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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026398796 
 
ANOTHER BOOK on the THEATRE 
 
BY GEORGE JEAN ^ATHAN 
 
 Another Book 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Theatre 
 
 NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH MCMXV 
 
Copyright, 1915, by 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 13 
 
 s 
 
To 
 H. L. M. 
 
BEING 
 A COLLECTION OF 
 
 Haphazard, Fugitive and Some Might Say Impudent 
 
 ' Reflections in and on the Mirror -which the 
 
 Theatre is Supposed to Hold Up to 
 
 Nature But with Which, 
 
 Instead, It More Often 
 
 Holds Up Its 
 
 Patrons. 
 
INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY 
 
 [The ambition to become a dramatic critic assails 
 probably nine city boy-children out of ten in that 
 epoch which lies between their ambition to become 
 President of the United States (an ambition rejected 
 not later than the age of eleven by all better-class 
 youngsters) and the somewhat loftier subsequent 
 ambition to marry Gaby Deslys. 
 
 This ambition to grow up to be a professional 
 remarker on the theatre is variously inculcated in 
 youths. In the first place, they have at a very early 
 age read the critical works of Mr. William Winter. 
 A careful perusal of these standard critical works 
 has convinced them that dramatic criticism is the pas- 
 time of taking luncheon with beautiful and prom- 
 inent Shakespearean actresses. In the second place, 
 they have read in the Sunday newspaper supple- 
 ments many interviews by the dramatic critic of the 
 paper in which that bored bird has recited the man- 
 ner in which superb actresses have received him in 
 their lacy peignoirs. And in the third place, they 
 have caught sight, in the various strictly housekeep- 
 ing, home and family journals for which their 
 mother subscribes, of pictures of somebody with 
 great big beautiful brown eyes named Marie Doro 
 
vili INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY 
 
 or something — and, blooie ! their little minds are 
 made up on the spot. 
 
 There is only one way in which parents may cure 
 a child of this ambition to be a dramatic critic — 
 and that way is quickly to take him to New York and 
 make him go to the theatre twice in succession. If, 
 after this, the child is still alive, and still interested 
 in the theatre, his parents may prepare themselves 
 for the worst. As dutiful parents it then becomes 
 their duty no longer to stand in the way of their 
 child's ambition and to give him the education neces- 
 sary to the work he has chosen as his life's career. 
 This education — essential to the popular and finan- 
 cial success of a modern dramatic critic — super- 
 imposes upon the aspirant a thorough understanding 
 and appreciation of the following inviolable defini- 
 tions and rules : 
 
 I. A dramatic criticism consists in so arranging 
 the words and phrases, " technique," " nuance," 
 " brilliant," " realism," " play of ideas," " com- 
 mercial," " superficial," " egregious," " relentless," 
 " atmosphere," " symbolism," " craftsmanship," 
 " psychology," " Belasco, the Wizard," " dramatic 
 unities of Aristotle," " talky," " types," " details," 
 " unmoral rather than immoral," " the meaning is 
 esoteric," " in the last analysis," " Shaw is insin- 
 cere," "bourgeois," "piffle," "flapdoodle," "pro- 
 vincial," " personality," " cycle," " Moliere," " sings 
 through the nose," " metier," " the play of the cen- 
 tury!," "sympathy," "heart interest," "genre 
 
INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY ix 
 
 play," " as funny as Charley's Aunt," " the big scene 
 reminds one of Mrs. Dane's Defense," and 
 " ' young ' Mr. Edward Sheldon," that they shall 
 deftly conceal the dramatic critic's impressive lack 
 of ability to criticize drama. 
 
 2. " To review an author one must write a gen- 
 eral essay on some more or less related theme or 
 themes and, when one comes at last to one's man, 
 use his play mainly to exhibit one's own powers of 
 humor or satire." 
 
 3. Iterate with authoritative finality that Pinero 
 is the greatest living British dramatist, Augustus 
 [Thomas the dean of American playwrights, Brieux 
 a " mere feuilletonist " and Gordon Craig " an 
 idealist whose practicability is seriously to be 
 doubted " (proceeding then in the next sentence with 
 a eulogy of Relnhardt) . 
 
 4. Never, when the subject is in hand, let slip the 
 opportunity to make a slightly disparaging allusion 
 to: I. Sardou; II. Klaw and Erlanger; III. melo- 
 drama; IV. George M. Cohan; V. any playwright 
 under thirty-five; VI. all dramatic critics other than 
 yourself; VII. "distorted adaptations of foreign 
 plays " ; and VIII. exceptionally pretty young ac- 
 tresses (this latter will attest to your " dignity," " Im- 
 personal viewpoint," and non-confounding of good 
 looks with the art of acting) . 
 
 Of course, there are several other important 
 rules, but I shall not disclose them all. Were I to 
 do so, dramatic criticism would become an even 
 
X INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY 
 
 easier job than it now seems — and God knows ! our 
 children will need what college professors we still 
 have )eft over as it is. 
 
 By this paragraph, you may be wondering why 
 I, who am alleged by my friends and other enemies 
 to be a dramatic critic, am here muckraking the pro- 
 fession. Let me defend myself. By every Ameri- 
 can definition of dramatic critic, by every American 
 view of dramatic criticism which I have read or 
 heard — and from a close study of dramatic criticism 
 as it is largely practiced to-day in the land — I 
 modestly, and not without regret, deny that I have 
 any right or claim to the title which my plugging 
 enemies have bequeathed upon me. I am not a dra- 
 matic critic. Let me prove it. 
 
 First, I believe that drama is not one thing and 
 literature another. The two, I absurdly believe, 
 may be, and from the soundest critical point of view 
 are, on perfectly friendly terms. Second, I believe 
 ridiculously that, in the main, acting is acting only 
 in so far as it is ocularly reasonable and effective and 
 that therefore, in many species of roles, " types " 
 are absolutely imperative. (Character acting I ex- 
 clude inasmuch as character acting is not acting at 
 all, but merely a slick knack for making-up.) If 
 acting is not meant to be ocularly impressive, why 
 the theatre ? Why not sink on your spine in a mel- 
 low chair and read the play ? Am I not quite silly ? 
 I believe with what is almost a 42-centimeter im- 
 becility that poor George Shaw is our most talented 
 
INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY xi 
 
 living playwright; that the late Clyde Fitch was a 
 laughably over-estimated fellow; that the late Stan- 
 ley Houghton was another; that the Hungarians 
 are writing the most imaginative plays of the hour; 
 that Raymond Hitchcock is as adroit a farceur as 
 Sacha Guitry; that Granville Barker is, in consider- 
 able measure, an artistic mountebank; that Arnold 
 Daly is the best actor on the American stage; that 
 Mrs. Fiske (as she faces us to-day) is one of any- 
 thing but important position ; that David Belasco has 
 not thus far written one good play ; that the German 
 Lothar Schmidt knows human nature as not many 
 modern light comedy writers know it; that Brieux's 
 Les Hannetons is one of the finest satires of our 
 day and generation; that the acting at the Kleines 
 Theatre in Berlin is the best acting in Europe or 
 America ; that musical comedy should be a frank ap- 
 peal to and stimulant of the sex impulse and should 
 aim to be nothing else; that there is no such thing 
 as the mystery called dramatic technique — and a 
 whole lot of other just such perfectly crazy things. 
 Now do you believe me? I told you I wasn't a 
 dramatic critic. And why, pray, should I be a dra- 
 matic critic? At least, a dramatic critic of the sort 
 that is paid to review seriously and profoundly the 
 theatre as we have it currently in the United States? 
 I am a progressive. Our theatre, as you know, 
 isn't. Why, therefore, should I go on indefinitely 
 writing serious pieces about the very same things 
 I wrote serious pieces about a dozen years ago? 
 
xli INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY 
 
 The serious things of one generation are ever the 
 comic things of the next. I feel I cannot go on be- 
 ing serious about what, once serious, has become 
 sort o' funny. And, having thus become too flip- 
 pantly light-hearted about the matter and having 
 come to view it as more or less a joke, it follows 
 that I can't be a dramatic critic even should I desire. 
 To be a completely successful dramatic critic one 
 must constantly see funny things from a serious view- 
 point and serious things from a funny viewpoint. 
 Some day, however, my present attitude may change. 
 It usually does in a dramatic critic when he gets old. 
 Which is why our old dramatic critics are held in 
 such high esteem. 
 
 Meanwhile, I shall continue in my deplorable, su- 
 percilious and distinctly odious rut until our theatre 
 progresses far enough along the avenue of original- 
 ity to dare show us Maude Adams in a play in which 
 Maude Adams is " ruined," a play in which John 
 Drew ends unhappily, a play in which a character 
 who shows symptoms of heart disease in the first act 
 fails to die of it in the last, a play in which a se- 
 duced baggage does not sentimentally observe in 
 narrating her sad tale that he had " tossed her aside 
 like a broken flower," or a play in which the juvenile 
 does not wear a black ribbon across his evening 
 shirt and the ingenue some time or other run into 
 the room carrying a bouquet of sweet peas. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction and Apology vii 
 
 Another Theory of the Theatre i 
 
 A Protest for Vulgarity 4 
 
 When Greek Meets Granville i6 
 
 'figleaves from the book of musical comedy 3 j 
 
 Actors Who Shall Be Nameless 41 
 
 The Optimism of Tragedy 47 
 
 On the Reading of Verse 54 
 
 The Unimportance of Being Earnest 58 
 
 The Sad Play versus the Serious Play 75 
 
 Some Remarks on the Theatre 87 
 
 A Miracle in Thirty-ninth Street West loo 
 
 Our Thoughtful Drama iii 
 
 The Rules of the Current Plays 115 
 
 On First-Nighters 122 
 
 Parlous Views Franqais 126 
 
 On Zangwill 130 
 
 Plays That Speak Volumes 134 
 
 On J. K. Jerome 138 
 
 On Vaudeville 142 
 
 Now to Revive the Audience 148 
 
 Why Our Drama is Backward 163 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The "Late" Mr. Shaw 172 
 
 The Sport of Kings 185 
 
 A Play to Interest You 190 
 
 On Children's Imagination and Other Fairy Tales . . . 209 
 
 On "Young" Mr. Edward Sheldon 214. 
 
 Stanley — Explorer of the Amazon 219 
 
 On " Spicy " Drama 226 
 
 On Critics 228 
 
 On Monckton Hoffe's Dialogue 232 
 
 The Trail of the Lonesome Spine 235 
 
 On the Slapstick 240 
 
 One View of Two Plays 246 
 
 On the Cycle Nonsense 256 
 
 No. 7 262 
 
 Lessons for Playwrights 265 
 
 On the Harlot 273 
 
 The Eye and Mr. Ziegfeld 275 
 
 Some Casual Notes 278 
 
 The Standing in the Popularity Contest for Dramatic 
 
 Lines ... 322 
 
 On " Acting is an Art " 325 
 
 On Villains 328 
 
 At the Folies Marigny, Paris, 1914 330 
 
 On Alfred Sutro 331 
 
 On Fitch and Women 333 
 
 On Bernstein 335 
 
 National Drama 337 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On New Shaw Opinions 340 
 
 American Musical Comedy 345 
 
 Betting Odds on an Actress's Ambition . > 346 
 
 Eight Reasons Why the Moving Pictures Are Hurting the 
 
 Regular Theatres 347 
 
 Definitions of Stage Furniture, etc 349 
 
 Impressions of Dramatists 350 
 
 The Plot of a Belasco Play 355 
 
 From the Collection of a Rubber-Stamp Collector . . .357 
 Conventional Conceptions as to How an Actress Should 
 
 Express the Emotions 357 
 
ANOTHER BOOK ON 
 THE THEATRE 
 
 ANOTHER THEORY OF THE THEATRE 
 
 I 
 
 To be a successful argument in the American drama, 
 an argument must be of such a quality that it coin- 
 cides with the belief of nine-tenths of an Amer- 
 ican -theatre audience -^ — hence, an unsound argu- 
 ment. 
 
 II 
 
 To be regarded as a villain in the American 
 drama, a character must be of such a nature that his 
 opinions differ from the opinions of the hero, who 
 has no opinions.-*^ 
 
 Ill 
 
 The ingenue in a play containing a woman " star " 
 is a female character who is older and homelier than 
 the " star " and who wears an unbecoming dress.^ 
 
 ^ Hence the term " sympathetic,'' applied to the hero. 
 ^ This is what is so often referred to as the star " system.'' 
 
 I 
 
2 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 IV 
 
 In the American theatre, " the play's the thing " 
 in the following proportion: i. The "star." 2. 
 The press-agent. 3. The scenery. 4. The light- 
 ing effects. 5. The modiste or tailor. 6. The 
 play (provided the play is not a good play). 
 
 V 
 
 For a theme to be regarded as a new and sensa- 
 tional theme in the American drama, two things are 
 essential : first, the theme must be an old theme ; sec- 
 ond, the theme must have no basis in fact. 
 
 VI 
 
 The heroes and villains in the American* drama 
 may be classified as follows : 
 
 Heroes Villains 
 
 Bridge-builders Bridge-players 
 
 Westerners Easterners 
 
 Americans Foreigners 
 
 Pipe-smokers Cigarette-smokers 
 
 Paupers Millionaires 
 
 Inventors Lawyers 
 
 Crooks Policemen 
 
 Brothers Cousins 
 
 VII 
 
 The so-called " punch " in an American play is 
 that part of the play that has been stolen from a play 
 by Brieux. 
 
ANOTHER THEORY OF THEATRE 3 
 
 vin 
 
 The heroine in the play is the best-looking woman 
 in the cast. 
 
 IX 
 
 A " play of New York Life " is any play that does 
 not reflect New York life. 
 
 X 
 
 " Comedy relief " — relief from comedy. 
 
 XI 
 
 [The star system — a substitute for acting. 
 
 XII 
 
 Acting — a substitute for drama. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Drama — a substitute for moving-pictures. 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY 
 
 The difference twixt a risque American farce and 
 a risque French farce is simply this: in the former 
 the plot proceeds toward adultery, in the latter the 
 plot proceeds from adultery. Or, in another phras- 
 ing, the American product deals with adultery as 
 a probability of the immediate future, while the 
 Gallic product deals with the probability of adultery 
 of the immediate past being found out. 
 
 The merciless, almost frantic, circumspection ex- 
 ercised by authors and adaptors of so-called risque 
 American farces to prevent a realization of this 
 potential adultery — a whitewashing process that 
 has been going on longer than the oldest amongst 
 us can reniember — has now arrived at the point 
 where the average risque home-done boudoir affair 
 Is about as risque as a bed in a hospital. 
 
 By nature and training a prude and Puritan, I 
 protest to the fullest force of Invective against this 
 foul and nauseous practice of our farce writers. I 
 object to this salamandering school of farce that 
 has barnacled itself to the name American, this 
 teaser academy of pseudo-risque writing. It dis- 
 gusts me, goes against the stomach. Here a legiti- 
 mate field for the Incursion of a Mr. Anthony Com- 
 stock. Were I in some such gentleman's place, I 
 
 4 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY 5 
 
 should have such farces off the boards, I may tell 
 you, in quick order. Had I my way, there would 
 be no farce of the class discussed permitted on the 
 American stage. Not one ! I should insist, and 
 to my aid should invoke the law, that the present 
 laboriously suggestive bed-badgering pieces — pieces 
 that impress one as a sex alumna affecting baby-eyes 
 and baby-talk further to sentimentalize a college 
 boy — be chased out of the playhouse. And I 
 should insist, and should summon the law to insist 
 with me, that in the stead of such pornographic 
 innuendo, such lewd signalings behind the back, we 
 be given good, straight-forward, clean, wholesome, 
 healthy risque farce in which adultery, instead of be- 
 ing, as now, nastily jockeyed with and titillatingly 
 deferred, should figure as a realized fact. 
 
 Although Mr. John Palmer is a bit too Britishly 
 timid in the full admitting of it, I agree completely 
 with him that, in dealing comically with sex, the 
 Grangousian way is certainly the best way — that 
 sex is a perennially gross accident and necessity of 
 the flesh — the capital instance of our damnation as 
 immortal spirits compelled to utter ourselves gro- 
 tesquely in blood and bone, but finding in that dam- 
 nation a way of laughter whereby to accept it. 
 " This," says J. P., " is the comic way of all that 
 broad, intimate comedy of life which now is no 
 longer printed, but lingers still in every house where 
 men and women live with the barriers down; lin- 
 gers too in every boudoir and smoke-room where 
 
6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 women or men find severally their honest fun. 
 Such treatment of sex peeps furtively out of our 
 comedy; but our authors are too much afraid of it 
 to turn it to any fruitful purpose." " Falstaff," con- 
 tinues he, " no longer treads the English stage save 
 as an historic ghost; and it is at present useless at- 
 tempting to recover him. Someday, perhaps, when 
 the theatre once more believes too fervently in the 
 souls of men to be afraid of their bodies, Falstaff 
 will come back to us, speaking the language of a new 
 century. For the present, universal vulgar comedy 
 is extinct." 
 
 The chief objection to our so-called risque Ameri- 
 can sex farces is their lack of vulgarity. Of course, 
 they are in the main sufficiently ill-mannered to pass 
 as comedies of manners with our first-night audi- 
 ences, and they are, in general, sufficiently gross in 
 their cheapness of wit, humor and intelligence to ap- 
 peal strongly to such audiences as witty, humorous 
 and intelligent, but their deficiency in the matter of 
 fine, open-hearted, full-throated vulgarity remains 
 markedly offensive and repugnant to ladles and gen- 
 tlemen. To be delicately risque is an absurdly easy 
 task; but to succeed in being downright and originally 
 vulgar is a job only for crack shots. If you doubt 
 me, try it for yourself. Unless I am mistaken, I im- 
 agine you will discover that your attempts at original 
 abject vulgarity are very pitiful affairs — having the 
 air of nothing better than such attempts as might be 
 ventured by garbage-removers, trapeze performers 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY 7 
 
 or clever conversationalists. To be genuinely, ar- 
 tistically vulgar requires an education, a soundly 
 trained mind, good breeding, social background. 
 Find a completely satisfying vulgar person and you 
 will find simultaneously an artist. But the Walt 
 Whitmans and Richard Wagners, alas, are few and 
 far between. 
 
 On the other hand, as I have remarked above, 
 almost any one may be adept at the delicately risque. 
 As a matter of record, I cannot at the moment think 
 of a person of my acquaintance — man or woman — 
 who is not more or less a whip-hand at the business. 
 The idea that when Oscar Wilde died the knack of 
 the tactfully risque died with him, is as preposterous 
 as it Is popular. Compare, for instance, any line of 
 Wilde's you choose with one of my friends' " There 
 can be no peace of mind for the old man who has 
 taken for wife a young woman: he must ever be 
 jealous of the man she should have married." Even 
 some of our American playwrights are handy at the 
 thing! Consider, against any line of Wilde's, for 
 example, Mr. Hurlbut's " When a man encounters a 
 woman In a mood he doesn't understand, he desires 
 to know if she is tired." (From The Strange 
 Woman. ) 
 
 The very fact that Wilde has had countless imi- 
 tators and Rabelais none (or exceeding few) proves, 
 in a measure, the contention that complete, convinc- 
 ing vulgarity is ten thousand times as difficult of ac- 
 complishment as the nicely suggestive. For a mil- 
 
8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 lion men like myself who can write such smartly 
 risque, but thoroughly childish, things as " The Em- 
 press Josephine — caviare to the General," and 
 " Girls' boarding school — an institution of yearn- 
 ing " (I can turn 'em out, when engrossingly alco- 
 holed, by the yard) , there is born but one fine old vul- 
 gar Wycherley with his fine old vulgar Mr. Horner. 
 Shaw has tried his very damnedest to be vulgar — 
 and has regularly failed. So has Wedekind. So 
 Brieux. So, save for one fleeting moment, Eche- 
 garay. There is, so far as I know, only one piece of 
 dramatic literature in Europe to-day which in any 
 sense may be said to approach, however remotely, to 
 handsome, soothing, compelling, admirable vulgar- 
 ity, and that one piece is the Reigen of Arthur 
 Schnitzler. Whenever you hear a critic get red in 
 the typewriter over the " vulgarity" of a theatrical 
 presentation you may make up your mind that the 
 critic in question confuses vulgarity with common stu- 
 pidity. And, as I have proved to you, the two can- 
 not and do not go together — ever. That is, vulgar- 
 ity cannot be negotiated whether in literature or 
 stage buffoonery or what not save by intelligence and 
 skill. Mr. George Robey, the most vulgar comic 
 actor on the British stage, has been eulogized in one 
 of the most dignified of the British critical journals 
 of arts and letters for the purely intellectual quality 
 of his vulgarity. Mr. Ade's fables In slang are at 
 once vulgar and genuine works of literary art be- 
 cause their author is an intellectual surveyor of the 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY 9 
 
 human comedy, a shrewd student of places, peoples, 
 manners. Where, to turn to our more serious 
 American stage stuffs, more thorough art than in 
 the crass vulgarity of much of Mr. Walter's Easiest 
 Way? 
 
 I repeat : What our comic stage needs more than 
 anything else is vulgarity. Not vulgarity as vulgarity 
 is commonly translated by our critics — vulgarity of 
 diagonally hung waistcoat watchchains, of Broad- 
 way slang, of file-voiced, overdressed actors, of 
 cheap and tawdry smut — but the incandescent vul- 
 garity that reveals and depicts human nature at its 
 truest. This latter vulgarity is the sort of vulgarity 
 so excellently accomplished by Mr. Knoblauch in 
 that scene of his Faun wherein the Faun invites the 
 haughty lady out into the garden, a scene unfortu- 
 nately edited to some considerable extent, I have 
 heard, before it was given to the delicate local pub- 
 lic. This latter vulgarity is the species of vulgarity 
 so adroitly managed in Toby Belch. It may take 
 many forms, many movements — but if it be honest 
 vulgarity and sincere, it is not to be mistaken for 
 the kind of vulgarity with which Broadway cur- 
 rently confounds it. The stubborn foe that vul- 
 garity must contend with is, of course, hypocrisy. 
 The hypocrisy of second-rate members of second- 
 rate society who are forced to pose the pretenses 
 of a cafe type of civilization and culture. When 
 that day comes when our theatre will draw again 
 its audiences from the ladies and gentlemen of the 
 
lo ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 commonwealth, instead of as present from the cere- 
 bral and social clowns of stuccoed grillrooms, 
 Danses de This or That and similar rendezvous of 
 the metropolitan social fractions, then and only then 
 may our theatre safely devote itself to the frankly, 
 completely and magnificently vulgar in its comic 
 drama. 
 
 Let us cast an eye upon three farces of the so- 
 called risque class which have been visited upon the 
 community. First, Apartment 12K, the job of a 
 Mr. Lawrence Rising. By virtue of the circum- 
 stance that the piece disclosed a bed to the audience, 
 to say nothing of a man in pajamas and one-not-his- 
 wife in night clothes, the play reviewers pronounced 
 the procedure, as is the custom in such cases, vulgar. 
 This, however, was precisely the fault of the farce. 
 It was not vulgar. Common and cheap, yes; but 
 vulgar, no. Not once from curtain rise to curtain 
 fall were the characters made or allowed to act ac- 
 cording to the natures of human beings. Not once 
 when did their prototypes in the actual world of 
 humans subconsciously demand that innate vulgarity 
 pop out its rebellious but lovely bean, did Rising's 
 characters hear. The result? A good vulgar at- 
 mosphere spoiled by injecting into it timid characters 
 afraid of that atmosphere. As well try in a piece 
 of straight dramatic writing to work out the " Hindle 
 Wakes " case of a Fanny Hawthorne with a vir- 
 gin. What ho I Laura Murdock a member of the 
 y. W. C. A., Iris Bellamy a subscriber to The 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY ir 
 
 Ladies' Home Journal and Zoe Blundell a sock- 
 mender ! 
 
 No, if the writer takes, in farce, a vulgar cyclo- 
 rama he must people it with pertinently vulgar per- 
 sons. Otherwise, instead of deriving sound farce 
 from the materials in hand, the residue will be 
 neither flesh nor foul, neither human nor humanly 
 vulgar, but merely a hypocritical potpourri of af- 
 fected and tedious social conventionalities. 
 
 But Mr. Rising, it would appear from the two 
 plays of his workmanship which I have been invited 
 professionally to witness, is still too greatly the 
 amateur of letters, life and humor to hope to write 
 happily vulgar farce. The barest mechanics of 
 writing are still evidently not within his knowledge. 
 He should, therefore, turn his attention to the writ- 
 ing of successful novels. (Or magazine short 
 stories "intended for the home.") As to humor, 
 this gentleman's arsenal of wit seems principally to 
 contain the standard uncomplimentary jokes about 
 New York. P. P. Howe has observed that you 
 may always spot a young writer by his fondness for 
 mentioning by name in his writings rare wines and 
 sauces. One may similarly always spot the amateur 
 playwright by his predilection for cracking cynical 
 jokes about New York. When the playwright 
 grows up In his work, he learns that New York 
 is of itself too much the cynical joke to be the butt 
 of a reciprocal humor; and, having once learned 
 this, he proceeds to crack cynical jokes about Phila- 
 
12 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 delphia. And after a couple of years elapse and he 
 gains a famous reputation, he is duly honored with 
 election to the Society of American Dramatists, an 
 election which permits him once a year to make a 
 speech eulogizing the American drama and closing 
 with an explosion of beautiful rhetorical fireworks 
 in honor of Klaw and Erlanger, to whom he hopes 
 to sell his next play. 
 
 The Third Party is of the college of adapted 
 foreign risque farce and, while happily more vulgar 
 than its predecessor, exhibits still an undue and 
 vastly regrettable restraint which scours the enter- 
 tainment of the bulk of its possible humors. Where, 
 however, in Apartment 12K the leading figures of 
 the show, moving about the bed checkerboard, were 
 made to persist unnaturally in a morality at once 
 so dainty and so disgusting, so theoretically ortho- 
 dox and so unsavory, there is at least one figure in 
 this second sex-loto who, for something like fifteen 
 minutes, has been permitted by the authors to view 
 his joint occupation of a boudoir with a pretty young 
 woman without the ethical alarm held to be neces- 
 sary in the Anglo-Saxon theatre. The unreserved 
 vulgarity of the fellow, a vulgarity of course pres- 
 ently toned down and moralized to ease the shock 
 of the Broadway vestals, is quite captivating in this 
 hour of melancholy farcical sex cant and humorless, 
 unseasoned quackery. Beyond these fifteen minutes 
 of intelligent fun, the farce resigns itself to cus- 
 tomary confection of old roue, fair young (adapted)^ 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY 13 
 
 virgin, overturned screen disclosing twain to wife, 
 prevarications, motionings behind wife's back, 
 stampings on neighbor's foot, squirting seltzer si- 
 phons, et cetera. The supposed resistance piece of 
 the show, as I have already hinted, is the standard 
 climacteric scene wherein a man and woman, not 
 wedded but supposed by the other characters to be 
 man and wife, are assigned to the same sleeping 
 chamber. In one form or another, more or less 
 precise, this situation is always with us. In different 
 masks it has peeped out of any number of French 
 farces, out of such native products as Little Miss 
 Brown, An American Widow, Nobody's Widow 
 and the like, out of The Beautiful Adventure (to 
 name a French play not a farce), out of German 
 farcical comedy, out of the transoceanic musical 
 gambol. In its Anglo-Saxon mask, the situation is, 
 as I have observed, generally reduced to a condition 
 of laughless ineffectuality through the same yap 
 morale which has adapted Gulliver's Travels into 
 a kindergarten tale, ripped out George Moore's ap- 
 pendix with a blue pencil, and raised the price of 
 Burton's Arabian Nights to $98.50. 
 
 For a correction of our local farce conditions, 
 conditions which have made our home-made comic 
 pieces fit only for the audition and contemplation of 
 tots in arms and old maids, I look in good measure 
 to Miss Margaret Mayo. Here a lady who is 
 energetically vulgar, humanly vulgar. Her Baby 
 Mine was the funniest American farce because, of 
 
14 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 all, it was the vulgarest. Two of her financially 
 unsuccessful attempts at serious dramatic writing — 
 one was called Behind the Scenes; I forgot the title 
 of the other, having a knowledge of the play only 
 from the fragmentary reports of my Pacific Coast 
 patrol (the piece was done briefly out there) — 
 were frank and sincere studies of the genus young 
 girl as she is in contemporary native life and prob- 
 ably may account their failure to this frankly vulgar, 
 admirably vulgar and consequently honest attitude. 
 The artist in vulgarity has against him ever the 
 allied forces of sentimental ignorance. 
 
 Miss Mayo's most recent adventure with the 
 foothghts takes the form of a dramatization of Mr. 
 E. S. Field's short fiction. Twin Beds. Although in 
 no manner comparable with Baby Mine, which it 
 apparently was designed to parallel, the farce has 
 sufficient of the characteristic Mayo touch to render 
 the ear politely hospitable to it. There are numer- 
 ous tedious spaces In the piece where the playwright 
 has become a bit afraid of too much vulgarity and 
 has " refined " the action, but these droughts find 
 their relief in pleasurable contra bonos mores mo- 
 ments wherein several beings, male and female, un- 
 dress in public, get into one another's beds, roll 
 around on the floor with the whisky rabies, dis- 
 course of the marital relations and vie briefly with 
 the Don Juan of Echegaray, whose palate was 
 touched at dawn by the stray lock of the Tarlfena's 
 
A PROTEST FOR VULGARITY 15 
 
 hair, in an allusion to a somewhat similar phenom- 
 enon. ' 
 
 As I have suggested, Miss Mayo is ever happiest 
 in her handling of vulgar situations. To this deft 
 talent she owes her considerable and legitimate suc- 
 cess in the theatre. Where other native playwrights 
 seek to tone down such situations and episodes, Miss 
 Mayo tones them up. She is ever delightfully 
 dirty. Whether or not this is a conscious play- 
 writing activity of the lady's, I am unable, of course, 
 to say. Probably, indeed, she does not mean her 
 episodes to be so ; probably she strives in her studio 
 to make them the reverse. But, conscious or not 
 conscious. Miss Mayo's farce humor is vastly above 
 the farce humor of the majority of her native rivals 
 because It is basically natural, human and hence, 
 ribald. Not smutty, mind this! There is a spa- 
 cious chasm between smut and vulgarity of the sort 
 which we are treating. Such vulgarity is of natural, 
 smut of unnatural, birth. The former makes for 
 the honest fun, the brotherly fun, of barrooms; the 
 latter for the effeminate, mincing giggle of pink 
 boudoirs. There is in vulgarity the true philosophy, 
 the true biography of man as he is born; smut is 
 the fiction side. Thus, only " refined " people are 
 smutty. 
 
WHEN GREEK MEETS GRANVILLE 
 
 I AM disposed to regard outdoor drama as of a 
 kidney with indoor baseball. That such dubious 
 things have existed and do exist I stand, if sur- 
 prised from the rear, ready to admit; but else, 
 though the antiquarian evangelists of both forms of 
 bizarrerie marshal a magnum of facts against me, 
 I afErm I shall to my dying day stoutly deny the 
 probability of any such existence. 
 
 Fresh from a vision of the benevolent Mr. Gran- 
 ville Barker's dramatic Fresh Air Fund in the divers 
 university stadia, I am inspired to record the im- 
 pression that it seems as logical and " educational " 
 to play Euripides out-of-doors (merely because 
 Euripides was originally played thus) as it would 
 be to compel students to glimpse the Homeric epics 
 off goat-skin merely because they were originally 
 transcribed upon goat-skin. The entire business is 
 still another illuminating commentary first, on the 
 extravagant and transparent tomfooleries with 
 which this Mr. Barker has been fetching the im- 
 pressible American public (Mr. Barker was sharp 
 enough to produce both Iphigenia and The Trojan 
 Women indoors in his less buncombe-swallowing 
 London) ; second, on the inappropriateness and 
 comic futility of al fresco drama as a whole; and 
 
 i6 
 
WHEN GREEK MEETS GRANVILLE 17 
 
 third and finally, on that class of persons which ac- 
 cepts any such slaughter of Greek drama as a post- 
 impressionist Roman holiday. 
 
 {That the ancient Greeks gave matinees of Euri- 
 pides, when they gave them at all, only on cloudy 
 days, days when the heavens were sad and sullen, 
 and that their best effect with his dramas was, after 
 all, achieved by night with the glaring fringe of 
 torches, should in some measure cool the whoopings 
 of the professors for these modern Greek daylight 
 shows. 
 
 That the drama, of whatever sort, cannot endure 
 in the sun is, of course, a fact already deeply ap- 
 preciated. The test of all art is the light of day. 
 The drama cannot stand the light of day. Hence 
 the drama is not an art. Beethoven's effect is as 
 positive in the open Prater at high noon as in the 
 darkened Hofoperntheatre by night. Velasquez's 
 Adoration of the Shepherds, with the hard light 
 streaming in upon it through the windows of the 
 National Gallery of London, produces its mood as 
 positively, as genuinely, as when, later, the great hall 
 darkens and the soft flow of electricity falls more 
 gently upon it. Michelangelo's marble David of 
 the Signoria, by sun or by moon, is the same. These 
 are in the corral of art. Now, imagine Rosmer- 
 sholm around ten o'clock some morning at Coney 
 Island! 
 
 The drama, in so far as its written self Is con- 
 cerned, is of course another — and a finer — thing. 
 
1 8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 But as for acted drama, acted drama is to written 
 drama as a talkative woman Is to a subdued and 
 wistful one. 
 
 The acted drama prospers In proportion to the 
 artificiality and unreality of its immediate surround- 
 ings. Hence, to essay a projection of acted drama 
 on a dazzling football gridiron with, across the tops 
 of the bleachers, a prospect of Innumerable Olus 
 Underwear and Campbell's Soup advertisements 
 bewitching the eyeball, Is to essay a task at once 
 asquint and Impeachable. Such extramural impre- 
 sarios as Mr. Ben Greet and the Coburn players, 
 accepting the outdoor performance at Its one and 
 only true value, to wit, as a means for diddling 
 money out of good-natured, culture-currying yokels, 
 are sufficiently slick generally to give their perform- 
 ances in groves. These groves not only tend to 
 soften the searching light which otherwise would 
 make of tragedy's cloak a motley, but also in the 
 audience's eye so mix up the actors with the trees 
 that the audience is led subtly to Imagine the actors 
 are less wooden than they are. 
 
 Mr. Barker approaches the Greek drama as he 
 approaches Shakespeare. Not as one who admires 
 and respects and appreciates a noble dramatic text, 
 but as a saucy college-boy who elects a course In the 
 classics solely for the familiar opportunity It will 
 afford him to put impudent questions to his tutor. 
 What the milk bath was to Anna Held and the left 
 hook to the Poillon sisters, the Greek drama and 
 
WHEN GREEK MEETS GRANVILLE 19, 
 
 Shakespeare are to Barker. In his work with the 
 classics, he occupies the same relation to an artist 
 that Sarah Bernhardt's artificial leg occupies to his- 
 trionic talent. Unfortunately, there are few who 
 choose to discriminate in the matter of such ratios 
 and so we have the spectacle of Barker's canoniza- 
 tion in much the same way that we currently 
 enjoy a stunning and hysterical discharge of critical 
 nougat over the French actress, not, mind you, be- 
 cause she is an actress and an artist of possibly high 
 rank, but because she is an actress and an artist with 
 only one leg! 
 
 It has been said of Mr. Barker — and in con- 
 siderable part the statement is true — that he en- 
 joys a perfectly open mind so far as the drama and 
 the theatre are concerned. The leading difficulty 
 with Mr. Barker's mind, however, would seem to 
 be that it is so darned open that every wild, crazy 
 theatrical idea gets into it. And, once in, squats. 
 As a consequence, he presents us in his treatment of 
 the classic drama with a mixture of Bakst, Rein- 
 hardt, the Butterick Patterns, May Manton, Gordon 
 Craig and the Nonpareil Wall-Paper Company. 
 His production of Iphigenia in [Tauris in the Yale 
 Bowl, with its procession of grotesque costumes by 
 one Wilkinson, accordingly reminded the spectators 
 of nothing quite so much as a five-year reunion 
 parade of the class of 19 10. Certainly, if it be a 
 legitimate enterprise to " sell " Greek drama by 
 such controvertible means, so were it then a nobby 
 
20 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 bit of trade likewise to create a stir among the book- 
 agents by getting out a new edition of the Bible 
 with a Penrhyn Stanlaws cover and a jacket con- 
 taining the reprint of a favorable criticism by Jean- 
 ette Gilder. 
 
 That it is the local tradition habitually to mistake 
 novelties for ideas is of course a circumstance in- 
 timately appreciated. Thus the native slang, " I've 
 got a great idea for a play," when translated, is 
 found generally to mean that the enthusiastic in- 
 dividual has merely given birth to some such super- 
 ficially fresh but equally immaterial notion as a play 
 the scene of one whose acts is laid in a Turkish bath. 
 It is undoubtedly to the well-nigh unanimous Amer- 
 ican acceptance of this theory that Mr. Barker has 
 attained to eminence in our community — and to 
 some extent, in his own. But, even now, I catch 
 symptoms of a coming-to, a where-am-I, an awaken- 
 ing, on the part of our populace. True, by many 
 of the daily journalists the gentleman is still re- 
 garded with the awe that is ever born of puzzle- 
 ment, the veneration that flourishes always in this 
 country for the dealer in the latest spectacular 
 quackery, the doler out of the latest persuasive 
 physic, the vender of the most recent bolus; and 
 true, we encounter still such intermezzi as those 
 composed by one Harrison Smith in The Bookman 
 in the general pitch of " inspiration," " genius " 
 and the like — but, as I say, even so there are al- 
 ready straws which begin to show that Mr. Barker 
 
WHEN GREEK MEETS GRANVILLE 21 
 
 will shortly take his place in the pew of passe Amer- 
 ican fads along with the white slave, Phyllis Neilson- 
 [Terry, the Kneipp Cure, the Belasco details, Fried- 
 mann's tuberculosis cure, the Princess Theatre as 
 an American Guignol and Antoine, Schlatterism, 
 flannel stomach bands, hair-growing tonics, Bergson, 
 September Morn, the girls in the Florodora sextette, 
 umbilicular contemplation, the idea that George Ber- 
 nard Shaw spoke only paradoxes, witchcraft, the 
 divining rod, Elsie Siegel, Thomas W. Lawson, the 
 monarchical abduction of Gaby Deslys, the efficacy 
 of rubber shoes in wet weather, the bustle, Dowie, 
 the Mann Act, free silver, malicious animal mag- 
 netism, mental healing, physicians, patent pocket 
 cigar lighters, advanced coffees, the theory that per- 
 sonality was one thing and effective histrionism an- 
 other, the power of suggestion, French drama, 
 table-tapping, root beer, Arnold Bennett's genius, 
 Mrs. Fiske, Stanley Houghton, psychological phe- 
 nomena (chiefly, dual personality), sex hygiene, eu- 
 genics, the brutality of football, " The Turtle," anti- 
 vivisection, the buildings at the Philadelphia Cen- 
 tennial, the wickedness of the hoochee-koochee, 
 Esperanto, cubist art, futurist art, Maeterlinck's 
 symbolism, the Montessori method, the British bat- 
 tleship Audacious and Anna Held's eyes, the 
 segregation of vice, the bicycle, Maxine Elliott's 
 beauty, the Katzenjammer Kids, tThree Weeks, 
 Home-run Baker, Isadora Duncan, the belief that 
 every time you crossed the Channel you were sure 
 
22 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 to be seasick, the maxixe, the phaeton, men's hair 
 cut round at the back, Frankie Bailey's limbs, sus- 
 penders and the single standard of sex, the animal 
 and geographical discoveries in the wilderness by 
 Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Mansfield's tempera- 
 ment, the freak clothes worn by Eleanora Sears, the 
 New York Herald, Damaged Goods and the pure 
 uncommercial purpose of Richard Bennett, the su- 
 periority of Franz Lehar to Victor Herbert, the 
 philosophies of Andrew Carnegie, Bonnie McGinn, 
 gray ties and waistcoats with dinner jackets, ad- 
 vanced vaudeville and Billy Sunday. 
 
FIGLEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF MUSI- 
 CAL COMEDY 
 
 There is, in America, a group of men containing 
 such familiar programme names as Ned Wayburn, R, 
 H. Burnside, Julian Mitchell, George Marion, Ben 
 Teal, Fred Latham and the like, a group which 
 achieves a more or less secure livelihood through 
 massaging musical shows into proper shape for 
 public presentation. These men refer to themselves 
 and are referred to customarily not as stage pro- 
 ducers of musical comedies, but as musical comedy 
 stage producers. The difference wherein may at 
 first glance elude the eyeball. But there is a dif- 
 ference — and a stout one, at least to those who 
 are in the know as to what I am compelled, for suf- 
 ficiently illuminating designation, to name the tech- 
 unique of the business. 
 
 The difference is this: these men do not produce 
 musical comedies (plural). They produce musical 
 comedy (singular). In another phrasing, they may 
 produce any number of such shows apiece, but, 
 basically, every one of these shows follows more or 
 less closely a ritual so precise that almost all music 
 shows may be accurately narrowed down to one 
 definite type. They are, therefore, are these pro- 
 ducers, producers not of many musical comedies but 
 of one musical comedy. 
 
 23 
 
24 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 My business here is to prove this to you — and 
 to them. 
 
 In musical comedy as we get it currently in our 
 theatres — and as it has been given us for many 
 years — there are, for example, sixty certain al- 
 lusions and points in the dialogue (we shall discuss 
 the dialogue presently) which a song is publicly ex- 
 pected to follow and which consequently must fol- 
 low. This fact has given birth to a so-called musi- 
 cal comedy producer catalogue of song cues, as the 
 points in the dialogue are called. The producers 
 are bound to introduce a song at such points, irre- 
 spective of the original form, intent and purpose 
 of the manuscript. These songs — which may be 
 defined as a combination of tonsil and nose sounds 
 originally set and subsequently upset to a combina- 
 tion of violin and French horn or bass drum and 
 trombone sounds — inevitably follow upon these 
 sixty spoken words and allusions: 
 
 I. " Listen and I'll tell you." 
 
 II. " Oh, my moon — how wonderful you are to-night 1 " 
 
 III. " How much do you love me? " 
 
 IV. " What is that I hear ? " " It's the whippoorwills 
 a-callin'." 
 
 V. " Yes, but there's only one girl in the world for me ! " 
 
 VI. " Yes, but there's only one town in the world 
 for me!" 
 
 VII. " Yes, but there's only one street in the world for 
 me!" 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 25 
 
 VIII. " Ah love! What a wonderful thing is love! " 
 
 IX. Any allusion to a rose. 
 
 X. Any allusion to ale. 
 
 XI. " It seems to me only yesterday." 
 
 XII. " Do you remember that waltz we heard on that 
 Wonderful moonlit night in Florence ? " 
 
 XIII. " Wine ! What a comrade in times of despair 
 and sorrow ! " 
 
 XIV. Any allusion to the stars. 
 
 XV. " She is my dream girl." 
 
 XVI. " Through the smoke of my pipe I can see — " 
 XVI I. Any allusion to a levee. 
 
 XVIII. Any allusion to the Mississippi River. 
 
 XIX. Any allusion to the State of Tennessee. 
 
 XX. " She comes ! The Princess comes ! " 
 
 XXI. "Those were the good old days — Youth and 
 Spring and the highroad ! " 
 
 XXII. Any allusion to gypsies, particularly a gypsy 
 girl. 
 
 XXIII. " Why, to be sure I've loved other girls ; but 
 somehow they weren't like you. For you're — " 
 
 XXIV. Any allusion to Arcady. 
 
 XXV. " The girlies: how I love them all! " 
 
 XXVI. "Give me a soldie/s liieU" 
 
 XXVII. "Give me a sailor's life!!" 
 
 XXVIII. " There's nothing to me like the music of the 
 band!" 
 
 XXIX. Any allusion to the month of June. 
 
 XXX. "Just you and me, dear — what a wonderful 
 honeymoon it'll be." 
 
 XXXI. "Well, we can't do without the girlies!" 
 
26 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 XXXII. "A toast! A toast!" 
 
 XXXIII. "Oh, for the days when I was twenty-one 
 and you were sweet sixteen ! " 
 
 XXXIV. Any allusion to a " garden of dreams." 
 
 XXXV. Any allusion to Dixie. 
 
 XXXVI. " It's different when the right one comes 
 along." 
 
 XXXVII. Any allusion to any white girl named Mary. 
 
 XXXVIII. Any allusion to any colored girl named 
 Mandy. 
 
 XXXIX. " I think I'm falling in love." 
 XL. Any allusion to " childhood days." 
 XLI. " But love — love refwer dies ! !' 
 XLII. " True love lives but in our dreams." 
 XLIII. Any allusion to " gay Paree." 
 XLIV. " If I were the man in the moon." 
 
 XLV. " I'm awfully lonesome for a certain girl and — 
 can you guess, dear? — that certain girl is you." 
 
 XL VI. " Remember the words of the' wise old owl." 
 
 XLVII. Any allusion to the golden sunset fading be- 
 yond the hills. 
 
 XL VIII. " I wonder how many girls you've told that 
 to." 
 
 XLIX. Any allusion (on a darkened stage) to " dream- 
 land." 
 
 L. " Yes, but there's another I'm thinking of — my 
 mother." 
 
 LL "Because—" 
 
 LII. "Ah something (girl, man, boyhood home, native 
 land, etc.), forever I call to thee." 
 
 LIII. " Then it's farewell forever." 
 
 LIV. " Hail! " (It matters not in the least to whom.) 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 27 
 
 LV. Any allusion to Mrs. Grundy. (Always a comic 
 song.) 
 
 LVI. "That's art." (See LV.) 
 
 LVII. " What you want and what you get are not al' 
 ways the same thing, remember." 
 
 LVIII. "Come, let's go to (the ball, St. George's, rag- 
 time jubilee, or what not)." 
 
 LIX. Any allusion to wedding bells. 
 
 LX. II P.M. (imperative). 
 
 [Thus is the introduction of songs into musical 
 comedy definitely and rigorously tabulated. Now 
 for the songs themselves. First, a consideration of 
 the lyric, or words of the song. A musical comedy 
 lyric, to be satisfactory, must read as well and as 
 intelligibly backwards as forwards. In this wise is 
 the popularity of the lyric to a considerable degree 
 insured, inasmuch as the mind of the music show 
 patron is such that he remembers the lyric back- 
 wards rather than forwards. This, at first, may 
 sound a trifle ridiculous; but you may experiment 
 upon yourself to test the probity of the thing. Pick 
 up a sheet of music and read the lyric of the chorus 
 aloud in the tempo In which it is likely to be sung 
 from the stage. Then put the printed sheet aside 
 and endeavor to recall the words. Is it not rather 
 obvious and natural that you will recall the last 
 words you read (or, in the theatre, heard) more 
 readily than the first? Take such a particularly 
 popular ragtime lyric as, let us say, The Gaby Glide. 
 Contemplate it backwards I 
 
28 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Verse 
 
 It's a heavenly trip, it's a big joyful dip, 
 
 Can you stop? I guess "no," 
 
 For you travel so, with a lot of go ! 
 
 You feel all the joys of life in one single minute. 
 
 Talk about your other rags, why they aren't in it — 
 
 Floating in the air, you are here and there, 
 
 We can't stop our feet at all, they feel such an itching, 
 
 We are going crazy 'bout this new dance bewitching. 
 
 Chorus 
 
 Oh! Ohl That Gaby, Gaby glide, 
 
 Do the forward dip and see how you begin to sway. 
 
 Do the side step, trip and then go back the other way — 
 
 Don't lag or let your feelings hide. 
 
 Oh! Oh! That Gaby glide. 
 
 Swing up near, then wide, 
 
 Do the Paris ride, 
 
 Start in to the side; 
 
 D'ance it here and dance it there and keep on dancing hard. 
 
 Prance along as though you were upon the boulevard, — 
 
 It's just a real Parisian slide, 
 
 Oh! Oh! That Gaby, Gaby glide. 
 
 Try the reversed process on any such lyric you 
 may happen at the moment to have in mind, and 
 you will discover for yourself the truth of the trick. 
 This is an established rule of the musical comedy 
 lyric. Take, as another example, a lyric other than 
 one joined to a ragtime melody. Some such lyric, 
 for illustration, as the following from Fantana, one 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 29 
 
 that, at first thought, might seem to reverse itself 
 less clearly than a more naturally jumbled, synco- 
 pated lyric of The Gaby Glide quality: 
 
 Chorus 
 
 Save one kiss for me, 
 
 Look no further, I'm your man, 
 
 Like this one on the fan 
 
 Is your tiny face of tan 
 
 Listen to my plea 
 
 Black-eyed maid of eastern skies 
 
 Sitting taking tea, 
 
 Laughing little almond eyes! 
 
 To convince yourself finally, experiment with such 
 a spacious range of music show lyrics as The Land 
 of My Own Romance from The Enchantress, the 
 most popular of the Rose Maid lyrics, the best lyrics 
 of Ivan Caryll in The Little Cafe (see The Lady 
 Who Has Seventeen Aigrettes), Yip-I-Addy-I-Ay, 
 Rum Turn Tiddle, You're My Little Persian Rose, 
 et cetera. 
 
 The music of the music show song? Two gen- 
 eral rules hold true. The rule for melodies that 
 are to be invested with a popular and taking quality 
 is this: Either borrow the leading strain of the 
 melody from some more or less " classic " piece of 
 music or paraphrase a popular tune of the immediate 
 yesterday. The " reminiscent " quality is the sine 
 qua non. Thus, to illustrate from several more 
 recent examples, the vastly popular Sumurun Girl 
 
30 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 was a mere paraphrase, or rewriting, of the already 
 perfectly familiar tune Tammany and the subsequent 
 Tango Tokio a paraphrase of the Sumurun Girl. 
 The Gaby Ghde was a paraphrase of Scheherezade; 
 a widely whistled Hippodrome rowing song was 
 Mascagni rewritten ; the Omar Khayyam song of the 
 moment is Peg o' My Heart doctored up anew; the 
 Heart to Let of Joseph Howard is Gustav Luders' 
 Turtle Dove little altered; My Yellow Jacket Girl 
 is in part The Chocolate Soldier (with a dash of 
 Sumurun Girl) ; The Girl of My Dreams waltz song 
 and the Adele waltz song are clearly sisters ; the much 
 sung In the Night from The Queen of the Movies 
 is borrowed from a familiar hymn ; Isle D'Amour is 
 The Purple Road over again ; the moving duet in Sari 
 is largely the Miserere from Trovatore ; and so on. 
 The other regulation is known as the " sob chords " 
 rule. Just as the chords fj c e and the chord d g# 
 c struck softly upon the piano will make one feel 
 " sad," so have the musical comedy men edited a 
 table of similar chords and phrases which they in- 
 clude in their melodies of the so-called " senti- 
 mental " species. To avoid technical musical char- 
 acters in so far as possible in this chapter, it may 
 be recorded that the second and third last measures 
 of the " Adele " waltz are standard " sad feeling " 
 provokers among the music show music men. You 
 will find them in scores of songs in as many different 
 shows. As for simple chords known in the inside 
 circle as effective heart-getters, there are such chords 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 31 
 
 as the oft-repeated e g# c e; as for heart-getting 
 note sequences such oft-used sequences as c b[) f# a; 
 as for heart-getting " harmony " measures such 
 measures as the following familiar one : 
 
 it=f^t 
 
 5 
 
 fp 
 
 ?^^ 
 
 x 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 p 
 
 The rules covering the rendition of music show 
 songs specify that an actress singing a sentimental 
 song must blink her eyelids ceaselessly to heighten 
 the pleasurable melancholy of the song; that an 
 actor singing a comic or topical ditty must take his 
 position as close as possible to the footlights and 
 must stare with exaggerated intensity at the audi- 
 ence during the singing; that love duets achieve the 
 best effect when sung on a darkened stage; that a 
 prima donna must sing the high note at the end of 
 her song at the top of her lungs if her number is 
 to " get over " ; and that no soubrette may sing a 
 song standing still ! 
 
 This last brings us to the technical side of music 
 
32 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 show chorus dancing. The catalogue of such 
 " dancing" is divided into three sections: i. feet; 
 2. knees; 3. shoulders. Foot dancing covers the 
 clog and pyrotechnic kicking. Knee " dancing " is 
 known as " the bow and the jack." Shoulder 
 " dancing " (movement, rather than dancing, we 
 would call numbers two and three) is known as " the 
 eagle rock." These physical movements of the 
 chorus are not allowed to vary. A musical comedy 
 chorus must not dance in the real sense of the word; 
 It must rock — and its rock must be as unchanging 
 as the rock of Gibraltar. Of chorus mass maneu- 
 vers, anon. 
 
 One of the most successful of the music show pro- 
 ducers has a sort of personal guide-book which (he 
 has admitted to me) he follows with undeviating 
 adherence. I have been privileged to examine this 
 book and, for the insight it provides into the basic 
 uniformity of all musical comedies, it is somewhat 
 remarkable. Let me quote from this curious vol- 
 ume several sample items. I transcribe the latter 
 exactly: 
 
 I. First entrance of the comedian — must be 
 worked up in one of three ways. No other ways 
 will do ; public won't stand for any others. These 
 three ways are : I. Have automobile blow up with 
 a loud report off stage; II. Have chorus face up- 
 per right entrance " hailing " the comedian who is 
 supposed to be coming in that direction and then, 
 while the chorus is in this position, have the come* 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 33 
 
 dian enter from the opposite side ; or III, Have co- 
 median appear at top of flight of steps, start to 
 walk down with majestic dignity, and, when half- 
 way down, have him slip and fall the rest of the 
 way. 
 
 2. A sentimental or " sad " song must absolutely 
 be followed by a lively number. This rule can 
 never be neglected. 
 
 3. A Mrs. Malaprop character (always to be 
 cast with a fat actress like Connie Ediss or Eva 
 Davenport) must at least once during the show re- 
 fer to the haut monde as the haut sauterne. 
 
 4. The artistic dance of the show must always 
 be burlesqued by the comedian and the comic female 
 member of the cast. 
 
 5. The spinster character in a musical comedy 
 must always be cast with a very thin, tall actress. 
 The public wouldn't stand for a fat spinster. 
 
 6. To get an atmosphere of refinement just 
 have the leading actors speak in very low tones. 
 
 7. Song sentiment rests in the rhymes " moon " 
 and " spoon," song humor in " sneeze " and 
 " cheese," and risque songs must hinge on the 
 rhymes " clocking " and " stocking." These are 
 all sure-fire. 
 
 8. The gambler or police sergeant or captain of 
 industry characters must always bite unlighted cigars 
 in the right corners of their teeth, giving the cigars 
 the upward tilt. This gets over the idea of cruel 
 determination. 
 
34 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 9. The villainess must wiggle her hips. This is 
 sure-fire hokum. 
 
 10. It's always a good idea to have the show 
 girls stand in line and have the comedian kiss them 
 one after the other. DeWolf Hopper, Jefferson 
 De Angelis, Frank Daniels, Frank Lalor and Ray- 
 mond Hitchcock have for years gotten away big 
 with this. 
 
 The music show has a set of dialogue and " bus- 
 iness " rules that must be adhered to closely if the 
 show is to be a success. Thus, in any show one of 
 whose scenes is laid in France, a reference to the 
 River Seine as the " insane " river is essential. 
 What the producers call the " olive line " is placed 
 by them into every music show regardless. This 
 line is the comparing of something — anything — 
 with an olive. As, for example, " Marriage is like 
 an olive — you've got to get used to it " or " Love 
 is like an olive — a matter of taste." Following 
 the remark " Let us think of the future," it is vital 
 that the woman character to whom the remark is 
 addressed reply: "But this is my birthday and 
 I'm thinking of the present." When a character 
 observes : " When I see that fellow So-and-So 
 again, you bet I'll tell him what I think of him ! " 
 the character must presently turn around, see that 
 the man against whom he has just lodged the threat 
 has been standing there all the while, and, behold- 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 35 
 
 ing him, must slink meekly away. When one char- 
 acter absolutely refuses to do a certain thing, the 
 other character must pull out a revolver, whereupon 
 the first character must observe " Oh, I was just 
 fooling. I felt like doing it all the time ! " These 
 two last dialogue and " business " stratagems never 
 fail to make a great impression. As a consequence, 
 they are dear to the producers' hearts. 
 
 The line "Do you know, I feel guilty?" must 
 always be followed by " Now you arrest my atten- 
 tion " ; the line " You told me it was a case of love 
 at first sight " by " Yes, but I've seen you several 
 times since " ; and the line " Did you hear about the 
 scandal in the ocean? The catfish had kittens 1" 
 by " That's nothing; this morning my cat had mice." 
 The comedian, whose attention is called to a char- 
 acter representing an executioner, must observe: 
 " Isn't he killing! " The remark " I'll give you a 
 good riddle " must evoke the response : " If it 
 isn't good, I'll riddle you with bullets." (If the 
 comedian is of the blackface variety, he must mis- 
 understand " bullets " for " pullets " and pretend 
 to be vastly pleased.) Thus does music show dia- 
 logue proceed after an established pattern. I have 
 merely sought to suggest the manner of this pattern, 
 in sufficient measure to connote the balance to you. 
 There are, in all, exactly twenty-four such jokes 
 and ten such bits of so-called " business " which 
 serve as musical comedy's basis. The setting of 
 
36 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 each joke and bit of " business " may, of course, be 
 altered, but the joke and the bit of " business " 
 must (and does) remain intrinsically the same. 
 
 The fifteen regular music show plots are rubber- 
 stamped as follows : 
 
 1. The " mythical kingdom " plot, with the chief 
 comedian as potentate and the final rescue of the 
 heroine by the United States naval marines led by 
 the hero in the white summer uniform of a lieu- 
 tenant. 
 
 2. The " gadzooks " plot, in which the Prince, 
 betrothed to a lady of blue blood, falls in love with 
 a Simple Maiden and, after a foil combat with 
 candelabra held aloft, and numerous disguises on 
 the part of all concerned, marries the girl of his 
 heart. The " Simple Maid " plot is, in various 
 guises, a great favorite. 
 
 3. The " vendetta " or " nihilistic " plot, in which 
 the timid, weak-kneed comedian is forced by a chain 
 of untoward circumstances into the thick of mani- 
 fold dangers. 
 
 4. The " mineral springs " plot, in which the 
 Princess in order to gauge the Prince's love dis- 
 guises herself as a lowly attendant at the springs. 
 
 5. The adapted " French farce " plot, in which 
 the boudoirs of the various leading characters are 
 the centres of wild confusion and door slamming. 
 
 6. The " American-Princess " plot, in which the 
 beautiful young Princess falls in love with the hand- 
 some young American. 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 37 
 
 7. The " maid change " plot, in which the heroine 
 changes places with her maid in order to test the 
 hero's love. 
 
 8. The "youth is triumphant" plot, in which 
 youth and love are shown to conquer everything. 
 
 9. The " dream " plot, in which the leading char- 
 acter falls asleep, dreams wonderful adventures and 
 wakes up in an epilogue. 
 
 10. The " mistaken identity " plot. 
 
 11. The "breeches" plot, in which the leading 
 actress disguises herself as a boy to be near the man 
 of her heart and subsequently becomes involved in 
 embarrassing predicaments. 
 
 12. The "magic" plot, in which the use of a 
 curious perfume or a magic stone or a mysterious 
 liquid compound or something of the sort produces 
 fantastic results. 
 
 13. The "two-in-one" plot, in which the King 
 and the notorious bandit are discovered to be really 
 one and the same man. 
 
 14. The " eleven o'clock " plot, which hinges 
 upon a wager by the hero that he will succeed in 
 accomplishing something or other in a certain length 
 of time — duly accomplishing that something or 
 other at eleven o'clock. 
 
 15. The "she is — !" plot, in which the poor 
 and meanwhile contemptuously treated heroine 
 turns out in the end to be of high position and large 
 estate, and marries the hero who all along has loved 
 her for herself alone. Parental objection is, of 
 
38 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 course, as much a part of this plot as most of the 
 others. 
 
 The hero of a musical comedy must be of one of 
 the following brands: a Prince, a football player, 
 a naval lieutenant, a lieutenant in the army (heroes 
 under no circumstances must hold higher or lower 
 rank than that of lieutenant), a disowned but re- 
 pentant son, a rich young American traveling 
 abroad, a poor young American staying at home 
 (must be the hero in all shows in which they want 
 the heroine to marry the old roue of a Duke), a 
 violinist, the son of the proprietor of the works, an 
 automobilist or a longer for Broadway. 
 
 The villain must be a father, an uncle, a foreigner, 
 a scheming Prime Minister, the ruler of the neigh- 
 boring kingdom or a husband. 
 
 A music show is permitted a scope of approxi- 
 mately twenty-one scenes — approximately so many 
 and no more. These scenes are: "The ballroom 
 of the palace," " the throne room of the palace," 
 " the courtyard of the inn," " the interior of the 
 inn," "Times Square by night," "Maxim's" (or 
 some other Parisian cafe), " near Versailles," " the 
 Royal Something Hotel, Brighton-on-the-Sea," " cor- 
 ridor of the Hotel Carlton, London," " in the moun- 
 tains," " on board the battleship Something, U. S. 
 N.," " on the beach at Something," " the interior of 
 the Count's hunting lodge," " the banquet hall " of 
 some London hotel, " a garden party in the Bois," 
 "a villa near Nice (or Fontainebleau)," "over- 
 
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL COMEDY 39 
 
 looking the Sound," " Outside Dr. Somebody's sana- 
 tarlum," " on board the yacht, homeward bound," 
 
 " exterior and grounds of ," and " the pagoda 
 
 of the Ten Thousand Dragons." 
 
 The chorus maneuvers are ten in number. These 
 must never be altered. They embrace the driving 
 off of the chorus girls pony-fashion by the chorus 
 men, who hold the girls with reins of vari-colored 
 ribbons ; the grouping of the chorus girls around the 
 prima donna (centre stage) with bouquets or 
 wreaths of roses; and the so-called " Barrison Sis- 
 ters formation," which is to say a closely formed 
 arm-around-waist-of-girl-in-front line which kicks up 
 simultaneously right and then left. Then there is 
 the leap frog maneuver, In which the girls jump over 
 one another; the silk-hatted chorus-man line back of 
 the line of girls, with the two columns keeping step 
 and alternating positions upon every other line of 
 the song; the tandem maneuver in which the men 
 carry some of the girls off on their shoulders, the 
 girls wielding whips and " driving " teams made up 
 of the other girls, who imitate the prance of horses ; 
 and the chair maneuver, in which a line of gilt chairs 
 is occupied by the girls, the chorus men standing 
 back of the chairs and, during the course of the 
 song, changing places with the girls. There is, 
 further, the familiar pinwheel maneuver, in which 
 the chorus marches in the form of a revolving pin- 
 wheel; the "finale rush," in which the chorus, 
 massed up stage, suddenly dashes in solid array to 
 
40 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 the footlights, coming up with a quick, halt (this 
 Is a " curtain " standby) ; and the rule of all rules 
 that the last chorus girl In the line dancing off the 
 stage must kick up her foot In a backward direction 
 at the audience. 
 
ACTORS WHO SHALL BE NAMELESS 
 
 Newspaper advertisements and the allied gratui- 
 tous reading notices, billboards, street car litho- 
 graphs, circulars, drug store display cards, pass- 
 cajoled reporters and homoousian uncouth publicity 
 devices, massaged and cultivated by salaried press 
 agents, have succeeded in working the present day 
 theatrical public into a condition where it thinks of 
 Ophelia primarily as that actress who wears La 
 Spirite corsets and who advises the wholesale eat- 
 ing of pickled pigs' feet as a certain aid to health 
 and beauty; of Marc Antony as that actor who 
 smokes Tuxedo tobacco, who recommends Herpi- 
 cide and who was named as co-respondent in Mazie 
 Somebody's divorce case; and of Paula Tanqueray 
 as that actress who is the wife of Sir Charles Sur- 
 face, who has five babies, who always uses a Rub- 
 berset toothbrush and who was observed dancing 
 the fox-trot at Bustanoby's last Wednesday evening 
 with, oh, you know — that character in the Gals- 
 worthy play who has that house with the pink shut- 
 ters on Long Island, who always drinks six glasses 
 of hot water before breakfast and who drives a 
 mauve six-cylinder Mercedes. 
 
 I do not believe I exaggerate the general situation 
 unduly, even though my verbal mechanism resolves 
 
 41 
 
42 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 itself into puckish form. The nugacious over-ad- 
 vertising and personal exploitation of mummers has 
 gone no small way toward putting the present prev- 
 alent squint in the auditorium imaginative powers 
 of the native theatregoing herd. The herd, conse- 
 quently, when in attendance upon some such play as, 
 for example. The High Road, no longer views the 
 playwright's tale of Mary Page, of Mary's liaison 
 with the artist Wilson, of her subsequent marriage 
 to Governor Barnes and of her fight for happiness 
 against the proofs of her wrongdoing insinuated into 
 her household by the newspaper owner Maddock. 
 What the herd now views, as the play unfolds, is 
 rather Mrs. FIske living in Charles Waldron's apart- 
 ments, her marriage several years later to Frederick 
 Perry and her struggle to save her own and her hus- 
 band's name when Arthur Byron comes in and con- 
 fronts her with her past. This bland state of af- 
 fairs, no matter whether the play in point be good 
 or bad, patently assists in stifling the complete ef- 
 fectiveness of the playwright's ware. 
 
 Of course, the himalayan predilection of mum- 
 mers for gaudy publicity and the gratifying of that 
 predilection by the managers are not alone respon- 
 sible for the scotomy of our audiences. Our audi- 
 ences in considerable measure have a passionate 
 fondness for hocusing themselves. They love to 
 appear conversant with the details of the world of 
 the theatre; they adore being in the know; they 
 burn with the desire to hobnob with the people of 
 
WHO SHALL BE NAMELESS 43 
 
 the play world in magazine pictures, in the under- 
 wear ads., in the cozy interview of the Sunday paper, 
 or, at closer range, in the flesh-fish cafes of night- 
 time Broadway and the tea rooms of our jnost in- 
 clusive hotels. As a result, " Billie Burke sat at the 
 table next to me at the Plaza yesterday afternoon " 
 carries ten times more weight and interest in a local 
 theatrical conversation than " I saw Pinero's Mind- 
 the-Paint-GIrl last night." 
 
 As a second result, each successive role that a 
 mummer seeks to portray becomes, in the eyes of the 
 herd, less and less a characterization and more and 
 more the mummer. It matters not whether the 
 roles be similar or of spacious divergence. [The 
 roles fade as the actor in them becomes more widely, 
 more intimately, known. The audience cannot see 
 the forest because of the trees; it cannot grasp the 
 entity of the role because the dinned-in name and 
 personality label of the mummer are in the way. 
 And the large pity of it all is that, through the lip- 
 wisdom of promiscuous star-boosting and featuring- 
 given producers, it has come about that our audiences 
 have been led to take their keenest interest in the 
 personalities of many of the least talented actors, 
 the least worthy performers, in the business. The 
 Herbert Yosts and Mathilde Cottrellys are adver- 
 tised (when they are advertised at all) in the pettiest 
 eight-point, while the billboards are inflamed with 
 capitals and the massage cream endorsements are 
 vehement in lithographed visages and the Sunday 
 
44 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 dramatic sections are riotous in anecdote of Mr. 
 Hart, Shaffner and Marx, Miss Lucile and the rest 
 of the so-regarded salient individualisms of the na- 
 tive theatre. 
 
 A few years ago Mr. Henry Miller took into his 
 company a young actress of considerable talent. 
 He assigned her to play in the piece he was then 
 about to present the role of a girl innocent in the 
 ways of the world, wholesome, simple, pure. The 
 young actress achieved a sterling success. When the 
 play was to be shelved for the summer, the young 
 actress, having found a one-act play to her liking, 
 planned to act it in the vaudevilles during her sev- 
 eral months of idleness. Mr. Miller, an acute ob- 
 server of the theatre and its devious tides, read the 
 little play, saw that the role the young actress would 
 portray was that of a female crook — and put down 
 his foot with an italicized bang. " It is better for 
 you not to play such a part, even for a short while," 
 he told the girl. " If you do, next season when the 
 people who saw you in vaudeville see you in The 
 Rainbow, they'll say to themselves : ' HuhJ Why, 
 that girl isn't as innocent as she pretends ; she picked 
 pockets and cracked a safe last time we saw her. 
 Innocent? Not on your life! ' " 
 
 As first aid to the barnyard imagination of local 
 playhouse patrons, as first aid to the present de- 
 crepit status and impudicity of native acting on the 
 American stage, as first aid to public interest gone 
 
WHO SHALL BE NAMELESS 45 
 
 wrong, as first aid to playwrights, I make this plea : 
 Anonymity for actors. 
 
 Let our actors go nameless to their tasks. Let 
 our actors cease to be incandescent lights and pic- 
 tured endorsers of O'Sullivan's Rubber Heels and 
 Sanatogen, and let them become roles, characters 
 etched into plays, figures in moving narratives, ele- 
 ments for the assisting of drama on its respectable 
 course. Let our buskined gentry cease to have their 
 names spread in newspaper linotype via inter- 
 views on " The Decline of Pomeranians' in Toledo, 
 Ohio," via knock-kneed epigrams and actor's-club 
 repartee, via their perfectly unimportant opinions on 
 very nearly all subjects — and let them occupy such 
 misspent time in thinking about that foreign and 
 seemingly irrelevant thing called acting. Let there 
 be but one column on the first page of the programme 
 the usher hands us, and let that column contain only 
 the names of the characters in the play. Let press 
 agents pressagent plays and let them let the mum- 
 mers rest. And then, in time, good will be the tonic 
 on the local imagination; good will be the tonic on 
 the local drama ; good will be the tonic on the local 
 actor. In the anonymity of the actor — complete 
 or, if that be impossible, in part — reposes no puny 
 logic, no soulful pumpernickel, no witling philoso- 
 phy. Such anonymity will succor drama. And such 
 anonymity, while it will not hurt a worthy player to 
 the slightest extent, will spare our stage the current 
 
46 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 plague of dress shield and perfumery guarantors 
 who pass muster with the local bumbailiffs, dach- 
 shunds and other orchestra chair slouches as capable 
 public performers. 
 
THE OPTIMISM OF TRAGEDY 
 
 Shakespeare, whatever his truly multifarious vir- 
 tues, was at bottom one of those provoking nuisances 
 — an optimist. His optimism is unequivocally re- 
 flected in almost all his writings ; with particular sun- 
 niness, however, in his tragedies. From Othello, 
 which he ends happily by comfortably blotting out 
 the lives of his wedded protagonists instead of giv- 
 ing to the drama the inevitably tragic and more ter- 
 ribly natural ending of the Moor living out the rest 
 of his days in lingering, brain-searing, heart-gutting, 
 tormenting suspicion,^ to Hamlet, which he gives 
 a pleasant termination in the death of Hamlet in- 
 stead of the more relentlessly logical ending of the 
 miserable man living out his poisoned life on earth, 
 the appalling uplift spirit of the dramatist is un- 
 mistakably apparent. 
 
 Take another of his dramas — Julius Cssar. 
 What clearer proof of Shakespeare's omnipresent 
 optimism, of his trans-MaeterlinckianIsm, than 
 here? Where Shaw, in his Cssar and Cleopatra, 
 proves for the hundredth time that he is a discrim- 
 inating pessimist and a sincere observer by having 
 
 1 Sense thus the tragedy of such comedies as Rebellious Susan 
 (Henry Arthur Jones) and The Fairy Tale (Schnitzler). 
 
 47 
 
48 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 deliberately selected for his drama that most miser- 
 able portion of Caesar's life, when the now bald- 
 headed and stringy old Julius was brought face to 
 face with the realest of all men's tragedies, the fu- 
 tile, dried-up passion of an old man for a pink young 
 girl, Shakespeare, the optimist ever, dramatically 
 overlooks the acuter travails in the soldier-states- 
 man's career and benignly makes him a theatrical 
 hero by the simple and perfectly patent " sympathy " 
 trick of killing him at the hated hands of no less 
 than eight villains in the very first scene of the third 
 act of a five-act play. 
 
 Of course all this is not remarkable when we con- 
 sider that the authors of the world's greatest tragic 
 dramas have, with possibly but a single exception, 
 been Indomitable optimists. Just as our greatest 
 writers of farce and comedy have ever been thorough 
 pessimists I iEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, 
 who have been designated respectively as the Phidias, 
 the Polycletus and the Lysippus of Tragedy, were 
 each and all unconscionable whitewashers, not only 
 in their professional but also in their personal at- 
 titudes. It is recorded of ^Eschylus, an eye witness 
 of Grecian triumph in the overthrow and annihila- 
 tion of the Persian forces under Darius and Xerxes, 
 that his great personal bravery in the battles of 
 Marathon and Salamis was due to an absolute belief 
 that death was the happiest adventure in mortal's life. 
 For his poorly concealed subterfuge in the indirect 
 but pompous proclamation of his own valor, one 
 
THE OPTIMISM OF TRAGEDY 49 
 
 need only look into his Persians and Seven Against 
 Thebes. 
 
 Sophocles was an optimist from birth. Of rich 
 parents, extremely handsome and magnetic to the 
 ladies, an athlete and a musician, an inordinate lover 
 of life and life's good times, a mixer of almost Elk 
 proficiency and a popular all-around man, the pres- 
 ence of this cerise quality in the fellow was to be 
 expected. It had been observed that, to speak in the 
 spirit of the ancient religion, it was as if a Providence 
 had crowned Sophocles with every imaginable bless- 
 ing of this earth, for he proceeded with increasing 
 success in his career till he had passed his ninetieth 
 year, some of his greatest works. Indeed, being the 
 fruit of an even later period. Sophocles, the tragic 
 writer of imperial wallop, was the biggest born op- 
 timist of his period. 
 
 And Euripides I As Plato indicates, here an opti- 
 mist to the point of effeminacy, an altruist aux fines 
 herbes. The tragic writings of the man, as Winkel- 
 mann has pointed out, proceed to a degree of oleo- 
 margarine where he lays on, even to overloading, 
 those merely corporeal charms characterized as a 
 " flattery of the gross external senses," whatever Is 
 persuasive and pleasantly striking — in a word, what- 
 ever produces a happy impression regardless of in- 
 trinsic soundness. 
 
 All optimists are, naturally, exaggerators. The 
 optimism of Euripides may thus be appreciated with 
 doubled intensity upon an investigation into his at- 
 
so ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 titudes toward such of his characters as his exag- 
 gerated moaning old men, his exaggerated suffering 
 heroes made paupers. Euripides, In fact, was so 
 optimistic that he could not help being perfectly 
 aware of the somewhat jocose extent to which his 
 optimism carried him; and as a result he was prob- 
 ably the original sleeve-laugher, the stammvater of 
 the tongue-in-the-cheek academy. 
 
 August Wilhelm Schlegel, in his lectures on dra- 
 matic art and literature in the spring of 1808, in 
 Vienna, said : 
 
 "He (Euripides) thought (orpretended to think) 
 it too vulgar a thing to believe in the gods after the 
 simple manner of the people, and he therefore seized 
 every oportunity of Interspersing something of the 
 allegorical Interpretation of them, and gave his spec- 
 tators to suspect that the sincerity of his own belief 
 was very problematical. . . . He applied to the 
 heroic life and the heroic ages maxims which could 
 only apply to the social relations of his own times. 
 He threw out a multitude of moral apophegms, not 
 seldom fundamentally false. With all his parade of 
 morality, the aim of his pieces and the general im- 
 pression which they were calculated to produce was 
 sometimes extremely Immoral." 
 
 Here the primordial G. B. S. — with this one dif- 
 ference: the Greek laughed in his sleeve at himself; 
 the Irishman laughs In his sleeve at the public. In- 
 asmuch as the public is ever an optimistic body, It 
 is given only to a pessimist consciously and consist- 
 
THE OPTIMISM OF TRAGEDY 51 
 
 ently to hoax it with success. What better further 
 evidence of the preposterously creamy mental pos- 
 ture of this Euripides than his sweetening of " Elec- 
 tra " with ^Egisthus' exhibition of honeyed hospi- 
 tality, Clytemnestra's " mother love," etc., especially 
 when this treatment is compared with that of his two 
 predecessors? Among the later writers of ancient 
 tragedy, Agathon was so full of goosefat for hu- 
 manity and the cosmos generally that Aristophanes 
 was impelled to describe his mind as being " fragrant 
 with ointment and crowned with flowers." And 
 Lycophron, with whose tragedy Alexandra my 
 readers are familiar, was such an unmitigated op- 
 timist that he was known even among his colleagues 
 as " he whose eyes see gold in the yellow clay." 
 
 These " lovers of their fellow men," these im- 
 presarios of the sweetened salves of faith, have ever 
 been our leaders in the creation of tragedy. Pass- 
 ing over the chasm of time to the Italian tragedy 
 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we dis- 
 cover (via Hyginus, Voltaire and the Drama- 
 turgic of Lessing) that its celebrated chef, Maf- 
 fei with his Merope, was an optimist de luxe di- 
 rectly out of Euripides. And in the musical Metas- 
 tasio — " his heroes, like those of Corneille, ever gal- 
 lant; his heroines, like those of Racine, ever tender" 
 ' — and in Alfieri, with his Orestiad, with its crudely 
 hidden optimism derived from the Greeks, we en- 
 counter biographical vaseline in robust doses. 
 
 On to France and her sixteenth and seventeenth 
 
52 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 century writers of tragedy — Corneille, Racine, Vol- 
 taire ! Could any one but an optimist have written 
 the volitional, trusting heroes of Corneille? Could 
 any one but an optimist have displayed the " sugared 
 gallantry," the later personal piety, the pew worship 
 of romantic love as Racine displayed these? Would 
 Madame de Maintenon have had to exercise her 
 person so laboriously against a pessimist? Hardly. 
 
 The name of Voltaire you may cast against the 
 strong walls of the argument I am building. Ho, 
 ho, you exclaim, he was no haberdasher of honey, 
 no peach compote, no professional or personal mer- 
 chant of molasses ! Well, maybe he shall be our one 
 exception, although, had I the space or inclination, 
 I might summon forth in behalf of my contention 
 such doubts over the authenticity of much of Vol- 
 taire's " pessimism " as are to be located in his peti- 
 tion to the queen when he was threatened with a 
 burlesque of his Semiramis, in the observation of 
 the illustrious founder of the modern romantic school 
 of German literature that " from the variety of sub- 
 jects on which Voltaire's mind was constantly em- 
 ployed, it was impossible for him to avoid shallow- 
 ness and immaturity of ideas (and their daughter, 
 cynicism)," in the blind influence upon him of the 
 optimistic Greek tragedy, and so on. 
 
 And so, through these optimistic fellows who have 
 turned out the prime tragedic moans of dramatic his- 
 tory, we come to the Germans, Elias Schlegel, 
 Cronegk, and Weisse, all dyed-in-the-wool followers 
 
THE OPTIMISM OF TRAGEDY 53 
 
 of the French plum-jam school. And from these, to 
 Goethe, whose idealizing soul music sings from out 
 Iphigenia and Egmont, and to Schiller and the riot- 
 ing sentimentality of his Kabale und Liebe, the im- 
 pressions of earnest piety in his Maria Stuart and 
 the inevitable coming to the surface of the syrups 
 of romance in his tragedy The Bride of Messina, 
 the rose colorings of his Maid of Orleans. And 
 so back again to the sachem of tragedy and the 
 sheik of altruistic musk and sachet, Shakespeare. 
 Here at once rooster of tragedy and chief cock of 
 the metaphysical doctrine of Leibnitz that the ex- 
 isting universe is the best of all possible universes; 
 he whom Milton called " our sweetest Shakespeare, 
 fancy's child;" he who was so optimistic that he 
 actually put money Into the theatrical business; and 
 he who, having put it In, was still so persistently the 
 ingrained optimist that he could soberly ruminate 
 " all's well that ends well," when, as any sensible even 
 half-pessimist who has ever had anything to do with 
 the theatre knows, all's well that ends at all. 
 
ON THE READING OF VERSE 
 
 iThe critical delusions of the theatre are queer things 
 at best. Some day when I get sufficient leisure from 
 reading the daily stack of letters which urge against 
 the worth of my critical opinions the mot that I 
 derive much less financial remuneration for my work 
 than do they whose labors a droll fate has brought 
 me to criticize (unfortunately, my correspondents 
 are in error in this belief, although, were they not, 
 they might still be bewitched with the retort that, so 
 far as their own incomes go, be they managers, play- 
 wrights, composers or whatever else, there are count- 
 less pawnbrokers, haberdashers, procurers, madames, 
 exhead-waiters and bawdy house owners to bafHe 
 them with more obese bank books) — some day, I 
 say, I am going to write a lengthy treatise illuminat- 
 ing in full an invoice of these hallucinations. In this 
 treatise I shall point out, among a thousand or so 
 other hallucinatory gems, such delusions as concern 
 the so-called modern tendency toward the " happy 
 ending " (held to be purely a modern commercial 
 growth) and the frequent consequent comparisons 
 of such endings, when they are revealed in our best 
 serious drama, with the so-called " relentlessness of 
 the Greek tragedies " and their " remorseless tragic 
 ends." This is, of course, translucent piffle. The 
 
 54 
 
ON THE READING OF VERSE 55 
 
 " happy ending " was as much a part of the Eu- 
 meni'des, the CEdipus Coloneus, the Phlloctetus and 
 of many of the tragedies of Euripides as it hap- 
 pens to be of many of our theatrical pieces of to- 
 day. I shall also make a note that the delusion con- 
 cerning Shakespeare's " wholly-original-among-all- 
 his works " Taming of the Shrew and Comedy of 
 Errors may be dissipated by turning to the sources 
 of these very plays in a comedy of the Itahan 
 Ariosto and in the Menoechmi of Plautus respec- 
 tively. A page will be devoted to pointing out the 
 stupidity of the insistent belief that a playwright, 
 to be acclaimed an artist, must ever show his au- 
 dience the actions of his characters instead of merely 
 relating them, and among the examples In proof of 
 the vacuity of the belief will be quoted Hedda 
 Gabler. And, in this manner, shall I proceed from 
 the critical delusions obtaining in relation to the 
 drama of ancient Greece down through the amplitu- 
 dinous file to the critical delusions concerning the 
 drama of our current day. 
 
 And, so far as the latter goes, one of the leading 
 phantasms that I shall endeavor to disembowel will 
 be the traditional and final decision of so many of 
 my colleagues as to how verse, in contradistinction 
 to prose, ought to be read. With the production 
 by Mr. Winthrop Ames of the Housman-Barker 
 Prunella, the usual critical to-do as to the proper 
 manner in which to render verse got under way, the 
 fact that there is scarcely any genuine verse in Pru- 
 
S6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 nella discouraging the artillery corps not in the 
 least. Granville Barker is, as he himself would 
 freely admit, anything but a poet. And Lawrence 
 Housman, while a writer of pleasant whimsy, needs 
 only the work of his semi-brother, A. E., to at- 
 test to the truth of his own shortcomings In the 
 temple of Sappho. Undeterred, however. Old Doc- 
 tor Delusion put on his tortoise-shells, cleared his 
 throat and delivered himself of his familiar set of 
 opinions on how verse, as opposed to prose, should 
 be Interpreted. 
 
 Let us have done with such lugubrious flapdoodle ! 
 The reading of verse Is of a precisely similar order 
 to the reading of prose — that is, it must be if It 
 desires to be accurate. Informed, artistic, musical and 
 pleasing. What do the professors expect? Evi- 
 dently an elaborate manifestation — however simple 
 and Innocent the rhythmical delassement In point — 
 of vocal demiquaver, roulade, gorghegglamento and 
 picchiettato, of bronchial tarantellas and czardas, of 
 laryngeal boleros and fandangos. Forbes Robert- 
 son is the actor he Is because he recites the verse 
 of Hamlet precisely as he recites the prose of 
 Caesar and Cleopatra. He exhibits none of the 
 superficial, sentimental attitude toward verse — 
 merely because It is verse — observable on the part 
 of so many of our younger Anacharses of criticism 
 and acting. He realizes that the music of Joseph 
 Conrad and the music of William Shakespeare are 
 each equally melodious, that the former does not 
 
ON THE READING OF VERSE 57 
 
 call for a kettledrum and the latter a pansym- 
 phonikon: he realizes that both demand exactly the 
 same treatment. The fault of our mummers is not 
 that they cannot read verse — and this is what so 
 confuses the professors — but that they cannot read 
 prose. One who is proficient in the latter art is 
 synchronically proficient in the former. This exalted 
 bosh about the reading of poetry — as if the read- 
 ing of poetry were a particular, isolated and especial 
 art — is symptomatic of the schoolboy mind. 
 
THE UNIMPORTANCE OF BEING 
 EARNEST 
 
 Among critics there exists a legend that so long as 
 a dramatist is sincere, it is meet that, however bad 
 his productions, he be treated with a soft and sweet 
 consideration. Thus it occurs that the eye, roving 
 across the transient critique, is oiled regularly by 
 such neighborly bits as " but the playwright is to be 
 praised for his unmistakable sincerity " and " what- 
 ever the play is not, it is at least the work of a sincere 
 writer." Now, all this is very amiable and motherly, 
 yet two or three unruly little facts would seem to say 
 I-spy and call the game. 
 
 The first of these little facts is in itself a trifling 
 thing. It is merely this: that probably as large a 
 percentage as seven-tenths of the world's valid 
 drama and literature has been the manufacture of 
 writers who not only were not sincere, but were 
 actually sleeve scalawags of a high and fine gusto. 
 In a previous turn in these pages, I indicated, with 
 numerous examples, the measure of the world's 
 mightiest compositions in tragedy which proceeded 
 from gentlemen who were, at heart, not only not 
 murky, but who, contrary to believing in life's tragic 
 aspect, were in their personal philosophies and 
 boarding-houses sidewalk comedians in the grand 
 
 58 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 59 
 
 style. Any one who knows the first thing about 
 Shakespeare, for instance, knows that, of all men, 
 he was a glutton for mendacity and rarely meant a 
 philosophy he wrote save, of course, when he wrote 
 of rum and women. Did not the fellow himself, 
 forsooth, once admit as much? "Why," he was 
 asked by Robert Peele, " are you ever so persistently 
 insincere in your labors ? " To which he offered 
 the now celebrated rejoinder: "Bob, you give me 
 a pain in the ear. No sincere man who is or hopes 
 to be regarded as an artist descends to so low and 
 so facile a means as sincerity to trick fame and re- 
 pute and moneys. That is reserved for the mahog- 
 any heads, the vacant gourds, who have nothing to 
 sell but sincerity. Do you get me, old tosspot?" 
 ... I do not remember the exact wording. 
 
 In all forms of literature, the books stand much 
 the same. From iEschylus to Shaw, from Euripides 
 to the five-aced Wedekind, from Balzac and Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau (that Hans Christian Andersen of 
 seduction and papahood) to Oscar Wilde, from 
 Becque to Synge, artist to artisan, artisan to artist, 
 up and down, back and forth, one must appreciate, 
 if one balances biography against shelf and stage 
 fiction, the whimsy of the notion that sincerity and 
 art are inseparable. 
 
 Your true artist is seldom, if ever, sincere ; for he 
 realizes that to write only what he believes is to con- 
 fess his pettiness, narrowness and his Inflexible limi- 
 tations. Perfectly sincere men have been or are 
 
6o ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 rarely artists. Or even mere effective producers. 
 What is more, perfectly sincere men, whatever their 
 line of trade, are not worth a hoot to civilization. 
 You will find them in some such absurd position as 
 congressman obsessed with the idea that the Japanese 
 ought to be kept out of the United States, but the 
 English let in; or as philanthropist with the idea 
 that what newsboys need is a fund to give them fresh 
 air — which, as Robert H. Davis would put it, is 
 like asking a letter-carrier to take a walk. 
 
 The one way to accomplish things worth-while 
 in this world is to be insincere, having a dexterous 
 care only to conceal the insincerity lest the mob, in 
 its ignorance as to real values whatever their name, 
 be inclined to feel that it is being made game of. 
 Where a man who is doing more for American 
 journalism than Hearst — and where a more superb 
 pitcher with the left hand? By the expedient of 
 publishing unreliable newspapers, this gentleman is 
 unselfishly encouraging the business of his rivals, and 
 so building up what in, say, a few hundred years, 
 win be a half-way honest and fearless national jour- 
 nalism. 
 
 Where a man who has done more to make the 
 mob appreciate the true beauty of the human form 
 in the nude than Anthony Comstock — and where a 
 man less sincere in admitting the real purpose back 
 of his nosings and suppressions? Think what 
 ample good such indubitably insincere fellows as Dr. 
 Parkhurst and Harold Bell Wright have accom- 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 6i 
 
 plished : how the former has worked subtly to incite 
 the populace to pleasure-giving immoralities by tell- 
 ing the populace that he believed such acts were sin- 
 ful, how the latter has subtly encouraged the public 
 to read better literature by giving it his annual dam- 
 burst of balderdash. Think of the way Brieux, as 
 specious a jester as ever breathed in the mush air 
 of Montmartre, contrived to discourage undue con- 
 tinence and the resultant mental lethargy of his na- 
 tion by his adroit trick of so melodramatizing and 
 exaggerating the dangers of loose living that even 
 the veriest blockhead would glimpse the farce of the 
 ubiquitous crusading statistic. 
 
 Do you believe for a moment that Botticelli 
 believed what he painted, that he did not from a 
 vast ocular experience know he was lying about 
 women in the same proportion that Guillaume paints 
 the truth about them to-day (and is therefore, is 
 Guillaume, a ratified hack) ? Do you believe 
 that either Haydn or Mozart believed in trick use 
 they made of the coda? Investigate — ^ and then 
 give ear to the seriously sincere finis fireworks of 
 Reggie De Koven and Charles K. Harris! Con- 
 sider Verlaine and his vivid psans to the ladies. 
 Consider that famous tract of Balzac's, and then re- 
 call the fellow's sentimental slobbering over the an- 
 cient flapper who had run off to Switzerland. What 
 of De Quincey? And what of the celebrated divine 
 whose address on the sacredness of the Seventh 
 Commandment carried such conviction? Could a 
 
62 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 sincere Hauptmann have done both The Sunken 
 Bell and Michael Kramer? Does George Ade 
 really believe that the way for a wife to hold 
 her husband is to fill the flat of evenings with pinch- 
 able hussies? No. Only men who fail to think are 
 sincere; third-raters like Maeterlinck (arch arbiter 
 of the after-life rumble-bumble), D'Annunzio and 
 their kind. Truly great men and real artists — or 
 at least able men and comparatively real artists — 
 are generally prime fakirs, whatever their particular 
 direction of activity. True, they may be temporarily 
 unconscious of their faking, it may be unintentional 
 — but this figures not in the final logic of the thing. 
 Was P. T. Barnum, probably America's greatest 
 amusement artist, a sincere man? Was Elbert Hub- 
 bard, probably America's greatest advertising writer, 
 a sincere man? Is Brand Whitlock, probably Amer- 
 ica's most clear-sighted public official, a sincere man? 
 Isn't Gordon Craig laughing at us and isn't Rein- 
 hardt dead serious — and isn't Craig three times the 
 artist Reinhardt is? Isn't it the sourball who writes 
 the world's finest love stories ? And the satirist who 
 writes the best serious plays ? The only consistently 
 sincere men who, so far as one knows, have amounted 
 to anything have been Marc Antony, Napoleon, Bee- 
 thoven, Rubens, Robert E. Lee and George M. 
 Cohan. And there is some doubt at that, when one 
 recalls his having invoked the aid of the human voice 
 in his working out of the Ninth Symphony, as to the 
 sincerity of Beethoven. 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 63 
 
 Now that I have gone to such length in outlining 
 the first of the arguments against sincerity — and 
 have been so persuasive — I wonder If I need pro- 
 ceed with the additional arguments? What need to 
 prove to you what you already know: that if we 
 arbitrarily praise a man for his sincerity we must 
 arbitrarily praise every impassioned numskull who 
 offers up his divers opera for our consideration ; that 
 if sincerity is per se a quality to be admired we must, 
 perforce, admire such intellectual slop merchants as 
 provide us with white slave plays, plays in which 
 poor working girls reject rich and handsome suitors, 
 novels of feminine psychology by disappointed old 
 maids, stories in which the arrival of a baby in- 
 evitably brings about the repentance and reconcilia- 
 tion of an estranged man and wife or man and mis- 
 tress, thesis dramas by Charles Klein and chorusless 
 musical shows? What need to prove to you that 
 were sincerity the seventh heaven, one would have 
 to enfold unto one's bosom such angels as Elinor 
 Glyn (who beyond doubt believes what she writes), 
 to say nothing of all the dramatic critics who are 
 sincere in their trust in dramatists' sincerity? 
 
 As sure as you will find the idea of Edward 
 Knoblauch's My Lady's Dress in Wilde's The 
 Young King, as sure as the theory of the influence 
 of the dead over the living expounded in The Re- 
 turn of Peter Grimm figures in the play of the 
 German Gustav Strelcher entitled The Power of the 
 Dead (Die Macht der Xoten), as sure as the un- 
 
64 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 identified Japanese girl who plays the leading role 
 in the current moving picture bearing the elegant 
 and dignified title Nipped, is a more charming ac- 
 tress than nine-tenths of the young white women 
 adorning the Broadway stage, as sure as the whole 
 theory of characterization in acting (on the part of 
 the actor rather than the author and producer) falls 
 to pieces when one compares the stage with these 
 same moving pictures, as sure as each and all of 
 these, the sincerity bugaboo has done as much to 
 retard the progress of sound, genuine, manly drama 
 in America as have all the American dramatists put 
 together. 
 
 And so, relevantly, we come to the case of a play 
 by Miss Harriet Ford and Mr. Harvey O'HIggins 
 called Polygamy. Although the authors have been 
 widely endorsed for their sincerity in the writing of 
 this work, it is this very sincerity on their part that 
 has hurt what might conceivably have been a highly 
 interesting piece of dramatic writing. Whereas it 
 is patent that Mr. O'HIggins is the headwork of the 
 collaborative couple and Miss Ford the handwork, 
 the error of sincerity is probably to be laid for the 
 major portion at Mr. O'HIggins' door. What the 
 result? Mr. O'HIggins, instead of presenting the 
 case for or against polygamy from a new plane, has 
 permitted himself to present that case as nine hun- 
 dred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would 
 present it. And the presentation, being conse- 
 quently a mere parroting of what the man in the 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 65, 
 
 street sincerely thinks of polygamy, resolves itself 
 into a tedious business. The sincere view-point is 
 most often the trite, the commonplace, view-point. 
 Would it not, therefore, have been much wiser for 
 Mr. O'Higgins to have forgotten his own (which is 
 to say, the general) idea of polygamy and to have 
 permitted himself a sufficient insincerity to present 
 the problem from a fresher and assuredly a hun- 
 dred-fold more engaging angle? 
 
 Mr. O'Higgins' philosophy in the matter of plural 
 marriage is the senile, palseocrystic philosophy of 
 the uplift magazines, to wit, that plural marriage is, 
 in itself, a bad thing, that it harbors ruin for the 
 home, the state and the spiritual being, that it is im- 
 moral, and so on. In brief, the species of philoso- 
 phy that may be " left lying on the library table," 
 that may be read aloud to little Sylvester and little 
 Azalia, that gets the carpet sweeper and the Sapolio 
 and the Van Camp's pork and beans ads. into the 
 advertising section. In short, the passing of the 
 half million circulation mark, pictures by Brown 
 Brothers, and Mr. McRake at his safe game of play- 
 ing platitudes fortissimo. To Ije sure, such stuff is 
 sincere! That is what makes it so sad. In Mr. 
 O'Higgins' case, I cannot resist thinking that it is 
 a sort of pity. In his previous play — The Dummy 
 — this gentleman wrought an entertaining evening 
 by picturing the young boy of the species insincerely, 
 picturing him as longing ever to be a detective when 
 he (O'Higgins) knew full well from his own and 
 
66 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 every other man's experience that what a young boy 
 wants more than anything else to be is not a detec- 
 tive, but a burglar. Did you ever see a detective 
 badge in a toy shop? Certainly not. But you've 
 seen miniature dark lanterns and black masks there 
 by the crate! I have yet to hear of a boy who 
 wanted to be a Lupin. If it isn't a burglar he wants 
 to be, his ambition, you will find, is to be an iceman, 
 the driver of a delivery wagon, a drum major or a 
 husband of Lillian Russell. But the fact remains 
 that when he grows up he usually sticks to his boy- 
 hood's first predilection and remains a burglar. 
 
 To return to polygamy. Why is it the deplorable 
 business Mr. O'Higgins believes it to be ? Can Mr. 
 O'Higgins name one people in the civilized world 
 who are as happy, as well behaved, as prosperous, 
 parents of as fine and healthy and adoring children, 
 as law-abiding, as were the Mormons when in the 
 full of plural marriages ? Was a Mormon, in those 
 days, ever to be found in the Keeley Cure? Or as 
 a tramp upon the public highway? Or in the di- 
 vorce court? Or figuring even in yellow journal 
 scandal? Were "white slaves" ever heard of in 
 the Utah of those blessed days? Were there 
 parched old maids to patronize and encourage the 
 Swami brothels? Were there married men hanging 
 around the stage door of the Salt Lake City opera 
 house ? Were Raines Law hotels — or hotels like 
 them — necessary? Was the sale of pasteboard 
 suitcases as big then as it is to-day? Do the court 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 67 
 
 records of those Utah years bear one unwritten law 
 case ? Was there a to-do over the question of segre- 
 gating or not segregating vice? Was there vice? 
 Were there business failures ? Or cashiers scooting 
 off to Canada? Was there a jail? Would Brieux's 
 Damaged Goods have sizzled the Mormons as it 
 more recently sizzled the hitherward villagers? A 
 thousand such questions come to mind. And they 
 would seem to make one pause and reflect. If 
 marrying one woman is moral, why isn't marrying 
 two women twice as moral? 
 
 Another sincere, and hence less interesting than 
 he might otherwise be, author is Mr. Willard Mack. 
 His sincere play, So Much for So Much. His sin- 
 cere belief : ( i ) that the offices in the business 
 districts are lyceums maintained for the primary 
 purpose of luring beautiful stenographers, by means 
 of jewels, taxicabs and suppers, to ruin, and (2) that 
 the beautiful stenographers don't like It. Here, at 
 a glance, the typewriter au Lait, Help Wanted 
 redivivus, Laura Murdock at the Remington, Iris 
 Bellamy pounding a Smith-Premier — but with vir- 
 tue eventually kicking the goal to the bleacher's 
 voluminous cheers. Mary Brennan is a poor work- 
 ing girl. But she has a figure. And her employer 
 has an eye. Furthermore, he has read his ,Tosca 
 and, following the ancient custom, traps Mary in his 
 den and prepares to sardou her. The rest you 
 know. If the day ever comes that I go to a play of 
 this order and witness a consummation of the busi- 
 
681 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 ness, I shall consider my work in life done and give 
 up dramatic criticism for good and all. And become 
 an actor. 
 
 This Mr. Mack, had he been disloyal to his point 
 of view, might have done a better play out of his 
 subject matter. Eugene Walter, when he executed 
 The Easiest Way, took practically the same sub- 
 ject, treated it insincerely and the result was an ex- 
 cellent piece of stage writing. Certainly Mr. Wal- 
 ter did not, and does not, for an instant believe that 
 the Murdock would have been abandoned by her 
 broker. Momentarily maybe, but scarcely with fi- 
 nality. Mr. Walter is a gentleman of too compre- 
 hensive a knowledge of the world we live in to have 
 written this honestly. (There is, at this point, a 
 fine argument against me. A similar situation in 
 ' The Song of Songs, Scene IV, has been handled in 
 exactly the opposite manner. And, as a conse- 
 quence, presents an authentic and truly fine bit of 
 observation. But then, for all I know, Mr. Sheldon 
 probably does not believe sincerely in the logic of 
 the scene. The two-fold merit of the Sheldon ma- 
 nipulation of the situation over the handling by Mr. 
 Walter may simply mean that Mr. Sheldon is in this 
 matter twice as insincere, and therefore twice as per- 
 tinent, as was Mr. Walter.) 
 
 To return to Mr. Mack. Imagine how much 
 more interesting his play would have been had he, 
 casting aside his own attitude toward his thesis, pre- 
 sented the case of a Mary Brennan who, scenting 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 69 
 
 quickly the sort of employer she was up against, set 
 herself forthwith with a large cunning to practise 
 against the fellow an elaborate teaser-technique, 
 leading him on, gently tormenting him, plying against 
 him and his pseudo-suave wiles the strategy of a 
 Mary Turner versed in the chicanery of the sex 
 skirmish, all the while fishing out of him money 
 wherewith to provide her family and herself not only 
 with necessities but luxuries, all the while visiting 
 upon him that subtle blackmail called baby-eyeing — 
 and, finally, when the old spitzbub began to show 
 signs of being winded, giving him a good-natured 
 slap on the back, telling him just how she delib- 
 erately made a complete ass of him and bidding him 
 be the sufficient sport to take his medicine and shut 
 up. Not an unusual tale, true enough, but one that 
 has at least the merit of a greater verisimilitude and 
 the additional merit of a sounder observation. Mr. 
 Mack's philosophy that, however wily a woman, she 
 is bound to meet men with the ability to best her 
 in the diplomacy of sex, is sweet and luscious fibbery. 
 In the matter of sex sham battles, there probably 
 never lived a woman who could not fool and put to 
 reluctant rout any man who sought to intrigue against 
 her. Provided, of course, she did not like the fel- 
 low. The idea of the great dangers with which 
 women who lead business lives are supposed to be 
 confronted is mere pretty sentimental moonshine. 
 In all probability you will find that it was started, not 
 by the women, but by the business men themselves by 
 
70 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 fictitious way of gratifying their vanity as bold Don 
 Juans. 
 
 Mr. Mack deserves his share of praise, however, 
 for the skill with which he maneuvers his faulty 
 thesis. He writes directly; he flouts the supposedly 
 necessary secondary or sub-plot; he touches off aptly 
 and adroitly the idiosyncrasies of character. In his 
 engagement with the lower strata of life he is more 
 successful than in his essay to depict what, in com- 
 parison, may be referred to as the upper strata. 
 There lives no man like his wealthy malefactor this 
 side of the novels of the late Busy Bertha M. Clay. 
 There exists no man-servant like the butler to his 
 villain this side of the butler in The Law of the Land. 
 
 If your imagination be such that it can agree to 
 Miss Emily Stevens as the wondrous little mermaid 
 of Hans Christian Andersen's familiar and lovely 
 fairy tale, then Edward Sheldon's dramatization of 
 that tale under the title of The Garden of Paradise 
 is a more magnetic spectacle than it seems, or rather 
 seemed, to me. If, as you picture her, the wondrous 
 little mermaid imitates Mrs. Fiske's gestures and 
 walks like Mrs. Fiske and talks like Mrs. Fiske, 
 then, as I say, the stage version of the story may 
 soothe and convince you and may sing once again 
 its song of tender romance into your soul. But if, 
 to the contrary, your idea of the wonderful little 
 mermaid — an idea yours from childhood — is of a 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 71 
 
 bit rarer and less real creature whose movements are 
 as of a silver eel, whose voice is of the dulcet tremor 
 of the bashful south wind and who looks like the 
 pictures of Evelyn Nesbit at sixteen, well — 
 
 When, alas, will our producers realize that tech- 
 nique is as nil where a role calls for something ap- 
 proximating beauty; that the circumstance that a 
 young woman happens to be the niece of a prom- 
 inent actress does not indicate arbitrarily that the 
 young woman, however great her virtuosity in facial 
 expression, can bring herself to look like a fairy? 
 As to Mr. Sheldon's rendering of the Andersen tale 
 into footlight form, there seems little to remark on 
 save to observe that several of the criticisms directed 
 against his work (which was by no means satisfying) 
 possessed no basis in fact. For instance, it was 
 urged cocksurely against Mr. Sheldon that he was 
 no minnesinger on the ground that he had, in his 
 manipulation of the fable, here and there injected 
 into his rhythmic prose, words and phrases not in 
 keeping with the musical story and allusions to things 
 so crass and real as to be out of place in the atmos- 
 phere of poetry. Which silly criticism might be ap- 
 plied quite as aptly to Shakespeare (see, for example, 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream) as to Sheldoa. 
 
 The United States is a country where all men are 
 created free and equal and where any boy, it mat- 
 ters not how poor or humble, may, when he grows 
 
72 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 up, become a famous one-step dancer. Gone is the 
 low ambition to become President. Gone the hank- 
 ering after the muscle of John L. Sullivan and the 
 dream of a batting eye like Pat Tebeau's. Gone 
 the passion to wear a Stetson, shoot at the glass 
 balls and bow magnificently to the boxes as Buffalo 
 Bill. Dead the desire to stand on a rock in the 
 backyard in father's ulster and grandma's bonnet 
 turned sidewise and be Napoleon looking longingly 
 to France and faded fame. Dead the lust to scalp 
 Gustav, the neighbor's boy, of his feather duster. 
 Apart from the always present ambitions quoted in 
 an earlier chapter, it is evidently now boyhood's 
 single ambition to get up in a restaurant with a girl 
 and display some New Ones to the gaze of the en- 
 vious and abashed onlookers. To twirl round half 
 a dozen times in swift succession without landing on 
 top of the girl in the midst of some dinner party's 
 soup course. To hold the girl at arm's length and 
 let her wiggle three times in her corset, then sud- 
 denly to grab her back and pirouette her off against 
 some other dinner party's salad. 
 
 A rustic and a vulgar aspiration? Not at all. 
 The Duke of Wellington was never so happy as 
 when lifting some lady through the maze. Louis 
 XV was vainglorious of his prowess as a couple- 
 bumper. George Washington, while no Maurice, 
 was as flip with the feet as any gallant of his day; 
 and it is recorded of him that the joyful girls of 
 Providence, Rhode Island, whom he would fain now 
 
OF BEING EARNEST 73 
 
 and again visit with, regarded him as the best dancer 
 they knew. Read in the back-stairs records of King 
 Leopold and you will discover that on one occasion 
 of wager he contrived to kick a mark half an inch 
 higher on the wall than his Lola — and would have 
 won had he not lost his balance and landed on the 
 floor. The current mayor of New York City is as 
 nimble a hesitation professor as the late King Ed- 
 ward, as Prince of Wales, was a round waltzer. 
 Dancing with a lovely actress in Paris during his gay 
 days, the good Prince, so goes the story, marathon'd 
 all the other couples off the wax, and then did a 
 pas seul to show he was still there. Bismarck, in 
 his younger days, was, you may be sure, no slouch 
 at Terpsichore; nor was Dr. Munyon. It is re- 
 corded of the younger Dumas (The Foibles of 
 Paris, Jean Bouttlier, Chapter XI) that never once 
 did he step on a partner's toe. And it is whispered 
 by intimates of Gerhart Hauptmann that he is prac- 
 ticing in secret ! 
 
 The enormous vogue launched by the two Castles, 
 and so deplored by all fat persons, is significant of 
 a more rational attitude on the part of our hitherto 
 ungraceful nation toward the merits of the dance. 
 Where, several years ago, it was the habit to deride 
 dancing as the profession of girlish gentlemen and 
 their escorts, we have now awakened to the fact that 
 dancing has its several unmistakable values. In the 
 first place, there is nothing like dancing for wearing 
 down the mounting tendencies of a jag. In the 
 
74 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 second place, it is an excellent thing for the boot- 
 makers and cafe proprietors. In the third place, it 
 throws a great many of Its devotees among the best 
 people — when the floor is slippery. And in the 
 fourth place, it permits a man to hug twenty girls 
 an evening in place of the former one. The Castles 
 recently hopped around in a show called Watch 
 Your Step. The noteworthy feature of the show 
 was the touch of ironical burlesque which was ap- 
 plied to its ingredients : as in the case of its business 
 man's " office de danse," its grand opera boxes with 
 occupants playing bridge, reading newspapers, waltz- 
 ing and hovering over stock tickers, and its Pullman 
 sleeping car full of beautiful girls in openwork 
 nighties lying in their berths with the curtains open. 
 
THE SAD PLAY VERSUS THE SERIOUS 
 PLAY 
 
 It is the prescription of a large parcel of our the- 
 atrical reviewers habitually to mistake (i) a deep 
 male speaking voice for acting ability; (2) physical 
 motion for dramatic action; (3) veracity for vul- 
 garity; (4) all audible or visible hysteria, such as 
 bosom-heaving, fist-clenching and nose-blowing, for 
 emotion; (5) age for experience; (6) merely terse 
 dialogue for dramatic dialogue; and — (7) sad 
 plays for serious plays. 
 
 A sad play, that is to say a play which brews a 
 bourgeois tear, which moves in an atmosphere of 
 gloom, is inevitably regarded by these gentlemen as 
 a serious play, while a gay play, a play which shakes 
 the belly to mirth, is quite so inevitably looked on as 
 the contrary. Thus do we observe such an absurd 
 sniffle salad as The Shadow and such a nose-opera 
 as Marie-Odile approached with profound and 
 studious frown, while such a flip, light, laughing, 
 jolly thing as Androcles and the Lion — which is a 
 thousand times as" serious — is amiably but promptly 
 dismissed as — let me see, how goes the phrase ? 
 Ah, yes, I have it — " good fun." The philosophy 
 of such critical pinochle is, of course, unconsciously 
 jocose. Particularly when one recalls that a play is 
 
 75 
 
76 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 often sad in proportion to its absence of thought; 
 that emotion and calm hard thinking seldom go to- 
 gether; that new ideas ever impress the community 
 as comic, and that, in brief (to repeat Walpole) , Ufe 
 is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those 
 who think. As the eye becomes moist, the brain be- 
 comes dry. 
 
 Let us look first to The Shadow, one of the contes 
 drolatiques of those Von Tilzers of the tear, Dario 
 Niccodemi and Michael Morton, done to order for 
 the person of Miss Ethel Barrymore and following 
 to the letter the old Frohman commandment that in 
 all Frohman plays the woman must have the whip 
 hand. The facetious extent to which this sentimen- 
 talization of the skirt has developed in the local 
 show business is, by the way, acutely instanced in 
 a comparison of this play with a play called The 
 Fallen Idol, which immediately preceded it on the 
 metropolitan stage. The Fallen Idol held a brief 
 for the healthy wife bound by law to a paralytic 
 husband. The Shadow holds a brief against the 
 healthy husband bound by law to a paralytic wife! 
 
 The Shadow, being a lugubrious film, has, as set 
 down, been accepted widely as a serious play. And 
 yet, it remains that its biihne bawlings, its salty 
 drizzles, spurt from a set of characters whose mo- 
 tives and decisions are patently spurious. These 
 characters are of the French upper middle class. 
 Yet their every posture on the pedestal of morals, 
 marital relationship and ethical conduct reveals un- 
 
SAD VERSUS SERIOUS 77 
 
 mistakable string-pulling by an Anglo-Saxon hand. 
 The characters, indeed, are approximately as French 
 as an American actor's pronunciation of monsieur. 
 Their names are Tregnier, Magre and Michel 
 Delon, but their philosophies are Smith, Jones and 
 Bill Jenkins. This, probably the consequence of the 
 bi-national nature of the play's authorship. I may 
 imagine nothing more difficult than a piece of sound 
 dramatic workmanship dealing with Parisian morals 
 emanating from a collaboration twixt a Frenchman 
 and an Anglo-American. 
 
 As I envisage it, this play is a mere effigy of the 
 commonplace French drama of two decades ago. 
 The touch of thematic novelty which many of my 
 colleagues claim for it, to wit, the fact that the wife 
 is a paralytic and that the husband's amorous aber- 
 ration thus assumes a new justice, seems perfectly 
 inconsequent, inasmuch as the wife recovers from 
 her paralysis fifteen minutes or so after the curtain 
 rises on the first act and inasmuch as, therefore, 
 from this point on, the stage traffic resolves itself 
 into the bearded triangle of the equally bearded 
 French drama. If, forsooth, there be any novelty 
 to the play, that novelty must repose in the acts that 
 occur in advance of the first act. Certainly, once 
 the curtain is up a scant quarter hour, we give audi- 
 ence to nothing newer or more vital than a skeleton 
 of Becque's L'Enlevement (originally produced In 
 1 871) — with the bones removed. 
 
 Marie-Odile, a play by Edward Knoblauch, being 
 
78 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 both sad and produced by Mr. Belasco, was taken in 
 doubly serious manner by my confreres. 
 
 This play, though its language is of the deft and 
 musical quality associated with its author's name, 
 amounts to little more than a burlesque of Maeter- 
 linck's Sister Beatrice. John Luther Long's play, 
 Kassa, done by Mrs. Leslie Carter about seven years 
 ago at the Liberty Theatre and dealing in a general 
 way with the same stage materials, was a more im- 
 aginative and a better play. Although, true enough, 
 a bad play. The central idea of Marie-Odile has 
 been maneuvered many times by many men, and 
 Mr. Knoblauch has not only not improved upon 
 these maneuverings, but has, to the contrary, failed 
 to uncurtain anything like the proportion of lively 
 imagination vouchsafed in them. A play by a 
 sophomore in Harvard College, done half a dozen 
 years ago and printed in one of the undergraduate 
 gazettes, dealt the chief point of Knoblauch's play 
 a vastly better treatment. To the ancient tale of the 
 nun led into the pensive glamours of the world, 
 Knoblauch has brought but a single touch of pseudo- 
 modernity. He has made his Herr Lorelei a young 
 Prussian under-ofEcer. And this solitary fresh 
 touch, to boot, has plunged Mr. Knoblauch into sev- 
 eral absurdities. Imagine the chief officer of a com- 
 pany of Uhlans, ever the iiber-professoren of mili- 
 tary discipline and rigidity, urging one of his cor- 
 porals, in a tactical crisis, with the enemy not far 
 away and about to register an attack. Imagine the 
 
SAD VERSUS SERIOUS 79 
 
 officer remaining behind for a spell in order to urge 
 the corporal to defer carrying out an important 
 scouting mission long enough to seduce a likely look- 
 ing girl. Imagine a company of Uhlans, with the 
 foe near at hand, carrying on high jinks inside a 
 convent without a single man on guard duty outside. 
 The play is, in short, a belated effort again to 
 make money out of bad drama soaked in so-called 
 religious atmosphere. Not merely bad drama, but 
 what to many must seem indiscreet and objection- 
 able drama. Imagine the Mother Superior of a 
 convent banishing from the convent a nun who has 
 come by a baby — and yet blessing the baby ere 
 she casts it out. Imagine a convent made the the- 
 atrical residence in Act I of the old Cinderella story, 
 with the Mother Superior and all the sisters save 
 one serving as the wicked stepmothers ; the theatrical 
 residence in Act II of Paul Potter's The Con- 
 querors; and the theatrical residence in Act III of 
 a baby spotlight haloing with deliberate significance 
 the bastard son of a young German insurance clerk. 
 Such things may not be sacrilegious, but they may be 
 irreverent. Against all such tawdry attempts at 
 capitalizing the religious sentimentalities I stand op- 
 posed. If we are to have religion and its parts 
 treated in the drama — and where a better theme ? 
 — let us by all means have the theme treated in- 
 telligently and with a show of philosophic skill, 
 rather than that It be served up as a medium for a 
 Hanlon Brothers' tassel-tinsel extravaganza. The 
 
8o ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 considerable success of Androcles may be the fin- 
 ger pointing at last to a public concurrence in this 
 wish. And the Androcles box-office may at last 
 in a measure be contradicting Shaw's until now truth- 
 ful statement that " the deepest realities of religion 
 are the most unbearable of all subjects for the purely 
 theatrical public." 
 
 Although, of course, I am not one to make pre- 
 tense to a knowledge of the set of tricks called stage 
 direction, it yet appears to me that Mr. Belasco's 
 production of the Knoblauch work might possibly 
 in several directions be improved upon. For ex- 
 ample, would not a withholding of the aureolizing 
 baby spotlight from the head of Marie-Odile dur- 
 ing the first two acts vitalize the presence of the 
 effulgence in the last act, wherein is drawn the 
 analogy of the Virgin Mary? For example, when 
 Marie-Odile is called upon by the boisterous soldiers 
 to lift them a toast, when Marie-Odile then speaks 
 her prayer that they may be soon and safely re- 
 turned to their mothers (regards to Owen Davis, 
 Jules Eckert Goodman, et al. ) , would not a gradual 
 cessation of ribaldry on the part of the men of war 
 be more effective than the instantaneous and unan- 
 imous silence and bowing of heads? For example, 
 is not the sympathy trick of Marie-Odlle's drudgery 
 overdone; is there not too much floor sweeping, 
 furniture dusting, waiting on table, and does not 
 the little Marie-Odile thus gradually become less 
 sympathetically impressive as a poor nun and more 
 
SAD VERSUS SERIOUS 8i 
 
 sympathetically impressive as a good servant girl? 
 For example, why the casting of the crack Coldstream 
 Guards of Prussia in the bodies of a grotesque con- 
 gress ranging from five feet two to six one? For 
 example, why not a detection of the guard error 
 mentioned hereinbefore? But — these, after all, 
 are trivial things. The main point is this: Mr. 
 Knoblauch has not composed a good play. 
 
 Washing the hands of such distasteful obligations 
 of criticism, it becomes a happy duty to announce 
 The White Feather, by Messrs. Lechmere Worrall 
 and Harold Terry, as the best farce, by all odds, 
 that England has sent us in many years. That the 
 play was not intended as farce is, of course, not at 
 all to the authors' discredit. Let us not forget that 
 Columbus believed merely again to touch Asia and 
 in the act discovered a new continent. A farce is 
 a good farce in proportion to the amount of laughter 
 it provokes. And by this definition [The White 
 Feather is not only a good farce but — as I have 
 said — a really great farce. 
 
 Almost all comedy is based on the fact that a man 
 will do anything for the woman he loves. So is 
 almost all tragedy. 
 
 Almost all farce is based on the celebrated prob- 
 lem that if the village barber shaves every man in 
 the village except those who shave themselves, and 
 the barber is in the habit of shaving himself, who 
 shaves the barber? And where not based on this 
 problem, farce is grounded upon the equally re- 
 
82 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 nowned theory that if a man twenty-five years old 
 marries a girl five years old (I.e., the man being five 
 times as old as the girl) and lives with her five 
 years, the man will then be thirty years old and the 
 girl ten, thus making the man only three times as 
 old as the girl; that If they live together ten years 
 more, the man will be forty and the girl twenty, thus 
 making the man only twice as old as the girl; that 
 if they live together ten years more the man will 
 be fifty and the girl thirty, thus making the man 
 considerably less than twice as old as the girl; and 
 that, therefore, if the man and girl live together 
 long enough they will be of the same age. Substi- 
 tuting villainous German spies for the village barber, 
 heroic English secret service agents for the twenty- 
 five year old man, and Now-All-Together-Boys-Rule- 
 Britannla for the five year old girl, Messrs. Worrall 
 and Terry have otherwise adhered closely to the 
 farce canons. 
 
 Why some of my critical colleagues should have 
 seen fit to regard this play merely as an exceedingly 
 cheap melodrama and quickly dismiss It as such I am 
 unable to comprehend. To be sure, it was meant 
 to be melodrama, but certainly this is small reason 
 for the critical oversight In not having analyzed the 
 play as an exceedingly fine farce. Observe, if you 
 please, the materials. The scene Is " a private sit- 
 ting-room In the Wave Crest Hotel " on the east 
 coast of England. This chamber is occupied by one 
 who calls herself Sanderson and who, being a Ger- 
 
SAD VERSUS SERIOUS 83 
 
 man spy commissioned with the immediate execu- 
 tion of a critical enterprise, invites a couple of Brit- 
 ish secret-service sleuths to spend the week-end with 
 her. Following the other well-known custom obtain- 
 ing in espionage, the lady then brings to her room 
 three more Pilsner spies who craftily conceal their 
 identity from the Bass scouts by dropping trays full 
 of dishes whenever the latter give indication that 
 their suspicions are being aroused. The canny 
 WiJrzburger spies exercise additional caution by 
 making sure all the doors and windows are wide 
 open before consulting in loud voices as to their 
 secret plans, and further indicate their cunning by 
 leaving their tracings of the British fortifications on 
 the tables and sofas only when the English secret- 
 service people are in the room. Where, I now ask 
 you, a nobbier premise for brilliant farce ? Where a 
 site for a more elegant guffaw brewery? 
 
 Coincident with this farce there was presented at 
 the Maxine Elliott Theatre a second admirable farce 
 to be identified generally as The Rented Earl. The 
 Rented Earl was by Mr. Salisbury Field, but the 
 admirable farce was by Mr. William A. Brady. 
 Like The White Feather, The Rented Earl was a 
 play of noteworthy mediocrity, but this circumstance 
 prospered little in diminishing the enjoyability of the 
 evening. Mr. Field's play dealt with the smart so- 
 ciety colony at Lenox and Mr. Brady, ever on the 
 alert for novelty and especially so in a season con- 
 secrated to novelty, conceived the excellent farce 
 
84 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 notion of producing the play with actors in the roles 
 of the society characters. And, never satisfied with 
 doing things in a half-way manner, this astute pro- 
 ducer then conceived the droll idea of using for the 
 last act scene (which Mr. Field had specified as " the 
 terrace of The Westways, Mrs. Sanderson-Burr's 
 Lenox house") the last act set of his old musical 
 comedy The Balkan Princess. By these subtle de- 
 vices Mr. Brady took what was Intrinsically a dull 
 play and made of it an hilarious evening. 
 
 Why is it, you wonder, that actors so regularly 
 make a ridiculous showing in so-called society roles ? 
 The explanation is simple enough. Cast for a so- 
 ciety character, an actor or actress imagines that he 
 or she must, for the proper delineation of that char- 
 acter, affect a mien and manner at once suavely 
 genteel and punctilious, courtly and degage. The 
 result? Absurd, of course. For the proper de- 
 lineation of such a character, an actor or an actress 
 must affect a mien and manner at once ill-bred and 
 vulgar. ... As I have countless times observed, 
 the only persons who do not act like society people 
 are society people. 
 
 In connection with the performance of this play 
 there is the quality of the apropos in the following 
 remark of Henry James : " Purity of speech on our 
 stage doesn't exist. Every one speaks as he likes 
 and audiences never notice; it's the last thing they 
 think of. The place is given up to abominable dia- 
 lects and individual tricks ; any vulgarity flourishes ; 
 
SAD VERSUS SERIOUS 85, 
 
 and, on top of it all, the Americans, with every con- 
 ceivable crudity, come in to make confusion worse 
 confounded." I have heard Mrs. LesUe Carter, an 
 American, pronounce " never " new-hair; I have 
 heard Miss BlUie Burke, an American, pronounce it 
 satisfackshawn; I have heard Mr. Robert T. Haines, 
 an American, do up " relentless " as relintless, and 
 Mr. Milton Sills, an American, dispense " suspi- 
 cion " as something akin to soospisiyon. I have 
 heard all this, and more. But I have also heard 
 Mr. Julian L'Estrange, an Englishman, render " im- 
 mediately " immejutly; I have also heard Mrs. Pat- 
 rick Campbell, an English subject, project " delight- 
 ful " as dell-ight-fole; I have also heard Mr. 
 Beerbohm Tree, an Englishman, discharge " ceme- 
 tery " as scimetry, and Miss Marie Tempest, an 
 Englishwoman, gargle " conviction " into something 
 like cohenviction. I have heard all this, and more. 
 But I have never, not even from the tonsil cave of a 
 low American vaudeville actor, heard such bizarre 
 sounds, presumably standing for the English lan- 
 guage, as emanated from the English actor D'Orsay 
 in the role of the earl in this Field play. Let us 
 be fair in this matter of pronunciation and articula- 
 tion. Let us Americans forget our patriotism once 
 in a while, our stanch patriotism for England and 
 everything English from King George up to Phyllis 
 Dare, and remember that, however much our own 
 mummers may chew into the language, there are 
 British actors equally as proficient in the technique 
 
86 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 of mastication. The circumstance that " secretary " 
 pronounced secretry by an English buffo massages 
 the American tympanum as smarter and more fash- 
 ionable than plain American sec-re-ta-ry ought not 
 fool the jury for a moment. 
 
SOME REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 
 
 "The great are great only be- 
 cause we are on our knees. Let 
 us rise ! " — Prud'homme. 
 
 THE BATHOS OF DISTANCE 
 
 We hear talk about theatrical traditions — " the 
 proud traditions of the theatre," so I believe the 
 phrase is. What are they, these proud traditions? 
 Did the Greeks write one play so fine (from any 
 point of view you choose) as Hauptmann's Weavers 
 or Barrle's Peter Pan or Shaw's Caesar and Cleo- 
 patra ? Did Augustin Daly know one half so much 
 about producing a play as David Belasco? Was 
 Booth as good an actor, by and large, as Forbes 
 Robertson? Is not Elsie Ferguson thrice as capa- 
 ble as Mary Anderson — - and isn't she twice as 
 comely? Was the mise-en-scene of the playhouse 
 of Moliere to be compared with that of Winthrop 
 Ames? Compare Lester Wallack, as actor-man- 
 ager, with Arnold Daly or William Faversham. In 
 the original Gilbert and Sullivan productions was 
 there a better leading comedian than DeWolf Hop- 
 per? Did Charles K. Hoyt write a better farce 
 than George Ade's County Chairman, or Buchanan's 
 
 87 
 
88 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 The Cub or Howard's Snobs or Margaret Mayo's 
 Baby Mine ? Was Charlotte Cushman as competent 
 an actress as Julia Marlowe? Are not John Gals- 
 worthy's Strife and The Pigeon finer pieces of work 
 than the best of Sardou ; Bahr's Concert and Brieux's 
 Hannetons better comedies than Robertson's? Did 
 A. M. Palmer know as much about casting a play as 
 A. H. Woods? The Lady of Lyons was con- 
 sciously designed by the piqued Bulwer-Lytton as 
 boob-bait after the failure of his Duchess de la Val- 
 liere; Is it any better than the more recent mob-meal 
 unconsciously provided by Henry Arthur Jones 
 under the title of Mrs. Dane's Defense? Where In 
 antiquity a better farce fellow than Feydeau? Is 
 It likely that Shakespeare's production of any one of 
 his dramas was as effective as the presentation of his 
 Winter's Tale at the lamented New Theatre? 
 Were Congreve and Wycherly as good as Caillavet 
 and de Flers ? Compare the girls in Mile. Nitouche 
 with those in the Follies. 
 
 11 
 
 ON GLAMOUR 
 
 They say that glamour has gone from the drama ; 
 that this is why the race of theatregoers Is dying. 
 They say the old air of mystery, the old sorcery and 
 strange fascination, are no more. But they are mis- 
 taken. It Is not the drama from which glamour has 
 gone ; It is the theatre. There was a day — remote, 
 
REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 89 
 
 alas — when to go to the theatre was an occasion, a 
 privilege. A privilege, forsooth, to be enjoyed not 
 indiscriminately by hoi polloi. In those days, the 
 cut-rate ticket was not known. In those days, 
 " paper " was used for snowstorms into which to 
 drive erring daughters with their babies and not, as 
 now, for snowstorms with which to drive erring 
 movie-goers into theatres. To-day, it is no longer 
 a privilege, as I say, to go to the theatre. Any- 
 body may go. There are even some theatres to 
 which dramatic critics are admitted. 
 
 Ill 
 
 RICHARD MANSFIELD 
 
 Mansfield was looked on by many as a fine actor 
 because of the reahsm of his death scenes. Any 
 actor can " die " realistically. The good actor is 
 the one who can live realistically. 
 
 IV 
 
 A NOBLE DRAMATIC MOMENT 
 
 There are, in the world's drama, many noble 
 situations, many stunning moments. Search into 
 them all, very carefully. Then tell me if you have 
 found a finer one than that in The Mob of Gals- 
 worthy, where the mere distant and approaching rat- 
 tle of the drums shake the iron-bound logic and re- 
 solve of mankind. 
 
90 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 STAGE LOVE 
 
 We are sometimes told (by actresses) that an ac- 
 tress, engaged in a passionate love scene, feels noth- 
 ing — need feel nothing — that the actress serves 
 simply as a steel tool in the hands of the dramatist. 
 By the same process of reasoning, the foreman of a 
 distillery, ordered by his employer to absorb a quart 
 of whiskey from a sample barrel, feels nothing. 
 
 VI 
 
 CHARLES FROHMAN 
 
 Charles Frohman is dead. It is the American 
 theatre's great misfortune that it lost, through his 
 death, not a producer, but a gentleman. What the 
 American theatre needs is not so much producers 
 as gentlemen. 
 
 VII 
 THE AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 The trouble with the American playwright is that 
 he is attracted to the drama less by love of the drama 
 than by love of the advance royalty. 
 
 vin 
 
 INTROSPECTION 
 
 I often say to myself : " Why do you keep up 
 this dramatic criticism? Why do you waste your 
 
REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 91 
 
 time writing of the work of others? If you know 
 so much about what's wrong with their work, why 
 do you not quit talking about it and do their work 
 yourself? " And, so saying, I am often on the point 
 of acting upon the advice when, lo, pops up some 
 manager or playwright who excludes me from his 
 theatre or lambastes me from cart-tail or pamphlet 
 on the ground that I do not know what I am talking 
 about — and so brings me to speculate why these 
 persons do not do the same. 
 
 IX 
 
 IMPERSONAL CRITICISM 
 
 The impersonal critic is a worthless critic. He 
 is as worthless as an impersonal producer or an im- 
 personal playwright. The chief argument against 
 the impersonal critic is, after all, not that he is im- 
 personal, but that he is a critic. The practice by 
 any such fellow of professional criticism is both 
 ludicrous and objectionable. He is not a critic; he 
 is a reporter. Reporting is the recording of what 
 one has seen and heard. 'Criticism, the recording 
 of deductions made from what one has seen and 
 heard. The difference is the difference between a 
 Sunday newspaper supplement article on the monkeys 
 in the Bronx Zoo and the Darwinian theory. 
 
92 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 X 
 NO LONG speeches! 
 
 When the critical professors busy themselves with 
 giving advice to playwrights, it becomes one of their 
 most toothsome tactics to warn the aforesaid play- 
 wrights against the writing into their dialogue of 
 long speeches. Long speeches, say the critical pro- 
 fessors, are not dramatic; they are not so vital with 
 dramatic life as are the short sentences; they slacken 
 the action of a play. Etc. The contention of the 
 critical professors rests upon two grounds, both of 
 which are quicksand. Artistically, the long speech 
 is as thoroughly sound as the short speech — viewed 
 however the professors choose. It is. In this direc- 
 tion, as dramatic, as instinct with dramatic life, as 
 quickening of dramatic action (In the best sense) 
 as its runt colleague. Consider, for example, the 
 long speeches of Prospero and others in The Tem- 
 pest, of Hamlet, of Proteus and others in The Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, of Falstaff in The Merry 
 Wives, of the Duke of Vienna in Measure for 
 Measure, of two-thirds of the characters In The 
 Comedy of Errors and Much Ado — In short, con- 
 sider all of Shakespeare. Then continue and con- 
 sider a great measure of Shaw and Galsworthy and 
 Brieux and the Russians, Barrle and Rostand and 
 Stephen Phillips and Echegaray, Hauptmann and 
 Synge. So, too. Is practically, or commercially, the 
 
REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 93 
 
 long speech as thoroughly sound as the short speech. 
 Have not Shaw, Galsworthy, Brieux, Barrle and 
 Rostand profited sufficiently well despite their prac- 
 tice of the long speech in dramatic dialogue? And 
 what about The Lady of Lyons and East Lynne? 
 
 XI 
 
 THERE ARE ONLY SO MANY SITUATIONS 
 
 When a critic finds fault with a play so far as to 
 set down his impression that the theme and situations 
 divulging that theme are not new, it is the custom 
 of the anti-critic to rail against the offender by quot- 
 ing from Georges Polti's Thirty-six Dramatic Situa- 
 tions to the effect that Goethe once said, " It is al- 
 most impossible in the present day to find a situation 
 which is thoroughly new. Only the manner of look- 
 ing at it can be new, and the art of treating it and 
 representing it." In the minds of many of our pro- 
 ducers and playwrights, the anti-critic, so railing, is 
 hailed as a seer; as, withal, a highly perspicacious 
 fellow. In reality, he is something of a driveller. 
 The old horse-car was one situation. When a man 
 came along with sufficient skill and imagination to 
 sick the nags away and inject electricity into the car, 
 that was entirely another situation. To argue that 
 both were, after all, cars is to argue that a storage 
 battery Is charged with oats. The critical objection 
 to most playwrights is not so much that they fail 
 to Invent new situations as that they fail to improve 
 
94 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 upon the old ones. Or even to exercise taste in the 
 manipulation of the old situations which they pilfer. 
 The man who stole the Mona Lisa was merely a 
 thief. But what if, having stolen it, he had put it in 
 a bird's-eye maple frame ? 
 
 XII 
 
 LE GOUT INFLAMMATOIRE 
 
 Musical comedy is based on the theory that a leg 
 hath charms to soothe the savage breast. The 
 theory is, obviously, absurd. Hence the success of 
 musical comedy. 
 
 XIII 
 ON CRITICAL DIGNITY 
 
 As an analytical commentator on the American 
 theatre and drama, I am now and again hauled upon 
 the carpet by this or that good soul for what is 
 termed my lack of seriousness and critical dignity. 
 As a boy, I recall having once seen a man in top 
 hat and Prince Albert at a country circus. 
 
 XIV 
 VARNISH 
 
 " No varnish," said Dickens, " can hide the grain 
 of the wood; the more varnish you put on, the more 
 the grain will express itself." Respectfully com- 
 mended to those who still cherish the notion that 
 Pinero is a great dramatist. 
 
REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 95 
 
 XV 
 
 A baby's first laugh, etc. 
 
 A celebrated remark of Margaret of France: 
 " I do not kiss the man, but the mouth that has ut- 
 tered so many charming things." Where a more 
 apt criticism of the work of James M. Barrie ? 
 
 XVI 
 ON HACK WORK 
 
 When a playwright achieves a popular financial 
 success with a cheap piece of work, I respect his 
 sagacity as a tradesman. When he, achieving such 
 a success, chooses to regard himself of a peg higher 
 than a mere tradesman, when he then chooses to 
 anoint himself as something of an artist, I laugh at 
 him. I, too, in my day, have done hack work — 
 and have duly profited thereby. But I found my- 
 self compelled to give up one of my best friends 
 because, one day, the fellow told me in all sincerity 
 that he had just read some of the indubitable trash 
 I was then shedding — and considered it a fine piece 
 of writing. 
 
 XVII 
 HOW TO SEE A PROFESSOR 
 
 Professor Richard Burton, head of the Drama 
 Eeague of America, or something, has given birth to 
 a book called How to See a Play. I have not read 
 
96 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 the good Professor's book and, what is more, I am 
 not going to read the good Professor's book. Any 
 man who can write a full-size book upon the sub- 
 ject of how to see a play would be successful in 
 composing a cyclopedia on the equally complex sub- 
 ject of how to see a good-looking girl. There is 
 but one way to view a play (or a good-looking girl) 
 and that one way may be summed up in a single 
 sentence. A play (or a good-looking girl) should 
 be viewed with the philosophy of a German, the 
 humor of a Frenchman and the heart of a Japanese. 
 So, and only so, does the intelligent spectator sit 
 before a drama. 
 
 XVIII 
 ACTING ON THE HALF SHELL' 
 
 No great actor ever took his profession seriously. 
 Edmund Kean, whom George Henry Lewes dubs 
 " incomparably the greatest actor I have seen," was 
 half-drunk the night he gave his finest performance 
 of Othello. Rachel's attitude toward her art is 
 well known from the pages of her biography. On 
 one occasion, while in the midst of one of her pas- 
 sionate, tragedic performances of Racine, she 
 plucked a rose from her girdle and began eating it. 
 At the height of her career, she was in the habit 
 of rushing through her performances at top speed 
 and appearing in the last scenes already half-dressed 
 for the street, so that she might not lose time in 
 getting back to her current lover. It is said of 
 
REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 97 
 
 Salvini that, when he played Hamlet, he used now 
 and again to take delight in falling upon Horatio's 
 neck, with such violence that both he and his colleague 
 were set rolling on the floor. 
 
 And Louis James, ridiculous as may seem, when 
 playing engagements in southern cities actually hired 
 an oyster-shucker and lodged him in his dressing- 
 room so that he might, during his performances of 
 Julius Caesar, be amply supplied with bivalves to slip 
 down the backs of his toga'd associates. 
 
 XIX 
 
 WORDS SPEAK LOUDER THAN ACTIONS 
 
 The question as to the indispensability of action 
 in drama is ever with us. " Drama," says the ice- 
 man, " is not drama unless it has action." " Ac- 
 tion," says the milkman, " is the chief requisite of 
 drama." " Without action," says the policeman, 
 " drama ceases to exist." And the simple truth is 
 this : action is essential to plays in proportion to their 
 intrinsic worthlessness. 
 
 XX 
 A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 
 
 There never lived an actor so proficient in his 
 craft but that he could learn something from watch- 
 ing a child. All children are natural actors — save 
 nine-tenths of those on the stage. 
 
98 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 XXI 
 
 A CRITICAL OPINION 
 
 It is held by many to be impossible for a critic 
 personally to associate with those whose work he is 
 called upon to criticize. Which, of course, is sheer 
 nonsense. It is not impossible. It is merely dull. 
 
 XXII 
 
 THE NINETY-AND-NINE 
 
 The American drama is reared upon a founda- 
 tion of four F's: fibbery, falsity, flattery and flim- 
 flam. Yet what may one reasonably expect when 
 ninety-nine persons out of every one hundred in an 
 American theatrical audience are of the firm convic- 
 tion that It always rains on the Fourth of July, that 
 because a dog scratches himself he has fleas, and that 
 burglars do not shave ? 
 
 XXIII 
 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
 
 The idea, so cherished and widely preached, that it 
 is impossible to figure out what the public wants and 
 will like is, upon investigation, found to be full of 
 holes — as are most such ideas concerning the the- 
 atre. Any open-eyed person is able easily to turn 
 the trick. The lament is the blind man's. I have, 
 in a previous paragraph, observed that Bulwer- 
 Lytton knew exactly what the public wanted and 
 
REMARKS ON THE THEATRE 99 
 
 gave it to them, in The Lady of Lyons, Shake- 
 speare knew what his public wanted — and he gave 
 it to them. His comedy was, to them, " sure-fire," 
 his dramatic scenes so many certain " punches." 
 The records of the time prove as much. Shake- 
 speare financed some of his plays with his own 
 money; was his own producer. In view of the re- 
 sults, what better proof of his playwrighting sagacity 
 so far as the public's taste was concerned? Shaw 
 has repeatedly told the public what it wanted and 
 has then proceeded to write it for them — from 
 Man and Superman to Fanny's First Play. George 
 M. Cohan's local ability to hit the mark is 
 well-known. Euripides knew his public every bit as 
 well as Harry B. Smith knows his. The former 
 wrote seventy-five hits in succession. The latter has 
 written the same hit seventy-five times in succession. 
 It's all too absurdly simple. 
 
A MIRACLE IN THIRTY-NINTH STREET 
 WEST 
 
 I HAVE, in my period, contemplated many a stupe- 
 fying, many a brain-staggering, theatrical phenome- 
 non. For instance, I have seen — fifteen years ago, 
 I think it was — a play actor who, having to find 
 a passage in some book during the enactment of a 
 drama, did not locate the place immediately he 
 opened the volume. On another memorable occa- 
 sion — I was quite young at the time — I recall hav- 
 ing seen an actress in an ingenue role who did not 
 essay to heighten her girlish cunningness by sitting 
 down with one of her feet tucked under her; and 
 on another long-to-be-remembered occasion when, 
 still in kilts, I was privileged a matinee in the com- 
 pany of my governess, I recollect having seen a play 
 in which the young actor playing the part of a col- 
 lege man did not delineate the role by shaking hands 
 frequently and impulsively with all the other male 
 actors. On the night of February 8, 1891, I be- 
 held an emotional actress play the entire tear-filled, 
 grief-laden climax of a drama on her feet, without 
 once either falling on her knees or rolling around 
 the floor. And from the night of November 16, 
 1889, I still treasure in memory the view of an actor 
 who, called on by the manuscript to " suffer in si- 
 
 100 
 
A MIRACLE loi 
 
 lence," did not make to interpret his sad condition by 
 giving periodic vent to a grim, cynical little laugh. 
 
 Nor have the miracles been restricted wholly to 
 actors. Although I have small faith that I shall 
 be believed, I yet confess to having once seen a play 
 containing a faithful old servant in which, when 
 the hero lost his fortune, the faithful old servant 
 did not in a pathetic scene urge his master to per- 
 mit him to help him out with the forty-eight dollars 
 he had saved up. Also have I seen a comedy in 
 which the young lovers, just about to kiss, were not 
 surprised in the act by the unexpected entrance of 
 one of the older characters, the latter thereupon 
 with lovable sympathy giving a significant cough and 
 elaborately busying himself with the papers on the 
 table in the pretense of having not noticed. Also 
 a melodrama in which at no time one of the char- 
 acters suddenly stood still, motioned his companion 
 for silence, crept on tiptoe to the door, paused a 
 moment and then quickly pulled the door open to 
 surprise an eavesdropper (who, incidentally, nine 
 times out of ten, is never there). And once — it 
 was some dozen years ago as I remember — I was 
 actually witness of a play containing a detective in 
 which at no point in the action were the lights sud- 
 denly switched off by some one in order to provoke 
 a thrill. 
 
 Ah, yes, mine has been an eventful life. Think 
 of it: on the night of March 14, 1903, I even 
 heard an actor pronounce the word " mademoiselle " 
 
102 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 correctly! On the night of September 27, 1896, I 
 heard every word of the part an actor was reciting 
 
 — and I seated 'way back in the second row! On 
 the night of January 4, 1900, only fifteen years ago, 
 I beheld an actor deliver a line of seven words and, 
 during the process of delivery, employ only four 
 gestures! At a matinee on April 21, 1907, I saw 
 a play laid In the tenement district in which the 
 heroine's father was not a drunkard and in which 
 the heroine's sister was not low with consumption! 
 On the night of October 2, 1888, I attended a play 
 in which the hero did not bluff the villain by pro- 
 claiming, " Meet me here at ten o'clock to-morrow 
 morning and I'll have the money to pay you every 
 cent I owe you ! " and subsequently, upon being inter- 
 rogated by his friend as to how he was possibly going 
 to accomplish it, replying, " Damned if I know." 
 At a matinee on September 29, 1894 (I can remem- 
 ber the date well — It was Michaelmas Day), I saw 
 a play In which the fact that the leading female char- 
 acter was supposed to possess " temperament " was 
 not Illustrated by the playwright by having the 
 woman one moment vociferously vituperate her 
 maid and the next call her back and present her 
 casually with a handsome bauble from out her jewel 
 case — "Take It, Suzette; 'twill look well on you. 
 There, there, say nothing! Go — leave me alone 
 
 — you annoy me ! " On the night of February 11, 
 1901 — but enough of adventures with what, how- 
 ever Imposing, are after all comparatively no more 
 
A MIRACLE 103 
 
 than trifling miracles, no more than paltry prodigies, 
 no more than nugatory supernaturalisms. 
 
 For, sweeping against these one and all and blow- 
 ing them before it into oblivion with the mighty 
 wind of ten typhoons, twenty simoons, thirty siroc- 
 cos, forty hurricanes or one Drama League official, 
 comes a play written by an actor for his own use — 
 and staged for that actor by another actor ! — which, 
 nevertheless, from curtain to curtain, fails persist- 
 ently to disclose any trace of (i) a scene wherein 
 the actor who wrote the play for his own use, single- 
 handed and armed only with a stylish " dress suit," 
 defies the villain and his jackals to dare so much 
 as touch the heroine ! — meanwhile emphasizing his 
 perfect coolness by puffing nonchalantly at a ciga- 
 rette; (2) a series of prefatory scenes wherein all 
 the other characters are made to work up an en- 
 trance for the actor who wrote the play for himself 
 by referring to him repeatedly as " that strong, 
 handsome brute " and with such observations as 
 " Well, whatever they may say against him, he's a 
 man!" and such amorous encomiums as " Oh, what 
 would I not give to have one as noble, as generous, 
 as manly as he take me In his big strong arms and 
 protect me from the world, and love me! " or (3) 
 a valet who is made by the actor who wrote the play 
 for himself to help aforesaid actor in and out of his 
 purple velvet smoking jacket, the object being to let 
 the audience know that aforesaid actor is really a 
 gentleman " on and off." 
 
104 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Pause a moment and reflect. A play of such par- 
 entage that has in it not a single touching passage 
 about " mother love " ; not a passage indicating the 
 leading actor's perfect familiarity with Biarritz, the 
 placid - Mediterranean - turquoise - under - the - Au- 
 gust-skies, and Lord Allonhurst's (with a significant 
 wink) gay yachting parties; not a passage (directed 
 at the man sei"vant) as " C'est Men, Jenkins, mats 
 aidez-moi plutot a mettre mon pantalon " to prove 
 that the actor who devised the play for his personal 
 use is a French scholar ! In it — imagine ! — no' 
 scene wherein the actor, in white silk blouse open at 
 the throat and with sleeves rolled up, poses rapier 
 in hand before the entrance to the Taverne du Lion 
 d'Or and, thrusting the fair Therese de Valois be- 
 hind him, defends her " honor " with his life, by the 
 dim light of the candelabra eventually disarming and 
 putting to rout not only the traitorous Due ( " the 
 best swordsman in all France") but his hirelings 
 as well ! In it — think you ! — a hero who is not 
 finally discovered to be related, even illegitimately, 
 to Napoleon ! ! 
 
 The miracle? Too Many Cooks, by name. The 
 author and chief interpreter? Mr. Frank Craven. 
 The scene? The Thirty-ninth Street Theatre. 
 Narrating simply, unaffectedly and with a sharp ap- 
 preciation of the humors resident in the materials, 
 the adventures of a vulgar young lower middle class 
 clerk coincident with building a small house in the 
 suburbs wherein to house his bride-to-be, the piece 
 
A MIRACLE 105: 
 
 is not only suggestive, in several of its major local 
 phases, of the playful viewpoint attaching still to 
 the memory of Charles Hoyt, but, more than this, 
 it attains in recurring flashes of humorous characteri- 
 zation and genial philosophy to the quality of Ade. 
 In its entirety, this little farce comedy is so absurdly 
 incomplex and innocent that, withdrawing from its 
 contemplation, one is at first deluded into a deprecia- 
 tion of its merits, merits that subsequently must pre- 
 sent themselves with some considerable force in a 
 day when the contributors to the native theatre are 
 either little more than preposterous pilferers of 
 foreign goods which they seek archly but vainly to 
 infuse with a local vitality or mere virtuosi of 
 original slipslops. This Craven, setting out to write 
 " an American play," unlike the rank and file of his 
 current rivals in this omnipresent and generally un- 
 savory divertissement, refrained from bequeathing 
 to his " American play " the conventional essentials 
 of the countless " American plays " that the prole- 
 tariat is half-paged into regarding with serious awe 
 — to wit, such distinctively American ingredients as 
 a German ethical viewpoint, a French " punch," an 
 Austro-Hungarian concupiscence and an English but- 
 ler. 
 
 Another thing. Craven's " technique." Dei 
 ffratia, he has none — at least in the sense which our 
 critical column fillers so lovingly stroke the word. 
 His play folk amble on and off the stage without pay- 
 ing any attention whatever to what technicians would 
 
io6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 have us believe is the first law of all human con- 
 duct; always, that is, to specify precisely where one 
 is going and why before one leaves the presence of 
 another, and to explain where one has been and why 
 when one makes his reappearance. Nor do his play 
 characters hesitate at doors to deliver themselves 
 of brilliant, cutting repartee, nor do they maneuver 
 intricately in and out of half a dozen exits and en- 
 trances such as French windows, stairways, verandas 
 and the like arbitrarily to decorate the action of the 
 play. They seem to realize — with the bare two 
 exits and entrances that Craven has allowed them — 
 that, in actual life and in the actual world, there is 
 probably not more than one room or one houseyard 
 or one what-not in a hundred in which the persons 
 immediately figuring make use of more than one or 
 two means of ingress and egress. Show me the play- 
 writer who utilizes from four to six doors or other 
 entrances and exits in his acts and, generally speak- 
 ing, I will show you a concocter of bad plays. 
 
 Do' I seem absurdly to ladle out over-praise on 
 the head of the sire of this little play? Well, well, 
 I trust not, for it deserves no so fluent and copious 
 a dose of gravy. Yet if I have been led somewhat 
 rashly to explode too many pinwheels in this 
 Craven's honor, I have as my apology the sudden 
 reaction in me provided by his play against the leaky 
 native twattle that has been abusing our theatrical 
 eyes. When one encounters such a likable reticence, 
 such a genuineness and thoroughly sound derivation 
 
A MIRACLE 107 
 
 of humor and such a frank, conscious display of bad 
 manners as is to be approached in the play of which 
 speech is here being made, it is privileged the critic 
 to omit reference, in this day and hour of our dra- 
 matic famine, to mere defects and flaws. From 
 these the play is not exempt. It is unduly repetitious 
 in its episodes; it is given now and again to the 
 familiar practice of mental Coo and Coddle, the 
 silly sentimentality without which no American-made 
 play seems possible of birth. But, with these faults 
 and its several others, the play (with the novel 
 scenic notion of showing a house in the three stages 
 of building — first, the foundation, then the frame- 
 work and lastly the finished product) is still instru- 
 mental in providing theatregoers with an evening of 
 happy relief from the theatre. 
 
 Why, on the other hand, Mr. Augustin Mac- 
 Hugh's play. What Would You Do ? scored so pre- 
 cipitous a failure in New York, I am at a loss to 
 comprehend. In the first place, it was such a very 
 bad play. Mr. MacHugh, who, before he achieved 
 success with the farce Officer 666, was a play actor, 
 was unfortunately unable, judging from the contour 
 of his play, to forget the circumstance as his former 
 colleague Craven had in his own case contrived 
 adroitly to forget it. What the result? Behold 
 the situation so close to the hearts of the Vaughan 
 Glasers of the hinterland stock companies — wife 
 in lover's arms, enter husband! Behold the situa- 
 tion that makes the Corse Paytons leave home — 
 
io8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 telephone . . . Stock Exchange . . . Consolidated 
 Preferred down 190 points ..." My God, I'm 
 ruined!" . . . "What's that? Market recover- 
 ing? Up 340 points? pThank God! Saved!!" 
 Behold the dear old scene in which husband " loses 
 control of himself," throws extravagant, pleasure- 
 loving wife to her knees and Then Tells Her She Is 
 No Better Than The Painted Women You See On 
 The Streets! Behold the now celebrated last act, 
 laid In the country — " How wonderful it is out here ! 
 It's like a different hfe, Bob, after the sordidness 
 and misery of the city " — with wife returning peni- 
 tently at ten to eleven in a Simple Dress. And, 
 pervading all, behold the inevitable unconscious evil 
 manners. 
 
 Why is It that when all but three of the writers 
 for the American stage set out to deal with char- 
 acters presumed to be moderately well-bred, the man- 
 ners they attribute to such characters are disclosed 
 to be on a par with the manners of stable boys and 
 persons of secure social position? To 'say that the 
 writers fail In portraying good manners through the 
 medium of their characters because they themselves 
 may be ill-bred is vapid argument. Oscar Wilde, 
 a Sousa of proscenium manners, had the personal 
 manners of a fellow in trade ; Richard Brinsley Sheri- 
 dan, whose dramatic characters are models of form, 
 was, so history informs us, possessed of a prime 
 loutlshness in personal conduct; and I have heard 
 whispered In the alehouses that Pinero, whose play 
 
A MIRACLE 109 
 
 characters are ever so thoroughly en regie that they 
 aggravate one, not only tucks a serviette under his 
 chin and chases the nomadlcally Inclined French pea 
 which happens to wander from the saucer over the 
 tablecloth, but, in a major way, may be said gen- 
 erally to make up his manners as he goes along. 
 Having seen many plays, it follows as obvious 
 that I have seen many badly acted plays. What 
 Would You Do? was interpreted with so stunning 
 a lack of histrionic ability on the part of the mum- 
 mers engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with Its parts 
 of speech that the applause for the actors on the 
 opening night was deafening. What is applause? 
 Crossing the sea last summer In a ship numbering In 
 Its passenger list forty-six recognized music lovers 
 — persons well known In New York for their in- 
 telligent devotion to opera, symphony concerts, re- 
 citals — I had reason to reflect. Each night, in the 
 large saloon on the promenade deck, these forty- 
 six gathered with the rest of the ship to listen to 
 one of the new Instruments that so wonderfully, so 
 uncannily, reproduces to the most humble detail the 
 Interpretation of rare musical compositions by the 
 best pianists of the current era. It has been agreed 
 and is agreed — and It has been proved — by able 
 critics that were one of the famous pianists to seat 
 himself behind a screen and play, and that were 
 subsequently the instrument to reproduce his play- 
 ing behind another screen, the listener would be un- 
 able to determine which of the performances had 
 
no ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 come from the human hand, which from the mechan- 
 ical. This night, the forty-six Hstened to Paderew- 
 ski — or, more accurately, to the reproduced Pade- 
 rewski. The forty-six were silent, enraptured, en- 
 thralled. The playing stopped. There was not a 
 handclap from the forty-six. Nor a handclap, a 
 murmur, a sound, for that matter, from any one 
 else. And then it was that I came to wonder if 
 applause, after all, is not ever less a tribute to work 
 well done than a sop to the empty personal vanity 
 and jackassish conceit of public performers? 
 
OUR THOUGHTFUL DRAMA 
 
 The late Mr. Charles Klein's final contribution to 
 our national drama of thought bore the title The 
 Money Makers, and fired the bewildering, revolu- 
 tionary philosophy that wealth is acquired only by 
 foul practice, that it brings with it awful misery and 
 unhappiness, and that an economic desideratum be- 
 seeches its immediate return to the sources whence 
 it has been illegally derived. This, the culmination 
 of our native mental drama, le grand climax, the 
 Krupp discharge. 
 
 It must be at once obvious, however, that so 
 stupendous a coup of reasoning could be born only 
 out of a slow and painfully plodding process of 
 years of American theatrical thought. Great phi- 
 losophies are not of instantaneous creation. A com- 
 plete and careful survey of our drama of ideas, 
 precursor of the Klein masterpiece, reveals the fol- 
 lowing ripening contributions on the part of our 
 principal intellectual playwriting giants to the cyclo- 
 pedia of worldly intelligence and information: 
 
 The Witching Hour (Thomas) — (i) Although 
 a jury is locked securely in a court chamber, it may 
 be influenced telepathically by what persons hun- 
 dreds of miles away are at the moment thinking; 
 
 III 
 
112 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 and (2) A madman about to fire a revolver may be 
 restrained In a twinkling by a mere hypnotic glance 
 of the eye. 
 
 The Harvest Moon (Thomas) — (i) If you re- 
 mind a young girl that her mother divorced her 
 father and married another man it will cause the 
 young girl in time to become a prostitute; (2) Dif- 
 ferent colors are suited to different emotional effects 
 (see Herbert Spencer, 50 years before) ; and (3) 
 Moonlight makes one feel sentimental. 
 
 The Lion and the Mouse (Klein) — The com- 
 mercial mind, will and strategy of a great organizer 
 of trusts may be completely and quickly changed 
 and upset by the arguments of a young woman. 
 
 The Servant In the House (Kennedy) — (i) It 
 is our duty to believe in the brotherhood of man ; and 
 (2) The socialism of the average socialist of to- 
 day Is merely " the fighting with his class against 
 all the other classes." 
 
 The Terrible Meek (Kennedy) — Duty is one 
 thing, mercy Is another thing. 
 
 The Next of Kin (Klein) — A corrupt lawyer 
 can gain control of every court In New York. 
 
 The Dawn of a To-morrow (Burnett) — Mental 
 suggestion is a sure cure for all human ills. (See 
 also The Witching Hour and Harvest Moon.) 
 
 As a Man Thinks (Thomas) — (i) See The 
 Dawn of a To-morrow; (2) An estranged couple 
 having a child is always reunited on Christmas eve 
 by that child. 
 
OUR THOUGHTFUL DRAMA 113 
 
 Bought and Paid For (Broadhurst) — (i) Poor 
 girls who marry rich men have an awful time of it 
 because (2) rich men drink heavily and proceed to 
 enact big scenes from Brieux. 
 
 Mere Man (Thomas) — Woman is dependent 
 upon man. 
 
 The Model (Thomas) — Art has a mental as 
 well as a physical appeal. 
 
 The Law of the Land (Broadhurst) — If a man 
 treats his adulterous wife harshly It is only simple 
 justice that she shoot him dead on the spot. 
 
 The City (Fitch) — A large city corrupts a man. 
 
 The Third Degree (Klein) — The police often 
 practice devious means to get a confession from a 
 malefactor. 
 
 The Return of Peter Grimm (Belasco) — (i) A 
 man who believes certain things during life is actually 
 able to change his beliefs after death, and (2) pro- 
 ject these new beliefs into the " subconscious memo- 
 ries " of living persons. 
 
 The Case of Becky (Locke) — (i) Absolute 
 dual personality is a fact; and (2) a man may be 
 hypnotized against his will (see also The Witching 
 Hour). 
 
 The Lure (Scarborough) — (i) pThe poor, 
 fatherless girls of New York City are at the mercy 
 of white slavers; and (2) it is the custom of bawdy 
 houses that all male visitors be shown into the same 
 room. 
 
 A Man's World (Crothers) — A woman who 
 
114 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 loves a man deeply will not marry him if she learns 
 that he is not a virgin. 
 
 The Great Divide (Moody) — (i) When the 
 old Puritan formalism of conscience and pragma- 
 tism come into conflict, there is a struggle; and (2) 
 this struggle always has a comfortable termination. 
 
 Ben Hur (Wallace) — (i) A white spotlight 
 may bring about a spiritual awakening; and (2) a 
 chariot race is at once a spiritual spectacle and a 
 powerful sermon. 
 
 There, in brief, is the grand sum total of the wis- 
 dom of the American drama to date ! And there 
 the profound womb out of which the climacteric 
 Klein none-such was given its being. 
 
THE RULES OF THE CURRENT PLAYS 
 
 There has been great discourse of late in the chess 
 parlors as to whether or no playwriting can be 
 taught. 
 
 The eminent post-prandial Cicero, Professor W. 
 T. Price, that proud pasha of the yeas, discreetly 
 forgetting that, in collaboration, he taught Roland 
 Burnham Molineux to build what was indubitably 
 one of the very worst specimens of plaj^writing re- 
 vealed in recent years, has been hot at it splitting a 
 lung for the defense. The good Harvarder, 
 George P. Baker, amiable exhorter of the incipient 
 Sardous of the species, glowing with the triumphant 
 incubation of a Sheldon, has been quoted with fire 
 and gusto by the faithful, that copious bund that 
 somehow sees Baker in Romance in place of Haupt- 
 mann, Baker in The Princess Zim ZIm in place of 
 Maurice Donnay, Baker in The Boss in place of 
 George Ohnet — Baker generally in place of Bern- 
 stein. Nor have the mustaphas of the nay been less 
 kings of the storm. The Reverend Dr. Howard 
 has laid about him with a grievous cudgel, flaying 
 the dust into the playwriting pilgrims' eyes with 
 aplomb and bidding them desist in their futile 
 quest of the muse. Other playwrights, applauded by 
 theatrical personages of more or less relevance, have 
 
 I IS 
 
ii6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 balanced the nugatory feather on their noses and 
 performed nobly. And various newspaper critical 
 gentlemen, bursting with sagacity, have interrupted 
 our regular Sabbath devotions at the photographs 
 of the physiology of Kay Laurell with space-consum- 
 ing arguments pro and con. 
 
 Now, this question as to whether or not it may 
 be possible to teach playwriting to some of our most 
 popular American dramatists and other beginners 
 — so far as we are here concerned — may continue 
 to remain an open one. What engages our attention 
 at the moment is the correlative, but seemingly over- 
 looked, fact that, given a person sufficiently deficient 
 in ideas, it should be a very simple matter to instruct 
 him in the technique of theatrical, critical and com- 
 mercial success whether he knows anything about 
 playwriting or not. That Is to say, the rules for 
 achieving the sale of a play and for achieving the 
 subsequent plaudits of press and public would seem 
 In themselves to be so absurdly incomplex that it is 
 a legitimate subject for amazement that notice has 
 not more often been called to them. From time to 
 time I have directed attention to the divers recipes 
 in the cookbook of theatrical prosperity as such 
 recipes were discovered for me by the plays of the 
 day. 
 
 [Thus, I have pointed out that a play in which a 
 young city ne'er-do-well goes to live in the country 
 and is made morally and financially whole again 
 through the atmosphere and inspiration of the vil- 
 
RULES OF CURRENT PLAYS 117 
 
 lage is as certain of success as a play in which the 
 proud heroine eventually discovers that " love has 
 been born in her " for the cave man who has beaten 
 her up in the second act. Thus, I have pointed out 
 that it is like the proverbial taking of candy from 
 children to give the public and critics a play in which 
 all Jews are proved to be angels. There is always 
 room, too, for a play in which old age is shown sen- 
 timentally to be a wonderful thing (the older critics 
 always succumb to this one), and for a play that 
 proves beyond all doubt how much a mother loves 
 her child. The latter play cannot possibly fail if 
 it contains a scene in which the mother is on trial 
 in a courtroom. A farce in which a character hides 
 in a chest after he has suddenly extinguished all the 
 lights in the room and in which the hero wears a 
 Norfolk jacket with a revolver conspicuously observ- 
 able in one of the pockets is so certain of good for- 
 tune on the face of it that it does not even have to 
 be written, or rewritten, by George Cohan — and as 
 for any play in which the chief rascal and all the 
 other lesser rascals are gradually reformed through 
 the influence of a Good Woman. . . . 
 
 So, also, in the register of established sure-things 
 do we find the so-called religious play in which a 
 group of venomous, warring, cheating, pessimistic 
 humans slowly melt into so many cherubs before the 
 calm and kindness and comforting words of a mys- 
 terious character only vaguely identified in pro- 
 gramme and dialogue. And so, too, the play in 
 
1 18 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 which a father and mother, estranged from each 
 other, are ultimately reunited by their child, pref- 
 erably, as some one has remarked, a little daughter 
 in her nightie. But safest of all these artless 
 dodges is a decrepit, out-of-date, ingenuous play in 
 which the dialogue has been altered from " Yes, 
 Margaret Is a pretty girl, the best-looker in Detroit," 
 to " Aye, Mag's a bonnle lass, the bonniest wha 
 lives i' all Drumtochty." 
 
 . Enter, therefore, Kitty Mackay, by Catherine 
 Chisholm Gushing. 
 
 Most American playwrights may soon or late 
 be divided into five classes: first, those who write 
 Sardou's DIvorgons; second, those who write Sis 
 Hopkins ; third, those who write Brieux's plays ; 
 fourth, those who write Sudermann's Magda; and 
 fifth, those who write Cinderella. In the latter 
 catalogue we find Miss Cushing. Her Kitty Mac- 
 Kay Is merely Cinderella written thus: Cinderella 
 — which is to say, Cinderella with an accent. That 
 Miss Cushing is one of my regular readers and deep- 
 est admirers I cannot but believe after an inspection 
 of her play, for to insure Its success she has per- 
 spicaciously utilized not merely one of my frequently 
 repeated rules, but as many as three or four. Thus, 
 what she has done to achieve the critical and public 
 eulogies is merely to adopt my Rule XVIII 
 
 (originally published In March, 1909) that "Suc- 
 cess may always be gained In the theatre with the 
 story of the girl who is ill-treated by her foster par- 
 
RULES OF CURRENT PLAYS 119 
 
 ents and who, no matter what her nationality, finally 
 marries a wealthy young Enghshman (who has been 
 coveted by her stepsister) and then marches straight 
 back home and, with much sweetness of nature, for- 
 gives those who abused her." And with my Rule 
 XVIII, my Rule XXIV (originally published In 
 January, 19 10) that "A good genre play may be 
 obtained by laying the scene of any particularly bad 
 play in an Irish, Scotch or Welsh village or British 
 provincial town;" my Rule XXXIX (August, 
 1910) that " Dialogue, however stale and stupid, 
 may be given the semblance of freshness and wit by 
 translating it into any form of dialect, including the 
 Scandinavian;" and my Rule XLI (April, 1911) 
 that " The device of having the babies changed at 
 birth, now beginning to be looked on with some dis- 
 favor in musical comedy libretti, should in due time 
 therefore be excellent material for the popular legiti- 
 mate drama." 
 
 Were it not for the circumstance that our patrons 
 and appraisers of dramatic art are so consistently 
 confused and led astray at the first smell of dialect 
 and the sight of some scenery picturing a village 
 somewhere in the British Isles, I should hesitate to 
 call out the artillery against so otherwise harmless 
 and innocent an exhibit as this little play of Miss 
 Cushing's. But recall the dumfounded awe with 
 which the " Irish school of drama " was greeted a 
 few years ago, the elaborate hysteria and befuddled 
 groplngs in the contemplation of the plays presented 
 
120 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 in the name of that " school." Recall the critical 
 epilepsies, the general panic of the dramatic barris- 
 ters, the great debates in the ale houses I Recall 
 the eurekas and golden opinions and benisons that 
 were sounded in the pantheon when Githa Sowerby 
 rewrote Mirabeau with a British provincial accent 
 and when the late Stanley Houghton rewrote Max 
 Dreyer and David Graham Phillips with inland in- 
 flections. Ah, me, what a hocus-pocus is on the 
 world I Why this confounding of dialect with char- 
 acterization, why this confounding of scenery with 
 " drama of the soil " ? The Scottish characters of 
 Kitty MacKay are merely the conventional mario- 
 nettes of the theatre dressed in kilts ; their loudly ac- 
 claimed "wit" (saving one legitimately humorous 
 episode having to do with a revision of the Bible) 
 is intrinsically nothing more than a substitution in the 
 obvious American proscenium badinage of " nae- 
 thln'" for "nothing," "aboot" for "about," 
 " dinna ken " for " do not know," u.s.w. — the old 
 trick of the club comic who gets a better effect out 
 of a story by telling it in the negro tongue or in 
 German dialect. In view of the reception of Kitty 
 MacKay, why wouldn't it be a profitable enterprise 
 for some needy producer to present a version of 
 some particularly out-of-date play such, for example, 
 as " The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," with Aubrey 
 made Angus MacTanqueray and Paula made Polly, 
 and with the dialogue altered thus: 
 
RULES OF CURRENT PLAYS 121 
 
 Angus: Is naethin' ever serious wi' ye, Poll? 
 
 Polly: . . . We canna talk aboot that now, Angus, 
 
 Angus: But now, lass, life wi' be different wi' ye, wi' 
 it not, m' bonnie one? 
 
 Polly: Aye, an' it wi', Angus. But, mind ye, Angus, 
 a'ways to keep me wi' ye and happy. 
 
 Angus: I wi' try, Polly. 
 
 Polly: I canna endure more misery, Angus — I am a 
 lassie wh' canna endure it! 
 
 Angus: I dinna want ye to, lass. 
 
 Polly: Then take me wi' ye, Angus, awa' i' the Hie- 
 lands, i' a wee sma' place ca'd Willowmere, i' Surrey. Oh, 
 I'm sae awfu' happy, Angus, sae awfu' happy! 
 
 I give the suggestion gratis, but with one reserva- 
 tion. Whoever accepts it and produces the play 
 must agree not to send me tickets to see it. 
 
ON FIRST-NIGHTERS 
 
 By way of indicating to the majority of our theatri- 
 cal managers that they have only themselves to 
 blame for the spurious circumstances attaching to the 
 metropolitan inaugurations of their new productions 
 — in other words, the studied frigidity and (more 
 often) the senseless and profitless hysteria of their 
 invited first-night audiences and regular guard — I 
 recently persuaded an acquaintance, a learned and 
 intelligent surgeon (incidentally, one of the greatest 
 in the United States), to write to several manage- 
 ments, enclosing his cheques and asking that two seats 
 subsequently be reserved for him for each of the 
 opening performances of the current season. 
 
 In due time the surgeon received replies (return- 
 ing his cheques) stating that " it was impossible to 
 accede to his request because the first-night houses 
 were already made up from their regular first-night 
 lists." It was postscripted that the surgeon might, 
 if he desired, try to buy seats at the box-offices for 
 such opening performances as he would wish to see; 
 it being added that sometimes a few seats were " left 
 over " and put on sale for the benefit of the pubhc 
 at large. 
 
 Now, gentlemen of the jury, what is this New 
 York first-night audience that renders its verdict 
 
 123 
 
ON FIRST-NIGHTERS 123 
 
 for or against a new play? What is the caliber of 
 its intelligence, what the nature of its critical acu- 
 men? The professional reviewers I except from 
 the present catalogue : I have neither space nor in- 
 clination to make an excursion to-day into their tal- 
 ents. But the general audience, what of that? Is it 
 the sort of gathering that is properly constituted to 
 pass on a dramatic production? Is it the sort of con- 
 gregation that is capable of assisting the managers in 
 any tonic way ? Does it help with its applause ? Does 
 it help with its lack of applause? Does it — can 
 it — exercise judgment of any respectable kind (ad- 
 verse appraisal or favorable appraisal) in any man- 
 ner beneficial to these very managers who seduce 
 themselves year by year into the hallucination that 
 it does and can. 
 
 I will not finally say. But, after an attendance 
 upon some seventy-five successive premieres, I may 
 best suggest to the forgetful managers the scholarly 
 aspect of their typical New York first-night audience 
 by citing, in a general, albeit sufficiently illustrative 
 way, the personnel of such an audience as It has, on 
 each of the seventy-five nights in point, assaulted my 
 vision. Here, then, is an approximate register of 
 the representative New York first-night audience : 
 
 38 Actresses out of work. 
 
 31 Actors out of work. 
 
 3 Wine agents. 
 
 8 Song Writers. 
 
 42 Kept Women. 
 
124 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 42 Keepers (chiefly stockbrokers, peaf owlish tradesmen and 
 bogus roues). 
 
 1 Corset manufacturer, 
 
 2 Scene painters. 
 
 14 Members of leading woman's family or friends. 
 10 Members of leading man's family, or friends. 
 50 Friends or members of families of other actors in the 
 company. 
 
 1 Wife of orchestra leader. 
 
 60 " Gentlemen friends " of the chorus girls (if a musical 
 comedy premiere), 
 
 2 Stenographers in producer's office. 
 
 5 Celebrated American plajrwrights. 
 
 4 Programme, billboard, etc., advertising men. 
 2 Ticket Speculators. 
 
 2 Firemen. 
 
 3 Newspaper illustrators. 
 2 Dressmakers. 
 
 2 Milliners. 
 
 1 Wigmaker. 
 
 2 Representatives Orange Costume Company. 
 
 1 Representative Russell Uniform Company. 
 25 Song Pushers (if a musical comedy opening). 
 
 4 Play-brokers. 
 
 3 Other managers. 
 
 2 Theatrical doctors. 
 
 9 Lawyers (if a Belasco premiere). 
 
 1 Hotel manager. 
 
 2 Ex-waiters, now restaurant managers. 
 
 6 Chorus-girls-de-luxe. 
 
 3 Librettists. 
 
 2 Newspaper " society " editors. 
 
ON FIRST-NIGHTERS 125 
 
 4 Vaudeville booking agents. 
 
 8 Members producing manager's staff. 
 
 I Producing manager's valet. 
 
 3 Producing manager's lady-friends. 
 
 3 Manager's friends' friends. 
 
 I Theatrical photographer. 
 
 1 Florist (come to see how his flowers look in the lobby). 
 ;;i Press-agents-at-large. 
 
 3 Producing manager's backers. 
 
 2 Sunday newspaper supplement humorists. 
 2 Restaurant-cabaretists. 
 
 6 Audience-scouts (regulars who attend openings for the 
 purpose of indulging in entr'acte conversation with 
 actresses and other girls present whom they know — 
 or desire to meet). 
 
 There, in the aggregate, is the New York first- 
 night audience! 
 
 Were I a manager or a playwright, I should pre- 
 fer to inaugurate my piece on the second night. 
 
PARLOUS VIEWS FRANgAIS 
 
 The current theatrical taste of a community is to 
 be gauged most accurately not through its dramas 
 but through its music halls. 
 
 Although this mischievous view has never, to my 
 knowledge, been bestowed upon a logically rheu- 
 matic populace, it yet persists as one of those per- 
 fectly veracious and patent statements for which, 
 alas, no proof, no reason, may be assigned in sat- 
 isfying terms of black and white. Like the curious 
 circumstance, for instance, that a lonely far-off whis- 
 tle-wail of some steamship or locomotive invariably 
 accents for us the sentiment of a melody we hear 
 played in the twilight on some neighboring piano. 
 Or the fact that the most beautiful of musical in- 
 struments, the violin, has the ugliest physical aspect. 
 Or the fact that the first impulse that comes to a 
 woman who believes she can write is a longing to get 
 out a book on Lafcadio Hearn. Or the facts that 
 no man can be a philosopher of any order unless he 
 possesses a keen understanding of the subtleties of 
 physiology; that no one ever gets drunk on the 
 intrinsically intoxicating chianti of the Fattoria di 
 Vico d'Arbia; and that every mother's son of you, 
 in reading Well's New Machiavelli, skipped the 
 excellent section dealing with British politics. 
 
 126 
 
PARLOUS VIEWS FRANgAIS 127 
 
 The relationship existing between the Parisian 
 music hall and the composite taste of the boulevards 
 I may describe as a sort of double entente cordiale. 
 This, the true spirit, the true taste of theatrical 
 Paris, at least as it comes to me at the moment. 
 And in my estimate I have not overlooked the 
 Comedie Frangaise, the Gymnase and the sterner 
 domiciles where now and again one may be specta- 
 tor at the dramatization of some other triangle than 
 the familiar one composed of Him, Her and the 
 Bed; nor the Varietes, the Gulgnol and the bolder, 
 more unconventional inns where life is often treated 
 as just one bridal night after another. Your critic 
 who sagely makes assurance that the Frenchman 
 vastly prefers that a spade be called a spade in his 
 playhouse would seem to be somewhat mope-eyed. 
 The fact that here and there in the Gallic theatres 
 a spade is called a spade does not argue that the 
 Frenchman fancies such a designation above every 
 other any more than the fact that a real Frenchman 
 once went into Maxim's argues that Maxim's is a 
 French restaurant. 
 
 Just as the mental picture of Paris that Americans 
 conjure up consists principally of a girl dancing on 
 top of a table at two o'clock in the morning (a sheer 
 delusion and impossibility inasmuch as by two o'clock 
 in the morning that girl is under the table), so does 
 the mental picture of dramatic Paris seem to consist 
 chiefly of a hotel, like the celebrated one in Atlantic 
 City, where, so the word goes, they used to ring a 
 
128 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 bell at seven o'clock every morning to warn the 
 guests that it was time to go back to their own rooms. 
 As a result of this insistent conception, the voyager 
 who visits the majority of Gallic playhouses finds 
 himself sorely perplexed. He observes that, in the 
 greater number of cases, instead of calling a spade 
 a spade, the French stage more often calls a spade 
 " la profession d'un Italien " or something of the 
 sort, which, as he does not understand French, the 
 voyager guesses must mean something about 
 chemises or nightgowns or at least silk stockings. 
 So when he returns to his native soil, the voyager, 
 upon being asked the nature of the plays he saw, 
 winks his eye and smiles one of those condescending 
 Cook's tourist smiles that, translated into Esperanto, 
 signifies : " I'd like to tell you, but really you've 
 gotta understand French to appreciate such things." 
 Translated into plain, everyday American, you may 
 lay your last louis that in nine cases out of ten all 
 the Gaulish enlightenment that is back of the voy- 
 ager smile is an acquaintance with a suggestive post- 
 card purchased in front of the Cafe de la Paix in a: 
 manner that he was ingenuously made to believe was 
 sub rosa. 
 
 I regret that I must take this parlous view of the 
 French theatrical taste. For positive I am that 
 these remarks would achieve the wider favor of my 
 readers were they to take the old conventional 
 American-crltic-abroad tone to the effect that the 
 three Parisian dramatic unities must ever be time. 
 
PARLOUS VIEWS FRANCAIS 129 
 
 place and counterpane. " In every French play a 
 bed occupies the principal position on the stage " is 
 one of the juiciest cuds in the critical mouth, although 
 whenever I run across it I know that its inditer is 
 just the sort of theatrical commentator who, in writ- 
 ing about a musical comedy, will every once in a 
 while say that " the performers seemed to be enjoy- 
 ing themselves in their work, which made the en- 
 tertainment doubly enjoyable to the audience." 
 
 For then he was inspired, and from him came, 
 As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore, 
 Those oracles which set the world in flame, 
 Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more: 
 Did he not this for France, which lay before 
 Bow'd to the inborn tyranny of years? . . . 
 
 Do not misjudge me! I am not hazarding the 
 contention that the French theatrical taste is becom- 
 ing wholly white and virtuous. I insist merely that 
 double entente would appear to be supplanting single 
 entente in popularity, and that instead of the old- 
 fashioned bedstead the taste now runs to something 
 that seems to be a bookcase but that, when pulled 
 down, is really the old bed after all. This double 
 entente, of course, is not always quite so refined, so 
 delicate, as that of La Cruche Cassee, but It is 
 double entente — and that is something. The bed 
 is dead ! Long live the davenport 1 1 
 
ON ZANGWILL 
 
 Mr. Zangwill is at it again. This time it is called 
 Plaster Saints. Zangwill is the William Jennings 
 Bryan of the drama. Let him have a basically 
 sound idea, and in ten minutes he will have contrived 
 to talk that basically sound idea into a basically un- 
 sound idea. The virtuosity of the man in this di- 
 rection is amazing. With Zangwill, every idea is 
 a Lucrece. No idea ever escapes his hands with its 
 virtue still intact. And even may we imagine that 
 an idea might so elude his amorous befuddlement, we 
 still cannot persuade ourselves to believe that the 
 man's apparently unconquerable bad manners would 
 not work as complete havoc with the idea. I am 
 getting very tired of employing the word " plati- 
 tude," but Zangwill is platitude's John Philip Sousa. 
 He waves his baton and an orchestra of platitudes 
 begins to ragtime. Recall The Melting Pot, that 
 Zeppelin of molasses and stupid blasphemy of com- 
 mon sense — with its valid basic idea shot to pieces. 
 Recall The Next Religion and The War God. It 
 has been truly said of Mr. Zangwill that he is an 
 intelligent and enthusiastic public character who, as 
 soon as he enters the theatre, at once achieves the 
 limit of vulgarity and silliness. 
 
 Plaster Saints is a saturnalia of rhetoric which 
 130 
 
ON ZANGWILL 131 
 
 quickly sucks its theme down into oblivion. This 
 theme is of the unreasonable attitude of a world 
 which expects its clergy to be immaculate, sexually 
 negative and yet as understanding of sin as were the 
 lusty Saints Augustine and Francis. The play- 
 wright zangs away at his thesis with such yelling and 
 florid mental gesticulation that the din becomes so 
 deafening the lay auditor believes himself unable to 
 hear Mr. Zangwill think. [The auditor who has 
 been there before, of course appreciates that Mr. 
 Zangwill never thinks, and so merely slides down 
 onto his shoulder blades and permits the volume of 
 sound to thunder him to sleep. In this essay on 
 Noise, Schopenhauer mentions an epistle by the 
 celebrated painter Bronzino, entitled De Romori 
 a Messer Luca Martini, which gives a detailed de- 
 scription of the tortures to which persons are put 
 by the various noises of a small Italian town. The 
 philosopher recommends it, if I remember rightly, 
 as the best argument against noise that he can bring 
 to mind. Schopenhauer died in 1838. Zangwill 
 was born in 1864. 
 
 Zangwill's leading character is a provincial 
 clergyman of Nonconformist denomination who has 
 a baby by his secretary Felicia. The gentleman's 
 wife in due time hears of the scandal, and insists 
 that it is her spouse's duty to divorce her and marry 
 the other woman. Also that It is his duty (a Zang- 
 will play is always full of " duty" of one sort or 
 another) to make a public confession. The end? 
 
132 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Of course, news comes that a " rising young novel- 
 ist " has married Felicia. Whenever a married 
 man ruins a young lady in the drama it is an even 
 break that his perplexity will ultimately be solved 
 through one of these " rising young novelists." 
 Why it should be thus, I do not seem to know ; but 
 on the stage rising young novelists are generally de- 
 picted as Act IV mouthpieces of " Let's say no more 
 about it, dear. What happened, happened a long 
 time ago — before you knew me. I love you. It 
 doesn't matter." In real life, of course, sentimen- 
 tal, which is to say rising, young novelists are 
 very often given to just this sort of thing; therefore 
 we have the right to expect of a plajrwright that he 
 use a little invention. As Shaw said in his address 
 to the students at Oxford, " It is silly to urge that 
 drama should reflect life. Life is not sufficiently 
 dramatic to make drama. If it were, what would 
 be the use of drama? " With Felicia and the baby 
 satisfactorily disposed of, the pastor emerges as 
 " one who, tempered by the winds of sin, will devote 
 himself sympathetically to the uplift of mankind " 
 or something to that usual effect. 
 
 I may or may not have observed that, in a vague 
 way, there might be detected a soupgon of something 
 interesting in the play's theme before Zangwill be- 
 gan fooling with it. In a somewhat relevant way, 
 may I wonder why it is that, in the United States 
 particularly, continence and a professional talent are 
 so widely believed to be impossible of disassocia- 
 
ON ZANGWILL 133 
 
 tion? In other words, why is it that so many na- 
 tive noodles believe that the talented man who 
 dallies with the ladies cannot be really so talented as 
 the untaleated man who does not? 
 
PLAYS THAX SPEAK VOLUMES 
 
 Why do so many dramatized romantic novels fall 
 of success in the theatre ? 
 
 Let us consider. 
 
 It Is Imagination that makes the world go round. 
 
 Imagination creates poets, generals, democrats. 
 Investors in gold mines and appendicitis. It often 
 causes the poor actually to be contented and to im- 
 agine themselves to be quite so good as the rich. 
 It Is the mother of art, the father of patriotism. 
 It Is the charter of the doll-founded toy town of 
 Nuremberg. It Is the architect of the marriage al- 
 tar, and, crafty dog. It has invested millions of dol- 
 lars to huge profit In the manufacture of cradles. 
 Imagination gave birth to a Cleopatra and death 
 to those who conjured up Its mirages of passion 
 when her gilded barge prowed toward them. It 
 grafts rosemary on what Is often really nothing 
 more than an old geranium stalk. It orchestrates 
 music so that music " creates for one a past of which 
 one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of 
 sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears." 
 It discovers the poles; It makes beer Intoxicating. 
 And — It makes novels pay. 
 
 Take imagination from the common people, that 
 is, take from them what small imagination they pos- 
 
 134 
 
PLAYS THAT SPEAK VOLUMES 135 
 
 sess, and Bobbs-Merrill would go into the picture 
 postcard printing business; Robert W. Chambers 
 would have to make his last winter's suit do; Mc- 
 Cutcheon would still be covering fires in Chicago; 
 Bennett would have to buy his own meals when he 
 came to America; and Phillips Oppenheim, with all 
 other capitalizers of the yeoman imagination, would 
 be writing special articles for the trade papers. 
 
 If there is one combination of things above all 
 others that the hardworking thirty-five-dollar-a-week 
 free-holder cherishes, it is to lay hold on a fiction 
 book once the factory whistle has bade him au 'voir 
 until the morrow — It is to deposit himself In his 
 favorite armchair, and, this done, to look into that 
 book and Imagine himself in the place of the stal- 
 wart former Yale right half-back, now become com- 
 mander-in-chief of the army of the beautiful BuUkon 
 princess with no less a personage than the beautiful 
 princess herself bringing him his grapefruit in the 
 mornings. He loves to imagine himself in Clay's 
 place, leaning over the rail of the coast steamer with 
 the gorgeous Hope Langham's soft brown wind- 
 blown hair tickling his nose, and he loves to hear 
 himself say to her: "There to the north Is Paris, 
 with London only eight hours away. If you look 
 very closely you can see the thousands of hansom 
 cab lamps flashing across the asphalt, and the open 
 theatres, and the fairy lamps in the gardens back of 
 the houses in Mayfair, where they are giving dances 
 In your honor. In honor of the beautiful Araerlcan 
 
136 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 bride, et cetera." He loves to imagine himself the 
 " clean, straight-limbed " Rassendyll, standing in the 
 presence of the sun-bathed towers of Zenda with the 
 music of Ruritania ringing in his ears and with the 
 violet eyes of Flavia melting in his own. He loves 
 for the nonce to forget that he has a calldown com- 
 ing to him unless he gets to the office at half past 
 eight every morning, to forget that little Henry has 
 the measles, that the cook is going to leave on Sat- 
 urday, that his wife has a red nose and dirty finger- 
 nails. He opens his Tabard Inn literature and pro- 
 jects himself into another and lovelier world. It is 
 he, not Androvsky, who goes forth with the hand- 
 some Domini to seek " freedom, a wide horizon, the 
 great winds, the great sun, the terrible spaces, the 
 glowing, shimmering radiance, the hot, entrancing 
 noons and bloomy, purple nights of Africa." 
 
 And when he happens to be a she, it is the same. 
 She, too, loves to forget that, unless she gets to her 
 manicure table to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, 
 the head barber will give her a black look. She 
 loves to forget that she has to eat roast-beef hash 
 four times a week and egg sandwiches the other three 
 instead of dallying carelessly over narcissus salad on 
 a Sevres plate with lotus blossom tea in a Cloisonne 
 cup on the side. For two reading hours she imag- 
 ines herself to be Clorinda Wildairs, Peg Woffing- 
 ton, Glory Quayle, Lygia, some vague, wondrous, 
 beauteous, fascinating heroine — and then — and 
 then he and she go to the theatre. 
 
PLAYS THAT SPEAK VOLUMES 137 
 
 With the rise of the curtain, their dreams are 
 shattered. Another man than himself is in Clay's 
 boots ; another woman than herself stands beside him 
 straining over the ship's rail to see " the harbor 
 lights of Bizerta and the terraces of Algiers shining 
 like a cafe chantant in the night." And the man 
 doesn't look like Clay at all! Imagination hid the 
 bald spot that now also shines like a cafe chantant 
 in the night on the actor's dome. Imagination did 
 not take into account the lusty gold tooth that flashes 
 like Scotland Light whenever the actor opens his 
 mouth to speak. Imagination certainly did not pic- 
 ture Miss Langham to be the dumpy brunette with 
 false puffs and a squint eye that the stage now re- 
 veals her to be. And here, my friends, you have 
 it — you have the chief reason why such book fiction 
 cannot, save in rare and isolated instances, be trans- 
 ferred favorably into the house of Thespis ! Im- 
 agination is the forbidding censor. And nature is 
 the censor's sister. I can think of two, maybe three, 
 players who, correctly assigned, may look and in- 
 deed have looked the Gibsoned roles of best-seller- 
 dom on the boards, but I can think of no more. 
 And correlatively I can think of only two, maybe 
 three dramatized romantic novels that in all these 
 many years have been satisfactory by this token to 
 my eyes and ears. 
 
ON J. K. JEROME 
 
 Every once in so often some playwriter addresses 
 himself to achieve again the spirit and romance of 
 Meyer-Forster's Alt Heidelberg, and every once in 
 so often the tilter comes unhorsed from the tourney. 
 The latest gentleman to be unseated is Mr. Jerome 
 K. Jerome, whose play, The Great Gamble, met the 
 eye at the Haymarket in London. Imagine Brown 
 of Harvard written by J. M. Barrie and Henry Ar- 
 thur Jones in collaboration, and then imagine a 
 criticism of such a play written by Brander Mat- 
 thews for the theatrical department of one of our 
 popular upHft magazines, and you will have, in your 
 conception of the criticism, an electrically accurate 
 idea of Mr. Jerome's play. It is an odd circum- 
 stance that most writers for the theatre who essay 
 to translate into drama the reminiscent spirit of 
 youth and youth's bygone loves and dreams in a uni- 
 versity atmosphere think entirely to accomplish their 
 end with student songs at periodic intervals off left, 
 with more or less jocose allusions on the part of the 
 returned oldsters to one another's bald spots, in- 
 creasing avoirdupois and rheumatism, and with sen- 
 timental reflections bearing upon " you remember, 
 the one with the golden hair and blue eyes; Kathie 
 : — wasn't that her name? " . , . " Ah, yes, ah, yes, 
 
 138 
 
ON J. K. JEROME 139 
 
 I remember. Poor dear little Kathie, I wonder 
 what has become of her? {sadly) But such Is 
 life ; such — Is — life ! " 
 
 What Is Jerome's trouble? When not writing 
 for the stage, as spontaneously comic and clear-eyed 
 a fellow as one might meet at the round table ; when 
 writing for the stage, a clergyman of the pearly tear, 
 a packer of lard, a Charles Rann Kennedy with one 
 foot on the brass rail. What a pity. Jerome has 
 In him wit and humor; he can toy aptly and adroitly 
 with the King's English; and both imagination and 
 fancy are In some measure his portion. Has the 
 stage (Lorelei of so many modern talented writers) 
 wrecked him on its miraged rocks of royalties? 
 
 Even when Jerome fails, however, he does not fail 
 entirely. Thus, for example, the first five and last 
 five minutes of The Great Gamble possess consider- 
 able charm. The scene, an ancient grove at dawn 
 In the purlieus of Heidelberg, deserted, still. 
 Through the trees and shrubbery which half conceal 
 a marble statue of Venus, one hears, very faintly — 
 almost doesn't hear — a soft piping of some once 
 familiar but somehow now forgotten melody. The 
 song of love. Young Robin, returning to Heidel- 
 berg, hears it as again he meets the pretty little Elsa, 
 his sweetheart of university years ago — and the 
 pretty little Elsa hears It too. Then comes a time 
 of misunderstanding, of unhapplness, of separation 
 — and the melody dies away. Moonlight even- 
 tually silvers the grove, and the dejected young fel- 
 
I40 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 low makes to leave behind him forever Heidelberg 
 and its days of dear youth and Elsa. With him, 
 ready to go back to their drabber lives in the world 
 beyond the grove, are several students of other 
 times, now grown gray and old. 
 
 Suddenly the pipes are heard again, faintly whis- 
 pering among the leaves. Robin steps back from 
 the departing group and listens. " Hurry," calls 
 one of the old fellows to him. " Hurry ! " But 
 Robin stands still. "Do you hear?" he asks. 
 "Hear?" grumbles the ancient; "Hear what?" 
 And then — to his old cronies : " Do you hear any- 
 thing?" No, they hear nothing. And they pre- 
 pare to take the strangely acting youngster by the 
 arm and lead him with them. When — " Leave 
 him," says the old Colonel tenderly; "he hears it 
 just as we used to hear it when we were his age. 
 We can't hear it any more, we old boys, but it's sing- 
 ing there among the trees just the same as always." 
 And presently the curtain falls. Thus, too, for ex- 
 ample, a trace of the old Jerome wit in the retort of 
 a cross-examined man who has run away for an 
 absurd platonic junket on the Continent with his best 
 friend's wife, to the question as to whether they had, 
 at the various hotels at which they had stopped, 
 taken separate rooms : " Yes, where it didn't excite 
 vulgar comment." 
 
 Let Jerome write what tiresome plays he will (ten 
 minutes of charm and one gay joke do not constitute 
 an engaging two and one-half hours), yet there re- 
 
ON J. K. JEROME 141 
 
 mains still about his work one encouraging and win* 
 ning quality. Let him, as in The Great Gamble 
 (the " great gamble " is marriage, according to this 
 vicious anti-platitudinarian ! ) , give us a mother with 
 a "past" (a Wilson Barrett kind of past, with re- 
 pentance that closes its eyes, shudders and grasps at 
 tables, as one of the British boo-bund has phrased 
 it) , and such like persistent and undismayed rubbish, 
 and still there remains something soothing about his 
 labors. I speak of the man's admirably cool snob- 
 bery in the matter of tried and true — and so 
 often correspondingly tedious — dramatic technique. 
 Jerome writes his plays with all the spontaneous 
 bounce of the fresh-minded, clean-eared, progressive 
 amateur. They have that most excellent and vivid 
 form which the professors name formlessness. 
 They are alive with the unreasonable, irrational 
 movement of life. In them, nothing of that pre- 
 cisely elegant, elaborately exact (and now so futile, 
 so ridiculous) minuet movement clung to by the poor 
 little Bernsteins and Michael Mortons of the the- 
 atre. Too bad Jerome has not ideas to put into his 
 pleasurable lack of technique. In general, give me 
 a so-called technically unpolished, amateurishly built 
 play like Chesterton's Magic, or give me a fresh, 
 new playwriter like Robert Elson with the idea he 
 brought out in a so-called technically amateurish 
 manner in his Account Rendered, or give me a man 
 with fun and notions like Karl Ettlinger, technique or 
 no technique, and a hundred de Crolssets are yours. 
 
ON VAUDEVILLE 
 
 vaudeville (vo-duh-vil) n. [Ger- 
 man. Wo (where) + der (is the) 
 + Will (sense)?] — The science 
 of getting money for remarking: 
 "Are you a Democrat?" "No, 
 I'm a Baptist." 
 
 It has been said that all men may be divided into 
 two classes: Those who like vaudeville and those 
 who can stand it when they're drunk. It has also 
 been said that any one can succeed in vaudeville, 
 granted he will memorize two things : ( i ) Have- 
 you - been-traveling-yes-I-came-clean-from-Pittsburgh- 
 nobody-ever-comes-clean- from- Pittsburgh ; and ( 2 ) 
 What - are - those - two - red-and-green-lights-about-a- 
 mile-off-starboard-it-must-be-a-drug-store. The late 
 Mr. Frederick Wyckoff, one practiced in the field 
 whereof he spoke, was wont to contend that success 
 in vaudeville is to be achieved even more easily than 
 this, that it involves a certain amount of memory, of 
 retentive power, not to forget these two somewhat 
 elaborate jokes. All one has to do to be a big win- 
 ner in vaudeville, observed this authority, is : ( i ) 
 To have the drummer put in an extra beat with the 
 cymbals, and then glare at him; and, (2) To use an 
 expression which ends with the query, " Did he 
 not? " And then reply, " He did not." 
 
 142 
 
ON VAUDEVILLE 143 
 
 Forty years ago, in my childhood days, I worked 
 out a guide to vaudeville success which would seem 
 to be as accurate to-day as it was then. In this guide 
 a roar of laughter on the part of vaudeville au- 
 diences was guaranteed on each of the following 
 occasions : 
 
 I. When a comedian takes hold of his coat-tail, walks with 
 a mincing step, and speaks in a falsetto voice. 
 
 2. When a German comedian casually opens his coat and 
 discloses a green vest. 
 
 3. When a comedy acrobat falls down repeatedly. 
 
 4. When a performer asks the orchestra leader if he's mar- 
 
 ried. 
 
 5. When a performer starts to sit down and the drummer 
 
 pulls a resined piece of cord and the performer pre- 
 tends to think his trousers have ripped. 
 
 6. When a tramp comedian turns around and discloses a 
 
 purple patch or some pearl buttons or a target sewed 
 on the seat of pants. 
 
 7. When a juggler doing a trick remarks in the third per- 
 
 son: " Isn't he clever! " 
 
 8. When one member of a conversational team, speaking 
 
 vehemently to the other, accompanies his words with a 
 salivary spray, whereupon his partner observes: " It's 
 raining! " 
 
 9. When one German comedian strokes the other's chin 
 
 w^hiskers and jocosely refers to the latter as " spinach." 
 
 10. When the comedian member of a troupe of instrumen- 
 
 talists interrupts one of the melodies being rendered 
 by sounding a sour note on his trombone. 
 
 11. When the bass member of a quartet sings a very low 
 
144 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 note and the other three members stop singing and 
 look at him in feigned surprise and awe. 
 12. When the clown of a team of acrobats poises himself to 
 do a presumably difficult feat, and then, suddenly 
 changing his mind, walks away without doing it. 
 
 Thus, too, applause was and still is always to be 
 won in vaudeville by throwing the pictures of Wash- 
 ington, Lincoln, and the current chief executive on 
 the screen just before the moving pictures. Also 
 with the picture of any prizefighter save Mr. Jack 
 Johnson. Applause similarly was and still is sure 
 to follow a laudatory reference to the local baseball 
 team, the bow of an acrobat after he has done his 
 trick, a scenic effect showing the Mississippi River 
 by moonlight with darkies singing softly in the dis- 
 tance, the playing of The Wearing of the Green, 
 Dixie, and The Star Spangled Banner, and a deroga- 
 tory allusion to the police force. 
 
 All imitators, if they would succeed, must give imi- 
 tations of George Cohan, Eddie Foy, Irene Frank- 
 lin, Jack Norworth, David Warfield and Ethel 
 Barrymore, and must conclude demurely with " an 
 imitation of an imitation of myself." Briefly, " ad- 
 vanced " vaudeville has advanced only in prices. 
 The clog dance has not been lost in the shuffle; the 
 drop-curtain showing an empty street has not been 
 peopled by the scene painter; the xylophone players 
 still conclude their act with the same old medley of 
 patriotic airs; the grand-children of a hundred differ- 
 ent " world's champion acrobatic marvels " are still 
 
ON VAUDEVILLE 145 
 
 on the bill under the same old caption ; the same old 
 sidewalk comedian still periodically swats his same 
 old humble companion in the same old face with the 
 same old newspaper; the same old hobo monologist 
 still strikes the same old match on his same old whis- 
 kers ; the same old comedian still thinks his same old 
 dressy " educated " partner is calling him a name 
 when the dressy " educated " one uses a big word 
 in his conversation. 
 
 In the secret ritual of vaudeville success there 
 are something like thirty or more standard rubber- 
 stamp jokes that are guaranteed always to be posi- 
 tive in their laughing effect upon a vaudeville 
 audience. These jokes are priceless in helping a 
 performer make a hit. Among the jokes are the 
 following (every joke being familiarly known by its 
 assigned name) : 
 
 THE " DILL PICKLE " JOKE 
 
 A. I've got a dill pickle compass. 
 
 B. What's a dill pickle compass? 
 
 A. A dill pickle compass tells which way the dill pickle is 
 going to squirt. 
 
 THE " INCOME " JOKE 
 
 A. What is your husband's usual income? 
 
 B. About three A. M. 
 
 THE " SATURDAY BATH " JOKE 
 
 A. My father's a great man. He was made Knight of the 
 
 Bath the last time he was in England. Do you know 
 what the Knight of the Bath is? 
 
 B. Sure; Saturday night. 
 
146 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 THE " MIGHT BE " JOKE 
 
 A. And who, pray, might you be, miss? 
 
 B. I might be Lillian Russell, but I ain't. 
 
 THE " SISTER LENA " JOKE 
 
 A. Your sister Mary is quite stout, ain't she? 
 
 B. Yes, but I got a sister Lena. 
 
 THE " DYED HAIR " JOKE 
 
 A. Is she a blonde ? 
 
 B. She was. 
 
 These samples will serve to illustrate the general 
 quality. As effective laugh-getters in vaudeville 
 they are equaled only by what may be termed " in- 
 sult acts," that is, acts in which one performer insults 
 his partner, and vice versa. The spectacle of one 
 performer insulting another is logically certain to 
 " get over." The nature of such acts I may briefly 
 convey to my clients as follows : 
 
 A. Not so loud there with them drums while I'm singing! 
 
 B. Them are new drums and I got to try 'em out on some- 
 
 body! You can't sing anyway. 
 
 A. If I couldn't drum no better'n you I'd run for the river. 
 
 B. If I couldn't sing no better'n you I'd jump in ! 
 
 A. Huh! You look like a common waiter to me! 
 
 B. You eat at common joints then, eh? 
 
 Generally speaking, these things, however vocifer- 
 ous the contradictions, are the big notes in the " get- 
 ting over " of a vaudeville act. There are, how- 
 ever, several other lesser notes that, when used, in- 
 
ON VAUDEVILLE 147 
 
 variably return their employers winners with the 
 devotees of the two-a-day. Thus, a medley of songs 
 of a generation ago, Comrades, Sweet Rosie 
 O'Grady, Daisy, Pals, etc., is known in the argot 
 of vaudeville as " sure-fire." The rendition of 
 Annie Laurie on a harp under a colored spot-light 
 is certain to provoke loud applause. A so-called 
 " comedy-entrance," in which a male performer sings 
 off stage in Italian, creates the impression that his act 
 is an " operatic " specialty, and then comes on as a 
 sloppy " coon," is similarly sure always to inspire 
 roars of laughter. An act wherein a comedian en- 
 gages in a quarrel and a fight with an imaginary per- 
 son never fails. A " finish," wherein the drop 
 curtain is raised, revealing a special drop In the rear 
 showing a battle scene, the performers meanwhile 
 singing or playing The Star Spangled Banner, can 
 not possibly fail. A singer " planted " in a box or 
 in the gallery to take up the chorus of a song sung 
 from the stage is an old, and consequently still good, 
 trick. So, too. Is the singing on a darkened stage 
 of The Rosary to the accompaniment of a small 
 organ " off," with an incandescent cross displayed on 
 the back-drop. So, also. Is the singing of a grand 
 opera melody In rag-time. So, again, is a facetious 
 reference to the preceding " act." 
 
 What's the use of working? Let's all go Into 
 vaudeville. . . . I'll supply the pair of white kid 
 topped patent-leather shoes! 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 
 
 The metropolitan theatre during the Spring of 
 191 5 was abandoned almost in its entirety to revivals 
 — some of them intentional. 
 Thus: 
 
 1. At the Garrick, Arnold Daly revived Shaw's 
 You Never Can Tell. 
 
 2. At the Shubert, they revived Paul Potter's 
 dramatization of Du Maurier's Trilby. 
 
 3. At the Empire, they revived d'Ennery and 
 Cormon's old Union Square Theatre success, A Cele- 
 brated Case. 
 
 4. At the Forty-eighth Street, Emanuel Reicher 
 revived Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman. 
 
 5. At the Lyceum, Margaret Anglin revived The 
 Marriage of Kitty, Nearly Married, and other well 
 known comedies under the title of Beverly's Balance, 
 supplied by Paul Kester. 
 
 6. At the Booth, Louis Mann revived the play 
 about the lovable old man who Is swindled out of his 
 savings by a smooth rascal and whose dreams of 
 great wealth are sadly Interrupted, under the title 
 of The Bubble, supplied by Edward Locke. 
 
 7. At the Maxine Elliott, they revived The 
 Lure, A Man's World, To-day and East Lynne un- 
 der the title of The Revolt, also supplied by Edward 
 Locke. 
 
 148 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 149 
 
 8. At the Republic, they revived What is Love? 
 and Maternity under the title of The Natural Law, 
 supplied by Charles Sumner. 
 
 9. At the Bramhall, they revived The Three 
 Daughters of M. Dupont, The Awakening of Spring 
 and Clyde Fitch's The Climbers under the title of 
 The Importance of Coming and Going, supplied by 
 Butler Davenport. 
 
 Let us review first the last named revival. Mr. 
 Davenport, in his new and extremely intimate 
 theatre which possesses a seating capacity of but two 
 hundred and twenty, seemed splendidly to have 
 solved the theatrical problem of bringing his au- 
 dience near the stage. But, so much accomplished, 
 it would seem still to remain for Mr. Davenport to 
 solve the somewhat more troublesome problem of 
 bringing his audience near the theatre. 
 
 Mr. Davenport, who once on a time wrote a play 
 of some promise — Keeping Up Appearances, its 
 name — presents a case so typical of the American 
 playwright that he may forgive me for employing 
 him, for clinical purposes, as a convenient horrible 
 example. In the first place, this gentleman is over- 
 given in his work, as are so many of his native col- 
 leagues, to the epigram. A salty epigrammatic 
 form of expression, in which this gentleman is no 
 more talented than are the majority of his contem- 
 poraries, is, as I have frequently endeavored to in- 
 dicate, so perfectly simple and so common of execu- 
 tion that it has long since ceased in the drama to be 
 
ISO ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 effective. It is not that epigrams died with Oscar 
 Wilde, but that epigrams were born with Oscar 
 Wilde, that argues for their diminished and dimin- 
 ishing kick in the theatre. To be apt at epigram is 
 merely to be skillfully dull. And nothing is quite 
 so tedious as the superficial cleverness which springs 
 from such tongue gymnastics, the sort of cleverness 
 which is achieved, very easily, simply by saying the 
 wrong thing at the right time. 
 
 A second point. Mr. Davenport intimates by 
 this play of his that he believes Brieux to be the 
 greatest dramatist west of Russia. Thus making 
 the third party to agree with Shaw — and Brieux. 
 Worse still — IVIr. Davenport, in his mad adoration 
 of the French exclamation mark, has copied that 
 dramatist's method without copying his methodol- 
 ogy. In other words, he has followed Brieux's 
 system of yelling, but, unlike Brieux, he has neg- 
 lected to take the precaution first to get hold of 
 something to yell about. 
 
 A third point. Like many of his indigenous mess- 
 mates in dramaturgy, Mr. Davenport would appear 
 to imagine that all that is necessary to achieve a sen- 
 sational play is to rewrite into contemporaneous 
 American surroundings some thesis play written by 
 a Continental dramatist more than a dozen years 
 ago. Though, true enough, this is the best way 
 to impress our audiences and gain a fine reputation 
 as an original dramatic thinker, Mr. Davenport has 
 committed the failure-spelling error of attempting 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 151 
 
 to insert into the theories he has cabbaged from 
 Wedekind, Thoma and Brieux some theories of his 
 own and thus divulges himself in the light of a 
 Raffles prowling stealthily, noiselessly, hither and 
 thither in the dark, searching out jewels with a flash- 
 lantern, and the meanwhile lustily singing ragtime. 
 For instance, instead of being content to win native 
 kudos by following the established custom of recit- 
 ing the cabbaged foreign authors' verbatim and so, 
 accurately, — in this immediate instance Thoma and 
 Wedekind (see box office receipts Cosmo Hamil- 
 ton's Blindness of Virtue) — Mr. Davenport has 
 imagined that he might improve upon these Con- 
 tinentals by slipping in, as they say in the newspapers, 
 some of his own stuff. The result is, naturally, 
 grotesque. And the ideas of the Continentals are 
 made to appear red-nosed and absurd. 
 
 Thus, parodying the author of The Awakening 
 of Spring, Mr. Davenport seeks to improve upon 
 the Wedekind argument for the sex information of 
 children by their parents by suggesting that the best 
 person to safeguard with words the sex morals of a 
 little girl of ten Is a mother whose social commer- 
 cialization of her own sex values constantly casts 
 its glamour of romantic prosperity before her child's 
 eyes. Thus, parodying Brieux, Mr. Davenport 
 argues that a child born of a second act Three 
 Daughters climax will unquestionably be a mon- 
 strosity. And so the Davenport wisdom proceeds. 
 
 The best and only artistically conceived' scene in 
 
152 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATEE 
 
 the Davenport play, a scene in which a young girl's 
 hereditary viciousness is projected now by a twitch 
 of her little shoulder, now by a quick nervous whis- 
 per, now by commenting with unconscious signifi- 
 cance on the fragrance of a man's hair tonic, was 
 vigorously denounced by my tender critical col- 
 leagues as the worst. To argue that a scene is not 
 well done because it is disgusting is to consign a 
 great deal of Gorki's Night Refuge, of Tolstoi's 
 Resurrection, of Shaw's Mrs. Warren, of Porto- 
 Riche and of the Bible to the sewers of art, letters, 
 philosophy and imagination. 
 
 A Celebrated Case was not only a revival of A 
 Celebrated Case, but also — being presented with an 
 all-star cast — a revival of bad acting. The play 
 itself was in its original presentation in the late sev- 
 enties one of the now familiar specimens of thrill 
 melodrama in which " I'll always believe ye inno- 
 cent," "I don't like the looks of that man," my-long- 
 lost-daughter and purses of louis figured conspic- 
 uously. The play in its latest manifestation was a 
 thrill melodrama, the most conspicuous thrill of 
 which was experienced by the audience in watching 
 the all-star hero, the all-star heroine, the all-star 
 villain, the all-star comedy relief character and all 
 the other all-stars fight to the death with one another 
 to determine which one could get and hold for the 
 longest period of time the center of the stage. . . . 
 All being successful. 
 
 Aside from this Ibsen-like conflict of wills, the 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 153 
 
 play was interesting in providing the dramatic critics 
 an opportunity to remark how greatly the drama has 
 changed in the last three decades and in providing 
 all other persons an opportunity to observe how little 
 it actually has changed. Since A Celebrated Case 
 was first produced, the automobile, the submarine, 
 the wireless, the aeroplane and countless such won- 
 derful things have been given the world; but in the 
 drama the butler is still going out of the room back- 
 wards, the faithful old servant's eye is still invaded 
 by a tear when his master finds himself in dire 
 straits, the guilty are still being found out in the end 
 and the innocent vindicated, the bashful young lover 
 still nervously holds the bunch of flowers behind his 
 back, the drama's jewelry still knows no other form 
 than that of a necklace, little Willie is still reuniting 
 papa and mamma, husbands are still returning unex- 
 pectedly, the wrong person is still always being sus- 
 pected and accused of the murder, old darkey 
 servants are still hobbling around with one hand on 
 their kidneys, characters due on the scene at a cer- 
 tain time are still always found ringing the doorbell 
 following the remark: "He ought to be here any 
 minute," and this remark is still always found to be 
 followed with, " Ah, that must be he now," the 
 abused orphan is still winning the desirable male 
 from under the nose of her haughty rival, husbands 
 still fail to recognize their wives at masquerade balls, 
 the lady playing the piano in a drama still breaks 
 down in the midst of the playing and buries her face 
 
154 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 in her arms, the lady standing beside the baby-grand 
 and singing a song in a dramatic scene still suddenly 
 breaks down and can not continue, and the stock mar- 
 ket still always goes the wrong way at the end of 
 second acts. 
 
 And, in a general way, melodrama is still based 
 upon the theory that the greatest crisis in one's life 
 always occurs near railroad tracks. 
 
 The revival of John Gabriel Borkman, simulta- 
 neously revived a familiar and vacant tradition of 
 the Ibsen theatre; to wit, that Ibsen must always be 
 played on a darkened stage. The advantages that 
 would accrue from playing, for instance, George 
 Broadhurst on a darkened stage become of course 
 at once apparent; but the reason for the practice 
 of bringing all possible indistinctness to the trafSc 
 of an Ibsen drama I am unable to plumb. Bork- 
 man should," for its best effect, have its progress — 
 save patently in the case of its last act — upon a well- 
 illuminated platform. The dark-stage idea has 
 done as much to instil the fear of Ibsen in the prole- 
 tarian heart as Mr. William Archer's prefaces. 
 
 It is the American critical habit, whenever an 
 Ibsen play is presented, deftly to conceal a lack of 
 critical understanding and opinion of the Ibsen play 
 in question by confining the entire attention to the 
 criticizing of the actors. This seems to be as in- 
 variable a custom as the custom of American play- 
 wrights to believe that all the great crises of life 
 take place standing up: that one cannot experience 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 155 
 
 a critical situation while seated. In an effort meas- 
 urably to correct this habit, Mr. Reicher provided 
 each of the reviewers with a critique of the play in 
 the form of a small printed pamphlet. It is to 
 some of the reviewers' credit that they broke away 
 from the critical habit sufficiently to copy off this 
 critique into their papers, even though, true, they 
 omitted quotation marks and failed to observe that 
 Mr. Reicher's critique was, for the major part, full 
 of holes. For instance, sings Mr. Reicher: "In 
 this apparently simple but thrilling drama five dif- 
 ferent theories of life are opposed to each other. 
 The altruism, the illusion of making everybody 
 happy. In Borkman; the right of love in Ella; the 
 law of honor in Gunhild; the love of pleasure and 
 amusement in, Mrs. Wilton, and the right of all- 
 overthrowing youth In Erhard. Every representa- 
 tive of these five theories believes himself right and, 
 by acting accordingly, destroys the happiness of the 
 others as well as his own; while, on the other hand, 
 the poor, abused poet, Foldal, is in his retirement 
 from life the only really happy person In the play." 
 With all due respect for Mr. Reicher, pooh-pooh! 
 The fairly good performance he gives In the role of 
 Borkman is added proof that it is not necessary for 
 an actor to know the meaning of his lines and the 
 relation of the other lines to them in order to give 
 an impressive portrayal: that acting, in short, has 
 infinitely less to do with art and a capacity for dra- 
 matic analysis and understanding in general than it 
 
156 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 has with a presentable appearance, a tone-full speak- 
 ing voice, a good wig-maker and a nicely creased 
 pair of trousers. As Mr. Reicher views the drama 
 in which he acts, Mrs. Wilton and Erhard destroy 
 each other's happiness and Foldal is the merry soul 
 of the congregation. Well, well, let us not be too 
 hard on the honorable gentleman. His critical 
 pamphlet, at that, is no worse than Herr Barker's 
 " preface " to Shakespeare's Dream. 
 
 In the two plays of Mr. Edward Locke, The Re- 
 volt, and The Bubble, we saw a revival, among 
 other things, of the estranged couple who are 
 brought to a reconciliation at the bedside of their 
 dying child, the daughter of joy who becomes ocu- 
 larly moist when " home " is mentioned, the idea 
 that a lady can get drunk on a single cocktail, the 
 ancient jabber over the double standard of sex, 
 the joke concerning the great number of smart men 
 who have come from a certain small town, with the 
 observation that the smarter they are the quicker 
 they've come, jocose allusions to the Ford automo- 
 bile, the young lovers who are compelled to meet 
 clandestinely in order to slip the eye of the girl's 
 irate male parent, the male parent's uncompromising 
 hostility toward the young man, and then, in the 
 last act, when the young man has proved his worth, 
 the male parent's remark, " I told you all along he 
 was a fine fellow ! ", the use of the names of queer 
 German food dishes to provoke laughter, and the 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 157 
 
 lady who, when her heart is breaking with a great 
 sorrow, bravely affects an air of gayety. 
 
 The first of these revivals. The Revolt, followed 
 in execution the method practiced by magazine edi- 
 tors who purchase some such fable as The Common 
 Law or The Salamander, print it serially and bring 
 their reader suddenly up against the legend " con- 
 tinued in the next number " just as the spotless hero- 
 ine is on the highly exciting point of surrendering 
 her virtue to the main gentleman. The impatient 
 reader, of course, invariably discovering at the be- 
 ginning of the next fifteen-cent dose that the only 
 thing the spotless heroine surrenders is the cele- 
 brated remark that " there can be no love where 
 there is no respect." So, when the curtain de- 
 scended upon the first act of this play, we heard 
 Mrs. Stephens making speech to the effect that " if 
 it is right for man to soandso, then why shouldn't 
 it be right for woman to soandso?", and we saw 
 the lady grab her hat and wrap and slam her way 
 out of the house, ready to join a gay party in a lady 
 friend's flat. Obviously, what followed is what al- 
 ways follows in the next installments of such fictions, 
 to-wit, nothing. 
 
 The Bubble, as remarked, looked back to the 
 school whose pupils are 
 
 I. The irascible but kindly old fellow in lowly 
 surroundings who, after years of hard work, has 
 saved up a few thousand dollars. 
 
158 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 2. The plausible villain who seeks to swindle him, 
 the while professing warm friendship. 
 
 3. The dream of wealth, with visions of a life 
 of ease in a select kiosk. 
 
 4. The plain, simple, loving, old-fashioned wife 
 whose heart aches at the thought of leaving the hum- 
 ble home where her children were born. 
 
 5. The discovery that the gold mine was a fraud. 
 
 6. The grief-stricken old fellow and the patient 
 wife who essays to soothe and comfort him with 
 the remark, " Now, now, it isn't so bad as it might 
 be. We've always been very comfortable and 
 happy here, Gustav, and we can get along some 
 way. So long as we have each other and our 
 Rosie . . ." 
 
 7. The sapient young lover of the daughter who 
 has been suspicious of the villain from the start and 
 who has taken the secret precaution to cover up his 
 sweetheart's father's losses; 
 
 and 
 
 8. The usual eleven o'clock coca-coda. 
 
 The dramatic records are full of this play. It 
 bears the same relation to the legitimate stage that 
 the sketch in which a burglar enters a lady's dark 
 boudoir bears to the vaudeville stage and that the 
 name Orloff bears to Russian characters in dramas, 
 stories, sketches and musical comedies written by 
 Americans. It is, in its way, very nearly as omni- 
 present as Cinderella, Divorgons, Tosca and The 
 Relief of Lucknow. 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE 159 
 
 The Natural Law was, I have pointed out, the 
 title of a revival of the wise, magnanimous, under- 
 standing doctor character who speaks in the tempo 
 of a home-and-mother ballad, the Manchester kind- 
 ergarten of the David Graham Phillips school of 
 heroine who is impure but honest, the notion that 
 all college men wear sweaters and turned-up trou- 
 sers, talk slang and are habitually Impertinent, and 
 the stereotyped spent Brieux fireworks. The tale 
 was of a sweet minx who, engaged to marry a physi- 
 cian considerably older than herself, succumbs to 
 the charms of a younger man, comes near a baby 
 and seeks then to persuade her technical fiance, the 
 ancient medico, to assist her in holding her social 
 position. The proposal horrifies the old gentleman, 
 who seizes upon the opportunity to get smutty with 
 the audience under the subtle pretext of preaching 
 scientific obstetrical facts to the girl. In the end, 
 however, so I was assured by one of the ushers, 
 everything turns out respectably. The girl marries 
 the young fellow, the doctor shakes the latter's hand 
 in the conventional silent forgiveness, and the baby 
 is cruelly destined to live and become a playwright. 
 
 Beverly's Balance, though also a revival of fa- 
 miliar episodes and situations, as well as a revival 
 of the character of the hot-headed young So'th'nuh 
 who resents any foamilyaity (however eminently 
 proper) toward his women folk, of the married 
 couple who have been brought to the verge of 
 separation by the woman's predilection for society's 
 
i6o ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 gayeties and the man's longing for quiet evenings at 
 home, of Murphy the comic janitor, and of the 
 overly timid lover who is finally forced into a pro- 
 posal of marriage by the exasperated leading 
 woman, was in spots conceived with grace and a feel- 
 ing for comedy values. Mr. Kester labors suspi- 
 ciously under a burden of seemingly incurable 
 sentimentality, however, and this contrives to work 
 him ill in much of his writing. In Mr. Kester's 
 play every male is a hero, every female a heroine. 
 The air is insistently heavy with music. One can 
 almost hear the noble hearts beating. One longs 
 for just a dash of human frailty, of distemper, of 
 dirty work. One pines, as on a desert Island, to 
 sight the passing sail of a hell or a damn, to dis- 
 cover the footprints of an intercepted letter or a 
 thrown railroad switch or even a forged will. 
 
 Still another revival was observable under the 
 title of The Hyphen, supplied by the late Justus 
 Miles Forman. We found here, in the main, a 
 phoenix of The White Feather and other such plays 
 inspired by the European unpleasantness. All war 
 plays may be divided into two classes : those in which 
 a lady has been, or is about to be, seduced by an 
 officer of the invading army, and those in which a 
 foxy spy braves great perils and the love of the lead- 
 ing lady in the service of his country. The play 
 under consideration dropped broadly into the second 
 category. 
 
 Mr. Forman, in his piece, revived, among other 
 
NOW TO REVIVE THE AUDIENCE i6i 
 
 things, the beloved blue-print showing the usual 
 plans and contained, in accordance with tradition, in 
 the usual blue envelope, the safe hidden in the wall 
 behind the usual painting, the " Won't you say some- 
 thing?" on the part of the trust-shaken hero when 
 the accused heroine remains silent, the playing of 
 " The Star Spangled Banner," the sudden switching 
 out of the lights and the pulling forth of an eaves- 
 dropper from behind the portieres, the bomb timed 
 to explode at a certain moment but duly baffled in 
 its intention, the dangerous papers that should have 
 been burned but carelessly were not, the sudden en- 
 trance of a character while the young sweethearts 
 are in the midst of a love scene, with the character's 
 little cough to warn the lovers of his presence, the 
 subterfuge of slamming a door in order to make a 
 listener outside the room believe the person has left 
 the scene, the smashing of a pane of glass, the warn- 
 ing whistle by night on the lawn under the balcony, 
 the sudden collapse of an old gentleman the weak 
 condition of whose heart has been " planted," and 
 the inevitable final Lucknow arrival of the rescuing 
 police. 
 
 One point in connection with the play brewed a 
 raise of the eyebrow. To-wit, Mr. Forman's re- 
 vival of the screen. The history of the drama 
 shows that the screen has been used for three, and 
 just three, purposes. In real life, a screen is used 
 for but one purpose: to hide some unsightly object, 
 such, for example, as father when one is entertaining 
 
i62 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 company. But not so on the stage. On the stage 
 a screen is a device used to conceal ( i ) an eaves- 
 dropper (preferably a villain), (2) a married man 
 having supper with a gay French actress, or (3) a 
 leading lady who is undressing for bed or for an 
 artist, or both. Certainly the late Mr. Forman was 
 a sufficiently imaginative fellow to have devised a 
 more piquant use for the screen than a hiding-place 
 for supposedly super-cunning German spies. 
 
WHY OUR DRAMA IS BACKWARD 
 
 I AM by this time quite convinced that one of the 
 reasons why our American drama is backward is 
 because it is forward. 
 
 By this I mean to say that if many of our home- 
 made plays were turned hind end foremost, and thus 
 enacted, the process would not only convert them 
 into much more intelligent pieces of work, but would 
 invest them with at least a semblance of the co- 
 herence and logic which, as is pretty generally 
 agreed, they only infrequently in their present form 
 of presentation reveal. I am perfectly serious. Of 
 course I appreciate that it is too much to hope that 
 I shall be so regarded: I shall, as per established 
 local custom in the case of any one who endeavors 
 to expose a new idea, be set down as a low joker. 
 In the American mind, comparative originality of 
 viewpoint and seriousness of Intention are ever held 
 to be incompatible of association; only the simon- 
 pure numskull or the pseudo-intellectual echo are 
 accepted as being in earnest. Wherefore, we have 
 Shaw proclaimed as harlequin and Charles Rann 
 Kennedy, who merely echoes fortissimo Shaw's 
 speech of Cssar to Cleopatra in the fourth act of 
 the play bearing the latters' names and entitles the 
 echo The Terrible Meek, as serious thinker. 
 
 163 
 
1 64 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 One dramatist whose goods the device versa 
 would improve to a considerable degree is Mr. Au- 
 gustus Thomas. Consider his play, Indian Sum- 
 mer. Its narrative, in the order in which it is 
 divulged to an audience through four acts, is as 
 follows : 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Frank Whitney, a bachelor artist well along in years, has, 
 to save a married friend's home and name, shouldered in 
 silence responsibility for the latter's illegitimate son. Kath- 
 erine Harvey, the daughter of this married friend (now dead 
 these twenty years), is engaged to a young lavi^rer, and 
 Whitney takes it upon himself to further their love interests. 
 The girl, however, about half Whitney's age, has posed for 
 the elderly artist, and has come gradually to feel her love 
 swerve from the young lawyer to this other and, to her, more 
 sympathetic man. 
 
 ACT II 
 
 Whitney is confronted by the woman who bore the ille- 
 gitimate son, is apprised that the latter has killed a man 
 whom he found in his mother's bedroom the night before, is 
 further warned that the boy is even now looking for Whit- 
 ney, whom he believes to be the man who ruined his mother 
 and who is responsible for his own shame of illegitimacy; 
 and that the boy, if he finds the artist, will shoot him. The 
 widow of the man who was in reality the boy's father learns 
 the truth of her husband's deceit. The widow's daughter, 
 Katherine, rejects the young lawyer, her erstwhile sweet- 
 heart, and tells Whitney that she loves him and no other. 
 
WHY OUR DRAMA IS BACKWARD 165 
 
 ACT III 
 
 The young lawyer, angered at Katherine's treatment of 
 him and her afFection for Whitney, tells the girl that the 
 latter is actually the illegitimate boy's father and dares the 
 artist deny it. Despite Katherine's tears, however, Whitney 
 remains silent. The illegitimate boy breaks into the studio 
 where Whitney is and announces that he is about to kill 
 Whitney, the betrayer of his mother. Whitney eyes him out 
 of his purpose. Just then the police are heard coming in 
 pursuit. The boy, in trying to escape, is shot and mortally 
 wounded. 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 Katherine is told that Whitney, who has assumed the 
 burden of the parentage of the illegitimate boy, is guiltless: 
 that it was her own father whose disgrace it was. Whitney 
 announces that he is going to France to paint, and invites 
 Katherine to come and visit him with her mother : in time — 
 they will be married. 
 
 Reflect now how considerably this narrative, and 
 the play, would be improved, how much more com- 
 mon sense, logic — even romance — would be im- 
 parted to it were it to be written and acted in the re- 
 verse way, from the end to the beginning, from the 
 back to the front, thus: 
 
 ACT I 
 
 Whitney announces that he is going to France to paint 
 and invites Katherine to come and visit him with her 
 mother : in time — they will be married. Katherine is told 
 
1 66 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 that Whitney, who has assumed the burden of the parentage 
 of an illegitimate boy, is guiltless : that it was her own father 
 whose disgrace it was. 
 
 ACT II 
 
 The illegitimate boy breaks into the studio where Whit- 
 ney is and announces that he is about to kill Whitney, the 
 betrayer of his mother. Whitney eyes him out of his pur- 
 pose. Just then the police are heard coming in pursuit. 
 The boy, in trying to escape, is shot and mortally wounded. 
 The young lawyer (to whom Katherine had been engaged 
 before she fell under the aged artist's spell), angered at Kath- 
 erine's treatment of him and her affection for Whitney, tells 
 the girl that the latter is actually the illegitimate boy's 
 father and dares the artist deny it. Despite Katherine's tears, 
 Whitney remains silent. 
 
 ACT III 
 
 Katherine rejects the young lawyer, her erstwhile sweet- 
 heart, however, and tells Whitney that she still loves him 
 and no other. The widow of the man who was in reality 
 the illegitimate boy's father learns the truth of her husband's 
 deceit, but Katherine, her daughter, does not yet positively 
 know. Whitney is confronted by the woman who bore the 
 illegitimate son, is apprised that the latter killed a man 
 whom he found in his mother's bedroom the night before, is 
 further warned that the boy is looking for Whitney, whom 
 he believes to be the man who ruined his mother and who 
 is responsible for his own shame of illegitimacy; and that 
 the boy, if he finds the artist, will shoot him. Whitney now 
 immediately realizes why the police were after the lad and 
 tells the mother tenderly of what has happened. 
 
WHY OUR DRAMA IS BACKWARD 167 
 
 ACT IV 
 
 Katherine, who is half Whitney's age and who has posed 
 for the elderly artist, still feels that her love for the young 
 lawyer has swerved to this other and, to her, more sympa- 
 thetic man. But Frank Whitney, who has, to save her dead 
 father's home and name, shouldered in silence these twenty 
 years responsibility for the latter's sin, maintains his silence, 
 permits the girl to cherish her faith and ideals and takes it 
 upon himself to further the love interests of her younger 
 lawyer lover and herself. (And as the curtain falls, the 
 young girl, eyes wet with tears of misunderstanding, heart 
 at the breaking over youth's disappointment and love unan- 
 swered, would look to Whitney with a word of pleading. 
 But — " No, my child," he would say to her, and his voice 
 would be as voice paternal: " I am in the Indian summer of 
 life and you are in life's warm and so wonderful spring- 
 time. You think you love me, dear little girl, but your love 
 for me is like a child's love for some favorite uncle, or some 
 favorite old friend of its parents who tells it strange stories 
 of the great big world and helps it build wonderful castles 
 out of its playing blocks. You'll come to see — in time. 
 You'll come to see that youth is the greatest thing in all the 
 world, a million times greater, a million times more impor- 
 tant, than love itself, and that youth wants youth, longs for 
 youth, must have youth for its companion — always. For 
 youth, my child, with its flaming Fires of St. John, is love's 
 fairy godmother. So dry your tears — ah, I see they're dry 
 already ! — and let me get you something good to eat. A 
 full stomach is a sure cure for false sentiment. And here 
 (hands her a book) — while I am ordering the meal, read 
 this. It will interest you. As you see, it is by Ludwig R. 
 
i68 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Von Halsmer, a noted Diisseldorf arborist, and its title is 
 ' When the Sap Slackens in Winter.' ") 
 
 Granting that this reversed play is still by no 
 means a good play, will you not concede that, what- 
 ever its resident demerits, it is yet a more valid, a 
 more rational and dialectical play, and a lesser speci- 
 men of sentimental pishmince, than the original? 
 Observe, for instance, the metamorphosis of Whit- 
 ney from a typical Thomas hero into a compara- 
 tively intelligent person. Observe, for instance, the 
 psychophysiological calmheadedness of the reversed 
 ending in place of the dripping sugar of the original. 
 Observe, for example, the fragmentary and irrele- 
 vant trickeries of life operating naturally in the re- 
 versed version in place of the mere trickeries of 
 " fine construction " evident in the version exhibited. 
 Observe — even so far as this very thing called con- 
 struction goes — the greater conflict and comple- 
 mental suspense of the second play. 
 
 In this same way, an inversion of most of the 
 plays promulgated in recent seasons by the native 
 writers for the theatre definitively improves those 
 plays. Such a play as Owen Davis' The Family 
 Cupboard becomes even a moderately holding piece 
 of work when turned end foremost, with the final 
 curtain falling on the news that Nelson, still finding 
 his home with its arctic-souled wife devoid of warm 
 camaraderie, has entered into an alliance with still 
 another sympathetic package. The son's shout, 
 
WHY OUR DRAMA IS BACKWARD 169, 
 
 " You're keeping a chorus girl! " would thus take 
 on a double thrill, a double intelligence, and the play 
 as a whole would thus assume the in-this-case espe- 
 cially befitting circular method of construction — 
 the play ending just where it begins — so aptly 
 employed by such artificers as Brieux in Les Hanne- 
 tons, Galsworthy in The Pigeon, Schnitzler in 
 Professor Bernhardi and Reigen, et al. 
 
 But to return to Indian Summer. Until the pro- 
 duction of this play, it had been the invariable cus- 
 tom of the majority of our metropolitan critics, every 
 time Mr. Thomas scored a new and particularly ab- 
 ject failure, to refer to him as the foremost Ameri- 
 can playwright. With this play, curiously enough 
 only six years after every one else had appraised Mr. 
 Thomas at his true worth, these same critics found 
 him out. And they poked jest at his flamboyant 
 platitudes, his specious " culture," his perfumed 
 heroisms and empty melodrama. This, of course, 
 is on the general principle that it usually takes the 
 majority of our critics several years longer to de- 
 termine the truth about our theatre and the parties 
 to it than any one else. The case of Mr. Thomas 
 provides an excellent example. His Witching 
 Hour, as futile an agglomeration of psychological 
 amphigouri as even The Return of Peter Grimm or 
 The Case of Becky, was hailed as a great and pro- 
 found contribution to American dramatic art. And 
 one scene in it in particular, the scene wherein 
 Hardmuth rushes in to shoot Brookfield, with the 
 
lyo ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 latter's " You can't pull that trigger; you can't even 
 hold that gun!", was greeted with eulogistic awe 
 and a completely floored veneration. Behold prac- 
 tically the same scene in Indian Summer — a much 
 more authentic scene, too — wherein Jack Boutell 
 rushes in to shoot Whitney, with the latter eyeing 
 the trigger into inaction, ridiculed by the same critics 
 as bumptious, theatrical and absurd ! Observe such 
 Thomas philosophy in As a Man Thinks as " The 
 world moves on man's faith In woman. Those 
 countless lathes of industry turning out there, those 
 railroads . . . are all testimony to this faith " — 
 saluted by these critics as the message of a new 
 Mohammed, a new Moses, a new Savonarola; and 
 such precisely similar Thomas philosophy as " All 
 the world's fine work is accomplished through the 
 love of a good woman " in his Indian Summer 
 laughed at from the belly by the same sage lads. 
 And hearken to the spacious scoffing at his encyclo- 
 pedic bulletins In Indian Summer on whippoorwIUs' 
 eggs and the deep impression registered in the same 
 individuals by his encyclopedic transcripts of color 
 influences in The Harvest Moon. 
 
 I charge the critics with having treated Mr. 
 Thomas inconsistently and with gross unkindness. 
 They have encouraged him to do the very thing he 
 is doing and, now that he has done it, they flout 
 him, sneer at him, revile him. Augustus Thomas 
 is still the most proficient writer of graceful dia- 
 logue among American playwrights, and he knows 
 
WHY OUR DRAMA IS BACKWARD 171 
 
 more about the staging of a play than the most of 
 them — also is he an adept professor of theatrical 
 mechanics — but never once has he contributed a 
 new idea, a note of substantial and authentic prog- 
 ress, a single living character, a single chord of fresh 
 philosophy or a single electric observation on our 
 life or of our peoples to the theatre of the United 
 States. 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW 
 
 In the light of recent developments, there would ap- 
 pear to be two schools of dramatic critics: those who 
 know that George Bernard Shaw is the greatest liv- 
 ing playwright and admit it, and those who know 
 that George Bernard Shaw is the greatest living 
 playwright and deny it. The first body is composed 
 of dramatic critics. The second, of old dramatic 
 critics. 
 
 In bygone days, as the ever-youthful Huneker, I 
 believe, has observed, all a young man had to do to 
 achieve a reputation was to mount a box in the pub- 
 lic square and lustily disclaim behef in a Divine Be- 
 ing. Of course, as we know, things have so greatly 
 changed since then that all the young man would 
 have to do to-day would be to climb atop the same 
 box and announce his belief in a Divine Being. The 
 acquisition of celebrity in the current community has, 
 however, in the case of young men become an even 
 simpler performance than this. To-day, approxi- 
 mately all your young man need do to establish him- 
 self as a considerable figure is to keep moderately 
 quiet — and wait. In due time there inevitably 
 will come along some old fellow engaged in the 
 same profession who, in an endeavor to recall at- 
 tention to himself in this crowding, pushing age, 
 
 172 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW 173! 
 
 will deliver himself of a sufficient number of absurd 
 opinions indirectly to guarantee the perspicacity and 
 position of his young colleague. 
 
 Speaking particularly of critics of the drama, 
 Shaw may be said in an oblique way to have been in- 
 strumental in unmaking more old reputations and 
 making more new reputations than Ibsen, Nietzsche 
 or Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. For every old critic 
 who has died in battle for Pinero against Shaw, a 
 young critic has been born to estate. For every old 
 critic who has stuck manfully to the guns of " tech- 
 nique " against the guns of ideas, a young critic has 
 been brevetted. For every old critic whose loyal 
 heart has gone still to Tosca in jilt of Dora Delaney, 
 there has been created a further estimation for some 
 younger professional associate. Shaw has worked 
 for the young critics while they slept. Or rather 
 while the older critics slept. 
 
 The old boys have fought against him to no avail, 
 even despite their lack of humor — an attribute 
 that usually guarantees the popular success and wide 
 influence of criticism in the Anglo-Saxon community. 
 The young men, realizing that though, true enough, 
 this same Shaw was no Hauptmann in rare dram- 
 aturgic versatility and varied grace, no Frangois de 
 Curel of the passions, no Tolstoi, nor even Gorki, 
 in the distilling of visualized human hearts, no Gals- 
 worthy of the suaver parts of speech — nor yet a 
 character dissector of the amiable penetration of an 
 Arthur Schnitzler, nor yet a blithesome metaphy- 
 
174 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 sician of the too widely depreciated quality of Mol- 
 nar — this same Shaw was, in their time and his, 
 the most quivering, vibrating man in the world's 
 theatre. 
 
 For his was the position as first coadjutor since 
 Ibsen to practice with auspicious regularity at amus- 
 ing the theatre through the cerebral as against the 
 Wrisberg ganglion, as first to have successfully in- 
 troduced into the theatre of his day a stage refreshed 
 at his almost every touch with technical novelty, 
 piquing attitude and wit. The first, moreover, sys- 
 tematically to remember that words ever speak 
 louder than actions in the quick delineation of char- 
 acter (Schnitzler has learned this recently to his ad- 
 vantage. See Professor Bernhardi) ; the first, 
 moreover, again to infuse a theatre youthful in spots 
 with a pervading youth that presently was to be felt 
 round the globe — felt and imitated in his own coun- 
 try by such hustling, if comparatively inept, strivers 
 as the Barkers and Bennetts and Hastingses and 
 Besiers ; in Germany by the Wedekinds and Herbert 
 Eulenbergs and H. Miillers and Ludwig Thomas 
 and Otto Soykas; in France by the Brieuxs (the in- 
 fluence of Shaw on Brieux is at once obvious to the 
 discriminator between such early things as Blanch- 
 ette and such later pieces as Damaged Goods — 
 also to any one who appreciates the sly humor of 
 Shaw's eulogy of Brieux) and the Donnays and by 
 the little Gabriel Trarieuxs ; in Austria by the Bahrs 
 (see Die Mutter — influenced by Shaw via Wede- 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW 175 
 
 kind; see Das Tanzchen; see parts of The Yellow 
 Nightingale) and the Felix Saltens; in Russia by 
 the Tchekhovs and (via Germany) the Leo 
 Birinskis; in Ireland by the Lennox Robinsons and 
 George Birminghams; in Scotland by the Graham 
 Moffats — and on. From Arnold Bennett's What 
 the Public Wants and The Great Adventure on 
 through the whole of Barker; from MacDonald 
 Hastings' New Sin and Love and What Then? on 
 through Besier's Don and Lady Patricia; from 
 Thoma's Moral (see Mrs. Warren) through a nice 
 slice of Wedekind and from G. Hermann's Wvist- 
 ling (see The Philanderer) to Freksa's Der Fette 
 Cssar (see Caesar and Cleopatra) ; from the later 
 Brieux across the frontiers to the Narrentanz of 
 Birinski and thence northwest through the Patriots 
 of Robinson and a measure of the Irish prose plays 
 — there is breathed, true, here and there only 
 faintly, but breathed still, the impudent scent of the 
 influence of the man whose early critical tourneys in 
 The Saturday Review foreshadowed the obtaining 
 of a new contemplation of the theatre — of a theatre 
 that should be at once artistic and practical, of a 
 drama that should be neither mere drama nor mere 
 literature, but of a drama that should be at once 
 drama and literature. 
 
 That Shaw possesses the truly staggering plas- 
 ticity of Hauptmann it were absurd to claim. That, 
 work for work, his record is the peer of the Ger- 
 man's it might be equally futile to contend. But 
 
176 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 that the influence of the Shaw dramatic mind as 
 opposed to the Hauptmann dramatic heart has not 
 been a more vigorous, a more inspiriting, and a 
 more blood-giving theatrical one constitutes a differ- 
 ent decision. Hauptmann, the pioneer of Before 
 Dawn and Beaver Coat days has in these, his later 
 years, declined steadily into the comparative unim- 
 portances of Gabriel Schilling and The Bow of 
 Odysseus. The trail blazer, as all trail blazers, has 
 seen another than himself strike easily ahead on 
 the path he has laboriously opened and decorate the 
 clearing. 
 
 Shaw has brought humor to what, though so re- 
 garded, was never tragedy. He has used the stage 
 as a tool instead of permitting the stage so to use him. 
 (Hauptmann only twice or thrice has done as much.) 
 He has rid the theatre, so far as any one man has 
 dared, of its mighty platitudes. He has been no 
 great " thinker," true, but he has at least been a 
 nimble thinker — and where in the theatre is there 
 to-day such another? He has taught the theatre 
 not to stand in awe of itself; he has given it the self- 
 confidence his immediate associates had sought (and 
 successfully) to take from it. And he has, from 
 first to last, been interesting in spite of all this. 
 
 After which lavish hymn, let us be quick to an- 
 nounce that this Shaw's play, Pygmalion, is a heavy 
 disappointment to those of us who look for Shaw 
 successively to out-Shaw himself. Such, however, 
 is ever the critical attitude. The better the play, 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW 177 
 
 the more the sedulous critic is inclined elaborately to 
 search out its deficiencies. The better the play, the 
 greater the challenge to the critic. Anybody, even 
 some of our New York newspaper critics, can easily 
 appear critically brilliant over the plays in which 
 Miss Billie Burke acts — which is to say, bad plays. 
 Such a feat is absurdly simple. A poor play gives 
 the critical mind no fight. The battle is wholly one- 
 sided. The man who would employ such an oc- 
 casion critically to exercise his humorous talents 
 would be likely to laugh at a funeral, a comedy by 
 Cicely Hamilton or some other such sad happening 
 in the lives of his fellow mortals. But, confronted 
 by a play of positive merit, your critics must protect 
 themselves and save their faces by one of two means : 
 either boldly to dismiss the play as being no good at 
 all and " consequently not deserving of serious criti- 
 cism " (a familiar trick which permits the critic to 
 maintain his reputation by reverting to his estab- 
 lished custom of contemplating jocosely a bad play), 
 or to admit the play is a good one and then devote 
 several hours of hard extra work to ferreting out the 
 play's potential defects. One of the favorite critical 
 expedients (in England as in America) in the criti- 
 cizing of a Shaw play is the first of these two means. 
 Although Pygmalion is not of the same quality as 
 Shaw's other recent play, Androcles and the Lion 
 — and not to be compared with such of his lustrous 
 products as Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Super- 
 man and the like — I frankly confess to having been 
 
178 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 prejudiced in its favor before my eyes were set upon 
 it. News of its theme had already been wafted to 
 my chamber, and by virtue of the circumstance that 
 here was a thesis that long had been a personal 
 hobby with me — I had, indeed, spent a whole sum- 
 mer abroad several years ago in experiments asso- 
 ciated with it — my partiality was to be the more 
 clearly comprehended. What Shaw has here nego- 
 tiated is an unplatitudinous dramatization of the 
 platitude that what one says doesn't count so much 
 as the manner in which one says it. This, the 
 especial Shaw knack. Give him a platitude and he 
 will build you a fresher, greener play out of it than 
 the vast majority of his fellow dramatists will be 
 able to derive out of a proportionately brilliant 
 thematic novelty. Pygmalion is, in truth, almost In 
 the nature of a dare! Shaw has taken for it the 
 most ancient materials that the cobwebbed files of 
 the theatre contain, and out of these materials has 
 created a play which gives his audiences every im- 
 pression of something quite new and startling. 
 Here, of course, as H. L. Mencken has aptly ob- 
 served, the celebrated Shaw secret : the ability to put 
 the obvious in terms of the scandalous. 
 
 What we have as basis for Pygmalion is nothing 
 more than the glutinous Sis Hopkins story, that 
 veteran of countless stage engagements which al- 
 most every playwright soon or late in his career 
 writes, either in Its entirety or In part, all over again. 
 Having its genesis In Cinderella, this theme — the 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW 179 
 
 dowdy baggage transformed into a wench of fashion 
 — has done brave service on the stage for genera- 
 tion after generation. Recall merely a few in- 
 stances at memory's right hand where the basic stuff 
 of the theme has figured in some degree or other: 
 The Marriage of Kitty, Smith (second act), The 
 Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The Real Thing, Kitty 
 MacKay, Peg o' My Heart, Years of Discretion, 
 The Marionettes, The Wishing Ring, Fanchon, 
 Merely Mary Ann, Lena Rivers, Caprice, The Trail 
 of the Lonesome Pine, The Lady from Oklahoma, 
 Rachel, Eliza Comes to Stay, Prunella. And think 
 of the innumerable Belle of New York species of 
 music show " books " in which the main ingredient 
 of the thing has appeared! Consider merely the 
 recent libretti: Sari, The Belle of Bond Street (The 
 Girl from Kay's), Sweethearts, The Little Cafe 
 The Purple Road, The Sunshine Girl, The Lady and 
 the Slipper, Eva, The Red Petticoat, The Gypsy — 
 memory cannot contain them all. The old story: 
 Act I — poor girl, poor dress ; Act III — rich girl, 
 rich dress. My terms are general, but my meaning 
 remains nonetheless particular. Then, as if these 
 materials were not sufficiently stale to make his dare 
 seem properly spectacular, Shaw piled Matterhorn 
 on Mount McKinley by topping this basic trash with 
 the perennial platitude already referred to. 
 
 And what the result? A farce brighter, quicker 
 with humor and satire, more tensely athrob with 
 novelty and thematic interest than even the rival 
 
i8o ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Hauptmann himself was able in Schluck and Jau 
 to build out of materials a thousand times fresher 
 and more fertile. Against Pygmalion, at bottom, 
 may be directed the remark of the man who, coming 
 out of the Lyceum Theatre after witnessing a per- 
 formance of the pure-girl-cave-man-I-hate-you-I- 
 have-grown-to-love-you fable called The Land of 
 Promise, observed that every darned time he went 
 into a theatre he saw this play. What say you then 
 to a dramatist who, despite an equally trite set of 
 tools, has yet made Pygmalion, as it in its totality 
 flashes across the footlights, entertain four world 
 capitals ? 
 
 In an earlier paragraph, I have hinted at certain 
 previous personally conducted experiments as to the 
 soundness of the theory that any girl — even an 
 American girl — may be made moderately interest- 
 ing if she gets some one to doctor up her speaking 
 voice. These experiments, which would seem to be 
 acutely relevant to the present critical subject, had 
 to do with a clinical effort to determine the relative 
 intensity of the emotion kindled in one by the pro- 
 fessions of adoration on the part of maidens repre- 
 sentative of each of six different countries — the 
 United States, England, Germany, France, Austria 
 and Italy. After a series of experiments with some 
 three or four hundred young ladies of these various 
 nationalities, experiments conducted through the em- 
 ployment of the pianoforte and the articulation on 
 the part of each of the three or four hundred of the 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW i8i 
 
 words " I love you," I deduced that, were the speak- 
 ing voices of the different young ladies to be trans- 
 ferred to the keyboard, their respective " I love 
 you's " would be as follows: 
 
 1. I love yuh (American) — dec {allegro giusto). 
 
 2. I love you (English) — d dj djf {freddamente). 
 
 3. Ich liebe dich (German) — c cc c (moderatissimo) . 
 
 4. Je vous aime (French) — cj d f (pp.). 
 
 5. Ish lieb' dish (Austrian) — d a a {ornatamente) . 
 
 6. T'amo tanto (Italian) — c c c# c# {ff.). 
 
 These notes, then, were found to contain what 
 soul — or lack thereof — reposed in the amorous 
 responses of the different young women. Now if 
 you will play these notes in turn in the manner indi- 
 cated on the keyboard, you will quickly discover 
 what I discovered : that your heart will respond most 
 quickly to the vocal tones of the French girl. 
 Actually respond. And why? Because the vocal 
 tones of this French brand of baggage are the pre- 
 cise tones that may scientifically be discovered to in- 
 duce sympathetic vibrations (or wave movements) 
 of the endolymph, hence the fibers of the basilar 
 membrane, and hence what are colloquially known 
 as the " heart strings." As is well known, the cross- 
 fibers of the membrane of the cochlea of the internal 
 ear are similar to the strings upon the backboard of 
 a piano, short at the beginning (these, the treble 
 strings), and gradually increasing in length as the 
 membrane continues (to the bass strings). I may, 
 
1 82 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 therefore, illustrate the effect of the French girl's 
 voice upon the ear strings (and via the ear strings 
 upon the " heart strings ") by asking you to imagine 
 this girl and each of the girls of the other nationali- 
 ties mentioned speaking their " I love you's " into 
 the body of an upright piano, the top of which has 
 been thrown back. 
 
 Through such a test — one familiar to psycholo- 
 gists in the experimenting generally with the quality 
 of auditory sensations — it will be found that, as 
 the speaking voice contains certain tones to which 
 the piano strings are " tuned," the strings (or notes) 
 indicated in the table of notes deduced by me orig- 
 inally will duly be thrown into vibration and set 
 ringing. Wherefore, as has been stated, as the ear 
 strings correspond to the piano strings, it follows 
 that the former will be set ringing in the same rela- 
 tive manner. Then, moreover, as the human heart 
 (via these strings) is quickest to respond to the notes 
 cj d f pianissimo, it follows as a conclusion that it 
 is the French girl's speaking voice, rather than the 
 French girl, that so invariably provokes in the male 
 of the cosmic species a feeling of interest where the 
 speaking voices of other nations and the girls be- 
 hind those voices are proportionately unsuccessful 
 in the achievement. 
 
 But my experiments did not stop here. In order 
 to assure myself that my prefatory convictions were 
 absolutely correct, I spent one whole month training 
 an American girl, an English girl, an Austrian girl. 
 
THE "LATE" MR. SHAW 183 
 
 a German girl and an Italian girl to speak the words 
 " I love you " as the French girl speaks them, i. e., 
 in the tones of c# d f. This accomplished, I caused 
 myself to be blindfolded and to be approached in 
 turn by each of these five representative maidens 
 and the original French girl, each of whom repeated 
 to me their "I love you's." And — Eureka! I 
 found that, although I had in the process of the pre- 
 vious experiments begun to feel amorously partial 
 toward the French girl (via her speaking voice), 
 I now responded to each one of the girls in precisely 
 the same degree ! In other words, blindfolded and 
 not knowing which of the young ladies was speak- 
 ing, inasmuch as their voices were now one and all 
 of a similar mellifluence, I found that I became 
 scientifically attracted to one as greatly as to another. 
 When one realizes that the human ear is capable of 
 11,600 different sensation qualities, the weight of 
 the human positiveness of my experiment becomes 
 the more obvious. It seems only fair to admit, how- 
 ever, that we learn from E. B. Titchener, from E. 
 Mach's Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, 
 from Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone and from 
 Hermann's Physiol, d. Gehors, that the experiment 
 may be conducted with equal relevance and success 
 by testing the effect of the tones on dogs. 
 
 To return to Pygmalion. As if by way of double- 
 dare, Shaw seems deliberately to have taken for 
 his substructure H. V. Esmond's play Eliza Comes 
 to Stay, a scrupulously morose gewgaw that ran half 
 
1 84 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 a season not so long ago in London. He has even 
 called his heroine Eliza ! Having taken Esmond's 
 piece, Shaw appears to have rolled up his cuffs and 
 observed: " I will now show you, ladies and gen- 
 tlemen, the difference between a hack playwright 
 and one who really knows the trade." And having 
 delivered himself of this comment, he has proceeded 
 to inject " the voice makes the woman " theory into 
 Esmond's plot in place of Esmond's inference that 
 " the clothes make the woman." And so aus- 
 piciously has Shaw turned the tables that I doubt 
 not he could even take a play by Henri Bernstein 
 and, by injecting sense into it, make it partly in- 
 teresting. 
 
 To Rudolph Christians, Herr Direktor of the 
 German Theatre in Irving Place, who produced the 
 Shaw play for the first time in this country, my sa- 
 lute! This German Theatre of his, incidentally, is 
 probably the one playhouse in the Greater City of 
 New York which a theatregoer may haphazardly 
 enter and not become metamorphosed instantane- 
 ously into a patron of the moving pictures. 
 
THE SPORT OF KINGS 
 
 Firstly, it has ever been my opinion that, given a 
 dozen girls of sufficiently luscious contour and 
 savory visage, any one — even George V. Hobart 
 — can write a successful music show. And sec- 
 ondly, this being true, it has ever struck me that it 
 amounts to a wanton pillage of precious time to go 
 to the theatre to review the average music show 
 when one may accomplish the appraisal in twenty 
 minutes or less from a table in the public eating 
 and drinking place infringed upon after the play by 
 the grisettes of the chorus. Thus, at eleven-thirty 
 of any night during the season, one may pass in- 
 telligently upon most New York musical shows at 
 the resort that happens to be conducted at the mo- 
 ment by the son of the House of Rector, just as an 
 excellent critical estimate may regularly be obtained 
 in London at the Savoy or nearby Romano's, in Ber- 
 lin at the bierstuben in the Jagerstrasse and the 
 spacious weinkeller in the Friedrichstrasse, in Vienna 
 at the Reclame and at the little places off the 
 Karntnerstrasse and down toward the Stefanplatz, 
 and in Paris at any one of four or five haunts scat- 
 tered around the region of the Champs Elysees and 
 that part of the boulevard that glides downhill to- 
 ward the Rue Richer. 
 
 185 
 
1 86 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Save, possibly, In Germany, and, with a few ex- 
 ceptions, in the United States, England, Austria and 
 France, the governing principle of the music show 
 stage as an institution amounts to little more than 
 the substitution of a two-dollar admission ticket for 
 the round of drinks and a union orchestra for the 
 colored professor. Otherwise, save for the inferior 
 quality of its music and, particularly, its wit, it is 
 much the same as its franker, more honest prototype. 
 In the light of these things, the current assumption 
 that one must sit through two and one-half hours 
 of is-your-brother-still-alive-no-he-lives-in-Philadel- 
 phia in order accurately to gauge one of these ex- 
 hibits, is evidently a blood relative of the equally 
 popular supposition that a dramatic critic is any man 
 who is a dramatic critic on a newspaper. Granting, 
 as grant one readily must, that music shows have 
 nothing whatever in common with the arts; that they 
 are, on the reverse, mere spectacular girl markets, 
 exchanges and trading stations — which of the two 
 following reports of one of these shows is the more 
 logical and practical, the more beneficial and desirable 
 to the public, the performers themselves and the man- 
 ager? Which — the present standard newspaper 
 form or the suggested new form? 
 
 PRESENT STANDARD NEWSPAPER FORM 
 
 The Frolicsome Princess, a new musical comedy by Harry 
 B. Smith and A. Baldwin Sloane, produced last night at the 
 Theatre, relates, in two acts and three beautifully 
 
THE SPORT OF KINGS 187 
 
 painted scenic pictures (one showing an old windmill in ac- 
 tion) , the romance of beautiful Princess Paula, of the imagin- 
 ary province of Saxonburgovia, and the socialistic Duke Ras- 
 ilause. Paula, in order to win the recalcitrant Rasilause, dis- 
 guises herself as a peasant girl, meets Rasilause at the mineral 
 springs and captivates him. Rasilause learns Paula's iden- 
 tity from Emil Donnerwurst, a stranded Gierman pinochle 
 player, and spurns her. In the end, however, all ends hap- 
 pily for the lovers. The lines given the character of the 
 pinochle player are especially clever, as, for instance : " A 
 bird in the hand is worth two in Bushwick " and " All's 
 swell that ends swell." Donnerwurst's clever catch phrase, 
 repeated frequently, " I'm a son of a gun, by Looie! " took 
 the house by storm. The best song numbers were: All 
 for You and You for Me, When the August Moon Plays 
 Ping-Pong with the Leaves in Central Park (during the 
 rendition of which real ping-pong balls were thrown at the 
 audience by the chorus) and The Smoky-Moky-Hokey- 
 Pokey Rag (the latter an interpolated number by Irving 
 Berlin). The play has been gorgeously staged by Mr. Fred 
 Latham, the staging of one number in particular — the ping- 
 pong song — displaying great originality and wit. The 
 company includes, etc. 
 
 SUGGESTED NEW FORM 
 
 The Frolicsome Princess, produced last night at the 
 
 Theatre, promises to be a huge success for the following rea- 
 sons: 
 
 Lillian Lewis ^ — aetat 18; weight 125; height 5 feet i 
 inch; shape, excellent; blonde; said to be jolly and fond of 
 motoring and dancing; mother and father dead. 
 
 1 30O West 45th Street. 
 
1 88 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Hazel Touraine^ — aetat 19; weight 120; height 5 feet; 
 shape, superb; brunette; said to be of quiet disposition yet 
 tres sympathique ; fond of wine. 
 
 Angie Arborea ^ — aetat 23; weight 142; height 5 feet 4 
 inches; shape, ravishing; coloring, medium; said to be full 
 of life and a clever conversationalist ; divorcee ; very needy. 
 
 Mae St. Cloud ^ — aetat 19; weight 127; height 5 feet 
 I'J4 inches ; shape, trim ; blonde ; hair when let down touches 
 floor ; " good sport " ; not averse to brokers. 
 
 Beatrice Verrill* — aetat 20; weight 125; height 5 feet 3 
 inches; shape, magnificent; brunette; said to be of merry na- 
 ture ; has expensive studio apartments in Central Park West ; 
 father dead, mother a poor washerwoman. 
 
 These five specimens are sufficient to indicate the excellent 
 quality of the new show. There are, moreover, fourteen 
 other equally meritorious elements in the persons of Jessica 
 Hughes, Sallie Salome, Molly Van Sittart, Olive Tremaine 
 (blonde) ; Mazie Reynolds, Dolly Anderson, Evelyn Hi- 
 dalgo, Desiree Dartmoor, Billie Marthwell, Mame Mau- 
 passant, Phyllis Frane (brunette) ; and Alys James, Trixie 
 French and Violet Rosenberg (mediums). 
 
 Take the American case, for example. In one of 
 the most notorious of the native girl show menages, 
 the girls' salaries are graded in proportion to the 
 girls' individual ability to tease their male hunters 
 into the playhouse night after night. Three widely 
 seen music shows produced during the last season 
 
 ^ 179 West 53d Street. 
 
 2 Hotel Lewellyn. 
 
 3 Marceaux Apartments. 
 
 * Phone number: 9979 Columbia. 
 
THE SPORT OF KINGS 189 
 
 and a half were the result of pools formed by out- 
 siders with money, either for the purpose of pro- 
 mulgating or assuaging their own particular lady 
 friends or giving their numerous theatre-going mas- 
 culine cronies a chance behind the scenes. Two re- 
 cent girl shows were financed by Wall Street brokers 
 for Wall Street brokers. One metropolitan music 
 show institution extends the privilege of its stage 
 door to its regular patrons; and in the case of an- 
 other girl house, the copious list of the favorites who 
 may be passed by the stage door keeper is headed 
 by the names of a United States Ambassador, a for- 
 mer district attorney, a judge, a power in the finan- 
 cial world, a celebrated politician, a steel magnate 
 and one of the leading and most nosey of New 
 York lawyers. The music show of to-day, with its 
 public dancing girls, is to our more hypocritical and 
 timid civilization what the private dancing girls were 
 to Rome in the hours of its golden, blatant glory. 
 
 Why seek to treat such sport (albeit a legitimate 
 one) from the standpoint of something it is not? 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 
 
 Why these ceaseless lamentations, these intermin- 
 able hubbubboos, these vociferous ululations, on the 
 part of our dramatic critics over the mediocre qual- 
 ity of the plays currently visible on the American 
 stage? Why the correlative pleadings and deplor- 
 ings and apologia that, because of such dramatic 
 famine, their critiques must inevitably be of an- 
 alogous dullness : that " how can one write enter- 
 tainingly — even write at all — when there is so 
 little of interest, indeed, so little of anything, to 
 write about?" Is this as it should be? Is this fair 
 to the public, fair to the drama? I think not. 
 
 As I see it, it is a critic's duty, above everything 
 else, to interest his audience whether the play he is 
 reviewing interested its audience or not. Hence, 
 when there is no play of interest to set the pen to, 
 it appears to me to be the critic's duty to create such 
 a play. Certainly, this is the least any respectable 
 critic can do. If not, then what the good of critics? 
 Of course, if the critic be a " destructive " critic — 
 like myself, for example — instead of one of the 
 benign " constructive " mountebanks, those bizarre 
 minstrels who bore peaceful managers) and rich play- 
 wrights and poor actors and a helpless public with 
 sapient twattle anent technique, the uaities of Aris- 
 
 190 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 191 
 
 totle and other anachronistic wisdoms, that is a dif- 
 ferent matter. The so-called destructive critic, 
 who, by the way, is regarded as destructive chiefly 
 by the toothless professors of the traditions and the 
 kindly conservative quacks who believe that con- 
 structive criticism means that only the good in drama 
 should be given attention and the bad passed over 
 (as if the bad were not the one and only element that 
 intelligently called for criticism ! ) — the destructive 
 critic occupies an honest and a helpful position in 
 the community. He is to drama what vaccine is to 
 smallpox. He makes a bit of a mess, to be sure, 
 and a lot of children kick around with a vague idea 
 that they ought to combat him, and he makes a great 
 many persons sore, but he does not fail of his 
 purpose. 
 
 He is, true enough, viewed as a low dog, a root- 
 beer drinker, a debaucher of innocent country maid- 
 ens directly they arrive in the city, a stealer of 
 Swedish emigrant girls; some of the more bellicose 
 pretenders whom he has destroyed sometimes even 
 write to the theatrical papers and succeed in prov- 
 ing, obliquely, that he is an intelligent fellow; and 
 he has as few friends as a " constructive " critic out 
 of a job — but he does not fail! Of course, he 
 fails so far as the American theatre and its managers 
 and playwrights and actors go, but that is a small 
 matter and of no importance. The task of convinc- 
 ing the latter is well and effectively looked after by 
 his " constructive " brethren, a fact certainly sub- 
 
192 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 stantlated by the jejune condition of the American 
 theatre as it still stands to-day. But where he does 
 not fail is in the rearousing of an interest in the 
 theatre in the great force of people who — sickened 
 by the current standards of the theatre and, fur- 
 ther still, by the dunderheaded pamphleteers who 
 believe they are helping that theatre by the display 
 of a large altruism and great forgiving spirit — 
 have temporarily deserted the acted for the printed 
 drama. Where he does not fail is in persuading 
 these people, in large numbers, to revisit the theatre, 
 not, assuredly, in the dim hope of seeing good plays, 
 but to observe for themselves that the plays are 
 actually still as bad as the destructive critic said they 
 were — something of which the charitable folk 
 might possibly, if only for a moment, have been 
 skeptical. 
 
 There is one of the many ways in which your de- 
 structive critic cannot fail finally to assist in the con- 
 struction of the better theatre of the future ! By 
 the adroit exercise of a warring and outrageous 
 tongue, he offends persons who believe they like to 
 think for themselves to such a degree that they has- 
 ten to the theatre to determine whether he knows 
 what he is talking about. Having discovered 
 thereby that he does, and in the process of so doing 
 having been encouraged by the critic to imagine that 
 they have thought the thing out for themselves (thus 
 being won by the critic through flattery), they sub- 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 193 
 
 sequently remain away from the theatre — not for a 
 week or a month or a year as before — but for good 
 and all. And so, gradually by convincing the au- 
 diences that it is their distinct duty both to them- 
 selves and to the theatre steadfastly to stay away 
 from the theatre, the destructive critic may ulti- 
 mately serve his end in compelling the inauguration 
 of a better grade of drama. Or, if " compel " be 
 too muscular a word, then at least in ultimately 
 bringing producers, playwrights and actors to realize 
 that unless better stuffs are forthcoming from them, 
 they will have to close up shop — and go back to 
 work. 
 
 The quality of theatrical fare recently offered the 
 public has been of the species that has become so 
 dear to the hearts of the moving picture oligarchs. 
 Almost every time a new play is produced in these 
 days, the moving picture business takes another big 
 jump. It is not the moving pictures that are mak- 
 ing inroads into the drama, but the drama itself! 
 In view, therefore, of the absence of any play of 
 sufficient novelty, bounce, imagination, whimsy and 
 originality during the period which this critique 
 must cover, my personally held laws of equity to- 
 ward my own public demand of me, as I have said, 
 that I, for the purposes of reviewing, create such a 
 play for them. 
 
 Wherefore : 
 
 The most interesting presentation of the recent 
 
194 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 weeks is a new American play designated as " a 
 philosophical spectacle through unphilosophical spec- 
 tacles " and entitled As We See It. Although the 
 author admits that he can read French and German, 
 both the idea and theme of his play are neverthe- 
 less original. The thesis of the play suggests the 
 philosophy that it is given only to youth to be an 
 accurate critic of life, that only youth may see the 
 world and the world's peoples and ways for what 
 they really are, for what they really stand for, for 
 what, in the end, they are found to have been. It 
 suggests that just as a too intimate and too pro- 
 tracted contact with anything naturally blinds one 
 to the exact values of that object, so does so-called 
 experience, the partner of age, dull the worldly per- 
 ceptions. It suggests that youth's eyes sweeping the 
 world with dreaming alarums, filled now with the 
 dust of crumbling castles, now with glinting light of 
 trivial triumphs — that youth's eyes alone appraise 
 the world truly. It suggests that, in the eventual 
 deduction, the complete lack of knowledge on the 
 part of a child and the sum total of experience on 
 the part of an old man cause both the child and the 
 old man to see things in much the same way: that 
 when we grow old we begin again to see the world 
 as we saw it through the eyes of childhood. The 
 play, which seeks to convey this idea in terms 
 of what may be called ocular satire, is divided 
 into three acts, thus accounted for on the pro- 
 gramme : 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 195 
 
 ACT I 
 
 The audience is asked to travel back across the canyon 
 of mounting years and to imagine itself to be again little 
 children, little boys and girls of twelve, wide-eyed and won- 
 dering in the presence of the great, fresh, new world. 
 
 ACT II 
 
 The audience is asked now to imagine itself as it was at 
 twenty-one and in the golden years that glistened after on 
 toward the frontier of thirty. 
 
 ACT III 
 
 The audience is asked now to imagine itself in old age — 
 or, at least, in the years to the thitherward side of fifty-five, 
 the autumn time of life's late October. 
 
 The first act shows the world as it is seen through 
 the eyes of a child of twelve — the audience being 
 the child, the audience's eyes being the child's eyes. 
 Thus we see Uncle Jim, our favorite uncle who 
 brings us candy and tells us such funny stories, as 
 seven feet high — one of the biggest men in the 
 whole world — almost as tall, indeed, as those great 
 heroes, the Policeman, the Fireman, the Iceman, the 
 President of the United States, Diamond Dick and 
 Papa, all of whom would seem to be on very inti- 
 mate terms, especially the President and Papa. 
 The Bank President, the World-Famous Scientist, 
 the Great Scholar and the Celebrated Artist are all 
 little fellows, not more than three feet tall at most. 
 
196 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 In fact, in the scene between the Great Scholar and 
 Diamond Dick, the latter is demonstrated to be so 
 clearly superior In every conceivable way to the for- 
 mer, that the very idea of the -Great Scholar's 
 effrontery in hazarding to debate with Diamond 
 Dick makes everybody laugh. The audience sees 
 itself In the person of a Httle boy, normal in every 
 respect save that his biceps, which his father Is urged 
 to feel every few minutes so as to note their constant 
 surprising development, are the biceps of a young 
 pugilist; it sees itself in the person of a little girl 
 whose doll, instead of being only a doll as her Kin- 
 dergarten Teacher (as tall and Imposing and regal 
 a creature as there is In this world) has tried to con- 
 vince her, Is a real living little laughing and crying 
 baby. The little unconscious love scene between the 
 boy and girl at the end of the act, when their respec- 
 tive parents come to fetch them and separate them 
 for the whole long summer (it Is in the late spring 
 of the year), with Diamond Dick covertly tugging 
 at the boy's coat and whispering to him " not to be 
 such a sissy — what'U the gang think of him?", 
 with its gift of a stick of peppermint candy to the 
 girl and the Immediate regret and maneuvering to 
 get it back again, has the ring of genuine reminis- 
 cence. So, too, has an earlier scene in which the 
 little boy tries to deduce some way in which to get 
 rid of his hated enemy, his bed, which constantly 
 stares him in the face from the window of the second 
 story of his home; and so, too, have the scenes In 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 197, 
 
 which even the most trivial actions of the growft 
 characters are enveloped through childhood's eyes 
 with the atmosphere of elaborate melodrama. 
 
 The second act scene is basically the same as the 
 scene of the first act, save that now the futuristic 
 chaos of the world as seen through a child's eyes 
 has resolved itself into the world's actual shapes and 
 forms — the bed cannot be seen through the win- 
 dow; the trees are not so tall, nor do pears and cher- 
 ries any longer grow on the same branch; the great 
 roadway that in the first act seemed to stretch a 
 hundred miles over the fields into the mysterious dis- 
 tance is now seen to be only a rather narrow foot- 
 path leading across the back yard to the automobile 
 road about one hundred feet away; the shrubbery 
 that in the first act seemed to be a deep jungle is now 
 only shrubbery. The eyes of youth — the little boy 
 of the first act is in the twenties now; so, also, is the 
 little girl — see that Uncle Jim (who is the same 
 age as in Act I, only the ages of the two central char- 
 acters, the boy and girl, changing during the play) 
 is not the big and wonderful man he seemed to be. 
 In fact. Uncle Jim is a very little man, without any 
 other ambition or purpose in the world than to be 
 nice to everybody. The President of the United 
 States, whose gross deficiencies the Youth points 
 out to him in a scene in which the Youth rehearses 
 his college debate with the chief executive, is about 
 two and one-half feet tall, a mere pigmy. Diamond 
 Dick? The Youth smiles rerainiscently when the 
 
198 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 name is mentioned — poor old Diamond Dick has 
 been dead these dozen years! His place has been 
 taken by D'Artagnan, who in one scene stands at 
 the top of the stairs of the house and with his sword 
 puts to rout the combined heroes of G. A. Henty, 
 Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolstoi, although in the 
 crisis he is saved from the blade of Ibsen's Master 
 Builder only by the timely interference of the ele- 
 gant Van Bibber, who flabbergasts Solness with a 
 mere look. 
 
 That is, D'Artagnan seems to have taken Dia- 
 mond Dick's place, although as the act progresses, 
 the Youth grows rather chilly toward the brave 
 Frenchman and one senses that it is a case of 
 cherchez la femme. The latter is presently discov- 
 ered to be none other than Flavia, ruler over the 
 kingdom of Zenda, although Youth, inconstant ever, 
 subsequently makes a rendezvous (a droll scene) 
 now with Hope Langham, her of Soldiers of For- 
 tune, then with Nora Helmer. The latter, how- 
 ever, try as he will to woo her, to cajole her, rebuffs 
 him, keeps him at a distance. The Celebrated Ar- 
 tist seems to Youth the biggest man in the world, al- 
 though Youth's eyes are not sure whether, after all, 
 the Great Scholar and the Bank President are not 
 the tallest men in the community. The little girl, 
 now in the wild glory of young womanhood, also 
 sees the world with new eyes, though the Youth 
 is still her hero, still her love. But, where the little 
 boy of the first act approached her, albeit timidly, 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 199 
 
 with the stick of candy, the girl now finds that she 
 must make the advances. And the scene (In nature 
 much the same as that at the conclusion of the pre- 
 ceding act) in which the girl, about to leave with her 
 parents for a trip around the world, tries vainly to 
 convey to the young man her heart-longing for him, 
 her wish to have him claim her for wife, with the 
 young man's coattails the while being tugged at by 
 the Bank President, the Great Scholar and the Cele- 
 brated Artist with their whisperings " Remember 
 your ' career ' — don't tie yourself down — don't 
 let sentiment interfere with your future," brings the 
 curtain down. 
 
 The third act scene remains still basically the 
 same, although not so precisely ordered as the view 
 of the world through the eyes of youth — besides, 
 the real roses on the bushes are made of paper now 
 and the footpath, although it is the same footpath, 
 seems much longer through the eyes of age than it 
 did before, and the bed again stares from out the 
 window — only now the bed is at once a welcome 
 and a frightening sight, at once rest temporary, rest 
 eternal. And everybody in the world seems to be 
 of pretty much the same height — it doesn't matter 
 who they are or what they are. Everybody, that is, 
 but the Celebrated Artist and the Iceman. The 
 young man, now in the late fifties, and himself a 
 celebrated artist after long and patient and health- 
 rending struggle, sees the Celebrated Artist as a 
 little man, the fine, healthy, big-lunged Iceman that 
 
200 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 he might have been a giant. For the now crabbed 
 old man, the quondam youth, has lost everything (so 
 he sees it) in his fight for fame — youth, the oppor- 
 tunities to amass a sufficient fortune against the drab 
 and lingering years, the pleasures of life — the girl, 
 his sweetheart, love. As his companion, D'Artag- 
 nan's place has long since been taken by another 
 hero, Cyrano de Bergerac. As the act progresses, 
 however, the marked intrinsic and even external 
 similarly of Cyrano to Diamond Dick, the man's 
 boyhood hero, becomes apparent to the audience. 
 Uncle Jim, who seemed so small to the man in youth, 
 now looks to him very much like any other man, 
 although Uncle Jim is still the small man he was when 
 seen through the eyes of youth in the second act. 
 The old man sees the President of the United States 
 to be of greater stature than the Scholar, and of 
 vastly greater stature than the Bank President. 
 Thus is his vision distorted. 
 
 Yet he refuses to believe when he is told by the 
 Oculist, the compere of the play, that he does not 
 see aright: that the Bank President is much taller 
 than the President of the United States, in fact, that 
 the Bank President provided the heels on the Presi- 
 dent's shoes to make him appear as tall as he seems. 
 The scene wherein the man's golden sweetheart of 
 other and fairer days flashes again into his hfe and, 
 on her sudden and unexpected entrance in the midst 
 of a most important piece of work, causes every- 
 thing to leave the man's vision, everything and every 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 201 
 
 one but her (the entire scene being suddenly dark- 
 ened and the woman revealed to the man in a purple 
 flush of light), and the subsequent scene wherein the 
 man learns that what confronts him, what has so 
 shocked his thoughts off the rails of work and 
 blotted out the world, is not the woman herself, but 
 the memory of her, the ever-beating, ever-pounding 
 memory of her crying out to him across the pallid 
 and disappointing years to his empty throne of fame, 
 have a quasi-Hoffmannsthal quality. (A delicate 
 touch has been imparted to this scene by the author 
 through the device of phrasing the love passages 
 spoken here by the characters in the same terms as 
 the love scene in Act II, thereby suggesting the 
 despotism of rosemary, the tyranny of memories.) 
 When the darkness is finally dissipated, the audience 
 observes the scene as it was at the beginning of the 
 act. Where the man was standing, however, the 
 audience now beholds the little boy of Act I. And, 
 as the little boy — for such was the old man, after 
 all — as the little boy, in whose breast beats the 
 heart of the old man's experience, stands there, the 
 scene gradually changes back in every detail, save 
 that the bed staring from the window seems no 
 longer so filled with dread, to the disordered scene 
 of the first act. 
 
 Obviously, it is out of the question for me m this 
 small space to review this play for you at the length 
 It properly demands; to quote its many witty lines 
 such, for example, as the youth's " We men flatter 
 
202 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 ourselves when we believe a woman does not love us: 
 why otherwise would she waste her time on us?", 
 as the scholar's " Persons object to the presentation 
 of vice in attractive form. In what other form, pray, 
 can It be presented? " So, too, is space not given 
 me wherein to thread the play's love story for you ; 
 wherein to tell you of the ingenious scheme of the 
 musical accompaniment to the play, with its first act 
 childhood's immature and undeveloped motif con- 
 veyed by an ill-assorted orchestra that lacks the love 
 notes of viola and violin and 'cello, that runs to 
 heavy brass and piccolo and rattling drums — with 
 its second act youth's throbbing motif of adventure 
 and dreams and passions conveyed by an orchestra 
 now amplified to the full with oboe and viola, B-flat 
 clarinet and 'cello, alto-saxophone and French horn 
 — with its last act dimming motif of dimming age 
 conveyed by the orchestra now again deleted of its 
 instruments of passion, with its violins become faint 
 and squeaky and with its ominous beatings of fu- 
 nereal kettledrums. 
 
 Nor is space left in which to describe for you the 
 trick of the increased vividness of the scenic pictures 
 of each successive act, as they are seen first rather 
 indistinctly through the eyes of childhood, then more 
 vividly through the eyes of youth, then more vividly 
 still, albeit not so genuinely as through youth's eyes, 
 through the spectacles of age's weakened vision. 
 Thus, the house in the first act set back at R3, is 
 brought in the second act down to R2 and in the 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 203 
 
 third act to the very foothghts at Ri, conveying the 
 sense to the audience, in the last case, that it is being 
 assisted nearer to the vision by old age's eyeglasses. 
 
 The critics are divided in their opinions of the 
 dramatic and artistic worth of the play, some con- 
 tending that the little girl in Act I should have worn 
 a pink bow in her hair in place of the baby blue bow, 
 others arguing that the bow should have been cream 
 color. Still others contend that while the idea of 
 the play is an excellent one and the treatment and 
 evolution thereof original, genuinely skillful and 
 amusing, the play as a play is ruined because one of 
 the minor women characters in the second act wears 
 a freakish and unbecoming gown. On the other 
 hand, two of the critics approve of the play heartily 
 on the ground that its lighting effects are awfully 
 pretty. 
 
 But enough. I have done my duty — at least, 
 in part. It now only remains for me to become 
 again the conventional critic and to shirk my work 
 by reviewing a couple of plays actually presented. 
 Therefore, will Children of To-day, by Miss Clara 
 Lipman and Mr. Samuel Shipman, kindly step for- 
 ward! We observe here a dramatization of Oscar 
 Wilde's celebrated epigrammatic duet: " Chil- 
 dren begin by loving their parents; as they grow 
 older they judge them, sometimes they forgive 
 them " and " Few parents nowadays pay any respect 
 to what their children say to them : the old-fashioned 
 respect for the young is fast dying out," the dram- 
 
204 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 atization being completely successful in ruining two 
 perfectly good epigrams. To a not inconsiderable 
 degree, it would appear to be the belief of an ample 
 quota of our native showwrights that wherever there 
 are bad manners there is drama. This probably 
 accounts for the fact that our American society set 
 is so often chosen by our playmakers as dramatic 
 material. It certainly accounts in a measure for the 
 fact that our native plays are so often unsuccessful 
 in London. It also probably accounts for the fact 
 that almost every American thinks he has sufficient 
 material out of his own life and actions to make a 
 play. To a not inconsiderable degree, it would 
 similarly appear to be the belief of a number of our 
 showwrights that satire means simply the reversing 
 of the conventional, that any one may be a satirist 
 merely by throwing the bat toward the ball instead 
 of throwing the ball toward the bat. The authors 
 of the piece under discussion are evidently profound 
 swamis of both these cults. The result is the usual 
 result when Bernard Shaw falls into the hands of 
 persons who imagine that all that is required to be 
 another Shaw is the ability to select some particularly 
 old-fashioned play and masquerade it as a new and 
 exceedingly up-to-date play by making the son or 
 daughter the hero or heroine in place of the father 
 or mother. This, believe the hapless persons, 
 causes the play to be " up-to-the-minute," " satiri- 
 cal " and " somewhat revolutionary." What it gen- 
 erally causes, however, is nothing more than the 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 205 
 
 spoiling of the old-fashioned play. The formula 
 for a " Shavian " play, as it would seem to exist in the 
 curious local showwright mind, is not difficult of de- 
 ciphering. All one has to do is to take a play like, 
 say, Mr. A. E. Thomas's The Rainbow and put the 
 father's speeches in the daughter's mouth, and vice 
 versa — that is, have Miss Chatterton speak Mr. 
 Henry Miller's lines and Mr. Miller Miss Chatter- 
 ton's. Or, say, a play like Mrs. Dane's Defence 
 and place most of Mrs. Dane's sentiments in Sir 
 Daniel Carteret's mouth and most of Sir Daniel's in 
 Mrs. Dane's. Here would be a brief scene from 
 such a so-regarded " Shavian " version of the Henry 
 Arthur Jones play: 
 
 Mrs. D. : iThen you never saw your cousin Felicia after 
 childhood ? 
 
 Sir D. : No — I — I — {suddenly breaks down) I can't 
 bear it ! I can't bear it ! 
 
 Mrs. D.: What? 
 
 Sir D. : You're questioning me as if I were a loose man. 
 I feel you suspect me still! . . . 
 
 Mrs. D.: Come, my dear Sir Daniel, this won't do. 
 {Takes him gently by the hand) We are here to get the 
 truth, aren't we? 
 
 Sir D. : Go on, I'll tell you everything. But I don't 
 know what you'll think of me. I don't care! I'd almost 
 rather everybody believed me guilty of being dissolute than 
 suffer what I have the last few weeks! 
 
 Mrs. D. : {after a pause) You're lying! 
 
 Sir D. : {flashing out on her) How dare you? How 
 dare you? {Stands confronting her) 
 
2o6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Mrs. D.: {looking straight at him) I say you're lying! 
 {She looks at him steadily. His eyes drop. He sinks on 
 his knees before her, seizes her hand in supplication, looks at 
 her appealingly) 
 
 Sir D. : I was only a child ... I believed her . . . etc., 
 etc. 
 
 Were Children of To-day merely a bad play, I 
 should deal with it here at no such length. But it 
 is more than a merely bad play; it is representative 
 of all that vulgarity and untutored atmosphere of 
 viewpoint which operate so milltantly against the 
 American stage. Therein lies its significance and its 
 warning. 
 
 Rachel, a so-called " romantic drama " by Carina 
 Jordan, founded on alleged episodes in the career 
 of the illustrious Mademoiselle Elisa Felix, is an- 
 other of those plays containing a Moe Rees. 
 Whenever an invitation is extended me to examine 
 a drama laid in France about one hundred years 
 ago and I detect the presence of a Moe Rees on the 
 programme, I immediately prepare myself for the 
 worst. Moe Rees : the drama : : young Travers : the 
 novel. Moe Rees: the drama:: Mandy: the coon 
 song. Being a dutiful critic, however, I always re- 
 main in my chair until quarter after ten, at which 
 time the heroine is by rule due to baffle the explor- 
 ing villain by secreting Moe in the closet. This 
 dramatic coup negotiated, I feel sufficiently secure 
 in my knowledge of what invariably transpires after 
 that to go home and enjoy myself by not reading 
 
A PLAY TO INTEREST YOU 207 
 
 what happens to be the most talked-of book of the 
 day. After Moe has been hidden in the closet, I 
 am perfectly sure that the villain, who is always very 
 passionate, will seek to barter with the heroine for 
 her person in exchange for Moe's freedom, will be 
 rebuffed with hauteur and will thereupon begin chas- 
 ing the heroine around the room. And I am always 
 similarly sure that later on, when Moe staggers out 
 of his hiding place, the heroine will assist him in get- 
 ting away by " outwitting " his pursuers. These 
 pursuers are always " outwitted " in one of three spe- 
 cific ways: (A) — through being directed by the 
 heroine to search for Moe in the room at R 2 so that 
 Moe meanwhile may make his getaway through the 
 room at L2 ; (B) — through being diverted by a fiery 
 patriotic harangue on the part of the heroine; or 
 (C) — through the heroine pretending to make ar- 
 dent love to the leader of the mob and thus beguiling 
 the latter into temporary inaction until Moe sneaks 
 around the back gf the sofa and out of the open door. 
 I have generally found these " romantic dramas " 
 to translate romance in terms of costumes and drama 
 in terms of shouted words. Rachel is indeed an old, 
 old fabric. Madame Bertha Kallch essays the title 
 role. But would it not seem to take a great actress 
 to play a great actress ? May a stunning talent be 
 represented save by a stunning talent? Here a sub- 
 ject for the newspaper interviewers. Of course, 
 Miss Elsie Janis's imitation of the talented Bern- 
 hardt is a logic-smashing performance ; of course, no 
 
2o8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 actor, however otherwise incompetent, has ever suc- 
 ceeded in failing wholly in the role of that actor of 
 actors, Napoleon Bonaparte — but may not the 
 question be still an open one? The argument 
 against me will be that in such a play as Rachel, 
 Madame Kalich Is called upon to depict, not Rachel 
 actinff, but Rachel off the stage, in private life. But 
 the argument in turn against this argument would be 
 the patent one that all great actresses have exhibited 
 and do exhibit a more elaborate species of acting off 
 the stage than upon it. 
 
ON CHILDREN'S IMAGINATION AND 
 OTHER FAIRY TALES 
 
 Whenever the subject of fairy tales or fairy tale 
 plays arises, numerous erudite adult minds arise con- 
 currently to deliver themselves of the usual benevo- 
 lent walla-walla on the allied subject of the child 
 mind. 
 
 We learn from them that the child mind is just 
 one little mass of imagination, that it is all guile- 
 lessness and lovely innocence, and that it finds its 
 supreme joy in the contemplation of elemental and 
 inconsequent spectacles, so long as the latter possess 
 noise and color. By what form of logic and reason- 
 ing this conclusion had been arrived at, I cannot say. 
 Very probably it was deduced by the same acute and 
 triumphant minds that thought out the theory that 
 a playwright must " plant " everything in his play 
 and never under any circumstances hazard to take 
 his audience by surprise, that thought out the Pro- 
 hibition Party and romaine salad. 
 
 By what token of mental darkness these abject 
 fallacies as to the child mind have persisted, is like- 
 wise not given me to explain. Very probably, how- 
 ever, have these delusions thrived in the same in- 
 scrutable manner as have such indecent uniform 
 hallucinations as the rhythmic melodic beauty of 
 
 209 
 
2IO ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Edvard Grieg's op. 46, No. 3 (in the orchestra suite 
 from the music to Peer Gynt) and the appetite 
 stimulating power of caviar. 
 
 What is spoken of as imagination in the child 
 mind is not imagination but lack of it! Imagination 
 is the power to elaborate the most infecund seed in 
 the soil of prosaicism into the lotus flower of ro- 
 mance, the power to conjure up dear dreams in the 
 daylight, the power to view me as a constructive 
 critic, the power to get tipsy on beer or — raised to 
 the nth — the power even remotely to detect any 
 real drama in the plays of Henri Bernstein. Im- 
 agination is impossible without experience, educa- 
 tion, a mellowed heart, a seasoned stomach, a long 
 and broad perspective. The child mind Is damp, 
 soft, impressible clay, and never does It nor can It 
 create the stuffs of Ideality unless an older and more 
 practiced mind concretely insinuates Into it the basic 
 building materials. The fact that a child takes for 
 granted anything and everything you tell It proves 
 that its mind Is one little lump of belief, but not of 
 imagination. And imagination and blind belief (or 
 ignorance) never go together — as witness the 
 American negro, English cooking and clergymen who 
 have not posted themselves on Buddhism. 
 
 The imaginative individual Is one who can pene- 
 trate to wondrous mental pictures, who can feel out 
 far-off things and far-off thoughts and bring them 
 home Into his own little stockyard without being sup- 
 plied In advance with a road map. 
 
ON CHILDREN'S IMAGINATION 211 
 
 This IS unquestionably the real reason why our 
 theatrical producers take the wise precaution of ex- 
 plaining thoroughly and in detail the plots and 
 scenes of their new plays In the newspapers before 
 the plays are presented. Otherwise, our audiences 
 might not be able to achieve a sense of even scenic 
 illusion for themselves at the Belasco Theatre. It 
 is not enough for the national imagination that the 
 programme state that the second act is laid in the 
 library of Senator Strickland, and that the stage set- 
 ting reveal a room that has all the marks of a library. 
 The fact that it is a library must be proved." You 
 must show the audience real books, a real reading 
 lamp with a green shade, a real paper cutter, a real 
 blotter. Indeed, if ever I write a play one of whose 
 scenes is laid in a library, I shall insist that the pro- 
 ducer put up a sign on the wall reading " Silence." 
 And after this brilliant coup, if my play isn't a suc- 
 cess and if I am not hailed as a startling new figure 
 in the realistic drama, it will not be the fault of us 
 dramatic critics. 
 
 To achieve the best and most healthful esem- 
 plastic results with the child mind, therefore, we 
 must never trust it to itself. We must teach it the 
 A B C of imagination, lest, when it grow older, it 
 begin to conceive and compose such plays as Owen 
 Davis thinks up. Imagination may be defined as 
 the melody that the matured mind plays after its 
 strings have been tuned by adversity. The only rich 
 man In our time who has been blessed with the power 
 
212 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 of imagination is William Randolph Hearst. One 
 may not coincide with the results of Mr. Hearst's 
 imagination, but the fact flashes that he stands alone 
 as possessed simultaneously of money and the plastic 
 faculty. 
 
 So far as the innocence of the child mind goes, 
 I maintain (I am speaking of the child mind in re- 
 lation to the theatre) that it is Innocent only as to 
 causes and reasons; that otherwise It is as sophisti- 
 cated as the average mind of the sap age. In illus- 
 tration, take some such scene as that between Aubrey 
 and Paula at the close of Act II of Tanqueray. The 
 tenderest of youngsters will understand its warring 
 notes as well as an older head — save in the de- 
 ciphering of its fundamental causes. I have studied 
 carefully the effect of such scenes on children, and 
 I have noticed that the discords of human nature are 
 remarkably clear to them. They know them not by 
 name — that Is the only difference. They see many 
 colors, but they are partly color blind. Red to them 
 Is pink and dark green to them is light green. They 
 get the shade, but not exactly, not securely. In fur- 
 ther Illustration, take some such scene as was made 
 visible by Mrs. Leslie Carter at the crisis of the third 
 act of Two Women. Still, on second thought, this 
 is not a fair criterion, as Mrs. Leslie Carter's plays 
 have usually been written for infantile Intellects. 
 This, however, is somewhat beside the immediate 
 issue — the Imaginative power of the child mind. 
 
 In final rebuttal of the commonly accepted attitude 
 
ON CHILDREN'S IMAGINATION 213 
 
 toward this latter, let me concretely face you with 
 your own case. Travel back across the chasm of 
 Time, and, if you are not a New Yorker and are 
 therefore able to do so, imagine yourself again a 
 youngster of nine with a feather duster tied to your 
 pate and a cake knife in your fist, lying behind a bush 
 in the back yard waiting for little Ignatz, the neigh- 
 bor's boy, to come around the corner of the wood- 
 shed in similar spectacular garb. Imagine yourself 
 imagining yourself to be a Sioux brave ready to scalp 
 little Ignatz, who imagines himself to be a Mohican 
 warrior. And then tell me if — on that distant day 
 — you actually imagined anything. You did not I 
 What you did was nothing more than to make your- 
 self up (so far as the kitchen utensils permitted) 
 to look like some Indian or picture of an Indian you 
 had previously seen, and to disport yourself after 
 the manner of the redmen in the Wild West Show. 
 You imagined nothing. You were you; Ignatz was 
 Ignatz. The fact that you were " playing Indian " 
 did not cause you to imagine you were an Indian any 
 more than the subsequent tumbling to the ground of 
 little Ignatz upon your shout, "You're dead!" 
 caused you to imagine for one moment that little 
 Ignatz had shuffled off this mortal coil. 
 
ON "YOUNG" MR. EDWARD SHELDON 
 
 The lingering impressions of " young " Mr. Ed- 
 ward Sheldon as a playwright are of a gilded bass 
 drum being pounded violently in the still corridors 
 of the Louvre; of the Harvard bleachers singing 
 " E ascose fibre vanno a carezzare " from Manon 
 Lescaut in the midst of a football engagement with 
 Yale; of a bunch of violets in a glass of rye whiskey; 
 of Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep played upon 
 the upper octaves of an harmonica ; of overalls worn 
 over a pair of modish white flannel trousers. 
 
 Let me warn you, however, before I proceed, not 
 to mistake me ! Whatever his deficiencies, remit- 
 tent droll logic, poses and achromatism, whatever his 
 odor of bookshelf adventure, this same Mr. Sheldon 
 is so considerably in advance of the majority of men, 
 young or old, writing for the stage in this country — 
 so considerably ahead of them in the matter of 
 scrivening skill, a courage honest so far as it goes, 
 and a sense of characterization, that he may be for- 
 given much. The difficulty with Mr. Sheldon, how- 
 ever, is not that he is young (the charge that is 
 regularly lodged against him by those of our news- 
 paper critics who already have one foot in the grave, 
 but who, even in this supposedly enlightened age, 
 are still regarded as authorities on the strength of 
 
 214 
 
" YOUNG " MR. EDWARD SHELDON 215 
 
 the important fact that they can remember having 
 seen Lotta Crabtree at Niblo's Garden in 1864) ; 
 but that his viewpoint, instead of being analogously 
 young and consequently vivid and sane and vital, is 
 too often old — and consequently both ventrilo- 
 quistic and erroneous. 
 
 He looks upon the realism of modernity with the 
 eyes of a Moritz von Schwind, upon the throbbing 
 romance of modernity with the eyes of a Jean Louis 
 Meissonier. He confuses his paints; his analyses of 
 theme and character are too frequently redolent of 
 the passe analyses and deductions of such archaic 
 revolutionary sans-culottes as the younger Dumas, 
 Victorlen Sardou, George Broadhurst, David Be- 
 lasco, Israel Zangwill, Pierre Wolff, Sydney Grundy, 
 Hall Caine, Henri Bataille, Basil Macdonald 
 Hastings (The New Sin, 1912; Is Suicide a Sin? 
 by Robert G. IngersoU, 1885), Wilson Barrett or 
 Henri Lavedan. 
 
 He gives one the idea of believing what he reads 
 in books (the first sign of mental old age and cor- 
 relative sterility of imagination and thought) ; of 
 holding sex and drama to be invariably synonymous, 
 when the truth is that, in the theatre, sex has some 
 time since to a great degree become comedy. In 
 each and every one of his plays, with the exception 
 of The High Road and The Garden of Paradise — 
 in Salvation Nell, in The Nigger, in The Boss, in 
 Egypt, in The Princess Zim Zim, in Romance and in 
 The Song of Songs, he has figured out his stellar 
 
2i6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 dramatic moment (or what some of our reporters 
 call the " punch ") in terms of a male visiting fierce 
 physical assault upon a female. And, in each in- 
 stance, the generating impulse of the male has been 
 nothing more than a plump and unemoUiated lust. 
 On no occasion has there been fused with this inca- 
 lescence any comparative intelligence of purpose of 
 the Brieux sort; on no occasion have these deputy 
 climaxes possessed any decanter justification than a 
 titillation of the drooping vertebrae of mild old men 
 and a driving giddy of the cranial contents of very 
 young girls. 
 
 Such immedicable proscenium patterns of yester- 
 day as Shenandoah, The Conquerors, The Queen of 
 the Highbinders, and the like, were given to pre- 
 cisely this Sheldon habit; indeed, unless memory 
 errs, the first act of the Bronson Howard specimen, 
 the middle act of the Paul Potter exhibition and the 
 central moment of the quoted melodrama revealed 
 what some of my venerable colleagues are fond of 
 calling " Sheldon's strength " while Mr. Sheldon 
 was still at an age where he said his prayers. Sex, 
 to repeat, has ceased to be dramatic. Nor is pas- 
 sion the synonym of romance. Paul Bourget and 
 Balzac, Weinlnger and Ellis and a thousand other 
 physicians — if he were still sufficiently young in 
 mind to read them with penetration and constructive 
 inference — would provide Mr. Sheldon much juicy 
 meat for speculation. 
 
 Three more items. First, Mr. Sheldon's method 
 
"YOUNG" MR. EDWARD SHELDON 217 
 
 of descriptive sentimental writing. His favorite 
 recipe : " The stars, the perfume of the night 
 breeze, the orange-colored moon, the violets in the 
 fields of St. Germain — the tinkle of a distant man- 
 dolin," et cetera ad infinitum. What fragrant 
 hackereil Surely Mr. Sheldon is young enough to 
 know better. Above every other cheaply effective 
 form of writing, this is the easiest; any amateur can 
 do it. I do not except even Henry Van Dyke. The 
 stars, the moon, the flowers and soft music in the 
 distance are a sadly overworked company. 
 
 Second, Mr. Sheldon's attempt to invest his writ- 
 ings with a loftier air than actually is theirs by in- 
 serting his dialogue in the mouths of important 
 proscenium personages such as governors of States, 
 great newspaper owners, famous painters, leaders 
 of suffrage movements, powerful bankers, noted 
 clergymen and famous opera singers. This coy 
 subterfuge is perfectly transparent and a bit naive. 
 Certainly, Mr. Sheldon, you are still young enough 
 to realize that the so-regarded important personages 
 of the nation rarely have anything important to say. 
 The drama of life, the shaking logic of life, the pain 
 and the joy of life, come from the John Smiths. 
 Where is there any fresh new thought or fresh new 
 drama to be had from the Roosevelts or the Rocke- 
 fellers, the Lyman Abbotts or Dr. Parkhursts, the 
 Mrs. O. H. P. Belmonts or the Mary Gardens? 
 Their life stories, their ideas, are of the literary and 
 dramatic past. There is progress and drama only 
 
2i8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 in the obscure of the world — or in the world's 
 growing children. 
 
 Third, Mr. Sheldon's condescending Continental 
 connoisseurish wisdom culled — so is the impression 
 — from the conventional window of the Hotel Bris- 
 tol in the Place Vendome; from the conventional 
 cushioned seat of a gondola dreaming its conven- 
 tional way along the lazy waters of Venice ; from the 
 conventional trip through the Musee Carnavalet and 
 the Luxembourg, the conventional taxi voyage 
 through the Bois de Vincennes, the conventional 
 sampling of the ris de veau a la Toulouse and of the 
 Haut Brion 1871 in the little garden across the way 
 at Fontainebleau, the conventional view from the 
 Montmartre of "Louise"; and from the conven- 
 tional pretty, sweet-natured Mademoiselle Ninette 
 of the Marigny promenade or the conventional 
 harder, sterner gaberlunzie of the Boul' Mich' by- 
 ways. All perfectly obvious; of the smell of the 
 guide book, of Stories of the Operas, of Famous 
 Masterpieces of Painting. Any incompetent and 
 unimaginative writer may produce a stirring effect 
 upon the American proletariat by such means, but it 
 is deplorable in so skilled a craftsman, so well edu- 
 cated and well bred a gentleman, as Mr. Sheldon. 
 
STANLEY — EXPLORER OF THE 
 AMAZON 
 
 Historical theatrical dates: 
 
 600 B. C. — Astrology discovered by the Greeks. 
 
 1912 A. D. — Astrology discovered by Augustus Thomas. 
 1855 A. D. — Theory of the influence of color on the emo- 
 tions propounded by Herbert Spencer. 
 
 1909 A. D. — Theory of the influence of color on the emo- 
 tions propounded by Augustus Thomas. 
 1874 A. D. — Osteopathy promulgated by Dr. A. T. Still. 
 
 1906 A. D. — Osteopathy promulgated by Augustus Thomas. 
 1778 A. D. — Theory of hypnotism advanced by Frederick 
 
 Anton Mesmer. 
 
 1907 A. D. — Theory of hypnotism advanced by Augustus 
 
 Thomas. 
 
 1905-1915 A. D. inc. — Theory of hypnotism practiced suc- 
 cessfully on dramatic critics and public by 
 David Belasco. 
 
 1895 A. D. — Brieux causes stir in Europe. 
 
 1913 A. D. — Americans discover Brieux is not name of a 
 
 cheese^ as had been suspected. 
 1880 A. D. — Strindberg's genius flashes across Europe. 
 1912 A. D. — Strindberg discovered by Americans at Berkeley 
 
 Lyceum. 
 1870 A. D. — Wilkie Collins writes Man and Wife. 
 1912 A. D. — Hartley Manners thinks it would make a timely 
 
 play. 
 
 219 
 
220 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 1868 A. D. — George Marion born. 
 
 1868 A. D. — George Marion stops having new ideas on the 
 staging of musical plays. 
 
 ? B. C. — Ev'B appears in public undressed. 
 
 1907 A. D. — Ziegfeld produces the first Follies. 
 
 1 88 1 A. D. — Klaw and Erlanger begin to improve theatrical 
 conditions in America. 
 
 1 88 1 A. D. — The public begins to swear at Klaw and Er- 
 langer. 
 
 1620 A. D. — The era of the George V. Hobart play. 
 
 1876 A. D. — Stanley explores the Congo. 
 
 1912 A. D. — Stanley explores the Amazon. 
 
 There are at least three unfailing ways in which 
 any particularly incompetent playwriter may deeply 
 impress our professional dramatic critics. First, 
 the plajrwriter must exercise the precaution to be 
 born in England. Second, he must be careful to 
 have no ideas and must place this lack of ideas in 
 the mouths of perfectly obvious Welsh or Irish or 
 Scotch or British provincial types or characters, thus 
 achieving what the critics will call a " genre study." 
 Third, if he desires to be hailed as " daring," all he 
 has to do is to have his heroine seduced, and then, 
 when his climax comes, have the young baggage put 
 on a shawl and quote a defense for herself at the 
 top of her voice from Havelock Ellis without put- 
 ting In the quotation marks. Other infallible ways 
 are for the dramatist to write Sudermann's Johannis- 
 feuer or Heimat or Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna, 
 having a care, however, to change the title; to get 
 
STANLEY 221 
 
 Mrs. Fiske to play the thing, or, if not successful in 
 this direction, at least to get Mrs. Thomas Whiffen 
 to play the part of the mother; to keep a weather 
 eye on the all-important lighting effects; and not to 
 look too much like Sydney Rosenfeld. The late 
 Mr. Stanley Houghton, in brief, impressed the 
 critics. 
 
 Stanley's play, Hindle Wakes, which evoked much 
 mental violence and copious bedizened, encomiasti- 
 cal adjectives on the part of many of the frigbeards 
 of Britain when it was produced by the Horniman 
 mummers of Manchester, appears to me the most 
 indecently over-estimated product that has come to 
 us out of England since Arnold Bennett. A polite 
 anterior glance at its virtues discloses little else than 
 a first rate plenary disregard for the pish-mince 
 called " dramatic construction," and a fair eye to the 
 inherent differentiating nooscopic attitudes, in cer- 
 tain matters, of the male and female. Beyond 
 these, Hindle Wakes is absolutely nothing more than 
 our own David Graham Phillips' play of the old 
 Madison Square Theatre days. The Worth of a 
 Woman, with the scene set in Lancashire instead of 
 Indiana — save that the British piece is not nearly 
 so thematically valid as the latter. The trouble 
 with Stanley is that he thinks and talks like Snappy 
 Stories, meanwhile imagining with the aid of the 
 critics that he is promulgating Something Big on 
 the Sex Question. The further trouble with Stan- 
 ley lies in the fact that like many other young men, 
 
222 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 he believes that he Is not given to sentimentality 
 merely because he refrains from using sentimental 
 words. The truth is that, although widely stamped 
 as a " frank, fearless looker upon life," this Stanley 
 is as soppy a bawl-brother as I have engaged with in 
 quite a time. And the second truth is that, although 
 characterized as a person of " bold viewpoint toward 
 sex matters," this same playwