the American stage, handicapped as it is by lack 
 of mechanical equipment. They both deserve our 
 gratitude.
 
 DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOLD FAIRIES? 
 
 "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Wallaces 
 Theater, February i6> 
 
 Granville Barker has now mounted "A Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream," at Wallack's Theater, and 
 shown us, perhaps, the most unusual of all his pro- 
 ductions. It will alternate with "Androcles and 
 the Lion" throughout the season, other plays being 
 added to the repertory later. It is amusing to see 
 the confusion which has resulted. The poor New 
 York public, totally unused to repertory since Mans- 
 field died, can't get it through their silly heads that 
 if a new play has been put on, the old one hasn't 
 been withdrawn. 
 
 There are two outstanding features of Mr. Bark- 
 er's production of Shakespeare's musical comedy. 
 The first is the fact that the method of staging per- 
 mits the entire text to be played without a single 
 cut, so that for the first time in the present writer's 
 experience the story emerges as a coherent, clear and 
 swiftly moving tale. This always does happen 
 
 234
 
 GOLD FAIRIES 235 
 
 when a Shakespearean play is acted without cuts. 
 The bard knew his business. He didn't write scenes 
 merely for the fun of it ; he wrote them to further his 
 story. The only proper way to stage Shakespeare 
 is the way which permits the use of the entire 
 text. 
 
 Hitherto it was supposed this could only be ac- 
 complished on a bare stage, or else one which was 
 equipped with elaborate mechanical devices, such as 
 are found in Germany. Mr. Barker, without re- 
 sorting to Reinhardt's revolving stage, and without 
 stripping down to the bare boards, either, has solved 
 the problem. 
 
 The second outstanding feature of his production 
 (which was "decorated" by Norman Wilkinson) is 
 its incessant, bizarre, pictorial appeal. The eye is 
 constantly surprised, constantly delighted, and 
 though many of the settings are so different from any 
 Shakespearean settings we have been accustomed to 
 that they rather disturb the conventional-minded, 
 nevertheless before the play is over they have estab- 
 lished their own mood and even if this mood isn't 
 what we have been accustomed to call Elizabethan, 
 it is at least so potent that the play takes on a new 
 lease of life. You leave the theater a bit bewil- 
 dered, but admitting that, after all, you never knew
 
 236 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 before that "A Midsummer Night's Dream" could 
 be such an interesting play. 
 
 When the audience gathers in the theater, it sees 
 the forestage (built out as far as old Row C), bathed 
 in white light, and hanging just inside the prosce- 
 nium, framed by a second proscenium of plain gold, 
 like a box, a curtain of whitish color, with a frail 
 green and gold floral design upon it. Just in front 
 is a black seat, on a slightly raised platform. As 
 trumpets sound, four negro slaves enter, by the pas- 
 sage made by the elimination of the stage box, and 
 they are followed by Theseus, Hippolyta and the 
 court. The costumes are not the traditional Greek, 
 but are full of barbaric color, which is perhaps more 
 nearly authentic. The duke and his lady seat them- 
 selves on the black seat, and the play begins. Just 
 as the entrance has to be made with a certain amount 
 of pageantry and music, so the stage has to be 
 cleared in the same way. For the next scene, all 
 that is required is the raising of the curtain. Six 
 inches behind it is another curtain, painted with a 
 quaint, formal representation of a window or two 
 and a glimpse of the city. It is a cloth curtain, 
 hanging in folds. Before this Bottom and his fel- 
 lows plan their play. Then this curtain also rises, 
 and behind it (it will be seen that so far the real
 
 GOLD FAIRIES 237 
 
 stage, behind the proscenium, has not been used at 
 all) is a third curtain, painted plain Nile green on 
 the bottom edge, and above that deep blue, spangled 
 all over with silver stars and a huge moon. The 
 light is dimmed down, and the fairies enter. 
 
 The fairies are the most bizarre things in the 
 entire production. They are entirely clad in gold, 
 with gold faces, gold hands, gold hair hanging in 
 gold curls like shavings from a new yellow board. 
 They are undeniably strange and at once differen- 
 tiated from anything mortal. It may very well be 
 questioned if they are the fairies of Shakespeare's 
 vision. They are not ethereal, but solid as gilt 
 statues, and stiff like statues, too, moving with 
 quaint, automatic motions. It is to them that most 
 of the objection will come. Yet they are undeni- 
 ably tremendously picturesque and undeniably they 
 do give the desired effect of difference. Perhaps, 
 when we consider how few productions of this play 
 have ever been able to create the mood of the super- 
 natural, these stiff gold fairies are better than the 
 more conventional representations, even if they do 
 rather orientalize a purely Elizabethan play. Only 
 Puck is not in gold. He is clad in bright scarlet, 
 with yellow hair streaming back like a comet's tail. 
 
 For the next scene the full stage is used at last.
 
 238 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 It is a very beautiful and strange set. Filling al- 
 most the entire stage is a green mound rising to a 
 dome in the exact center. Above this dome is sus- 
 pended a quaint ring, or wheel, of purple grapes and 
 leaves. Surrounding it on all three sides are long, 
 upright strips of Nile green cloth, between which 
 you see only an indefinite blueness. They are, pre- 
 sumably, the forest trees. They go up out of sight, 
 and of course all the illumination comes down from 
 above. This is pure suggestion with a vengeance, 
 and it is so lovely and so effective that the audience 
 bursts into applause. Of course, the green mound 
 is Titania's fairy bower, and here most of the re- 
 mainder of the action in the forest takes place, with 
 the characters vanishing and reappearing amid the 
 towering strips of green cloth. 
 
 When the action in the forest is over, the play is 
 practically over, too, and here Mr. Barker makes his 
 long break (there has been but one very brief inter- 
 mission before). It is long after ten when the last 
 act is begun. Again the full stage is used. The 
 forestage, as always, is bare. From immediately 
 behind the proscenium rises a flight of jet black steps, 
 all across the stage, to a height of six feet or more, 
 and on that elevation stands a forest of round silver 
 columns supporting white crossbeams through which
 
 GOLD FAIRIES 239 
 
 you glimpse the night sky. Black and silver that 
 is all. The duke and the lovers and the court re- 
 cline, Roman fashion, on couches at the very front 
 of the fore-stage, their backs to the audience, and 
 upon the platform, against the black and silver, 
 Bottom and his friends enact their Weber & Fields 
 burlesque. Then all the humans depart, and in 
 come the gold fairies, and to an old Elizabethan air 
 weave a dance amid the forest of silver pillars, 
 blessing the house. One by one they go out, like 
 the candles in the "Farewell Symphony," till only 
 Puck is left, in his red dress, before a yellow curtain 
 which has descended, in a dim radiance, to speak the 
 epilogue. 
 
 The entire production holds the interest without 
 a break, if only for its strangeness. It is played 
 at a tremendously rapid pace, which too often blurs 
 the beauty of the verse; but that is about the only 
 flaw in its accomplishment of its purpose. The cos- 
 tumes are of rare richness in color, and every move 
 of every player brings some fresh pictorial delight, 
 as these costumes group and melt and group again 
 against harmoniously colored backgrounds. All the 
 music is old English, and so are the dances. Men- 
 delssohn has been mercifully abandoned. The act- 
 ing, too, is excellent. Actors play leading parts who
 
 240 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 were almost supers in "Androcles" and vice versa. 
 Mr. Barker has a true stock, or repertory company. 
 But best of all the performances is that of a man 
 named Ernest Cossart as Bottom. He does no mug- 
 ging. He doesn't try to be funny. He doesn't 
 even try to be uncouth and ugly. He is just vain- 
 glorious and stupid in a most natural, almost quiet 
 way and consequently he is capital. However, 
 all the actors in the mechanic's drama are unconscious 
 and hence delightfully humorous. This usually 
 dull feature of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" 
 dull because usually so forced and laborious is in 
 the Barker production one of the most fascinating 
 features. 
 
 The production will arouse controversy (which 
 is good for business). But whether it jibes with 
 our preconceived notions or not, there is no denying 
 its unity of effect, its rare pictorial beauty and its 
 power to hold the attention unflaggingly, sending 
 you from the theater with lovely pictures in your 
 memory and a sense of strangeness, as of a dream. 
 After all, what more can you
 
 "THE TEMPEST" WITHOUT SCENERY 
 
 "The Tempest" Century Theater, April 24, 1916 
 
 The Tercentenary celebration of Shakespeare's 
 death was observed in New York by productions of 
 the poet's plays in no less than three manners not 
 including, of course, the amateur variations! Sir 
 Herbert Tree, at the New Amsterdam, produced 
 "King Henry VIII" after the late Victorian fashion, 
 with operatic pageants and conventionally excellent 
 scenery. At the Criterion Theatre; under the man- 
 agement of James K. Hackett, Richard .Ordynski 
 (pupil of Reinhardt) produced "The Merry Wives 
 of Windsor" in the manner of modern Germany. 
 The scenery, heavy and markedly composed into 
 pattern of design and color, was painted by Joseph 
 Urban; and an incessant bustle, a driving pace, a 
 fluid and highly mannered series of forming and 
 melting and reforming tableaux, distinguished this 
 production, giving that sense of "style," in the Con- 
 tinental use of the term. Finally, at the Century 
 
 Theatre (formerly the New Theatre), John Corbin 
 
 241
 
 242 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 and the actor, Louis Calvert, under the patronage of 
 the Drama Society, put on "The Tempest" in some- 
 thing approximating Elizabethan fashion. The 
 full text is spoken, there are but two intermissions, 
 and the only scenery employed, excepting a few 
 property trees and the like, is disclosed in the little 
 alcove under the Elizabethan balcony at the rear, 
 which serves first as the ship's cabin and later as 
 Prospero's cave. 
 
 There could hardly be a better test of Shake- 
 speare's dramatic power. He survives all three 
 methods of treatment, and each brings out some- 
 thing from his work which the other two miss. 
 Tree's production catches the pageantry. Ordyn- 
 ski's production records the speed and pictorial pat- 
 tern. But the production on the bare stage we our- 
 self like best of all, for it spurns all other aids and 
 stimuli, and compels the imagination by the sheer 
 power of the actor's art and the poet's verbal magic. 
 
 There is a great deal of talk about what Shake- 
 speare would do if he were writing today. "Of 
 course, he would employ scenery," people declare. 
 Therefor, is the implication, let us employ it for 
 him. Undoubtedly he would employ scenery; but 
 he would also employ quite a different technique in 
 the conduct of his story, and he would write in prose.
 
 "THE TEMPEST" 243 
 
 Should we, therefor, cut his plays to pieces, and 
 reduce his blank verse to common conversation 
 which is what most of our managers and actors be- 
 tween them actually do? After all, the plays were 
 written for a stage practically bare, and on such a 
 stage they are most effectively performed, just as 
 "Don Giovanni" is most effectively performed in a 
 theatre, not an opera house, with a small orchestra 
 and a harpsichord. Also, they are thus most eco- 
 nomically performed, and have the maximum of 
 educational value. Mr. Corbin has done a fine 
 work in returning "The Tempest" to the stage in 
 its integrity, for the first time, he maintains, in three 
 hundred years. After the Restoration, we know, 
 it was dressed up into a kind of opera, and in these 
 latter years, save for a revival at the hands of 
 Augustin Daly in 1897, it has slept the dusty sleep 
 of the admired classics. 
 
 In the present revival, several able actors are con- 
 cerned. Mr. Calvert plays Prospero with some- 
 thing too little of royal dignity", but with an evident 
 love for the poet's metres. Walter Hampden is the 
 Caliban, and a gruesome, grovelling beast he is. 
 Cecil Yapp is the Trinculo, and George Hassell 
 the Stephano. These two men are artists, Hassell 
 especially being almost unrivalled on our stage as
 
 244 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 an unctious low comedian who, at the same time, 
 holds himself in fine restraint and can touch other 
 stops on occasion with ease and deftness. It is un- 
 likely that the comic scenes between Caliban, Trin- 
 culo and Stephano have ever been much better 
 played than in the present production. The ro- 
 mance of Ferdinand and Miranda fades a little, at 
 the hands of a tame actress, before this rich, ripe 
 fooling, just as the fairy spell of Ariel evaporates 
 when Fania Marinoff, the Ariel, speaks or sings. 
 Ariel is, perhaps, one of the most difficult parts in 
 Shakespeare, because of the diversity of its require- 
 ments. The player must be light of foot as a 
 thistle-down, with the tongue of an angel, the voice 
 of a bird, the elfin charm of a Maude Adams. 
 
 The goddesses and nymphs in the masque Mr. 
 Corbin caused to disappear behind a curtain of hiss- 
 ing steam, finding his warrant for so doing in Shake- 
 speare's own stage directions and in his investiga- 
 tions of the Elizabethan theatre. There is no 
 cause to quarrel with him. If a woman plays 
 Miranda, we are already not strictly Elizabethan. 
 A little modern steam may be readily forgiven, sup- 
 posing it could be proved that Shakespeare didn't 
 employ steam himself. What is here sought is the 
 preservation of the text in its integrity, and the ap-
 
 "THE TEMPEST" 245 
 
 peal to the imagination through the medium of the 
 poet's verse and story. There is no use denying 
 that in the masque, where an appeal to the eye is 
 frankly made, we miss the richness of the modern 
 stage. But for the rest of the play we miss it not 
 at all. Shakespeare has his way with us, making of 
 bare boards his magic island, of two box trees in a 
 pot his tangled forest, of actors speaking immortal 
 verse his summons into fairy-land. One at least 
 of Shakespeare's plays ought to be produced each 
 year in this simple manner, with the best actors pro- 
 curable. It is a splendid stimulus to our pampered 
 imaginations.
 
 SECTION IV 
 PLAYS, PLAYERS, AND ACTING
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 
 
 There is a class of drama known to those who 
 love to put tags upon everything as the comedy of 
 manners. The term is now little used except to 
 describe the drama of the eighteenth century, 
 Sheridan's "School for Scandal" being the crowning 
 example of the comedy of manners. This particu- 
 lar division of the drama is thus defined in Henne- 
 quin's "Art of Playwriting" : 
 
 "In the comedy of manners especial attention 
 is paid to character drawing, and each character is 
 made the representative of a certain trait or passion. 
 In this way conventional or stock characters are de- 
 veloped, such as the dissipated son, the rich and 
 miserly uncle, the cruel father, the intriguing ser- 
 vant, and so on, which are used over and over again. 
 Comedies of manners are of a quiet and domestic 
 character and deal with the follies of society." 
 
 The ordinary mind, contemplating this definition, 
 
 249
 
 250 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 is a little perplexed to know why half the comedies 
 it sees to-day are not comedies of manners. At any 
 rate, stock characters are developed which are used 
 over and over again. And the ordinary mind, per- 
 haps, contemplating the American stage, is inspired 
 to wonder if, even within the strict limits of this 
 definition, we are not developing a comedy of bad 
 manners. 
 
 One of the early types developed for stage use to 
 symbolize the American was Asa Trenchard, in the 
 Englishman, Tom Taylor's, play, "Our American 
 Cousin," a comedy afterward rechristened "Lord 
 Dundreary," and acted for many years by the elder 
 Sothern. Asa Trenchard was an uncouth lout, let 
 us trust in reality never typical at all. But he 
 flourished in drama till W. J. Florence acted Bard- 
 well Slote and John T. Raymond acted Mark 
 Twain's Mulberry Sellers. The manners of these 
 stage characters were little better, though they were 
 vastly more entertaining. Their more recent suc- 
 cessors are Joshua Whitcomb (kindly and sweet old 
 grandfather of a loutish brood of by-goshing stage 
 children) and Daniel Voorhees Pike in "The Man 
 from Home." With all his differences, Daniel 
 Voorhees Pike is the legitimate stage descendant of 
 Asa Trenchard,' he is simply the latter-day example
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 251 
 
 of the type labeled "an American" in our comedy of 
 bad manners. 
 
 But we are rapidly developing another type 
 labeled "an American" which seriously threatens the 
 preeminence of the old. This type is being devel- 
 oped by the younger playwrights, headed, perhaps, 
 by that peerless leader, George M. Cohan. It is 
 most often urban instead of rural, but even more 
 than the old, the new drama which displays the type 
 is our comedy of bad manners. These bad manners 
 are not peculiar to our drama; they permeate our 
 fiction also. Mr. Cohan's skillful and amusing 
 play, "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," is made from 
 a story said to have been enormously popular in a 
 magazine which affirms a circulation equal to half 
 the population of the original thirteen colonies. 
 This new type is a brisk, resourceful, humorous, 
 slangy young person, fresh in every sense of the 
 word, always of low- or middle-class origin, without 
 any manners but bad ones, quick-witted but super- 
 ficial, devoid of fine breeding, distinction, charm. 
 He overruns our stage just now. The plays of 
 Edgar Selwyn, of George M. Cohan, of James 
 Forbes, of George Ade, of Henry W. Blossom, and 
 of many others, give him a field for his activities. 
 Always he triumphs. Always he is the hero. Al-
 
 252 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ways he is the type "an American," the new type 
 in our comedy of bad manners. 
 
 There is something veracious about him, too. 
 One meets him on the street on Broadway, at any 
 rate. One sees him at the races and ball games. 
 He is loafing round the post office after supper in 
 our smaller towns. There are some of us, to be 
 sure, who would rather see him educated than dra- 
 matized. But his mother wit is shrewd and amus- 
 ing, "he has good stuff in him," as the saying goes; 
 and dramatized he has been, manners and all. And 
 to play him a race of actors has been developed 
 whose "personalities" seem to fit the demands of 
 this character. His manners are reproduced to the 
 life. Grace and distinction of bearing and deport- 
 ment have become almost a lost art with many, if 
 not most, of our younger actors. Our comedy of 
 bad manners is no longer the narrow definition of 
 a certain kind of play; it is a description of much 
 that goes on upon our stage. 
 
 All of us who care for the amenities of life, who 
 esteem correct deportment in its proper place, who 
 are charmed by grace and distinction and hurt by 
 its absence from plays where it belongs, have suf- 
 fered only too often from the prevalent bad man- 
 ners of the American theatre. For these bad
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 253 
 
 manners, of course, the type of drama we have just 
 described is not alone responsible, though its pop- 
 ularity has undoubtedly tended to encourage the 
 more flippant side of the players and to discourage 
 the assiduous cultivation of correct deportment, of 
 good manners. Our present stage managers are a 
 contributory cause. They do not and too many 
 of them cannot instruct the players in carriage and 
 deportment, nor insist upon correct speech and 
 graceful bearing. The producing managers, also, 
 are to blame, because, in the first place, most of 
 them mount more plays than can possibly be pro- 
 duced with proper attention and rehearsal, and in 
 the second place because they are themselves too 
 often quite blind to the charm of good manners and 
 the value of distinction. Finally and in the last 
 analysis chiefly we, the public, are to blame, be- 
 cause we ourselves place too little emphasis on 
 charm and distinction in our judgment of the play- 
 ers (as in our judgment of our fellow men), esteem- 
 ing some too highly who lack these graces, esteem- 
 ing the few who possess them not enough, and in 
 general showing too little vigorous insistence in our 
 drama on a final note of style, of elegance, of good 
 breeding. 
 
 A popular actress, herself a woman of unques-
 
 254 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 tioned breeding and distinction, whose plays invar- 
 iably call for a touch of the same qualities in others 
 of the company, particularly in the leading man, 
 recently complained to the present writer that it 
 was almost impossible to secure an American actor 
 any longer who could qualify in this important re- 
 spect. She mentioned Bruce McRae and Charles 
 Cherry as two, of course, whom she would like to 
 secure, but both of whom were elsewhere engaged. 
 Frank Worthing was also otherwise engaged. She 
 was forced to send to England for a leading man. 
 Both Mr. Cherry and Mr. McRae, it might be re- 
 marked, may be claimed more by England than 
 America. 
 
 Charles Cherry and Bruce McRae (who is a 
 nephew of that most polished and delightful of 
 gentlemen and actors, Sir Charles Wyndham), 
 neither of them actors of any considerable range or 
 power, are, indeed, capital examples of what too 
 many of our players are not. They have the charm 
 and grace of bearing which come from familiarity 
 with the usages of good society; they have the ease 
 of gentlemen and the distinction of culture. If 
 either of them were called upon to portray a man 
 of the polite world, he would not come out on the 
 stage, as one of our prominent players actually did
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 255 
 
 a few seasons ago, wearing a pink waistcoat with 
 his evening dress. He would not, as so many of 
 our actors do, affect the latest ultra-fads of the 
 Broadway tailors one button to his sack coat, 
 turned-up coat cuffs, and all the rest. He would 
 not stand like a gawk in the presence of ladies, his 
 hands thrusting out like the Scarecrow's in the "The 
 Wizard of Oz." He would not sit down before 
 the ladies were seated, nor fail to rise when they 
 enter the room, nor hitch up his trousers above his 
 boot tops, nor talk with the Broadway flat "a" and 
 the Broadway "guerl" for girl and "puerfectly" for 
 perfectly and "minut" to denote a period of sixty 
 seconds. His tone would not be that of a rent col- 
 lector come on an unpleasant duty, or the gardener 
 making love to the cook. He would, in short, bear 
 himself like a gentleman. 
 
 Lester Wallack, himself a prince of deportment 
 on the stage, with that grace and poise and dashing 
 charm of bearing so essential for the true portrayal 
 of romantic roles, once rebuked an actor at rehearsal 
 for pulling up his trousers when he sat down. 
 "You are playing a gentleman now," he said, "and 
 you are supposed to have more than one pair of 
 trousers." The point is not unimportant. Noth- 
 ing is more ridiculous and fatal to illusion than the
 
 256 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 vain actor's preening of his person on the stage, and 
 his middle-class care of his wardrobe in the presence 
 of spectators. 
 
 In contrast to such careful attention to the amen- 
 ities by Lester Wallack, one of our present-day 
 stage managers, who mounts many important plays 
 for a leading firm of producers, permitted a minor 
 actor in a drama translated from the French to 
 throw an entire scene out of key by his total lack 
 of manners. This actor, in the role of a jeweler, 
 was supposed to call upon a fine lady, to see about 
 the purchase of her jewels. It was a part of his 
 trade to purchase jewels from fine ladies and to be 
 man of the world enough never to disclose by a hint 
 that he suspected the real cause for the sale. He 
 was supposed to enter almost as a servant, bland, 
 obsequious, polite, deferential. But the stage man- 
 ager permitted the American actor who essayed the 
 part to enter like a bailiff come to make an eviction. 
 The actress, fighting to create an air of distinction, 
 of breeding, for her part, to create the atmosphere 
 of an old, aristocratic household, was, of course, 
 hopelessly baffled by this performance. The at- 
 mosphere evaporated. The last whiff of it went 
 up the chimney when the actor deliberately sat down 
 in her presence, she standing up. Bad manners
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 257 
 
 could go no further in the destruction of illusion. 
 And this bit of boorish ignorance was sanctioned by 
 a stage manager to whom are entrusted some of our 
 leading productions. The actor, if he did not know 
 any better, should, of course, have been told. It 
 would have been comparatively simple at least to 
 make him remain standing in the lady's presence. 
 Unfortunately, there was nobody with good enough 
 manners to tell him. 
 
 In Henry Austin Clapp's "Reminiscences of a 
 Dramatic Critic" is the following sentence: 
 
 "I remember hearing it said, at a time near the 
 close of the Great War, by some men who were 
 native here, and to the best Boston manner born, 
 that Edward Everett, A.B., A.M., LL.D., ex-Gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts, ex-United States Senator 
 from Massachusetts, ex-President of Harvard Col- 
 lege, ex-Minister to England, litterateur, orator, 
 statesman, was, in respect of distinction of manners, 
 in a class with but one other of his fellow citizens : 
 that other one appeared in the local directory as 
 'Warren, William, comedian, boards 2 Bulfinch 
 Place/ " 
 
 William Warren, comedian, was one of America's 
 greatest actors. He was equally at home in high 
 comedy and low, equally convincing as the fine
 
 258 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 gentleman or the country lout, as Sir Peter Teazle 
 or Dogberry. He could slough off his manners 
 when the part demanded. That is not so difficult. 
 But it is not so easy to put fine manners on, when 
 you do not possess them. With Warren they were 
 as much an instinct as personal cleanliness. He did 
 not acquire them with any thought of their being a 
 stock in trade. But a stock in trade they inevitably 
 were. They raised him to a foremost position on 
 the American stage, because they endowed his high 
 comedy impersonations with a convincing style and 
 an irresistible charm, they gave him the final note 
 of personal distinction. 
 
 How many of our players to-day can you recall 
 offhand who can play in high comedy with con- 
 vincing style and the charm of fine bearing? You 
 think, of course, of Miss Maxine Elliott, of Miss 
 Grace George, of Miss Marlowe, of Mrs. Fiske, 
 of Miss Barrymore and Miss Anglin all of them 
 practised players, several of them trained in "the 
 old school." You think of certain other practised 
 players, such as Miss Crosman and Miss Irving. 
 Of the less practised women you think, it may be, 
 of Miss Janet Beecher and of her sister, Miss Olive 
 Wyndham, at the New Theatre, who speaks so 
 beautifully and carries herself so well that you are
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 259 
 
 inclined to forgive her slim technical equipment for 
 the suggestion of emotions. Perhaps you think, 
 too, of Miss Crystal Herne and two or three more: 
 and then your memory begins to waver. You begin 
 to recall play after play where fine ladies were de- 
 picted with every shade of nasal speech, affected 
 pose (our actresses' idea of gentility being a com- 
 plete absence of naturalness), gawky gesture and 
 uncouth manners. You begin to recall the pain of 
 drawing-rooms peopled with folk totally lacking in 
 distinction, of romantic scenes without charm, with- 
 out grace, without glamor. 
 
 Again, you turn to the men. The case is even 
 worse, for manners come more naturally to the 
 ladies. You think, of course, of Mr. McRae and 
 Mr. Cherry, of Mr. A. E. Matthews, the young 
 English actor now appearing in "The Importance 
 of Being Earnest," of Frank Worthing, of Frank 
 Gillmore, now at the New Theatre, who has played 
 Romeo alluringly and the Prince in "Such a Little 
 Queen" with a genuine suggestion of royal birth 
 and breeding, of Walter Hampden, of Richard Ben- 
 nett perhaps, who is a character actor also, of George 
 Nash, who played so beautifully in "The Harvest 
 Moon," and of Mr. Sothern, Mr. Skinner, Mr. Mil- 
 ler. But Mr. Nash, Mr. Sothern, Mr. Skinner
 
 260 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 and Mr. Miller belong by rights to an elder school 
 of training. Of course, you can name some others 
 for yourself and then again your memory begins 
 to waver. The picture comes of white-gloved 
 hands thrusting hugely forth from black sleeves, 
 embarrassed about what to do with themselves, of 
 flip, unmannerly speech, of nasal inflections, mis- 
 pronunciations, lack of social distinction, of ease 
 and grace and style. You think of a long proces- 
 sion of comedies of bad manners. 
 
 It is characteristic of a certain type of jingo 
 "Americanism" to consider good manners as a sign 
 of social snobbishness and to regard personal grace 
 and distinction as a cover for mental and moral 
 sloth, even a cover for the idle rich who ride down 
 Fifth Avenue with lap dogs. This attitude is both 
 a misapprehension of what constitutes good man- 
 ners and personal distinction, and a gross flattery of 
 those who ride down Fifth Avenue with lap dogs. 
 Good manners are the outward and visible sign of 
 inward and abiding regard for the finer feelings of 
 others. Personal distinction is the result, and can 
 only be the result, of personal familiarity with fine 
 thoughts, fine people, and a beautiful way of living. 
 Because, through ignorance and unfamiliarity with a 
 more finished society, many sturdy American virtues
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 261 
 
 are found in men and women of uncouth manners, 
 it is by no means logical to infer that those virtues 
 result from the uncouthness, or that the lack of un- 
 couthness implies in all others a lack of the virtues. 
 Yet that illogical inference is exactly what too 
 many of us are prone to make, until, finally, un- 
 couthness, bad manners, a lack of personal distinc- 
 tion, have come somehow to stand as a symbol of 
 our national virtues, and the G. M. Cohan type of 
 "fresh" young man is the hero of our new romance. 
 You cannot separate the national stage from the 
 national life. As we sow in taste, we reap in 
 drama, so long as the stage is left entirely to the 
 guidance of a strictly commercial management. 
 The inability of our players adequately to perform 
 plays which call for the finer graces of speech and 
 manner, whether native dramas, dramas of the 
 European aristocracy, or comedies and romances of 
 an elder day, results, of course, from lack of proper 
 training and direction; and that lack, in turn, results 
 from the lack of any imperative demand. For the 
 brisk, veracious, slangy, nasal performance of a 
 Cohan farce, running two hundred nights on Broad- 
 way to packed houses, and consequently exalting 
 that species of drama and performance as something 
 to be emulated by writers and actors and producers,
 
 262 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 we pay by the murderous performance of Bataille's 
 "The Scandal," or -of "Decorating Clementine," or 
 of a score of other dramas, native or adapted, real- 
 istic or poetic, grave or gay, which imperatively de 
 mand for illusion style and distinction of the players. 
 
 Now, style and distinction, personal grace and 
 charm of manners, are the very technique of fine 
 living as well as its flower. So far as they are 
 unesteemed and uncultivated in American life, so 
 far is that life crude, deficient. So far as they are 
 absent from the representation of life upon the 
 stage, just so far is the stage crude, deficient. From 
 the realistic depiction of frontier society, of sordid- 
 ness, of middle-class existence as it is frequently 
 spent, they are properly absent. But this is not the 
 whole of life, even in America. Nor is the realistic 
 depiction of surrounding conditions the whole mis- 
 sion of drama. The highest, as well as the lowest, 
 deserves a place upon the stage : and upon the stage, 
 too, belong the charm of romance, the glitter of high 
 comedy, the sensuous appeal of poetry, of verbal 
 beauty, of sheer esthetic charm. 
 
 For these things style and distinction are required. 
 The sparkle of high comedy can be scattered only by 
 lips trained to speak properly, by players trained to 
 ease and grace of pose; the glamour of romance can
 
 OUR COMEDY OF BAD MANNERS 263 
 
 be cast only by players of high bearing, personal 
 charm and chivalric manners; verbal beauty may 
 only exert its spell when a love of verbal beauty 
 sits at the speaker's heart; and, in the most realistic 
 depiction of actual life, there can be no truth to our 
 finer-bred and more intellectual society unless we 
 have actors of sufficient culture and worldly wisdom 
 to comport with their parts. 
 
 Not only must our stage for its full and rounded 
 development show us the comedy of good manners 
 as well as of bad manners, but by so doing it can 
 exert a considerable influence upon our society. 
 Especially over the minds of the young, the stage 
 has a tremendous influence; in certain quarters of 
 our larger cities it is the supreme influence. Could 
 the stage display more personal distinction, could 
 it put forth the charm of good manners, of style and 
 elegance, could it show the grace of correctly spoken 
 English, it would not, perhaps, so entirely hold the 
 mirror up to American nature (as that nature is ex- 
 pressed in American manners), but it would make 
 American nature more worthy to be mirrored. 
 
 How may this result be brought about? 
 
 It may be most practic'ally and effectively 
 brought about by the direct influence of more culti- 
 vated men in the managerial department of the
 
 264 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 playhouse. Fancy the influence, not of one New 
 Theatre, but of a score of playhouses where a score 
 of managers set themselves each a standard, picking 
 and drilling their players to comport with it. 
 
 The question reduces itself once again to the 
 statement we have more than once iterated: That 
 the man who essays to become a theatrical manager 
 takes upon himself the responsibilities of a public 
 servant, for what he produces will inevitably influ- 
 ence the public taste for good or evil; that no man 
 can produce above his own level; that his works 
 will have style and distinction only in so far as he 
 possesses those qualities; and, therefore, that a stage 
 which shall exert a steady influence for better taste 
 and better manners must be managed by better men, 
 men who are not of the "common average," but 
 above it. The advent of more such men into the 
 theatrical "business" is earnestly to be desired. 
 We need them quite as much as we need play- 
 wrights. May we not look to the newly awakened 
 interest in the practical theatre among our colleges 
 to produce managers as well as authors? Why the 
 management of a fine art should be given over so 
 exclusively as it is to something generally less than 
 the "common average" remains a reproach and a 
 mystery.
 
 THE REAL FOES OF THE SERIOUS 
 DRAMA 
 
 1911 
 
 As a new season opens in the playhouse, we 
 might do well to pause and consider our attitude 
 toward the play, for it is our attitude toward the 
 play, quite as much as it is the players or the play- 
 wright, which ultimately determines what kind of 
 a drama we shall have. 
 
 The real foes of a serious, effective and socially 
 important national drama in America are not the 
 managers, who are glad enough to produce any kind 
 of a play demanded if somebody will pick it out 
 for them ! The real foes are not the frivolous thou- 
 sands who prefer musical comedy or vaudeville 
 "tired business men," drummers, ladies on shopping 
 expeditions, and their like. Such frivolous folk we 
 have always with us, always have had, and always 
 will have. Indeed, the best of us are frivolous now 
 and then, and the man who says he doesn't like a 
 good musical comedy we regard in very much the 
 
 265
 
 266 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 same way as the man who says he doesn't like onions 
 as a liar. No, the real foes of a serious, effective 
 drama in America, which shall rank as literature on 
 the one hand and as a social force on the other, are 
 the thousands of good men and women more 
 women than men, unfortunately whose attitude 
 toward the stage is represented by their reiterated 
 remark in the face of a serious drama, "There's 
 enough unhappiness in the world without showing 
 it on the stage." 
 
 The attitude of these people toward the stage is 
 only too apt to be their attitude toward all art; but 
 it is only the theatre which concerns us here. Who 
 are these people? They are not the frivolous, the 
 unintelligent. They are more often than not most 
 serious-minded, and even pursuers of culture at 
 Chautauquan conventions, middle-aged and elderly 
 women, passionate workers in the church, seekers 
 after the salvation of the heathen and their pastor's 
 health, rigorous adherents to the strictest standards 
 of morality of such are the foes of a serious drama. 
 Men of solid standing in the community, of mature 
 judgment, of high civic ideals of such are the foes 
 of a serious drama. Younger women, neither 
 frivolous nor unintelligent, but just ordinary girls 
 grown up into the responsibilities of motherhood
 
 REAL FOES OF SERIOUS DRAMA 267 
 
 with comfortable homes and a wholesome desire for 
 the occasional pleasures of the theatre of such are 
 the foes of a serious drama. They are its foes be- 
 cause they are the very people who should support 
 it. Instead they, whose attitude toward life is one 
 of sane recognition of its gravity, assume toward the 
 stage an attitude of evasion, and demand of art not 
 honesty and seriousness, but a pretty story which 
 shall ignore the facts of life and take account only 
 of the fictions of romance; which shall, at any rate, 
 if it takes account of the facts of life, select only 
 the pleasant facts. 
 
 A preacher in a certain Pennsylvania city once 
 preached a sermon describing the squalors and pri- 
 vations among the mill and factory laborers and 
 their families at the other end of the town. After 
 the service a good lady of his congregation came up 
 to him reproachfully. "Why do you preach such 
 sermons?" she asked. "You have harrowed me all 
 up! I come to church to be spiritually uplifted and 
 soothed." 
 
 That, we fear, is the attitude of a great many 
 good ladies, and not a few good men, toward the 
 drama. 
 
 We have said that such people are the real foes 
 of a serious national drama, a drama that shall be
 
 268 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 literature and shall be of social value, because they 
 are most often the people who, in the community 
 at large, represent the solid element of average in- 
 telligence and civic service. They are the ones who 
 support the church, the village improvement society, 
 the Y. M. C. A., the boys' club; who keep their 
 lawns and their children in order; who are, whether 
 rich or poor, the people at whom our patriotic 
 orators proudly point. They are honest in their 
 lives; they are dishonest in their art. They declare 
 that they "want to get away from unpleasant things 
 in the theatre" and they do not mean that they 
 want vaudeville or musical farce, because they are 
 not the supporters of stage frivolity. They mean 
 that they want drama which is pleasantly romantic, 
 which has no relation to the stern facts of contem- 
 porary society. They want, like the good lady in 
 church, to be soothed. Thus the very class of the 
 population which, in the practical matters of life, 
 may be relied upon for support, in the matter of 
 art cannot be relied upon at all. These people do 
 not regard art as a practical matter of life, but as 
 something quite apart from life, and of consequent 
 unimportance. That is their error. Once con- 
 vince them that art, especially the drama, is of quite 
 as much living and practical importance as Chinese
 
 REAL FOES OF SERIOUS DRAMA 269 
 
 missions or the minister's salary or the trimming of 
 the sidewalks, and we fancy an astonishing change 
 would come over our stage; there would be a wid- 
 ening and deepening of the scope and appeal of our 
 serious drama, due to the new encouragement and 
 support. 
 
 But how convince them*? The task sometimes 
 seems hopeless, because there is something per- 
 versely illogical in their attitude. We have said 
 they regard art as unimportant. That is not en- 
 tirely true. They are willing to admit it possesses 
 a practical power for harm, but they cannot see how 
 it can, conversely, possess a practical power for 
 good by treating seriously the serious facts of life. 
 "The Easiest Way," for example, or "Mrs. War- 
 ren's Profession" to name two exceptionally un- 
 pleasant plays which the sentiment of these people 
 succeeded in forbidding, one in Boston, one in 
 New York are not to be tolerated because "no 
 good can come of showing such things on the 
 stage; there's enough of such unhappiness in the 
 world," and our young people "will learn from 
 such plays a great many things they shouldn't 
 know." 
 
 Just how far this attitude is inspired by a real 
 regard for our young people, or how far it is in-
 
 270 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 spired by an aversion to face the unhappy facts of 
 life when presented in so concrete and vivid terms, 
 is a question we need not go into here. The truth 
 remains that it is not the part of wisdom to adapt 
 all our drama to the young-person, but to pick what 
 plays our young shall go to see. Thus we dispose 
 of the young-person argument. 
 
 When we come to the argument that "there's 
 enough unhappiness in the world, and no good can 
 come of depicting it on the stage," we can only 
 answer that so long as there is so much unhappiness 
 in the world, it is our duty to keep people reminded 
 of it, by every means in our power, until they are 
 driven to remedy matters. It is a psychological 
 banality that man is roused to action much less 
 readily by indirect than direct stimulus. We read 
 without a shudder of 100,000 Hindoos dying of 
 famine in India. But if a family we know, in our 
 town, should starve, we would cringe with the hor- 
 ror of it. We have read, most of us, of insufficient 
 wages paid to working girls, and the dreadful moral 
 result; but how many of us have been roused to see 
 what remedial steps we, personally, can take"? 
 How real an impression has it made upon us"? De- 
 pict such conditions truthfully on the stage, in the 
 vivid terms of the theatre, let your audience become
 
 REAL FOES OF SERIOUS DRAMA 271 
 
 absorbed in your story, caught up into the lives of 
 your characters, and you have done the next best 
 thing, for purposes of rousing response, to striking 
 your audience directly through the tragedy of some 
 one near or dear to them. Most Englishmen have 
 never been in prison, and they remained indifferent 
 to the abuses of the English prison system till 
 Mr. Galsworthy's play, "Justice," was produced. 
 There is unhappiness enough in the world, enough 
 and to spare, but Mr. Galsworthy proposed that 
 there should be a little less, so he roused the nation 
 by a drama. That is the good which can come of 
 "putting such things on the stage." 
 
 So much for the social side of the serious drama. 
 No less important is the more strictly literary side. 
 No artist who is worthy of the name writes or paints 
 or carves or composes in a constant spirit of levity, 
 or with a disregard of the relations between his work 
 and the facts of nature. Art, for the genuine artist, 
 is not play; it is serious business, the business of 
 recording in coherent and significant form his ob- 
 servations of the world about him and his sense of 
 their drift and significance. No enduring art has 
 ever been created, nor ever will be created, which 
 is not the artist's conscious comment on life; and 
 the highest pleasure which we derive from a work
 
 272 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 of art is the pleasure of realizing its truth, expand- 
 ing our own experience of life by living thus vicar- 
 iously in an art work, and gaining through the 
 artist's eyes a new sense of beauty or of power. 
 Such art is only created by large-minded and serious 
 men. Such men can only create it when they are 
 unhampered in their choice of subject, when they 
 are permitted to follow their natural bent, write of 
 what interests them, paint what seems to them worth 
 painting. And just so long as the public puts a 
 check on the freedom of the playwright's choice by 
 refusing to enjoy or to patronize plays which are 
 not sweet, romantic fictions, just so long will a true 
 literary drama remain in abeyance, true artists of 
 intellectual power and serious interest in the prob- 
 lems of life turn to other fields of endeavor than 
 the stage. 
 
 It is a curious fact that the older generation 
 especially, which mourns a decline of Shakespeare 
 from the stage (though, as a matter of fact, Shake- 
 speare is still played more often than any other 
 dramatist), which sighs for the good old days of 
 Booth and Forrest, for the days when the drama 
 was "sweet" and "wholesome," forget, or cannot 
 comprehend, that the old order changeth, and that 
 our "unpleasant" realistic plays of to-day are the
 
 REAL FOES OF SERIOUS DRAMA 273 
 
 modern counterpart of the elder tragedies in which 
 Booth and Forrest thundered. 
 
 No good can possibly come of reviving "Vir- 
 ginius" to-day, because the theatregoers of to-day 
 don't want "Virginius" it bores them. Since our 
 modern drama is intimate and realistic, our modern 
 tragedies must be intimate and realistic, and their 
 subject matter must be what is tragic in modern life. 
 If the good souls who once accepted "Virginius" but 
 now reject "The Easiest Way" or "Mid-Channel" 
 would only pause to consider the question fairly, 
 they would see that the only reason why "Vir- 
 ginius" isn't as unhappy and unpleasant as the 
 modern plays is because it is a story of ancient Rome 
 instead of modern New York or London it is 2,000 
 years in the past. We fancy that the lust of Appius 
 Claudius is no more "pleasant" a thing to contem- 
 plate, per se, than that of the broker in "The Easiest 
 Way*' or of the husband in Brieux's play, "The 
 Three Daughters of Monsieur Dupont." We 
 fancy that certain physical facts are quite as frankly 
 suggested by "Virginius" (or "The Winter's Tale," 
 for that matter, or "Othello") as by the modern 
 plays of Pinero and Shaw. But the difference is 
 that girls to-day are not in danger of seduction by 
 Appius Claudius ; a great many of them are exposed
 
 274 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 to the perils of the Tenderloin of New York, to the 
 perils of marriage, of sweatshops and department 
 stores, of idleness and vanity. If we may have the 
 stage depiction of ancient perils passed, by what 
 logic can any theatre-goer deny us the depiction of 
 present perils'? There is no logic in it. The fact 
 is that the depiction of ancient perils did not trouble 
 us because they were far away ; the modern tragedies 
 "harrow us up," like the preacher's sermon, because 
 they are near to us, and so we do not like them. 
 We are cowards in art. After all, none but the 
 brave deserve a literature. 
 
 An inevitable accompaniment of the opposition 
 to serious modern social drama is the argument that 
 by tolerating such plays you will "banish beauty 
 from the stage," murk it o'er with gloom and de- 
 pression. You will do, of course, nothing of the 
 kind. In the first place, the men of the largest 
 purpose, the finest human sympathy that is, the 
 men best fitted to write such drama are very fre- 
 quently the men also best fitted for comedy, by 
 their very qualities of sympathy. Pinero of "The 
 Thunderbolt" is also the Pinero of "Trelawny of 
 the Wells" and "Sweet Lavendar." Barrie of 
 "The Twelve-Pound Look" is the Barrie of "Peter 
 Pan." It further follows that the qualities required
 
 REAL FOES OF SERIOUS DRAMA 275 
 
 of an audience to appreciate serious social drama are 
 the very qualities which are required for the ap- 
 preciation of satire. Still further, the depth and 
 richness of the humor in any literature. is most fre- 
 quently measured by the depth and richness of its 
 serious plays or novels, even when the two are not 
 united in one man, as in a Thackeray or Shakespeare. 
 
 The world is not all bad; men love to laugh; other 
 men love to make them laugh; we still have ro- 
 mance, happiness, poetry, and we shall continue to 
 have them. A problem play does not make the 
 world any worse; it strives, indeed, to make the 
 world a little better. Neither J. M. Barrie nor 
 G. M. Cohan is going to stop writing comedies be- 
 cause Pinero and Eugene Walter wrote "Mid- 
 Channel" and "The Easiest Way." When we 
 plead for the encouragement by American audiences 
 of earnest, outspoken, native sociological dramas, 
 we are only pleading for the widening and deepen- 
 ing of our dramatic literature, the enrichment and 
 vitalizing of its appeal. A stage must be universal 
 in its range, it must embrace the grave as well as 
 the gay if it is to class as literature, if it is justly 
 to reflect life, if it is to be of social service in the 
 community. 
 
 Once upon a time to a certain sectarian college
 
 276 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 came a student from the rural regions. "I want 
 to study for the ministry," he said, "but I don't 
 want to study any subjects which will shake my 
 faith, no science nor anything like that. My faith 
 is grounded on the Rock of the Church, and I pro- 
 pose to keep it there." 
 
 The wise Dean replied that if his faith was so 
 insecure that it would not resist honest study, he 
 had better go back to the farm. 
 
 Are not those good souls who cannot tolerate 
 serious social drama on the stage "because there is 
 enough unhappiness in the world," much like this 
 prospective parson*? Their faith in the ultimate 
 goodness and beauty of the world must be insecure 
 indeed if they cannot face the depiction of its evils 
 on the stage that they may understand those evils 
 better, and, through a better understanding and a 
 wider sympathy, gained by the noble service of Art, 
 move toward the day when there is less "unhappi- 
 ness" in Life.
 
 GEORGE ARLISS A STUDY IN ACTING 
 1912 
 
 When Mrs. Fiske first mounted "Becky Sharp" 
 Tyrone Power played the Marquis of Steyne and 
 Maurice Barrymore played and how he played! 
 Rawdon Crawley. When she revived the drama 
 a few years later poor Barrymore was dead, and an 
 actor comparatively new to our stage, though his 
 talents were already well recognized, was the Lord 
 Steyne. His name was George Arliss, and his first 
 entrance upon the scene was one of those memorable 
 examples of the actor's art which, once witnessed, 
 is never forgotten. 
 
 Steyne makes his appearance in Act II, coming 
 out on the broad stair-landing above the ball-room 
 and looking down upon the animated scene for a few 
 moments without speaking. No entrance is 
 "worked up" for him, as the players would say. 
 He comes quite unheralded, slipping quietly into 
 the picture. In Mrs. Fiske's production the ball- 
 room was done in a general color scheme of yellow. 
 
 277
 
 278 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 The eyes of the audience during the preceding por- 
 tion of the act were fixed upon the figures moving 
 animatedly about on the ball-room floor. "There 
 was a sound of revelry by night," a gay atmosphere, 
 nothing sinister nor tragic. But suddenly one or 
 two persons in the audience felt impelled to glance 
 up to the broad stair-landing above. There, sil- 
 houetted sharply against the lemon-yellow wall, 
 stood, to their surprise, a new figure in the drama, 
 a smallish figure immaculate in black silk hose and 
 breeches and coat, with a curiously crafty, malicious 
 and domineering face framed between its dark 
 whiskers and over a high white stock. The keen 
 eyes were glancing down upon the bare shoulders of 
 the women. A smile played upon the sensuous lips. 
 But the figure neither moved nor spoke. 
 
 Yet this silent figure had riveted the attention of 
 those few persons in the audience. One by one 
 others in the audience felt curiously impelled to look 
 up, and their attention, too, was riveted. Finally 
 the entire audience, forgetful of the persons on the 
 ball-room floor, was looking with something akin to 
 surprised awe at the black-clad, smiling, sinister 
 figure on the landing. When all eyes were fixed 
 upon him, the figure moved. He stepped with the 
 grace of a panther down the stairs, and it was as if
 
 GEORGE ARLISS 279 
 
 a dark shadow of evil, of tragedy, settled on the gay 
 scene. He walked over to Becky and spoke in a 
 soft, wheedling voice; and it was as if her tragedy 
 had met her face to face. The real drama had be- 
 gun. Then came the cannon of Waterloo. 
 
 The actor who, unheralded and in silence, thus 
 imposed a mood on an entire audience (aided, of 
 course, by Mrs. Fiske's wonderful sense of effect in 
 her stage management) was George Arliss. A bet- 
 ter illustration could hardly be found of Mr. Arliss's 
 power to bring a character to instant life, and weld 
 it into the drama. His acting, widely appreciated 
 and liberally rewarded, we are glad to say, is one 
 of the finer things of the American stage, and a 
 study of it rewards us with a better understanding 
 of and a greater respect for the whole art of acting. 
 
 How, the writer recently asked Mr. Arliss, did 
 he rivet the attention of the audience in "Becky 
 Sharp" before he had spoken a word, even before 
 many in the audience had even guessed what char- 
 acter had entered? His reply was significant. It 
 is much the same reply, in effect, that Duse once 
 made to a similar question. It connects the magic 
 of great acting directly with the mystery of imagina- 
 tion, and ranks the great actor beyond a question as 
 a creative artist.
 
 280 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 "I can account for that effect," said Mr. Arliss, 
 "only by the theory that even before I left my 
 dressing room each night I felt the situation. I 
 felt how like an ominous black shadow of evil the 
 real Lord Steyne must have descended on the scene 
 incarnate power, the power of wealth, of posi- 
 tion, of craftiness and will, all bent on cruel ends. 
 When I came out on the landing that idea possessed 
 my whole imagination. Technically, I think many 
 actors quite underestimate the power of the eye, and 
 perhaps my use of my eyes as I stood on the landing 
 had something to do with the effect. But I cannot 
 avoid the conviction that when the actor himself is 
 caught up into the imaginative life of the character 
 and the scene, then, and then alone, can he, by some 
 mysterious process, communicate a fire to the imag- 
 inations of his audience. 
 
 "There are times when one feels abominably 
 one's self on the stage, tremendously healthy, when 
 one's thoughts will stray to golf or a tramp in the 
 country. And then one feels that heavy atmos- 
 phere of the play which envelops you behind the 
 proscenium, or should envelop you if you have the 
 actor's temperament, dispelled; and just as certain 
 as death or taxes one feels, at the same moment, his 
 audience slipping from him, and hears the restless
 
 GEORGE ARLISS 281 
 
 cough. That is an excellent reason for having good 
 actors and actresses in the company with you. 
 They help to maintain the atmosphere of illusion 
 not only for the audience but, quite as importantly, 
 for the star or leading players. That is one reason 
 why it is so satisfactory to play with Mrs. Fiske. 
 She lives every moment the life of the play, and in 
 her electric atmosphere your imagination, too, sus- 
 tains you in the .illusion." 
 
 Imagination, then, is the life blood of fine acting, 
 as of any of the creative arts. But imagination 
 without training, without technical command of the 
 tools of the trade, is of slight avail. It is because 
 Mr. Arliss combines imagination with a fine and 
 resourceful technique and a broad intelligence, that 
 his art is a model and a standard on our contempor- 
 ary stage. 
 
 How he achieved his technique is a valuable 
 lesson to the younger actors of the day though, 
 fortunately for us, Mr. Arliss himself is still in his 
 prime. He was bom in England in 1868, and first 
 acted in 1887. His first year on the stage was 
 spent in an obscure London stock company "over 
 the water" on the Surrey side (which might be Jer- 
 sey City or Hoboken) a company which mounted 
 a new play every week. His second season was
 
 282 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 spent with a provincial road company wherein he 
 played twenty leading parts. Those first two sea- 
 sons, he says, were the most valuable of his career. 
 
 During the first year the novice, yet to enter his 
 majority, played a new part every week, all of them 
 small parts; and because they were small parts, and 
 because the company was a cheap one without time 
 for careful stage direction, he was left free to play 
 his parts as he saw fit. One week he was a police- 
 man, one week a clerk, another time a rustic. He 
 could make these characters young or old, as he 
 wished. The young actor, full of ambition, made 
 it his task to study each little part as carefully as he 
 could. If he was to play a London clerk, for ex- 
 ample, he watched actual clerks till he found one 
 who seemed, in dress and manner, either to be a type 
 of his class or to represent something that would be 
 effective on the stage. Then Mr. Arliss would go 
 home and design a hat or a collar or a wig or a 
 suit of clothes, or all combined, that he might look, 
 as well as talk and act, like this type from life he 
 had been watching. 
 
 "Anything I saw on the streets which I thought 
 effective dramatically I managed to get on to the 
 stage before a fortnight," Mr. Arliss says. "And 
 what was the result*? Sometimes I fear it was, im-
 
 GEORGE ARLISS 283 
 
 mediately, to upset the balance of the performance, 
 but for me personally it was the finest kind of train- 
 ing. Not only did I skill my eye to observation, 
 but I acquired a whole stock of effects which have 
 remained in the background of my memory, and to 
 this day when I am called on to play this part or 
 that, almost unconsciously these memories come to 
 my aid, and I know what I can achieve and how I 
 can achieve it. The young actor who begins on 
 Broadway with a single part, plays it for two sea- 
 sons, and then plays a second part for two seasons 
 more, and so on till he is old, will never, save by 
 a miracle, learn to be an actor. He will not learn 
 the tools of his trade." 
 
 The next year saw Mr. Arliss, still with a cheap 
 company, touring the provinces. He was now 
 playing leading roles, however, twenty of them, of 
 all sorts, and experimenting with audiences inces- 
 santly. A decade of acting in London followed. 
 Then, in 1901, Mr. Arliss came to America, sup- 
 porting Mrs. Patrick Campbell. New York first 
 saw him as Cayley Brummie in "The Second Mrs. 
 Tanqueray," and enjoyed the crisp, worldly humor, 
 the polished urbanity, the lurking tenderness of that 
 performance. It next enjoyed him as the Duke of 
 St. Olpherts in "The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith,"
 
 284 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 and felt a touch of his cynical power as well as his 
 polish. Fortunately for us, he did not go back to 
 England to act. David Belasco, who may be relied 
 on to know acting when he sees it, kept him here to 
 play the cruel and crafty old Japanese, Zakkuri, in 
 "The Darling of the Gods," a part wherein his 
 powers for sinister suggestion and for sheer physical 
 illusion of "make up" had full scope. 
 But, equally fortunately for us, Mr. Arliss did 
 not remain with Mr. Belasco. We say fortunately, 
 because Mr. Belasco, with all his marvelous skill 
 as a stage director, is too often enamoured of the 
 merely theatrical drama, and there is too seldom 
 any underlying basis of intellectual or social pur- 
 pose and truth-seeking in the plays he writes or 
 stages. Mr. Arliss transferred his support to Mrs. 
 Fiske, and with her, at last, he was in company 
 worthy of his finest efforts, and likely to induce 
 them. With her, he truly established himself as 
 a leading actor of our stage, in the best sense of the 
 word. 
 
 With Mrs. Fiske he played such diverse roles as 
 Lord Steyne in "Becky Sharp," Judge Brack in 
 "Hedda Gabler," Ulric Brendel in "Rosmersholm," 
 Raoul Berton in "Leah Kleschna," and the old 
 Frenchman in Mrs. Fiske's own one-act play, "Eyes
 
 GEORGE ARLISS 285 
 
 of the Heart." Lord Steyne was a crafty, power- 
 ful, distinguished man of the world; Berton in 
 "Leah Kleschna" was a degenerate young French 
 blade. The two parts, wide as the poles, were as 
 widely differentiated by the actor. One was by 
 turns hypocritically suave, worldly, urbane, grim, 
 powerful, not-to-be-denied; and in its physical 
 aspect an astonishing replica of Thackeray's own 
 drawing for the character. The other was juvenile, 
 devil-may-care, and physically, thanks in part to 
 the actor's wonderful use of his legs, arms, and 
 nervous, expressive hands and fingers, almost a 
 study in degeneracy. Still again, his Ibsen char- 
 acters were no less sharply cut, and carried with 
 them the chill atmosphere of the Old Man of the 
 North. 
 
 It was after his seasons with Mrs. Fiske that Mr. 
 Arliss first appeared as a star, not a star created be- 
 cause his "personality" pleased the public, but be- 
 cause he possessed the ripeness of technique, the 
 power of suggestion, the insight and the under- 
 standing, to play stellar parts. His first venture 
 was made in the early fall of 1907, in the title role 
 of "The Devil," a rather cheap and unimaginative 
 play by an Hungarian, in which the leading actor 
 wore a frock coat over his supposed tail, boots over
 
 286 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 his cloven hoofs, and symbolized temptation at the 
 ear of a man and a maid, who, truth to tell, needed 
 no external propulsion to drive them into sin. An- 
 other manager put out another Devil at the same 
 time, and the two productions at least served to 
 show how much more subtle, suggestive, polished 
 and imaginative was the art of Mr. Arliss than that 
 of his rival. 
 
 From the evil omniscience of the Devil to the 
 childlike simplicity and delicate goodness of Septi- 
 mus, in a dramatization of Mr. Locke's story, was 
 the wide step Mr. Arliss next chose to take. "Sep- 
 timus," the drama, fell far short of "Septimus," 
 the novel, and failed. But we had, at least, the 
 opportunity to see that Mr. Arliss's' "personality" 
 was not the cause of his success in sinister roles, 
 since here he no less successfully suggested whim- 
 sical childlikeness and goodness of heart. With 
 what minute and careful touches he built up the 
 quaint picture of Septimus the dreamer and eccen- 
 tric! His delicate fingers, nervously sinister as 
 Steyne or Berton, were here used to suggest the in- 
 ventor, and the man of gentle ways. When some 
 one departed from the room, he said "Good-bye" 
 after they had gone, as if his wits were but just 
 come back from wool gathering, and in a flash
 
 GEORGE ARLISS 287 
 
 touched the character to life. And here, in his 
 quiet, perfectly modulated voice, was not the oily 
 craftiness of Steyne, purring over Becky, but gentle 
 wistfulness or humor. His imaginative grasp of 
 the character seemed actually to color his tones. 
 
 Finally we are now seeing Mr. Arliss in New 
 York this winter (as Chicago saw him last) in a 
 character different alike from Steyne or Septimus, 
 from Devil or saint, as that brilliant and contradic- 
 tory historic figure of mid- Victorian England, the 
 Jew, Disraeli, set in a drama by Louis N. Parker. 
 It is a brilliant portrait that Mr. Arliss has painted, 
 one of the true acting achievements of the winter, 
 one of those achievements in character delineation 
 which remind us that large and stirring and vivid 
 acting did not perish with Richard Mansfield, after 
 all. 
 
 Considerable nonsense has been printed in the 
 Sunday papers about Mr. Arliss's methods of make 
 up for this part. Considerable nonsense is always 
 being printed in the Sunday papers about one thing 
 or another. According to the papers, Mr. Arliss 
 scurried all over Paris in. quest of a wig which might 
 exactly match one worn by "Dizzy" himself. "As 
 a matter of fact," the actor says, "I did what any 
 sensible person would do, I looked at an authentic
 
 288 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 portrait of Disraeli, and then went to a wig maker 
 with my instructions. I had his clothes copied in 
 the same rather obvious and practical manner, after 
 looking at the collection of Disraeli relics in the 
 South Kensington Museum." From which we may 
 infer that Mr. Arliss's art remains free of bun- 
 combe. 
 
 "I had always, from my youth, been interested 
 in Disraeli, both as a man and a possible stage 
 figure," he continued, "but when it was assured at 
 last that I was to put him on the stage, I stopped 
 reading about him altogether, and waited till the 
 completed manuscript was in my hands before re- 
 suming study. I did this that I might see the char- 
 acter in relation to the actual drama, rather than in 
 relation to history, and so have the squint on it my 
 audiences were bound to have. Once the manu- 
 script was before me, I began to study Dizzy's life 
 and works for the character details that would fit 
 with Mr. Parker's play. That seemed to me the 
 only way in which I could be fair at once to history 
 and to the drama. Doubtless my impersonation, 
 no less than the play, lacks something of historical 
 correctness, but Mr. Parker and I have both tried 
 to interpret for the present the essential spirit of the
 
 GEORGE ARLISS 289 
 
 man and his period, in a manner that shall still be 
 interesting as acted drama." 
 
 Sensible words, these. How nearly Mr. Arliss is 
 like the real Dizzy we fancy the majority of his 
 audiences do not greatly care, nor always realize. 
 Dizzy was something of a fop, we all know, and 
 Mr. Arliss catches this suggestion. But he was a 
 brilliant man besides, with a Shavian gift of epi- 
 gram, and Mr. Arliss tosses off those epigrams as 
 brilliantly and spontaneously as could be desired. 
 Disraeli, too, was Prime Minister of England, in 
 the face of opposition, and that meant crafty power 
 and iron will behind the suave, dandified ways and 
 the bantering, sharp-edged epigrams. Not the least 
 effective feature of Mr. Arliss's impersonation is his 
 constant suggestion of this power and will, a sug- 
 gestion made without our being conscious of the 
 method. Merely, he dominates the scene when he 
 is present; he holds the attention just as the striking 
 personality of Disraeli would in life; he brings the 
 spectator under the spell of his eyes and voice. 
 Finally, Disraeli was, with it all, a good bit of a 
 bluff and knew he was ; and a good bit of a humor- 
 ist, with a warm corner in his heart for his elderly 
 wife ; and a good bit of a dreamer, too, who saw an
 
 290 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 imperial England with an Oriental's eyes. It is 
 easy to find the suggestion of all these contradictory 
 traits clearly made in Mr. Arliss's portrait, and yet 
 fused into unity, as in the man himself. 
 
 The imagination which lies behind such a piece of 
 acting, planning it consistently, guiding it, welding 
 it into the drama without violence to history, is an 
 imagination to respect. The technical skill to make 
 the careful plan plain and potent for the audience, 
 to color the voice, to suggest power, distinction, 
 craftiness, humor, tenderness, in rapid succession, 
 to speak epigrams naturally, not by rote, to inspire 
 something of the dignity of a prime minister and 
 the romance of the Jew, is a technical skill as re- 
 markable as it is rare. Who of our younger actors 
 has such skill 1 ? Who has had the training to de- 
 velop such skill"? For, while the actor's imagina- 
 tion is born with him, his technique must be ac- 
 quired. 
 
 Indeed, the actors, young or old, on our stage to- 
 day who can compare with George Arliss, either in 
 imagination or technical proficiency, are few and far 
 between. He represents for us acting in its best es- 
 tate, an art at once broad and subtle, vivid as life, and 
 truly creative. To miss seeing him is to miss one 
 of the finest pleasures of our contemporary theater.
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 
 
 1912 
 
 One of the favorite sports of a considerable por- 
 tion of the population is scoffing at the dramatic 
 critics. It is not, however, a defense of dramatic 
 criticism we propose to write here. Criticism that 
 is serious and sincere needs no defense, for it is 
 inevitable, whether we like and agree with it or not ; 
 and the more serious and sincere our drama is, the 
 more criticism we shall have. The serious drama is 
 a record, presented for public consideration, of the 
 dramatist's vision and philosophy of life whether 
 he is conscious of it or not. And no public presen- 
 tation of so important a matter can, or should, pass 
 without challenge and consideration. Such chal- 
 lenge and consideration is any criticism worthy of 
 the name. If it concerns itself merely with a few 
 technical rules, or seeks merely to fill a column in an 
 evening paper with jesting, or to inform the public 
 whether such and such a play is going to run three 
 
 weeks or three months, it is hardly criticism at all. 
 
 291
 
 292 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 When we attack dramatic criticism, it might be well 
 to reflect first whether it is criticism we are attack- 
 ing. Such reflection would save us a lot of breath. 
 
 The residue of theatrical reporting, the real criti- 
 cism, is most often scoffed at because its verdicts dis- 
 agree with our personal tastes or judgments (which, 
 in untrained minds, are usually the same). It may 
 not be amiss, then, to set forth by examples of re- 
 cent seasons certain principles which guide the critic 
 to his judgments, to show the reasons why he calls 
 this play good and that play bad. Recently the 
 writer of this paper received a letter from a some- 
 what irate reader, which contained the following bit 
 of argument "I should like to know what you 
 think of Ibsen and 'The Man from Home.' " To 
 tell all we think of Ibsen would, unfortunately, re- 
 quire more space than the editor will allow us. To 
 tell what we think of "The Man from Home," how- 
 ever, calls for less room. We think it a pleasant 
 and popular piece of extremely parochial jingo. 
 We should class it as an excellent bad play. But it 
 is of the good plays we should prefer to speak at 
 this time, taking up several that are fresh in memory, 
 and showing, if possible, why the critics praised 
 them, either in accordance with, or in defiance of, 
 the popular verdict.
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 293 
 
 After twelve years of constant analytic attendance 
 at the theatre, we are ourselves persuaded that un- 
 derlying all other questions, technical or what not, 
 is the question of the playwright's sincerity. Did 
 he write his play because the theme or the characters 
 interested him, did he write it to please himself, to 
 express himself; or did he write it because he fancied 
 such a theme or such a set of characters would strike 
 the popular fancy? The machine-made dramas, 
 written to the order of such and such a star, the 
 vain efforts of one playwright to repeat another's 
 success in certain lines, or to duplicate his own, may 
 have all the supposedly requisite technical excel- 
 lencies. But they are invariably at most but the 
 success of an hour, and they are invariably poor 
 plays from any higher consideration. A man may 
 write his heart out, and still produce a poor drama, 
 to be sure, for lack of the technical gift. But no 
 man with only the technical gift and a desire to 
 make money can ever write a good play, a play, 
 that is, which will ring true and stand the test of 
 revival. 
 
 The first test a critic applies to a new work, then, 
 is this test of sincerity. And no more striking 
 examples of sincerity are to be found on the modern 
 stage than the plays of John Galsworthy. It is nei-
 
 294 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ther their theme nor their literary polish which pri- 
 marily causes their high estimation by critics and the 
 judicious amateurs. It is the still, white flame of 
 passionate sincerity which illuminates them. The 
 author isn't writing to please us, he is writing to tell 
 us about certain men and women he has observed, 
 to plead with us to understand these people; he is 
 asking us to look with him upon this or that episode 
 of real life (set by him upon the stage), and to 
 comprehend a little clearer its significance. That is 
 why his plays seem so worth while, so like a real 
 experience rather than a mere entertainment. And 
 that, primarily, is why the critics praise them so 
 highly. 
 
 Three of these plays have been professionally pro- 
 duced in America, "The Silver Box" by Miss Ethel 
 Barrymore, "Strife" by the New Theatre, and, most 
 recently, "The Pigeon" at Mr. Ames' Little The- 
 atre. The first failed largely because Miss Barry- 
 more's public were not yet ready to receive her in 
 anything but pretty piffle. The second shared in 
 the general failure of the New Theatre project. 
 The last was a success with Mr. Ames' public. But 
 success or failure with a certain public cannot 
 rightly affect the critic's judgments. These plays 
 were acclaimed, then, first for their sincerity, their
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 295 
 
 honest, truthful, sympathetic presentation of a hu- 
 man situation, and secondarily for their literary skill 
 and distinction, and technical expertness. These 
 latter qualities, of course, appeal more consciously 
 to the critic than to the playgoer ; and to some play- 
 goers they do not appeal at all. They are most 
 widely valued in a community where the largest 
 number of theatre-goers are aesthetically well edu- 
 cated, as in Paris. But as it is a part of the critic's 
 mission to help in the process of aesthetic education, 
 he cannot ignore them if he would. 
 
 William Archer, in his new book, "Play Making," 
 says, "The French plays (of Brieux), in my judg- 
 ment, suffer artistically from the obtrusive predom- 
 inance of the theme that is to say, the abstract ele- 
 ment over the human and concrete factors in the 
 composition. Mr. Galsworthy's more delicate and 
 unemphatic art eludes this danger, at any rate in 
 "Strife." We do not remember until all is over that 
 his characters represent classes, and his action is, one 
 might almost say, a sociological symbol." 
 
 This is a tribute at once to his literary and techni- 
 cal skill, and to his sincerity. We do not feel 
 "Strife" to be a tract on the labor question nor "The 
 Pigeon" a sermon on the need of love and sympathy 
 for our fallen fellow beings, because Mr. Gals-
 
 296 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 worthy is human enough himself to put real laborers 
 and real fallen fellow beings upon the stage, and 
 skilful enough to let them tell their own story, in- 
 stead of putting labeled puppets on the stage and 
 preaching about them. If Mr. Galsworthy's plays 
 fail of a wide popularity, that is because their themes 
 are sober and thoughtful, and they lack the sex ele- 
 ment a conventional public has come to expect. 
 But they have in a remarkable degree that attribute 
 of sincerity which inspires respect; they seem real 
 episodes in the lives of real people, not machines 
 concocted to amuse or thrill; and they are written 
 with technical expertness and distinction of dialogue. 
 That is why the critic acclaims them. 
 
 Taking now two plays of widely different sort, 
 the Scotch comedy, "Bunty Pulls the Strings," and 
 that one-act Irish masterpiece, "Riders to the Sea," 
 we find the first has been enormously popular both 
 in New York and Chicago, while Synge's drama, 
 when presented by the Irish Players here, drew only 
 half a handful of people. Yet the critic calls them 
 both good plays, and probably considers the less 
 popular the finer drama. Why? 
 
 Anybody can tell why he likes "Bunty Pulls the 
 Strings." It is funny. It is funny because it so 
 neatly and wittily and lovingly hits off the foibles
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 297 
 
 of the Scotch character and manners. The story 
 of the play alone would not make it a popular suc- 
 cess, nor a critical. Indeed, it is rather a simple, 
 obvious and old-fashioned story. But the char- 
 acters are all odd, humorous and interesting. We 
 delight to watch Bunty manage the whole commun- 
 munity. We delight in the quaint accent and 
 idiom, in the quaint costumes, in the flavor and at- 
 mosphere of the story. Here is a case where mere 
 academic structure counts for far less than the em- 
 broidery. Yet any critic who is not a hidebound 
 formalist is bound to call it a good play, because 
 it does rouse our interest and our mirth, it creates 
 its mood and lets us see into the life of a Scotch 
 village ; it does, in short, what it sets out to do. It 
 is truthful and it is funny. 
 
 There is nothing funny about "Riders to the 
 Sea." That solemn, heart-searching little master- 
 piece is almost Greek in its tragic simplicity. But 
 it, too, is honest, and it does what it sets out to do. 
 It sets out to create in the auditor a sense of the 
 terrible spectre of Death which broods over the 
 fishermen's huts on the bleak west coast of Ireland, 
 and yet to create it in such language the poetic 
 language of a sensitive peasant people that there 
 is a solemn beauty in the performance, and the play
 
 298 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 is not brutal but almost spiritual, tragic yet lovely. 
 It has always been the mission of true poetry so to 
 touch with transforming wand the themes of Fate 
 and Death. No man with a soul above the brute 
 can sit before the Irish Players' performance of 
 "Riders to the Sea" without feeling at once its tragic 
 solemnity and its searching poetry. Its language, 
 always the language these Celtic peasants might 
 naturally use, falls like hushed music on the ear, 
 though it brings the flutter of the wings of Death. 
 That is why the critic calls this not only a good 
 play, but a great play; and though a public which 
 likes always to laugh avoids it in America, the critic 
 feels that it will still be performed when "The Man 
 From Home" has retired to Kokomo forever. 
 
 We may also contrast two other plays, both of 
 which the critics called good, but only one of which 
 enjoyed much patronage in this country, "The Con- 
 cert," produced by Mr. Belasco, and "The Thunder- 
 bolt," by Pinero, produced both by the New The- 
 atre, and, more recently, by the Chicago Theatre 
 Society last winter. The critic calls "The Concert" 
 a good play (quite aside from the merits of Mr. 
 Belasco's particular production) because with 
 shrewd worldly wisdom and humor the author holds 
 up and dissects types of character, particularly the
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 299 
 
 character of a childish, egotistical, much flattered 
 piano virtuoso (type of the "artistic tempera- 
 ment"), and the character of the steady, comfort- 
 able, forgiving wife. The absurdities of such 
 women as lose their heads over musicians are also 
 satirized. This play is good because it has these 
 elements of truth, fused into a well made and inter- 
 esting story. This play is successful, of course, be- 
 cause its truth is patent and its interest and fun 
 unflagging. 
 
 Now, "The Thunderbolt" is a satire on types of 
 character, also, on middle-class British smugness, 
 hypocrisy and money greed (but British more in 
 externals than otherwise, since money greed and 
 smugness have been known to exist elsewhere!). 
 Because its characters are human and true, its story 
 well knit and sustained, its sincerity and interest 
 unescapable, the critic is just as bound to call this 
 a good play as "The Concert." Yet the public 
 went to "The Concert" but not to "The Thunder- 
 bolt." Why? Not because they considered "The 
 Thunderbolt" a bad play, but because its satire is 
 too mordant and grim, its story too harsh, its picture 
 too pitifully revealing of the sordid side of our frail 
 humanity that, and also a little, one is sure, be- 
 cause it was produced at the New Theatre and by
 
 300 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the Chicago Players, and so shared in the public 
 indifference toward those institutions. Such audi- 
 ences as did see it felt its power and most of them 
 followed its story with complete absorption. That 
 a thoughtless theatre-goer doesn't like "The Thun- 
 derbolt," because it oppresses him, is no reason at all 
 why he should leap with both feet upon the critic 
 who praises it. The critic does not ask whether it 
 is pleasant or unpleasant, but whether it is true, 
 whether its characters are real people, its story well 
 knit and logical, its author's deductions, his "crit- 
 icism of life," sound and just. Finding them to be 
 so in "The Thunderbolt," he is in duty bound to 
 proclaim it a good play. Only if he failed to do 
 so should he be leaped upon. The time may yet 
 come when enough of the public will find enter- 
 tainment in truth, whether grave or gay, rather than 
 in mere jesting or in truth only when it is pleasant, 
 to make such works as "The Thunderbolt" success- 
 ful in proportion to their real merits. 
 
 The later plays of Augustus Thomas have, fortu- 
 nately, pleased both critics and public. They have 
 pleased the critics because, without sacrificing that 
 narrative interest in a well sustained story which 
 was always the basis of Mr. Thomas's appeal, they 
 have revealed, besides, a purpose to make that story
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 301 
 
 significant of some larger idea. Both in "The 
 Witching Hour" and "As a Man Thinks," Mr. 
 Thomas has shown real people on the stage, talk- 
 ing naturally yet with a certain distinction, and in- 
 volved in an interesting set of situations. Yet 
 these situations have been cleverly chosen to illus- 
 trate some phase of the author's philosophy of life 
 chiefly, one guesses, a belief that our inner 
 thoughts have a tremendous dynamic power in shap- 
 ing our characters, our outward acts, even the for- 
 tunes of those about us. Mr. Thomas really be- 
 lieves this. His later plays have a ring of sincerity. 
 It is a belief that has great powers for good. There- 
 fore his plays gain an added importance. And, 
 since this message they bear is one of cheer, and 
 since they do not bear it in the form of a sermon 
 but a good story, they are popular with all theatre- 
 goers, as well as with the critics. 
 
 "The Typhoon," now being played by Walker 
 Whiteside, is an excellent example of a play which 
 the critic is obliged at once to praise and to con- 
 demn, to praise for its underlying theme and its gen- 
 eral truth, to condemn for its technical shortcom- 
 ings. It is a popular play, because its theme is 
 of such novelty and interest that the shortcomings 
 are not sufficiently felt by the public to destroy the
 
 302 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 appeal. The theme of "The Typhoon" is the con- 
 trasted characters and ideals of the Japanese and 
 the Europeans. A Japanese diplomat is shown at 
 Berlin, engaged on a secret and important work for 
 his government. He becomes entangled with a 
 European courtesan, and finally he loses that self- 
 control which is an ideal of his race, and murders 
 her. He is only able to finish his work because one 
 of his countrymen, regarding the national mission 
 as of more importance than his own life, takes the 
 blame for the crime. Broadly, the play shows the 
 intense racial self-possession of the Japanese, their 
 overpowering national consciousness, their total 
 antithesis to Occidental individualism. It is true 
 to the type depicted, and the story is told with much 
 embellishment of exotic atmosphere. It also has 
 its moments of great theatrical excitement. Hence 
 its popular appeal. So far, it is a good play. But 
 it has many structural weaknesses. In the first 
 place, we are never told what that great "work" 
 the Japanese diplomat is doing consists of. We do 
 not see why it should be of such profound impor- 
 tance to Japan. In the second place, many of the 
 scenes are crudely handled, so that the illusion of 
 reality is lost. Sometimes the Japanese babble in 
 their native tongue (or what is supposed to be their
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 303 
 
 native tongue) and sometimes they talk English. 
 The closing of the play is blind. Moreover, one 
 wonders what would become of the point that a 
 Japanese is ruined by the Occidental love passion 
 if the European woman had been a good woman, 
 instead of a scarlet lady. Such points as these are 
 flaws in workmanship and logic, and the critic is 
 bound to condemn them, even in the most popular 
 of plays. They are not to be found in the master- 
 pieces of the drama, where perfect workmanship 
 unites with depth or charm of idea and truth of 
 character and it is by the masterpieces that the 
 critic judges. 
 
 A frequent criticism of critics is that they are 
 over given to praising gloom and depreciating mirth. 
 Critical wrath against the "happy ending," how- 
 ever, is not due to the fact that the critics love 
 laughter less but that they love logic more. No- 
 body in his senses objects to a happy ending to a 
 comedy. It is when the happy ending is arbitrar- 
 ily tacked on a play which was foreordained to a 
 tragic conclusion that the critic rages. Any play 
 which sets out to depict a set of circumstances which, 
 to be true to life and significant as a commentary 
 on society, has to end unhappily, and then deliber- 
 ately, to please the ladies and matinee maids, throws
 
 304 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 everybody into somebody else's arms at the finish, 
 is a bad play, an insincere and false play, and no 
 amount of talk and excuses can make it anything 
 else. Imagine Shakespeare calling in the family 
 doctor to save Hamlet and resuscitate Ophelia! 
 Imagine Ibsen bringing Nora back from the front 
 door in "The Doll's House," and casting her into 
 Helmer's arms! 
 
 Naturally, an audience wants to see characters 
 in whom it has become interested, happy. But if, 
 to make them happy, truth to human nature has to 
 be sacrificed, then they cannot be happy and the 
 play remain a good one. 
 
 But it is not alone that you critics condemn the 
 happy ending, the reader may object. You seem 
 to prefer the solemn, serious, gloomy dramas, as a 
 class, to those which are light and merry. There's 
 a reason for this seeming preference, dear reader. 
 The critic does not really prefer such dramas as a 
 class, but such dramas are, as a class, more often 
 good than the other kind; they are more often truth- 
 ful, sincere and logical. That is partly because the 
 playwrights who write not to express themselves 
 but to catch the public pennies usually write come- 
 dies or machine-made romances, while the more 
 serious plays are written by the more serious play-
 
 WHAT IS A GOOD PLAY? 305 
 
 wrights. It is partly because it is almost always 
 easier to make bad people effective in fiction than 
 good a well known fact. But it is chiefly because' 
 most writers, in common with the rest of us, are 
 more deeply stirred by the wrongs and sufferings of 
 the world than by its joys. We don't, as a rule, 
 rise up and shout because our neighbor is getting 
 along happily with his wife. If he is beating her, 
 however, we are very likely to act. It is so with 
 the earnest dramatist. Joy, to be sure, with some 
 is a passion, and comedy a gift. J. M. Barrie is 
 one of them. Nothing could be truer than Barrie's 
 fantasy, and "The Admirable Crichton" is one of 
 the finest and most significant plays yet written in 
 English in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, 
 the fact remains that those dramatists who write 
 because they really have something to say, more 
 often than not feel impelled to talk about the 
 wrongs of the world rather than its farces. 
 
 Now the serious critic, too, hopes that he has some- 
 thing to say. He wants to have something to say, 
 at any rate. When he sees such a play as "Officer 
 666" or "Seven Days," what can he say, save that 
 it is an hilarious farce go, and laugh, and be 
 happy, and God bless you? But when he sees 
 Galsworthy's "The Pigeon," or Thomas's "As a
 
 306 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Man Thinks," or Gorky's "Night Refuge," or 
 Pinero's ''Mid-Channel," he is confronted with a 
 serious man's opinions on life and conduct, and his 
 own opinions rush into accord or conflict, and what 
 he has to say is limited only by the space he has 
 to say it in. He personally likes these plays be- 
 cause they give him intellectual stimulus and emo- 
 tional glow. And he believes they are far better 
 plays than the other kind, because they are bound 
 to give any intelligent spectator the same reaction. 
 If he can get these reactions from a comedy (as 
 from "The School for Scandal" or Shaw's "Arms 
 and the Man" or Barrie's "Admirable Crichton"), 
 the critic is as glad as you are. But he cannot often 
 get them from the comedies of commerce, and that 
 is chiefly why he seems to prefer the others. 
 
 Mary Shaw once played Ibsen's "Ghosts" in 
 Cripple Creek, and after the performance she heard 
 a rough miner say to his companion, "Say, Bill, that 
 play made a feller use his cocoanut!" 
 
 The play that makes a critic use his cocoanut, 
 he believes, is a better play than one which doesn't.
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS AND THE 
 NEW ART OF THE THEATER 
 
 William Shakespeare, when he wrote his plays, 
 did not have to worry about scenery, and because 
 with the stroke of a pen he could create a forest 
 of Arden or shift from Juliet's garden to the Friar's 
 cell, he has been the plague of scene-painters and 
 producers ever since scenery was invented. It is 
 only in our generation that the art of stage-scenery 
 has begun to be able to meet the exacting demands 
 of Shakespearean drama not only mechanically, but 
 poetically. Beginning with the visions of Gordon 
 Craig and the practical productions by the German 
 stage managers, like Max Reinhardt, a development 
 has been going on in the theater which amounts 
 almost to a revolution, and of which examples have 
 at last reached America not alone in the imported 
 pantomime, "Sumurun," rather a bizarre example, 
 but in the productions being shown this winter by 
 Margaret Anglin, to a lesser extent in those made 
 
 307
 
 3o8 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 by Mr. Faversham, in Mr. Ames' Little Theater, 
 in the Boston Opera-House, and elsewhere. 
 
 In a Lowell Institute lecture last winter, Profes- 
 sor George P. Baker predicted that in ten years the 
 old-fashioned, "realistic" scenery (which, after all, 
 seldom is realistic) would be quite obsolete save 
 only in realistic plays with interior settings. If 
 that is the case, the so-called "new scenery" is one 
 of the most important developments in the whole 
 history of the drama, and demands our attention. 
 The present writer believes with Mr. Baker that it 
 is the case; and he believes furthermore that we 
 are on the eve of a renaissance of theatrical art, 
 the art of the whole theater, that is to say, not 
 merely of the writing of plays, but of their pro- 
 duction. 
 
 In a word, the new scenery is pictorial. The 
 reader will perhaps exclaim at once that so was the 
 old scenery. But in ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 cases that is just what it wasn't, and isn't. It was 
 a more or less crude attempt at a reproduction of 
 place, which, to be sure, is the first duty of scenery, 
 but it was, and is, generally a mechanical repro- 
 duction, without pictorial quality and the higher 
 forms of illusion. At how many stage-settings 
 would you care to look for five minutes, with no
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 309 
 
 play going on, regarding them purely as picture*? 
 How many have you ever beheld which, quite on 
 their own merits, gave you the same mood of illusion 
 as the drama itself? How many productions of 
 Shakespeare have you ever witnessed in which the 
 scenery was not a caricature on the verse, and the 
 "waits" while the caricatures were being shifted 
 so long that half the text had to be omitted? How 
 many perspectives of distance have you ever seen 
 on the stage which did not end palpably twenty 
 feet to the rear in a painted back-drop? In short, 
 how many stage-settings have you seen which were 
 independent art? 
 
 The new scenery can be independent art, that is, 
 a pictorial and plastic expression worthy of com- 
 panioning the highest flights of dramatic literature; 
 and because this is so, the stage productions of the 
 future more than ever in the past will contain ele- 
 ments of illusion beyond the range of mere liter- 
 ature, and the author's talent will more than ever 
 be an incomplete equipment for the true man of the 
 theater. 
 
 In the earlier periods of literary creation the 
 drama always occupied a high and often a supreme 
 place both in literary dignity and popular regard. 
 We have merely to glance at the Greece of Sopho-
 
 310 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 cles, the England of Shakespeare, the France of Mo- 
 liere and Racine, to realize this. So strongly did 
 the traditional literary importance of drama per- 
 sist that the eighteenth century found Addison writ- 
 ing "Cato" and Garrick besieged with manuscript 
 plays from writers great and small, fitted and un- 
 fitted for the calling. It was the sudden expansion 
 of the novel form in the nineteenth century which 
 more than anything else put the drama back in our 
 day into a place of secondary importance in liter- 
 ary, if not in popular, regard a place that for the 
 most part, we are forced to admit from the examples 
 produced, was its proper one. 
 
 In the age of Shakespeare, of Dryden, even of 
 Fielding, probably Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and 
 a host of lesser novelists would have striven to write 
 for the stage; nor is there much reason to doubt that 
 many of them could have learned to write for the 
 stage successfully. But the novel having opened 
 up a new channel of expression, in many ways an 
 easier channel of expression, and certainly a fuller 
 channel for the conveyance of all kinds of philo- 
 sophic ideas, "criticism of life," and so on, won 
 their allegiance instead. Moreover, the novel was 
 suddenly realistic suddenly, as the gods reckon 
 time. When we reflect that Goldsmith's "She
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 311 
 
 Stoops to Conquer" was considered realistic; when 
 we read the strange melodramas of Kotzebue, which 
 held the boards in the day of Scott; when we scan 
 the playbills of any theater during the early years 
 of Thackeray and Dickens, we can readily see why 
 writers of talent turned away from the drama to 
 the new, vastly fresher, and seemingly unlimited 
 form of expression the novel. Thereafter the 
 drama steadily sank from its ancient post of liter- 
 ary honor, particularly in England, till it had to 
 offer, against the novels of George Eliot and Thack- 
 eray, the farces of Morton or at best the "tea-cup 
 comedies" of Tom Robertson, and in America Au- 
 gustin Daly's "Under the Gas Lamps" against "The 
 Rise of Silas Lapham." Small wonder the drama 
 was scorned by men of letters. 
 
 The contemporary drama was reborn in the North 
 of a literarily new nation, and its father was Hen- 
 rik Ibsen. It is not true, of course, that Ibsen 
 worked alone, that no other stage writers in other 
 lands preceded him or were contemporaneous with 
 him in the movement to put the stage on a new foot- 
 ing. Dumas fits and Augier certainly did their share, 
 and stirrings of the new spirit were abroad in Ger- 
 many. Realistic fiction was not without its influ- 
 ence, also. Nevertheless, Ibsen was the greatest
 
 312 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 single factor, in part from the self-imposed isolation 
 in which he labored. In this connection it is not 
 necessary to hold a brief either for or against his 
 own plays. Probably the truth about their merit 
 lies between the extremes of Shavian admiration 
 and Winterish detraction. Much of their atmos- 
 phere, certainly, is local rather than universal, and 
 as they recede their interest appears to grow less. 
 But of their technical importance there can be no 
 question. You have only to see a revival of a suc- 
 cessful play of one generation ago "Liberty Hall," 
 for example, produced at the Empire Theater, New 
 York, in 1892, and revived in March, 1913, to 
 realize what a tremendous revolution was wrought 
 by the simple overthrow of certain conventions of 
 play-writing, such as the aside and the soliloquy, 
 and the development of a technique which could re- 
 move the fourth wall of the room and show us 
 reality. As soon as the dramatists of the Western 
 World found that they could put real life, not stage 
 life, before their audiences, and began to do so, 
 what was bound to happen did happen the men 
 who knew most accurately and felt most deeply 
 about real life were acclaimed the best dramatists. 
 One did not need to be a Sardou to be successful. 
 To be successful in the higher courts of taste, indeed,
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 313 
 
 one needed not to be a Sardou. In short, reality 
 succeeded trickery. The drama once more could 
 offer to men of letters a worthy reward, because it 
 could offer them at last a technique by which they 
 could express their criticisms, their philosophies, 
 their beliefs about life, no less effectively though 
 not so easily, because vastly more selective conden- 
 sation is required than by the novel. 
 
 That is where the drama stands to-day so far as 
 it is a matter of spoken text, and writers of the first 
 rank are returning to it, as they always will return 
 when conditions are favorable, not only because of 
 its rich financial rewards, but because of its glamour, 
 its excitement, its superb directness and vividness. 
 J. M. Barrie has forsaken the novel altogether. 
 G. B. Shaw is certainly as widely read and as influ- 
 ential a man of letters as now writes in English. 
 Galsworthy has had six plays produced in the last 
 seven years. John Masefield, one of the leading 
 English poets of the time, is a dramatic author. 
 Sudermann and Hauptmann in Germany are essen- 
 tially dramatic authors. The new Celtic revival 
 is a dramatic revival, and Synge is its genius. The 
 real literary life of a city like Manchester, England, 
 centers about Miss Horniman's playhouse. Within 
 the last ten years, in more than one of our American
 
 3H PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 universities, the undergraduate interest in literature 
 has shifted largely from the essay and fiction to the 
 drama. This is notably true of Harvard. There 
 is not to-day, and there never has been, a spon- 
 taneous movement among the men and women who 
 make up the audiences for any form of art to com- 
 pare in extent or seriousness of interest with the 
 Drama League of America, which now counts over 
 fifty thousand members devoted to a study of the 
 playhouse. By every token, the drama has entered 
 upon a new era of respectability, and is once more 
 held in high regard by men of letters, and deserves 
 that regard. Mr. Galsworthy's "Strife" is no less 
 important as literature than his "Patrician"; Eu- 
 gene Walter's "The Easiest Way" is no less genuine 
 a document than the stories of Mrs. Deland. 
 
 We might, then, suppose from a casual glance 
 that the theater has returned to its ancient condition 
 in its relation to men of letters, that the play which 
 would "bear the test of print" and justify itself as 
 literature to the reader as well as to the spectator 
 was once more the final test. We might suppose, 
 in short, that the man of letters and the man of the 
 theater are once more interchangeable. Let us see 
 if that is the case. 
 
 The poet who wrote for the theater of Athens
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 315 
 
 wrote for a static stage, for actors who wore con- 
 ventional masks, for a perfectly definite and fixed 
 condition of presentation. The poet who wrote for 
 the Elizabethan theater likewise wrote for a static, 
 or very nearly static, stage, and once more the effects 
 achieved were only such as lay in the power of his 
 words or situations to convey. Even after the ap- 
 plication of scenery to the stage and the withdrawal 
 of the actors behind a proscenium-arch, so that the 
 stage was no longer static, but potentially pictorial 
 and plastic, the author still prevailed over the "pro- 
 duction," and continued to prevail, of course with 
 the actor's aid, until recent years. But the perfec- 
 tion of electric illumination, the invention of the 
 revolving-stage, the introduction of "relief" scenery, 
 the application by a hundred and one technical 
 methods of impressionism to the art of scenery and 
 production, have suddenly put so powerful a weapon 
 into the hand of the producer of the play that he 
 has become frequently as important as the author, 
 and not infrequently much more important. His 
 imagination, his creative powers, if they chance to 
 be greater than the author's, will produce an effect 
 more potent over the audience than the text of the 
 drama. Hence it is that we find such a man as 
 Gordon Craig, who is essentially an artist in moods
 
 316 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 and scenery, not a man of letters, talking about a 
 new art of the theatre of the theatre, mind you, 
 not of drama and by his influence and the influ- 
 ence of imitators in Germany, such as Max Rein- 
 hardt, working at a revolution in the playhouse, a 
 revolution extending even to the physical construc- 
 tion of the building. These revolutionists are not 
 dramatists, they are not men of letters ; they are pro- 
 ducers, stage-managers, in short, strictly men of the 
 theatre. However, if we have yet scarcely begun 
 to realize it in America, they are shaping the play- 
 house and the drama of the future, and conditioning 
 the dramatist. No sooner, then, do we seem to have 
 spanned once more the gap between the man of let- 
 ters and the stage, between literature and acted 
 drama, than we find a Gordon Craig busily hacking 
 down our bridge! 
 
 The new art of the theatre is based primarily on 
 the electric switchboard. It recognizes that great 
 stretches of painted canvas in a bright glare can 
 never be illusive in any high sense, that they are 
 bound to be the colored blocks of overgrown chil- 
 dren; and so, first of all, it gets its colors not from 
 the canvas, but from the lamps, and makes its per- 
 spectives with shadows rather than with drawn lines. 
 Secondly, it is usually an art of elimination down to
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 317 
 
 the salient features of a given scene which shall most 
 effectively comport with the mood of the play, and 
 which can be combined into a true picture. It is 
 impressionistic. It is to the old art what modern 
 landscape-painting is to the mid- Victorian chromo. 
 When it does not eliminate, when it employs the old 
 methods of building "realistic" houses all over the 
 stage, for instance, it does so in patches of color or 
 with a pictorial rhythm of design that converts the 
 ancient chaos into a new charm. Such is often Mr. 
 Urban's method at the Boston Opera-House. 
 
 Take, for an example of simplification, Living- 
 ston Platt's settings for Miss Anglin's Shakespearean 
 repertoire. They are painted almost entirely in a 
 stipple of primary colors, which would tell virtually 
 as gray in white light. Color is secured by the illu- 
 mination, which is from above, not up from the foot- 
 lights. Each Shakespearean play has a special per- 
 manent fore-stage set up, with entrances on each 
 side, which is designed to harmonize with the drama. 
 On this fore-stage are acted all the intermediate 
 scenes, while the main scenes are being shifted be- 
 hind. These main scenes are simple. The palace, 
 for example, in "Twelfth Night," shows only three 
 graceful arched windows and through them the 
 deep blue sky, while there are only two pieces of fur-
 
 318 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 niture in the room. Yet the picture amply satisfies 
 the imagination, and fills the eye with pleasure, be- 
 cause Mr. Platt is an artist. Moreover, every 
 change can be made without a moment's wait, and 
 the entire text of the drama played as quickly as 
 on a bare stage. Here at last the scene-setting can 
 match the magic and the speed of Shakespeare's 
 verse. 
 
 In "Sumurun," staged by Max Reinhardt, we 
 saw how the new art can get striking effects by dar- 
 ing to group the players in high relief against a jet- 
 black velvet curtain, mimes against primeval dark-> 
 ness ! and letting the very rhythm of their shifting 
 poses conspire to the emotional effect. Again in 
 "Sumurun" we saw how "relief scenery," which is 
 simply a curtain painted in the flat, without any at- 
 tempt at the third dimension, can, if it is designed by 
 a real artist, be more potent than a whole littered 
 stage of "solid" houses in perspective. Gordon 
 Craig staged "Hamlet" in Moscow amid a maze of 
 gigantic towering screens nothing else shifted in 
 various designs, and the effect, while undoubtedly 
 too bizarre for present American taste, was said to 
 be wonderful. Less of a break from tradition was 
 the Russian scenery for "Boris," shown at the Metro- 
 politan Opera House last Winter, where a lofty wall
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 319 
 
 of white went up, up, out of sight, and against it 
 huddled a group of players in reds and browns, 
 imaginatively dwarfed till the white walls were in- 
 deed those of a mighty building. Even Belasco, 
 arch-realist though he is, has felt the new possibili- 
 ties, and in "A Good Little Devil," by a complete 
 dimming of his lights in the first act, was able to 
 open the wall of the boy's chamber to show the star- 
 gemmed night sky, and then the angels floating in 
 and standing about the bed in a faint golden radi- 
 ance, like a moonlit fresco by Fra Angelico. That 
 picture, indeed, was worth all the text of the play. 
 It had far more of illusive art about it. It, and not 
 the spoken dialogue, was stage "literature." And it 
 was made possible, of course, by the modern electric 
 switchboard. Electricity marks a new element in 
 theatric art which was totally unknown in the past. 
 The new art is based not on the fact that electricity 
 has increased the reality of stage-settings, but on the 
 fact that it has vastly increased the possibilities of 
 suggestion: it veils reality in the nimbus of mystery. 
 It has brought to the aid of illusion the army of 
 shadows. 
 
 Now, the effect on an audience of such stage-set- 
 tings as these is something apart from the text of 
 the drama, in the sense that it is not supplied by the
 
 320 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 dramatist, but by the producer; not by the words, 
 the literary feature of the play, but by the arts of 
 the painter and the electrician. Naturally, a good 
 producer strives always to produce an effect which 
 is in keeping with the text and spirit of the play. 
 Indeed, the fact that Max Reinhardt has no fixed 
 method of production is only a testimony to his ex- 
 cellence as a stage-manager. He tries, if not al- 
 ways with success, to catch the essential mood, the 
 atmosphere, the emotional motif, call it what you 
 will, of the drama, in his impressionistic settings. 
 Even Gordon Craig, who staged "Hamlet" with 
 towering screens, would not dream of so staging 
 "The Easiest Way," which is not metaphysical, 
 poetic, remote. It is worth noting, however, that 
 Mr. Craig has recently published a design for Ibsen's 
 "Rosmersholm" which is almost pure suggestion 
 suggestive, some might say, of a rat-trap. The fact 
 remains that now, as never before in the history of 
 the playhouse, the producer is a man of potentially 
 as much importance as the dramatist, and the effects 
 he achieves with canvas and switchboard can be as 
 potent a part of our pleasure, even of our emotional 
 enkindling, as the spoken words of the play. We 
 feel that the "production," in short, is a part of the 
 genuine art of the drama. We have long talked of
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 321 
 
 the drama as combining all the arts, literature, paint- 
 ing, sculpture, music ; but beside the new scenery and 
 the new grouping of players in relief, the old scenery 
 and the old grouping had rather less of suggestive 
 art about them than the Victorian chromo. What 
 we have long said was true is only now becoming 
 so. And as it more and more becomes so, the drama- 
 tist who is merely a man of letters becomes less and 
 less effectual in the theatre. 
 
 He becomes less and less effectual because more 
 and more of the final effect of his work will not be 
 his own planning, but somebody else's, and because 
 that unity of impression which must be the great 
 test of a genuine work of art will more and more 
 depend on the chance unity of temperament between 
 author and producer. The more potent the pictorial 
 side of drama becomes, the more important it be- 
 comes that the author shall possess a pictorial mind, 
 that the emotional and philosophic content of his 
 work shall be capable of fusion with the most sug- 
 gestive of settings. This implies more than a mere 
 understanding of what is mechanically possible in 
 the theatre. Successful writers for the stage have 
 always possessed that understanding, which is a part 
 of the general understanding of dramatic construc- 
 tion. Men of letters who have not taken the trouble
 
 322 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 to achieve this general understanding have always 
 failed in the theatre, as Browning failed. But in 
 the new theatre not only an understanding of what 
 is mechanically possible, but the ability to conceive 
 and suggest the scenic designs, if not actually to put 
 them on paper, will be required of those dramatists 
 who are to be most eminent beyond the narrow 
 bounds of contemporary realism. Contemporary 
 realism, which has had its way with our literature of 
 late, and probably to our good, will nevertheless not 
 long endure as the only or the highest form of art. 
 Already the theatre is swinging from it. But when 
 fancy is turned loose in the theatre of the future 
 of the immediate future when poetry riots, and ro- 
 mance, no longer are the writer's line and the actor's 
 voice the only elements of suggestion which count 
 supremely in the effect, and no longer can the judg- 
 ment of the printed page be invoked as the final judg- 
 ment. So fused with the text will be the scenery, 
 the pictorial element, so much a vital, integral part 
 of the play will be the painting and the lighting, 
 even the rhythm of the groupings, perhaps, that the 
 printed text will not be the play at all. The pro- 
 ducer will be half-author. The man of letters will 
 be helpless without the man of the theatre. 
 
 That of course, is why these men of the new the-
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 323 
 
 atre are so impatient or even scornful of academic 
 judgments, the traditional tests of literature. They 
 know that they, too, are artists, and they rightly de- 
 mand tests of their art which are proper to it, not 
 tests devised for a wholly different form. And that 
 is why the man of letters in the new theatre will be 
 an incomplete, if not sometimes a futile, worker, un- 
 less he, too, abandons the ancient tradition of the 
 printed text as a final test of dramatic literature, and 
 makes the test of theatrical performance, which de- 
 mands a new judgment in the fusion of intellectual, 
 emotional, plastic, and pictorial suggestion. We 
 are to judge a play now by its capacities under ade- 
 quate production, and as adequate production im- 
 plies elements of art quite foreign to printed litera- 
 ture, dramatic literature now steps beyond the an- 
 cient test, and perhaps should drop the term litera- 
 ture altogether, as making for confusion. 
 
 And what shall be the relation of the man of let- 
 ters to the new theatre? It is quite inconceivable 
 that we shall ever follow Gordon Craig to the limits 
 of his theory that the drama should give up all at- 
 tempts at reality, even throwing over human actors, 
 and abandon itself to a puppet dance amid expressive 
 scenery. That way madness lies. The modern 
 drama of contemporary life has come to stay, though
 
 324 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 in a few years we shall demand something less than 
 one third of the furniture which now clutters our 
 stage rooms. The vocal side of dramatic art, carry- 
 ing to audiences by the common medium of human 
 intercourse the intellectual ideas of the dramatist, 
 the sense of reality, the revelation of character, will 
 of course always abide, whether in contemporary 
 realism or the highest flights of poetic fancy. The 
 new art of the theatre will be an evolution not, 
 after all, a revolution. It will add to the firm basis 
 of literary solidity the fresh element of pictorial 
 appeal, fusing the two into one structure, not, as of 
 old, employing pictorial appeal merely as a conven- 
 tional sign-post of place. That is all our present- 
 day "realistic" scenery does. It is a sign-board of 
 place. It has no emotional quality of its own; it 
 cannot be called a branch of art. It is not really 
 essential to the mood and effect of the drama. But 
 in the new theatre the "production," the elements of 
 scenery, lighting, grouping, the colors of the back- 
 drops and costumes, the very design of the settings, 
 are conscious art works in themselves; and when 
 once the dramatist can rely upon them, he has 
 achieved a whole new range of materials to work 
 with besides words and the intellectual ideas words 
 express. That is the point. The man of letters
 
 THE MAN OF LETTERS 325 
 
 works with words, but the new dramatist with scene 
 cloths and switchboards and living statues and even 
 great patches of pure color. If the man of letters, 
 then, is to express himself fully, reach a high devel- 
 opment, in the new theatre, he must add to his tra- 
 ditional literary equipment the ability to use these 
 new materials to his purpose, making them combine 
 and fuse into a great unity of impression. 
 
 In the new theater, then, the dramatist must be 
 painter and sculptor of words, ideas, emotions, no 
 less than writer. The old interchangeableness be- 
 tween dramatist and man of letters is gone. The 
 great dramatists must still be born men of letters, 
 but they must be something else besides: they must 
 be artists of the theatre, aware that the theatre is 
 not the printed page, rather proud, perhaps, that it is 
 not, and impatient of any judgment which is not 
 formed from a seat in the auditorium.
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 
 
 1914 
 
 How often we have heard somebody say, "Well, 
 after all, I go to the theatre to be entertained !" It 
 is but another statement of Barrett Wendell's sar- 
 castic definition of the duty of the American theatre 
 "To send the suburbs home happy." But how 
 many of those who make, or those who listen to, this 
 remark, have ever stopped to think just what enter- 
 tainment means? 
 
 Not only are we prone to forget that entertainment 
 is a thing entirely relative to the age and neighbor- 
 hood, but that it is still further relative to the indi- 
 vidual, and when we say that we go to the theatre 
 to be entertained we have no right to mean anything 
 more than that. But we always do mean more than 
 that. We always mean that we want a play which 
 will amuse us or pleasantly affect our emotions, with- 
 out tiring the attention, without bringing up issues 
 which will have to be carried away for digestion out- 
 side of the theatre, without, in short, in any way dis- 
 
 326
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 327 
 
 turbing the even flow of our daily lives and the estab- 
 lished order of our ideas ; and, in addition, we refuse 
 to admit other people's standards of entertainment. 
 Now, that isn't fair. Of course everybody goes to 
 the theatre to be entertained. Art exists for no 
 other purpose than to entertain to occupy the 
 mind, to add a super-meaning and grace and charm 
 to life. Art is a measure of the richness and happi- 
 ness of a civilization. But entertainment and 
 amusement are not the same thing, and so this popu- 
 lar (and wholly correct) belief that the theatre exists 
 to entertain has been converted into an evil influence 
 by the confusion of the two terms. 
 
 Indeed, even amusement is a relative term. As 
 Gilbert said, it may be funny to sit down in a pork 
 pie, but you don't have to sit down in a pork pie to 
 be funny. Some people laugh at the pork pie school 
 of comedians others prefer Gilbert. But enter- 
 tainment is a much broader term than amusement, 
 embracing all the various appeals of the allied arts 
 of the theatre, and unless our theatre is broad enough 
 to meet the various demands of various people, it is 
 but partially fulfilling its function. Let us look 
 more carefully at some of these possible demands, let 
 us try to see if entertainment cannot be found in 
 quarters unsuspected, let us try to see if the stan-
 
 328 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 dard of what is entertaining is not, even for the indi- 
 vidual, a changeable thing, which can be raised and 
 even altered completely by a little effort on his part. 
 We demand of children that they alter their stan- 
 dards in the process of education. Why should all 
 the rest of us cease in our growth the day we leave 
 school, or cast our first vote*? 
 
 Let us take first the matter of scenery. The first 
 function of scenery, without question, is to supply 
 an illusion of place. But need its function stop 
 there *? And are there not various degrees, even va- 
 rious kinds of illusion 1 ? Why should we not find 
 entertainment, then, in watching scenic experiments 
 in the theater, and so give encouragement to the ex- 
 perimenters'? Our stage has made practically no 
 progress on the mechanical side, while the stages of 
 Europe have been hotbeds of experiment, calling 
 forth the best talents of architects and painters. 
 That is solely because we, the American public, can- 
 not see "entertainment" in anything different from 
 the comfortable routine to which we are accustomed. 
 
 When a scene is set up for an hour before our 
 eyes, is there any sensible reason why it should not, 
 in addition to creating the proper illusion of place, 
 also give us pure aesthetic pleasure on its own ac- 
 count? Indeed, there is every reason why it should.
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 329 
 
 If you buy even knives and forks and plates to eat 
 with, you strive also to buy attractive ones, decora- 
 tive ones. Why, then, should not a stage picture 
 compose into harmonies of color and design, why 
 should it not please the eye? Let us keep watch on 
 the stage pictures we see, let us give encouragement 
 to the producers who have the courage to throw about 
 half the furniture now used into the cellar and to 
 substitute for the present restless and meaningless 
 crisscrossings and wanderings about of the players 
 significant and attractive groupings. Let us encour- 
 age, as well, those producers who, in plays which 
 permit of a romantic or poetic treatment, dare to get 
 away from the conventional pasteboard and give us 
 decorations of line and color. Let us, in short, find 
 entertainment in the scene-painter's and decorator's 
 art. 
 
 Another phase of the drama in which the general 
 mass of theater-goers fail to find entertainment, very 
 largely because it has never occurred to them to look 
 for it there, is the dialogue of the play that is, the 
 literary charm of the writing. It goes without say- 
 ing that if a play is to endure it must be not only 
 effective dramatically but it must be written with 
 sufficient literary style to withstand the acid test of 
 print. However, in the past, few plays were ever
 
 330 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 printed (fortunately, the Drama League and other 
 influences have begun to alter that condition), and 
 even to-day few people stop to consider whether or 
 not a play has enduring qualities. Its immediate 
 appeal for the one evening when they have paid 
 their money for seats is all that concerns them. 
 
 Yet what an added source of entertainment firm, 
 well-knit writing is writing which possesses style! 
 You have only to contrast the dialogue of Somerset 
 Maugham's "The Land of Promise" with that of 
 Moody' s "The Great Divide" (two plays of strik- 
 ingly similar theme), to realize this. Mr. Moody 
 was a poet, and the mere fact that he was writing in 
 prose did not prevent him from writing beautifully, 
 with passages of emotional fervor and sudden flights 
 of imaginative suggestion. Neither did his people 
 speak out of character, which would have been fatal 
 in such a play. He had the sense for style, how- 
 ever, and from the mouth of his rough hero, in rough 
 words, came shaggy similes which lifted the hearer. 
 When Miss Anglin revived "Lady Windermere's 
 Fan" last spring, the incomparably brilliant dia- 
 logue of Oscar Wilde, clean cut at every angle like 
 a diamond, fell deliciously on the ear. One of the 
 reasons for the success of certain plays by A. E. 
 Thomas "The Rainbow" and "Her Husband's
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 331 
 
 Wife" is undoubtedly the graceful phrasing, life- 
 like but never merely the sloppy conversation of the 
 ordinary "man in the street." 
 
 We have carried the cult of realism too far in our 
 theater, till our plays have become, indeed, so real- 
 istic that they are not even true of the majority. 
 Only a small section of the public, in its most care- 
 less hours, ever talks as slangily and sloppily as the 
 characters in a Cohan comedy or any one of half a 
 hundred recent American dramas we might name. 
 Moreover, if realism means that we shall hear no 
 more beautiful language on our stage, no more care- 
 ful phrasing, no more poetic figure nor eloquent 
 period, then let us have done with realism for good 
 and all! Fortunately, however, men and women 
 still exist who can and do talk well and carefully 
 and eloquently. We should find entertainment in 
 seeing them' represented on the stage, and in the skill 
 of any playwright who can achieve by his style the 
 charm of well-knit, virile, beautiful dialogue. 
 
 But this matter of style in plays goes far deeper 
 than the mere literary quality of the dialogue. It 
 goes to the roots of the construction of the play, and 
 betrays the master craftsman (or the bungler) in a 
 hundred ways. With a very slightly increased at- 
 tention on our part we may find an added entertain-
 
 332 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ment in observing good workmanship, which will 
 compensate us, perhaps, for the diminished enter- 
 tainment we shall thereafter find in poor. 
 
 If you pay ten thousand dollars for a house you 
 demand good workmanship, and you look for it care- 
 fully. Why not when you pay two dollars for a 
 play*? A real love for good workmanship is as much 
 disclosed by the one demand as the other. Indeed, 
 if the demand does not exist in both cases the real 
 love is not there. 
 
 Let us consider the telephone: the telephone 
 is a beneficent invention, and it has benefited 
 nobody so much as the dramatist. Think how 
 few plays of contemporary life you now see 
 without a telephone on the stage. Is it there 
 to give a realistic touch? It is not. It is there 
 to help the dramatist get his plot across; and 
 a very potent help it is. J. M. Barrie in his comical 
 burlesque, "A Slice of Life," which Ethel Barrymore 
 acted two or three winters ago, made fun of this use 
 of the telephone. Each character, as he or she en- 
 tered, rang somebody up, in order to announce his 
 or her name for the benefit of the audience. 
 
 "Is this you, Father*?" asked Miss Barrymore in 
 a languid voice. "This is your daughter, Mrs. Hy- 
 phen-Brown you remember."
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 333 
 
 None of Mr. Barrie's characters, of course, said 
 any more, which was what made it funny. In serious 
 plays they hold real conversations, however, and thus 
 the audience can learn who they are and something 
 about them, without the necessity of additional char- 
 acters for them to talk to. The telephone thus takes 
 its place as a new and up-to-date device for helping 
 the dramatist get his plot across. 
 
 Did you ever stop to realize what a task it is to 
 get a plot across"? It looks easy, and the better it is 
 done the easier it looks. When it is done by a mas- 
 ter it doesn't seem to be done at all. Several hun- 
 dred thousand would-be dramatists all over the 
 United States think they can do it, and every mana- 
 ger's office is bombarded with manuscripts. But 
 any play reader can testify from bitter experience 
 that in not more than one out of five hundred of 
 these manuscripts is the plot successfully got across. 
 What looks so easy is perhaps the most difficult task 
 that confronts the craftsman in any branch of lit- 
 erature. 
 
 Consider for a moment this task, in the very first 
 act. The program tells your audience where the 
 scene is, and the names of the characters and no 
 more. The audience when the curtain rises does not 
 know which character on the stage is John Smith and
 
 334 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 which is James Brown, it does not know anything 
 about their past lives, or their present condition. 
 Obviously, the first thing the author has to do is to 
 introduce his characters to his audience, and the sec- 
 ond thing he has to do is to tell the audience all 
 about them. 
 
 But how is he going to do this*? He cannot say 
 anything himself, as a novelist can in a book. He 
 cannot begin with an introductory chapter telling the 
 secret history of their great-grandfathers. The min- 
 ute the curtain rises and the characters are disclosed, 
 the poor author has got to get out of sight and let 
 the characters do all the talking. Now, people in 
 daily life don't go around as a rule telling who they 
 are and all about themselves. They don't have to. 
 How, then, is the author going to let you know what 
 you must know about these people, without making 
 them act in a ridiculous manner? And remember, 
 too, he has only three-quarters of an hour, at most, to 
 do it in really not that long, for his first act must 
 go forward as well as explain the past. 
 
 Easy, eh? Why do so many plays (or rather, 
 why did they) open with a scene between a stiff- 
 necked butler with a British accent, and a pert 
 French maid in a short black skirt? Is it because
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 335 
 
 these two characters are funny? No. They ceased 
 being funny long ago if they ever were. It is be- 
 cause the butler is supposed to know all about the 
 family affairs, particularly "the master's," and the 
 maid to know all about her mistress, and both are 
 supposed to like to gossip on such subjects, so they 
 can explain the family history more or less plausibly 
 to the audience, and finally cry, " 'Sh here comes 
 the master now!" Out they scurry, and you know 
 the man who enters is Mr. Beaumont Smith, that 
 he's carrying on with an actress, that his wife sus- 
 pects him, and that she's going in disguise that night 
 to the French Ball to catch him at his pranks. Dear 
 old butler, pert French maid, many a drama could 
 never have been launched without your aid! The 
 telephone is rapidly superseding you, driving you 
 out of employment, but we shall always hold you in 
 grateful memory! 
 
 Another potent aid to the dramatist is the "Do 
 you remember*?" speech. This speech is usually 
 made by a man to a woman. Ostensibly it is done 
 to soften the woman's heart, perhaps, but really it 
 is done to explain the plot to the audience. 
 
 "Do you remember the low light on the hills that 
 day, and the smell of violets'? Your hand lay
 
 336 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 clasped in mine, and I almost forgot that I was 
 working for the Sugar Trust at ten dollars a week, 
 and so couldn't ask you to marry me." 
 
 "Aha!" we cry, delighted at our perspicacity, 
 "this young man has loved this girl a long time, but 
 has been too proud to ask her to pledge herself to 
 him till he could support her in the manner to which 
 she was unaccustomed!" 
 
 Exactly! Such was the practical purpose of all 
 the poetry. 
 
 Dramatists sometimes have a harder time now 
 than they used to, in spite of the telephone, because 
 that old Viking and idol-smasher, Ibsen, has made 
 away with the soliloquy. The soliloquy was a very 
 present help in time of trouble. After all, it wasn't 
 so very dreadful. The characters but thought 
 aloud. The novelist can tell the thoughts of his 
 characters for whole pages. But now convention 
 decrees that the poor dramatist mustn't do anything 
 of the kind. His characters must not say anything 
 they would not be willing that the other characters 
 should hear ! lago, when he is alone with the audi- 
 ence, does not hesitate to tell them just the kind 
 of a man he really is, and what he secretly intends 
 to do. But nowadays, if a dramatist permitted one 
 of his characters to do that, he would have every
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 337 
 
 critic in the country landing on him with both feet. 
 He has got to find some other way of explaining the 
 character, either by introducing a second congenial 
 character for the first to talk to, or by letting deeds 
 speak for themselves. 
 
 The "Oh, look out there !" speech is another favor- 
 ite device. This is used for two purposes to "work 
 up an entrance," or to make vivid to the audience 
 something which in the nature of things cannot be 
 shown on the actual stage. Examples of either use 
 will occur to the reader at once. 
 
 In one of Rostand's plays, "La Princess Loin- 
 taine," the stage shows the deck of a ship. The 
 sailors rush to the rail and look off excitedly into the 
 wings. "A boat is leaving the shore!" they cry. 
 And they describe to each other its passage over the 
 water and the Princess sitting in it, and work them- 
 selves up to a high pitch of excitement and sup- 
 posedly work the audience up as well so that the 
 actress playing the Princess finally enters the scene 
 with all eyes focused upon her, which is something 
 all actresses greatly desire. 
 
 You remember "Quo Vadis," no doubt*? When 
 the play was produced great posters depicted a naked 
 damsel on the back of a bull, and a gigantic man 
 grasping the bull's horns and breaking its neck.
 
 338 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Rather a piquant stage situation, you thought, and 
 hastened to the theater. But you didn't see there 
 any naked lady on a bull's back while a giant broke 
 the creature's neck. You saw the spectators looking 
 excitedly into the wings at the stage hands, and 
 telling each other that the bull's neck was being 
 broken. Of course, its neck had to be broken, and 
 the audience had to know it was broken, or the story 
 couldn't go on. But, since modern actors are not 
 trained to break bull's necks, it had to happen off 
 stage. 
 
 Poor old Pete Dailey, who was such a tower of 
 humor in the Weber and Fields company, once put 
 the prick of burlesque into this technical balloon. 
 He was supposed to enter upon the stage from a din- 
 ner party in the next room, and his entrance was 
 followed by the sound of applause from the invisible 
 diners. Jerking his thumb back toward the wings, 
 he remarked, "Jolly dogs, those stage hands!" 
 
 Did you ever stop to think why there is so often 
 a deep, dark villain in the drama*? He is there be- 
 cause something has got to happen to your hero or 
 your heroine, or you'll have no drama, at least ac- 
 cording to orthodox ideas. Mr. Shaw won't agree. 
 Now in this world most of us are our own villains, 
 our struggles are with ourselves, and our misfortunes
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 339 
 
 result more from our own failures, or our weaknesses, 
 or our doctor's bills, or the price of coal, than from 
 the dark plottings of an enemy. But in the drama 
 these things are very hard to get across, because they 
 are more or less spiritual, or at least invisible. It 
 is, however, comparatively easy to get over a contest 
 between two separate and definitely seen personal- 
 ities. Therefore the villain still pursues her, even 
 in some of the plays of Ibsen. 
 
 If it is hard to write a first act, it is still harder 
 to write a last. Indeed, it seems to be almost im- 
 possible, so few good ones are ever written. Up 
 to the last act, the author's job is to get everybody 
 as mixed up and down-hearted and hopelessly licked 
 as possible, and then, in a brief half hour, he has to 
 get his wife back in her husband's good opinion, the 
 lovers back in each other's arms, the missing child 
 restored, the lost will found, the drunkard sobered 
 up, the black sheep reformed and owning a gold 
 mine out West. Anybody who has tackled the job 
 of reforming a black sheep or reconciling a hope- 
 lessly mismated couple, knows it's a job that cannot 
 be performed between ten-thirty and eleven of the 
 evening. But the dramatist has to do it, and make 
 it seem as plausible and logical as he can. If he 
 doesn't, we (and our wives) declare his play "ends
 
 340 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 unhappily," and refuse to have anything more to 
 do with it. 
 
 The dramatist, then, without any tools save the 
 conversation of the characters in his play, has to tell 
 his audience who these characters are, what they 
 have been doing before the play begins, what sort of 
 folk they are; he has to lead them through a series 
 of adventures constantly increasing in tension or 
 excitement; and finally he has to solve as logically 
 as he may the various problems their actions have 
 raised. He never can speak for himself, he must 
 always speak through the mouths of his characters, 
 and he must do it all in three hours. No wonder 
 he is hard put to it for devices. 
 
 The best play, of course, other things being equal, 
 is the one in which the characters reveal themselves 
 so naturally that we are not aware they are doing 
 it, and in which every speech which explains the past 
 is also directly related to the present and the future; 
 and in which, finally, the solution is not forced, but 
 a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the characters. 
 In the best plays, we are least conscious of the means 
 employed to get the plot across. The first act of 
 Augustus Thomas's "As a Man Thinks" is perhaps 
 one of the best modern examples of the dramatist's 
 art completely concealing itself. We watch a group
 
 WHAT IS ENTERTAINMENT? 341 
 
 of people chatting over afternoon tea, and before 
 we are aware of it we know all about their past and 
 are eager to learn what their future is going to be. 
 Thinking it over afterward, we see how craftily it 
 was done. The skill of this act may be called dra- 
 matic style in the fullest sense, embracing pith and 
 dignity and thrust of language, exposition so na- 
 turally made that we are never conscious that the 
 characters are explaining themselves for our benefit, 
 and all the time a direct forward march of the story, 
 so that when the act ends we sense the problem and 
 are nearer to its heart. 
 
 Is there no entertainment to be found in the un- 
 folding of a play so written? Are we to be so heed- 
 less and childish as theatergoers that we absorb any 
 story, regardless of its workmanship? Are we to 
 have no standards of dramatic style, so that clumsy 
 exposition and the failure to cover the bare bones 
 of the plot do not hurt us? Until we do have such 
 standards, we shall have no native drama worthy of 
 serious consideration. 
 
 For the more obvious entertainment to be found 
 in ideas, in the drama which takes a definite point 
 of view on life or some social problem, there is 
 hardly time to speak now. Such a drama, if its 
 viewpoint is sound, and if it is well written, is fairly
 
 342 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 sure to make its way, even if slowly. We have 
 perhaps said enough to show, at any rate, that the 
 pleasure of theatergoing need not be narrowly and 
 childishly confined to an entertaining story that 
 those who so desire may find stimulation along 
 almost every line of esthetic attack, or may at least 
 look for it. If they fail to find it, they have a per- 
 fect right to complain that our theater is not yet 
 fulfilling its entire function and its whole duty.
 
 A QUIET EVENING IN THE THEATRE 
 
 1914 
 
 A quiet evening in New York! You go first to 
 a restaurant for dinner, where, as you enter, a cloak 
 boy (or more often girl) seizes your coat and hat. 
 There is noise and confusion in the dining-room. 
 The ceiling, much too low for comfort, is painful 
 with lights. The tables are filled with people all 
 talking at once, at the top of their voices. They 
 have to talk at the top of their voices because if they 
 didn't they couldn't hear themselves, let alone hear- 
 ing the other fellow. The reason is that they are 
 talking against a full orchestra, sawing rag time 
 against the sounding-board of the too-low ceiling. 
 
 Every now and then, to be sure, this music ceases, 
 and then comes a blessed sensation of comparative 
 quiet, broken only by the chatter of 200 people, the 
 clatter of dishes, the feet of the waiters. It is much 
 like the sensation experienced when water, which 
 has got into your ear while swimming, all of a sud- 
 den is released. But this blissfully normal condi- 
 
 343
 
 344 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 tion does not last long. You have just begun to 
 enjoy your roast and your table-mate's talk, when 
 crash, bang, zim, teum-tum goes the band again, and 
 the plug goes back into your ears, till against the 
 eardrums is the roaring of Niagara. 
 
 After this pleasant meal, you and your friend 
 start out for the theatre, having tipped the waiter 
 enough to buy 10,783 cauliflower seeds, which, when 
 grown, would be worth $1078.30, at the very least. 
 The trip to the theatre is uneventful. If you take 
 a taxi you merely have the sensation, so dear to the 
 heart of the New Yorker, of being robbed. If you 
 walk, you encounter no more exciting adventures 
 than being spattered with mud, nearly run down, 
 deafened by the roar of an elevated train over your 
 head, and made hoarse by trying to talk against the 
 opposition of Manhattan street traffic. Presently 
 you reach the theatre where the popular play you 
 wish to see is being presented. 
 
 Of course, you already have your tickets, pur- 
 chased at a hotel for $2.50 each (or more), and you 
 take your seats one minute before the time adver- 
 tised for the curtain to rise. Then you look about 
 you at the tiers of empty chairs and wonder why this 
 play is called a success. In fact, you don't begin 
 to realize why until a quarter or even a half hour
 
 QUIET EVENING IN THE THEATRE 345 
 
 later, when the curtain at last goes up and the play 
 begins. 
 
 Then the people begin to come. They descend 
 the aisles talking. They climb over your feet. 
 They step on your hat. They bang down their 
 chairs. They make a noise taking off their wraps. 
 They rustle and fidget and cough. The last of them 
 do not get in and settled down till the first act is 
 nearly over. What the first act has all been about 
 you have but the vaguest notion. It has been plain 
 that the actors were working very hard, and shouting 
 very loud. That fat actor is hoarse and perspiring, 
 like a man who has been trying to harangue a mob 
 armed with fish-horns to drown his efforts. You 
 are rather sorry for the actors. You are even more 
 sorry for yourself. You are not sure that the act 
 was uninteresting. Being young, you still are opti- 
 mistic. 
 
 Then comes a breathing spell. Thanks to David 
 Belasco, pioneer, theatre orchestras have been more 
 or less given up, and during the first intermission 
 your ears are rested, and in the dim "artistic" light 
 of the modern playhouse, hearing only the meaning- 
 less buz of 1200 people all talking at once, you find 
 refreshment reading "What the Men Will Wear" 
 in your programme.
 
 346 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Then the second act begins. You very soon dis- 
 cover that all the actors have got the habit. The 
 play, of course, is a farce (the programme says a 
 comedy). Have we not stated that it was a suc- 
 cessful play? The actors are, therefore, being 
 funny. There is no doubt about it, or at least they 
 don't intend that there shall be any doubt about it. 
 All during the first act they knew they had to shout 
 to make themselves heard in Row A above the din 
 of falling chair seats and the multifold rustle of ar- 
 rival. Now they just keep right on shouting. 
 Shouting has become second nature to them. Some- 
 body once spoke of an actor who "wafted an epi- 
 gram across the footlights." He was a prehistoric 
 relic or Marie Cahill. When an actor now has 
 an epigram to convey, he plays he is a German 
 howitzer and the audience is Rheims Cathedral, and 
 he puts in the full charge and lets her bang. While 
 the big, bow-wow actor is playing he is a German 
 howitzer, all the other actors play they are three- 
 inch field pieces discharging shrapnel at the gallery. 
 Of course, they can't all be firing at once, but at 
 least they can be changing positions, getting into 
 more favorable cover to shell the boxes or bombard 
 the balcony. 
 
 A battery doesn't change its position, of course,
 
 QUIET EVENING IN THE THEATRE 347 
 
 without a deal of noise and bustle. Therefor the 
 stage seems to be in a constant state of hubbub and 
 confusion. The stage directors' copy of the script 
 must look something like this: 
 
 CHAS. "You're a liar!" (Xs left and lights a 
 cigarette. ) 
 
 JEROME "Don't you dare call me a liar. 
 You're another!" (Xs right and sits down.) 
 
 MARCIA (Rising from the window seat) "Gen- 
 tlemen, gentlemen, I beg that you will not quarrel 
 on account of me. Poor little me I am not worth 
 it. Besides, it was not my Pomeranian, anyhow." 
 (Comes down stage showing how her gown is cut, 
 and lifts her arms high over her head, showing the 
 dimples in her elbows.) 
 
 CHAS. "Not your Pom?" (Xs right, clenching 
 fists and stamping feet, and looks out of the win- 
 dow.) 
 
 JEROME "Not your Pom?" (Crosses left and 
 kicks a footstool into the fireplace.) 
 
 MARCIA (walking right, then left, across stage 
 to each man and putting her arms on his shoulders, 
 leaving powder marks) "No, not my Pom!" 
 (Goes up stage and poses by the draperies.) 
 
 CHAS. (raising hands to heaven and Xing left) 
 "Damn!"
 
 348 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 JEROME (Xing right and biting the end off a 
 cigar, spitting it into the footlights) "Hell !" 
 
 At this witty sally the audience laughs uproar- 
 iously, and the actors "hold the picture." 
 
 American stage management, as we see it at the 
 present time in our "best-seller" type of drama, pro- 
 duces, in fact, very much the same effect as modern 
 dance music din and monotony are its character- 
 istics. Every sentence must be shouted, every 
 "point" driven home with an exaggerated emphasis, 
 accompanied by an exaggerated gesture, which cor- 
 responds to the whack of the big bass drum. It is 
 against the rules to sit, stand or recline in any one 
 spot for more than a minute at a time unless you are 
 a pretty actress in a bed. Then you may stay there, 
 if you bounce up and down at regular intervals. 
 "We must have action," the manager cries, by which 
 he means that the actors must run about, like the 
 dancing mice in a shop window. Perhaps it is only 
 natural that folks who like ragtime like this sort of 
 thing. But it is the "art" of semi-barbarians. 
 
 The leader of the cult of St. Vitus and the Bull 
 of Bashan is undoubtedly the clever Mr. Cohan. 
 He is to drama and stage management what Irving 
 Berlin is to music. If he staged "Macbeth" it 
 would be in rag-time. How the actors rush in and
 
 QUIET EVENING IN THE THEATRE 349 
 
 out, hurry and shout, bustle and perspire, in one of 
 his plays! They are never still a second. No 
 "scene," in the French sense, lasts more than five 
 minutes, just as there is no paragraph more than ten 
 lines long in Munsefs Magazine. The scenes are 
 often clever, but how very noisy! The pace, the 
 racket, bewilders you, hypnotizes you. You feel, 
 when you come out of the theatre, that you have cer- 
 tainly got your money's worth of something, any- 
 how. 
 
 When you come away from "A Pair of Silk Stock- 
 ings" at Mr. Ames's Little Theatre, you don't feel 
 that you've had your money's worth. Nobody has 
 shouted, nobody has rushed around. At times, for 
 two or three minutes on a stretch, the actors and 
 actresses sat in their chairs in drawing-room or cham- 
 ber and talked just the way people really do talk. 
 Why pay $2 for this sort of thing 1 ? It's as much 
 of a swindle as Garrick's Hamlet seemed to Part- 
 ridge. 
 
 Of course, it wasn't "A Pair of Silk Stockings" 
 that you and your friend went to see when you spent 
 your happy evening in New York. More likely you 
 went to "It Pays to Advertise," or some really good 
 production where the actors really act and earn their 
 miserable salaries.
 
 350 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 After it was over, of course you went somewhere 
 for supper. Once more there was the too low ceil- 
 ing, the clatter of dishes, the crash of rag-time, the 
 chatter of screaming voices trying to make them- 
 selves heard above the din, and now, in addition, 
 the shuffle of one-stepping feet upon the dance floor. 
 Somewhere around one or two o'clock you headed 
 through a deserted side street toward your lodging, 
 and suddenly became aware of a queer atmospheric 
 condition known as silence. It made you dizzy at 
 first. Gradually, too, you became aware of a thing 
 up above the end of the street which memory told 
 you was a star in the sky. 
 
 Presently you caught your bed when it came 
 around, climbed in, and dreamed that you were 
 armed with a Ross rifle defending a trench labelled 
 Row H, from the assaults of seventeen thousand 
 actors and actresses and Marie Dressier, who were 
 charging upon you with strange cries and violent 
 gestures, and hurling shells filled with frightful, 
 jagged fragments of the English language. 
 
 Such is a quiet evening in the American theatre.
 
 MIDDLE-AGED MORALIZING FOR 
 YEASTY YOUNGSTERS 
 
 1915 
 
 A fear haunts us that we are reaching that period 
 of life James Huneker once called his anecdotage. 
 At any rate, we are more and more given in the the- 
 atre to reminiscences and memories of "the palmy 
 days" said palmy days for us being the eighteen- 
 nineties and the first few years of the present cen- 
 tury. Quaint as it may seem to older people to 
 speak of the eighteen-nineties as the palmy days 
 (they were, after all, but yesterday), we are con- 
 stantly being mournfully impressed with the fact 
 that a new generation has sprung suddenly into 
 active being which never went to plays in the eigh- 
 teen-nineties, which never adored Julia Marlowe as 
 Juliet, nor shed scalding tears at Mrs. Fiske's Tess, 
 nor hailed the advent of "The Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray" as the swimming of a new planet into their 
 ken, nor even realized Clyde Fitch as a contempo- 
 rary. We talk with theatre-goers in New York to- 
 
 351
 
 352 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 day, in fact, who have never seen a play by Clyde 
 Fitch on the stage, and know James A. Herne only 
 as a name, not a memory. Whereupon we feel 
 "chilly arid grown old," and begin to narrate anec- 
 dotes about "Shore Acres" or "The Climbers." 
 
 Those were hopeful days, the eighteen-nineties ! 
 Henry Arthur Jones was preaching "The Great 
 Realities of Modern Life," and William Winter 
 was thundering against Ibsen. Now, when a play 
 by Ibsen is produced, nobody thunders. Where is 
 the fun in fighting for a man if nobody fights against 
 him? Now, pretty much anything can be produced 
 (not that it is, but it could be) without arousing 
 protest and hostility. And, alas! a certain zest is 
 gone. Art, like anything else, thrives on battle 
 smoke and martyrdom. We youngsters were boast- 
 ing of what the passing generation scorned, even 
 abominated. We saw a new dawn on the horizon, 
 a new drama, a theatrical renaissance. Even when 
 we had to score Fitch for his frivolities and conces- 
 sions to "popular taste," we still upheld him as a 
 worker in the native vineyard, a butterfly, perhaps, 
 but a butterfly with genius. We battled, later, for 
 "The Easiest Way" ageing, it is true, but still 
 hopeful. 
 
 But all that is past history. Now, when we are
 
 MIDDLE-AGED MORALIZING 353 
 
 "chilly and grown old," we look about us on the 
 American stage and wonder what became of our re- 
 naissance, wonder where that sun of American drama 
 is which had flushed pink the eastern sky, wonder 
 what there is to fight for. Alas! there isn't even 
 a William Winter to fight against. 
 
 These melancholy reflections have been inspired by 
 a visit to Mr. Anspacher's play, "The Unchastened 
 Woman." "The Unchastened Woman," to be sure, 
 is a popular success and, in our humble judgment, 
 deservedly so. Why, then, should it inspire us to 
 melancholy? Because and here we get into our 
 anecdotage it is so much like a Fitch play, because 
 it is a character study of a frivolous and selfish 
 woman, gaining its appeal from that study rather 
 than from mere narrative excitement, or farcical situ- 
 ation, or machine-made slang; and also because it 
 gives the players a chance to act not to show off 
 a few pretty personal tricks, but really to act, to 
 impersonate. Of such stuff was "The Truth" and 
 "The Girl with the Green Eyes." 
 
 Still you fail to see why we are afflicted with 
 melancholy at the spectacle"? Simply because New 
 York is utterly amazed at the novelty of such a 
 drama! A few old gray beards of criticism who 
 have withstood the long siege of the advertising de-
 
 354 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 partments, have written, to be sure, about the char- 
 acter, discussing whether or not she is probable and 
 agreeing that she isn't pleasant. But not so the 
 youngsters. They are too surprised to debate 
 whether she is probable, or to care whether she is 
 pleasant. The great, stunning, overwhelming fact 
 is that she is a character, that her moods and emo- 
 tions condition the story, and that the actress who 
 plays her (Miss Emily Stevens) is so busy trying 
 to be the part that it is fun to watch. These young- 
 sters have even been too astonished to say that Miss 
 Stevens talks like her cousin, Mrs. Fiske. Perhaps, 
 indeed, they have never seen Mrs. Fiske ! For she, 
 too, belongs back in the Golden Age. Isn't it just 
 a little pathetic when a good play which merely does 
 what a good play ought to do, excites such wonder 
 and admiration because it does it? Isn't that a 
 rather bitter commentary on the plays which must 
 have preceded it 1 ? 
 
 Not long ago we wrote a little piece about the 
 movies, and from our lofty ground of superior years 
 and old-fashioned standards bewailed the fact that 
 the stories they tell are trash. Rising up in defence 
 of the movies comes a youngster, and with lance at 
 rest, charges upon us full tilt in all the confidence 
 of his youth. We know when to run. We know
 
 MIDDLE-AGED MORALIZING 355 
 
 that it is no use trying to fight youth. "Where on 
 the American dramatic stage, in the past ten years, 
 has Mr. Eaton seen plays, the plots of which weren't 
 trash *?" asks the boy, poking his lance into our ribs, 
 before our lame old Rosinante can carry us away. 
 
 "The past ten years !" Oh, youth, youth ! The 
 past ten years is the decade of Cohan and Megrue, 
 of Edna Ferber and Montague Glass, of Al. Woods 
 and the Winter Garden. Fitch is dead, and Walter 
 appears to have shot his bolt, and Moody has been 
 cut off in his prime. The rising sun took a peep at 
 theatrical conditions, saw a movie or two, and 
 flopped back below the horizon. Yes, my lad, you 
 are right sadly we admit it. But it wasn't always 
 so. Eleven years ago, now ! Or, say, twenty 
 years ago, when you were rejoicing in your first 
 knickbockers, ah, then it was different ! Why, then 
 we even used to see fine acting ! 
 
 Acting! We went recently to "The Two Vir- 
 tues," by Alfred Sutro, acted by Mr. Sothern at the 
 Booth Theatre, and once more we felt "chilly and 
 grown old." How old-fashioned Mr. Sothern im- 
 pressed us as being and Haidee Wright, too. 
 Why, here was an actor supposed to be representing 
 a man of intellectual force, of gracious manners, of 
 sly humor, of breeding and charm. And Mr.
 
 356 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Sothern didn't once try the entire evening to look 
 intellectual, or to show his gracious manners, or to 
 be humorous, or to have the charm of breeding. It 
 was a stupid performance. Any man of intellect, 
 good manners, breeding, humor and charm, would 
 have been just like him. He didn't act at all. He 
 didn't act any more than Garrick did the night Part- 
 ridge saw him play Hamlet. Any of our younger 
 generation of actors can tell you that it is quite im- 
 possible to represent these things without trying very 
 hard. Of course, off stage, a regular fellow isn't 
 like that at all ! 
 
 Another thing Mr. Sothern had so much up his 
 sleeve! Nowadays, when a player is called upon 
 to let his voice out you suffer agony for fear he's 
 going to snap a vocal chord. But when Mr. Sothern 
 bellows "No" why, it's not half so loud as he could 
 shout it, and you feel quite easy. Again, he is 
 called on to drop a pretty phrase something about 
 myrrh and honey and instead of being ashamed 
 of it he rolls it like a sweet morsel under the tongue 
 and you hear an echo of Shakespearean iambics be- 
 fore your mind proceeds ahead with the play. Still 
 again, for a second he drops his defence of banter 
 and lets a single sentence of simple sincerity stab 
 through and like magic a tense hush falls on the
 
 MIDDLE-AGED MORALIZING 357 
 
 entire audience, and in a thousand throats the breath 
 is caught. It is so easy for the big fellows. Who 
 can do it today 1 ? Tell us their names, oh youth. 
 
 Well, well, there is an answer somewhere, and 
 presently we shall go hopefully to work again and 
 find it, but just for this evening we claim an old 
 fellow's privilege to sit in the corner and growl. 
 There is a certain comfortable feeling steals over you 
 when you finally admit that you are middle-aged, 
 after all, and resign to the youngsters the job of 
 justifying the ways of the movies to man. The old 
 fellow in "Fanny's First Play" said that for him 
 England's anthem would always be "God Save the 
 Queen." Some day our mistrustful lad will under- 
 stand that speech. He cannot yet.
 
 ON LETTING THE PLAYERS ALONE 
 
 Last year, during the rehearsals of a play which 
 was soon to be shown on Broadway, I talked with 
 the actress who was to play the leading woman's 
 part. She was, she said, in a state of great perplex- 
 ity, because the author wished her to play the part 
 in one way, the manager in another. "When the 
 manager isn't there I play it the author's way," she 
 said. "When he is there I play it his." 
 
 "But what are you going to do on the opening 
 night ?" I asked. 
 
 Her frown of perplexity vanished in one of those 
 smiles which add fifty dollars a week to her salary. 
 "Oh, I am going to play it my way then !" said she. 
 
 As a matter of fact, she did. As the play was a 
 success, due in no small measure to her, she was 
 allowed to continue so to do. But not all players 
 are so clever, nor so daring, as she. William Win- 
 ter, who when it came to acting knew a thing or two 
 before most of us were born, always affirmed that 
 
 358
 
 ON LETTING THE PLAYERS ALONE 359 
 
 a great trouble with our latter-day stage manage- 
 ment is the lack of liberty allowed the actors to de- 
 velop their parts according to their personal vision 
 and capacity. He was quite right, and the state- 
 ment still holds true. 
 
 We generally think of David Belasco as our lead- 
 ing stage manager, certainly as our most painstak- 
 ing and thorough stage manager. Yet I never 
 talked with a player who had been under his tutelage 
 who did not say proudly, "Why, he let me play my 
 whole part for two weeks without telling me how 
 to read a single line !" Some actors tell you this as 
 a compliment to themselves, but some are wise 
 enough to realize that in reality it is a compliment 
 to Mr. Belasco. A man who has been in scores of 
 plays under nearly every management in New York 
 and several in continental Europe, told me the other 
 day that there were only three real stage managers 
 in America. Who the other two were, in his opin- 
 ion, I refuse to divulge. Personally, I think there 
 are at least a couple more. But the first, of course, 
 was Belasco. 
 
 "I have just been rehearsing in a play staged by 
 the author," said this actor, "and he has been show- 
 ing all of us how to read his lines. He has spent 
 hours showing us. The result will be that not a
 
 360 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 one of us will give a self-realized, spontaneous, 
 fluent performance. We shall all be more or less 
 stiff, and some of the less experienced will approxi- 
 mate parrots. I consider that stage management at 
 its very worst. Under Belasco the case is entirely 
 different. He often lets you quite alone for days, 
 even for weeks, at a time, allowing you to feel out 
 the part in your own way, and trusting you to make 
 it fit the general scheme of things by making the gen- 
 eral scheme clear at all rehearsals. He believes, I 
 suppose, that a man can do his best work only in his 
 own way, not in another man's way. There would 
 be nothing authentic about a composer's music if 
 somebody told him just how he should write every 
 bar. There would be nothing exactly inspired 
 about the poetry of a poet who was told by some- 
 body else how he must write every line. I've no- 
 ticed there's not even any good criticism written on 
 papers which dictate to their critics. An actor, too, 
 in so far as he is an artist, a creator and certainly 
 you've got to admit he is one to some extent must 
 be allowed to do things in his own way if the things 
 he does are to have the stamp of inspiration and 
 authenticity. It is just as easy to detect the parrot 
 in acting as in music or poetry. 
 
 "Well, Belasco understands that. He's like a
 
 ON LETTING THE PLAYERS ALONE 361! 
 
 good editor who lets his staff be original, and so gets 
 truly readable copy. Of course, he sometimes has 
 to take a player in hand, and very often when the 
 play reaches a point where the general effect is more 
 important than the individual performances he will 
 step in and make everyone conform to the effect he 
 desires. But that is part of his excellence as a stage 
 director, too. He keeps his units together, as well 
 as letting each have individual freedom. When 
 people talk of the fine acting in his plays, however, 
 it usually means that it is spontaneous acting, each 
 player having worked out more or less his own 
 scheme for his part and therefore taking a vastly 
 greater pride and interest in it." 
 
 Such is the substance of this experienced actor's 
 remarks. We believe they are true words, and 
 words which might well be pondered. A play is 
 more or less a lifeless thing, at the mercy of the pro- 
 ducer and the players. The line between success 
 and failure is again and again crossed on one side or 
 the other as the acting and production are good or 
 bad. This season, for instance, "The Boomerang" 
 at the Belasco Theatre is a great success ; but it might 
 easily have seemed nothing but a trite and trivial 
 comedy at another theatre. The more delicate a 
 work is, the more subtle, the more closely localized,
 
 362 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the finer its literary polish, the more dependent it 
 becomes upon its production. 
 
 We have a great many people in this country 
 engaged in the "business" of producing plays. We 
 have surprisingly few genuine producers, who under- 
 stand alike dramatic and literary values, and who 
 are capable of appraising and giving instruction in 
 the delicate art of acting. Just as a painter is im- 
 patient of any criticism save that of a fellow crafts- 
 man, a good actor quite naturally feels that perhaps 
 he knows more about his own job than a layman. 
 Certainly, he knows, as every other artist in every 
 other branch of art knows, that self expression is 
 the only kind worth striving for, and nothing worth 
 while is ever achieved that isn't a form of self ex- 
 pression. To develop actors, the actors must be 
 given a chance. To give them a chance under 
 proper guidance, under guidance which will keep 
 them in the bounds of the play and which they will 
 respect, the stage managers must be artists not 
 necessarily actors, perhaps, though as a rule actors 
 probably make the best stage directors but cer- 
 tainly men of the theatre in the true sense, men 
 whose interest is in the creation of artistic effects, 
 not in "putting over" another winner. 
 
 The late Frank Worthing probably taught more
 
 ON LETTING THE PLAYERS ALONE 363 
 
 young players to act in his day than any score of 
 stage managers. He taught Grace George, among 
 others. He played a part as only he could, and the 
 young actor playing with him strove not to read his 
 lines as author or director might order, but as they 
 should be read to fit into the rhythm of Worthing's 
 performance. He (or she) strove to measure up 
 to the art of that gifted player, and by feeling the 
 spur of emulation and trying out what was learned 
 in actual performance, made some of Worthing's 
 art his own. Just so Mrs. Fiske has been known to 
 tell a player in her company to go ahead and take 
 the scene away from her if he could. That was a 
 spur to make any player spurt. That was one 
 reason why Mrs. Fiske's companies used to shine. 
 
 At any rate, one thing is certain; the ranks of the 
 actors may or may not be overcrowded, but the ranks 
 of the competent stage managers most assuredly are 
 not. One has only to make the round of the New 
 York theatres and see the horrid pitch-fork methods 
 employed by the producers in most of them, to 
 realize it. Probably at least twenty-five per cent 
 (and possibly much more) of the failures in any one 
 season are due to hasty and incompetent stage man- 
 agement. Just how great a loss this means in dol- 
 lars and cents we leave it to the more statistically
 
 364 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 minded to determine. It certainly means a great 
 loss in pleasure and a serious handicap to the more 
 noble forms of drama. Why the big producing 
 firms do not select certain promising young men and 
 train them up and try them out as stage managers is 
 one of the mysteries of our theatre.
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 
 IN THE SCHOOLS 
 
 Spring 1916 
 
 Shakespeare died 300 years ago without the slight- 
 est consciousness that he had written textbooks for 
 Phillips Academy and the New Rochelle High 
 School. He passed from amid his daffodils and 
 primroses for in those last quiet years in the coun- 
 try I am sure he had especially the spring blooms 
 about his dwelling in the knowledge and belief 
 that he had written plays for the practical theatre. 
 That they commanded a wide interest he was not 
 unaware; probably he was not unaware that they 
 deserved it! He had already seen them put into 
 print. But he had no "message," as Shaw or Brieux 
 has, and these quartos were, so to speak, souvenirs of 
 a pleasant evening in the playhouse, or hints of a 
 pleasant evening for those who were not present. 
 Most assuredly they were not textbooks. 
 
 And it would take a bold man to deny the possi- 
 bility of a connection between the modern decline of 
 
 365
 
 366 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Shakespeare on the stage and the fact that his plays 
 were never more generally in use as textbooks. 
 More American children grow up today with a sup- 
 posed knowledge of Shakespeare than ever before, 
 and fewer ever see him acted which simply means 
 that fewer have any real knowledge of him. 
 
 It is an object of the tercentenary celebration not 
 only to honor Shakespeare, but to focus attention 
 upon all phases of his works, and I personally be- 
 lieve that no more useful result could possibly follow 
 than a revaluation of Shakespearean study methods 
 in our secondary schools, so complete in places as to 
 be revolutionary. At present it is safe to say that 
 the average high school makes Shakespeare a bore, 
 and while it may teach enough routine of plot and 
 smattering of philology to jam a child past the col- 
 lege entrance board, it fails utterly to inspire dra- 
 matic appreciation, to expand the imagination, to 
 create affection. And the reason invariably is that 
 Shakespeare's works are studied as textbooks, not as 
 living dramatic performances spoken by living play- 
 ers. Conditions are not so bad as they were a few 
 years ago, to be sure. The dramatic renaissance in 
 our colleges is carrying down better equipped teach- 
 ers into the secondary schools. But there is still a
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 367 
 
 vast deal to be done, and the present is an excellent 
 opportunity for calling attention to it. 
 
 Most readers, I fancy, have gone through much 
 the same experience that I went through in my 
 school days and they were spent in a great and 
 famous school, too. We boys sat on benches with 
 our red-bound Rolfe's editions before us, and in a 
 sleepy singsong some boy droned out a passage, and 
 then the instructor asked him questions to see if he'd 
 read the notes, and then another boy recited and was 
 questioned on the notes, and then the instructor, if 
 he were feeling particularly energetic that day, gave 
 us a bit of a lecture on the beauty of the poetry or 
 on the character of Rosalind, and we openly yawned, 
 and waited for the bell, and when it sounded rushed 
 with a glad stamping into the open air. By virtue 
 of much repetition, we learned that the quality of 
 mercy is not strained, and we could repeat the plot 
 of "Macbeth" in order to get into Yale. After 
 which, we prayed to be delivered from the Bard! 
 From a considerable observation of secondary 
 schools since that time I gather that this is still the 
 way Shakespeare is "taught" in too many places. 
 
 It is a crime, and doubly a crime now that we so 
 pitifully need the right cultivation of dramatic
 
 368 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 imagination and poetic appreciation to counteract 
 the stultifying banality of the movies. 
 
 I am convinced that the first thing which should 
 be thrown overboard in a preliminary teaching of 
 Shakespeare to children of high school age is the 
 notes. In their place should be substituted, by dia- 
 gram, by pictures, and most of all, if it is a possible 
 thing, by practical illustration, a clear image in the 
 pupils' minds of the Elizabethan stage, of the actual 
 conditions under which "Hamlet" or "Macbeth" or 
 "The Merchant of Venice" first saw the light. This 
 preliminary seems indispensable to me, for until the 
 play to be studied is sensed in its practical relation 
 to the theatre, until it is felt primarily as a living, 
 acted story, it is ridiculous to expect children, or even 
 untrained adults, to grasp its secondary significances. 
 Moreover, through the dramatic sense lies the easiest 
 and most natural approach to the child's interest; 
 the method is pedagogically sound. 
 
 If I were teaching Shakespeare in a high school 
 and, I may add, I have taught him to many boys 
 and girls of high school age, lest it be thought I am 
 speaking purely from theory I should first of all 
 (after my talk on the Elizabethan theatre and my 
 display of pictures and diagrams) have the desk re- 
 moved from the platform, or shoved far back for a
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 369 
 
 "balcony." I should then group some of the class 
 at the sides as well as in front, and with as much 
 merriment and informality as possible lead the class 
 to play the teacher's platform was Shakespeare's 
 stage and they the London audience. Then, pick- 
 ing boys and girls for the various parts, I should 
 have them come up on this platform to read their 
 roles, act by act. No doubt the players would be 
 changed frequently if the class were a large one. 
 Everybody must have a chance. 
 
 No effort would be made, of course, to coach any 
 pupils into acting, further than to keep them in the 
 relative positions called for by the text, though a 
 very definite effort would be made and herein lies 
 one of the finest opportunities of the Shakespearean 
 teacher, and a neglected one to coach each pupil 
 to read his lines not only intelligently but rhythm- 
 ically and with full voice and clean enunciation. 
 Those who by nature threw themselves into acting 
 would, of course, not be discouraged, but those who 
 lacked the capacity or the self-assurance would not be 
 made to feel that they were less useful or failing in 
 their work. The main object to be achieved would 
 be the creation in them all of a sense for the dramatic 
 quality of the story, a realization of the dramatic 
 drive and interest.
 
 370 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 It should be possible thus to cover at least one 
 act, possibly two, at each recitation, and I should go 
 through the entire play in this manner before a single 
 word was said about the notes at the back of the 
 book. I should make that particular play a living, 
 vital tale to every child, as vital as the movies 
 around the corner, before I turned to the notes at 
 all. I should abolish most of the formality and 
 discipline of the conventional classroom, and have 
 a grand good time in the process. 
 
 Then, and only then, should I turn back to the 
 text and go through it as classroom work, demand- 
 ing a knowledge of the notes, elucidating the simpler 
 and most necessary problems of philology, and dis- 
 cussing -with (not at} the pupils the characters of 
 Shylock or Hamlet or Rosalind. And even during 
 this work, at every possible opportunity the teacher 
 ought to make reference to this or that famous per- 
 formance in the past, show pictures of Booth and 
 Sothern and Marlowe, keep in every possible way 
 the stage side of the play before the pupils' minds. 
 It is only by bringing out the dramatic element that 
 the growing mind can grasp Shakespeare in his true 
 significance and interest. It is only by a practical 
 demonstration of the platform stage that the school 
 child can acquire the capacity for historic projec-
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 371 
 
 tion, the ability, that is, to view with comprehension 
 in one century the works of a previous century, 
 created for totally different conditions. And it is 
 only by keeping Shakespeare a living, spoken thing, 
 not a dry, printed text, that a love can be fostered 
 for verbal beauty on the stage of the present, for the 
 chiming of the spoken word, the strut and sweep of 
 poetic passion. 
 
 By following some such method of teaching as 
 this I think nearly as many plays can be got through 
 with in a year as by the old methods, and I am very 
 sure if only half as many are covered, twice as much 
 will actually be accomplished. I have certainly 
 demonstrated to my own satisfaction, by a consider- 
 able series of experiments, not only that the average 
 mixed class of small-town high school children can 
 be made to enjoy Shakespeare by this method, but 
 that they will thereafter voluntarily and delightedly 
 come through snow and slush of an evening to read, 
 in the same way, the plays of Sheridan, Goldsmith, 
 Lady Gregory, even G. B. Shaw. I have had a 
 dozen boys and girls howling joyously over "You 
 Never Can Tell" in my library, and I have the next 
 week had them all around the piano singing "Pa- 
 tience" and "The Mikado." They didn't ask to 
 "rag" the music, either ! After all, that is a better
 
 372 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 gauge of education than a high percentage in the 
 college entrance tests. We do not study to pass 
 examinations, but to expand our capacities for useful 
 living and rational enjoyment. Any pupil who gets 
 a mark of 100 per cent, in Shakespeare, but there- 
 after hates the plays, has not "passed" brilliantly; 
 he has dismally failed or, rather, his teacher has. 
 Coincident with some such method as this for 
 teaching Shakespeare in many cases might very well 
 be an actual performance of one of his plays (in 
 whole or in part) by the pupils. It is impossible to 
 say how many amateur productions are made by 
 public and private secondary schools in America 
 during a year, but the total is undoubtedly up in the 
 thousands. In a great many instances, the pupils 
 are allowed to pick their own play without any help- 
 ful suggestions, and naturally wanting something 
 "snappy" or amusing, they pick some cheap farce 
 and waste their time over the most direful rubbish. 
 Quite aside from the fact that any self-respecting 
 Principal ought to be ashamed to let his school be 
 represented by anything short of the best standards, 
 the school is losing thereby an excellent chance to 
 combine its educational functions with the spon- 
 taneous impulses of the children. If they have been 
 properly taught, the pupils themselves will know
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 373 
 
 that Shakespeare wrote quite as jovial farce as any- 
 body else, and that one of his plays offers them the 
 fullest opportunities for showing off the capacities 
 of everybody in the class. And to the teacher it 
 means the culmination of her efforts to vitalize the 
 text. 
 
 It is safe to say that a school performance of 
 Shakespeare should be made either on a platform 
 stage, as nearly Elizabethan as the resources permit, 
 or else out of doors. If the former method is 
 chosen, both pupils and public should be impressed 
 with the fact that the school is trying to do some- 
 thing historical, to show Shakespeare in an approxi- 
 mation of his original dress. It is perfectly proper 
 for a school production to have a touch of the edu- 
 cational about it, especially as in that way the ter- 
 rible obstacle of scenery is overcome. The platform 
 stage is easily made, requires no curtain, has the 
 charm of novelty, and centres the attention on the 
 spoken word. It can be appropriately dressed at 
 the rear, also, with cloth hangings, rugs, tapestries, 
 to relieve its bareness and give it color. The New 
 Theatre's production of "A Winter's Tale" proved 
 that. 
 
 So far as practicable, the costumes should be made 
 by the children themselves, and at the least possible
 
 374 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 cost. It should be a matter of pride to make a 
 pretty dress out of cheesecloth for sixty-five cents, 
 rather than to present a sumptuous appearance in 
 velvet and gold. Every possible phase of the school 
 curriculum drawing, music, sewing, manual train- 
 ing should be applied to the preparation of the 
 stage, the costumes, the play, not only to reduce ex- 
 penses, but far more to connect the school work with 
 reality, to correlate it, to give every pupil a useful 
 part to play. Happily, there are already many 
 high schools where this is realized, and even one or 
 two where the pupils have actually assisted in build- 
 ing a permanent school theatre. 
 
 The same methods hold true, of course, for the 
 out-of-door performance, which in many sections of 
 the country is the more desirable. Not only is the 
 out-of-door performance, under good conditions, apt 
 to be more illusive, especially if given at night, but 
 it has a peculiar beauty of its own, and it permits 
 the utilization of more players and the arrangement 
 of pretty dances. 
 
 An entire school can contribute. I have in mind 
 at this moment a performance of "A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream" given by a little West Virginia high 
 school at the instigation of the English teacher, a 
 graduate of Radcliffe College, where she had felt
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 375 
 
 the inspiration of the new dramatic renaissance. 
 The boys cut young firs on the mountain and made 
 a stage in a corner of the school yard, screening out 
 unsightly objects beyond and creating masked wings 
 and entrances. The girls made all the costumes. 
 Their natural love of dancing was utilized to the 
 full. Everybody contributed something, even the 
 grade children. And on a June day all the popula- 
 tion of the little town gathered to watch the play, 
 seeing and hearing something far different from any- 
 thing the movies provide. The sixteenth century 
 touched hands with the twentieth across the years in 
 this mountain village, and the thrill of eternal love- 
 liness awoke. What a splendid thing for a school 
 to do! That is the real way to teach Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 While the superior educational advantages of 
 doing a thing yourself instead of having it done for 
 you can never be overestimated, at the same time 
 we should never lose sight of the stimulus of pro- 
 fessional example and the standard such example 
 sets. In the study of Shakespeare there is as yet 
 almost no official recognition of the aid the profes- 
 sional theatre could, and should, give to the public 
 schools. Some form of co-operation between the 
 two should be brought about, and doubtless will be
 
 376 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 as time goes on and our theatre is better adapted to 
 such service. 
 
 There is probably hardly a reader of this article 
 who does not treasure among his most precious mem- 
 ories certain trips to the playhouse when he was of 
 school age. In my own case, I know, the perform- 
 ances of Dickens dramatizations by the old Boston 
 Museum Stock Company had more to do with my 
 development of a love for reading and appreciation 
 of character portrayal than anything else. The 
 other day a man told me of a boys' club he organized 
 some years ago, outside of Boston. Miss Maude 
 Adams sent him twenty seats to "Peter Pan," and 
 he took the whole club. Ten years later, talking 
 with those same boys, it was that trip to Boston to 
 see "Peter Pan" which every one of them most viv- 
 idly remembered and talked about. Moreover, 
 many of them had been to see Miss Adams's revival 
 of the play, and one and all were still her ardent 
 champions. Just so those of us who saw Julia Mar- 
 lowe's Juliet when we were schoolboys have never 
 forgotten it, but treasure in our hearts a fragrant 
 memory, like a precious standard of loveliness and 
 poetry. 
 
 But how is this co-operation between school and 
 stage to come about? the reader asks. Especially
 
 THE TEACHING OF SHAKESPEARE 377 
 
 how is it to come about in the small towns where 
 there are no theatres'? 
 
 Very often, of course, for the small towns, the 
 thing is impossible, making the more need for such 
 amateur productions as that in West Virginia, de- 
 scribed above. But in the larger towns, and in the 
 smaller places adjacent to them, a little co-operation 
 between theatre managers and school authorities 
 could in a surprisingly large number of cases bring 
 about an opportunity for the high school pupils to 
 see Shakespeare professionally performed. Not 
 only are there several companies touring the country 
 who are equipped to give Shakespeare out of doors, 
 but anything like a concerted demand for winter 
 performances would keep these companies as per- 
 manent organizations during the year. Moreover, 
 even today, though the average stock company has 
 sunk to a rather low level of accomplishment, the 
 right encouragement from the school and municipal 
 authorities would find most of the directors ready 
 to respond with occasional matinees. 
 
 Certainly, nothing could be better for the theatre 
 than the creation of a sentiment in the community 
 that it is not only a luxury, a means of idle amuse- 
 ment, but also a factor in the educational life of the 
 town, an adjunct of the schools. Let your rising
 
 378 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 generation of school children come to regard the 
 playhouse in their town as a fascinating part of their 
 school study, and you have made vastly easier for 
 the next generation the task which faces us the 
 task of freeing the American theatre from the bond- 
 age of Broadway, of revitalizing it and localizing 
 it in each separate community. One of the ways to 
 accomplish this end, and one of the surest ways, is 
 to make the theatre contributory to our prized na- 
 tional institution, the public schools. The advan- 
 tage will be mutual.
 
 THE VEXED QUESTION OF 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 No branch of art is so much discussed, in print 
 and in conversation, as the art of acting, and none, 
 perhaps, is so little understood. Those, presum- 
 ably, who know the most about it, the actors, either 
 give out silly utterances to Sunday newspaper inter- 
 viewers, or else their words are embalmed in such 
 papers as William Gillette's "Illusion of the First 
 Time in Acting," or Coquelin's "Art and the Actor," 
 or Talma's "Reflections on Acting," which are, in 
 this country at least, unknown to the general public, 
 and some of them only available in such special 
 editions as those published by the Columbia Dra- 
 matic Museum. Even those ardent culture seekers, 
 the American club women, who study earnestly 
 in preparation for a symphony, would never dream 
 of reading Coquelin's essay before going to see Billie 
 Burke or Maude Adams. However, that doesn't 
 in the least deter them from expressing an opinion, 
 
 379
 
 380 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 ex cathedra, regarding the merit of the performance. 
 Unfortunately, the average newspaper criticism is 
 in little better state. The critic usually devotes 
 nine-tenths of his space to the play, dismissing the 
 players sometimes with that one awful word, "ade- 
 quate," and but seldom writing definitely and 
 illuminatingly of the actor's art. One reason for 
 this is, of course, that so few dramatic critics remain 
 at their posts long enough to become competent to 
 discuss acting. Talma says it requires twenty years 
 to learn how to act. We are disposed to think it 
 requires hardly less time to learn how to analyze act- 
 ing critically. The present writer has been a critic 
 for nearly fifteen years, and, if he may make a con- 
 fession, always attends a Shakespearean performance 
 with a sinking heart, because he has not seen enough 
 different impersonations of these great characters to 
 give him an adequate basis of comparison. How 
 can one write adequately of Forbes-Robertson's 
 Hamlet, for example, who never saw Booth's 1 ? 
 Each may have been an unique creation, but it is 
 by what one actor can find in a part which another 
 does not find that the critic learns judgment. 
 
 One of the commonest confusions in the appreci- 
 ation of acting is that created by the thing called 
 Personality. Nobody disputes that personality
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 381 
 
 plays an enormous part in the popular success of 
 an actor or actress, sometimes the most important 
 part. But to differentiate between the actor with 
 a strong personality who is also an artist, and one 
 who is not an artist, frequently overtaxes the lay 
 critic; while the dispute has never ceased to rage 
 whether the use of a strong personality is "legiti- 
 mate" or not. You can hear it every day. Only 
 recently every paper in London has been writing 
 about the charming "personality" of the American 
 actress, Doris Keane, who is playing "Romance" in 
 that capital, to the immense delight of the soldiers 
 home on leave. They also add, almost invariably 
 in another sentence, that she can act. To very few 
 writers does it seem to occur that the revelation of 
 this personality in the theatre may be itself the most 
 artful feature of her performance. 
 
 What is the end and aim of acting 1 ? It is not 
 to repeat the author's lines. It is not to give pro- 
 pulsion to the events of the author's story. If is to 
 bring to life the author's characters. Now, in the 
 actual world, the character does not exist devoid of 
 personality a quality we need hardly try to define, 
 since it eludes definition, but is perfectly well recog- 
 nized by everybody. The most interesting people 
 are those with the most interesting personalities. A
 
 382 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 colorless person we say has little personality. Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt bristles with it, however tired some 
 of us get with his brand. Therefore, on the stage, 
 the most interesting characters in the play are bound 
 to be those for whom the author has imagined the 
 most vivid and interesting personalities. But the 
 grim fact confronts the actor about to assume one 
 of these roles that you cannot create personality by 
 putting on a wig, reciting speeches, carrying a cane, 
 aping certain gestures, donning a hoop skirt. In 
 fact, you cannot create personality at all. You can 
 train and direct it, you can even develop it, perhaps, 
 as so many men unconsciously do who give their 
 lives to a certain occupation; we all know doctors 
 who, from much association with sickness, have de- 
 veloped a natural gentleness till it shines from their 
 faces and is the best medicine they administer ! But 
 God and his grandparents gave the actor, as well as 
 every other man, what potential personality he may 
 possess, and it is this personality of his own which 
 he has got to use in creating a live stage character. 
 If he succeeds in giving you, in the audience, a com- 
 plete illusion of being that stage personage, it may, 
 of course, be a happy accident, merely i.e. his own 
 personality may be exactly that of the stage part. 
 Such an occurrence is not uncommon. But, much
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 383 
 
 more often, it means that the player has used his 
 personality as one of the best weapons of his art, 
 and is showing you, did you but know it, a very 
 fine piece of craftsmanship. He is fusing his per- 
 sonality with that of the character, and by his own 
 native resources vitalizing the dramatist's con- 
 ception. 
 
 It is perfectly true, as the London papers all re- 
 marked, that Doris Keane has a pronounced person- 
 ality. It was just as pronounced in the second part 
 she played, years ago, the seduced maiden in Henry 
 Arthur Jones' drama, "The Hypocrites," the part 
 which made her known to the public. But this part 
 was totally different from her role in "Romance." 
 She was unmistakably Doris Keane in both imper- 
 sonations and she was as unmistakably the charac- 
 ters in the two plays. How shall we explain the 
 paradox"? Billie Burke would have been Billie 
 Burke in both plays, because she cannot act. Miss 
 Keane, no less individual, contrives to give the illu- 
 sion of two contrasted women. 
 
 Well, that is one of the mysteries of the actor's 
 art, which even so skilled a player as George Arliss 
 throws too little light upon, in his introduction to 
 William Gillette's "Illusion of the First Time of 
 Acting." He does suggest that the mysterious thing
 
 384 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 we call personality is made up, say, of a hundred 
 elements. Now it may well be that only ten of these 
 elements are needed to assume the guise of a charac- 
 ter. The other ninety remain in the actor as a 
 reserve force, to be drawn upon to give charm and 
 vitality to his impersonation. Only, alas ! Mr. Ar- 
 liss doesn't tell us how the drawing is accomplished. 
 Perhaps it is too much a matter of instinct to de- 
 scribe. Miss Keane, let us say, has dark, magnetic 
 eyes, a curious mouth that is extremely mobile and 
 can suggest either impish glee or profound sorrow 
 very easily (Elsie Ferguson is another actress with 
 a peculiarly expressive mouth), and a general at- 
 tractiveness of face and figure which arrests atten- 
 tion. Having arrested our attention, we soon real- 
 ize other features of her personality, notably her 
 humor, not without its capacity for a sarcastic edge, 
 her sensitiveness to impressions, her alert mind. 
 We sense her as rather an unusual person. Now, to 
 play her role of the seduced maiden in "The Hypo- 
 crites," she needed only to color her dark eyes a 
 little darker with mournfulness, maintain the droop 
 to her mouth, and by her sensitiveness to the atmos- 
 phere of the part keep properly in the picture and 
 she had created the illusion of character by using 
 only a fraction of her natural weapons. The rest
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 385 
 
 remained to her in reserve, subtly to give interest 
 and vitality to her impersonation. 
 
 In "Romance" she drew much more fully on her 
 natural resources, especially on her humor, her ca- 
 priciousness, the sense of strangeness in her person- 
 ality. But even in "Romance" she did not tap the 
 capacity for sarcasm and only partially the sugges- 
 tion of mental alertness which we could always feel 
 behind her stage characters if she chose to let us, 
 inherent in the actress herself. It is because her per- 
 sonality is so rich, and because she has demonstrated 
 the technical expertness to utilize those sides of it 
 properly adapted to each character she plays, that 
 we have faith in her future impersonations. 
 
 Many years ago Mrs. Fiske, an actress with the 
 most striking and electric personality now visible on 
 our stage, gave a heart-breaking- performance of 
 "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," which was greatly ad- 
 mired by the public, but which was, none the less, 
 widely attacked by the critics, lay as well as profes- 
 sional, because "it wasn't Thomas Hardy's Tess." 
 Her personality, the critics said, was not suited to 
 Hardy's Tess. It certainly was not. Nobody knew 
 that better than the actress herself. If she hadn't 
 known it, and also known exactly what her person- 
 ality was suited for, she would have tried to give
 
 386 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 an imitation of Hardy's Tess, and made a miserable 
 mess of it. Tess of the novel was unquestionably 
 bovine, and Mrs. Fiske is about as bovine as a thistle- 
 down in a northwest gale. Tess had a certain 
 peasant stupidity. Mrs. Fiske's personality suggests 
 mental alertness to such a degree that she can- 
 not possibly simulate stupidity convincingly. Her 
 problem, then, was to make the Tess of the play the 
 kind of a woman she could plausibly impersonate, 
 so that her personality could give life to the part. 
 She had every right to do this or else acting is 
 not an art at all, but a process of mechanical repro- 
 duction, like a phonograph. For peasant stupidity 
 she substituted innocence and wistful trustfulness; 
 for the bovine quality she substituted fragility, 
 nervous sensitiveness; for the passionate dumbness 
 of Tess's longings, she substituted a taut-wire emo- 
 tionalism. 
 
 Thus, in the same set of circumstances, the same 
 tragic workings of Fate were plausibly brought 
 about, the same terrible lesson was read. Her Tess 
 was no less a human creature in the fell clutch of 
 circumstance than Hardy's maiden. Here was an 
 almost perfect example of an actor's realization that 
 he cannot get away from his own personality, and 
 that to succeed greatly in the theatre he must by
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 387 
 
 every device of art use his personality to give life and 
 illusion to his role. 
 
 Mrs. Fiske's Tess was not so satisfactory a per- 
 formance as her Becky Sharp, however, because 
 Becky's personality and hers have two things so won- 
 derfully in common an ironic sense of humor 
 (which had to be suppressed entirely in Tess), and 
 the dynamic magnetism of a sleepless will. Mrs. 
 Fiske all her life has been a fighter. She fought the 
 Theatrical Syndicate singlehanded after everybody 
 else had knuckled under. All her life she has been 
 a worker, the first at rehearsals, the last to leave. 
 Indeed, resolution, will power, bottled energy, ra- 
 diate from her little person when she chooses to re- 
 lease them, and ring in her bitten tones. Therefore 
 with no effort she took Becky to her bosom. And, 
 by the same token, she ought by rights to be the 
 great Lady Macbeth of our generation. 
 
 To go back a little, all the evidence of his con- 
 temporaries and of those who still remember him, 
 points to the fact that Booth's Hamlet, perhaps the 
 greatest achievement of the American theatre, was 
 a happy wedding of technical skill and a personality 
 marvelously akin to the personality generally asso- 
 ciated with the poet's Prince. Booth played other 
 parts well, though none so well. But there were
 
 388 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 parts he played badly and they were the ones 
 which he could not bend to his personality. His 
 great eminence, his Hamlet, was a work of genius 
 but the genius was only in part artful. It was Na- 
 ture which put him on the ultimate pedestal. And, 
 in our day, how much of the charm of Forbes-Rob- 
 ertson's Hamlet comes from his exquisite elocution, 
 his finished rhythm of performance, his intelligent 
 insight into character, and how much from that rare 
 and princely bearing with which Nature has endowed 
 him, from the splendid gentlemanliness of his per- 
 sonality? To say that an actor who has such a gift 
 is less of an artist because he uses it is to say that 
 Melba is less of an artist than the village soprano 
 because she had the most glorious voice of her gen- 
 eration. 
 
 He would be an ungracious and boorish critic in- 
 deed who said that Maude Adams, so universally be- 
 loved for two decades on our stage, did not deserve 
 the rewards she has won, because she received them 
 as a tribute to her personality rather than her art. 
 Indeed, one may almost say that her personality is 
 her art. A personality so winsome and lovely as hers 
 is itself a work of genius be it the Lord's or not. 
 Miss Adams, of course, knows how to act, up to a 
 certain point. But her range is limited. She
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 389 
 
 speaks very badly, her attempts at Shakespeare were 
 almost pathetic, and she mispronounces the English 
 language atrociously. Even in the plays of her fa- 
 vorite Barrie, she sometimes curiously fails to grasp 
 a character, as in the earlier acts of "What Every 
 Woman Knows." The first act of "The Legend of 
 Leonora" called for a technical virtuosity quite be- 
 yond her range. As Juliet, many years ago, she was 
 pitifully feeble in emotional suggestion the grand 
 passions are beyond her powers. Yet, in "The Lit- 
 tle Minister," a play almost twenty years old, she 
 packed the Empire Theatre all last winter, and 
 nobody would want to see any other actress play 
 "Peter Pan." As Barrie is called "whimsical," 
 Miss Adams is most often called "elfin." There is 
 something in her personality everybody recognizes, 
 everybody loves, and when she finds a part to which 
 she can give illusion by this personality of hers an 
 elfin part, as it were, with a sweet dash of tenderness 
 and womanly humor and wistfulness now and then 
 she is incomparable. She makes her slender tech- 
 nical resources go as far as they can, and the Maude 
 Adams God made does the rest. 
 
 How much personality limits even the most tech- 
 nically expert of players is well illustrated by the 
 case of Sarah Bernhardt. She knew every trick of
 
 390 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 the actor's art; so marvelous was her command of 
 them, indeed, that she could play the boyish hero of 
 "L'Aiglon" when she was over sixty, and now, a 
 feeble old woman on a wooden leg, she can stand 
 leaning on a table and evoke with her voice alone 
 the tragic passions. Yet, as William Winter once 
 remarked with rare penetration, in all her impersona- 
 tions of women she was always the woman being 
 loved, never the woman loving. Illusion always 
 broke down at that point, failed of completeness. 
 It was a fatal defect of her personality. 
 
 Again, both Julia Marlowe and Margaret Anglin 
 have played Cleopatra, and the present writer saw 
 both performances. Neither woman could create the 
 illusion, for all her skill. A certain inescapable 
 ladylikeness, the scent of the Anglo-Saxon lily, clung 
 'round them still. Miss Anglin especially was a 
 splendid Katherine in "The Taming of the Shrew." 
 There was nothing in her personality to contradict 
 tremendous temper and rebellious spirit. Indeed, 
 her personality suggests always a woman of strong 
 spirit, averse to leading strings. But as you and I 
 know Egypt's queen, a certain exoticness is de- 
 manded, and neither Miss Marlowe nor Miss Anglin 
 could find in her own personality the right qualities 
 to call to her aid. Nazimova, that "tiger cat in the
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 391 
 
 leash of art," might play it, so far as personality 
 goes. Then there would be no clash between player 
 and part. On the other hand, can you fancy Naz- 
 imova as Viola 1 ? If it is right for actors to avoid 
 parts for which their personalities are unsuited 
 and common sense tells us that it is it is equally 
 right for them to make the most of their personalities 
 in parts they are suited for. 
 
 The reader can easily call to mind for himself a 
 list of players with strong personalities, and can re- 
 flect on what use they have made of them whether 
 a crude, artless use, such as Billie Burke makes and 
 Ethel Barrymore is this season making in "Our Mrs. 
 McChesney" (more's the pity), or a vital, artful use, 
 such as that fine actor Ernest Lawford always makes, 
 or Ferdinand Gottschalk, or George Arliss. Fer- 
 dinand Gottschalk, an extremely individual and ec- 
 centric little comedian, who couldn't disguise himself 
 if he tried, yet played the silly ass in "The Climbers" 
 to the life, and in "The Truth" played the father 
 in such a way that through the foppishness and weak- 
 ness and vanity of the old man shone the remnants of 
 a gentleman, and gave the whole play its meaning. 
 Gottschalk, an artist and a gentleman, had only to 
 tap his personality a little deeper, to draw on those 
 reserve forces Arliss speaks of, and the second char-
 
 392 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 acter came to life, though almost in the exterior, su- 
 perficial image of the first. That is personality gov- 
 erned and utilized by art. 
 
 O. P. Heggie, an excellent English actor who 
 came to us as Androcles in the Granville Barker pro- 
 duction of "Androcles and the Lion," is this spring 
 playing the old clerk, Cokeson, in Galsworthy's "Jus- 
 tice." The two parts are totally unlike, save in one 
 respect. Both Androcles and Cokeson should com- 
 mand our loving, if smiling, sympathy, they should 
 have a certain quality of gentleness about them. 
 And Heggie's own personality, as it appears on the 
 stage, is remarkable for just this winning quality. 
 You could never for an instant confuse one charac- 
 ter with the other as he plays them, but neither could 
 you fail, if you had seen Heggie as Androcles, to rec- 
 ognize him as Cokeson. He has obediently carried 
 out the author's intention, but he has artfully em- 
 ployed his own personality to accomplish the final 
 bringing to life of the character. 
 
 It is one of the creeds of modern criticism that all 
 art is, in the final analysis, but an expression of 
 personality, of the artist's personality, of his vision 
 of life. Even the drama, the most objective of the 
 arts, the one in which the writer has least to say in 
 his own person, cannot escape the law. Though
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY, 393 
 
 Aristotle called the drama an imitation, we see today 
 behind the dramas of Aeschylus and Euripides the 
 two vivid and contrasting personalities of the poets, 
 their different visions of life. Their plays are not 
 imitations but revelations. Behind "Justice" and 
 "Peter Pan" and "Major Barbara" we feel the three 
 personalities of Galsworthy, Barrie and Shaw, and 
 if we had never heard a word of gossip about these 
 men, nor seen a picture of them, nor read anything 
 else they had written, we would yet know them for 
 what they are. There is, indeed, something almost 
 terrible to the artist when he realizes the self-reve- 
 lation he makes to the world when he wields a brush 
 or blots white paper with black ink. 
 
 And shall we deny to the actor and the interpreta- 
 tive musician the name of artist 1 ? Whether we wish 
 to or not, I fear it cannot be done. Personally, if the 
 actor is not an artist but a mere recording machine, I 
 would wish never to write another line about acting. 
 And if the public thought the interpretative musi- 
 cians were not artists that Sembrich and Kreisler 
 and Paderewski and Muck are but recording instru- 
 ments, phonographs on legs I am very sure the 
 concert halls would be deserted. The instinct of the 
 public is right, of course, as it always is in the long 
 run.
 
 394 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 But if the actor and the singer or violinist are ar- 
 tists, if they contribute a creative act by their per- 
 formance, then what they do, too, in the last analysis, 
 must be to reveal their personalities, their visions of 
 the world. They, too, cannot escape the self-reve- 
 lation. When Sembrich sings Schumann's Bride 
 Songs as no one but she can sing them, she contrib- 
 utes the revelation of her own womanliness. When 
 the Kneisels play a Beethoven sonata they contribute 
 the revelation of their leader's love of form and fine 
 reverence for beauty. When any actor gives a splen- 
 did performance of an interesting character, from 
 Hamlet to the latest hero of the current stage, he 
 adds something to the author's conception, he con- 
 tributes the vitality and the interest of his own per- 
 sonality, not merely in exterior aspect (he may con- 
 ceivably quite disguise that), but in far subtler ways. 
 So Booth and Forbes-Robertson both made Hamlet 
 live again, and without violence to Shakespeare 
 because they were artists, intent on the interpretation 
 of a character; yet each contributed something rare 
 and precious and unique, which perished when he 
 ceased to act. That something was his own per- 
 sonality, his vision, the thing he himself was as a 
 man. If this were not so, and if the actors did not 
 know it were so, it is inconceivable that anybody
 
 QUESTION OF PERSONALITY 395 
 
 with an ounce of brains would ever go on the stage, 
 or survive the debasing mechanism more than six 
 months if he did. And if this were not so, it would 
 not be true as it unquestionably is true that the 
 finest performances come from the players who can 
 add to the proper technical equipment the most va- 
 ried, interesting, profound and admirable person- 
 alities.
 
 THE LESSON OF THE WASHINGTON 
 SQUARE PLAYERS 
 
 1916 
 
 This is the story of the Washington Square Play- 
 ers and their experiment at the little Bandbox The- 
 atre in New York. It is told here because it illus- 
 trates better than any other experiment yet tried in 
 the American theatre the vitalizing influence of the 
 amateur spirit, and points the way toward possible 
 provincial theatres in various sections of the land, 
 conducted not from Broadway but by local artists, 
 and democratically serving the local community. 
 Its success is the success of youth, enthusiasm, ideals, 
 intelligence and democracy. And the greatest of 
 these is democracy. You cannot have a successful, 
 i.e. a vital theatre, or any other vital art expression, 
 just because a few rich people decide to have it. 
 You cannot superimpose art, or morals, or anything 
 else, from above. Your theatre must grow from the 
 desires of the workers in the theatre, and the audi- 
 ences in the theatre. That is the way the Washing- 
 
 396
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 397 
 
 ton Square Players began. They started in poverty, 
 and they are comparatively poor yet. We hope 
 they always will be. Then the workers in their 
 theatre will always be its lovers. We don't want 
 them to work for nothing; but better for nothing 
 than for great riches. 
 
 It was during the winter of 1914-15 that a group 
 of young people, mostly living in the region around 
 old Washington Square in New York, conceived the 
 idea, or at least crystallized the idea, of starting a 
 theatre of their own. Very few of them had ever 
 acted, except as amateurs. Several of them, how- 
 ever, had written plays and were filled with a per- 
 fectly natural desire to see these plays on a stage. 
 Others were artists who viewed the Broadway the- 
 atres with some contempt, perhaps, because of the 
 old-fashioned settings and costumes they saw there. 
 Still others were young men who had ambitions to 
 stage plays. Some of these men and women were 
 Hebrews, some belonged to the much-written-about 
 Greenwich Village Bohemian crowd, some, like Sam- 
 uel Eliot, Jr., grandson of the president-emeritus of 
 Harvard, were positively Puritanic in antecedents. 
 But one thing they had in common a love of and 
 enthusiasm for the theatre. No, there was another 
 thing none of them seems to have had any capital.
 
 398 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 However, they were young, and full of faith enough 
 not to let that fact bother them. 
 
 Calling themselves the Washington Square Play- 
 ers, they found the chance to rent a small theatre 
 three miles from Washington Square, far off the 
 beaten track, on East 57th Street beyond Third 
 Avenue. This theatre had been erected for use by 
 professional actors, whose venture had speedily 
 failed; and it could be rented cheaply. So the 
 Washington Square Players moved in. They had 
 chosen as their head director a young man named 
 Edward Goodman. They had selected three one- 
 act plays and a pantomime for their opening bill, 
 painted some scenery and designed some costumes, 
 all without any relation to the way plays are chosen 
 or scenery painted on Broadway; and they had 
 drilled a group of players to act these pieces as well 
 as they could, which, to confess the truth, wasn't 
 very well. 
 
 They announced their first performance for Feb- 
 ruary 19, 1915, and said they would give but two 
 performances a week, on Friday and Saturday eve- 
 nings. They did not advertise in the newspapers 
 not having enough money. And they did not pay 
 their actors anything, doubtless for the same reason. 
 All seats were to be fifty cents each, none higher.
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 399 
 
 The first performance came off on schedule, and 
 there were plenty of friends on hand to fill the 
 theatre. The newspaper critics journeyed over to 
 the wilds east of Third Avenue also, curious to see 
 what was going to happen, but probably not very 
 hopeful. Your average critic has learned by bitter 
 experience the futility of hope. 
 
 But the critics had a shock. Two of the three 
 one-act plays presented were original works, "Li- 
 censed," by Basil Lawrence, the story of an erring 
 girl and a pastor who took pity on her; and "Eugen- 
 ically Speaking," by Edward Goodman, the director, 
 an extremely racy satire on eugenics, done with an 
 engaging frankness which made it quite different 
 from the professional attempts at salaciousness made 
 occasionally over on Broadway. The third play was 
 Maeterlinck's haunting little study of death and 
 stillness, "Interior," very imaginatively and effec- 
 tively staged at a cost of $35.00. The bill ended 
 with a pantomime called "Another Interior," the 
 stage representing the interior of the human stomach, 
 the hero being Gastric Juice, and the villains the 
 various courses consumed at a dinner. Brave Gas- 
 tric overthrew them one by one, though with 
 failing strength, till at last he fell a victim to a 
 particularly vividly colored cordial.
 
 400 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 On the whole, the acting was amateur. But the 
 plays themselves were all vital, full of meaning, or 
 full of racy fun, and the settings were unusual and 
 arresting. The critics went away delighted. Here 
 was something fresh and new and different! The 
 next night the theatre was again sold out. And it 
 was sold out for every succeeding performance, 
 though a third performance a week was soon added. 
 
 On March 26th the second bill was staged. The 
 chief feature was Leonid Andreyev's satire, "Love of 
 One's Neighbor," translated from the Russian, and 
 the players were not quite up to the demands. 
 They did better with "Moon Down," a sketch of two 
 girls in a hall bedroom, by John Reed, "My Lady's 
 Honor," by Murdock Pemberton, and "Two Blind 
 Beggars and One Less Blind," by Philip Moeller, 
 one of the producing staff of the theatre. They did 
 better still with a pretty pantomime, cleverly staged 
 in black and white, called "The Shepherd in the 
 Distance." 
 
 The third bill was disclosed on May yth, and in- 
 cluded Maeterlinck's youthful and amusing satire, 
 "The Miracle of St. Anthony," "April," a play of 
 tenement house life by Rose Pastor Stokes, "For- 
 bidden Fruit," a French amorous trifle adapted from 
 Octave Feuillet, and, finally, "Saviors," a sketch
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 401 
 
 written by Edward Goodman, of a mother and son 
 and their attitude toward the son's desire to marry 
 his mistress. 
 
 The season closed on Decoration Day, but not 
 before one new production had been made, a trans- 
 lation of Tchekov's "The Bear." This play, to- 
 gether with the three most popular plays on the pre- 
 ceding bills "Eugenically Speaking," "Interior" 
 and "The Shepherd in the Distance" made up the 
 fourth bill for the final performances. 
 
 In the first season, then, from February iQth to 
 May 3Oth, 1915, the Washington Square Players 
 had given forty-three performances of fourteen one- 
 act plays and pantomimes, all but five of these being 
 original native work. Two of the foreign plays 
 were by Maeterlinck, two from the Russian and one 
 from the French. All of them had been mounted 
 simply but for the most part effectively and in the 
 new manner. The chief weakness lay in the acting, 
 yet the plays had sufficient vitality, the whole experi- 
 ment sufficient zest and novelty, to attract patron- 
 age, and to encourage the Players to reengage the 
 Bandbox Theatre for another year. 
 
 Their second season began on October 4th, 1915- 
 During the summer the company had been somewhat 
 augmented, with the most promising actors of the
 
 402 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 spring as a nucleus. There were, then, in October, 
 about twenty-five men and women, almost without 
 exception young, forming the active players. The 
 producers, stage hands, even the treasurer of the 
 theatre, were called in for mob scenes, and "extra 
 people." All told perhaps, counting the scene paint- 
 ers, costume designers, business managers and pro- 
 ducers the Washington Square Players numbered 
 now about fifty. For the second season, the price 
 of seats in a large portion of the house was raised to 
 one dollar, to enable the payment of salaries to the 
 leading actors and workers, for it was determined to 
 give six performances a week, and the regular per- 
 formers could not afford to donate so much of their 
 time. In other words, the theatre determined to be- 
 come self- supporting. A few professional players 
 were also secured, including Lydia Lopoukova, now 
 with the Russian Ballet, and Frank Conroy, for- 
 merly with Benson's company in England. 
 
 The first bill, acted on October 4th, did not 
 disclose any great advance in acting ability, how- 
 ever, though the acquisition of Mr. Conroy was a 
 help. But it did disclose one play of unusual qual- 
 ity, "Helena's Husband," by Philip Moeller, a sa- 
 tiric burlesque on Helen of Troy which kept the 
 audience in gales of merriment, and which has since
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 403 
 
 been played in other theatres through the country. 
 The other plays on the program (all of one act, as 
 before) were "Fire and Water," by Hervey White, 
 a war sketch showing how French and German sol- 
 diers, between the lines, may be very good friends, 
 "The Antick," by Percy Mackaye, and "Night of 
 Snow," translated from the Italian of Roberto 
 Bracco. This last play, after two weeks, was re- 
 placed by a revival of "Interior." Business started 
 off briskly, and remained good for a couple of weeks. 
 Then it began to fall off. 
 
 The second bill for the season was produced on 
 November 8th, and was called "a program of Com- 
 parative Comedy." It included Schnitzler's clever 
 play, "Literature," (not very well acted), Bracco's 
 "Honorable Lover," de Musset's "Whims" (very 
 inadequately acted, it being a work only skilled pro- 
 fessional comedians could make interesting in Eng- 
 lish), and finally, "Overtones," by Alice Gersten- 
 berg of Chicago. This, the only native play on the 
 bill, proved easily the most interesting, and was the 
 best acted. Two women, shadowed by their real 
 selves, or "overtones," meet and talk. They say one 
 thing, their real selves say what they really would 
 say if they spoke their minds. It was a clever 
 sketch, and has since been acted at the Indianapolis
 
 404 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 Little Theatre and elsewhere, even, we believe, in 
 vaudeville. 
 
 It was not till the third bill was presented, on Jan- 
 uary loth, 1916, that the Players began to show the 
 fruits of sustained practice in acting, and gave a 
 performance which could compare with professional 
 work. And at the same time, it should be noted, 
 public patronage began to be more steady and full 
 houses every night the rule. Ultimately, no experi- 
 mental theatre can succeed until it develops a com- 
 pany of players who can act. Enthusiasm, clever 
 plays, picturesque and novel scenery, will never be 
 a permanent substitute for acting. In the long run 
 the theatre rests on the actors' art, a fact which can 
 never be ignored by the founders of experiments. 
 
 The third bill was most notable for a play by 
 Lewis Beach, one of Professor Baker's graduates at 
 Harvard, called "The Clod." It was adroitly 
 acted, especially by Miss Josephine Meyer, from the 
 start a most useful member of the company. This 
 tense and thrilling little piece, perhaps the best one- 
 act play written in America in some years, showed 
 a mean border farm during our Civil War, at night. 
 The old farmer and his wife were the only occupants. 
 War had left them nothing, even robbing them of 
 sleep. A Union despatch rider, closely pursued,
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 405 
 
 enters, and the action so befalls that the old woman 
 hides him to avoid trouble with his two Confeder- 
 ate pursuers. These pursuers demand food from 
 her, which she dumbly gets, but when one of them 
 insults her, calling her a clod and worse, something 
 in her snaps and she shoots them both dead at point 
 blank range with a shotgun. The Union soldier 
 hails her as the savior of an army corps, as a patriot. 
 But all it means to her is some broken crockery and 
 the loss of a needed night's sleep. The play is rich 
 in suspense, in theatrical excitement, and richer in 
 spiritual suggestion. It is a little masterpiece. 
 
 The other plays on this bill were "The Road 
 House in Arden," a fantastic skit about Shakespeare 
 and Lord Bacon, the scene occurring at a road house 
 kept by Hamlet and his wife Cleopatra; a transla- 
 tion of Wedekind's cynical sketch of the artistic tem- 
 perament, "The Tenor" ; and, finally, a rather stupid 
 and poorly performed pantomime called "The Red 
 Cloak." 
 
 The fourth bill, presented on March 2oth, was 
 marked by a still more noticeable improvement in 
 acting, and a consequent increase in public patronage. 
 Three plays were original works, and all three were 
 performed with precision. The first was a thriller 
 by Guy Bolton and Tom Carl ton (the former being
 
 406 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 a playwright for the professional theatre), called 
 "Children," in which a negro mother shoots her son 
 dead rather than give him up to a lynching party. 
 The second was an amusing satire on divorce, called 
 "The Age of Reason," by Cecil Dorrian. Two 
 little girls in knee length frocks and hair ribbons talk 
 like the characters in a Wilde play, and finally put 
 the about-to-be-divorced parents of one of them on 
 trial. It is merry fooling, and not without some 
 point. The third original play was "The Magical 
 City," written in vers libre by Zoe Akins, and mount- 
 ed in a setting of great beauty, quite worthy of such 
 professional designers as Joseph Urban or Livingston 
 Platt. The scenery, however, left a more definite 
 impression than the play, which seemed to be try- 
 ing to capture the poetic glamor of Gotham and its 
 wealth, the glamor which snares certain women and 
 makes them the mistresses of the money kings. 
 Somehow, realism seems the proper treatment for 
 this theme. At any rate, "The Magical City" didn't 
 persuade us that it isn't. But the production of the 
 play was certainly an attempt at a different and more 
 intense handling of a sordid Broadway story, and so 
 needs no defense. The bill ended with a version 
 of the old 15th century French farce, "Master Pierre 
 Patelin," one of the earliest known examples of the
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 407 
 
 modern drama as it was emerging from the Middle 
 Ages, and one of the best. Unfortunately, the 
 Washington Square Players, instead of acting this 
 piece in its integrity and preserving its historic fla- 
 vor, cut it unmercifully and acted it in a kind of 
 animated puppet style. The result was neither 
 amusing nor educative. They would much better 
 have left it alone. However, some errors in judg- 
 ment must be allowed to everybody, especially to 
 young folks and pioneers. 
 
 On May yth, 1916, the Players acted for the first 
 time a long play, Maeterlinck's "Aglavaine and 
 Selysette." This performance, however, was not 
 repeated, as it was a special production for the sea- 
 son subscribers and was not intended for the public. 
 It need not concern us here, though it is only fair to 
 state that the scenery was unusual in design and full 
 of beauty and suggestion. 
 
 The last bill of the season was presented on May 
 22, and again a long play was chosen, Marian Fell's 
 translation of Tchekhov's "The Sea Gull." This 
 play was continued until June 1st, when the Players 
 moved from the tiny Bandbox Theatre to the Com- 
 edy Theatre near Broadway, and there presented a 
 few of their most successful productions until the 
 coming of hot weather. They have leased the Com-
 
 408 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 edy for the season of 1916-17, needing its ampler 
 stage for their scenic experiments, and its ampler 
 seating capacity for their revenue. 
 
 The production of "The Sea Gull," it must be 
 admitted, gave more practice to the players than 
 pleasure to the audience. Frankly, it was too much 
 for their still immature histrionic powers. The 
 plays of Tchekhov are almost unknown on the 
 American stage, and while we must applaud the 
 courage of the Washington Square Players in at- 
 tempting to remedy this lack, we cannot help feeling 
 that no great rush to the Russian dramatist will fol- 
 low. "The Sea Gull," to be sure, is lucidity itself 
 by comparison with "The Cherry Garden," but by 
 comparison with life as we know it in our native 
 drama even "The Sea Gull" is a book sealed seven- 
 fold. Not its sluggish back water of dramatic pro- 
 gression, not even its pictures of alien society, per- 
 plex us, but rather its Chinese puzzle of irrelevancies. 
 No character in it can stick to one idea for more 
 than two speeches, and no character in it has any 
 will, unless poor Constantine may be said to have 
 the will to die. Lack of will, lack of concentration 
 the two are really the same. Tchekhov, with un- 
 canny felicity, makes an ironic nightmare of these 
 negative traits in his countrymen. A Russian worn-
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 409 
 
 an once told me that "The Cherry Garden" is so in- 
 tensely Russian that she herself could not understand 
 it after she had lived eight years in America. "The 
 Sea Gull" differs only in degree. We whose modern 
 philosopher is William James, with his "Will to Be- 
 lieve," and who still applaud Emerson's "Trust thy- 
 self, every heart vibrates to that iron string," can 
 have small comprehension of, or even stomach for, 
 a play like "The Sea Gull." 
 
 And to make it at all impressive, certainly, a very 
 high grade of subtle acting is required, not in one or 
 two parts, but in all. Tchekhov never hitched his 
 wagon to a star! It would be futile to analyze the 
 performance given at the Bandbox. The play was 
 too far beyond the powers of every one concerned. 
 It is only necessary to point out that the abrupt 
 transition, the shift from a strong emotion to an irrel- 
 evancy, is possibly the most difficult technical feat 
 in the actor's art. 
 
 However, this failure of the Washington Square 
 Players had no criminal element of low aim. At 
 the worst, it merely proved that it takes longer to 
 develop a company of competent actors out of a 
 group of amateurs than we impatient Americans like 
 to fancy. At best, it showed that the Players are 
 ambitious, and wish to use their successes as stepping
 
 410 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 stones, dreading the commonplace more than failure, 
 the easily popular more than the difficult and the 
 exotic. The important thing is, not that they have 
 failed at their first attempt at a four-act play, but 
 that they have succeeded by many happy productions 
 of one-act plays in persuading the public to come to 
 see them in the longer work in short, that they are 
 now an accepted theatrical institution in New York, 
 and are going on to wider effort. Beginning a year 
 and a half ago as theatrical amateurs, this group of 
 young enthusiasts have by talent and intelligence and 
 cooperative enthusiasm stormed the forces of en- 
 trenched professionalism, and given to New York its 
 livest theatre. In a little over a year they have 
 produced thirty short plays and pantomimes, nine- 
 teen of them original native works, as well as two 
 long plays; they have discovered in Philip Moeller 
 and Lewis Beach, especially, writers of talent; they 
 have given to young scenic artists opportunities for 
 free experiment in stage pictures; and finally, they 
 have demonstrated that persistent and intelligent 
 practice of acting, even by amateurs, can develop a 
 company of players the public will pay to see, though 
 eighteen months will not make them finished actors. 
 In short, they have at least begun to prove that what
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 411 
 
 the Abbey Theatre players did in Dublin is not im- 
 possible in New York. 
 
 And if it not impossible in New York it is not im- 
 possible elsewhere in America. Curiously enough, 
 the other spot on the map of the United States where 
 the amateur spirit seems at present to be accomplish- 
 ing the most in the theatre is North Dakota. Under 
 the leadership of Frederick Henry Koch at the Uni- 
 versity of North Dakota, pageants are being written 
 by groups of people cooperatively, and acted and 
 staged by the community. Professor Arvold of the 
 North Dakota Agricultural College has devised a 
 "Little Country Theatre" which serves the small 
 communities, the people of these communities them- 
 selves being the actors. The theatrical life of the 
 countryside within the sphere of influence of these 
 two universities is in some part spontaneously fos- 
 tered by the people themselves, not supplied to them 
 by outsiders. The amateur spirit is making a the- 
 atre there, and some day it will no doubt make a 
 drama. 
 
 There have been numerous attempts in recent years 
 to start so-called little theatres in various cities, such 
 as Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Indianapolis. 
 But in too many cases they have come to grief, and
 
 412 PLAYS AND PLAYERS 
 
 upon inspection of the wreck the shrewd observer 
 has discovered that they were not in reality a spon- 
 taneous, democratic growth, but superimposed from 
 above by some person or persons of wealth. A gen- 
 uine demand for them did not exist, and a genuine 
 enthusiasm for acting, writing, scene painting, stag- 
 ing, was not sufficiently manifest in a large enough 
 group of potential artists. Samuel Eliot, Jr., went 
 out from the Bandbox Theatre to be director of the 
 Indianapolis Little Theatre last autumn and only 
 with the utmost difficulty could secure casts for his 
 productions; which simply meant that Indianapolis 
 was not yet ready for such an experiment. It was 
 superimposed, not spontaneously engendered by the 
 enthusiasm and ambitions of the potential artists 
 themselves. 
 
 Probably very few cities or sections of the country 
 are ready, as yet. Nevertheless, more and more peo- 
 ple everywhere are beginning to see a light. More 
 and more people are beginning to realize that the al- 
 lied arts of the theatre can, and ought to be, a field for 
 wholesome self-expression, not merely for exploita- 
 tion by Broadway shop keepers. More and more 
 people are realizing that each community has a right 
 to its own theatre, its own dramatic idiom, and that 
 the only way the community can ever achieve its
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYERS 413 
 
 own theatre is to set out to develop it from the bot- 
 tom, by its own efforts. More and more people are 
 beginning to realize a truth some of us have been 
 reiterating for years that the future development 
 of the American theatre must come through a renais- 
 sance in the practical theatre itself of the amateur 
 spirit, brought into the theatre by amateurs who, 
 with proper and intelligent leadership, will remain 
 to become self-respecting professional artists, or else 
 by the existing professionals themselves breaking 
 away from the present chains of exploitation. 
 
 And because the Washington Square Players have 
 demonstrated the entire possibility of such a renais- 
 sance, right in the citadel of smug, money-grubbing 
 exploitation, New York City, their success is the 
 most important thing just now in the American 
 theatre. 
 
 THE END
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbey Theater (Dublin), 148 
 Adams, Maude, 4, 5, 172, 173, 
 
 *7S, 177, 244, 376, 379, 38 
 Addison, Joseph, 310 
 Ade, George, 151, 251 
 Admirable Crichton, The, 305, 306 
 ^Eschylus, 393 
 Age of Reason, The, 406 
 Aglavaine and Selysette, 407 
 Aiglon, L', 390 
 Akins, Zoe, 406 
 Allen, Grant, 123 
 Ames, Winthrop, 155, 156, 157, 
 
 294, 308, 349 
 Anderson, Percy, 43 
 Andreyef, Leonid, 400 
 Androcles and the Lion, 188-194, 
 
 334, 240, 392 
 Angel ico, Fra, 319 
 Anglin, Margaret, 217, 221, 222, 
 
 223, 224, 225, 226, 229, 231, 233, 
 
 58, 307, 37, 330, 390 
 Anna Karenina, 105 
 Another Interior, 399 
 Anson, A. E., 74 
 Anspacher, Louis K., 1x6, 117, 
 
 118, 120, 121, 122, 353 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 223, 227, 
 
 230 
 
 April, 400 
 
 Archer, William, 295 
 Aristotle, 393 
 
 Arliss, George, 179, 185, 213, 277, 
 
 290, 383, 384, 39i 
 Arms and the Man, 306 
 Arnold, Matthew, 197 
 Arnold, Prof., 411 
 Art and the Actor, 379 
 As a Man Thinks, 25-33, 301, 
 
 305, 340 
 Ashe, Oscar, 34 
 Astor Theater, The, 90, 123 
 As You Like It, 223, 225, 227, 232 
 Aug, Edna, 88 
 Augier, Emile, 311 
 Austen, Jane, 141, 142, 144 
 Antick, The, 403 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 405 
 
 Baker, George P., no, 308, 404 
 
 Bandbox Theater, 396, 401, 407, 
 
 409, 412 
 
 Bataille, Henry, 262 
 Barker, Granville, 188, 189, 191, 
 
 192, 193, 234, 235, 238, 240, 392 
 Barrie, Sir James, 142, 172, 174, 
 
 *75, 274, 275, 305, 306, 313, 332, 
 
 333, 389, 393 
 Barrymore, Ethel, 12, 165, 197, 
 
 258, 294, 332, 391 
 Barrymore, John, 205 
 Barrymore, Maurice, 277 
 Beach, Lewis, 404, 410
 
 416 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bear, The, 401 
 
 Becky Sharp, 277, 279, 284 
 
 Beecher, Janet, 258 
 
 Beethoven, 394 
 
 Belasco, David, 17, 18, 21, 22, 59, 
 61, 62, 64, 165, 166, 170, 171, 
 179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186, 284, 
 
 298, 319, 345. 359, 360 
 Belasco Theater, 17, 59, 165, 179, 
 
 361 
 
 Bennett, Arnold, 44, 45, 158 
 Bennett, Richard, 259 
 Benrimo, 50 
 
 Benson Company, 217, 402 
 Bergson, Henri, 75 
 Bernhardt, Sarah, 389 
 Bernstein, Henry, 16, 165, 168 
 Blind, Eric, 223 
 Blossom, Henry W., 251 
 Bolton, Guy, 405 
 Boomerang, The, 361 
 Booth, Edwin, 213, 219, 272, 273, 
 
 38o, 387, 394 
 Booth Theater, 355 
 Boris Godunov, 318 
 Boss, The, 9 
 Boston Museum Stock Company, 
 
 376 
 
 Boston Opera House, 308, 317 
 Boucicault, Dion, 97 
 Bought and Paid For, 99 
 Bracco, Roberto, 403 
 Brieux, Eugene, 273, 295, 365 
 Broadway Jones, 44-49, 215 
 Broun, Hayward, 196, 197 
 Browning, Robert, 322 
 Bunty Pulls the Strings, 296 
 Burke, Billie, 165, 180, 379, 383, 
 
 39i 
 Busy Izzy, 88 
 
 Cahill, Marie, 346 
 Caine, Hall, 197 
 Caldara, Orme, 112, 114 
 Calvert, Louis, 242, 243 
 Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 181, 283 
 Candler Theater, 202, 203 
 Captain Jinks of the Horse Ma- 
 rines, 67 
 
 Carlton, Tom, 405 
 Caruso, Enrico, 6 
 Case of Becky, The, 59, 65 
 Castle Square Theater, no 
 Cato, 310 
 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 213 
 Century Theater, 241 
 Chambers, Robert W., 196 
 Cherry, Charles, 254, 259 
 Cherry Garden, The, 408, 409 
 Chicago Players, The, 300 
 Chicago Theater Society, The, 298 
 Children, 406 
 Chorus Lady, The, 82, 83 
 Clapp, Henry Austin, 257 
 Climbers, The, 352, 391 
 Clod, The, 404 
 
 Cohan, George M., 45, 46, 47, 49, 
 9, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, ico, 117, 
 124, 125, 197, 215, 251, 261, 275, 
 
 331, 348, 355 
 Cohan and Harris, 130 
 College Widow, The, 151 
 Collier, Constance, 216 
 Columbia Dramatic Museum, 379 
 Comedy Theater, 407 
 Common Clay, no, 115 
 Concert, The, 117, 180, 298, 299 
 Conroy, Frank, 402 
 Coquelin, Benoit-Constant, 379 
 Corbin, John, 241, 243, 244 
 Cordoba, Pedro de, 215, 216
 
 INDEX 
 
 417 
 
 Corey, Williams, and Riter, 202 
 Cossart, Ernest, 240 
 Courtenay, William, 66, 72, 73 
 Cowl, Jane, in, 114 
 Craig, Gordon, 190, 230, 307, 315, 
 
 316, 318, 320, 323 
 Craig, John, no, 226 
 Craven, Frank, 99, 100, 103 
 Crews, Laura Hope, 180, 183, 184, 
 
 187 . 
 Criterion Theater, 241 
 
 Crosman, Henrietta, 258 
 Cyrano de Bergerac, 222 
 
 Dailey, Pete, 338 
 
 Daly, Augustin, 243, 311 
 
 Daly's Theater, 12 
 
 Darling of the Gods, The, 284 
 
 Darwin, 124 
 
 Decorating Clementine, 262 
 
 De Forest, Marian, 136 
 
 Deland, Margaret, 314 
 
 Delsarte, 7 
 
 Deslys, Gaby, 77, 78, 79, 80 
 
 Devil, The, 179, 285 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 144, 310, 311, 
 
 376 
 
 Disraeli, 288 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 287, 288, 289 
 Ditrichstein, Leo, 128, 131, 132, 
 
 179, 180, 181, 185 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 59, 62 
 Doll's House, A, 304 
 Don Giovanni, 130, 133, 243 
 Dorrian, Cecil, 406 
 Drama League of America, The, 
 
 205, 314, 330 
 Drama Society, The, 242 
 Dressier, Marie, 350 
 Dryden, John, 310 
 
 Duke of York's Theater (Lon- 
 
 don), 202 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, fils, 311 
 
 Duncan, Isadora, 7 
 
 Duse, Eleanora, 279 
 
 Dwyer, Phil, 192 
 
 Earl of Pawtucket, The, 98 
 
 Earth, The, 68 
 
 Easiest Way, The, 117, 199, 269, 
 
 27jf 275, 3i4i 320, 352 
 Eaton, Walter Prichard, 355 
 Electra, 222 
 Eliot, George, 311 
 Eliot, Samuel, Jr., 397, 412 
 Elliott, Maxine, 258 
 Ellis, Melville, 78, 79 
 Eltinge Theater, 104 
 Emerson, R. W., 409 
 Empire Theater, 172, 312, 389 
 Empire Theater Stock Company, 
 
 221, 222 
 Engaged, 175 
 Eric, Fred, 42 
 Erlanger, Abe, 88 
 Erstwhile Susan, 134, 318 
 Eugenically Speaking, 399, 401 
 Euripides, 393 
 Evangelist, The, 91 
 Everett, Edward, 257 
 Eyes of the Heart, The, 284 
 
 Fairbanks, Douglas, 85, 88 
 Faith Healer, The, 90, 91 
 Fanny's First Play, 357 
 Farrar, Geraldine, 68 
 Faversham, William, 211, 212, 
 
 214, 215, 217, 221, 308 
 Fell, Marian, 407 
 Fenwick, Irene, 108
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ferber, Edna, 355 
 
 Ferguson, Elsie, 12, 165, 197, 384 
 
 Feuillet, Octave, 400 
 
 Fielding, Henry, 310 
 
 Fire and Water, 403 
 
 First Lady of the Land, The, 12 
 
 Fiske, Harrison Grey, 34, 179 
 
 Fiske, Mrs. Minnie Maddern, 67, 
 72, 121, 134, 136, 137, 138, 185, 
 258, 277, 279, 281, 284, 285, 351, 
 
 354, 363, 385, 386, 387 
 Fitch, Clyde, 67, 68, 351, 352, 353, 
 
 355 
 
 Florence, W. J., 250 
 Follies, The Ziegfeld, 109 
 Forbes, James, 82, 83, 251 
 Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston, 
 
 90, 216, 217, 218, 219, 380, 388, 
 
 394 . 
 
 Forbidden Fruit, 400 
 Forrest, Edwin, 272, 273 
 Forrest, Sam, 130 
 Fourth Estate, The, 13 
 France, Anatole, 75, 188, 193 
 Frohman, Charles, 88 
 Fulton Theater, 50 
 Furst, William, 58 
 
 Gaiety Theater, 134 
 
 Gaiety Theater (Manchester), 
 
 148, 154, 3i3 
 Galsworthy, John, 158, 162, 163, 
 
 164, 196, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 
 
 207, 271, 293, 295, 296, 305, 313, 
 
 314, 392, 393 
 
 Garden of Allah, The, 35 
 Garden Theater, 195, 197 
 Garrick, David, 219, 310, 349, 356 
 Gaythorne, Pamela, 157, 158, 159 
 George, Grace, 185, 197, 258, 363 
 
 George M. Cohan Theater, 44 
 Gerstenberg, Alice, 403 
 Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, 9, 
 
 45, 251 
 Ghosts, 306 
 Giddens, George, 146 
 Gilbert, Sir W. S., 175, 327 
 Gillette, William, 100, 379, 383 
 Gillmore, Frank, 259 
 Girl with the Green Eyes, The, 
 
 "7, 353 
 
 Glass, Montague, 355 
 Glendenning, Ernest, 109 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 310, 371 
 Good Little Devil, A, 319 
 Goodman, Edward, 398, 399, 401 
 Gorky, Maxim, 105, 306 
 Gottschalk, Ferdinand, 185, 391 
 Grand-Army Man The, 151 
 Great Divide, The, 222, 330 
 Great Lover, The, 128, 133 
 Greek Theater, University of Cal- 
 ifornia, 222 
 Green Stockings, 222 
 Gregory, Lady Augusta, 371 
 
 Hackett, James K., 241 
 
 Hamlet, 217, 230, 318, 320, 368 
 
 Hampden, Walter, 4, 243, 259 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 385 
 
 Harvest Moon, The, 25, 27, 259 
 
 Hassell, George, 243 
 
 Hatton, Frederic and Fanny, 128 
 
 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 195, 199, 
 
 3i3 
 
 Hazelton, George C., 50 
 Hedda Gabler, 105, 118, 284 
 Hedman, Martha, 171 
 Heggie, O. P., 193, 392 
 Helena's Husbands, 402
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hennequin, Alfred, 249 
 Her Husband's Wife, 330 
 Herne, Crystal, 32, 259 
 Herne, James A., 150, 352 
 High Road, The, 67, 68, 73 
 Hindle Wakes, 76, 148-154 
 Hit-the-Trail Holliday, 123-127 
 Hobson's Choice, 136 
 Homer, 67 
 
 Honeymoon Express, The, 75-81 
 Honorable Lover, The, 403 
 Horniman, Miss A. E. F., 148, 
 
 IS'. 313 
 
 Houghton, Stanley, 148 
 Hudson Theater, The, 82, 225 
 Huneker, James, 351 
 Hypocrites, The, 383, 384 
 
 Ibsen, Henrik, 285, 292, 304, 306, 
 311, 320, 339, 352 
 
 Illington, Margaret, 12, 15, 16 
 
 Illusion of the First Time in Act- 
 ing, The, 379, 383 
 
 Importance of Being Earnest, 
 The, 259 
 
 Interior, 399, 401, 403 
 
 Irish Players, The, 149, 296, 298, 
 
 4" 
 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 228 
 Irving, Isabel, 258 
 Irwin, May, 135 
 It Pays to Advertise, 349 
 Ives, Charlotte, 32 
 
 James, William, 18, 21, 24, 409 
 
 Johnson, Owen, 127 
 
 Jolson, AI, 79, 81 
 
 Jones, Henry Arthur, 91, 352, 383 
 
 Jones, Robert E., 193 
 
 Joseph and His Brethren, 77 
 
 Julius Caesar, 221 
 Justice, 202-207, 271, 392 
 
 Kane, Gail, 97 
 
 Keane, Doris, 66, 71, 72, 381, 383, 
 
 384 
 
 Kenyon, Charles, 12, 15 
 Kidder, Katheryn, 117 
 Kindling, 12-16 
 King Henry VIII, 241 
 Kinkead, Cleves, no, 114 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 14, 48, no, 142 
 Kismet, 34-43 
 Klaw and Erlanger, 34 
 Kneisels, The, 394 
 Knickerbocker Theater, 34 
 Knoblauch, Edward, 34, 35, 36 
 Koch, Frederick Henry, 411 
 Kotzebue, 311 
 Kreisler, Fritz, 138, 393 
 
 Lady Windemere's Fan, 330 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 76 
 
 Land of Promise, The, 330 
 
 Lawford, Ernest, 391 
 
 Lawrence, Basil, 399 
 
 Leah Kleschna, 284, 285 
 
 Legend of Leonora, The, 172-178, 
 
 389 
 
 Leslie, Marguerite, 171 . 
 Liberty Hall, 312 
 Licensed, 399 
 
 Little Country Theater, 411 
 Little Mary, 172 
 Little Minister, The, 389 
 Little Theater, The, 155, 164, 
 
 294, 308, 349 
 Little Theater (Indianapolis), 
 
 404, 412
 
 42O 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Locke, Edward, 59 
 Locke, William J., 286 
 Loftus, Cecilia, 216 
 Longacre Theater, 128 
 Lord Dundreary, 250 
 Lopoukowa, Lydia, 402 
 Love of One's Neighbor, 400 
 Lyric Theater, 211 
 
 McCarthy, Lilian, 192 
 McKinnel, Norman, 149 
 McLean, R. D., 215 
 McRae, Bruce, 254, 259 
 Macbeth, 348, 367, 368 
 MacKaye, Percy, 403 
 Madame X, 174 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 399, 400, 
 
 401, 407 
 
 Magical City, The, 406 
 Major Barbara, 393 
 Man From Home, The, 250, 292, 
 
 298 
 
 Man of the Hour, The, 9 
 Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, 
 
 The, 188, 193 
 Mansfield, Richard, 62, 132, 184, 
 
 222, 234, 287 
 
 Mantell, Robert, 217 
 
 Marlowe, Julia, 224, 258, 351, 
 
 376, 390 
 
 Martin, Helen, 136 
 Masefield, John, 313 
 Mason, John, 25, 26, 31, 32, 108, 
 
 '112, 114 
 
 Master Pierre Patelin, 193, 406 
 
 Matthews, A. E., 259 
 
 Matthison, Edith Wynne, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
 
 157 
 Maugham, Somerset, 165, 330 
 
 Maxine Elliott Theater, 66, 148, 
 
 156 
 
 May, Olive, 88 
 Megrue, Roi Cooper, 197, 355 
 Melba, Nellie, 135, 138, 388 
 Mendelssohn, 239 
 Merchant of Venice, The, 368 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 
 
 '241 
 Metropolitan Opera House, 129, 
 
 3i8 
 
 Meyer, Josephine, 404 
 Mid-Channel, 273, 306 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 
 
 234-240, 374 
 Mignon, 68 
 
 Mikado, The, 175, 371 
 Miller, Henry, 90, 259, 260 
 Miracle Man, The, 90-97 
 Miracle of St. Anthony, The, 400 
 Moeller, Philip, 400, 402, 410 
 Moliere, 310 
 
 Molnar, Ferenc, 179, 182 
 Moloch, 123 
 Moody, William Vaughn, 90, 330, 
 
 355 
 
 Moon Down, 400 
 Morosco, Oliver, n6 
 Morton, Madison, 311 
 Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh, 136 
 Mrs. Dane's Defense, 222 
 Mrs. Warren's Profession, 269 
 Muck, Karl, 393 
 Music Master, The, 17 
 Musset, Alfred de, 403 
 My Lady's Honor, 400 
 
 Nash, George, 97, 259 
 Nazimova, Alia, 12, 390, 391 
 New Amsterdam Theater, 241
 
 INDEX 
 
 421 
 
 New Theater, The, 3, 4, 5, n, 
 196, 216, 241, 258, 259, 264, 294, 
 
 298, 299, 373 
 
 Nicholson, Meredith, 150, 151 
 Night of Snow, 403 
 Night Refuge The, 105, 306 
 Norman, Christine, 122 
 North, Wilfrid, 157 
 Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, The, 
 
 283 
 
 Officer 666, 305 
 O'Neill, James, 222 
 Ordynski, Richard, 241, 242 
 Osborne, Thomas Mott, 205 
 Othello, 211-216, 221, 273 
 Our American Cousin, 250 
 Our Mrs. McChesney, 391 
 Overtones, 403 
 
 Packard, Frank L., 90 
 
 Paderewski, Ignace, 393 
 
 Page, Curtis Hidden, 193 
 
 Pagliacci, I., 6 
 
 Pair of Silk Stockings, A, 349 
 
 Parker, Dorothy, 146 
 
 Parker, Louis N., 141, 142, 143, 
 
 145, 287, 288 
 Passers-by, 158 
 Pater, Walter, 75, 76 
 Patience, 371 
 Patrician, The, 314 
 Patterson, Joseph Medill, 13 
 Payne, B. Iden, 202 
 Peabody, Josephine Preston, 3, 6, 7 
 Pemberton, Murdock, 400 
 Penguin Island, 193 
 Perugini, George, 53 
 Peter Pan, 77, 172, 274, 376, 389, 
 
 393 
 
 Phantom Rival, The, 179-187 
 Pigeon, The, 155-164. 203, 204, 
 
 294, 295, 305 
 Pinafore, 76 
 Pinero, Sir Arthur, 83, 273, 274, 
 
 275, 298, 306 
 Piper, The, 3-11 
 Platt, George Foster, 74, 157 
 Platt, Livingston, 223, 226, 227, 
 
 230, 232, 233, 317, 318, 406 
 Playmaking, 295 
 Polini, Emilie, 154 
 Pomander Walk, 141-147 
 Popularity, 45 
 Porter, Gene Stratton, 196 
 Potash and Perlmutter, 117 
 Power, Tyrone, 277 
 Prince, Dr. Morton, 59 
 Princesse Lointaine, La, 337 
 Pygmalion, 181 
 
 Quality Street, 141, 142, 145 
 Quo Vadis, 337 
 
 Racine, 310 
 
 Rainbow, The, 330 
 
 Raymond, John T., 250 
 
 Red Cloak, The, 405 
 
 Reed, John, 400 
 
 Reflections on Acting, 379 
 
 Rehan, Ada, 223, 224 
 
 Reicher, Emanuel, 195 
 
 Reicher, Frank, 157, 159, 160, 171 
 
 Reinhardt, Max, 193, 235, 241, 307, 
 
 316, 318, 320 
 Relph, George, 56 
 Reminiscences of a Dramatic 
 
 Critic, 257 
 
 Republic Theater, no 
 Return from Jerusalem, The, 170
 
 4.22 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Return of Peter Grimm, The, 17- 
 
 24, 59, 64 
 
 Revelle, Hamilton, 42 
 Riders to the Sea, 296, 297, 298 
 Rise of Silas Lapham, The, 311 
 Road-House in Arden, The, 405 
 Robertson, Tom, 311 
 Rolfe, W. J., 367 
 Romance, 66-74, 117, 381, 383, 385 
 Romeo and Juliet, 76, 211, 221 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 382 
 Rosmersholm, 284, 320 
 Rostand, Edmond, 4, 337 
 Russian Ballet, 402 
 Rutherford and Son, 149 
 
 Salvation Nell, 67 
 
 Sampson, William, 88 
 
 Sardou, Victorien, 200, 312, 313 
 
 Savage, Henry W., 75, 80 
 
 Saviors, 400 
 
 Scandal, The, 262 
 
 Schnitzler, Arthur, 403 
 
 School for Scandal, The, 249, 306 
 
 Schumann, Robert, 394 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 310, 311 
 
 Scribe, Eugene, 200 
 
 Seagull, The, 407, 408, 409 
 
 Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The, 283, 
 
 35i 
 
 Secret, The, 165-171 
 
 Selwyn, Edgar, 251 
 
 Sembrich, Marcella, 393, 394 
 
 Septimus, 286 
 
 Serrano, Vincent, 32 
 
 Servant in the House, The, 5 
 
 Seven Days, 305 
 
 Shakespeare, 56, 67, 91, 124, 206, 
 214, 217, 218, 219, 221, 227, 233, 
 234, 235, 237, 241, 242, 244, 245, 
 
 272, 275, 304, 307, 310, 318, 365, 
 366, 367, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 
 
 375, 377, 389, 394, 405 
 Shaw, Arthur, 53 
 Shaw, Bernard, 188, 189, 192, 225, 
 
 273, 306, 313, 338, 365, 371, 393 
 Shaw, Mary, 53, 306 
 
 She Stoops to Conquer, 76, 310 
 Sheldon, Edward, 66, 67, 68, 72, 
 
 73, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109 
 Shenandoah, 222 
 Shepherd in the Distance, The, 
 
 400, 401 
 
 Sheridan, R. B., 249, 371 
 Shore Acres, 150, 352 
 Show Shop, The, 82-89 
 Sidney, George, 88 
 Silver Box, The, 203, 204, 294 
 Sitgreaves, Beverly, 133 
 Skinner, Otis, 4, 35, 42, 259 
 Slice of Life, A, 332 
 Smith, H. Reeves, 122 
 Song of Songs, The, 104-109 
 Sophocles, 222, 309 
 Sothern, E. A., 250 
 Sothern, E. H., 228, 259, 355, 356 
 Sparks, Ned, 88 
 Starr, Frances, 62, 165, 170 
 Stevens, Edwin, 179 
 Stevens, Emily, 121, 122, 354 
 Stokes, Rose Pastor, 400 
 Stone, Fred, 7 
 Strange Woman, The, 165 
 Strife, 158, 196, 197, 203, 204, 294, 
 
 295, 3H 
 
 Such a Little Queen, 259 
 Sudermann, Hermann, 104, 105, 
 
 106, 313 
 
 Sumurun, 307, 318 
 Sutro, Alfred, 355
 
 INDEX 
 
 423 
 
 Swartr, Jean, 79 
 
 Synge, J. M., 149, 296, 313 
 
 Talma, 379, 380 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, The, 223, 
 
 225, 227, 390 
 Taylor, Laurette, 108 
 Taylor, Tom, 240 
 Tchekov, Anton, 401, 407, 408, 409 
 Tempest, The, 241-245 
 Tenor, The, 405 
 
 Teas of the d'Urbervilles, 385, 386 
 Thackeray, W. M., 275, 285, 310, 
 
 3" 
 
 Thais, 193 
 
 Thief, The, 15, 168 
 
 Thirty-Ninth Street Theater, 25, 
 
 26, 98, 116 
 Thomas, Augustus, 25, 26, 27, 28, 
 
 30, 3*1 3, 33, 72, 98, 300, 301, 
 
 305, 340 
 
 Thomas, A. E., 330 
 Three Daughters of M. Dupont, 
 
 The, 272 
 Thunderbolt, The, 274, 298, 299, 
 
 300 
 
 Too Many Cooks, 98-103 
 Toy Theater (Boston), 226 
 Traveling Salesman, The, 82 
 Tree, Sir Herbert, 228, 241, 242 
 Trelawney of the "Wells," 83, 274 
 Trial by Jury, 175 
 Truth, The, 117, 353, 391 
 Twain, Mark, 250 
 Twelfth Night, 223, 224, 227, 229, 
 
 3*7 
 
 Twelve-Pound Look, The, 274 
 Twice-Born Men, 95 
 Two Blind Beggars and One Less 
 
 Blind, 400 
 
 Two Virtues, The, 355 
 Typhoon, The, 301, 302 
 
 Unchastened Woman, The, 116- 
 
 122, 353 
 
 Under the Gas Lamps, 311 
 Urban, Josef, 241, 317, 406 
 
 Valentine, Sidney, 157-159 
 Virginius, 273 
 
 Walkley, A. B., 141 
 Wallack, Lester, 255, 256 
 Wallack's Theater, 141, 146, 188, 
 
 189, 234 
 
 Walter, Eugene, 199, 275, 314, 355 
 Warfield, David, 17, 18, 23, 151 
 Warren, William, 257, 258 
 Washington Square Players, 396- 
 
 43 
 
 'Way Down East, 150 
 Wayburn, Ned, 78 
 Weavers, The, 195-201 
 Weber and Fields, 239, 338 
 Wedekind, Frank, 405 
 Wendell, Barrett, 326 
 Wendell, Jacob, 4 
 What Every Woman Knows, 389 
 Where Ignorance is Bliss, 179 
 Whims, 403 
 White, Hervey, 403 
 Whitside, Walker, 301 
 Whytal, Russ, 157, 158 
 Wilde, Oscar, 330 
 Wilkinson, Norman, 235 
 Williams, John IX, 202 
 Williams, Malcolm, 186, 187 
 Winter Garden, The, 75, 77, 355 
 Winter, William, 352, 353, 358, 
 
 390
 
 424 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Winter's Tale, A, 273, 373 
 
 Wise, Thomas, A., 109 
 
 Witching Hour, The, 25, 26, 73, 
 
 301 
 
 Wizard of Oz, The, 255 
 Woods, A. H., no, 114, 355 
 Worthing, Frank, 180, 185, 254, 
 
 259, 3<>2, 363 
 
 Wright, Haidee, 355 
 Wyndham, Olive, 258 
 Wyndham, Sir Charles, 254 
 
 Yapp, Cecil, 243 
 Yeats, W. B., 149 
 Yellow Jacket, The, 50-58 
 You Never Can Tell, 371
 
 A SELECTED LIST 
 
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 .ITERATURE 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
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 CINCINNATI
 
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 Four Plays of the Free Theater 
 
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 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
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 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
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 HIS LIFE AND WORKS 
 
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 pathetic, yet independent interpretation of the most po- 
 tent individual force in society. Cultivated America will 
 find here the key to all that is baffling and elusive in 
 Shaw; it is a cinematographic picture of his mind with a 
 background disclosing all the formative influences that 
 combined to produce this universal genius. 
 
 The press of the world has united in its praise; let us 
 send you some of the comments. It is a large demy 8<vo 
 volume doth, gilt top, 628 pages, 'with 35 full page illus- 
 trations in color, photogravure and halftone and numerous 
 pictures in the text. 
 
 $5.00 Net
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 A FEW CRITICAL REVIEWS OF 
 
 George Bernard Shaw 
 
 His LIFE AND WORKS 
 A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY (Authorized) 
 By ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, M.A., PH.D. 
 The Dial: 
 
 "In over five hundred pages, with an energy and 
 carefulness and sympathy which deserve high com- 
 mendation, Dr. Henderson has presented his subject 
 from all conceivable angles." 
 The Bookman: 
 
 "A more entertaining narrative, whether in biog- 
 raphy or fiction, has not appeared in recent years." 
 The Independent: 
 
 "Whatever George Bernard Shaw may think of his 
 Biography the rest of the world will probably agree 
 that Dr, Henderson has done a good job." 
 Boston Transcript: 
 
 "There is no exaggeration in saying it is one of the 
 most entertaining biographies of these opening years 
 of the Twentieth Century." 
 Bernard Shaw: 
 
 "You are a genius, because you are somehow sus- 
 ceptible to the really significant and differentiating 
 traits and utterances of your subject." 
 Maurice Maeterlinck: 
 
 "You have written one of the most sagacious, most 
 acute and most penetrating essays in the whole mod- 
 ern moment." 
 Edwin Markham: 
 
 "He stands to-day as the chief literary critic of 
 the South, and in the very forefront of the critics of 
 the nation." 
 William Lyon Phelps: 
 
 "Your critical biography of Shaw is a really great 
 work." 
 Richard Burton: 
 
 "In over five hundred pages, with an energy and 
 carefulness and sympathy which deserves high com- 
 mendation, Dr. Henderson has presented his subject 
 from all conceivable angles. * * * Intensely interest- 
 ing * * * sound and brilliant, full of keen insight and 
 happy turns of statement. * * * This service Professor 
 Henderson's book does perform; and I incline to call it 
 a great one."
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 Short Plays 
 
 By MARY MAC MILLAN 
 To fill a long-felt want. All have been successfully 
 
 presented. Suitable for Women's Clubs, Girls' Schools, 
 
 etc. While elaborate enough for big presentation, they 
 
 may be given very simply. 
 
 Review of Reviews: 
 
 "Mary MacMillan offers 'SHORT PLAYS,' a collec- 
 tion of pleasant one to three-act plays for women's 
 clubs, girls' schools, and home parlor production. 
 Some are pure comedies, others gentle satires on 
 women's faults and foibles. 'The Futurists,' a skit 
 on a woman's club in the year 1882, is highly amus- 
 ing. 'Entr' Act' is a charming trifle that brings two 
 quarreling lovers together through a ridiculous pri- 
 vate theatrical. 'The Ring' carries us gracefully back 
 to the days of Shakespeare; and 'The Shadowed Star,' 
 the best of the collection, is a Christmas Eve tragedy. 
 The Star is shadowed by our thoughtless inhumanity 
 to those who serve us and our forgetfulness of the 
 needy. The Old Woman, gone daft, who babbles in 
 a kind of mongrel Kiltartan, of the Shepherds, the 
 Blessed Babe, of the Fairies, rowan berries, roses and 
 dancing, while her daughter dies on Christmas Eve, is 
 a splendid characterization." 
 
 Boston Transcript: 
 
 "Those who consigned the writer of these plays to 
 solitude and prison fare evidently knew that 'needs 
 must' is a sharp stimulus to high powers. If we find 
 humor, gay or rich, if we find brilliant wit; if we 
 find constructive ability joined with dialogue which 
 moves like an arrow; if we find delicate and keen 
 characterization, with a touch of genius in the choice 
 of names; if we find poetic power which moves on 
 easy wing the gentle jailers of the writer are justi- 
 fied, and the gentle reader thanks their severity." 
 
 Salt Lake Tribune: 
 
 "The Plays are ten in number, all of goodly length. 
 We prophesy great things for this gifted dramatist." 
 
 Bookseller, News Dealer & Stationer: 
 
 "The dialogue is permeated with graceful satire, 
 snatches of wit, picturesque phraseology, and tender, 
 often exquisite, expressions of sentiment." 
 
 Handsomely Bound. I2mo. Cloth Net, $1.25
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 The Gift 
 
 A POETIC DRAMA 
 By MARGARET DOUGLAS ROGERS 
 
 A dramatic poem In two acts, treating in altogether 
 new fashion the world old story of Pandora, the first 
 woman. 
 New Haven Times Leader: 
 
 "Well written and attractive." 
 Evangelical Messenger: 
 
 "A very beautifully written portrayal of the old 
 story of Pandora." 
 Rochester Post Dispatch: 
 
 "There is much poetic feeling in the treatment of 
 the subject." 
 Grand Rapids Herald: 
 
 "THE GIFT, dealing with this ever interesting 
 mythological story, is a valuable addition to the dramas 
 of the day." 
 St. Xavier Calendar: 
 
 "The story of Pandora is so set down as to bring 
 out its stage possibilities. Told by Mrs. Rogers in 
 exquisite language." 
 Salt Lake Tribune: 
 
 "The tale is charmingly wrought and has possibil- 
 ities as a simple dramatic production, as well as being 
 a delightful morsel of light reading." 
 Cincinnati Enquirer: 
 
 "The love story is delightfully told and the dra- 
 matic action of the play is swift and strong." 
 Buffalo Express: 
 
 "It is a delightful bit of fancy with a dramatic and 
 poetic setting." 
 Boston Woman's Journal: 
 
 "Epimetheus and Pandora and her box are charm- 
 ingly presented." 
 Worcester Gazette: 
 
 "It is absolutely refreshing to find a writer willing 
 to risk a venture harking back to the times of the 
 Muses and the other worthies of mythological fame. 
 * * * The story of Pandora's box told in verse by a 
 woman. It may be said it could not have been better 
 written had a representative of the one who only as- 
 sisted at the opening been responsible for the play." 
 Handsomely bound silk cloth Net, $1.00
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 Lucky Pehr 
 
 By AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 Authorized Translation by Velma Siuanston Howard. 
 
 An allegorical drama in five acts. Compared favorably 
 
 to Barrie's "Peter Pan" and Maeterlinck's "The Blue 
 
 Bird." 
 
 Rochester Post Express: 
 
 Strindberg has written many plays which might be 
 described as realistic nightmares. But this remark does 
 not apply to "Lucky Pehr." * * * This drama is one 
 of the most favorable specimens of Strindberg's 
 genius. 
 
 New York World: 
 
 "Pehr" is lucky because, having tested all things, 
 he finds that only love and duty are true. 
 
 New York Times: 
 
 "Lucky Pehr" clothes cynicism in real entertain- 
 ment instead of in gloom. And it has its surprises. 
 Can this be August Strindberg, who ends his drama 
 so sweetly on the note of the woman-soul, leading up- 
 ward and on? 
 
 Worcester Gazette: 
 
 From a city of Ohio comes this product of Swedish 
 fancy in most attractive attire, attesting that the pos- 
 sibilities of dramatic art have not entirely ceased in 
 this age of vaudeville and moving pictures. A great 
 sermon in altruism is preached in these pages, which 
 we would that millions might see and hear. To those 
 who think or would like to think, "Lucky Pehr" will 
 prove a most readable book. * * * An allegory, it is 
 true, but so are ^Esop's Fables, the Parables of the 
 Scriptures and many others of the most effective les- 
 sons ever given. 
 
 Boston Globe: 
 
 A popular drama. * * * There is no doubt about 
 the book being a delightful companion in the library. 
 In charm of fancy and grace of imagery the story may 
 not be unfairly classed with "The Blue Bird" and 
 "Peter Pan." 
 Photogravure frontispiece of Strindberg etched by 
 
 Zorn. Also, a reproduction of Velma Swanston Howard's 
 
 authorization. 
 
 Handsomely bound. Gilt top Net, $1.50
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 Easter 
 
 (A PLAY IN THREE ACTS) 
 AND STORIES BY AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 Authorized translation by Velma Swanston Howard. 
 In this c work the author reveals a broad tolerance, a rare 
 poetic tenderness augmented by an almost divine under- 
 standing of human frailties as marking certain natural 
 stages in evolution of the soul. 
 Louisville Courier- Journal: 
 
 Here is a major key of cheerfulness and idealism 
 a relief to a reader who has passed through some 
 of the author's morbid pages. * * * Some critics find 
 in this play (Easter) less of the thrust of a distinctive 
 art than is found in the author's more lugubrious 
 dramas. There is indeed less sting in it. Neverthe- 
 less it has a nobler tone. It more ably fulfills the 
 purpose of good drama the chastening of the spec- 
 tators' hearts through their participation in the suf- 
 fering of the dramatic personages. There is in the 
 play a mystical exaltation, a belief and trust in good 
 and its power to embrace all in its beneficence, to bring 
 all confusion to harmony. 
 The Nation: 
 
 Those who like the variety of symbolism which 
 Maeterlinck has often employed most notably in the 
 "Bluebird" will turn with pleasure to the short stories 
 of Strindberg which Mrs. Howard has included in her 
 volume. * * * They are one and all diverting on ac- 
 count of the author's facility in dealing with fanciful 
 details. 
 Bookseller: 
 
 "Easter" is a play of six characters illustrative of 
 human frailties and the effect of the divine power 
 of tolerance and chanty. * There is a symbolism, 
 a poetic quality, a spiritual insight in the author's 
 work that make a direct appeal to the cultured. * * * 
 The Dial: 
 
 One play from his (Strindberg's) third, or sym- 
 bolistic period stands almost alone. This is "Easter." 
 There is a sweet, sane, life-giving spirit about it. 
 Photogravure frontispiece of Strindberg etched by 
 Zorn. Also, a reproduction of Velma S<wanston Howard's 
 authorization. 
 Handsomely bound. Gilt top Net, $1.50
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 On the Seaboard 
 
 By AUGUST STRINDBERG 
 
 The Author's greatest psychological novel. Author- 
 ized Translation by Elizabeth Clarke Westergren. 
 
 American-Scandinavian Review: 
 
 "The description of Swedish life and Swedish scen- 
 ery makes one positively homesick for the Skargard 
 and its moods. 
 
 Worcester Evening Gazette: 
 
 "Classes in Psychology in colleges, and Medical stu- 
 dents considering Pathology would derive much infor- 
 mation from the observations and reflections of the 
 commissioner who holds the front of the stage whereon 
 are presented sciences as new to the readers of to-day 
 as were those which Frederick Bremer unfolded to the 
 fathers and mothers of critics and observers in this 
 first quarter of the Twentieth Century." 
 
 Detroit Tribune: 
 
 "Hans Land pronounced this novel to be the only 
 work of art in the domain of Nietzschean morals yet 
 written which is destined to endure." 
 
 Cincinnati Times-Star: 
 
 "It requires a book such as 'ON THE SEABOARD' to 
 show just how profound an intellect was housed in the 
 frame of this great Swedish writer." 
 
 New Haven Leader: 
 
 "His delineations are photographical exactness with- 
 out retouching, and bear always a strong reflection of 
 his personality." 
 
 Indianapolis News: 
 
 "The story is wonderfully built and conceived and 
 holds the interest tight." 
 
 American Review of Reviews: 
 
 "This version is characterized by the fortunate use 
 of idiom, a delicacy in the choice of words, and great 
 beauty in the rendering of descriptive passages, the 
 translation itself often attaining the melody of poetry 
 * * * You may read and re-read it, and every read- 
 ing will fascinate the mind from a fresh angle." 
 
 South Atlantic Quarterly: 
 
 "Only a most unusual man, a genius, could have 
 written this book, and it is distinctly worth reading." 
 
 Handsomely bound, uniform vuith Lucky Pehr and 
 Easter Net, $1.25
 
 STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 
 
 The Hamlet Problem and Its Solution 
 
 By EMERSON VENABLE 
 
 The tragedy of Hamlet has never been adequately in- 
 terpreted. Two hundred years of critical discussion has 
 not sufficed to reconcile conflicting impressions regarding 
 the scope of Shakespeare's design in this, the first of his 
 great philosophic tragedies. We believe that all those 
 students ivho are interested in the study of Shakespeare 
 will find this volume of great value. 
 The Louisville Courier-Journal: 
 
 "Mr. Venable's Hamlet is a 'protagonist of a drama 
 of triumphant moral achievement.' He rises through 
 the play from an elected agent of vengeance to a 
 man gravely impressed with 'an imperative sense of 
 moral obligation, tragic in its depth, felt toward the 
 world.' " 
 E. H. Sothern: 
 
 "Your ideas of Hamlet so entirely agree with my 
 own that the book has been a real delight to me. I 
 have always had exactly this feeling about the char- 
 acter of Hamlet. I think you have wiped away a 
 great many cobwebs, and I believe your book will 
 prove to be most convincing to many people who may 
 yet be a trifle in the dark." 
 The Book News Monthly: 
 
 "Mr. Venable is the latest critic to apply himself 
 to the 'Hamlet' problem, and he offers a solution in 
 an admirably written little book which is sure to at- 
 tract readers. Undeterred by the formidable names 
 of Goethe and Coleridge, Mr. Venable pronounces un- 
 tenable the theories which those great authors pro- 
 pounded to account for the extraordinary figure of 
 the Prince of Denmark. * * * Mr. Venable looks in 
 another direction for the solution of the problem. 
 * * * The solution offered by the author is just the 
 reverse of that proposed by Goethe. * * * From Mr. 
 Venable's viewpoint the key to 'Hamlet' is found in 
 the famous soliloquies, and his book is based upon 
 a close study of those utterances which bring us with- 
 in the portals of the soul of the real Hamlet. The 
 reader with an open mind will find in Mr. Venable a 
 writer whose breadth of view and searching thought 
 gives weight to this competent study of the most inter- 
 esting of Shakespearean problems." 
 t6mo. Silk cloth Net, $1.00
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 HOW TO WRITE 
 
 Moving Picture Plays 
 
 By W. L. GORDON 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 What is a motion picture? How are moving pictures 
 produced? What is necessary to write photoplays? 
 Prices paid for plays. Kind of plays to write. Kind 
 of plays to avoid. Single reels, double reels, etc. Prepa- 
 ration of manuscript. The plot and how to obtain it. 
 Title of play. Synopsis. Cast of characters. Scenario. 
 Leaders of Sub-Titles. Letters, Clippings, etc. What 
 constitutes a scene. Continuity of scenes. Stage settings 
 and properties. Entrance and exit of characters. Cli- 
 max.' Limitations of camera. Length of play. Review. 
 Time required to write a play. How and where to sell 
 plays. A complete sample play illustrating every point 
 treated upon in the instructions. A full list of over 
 twenty prominent film-producing companies wanting and 
 buying plays. 
 
 The following extracts from letters of satisfied writers, 
 addressed to the author, are very convincing and be- 
 speak the value of this exhaustive treatise: 
 
 " Have been successful in placing three plays, and am 
 awaiting news of two additional ones. Am certain I 
 would never have had that much success if I had not fol- 
 lowed your instructions." 
 
 " Your instructions entirely satisfactory. I think that 
 any one with common sense can make a very nice income 
 through moving picture play-writing. My first scenario 
 has been accepted, and I desire to thank you." 
 
 " You might be interested to know that my first scenario 
 completed according to your instructions was accepted by 
 the Essanay Film Co." 
 
 " Instructions well worth the money. Sold my first 
 scenario to the Edison Co." 
 
 Handsomely bound in DeLuxe Cloth Net, $1.00
 
 DRAMATIC LITERATURE 
 
 The Truth 
 
 About The Theater 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 Precisely what the title indicates facts as they 
 are, plain and unmistakable -without veneer of any 
 sort. It goes directly to the heart of the whole 
 matter. Behind the writer of it who is one of 
 the best known theatrical men in New York are 
 long years of experience. He recites what he 
 knows, what he has seen, and his quiet, calm, au- 
 thoritative account of conditions as they are is with- 
 out adornment, excuse or exaggeration. It is in- 
 tended to be helpful to those who want the facts, 
 and for them it will prove of immeasurable value. 
 
 " The Truth About the Theater," in brief, lifts 
 the curtain on the American stage. It leaves no 
 phase of the subject untouched. To those who are 
 ambitious to serve the theater, either as players or 
 as playwrights, or, again, in some managerial ca- 
 pacity, the book is invaluable. To those, too, who 
 would know more about the theater that they may 
 come to some fair estimate of the worth of the in- 
 numerable theories nowadays advanced, the book 
 will again prove its value. 
 
 Net $1.00
 
 "NDKkWOOI) .* I'NDEKWOOI), New York
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY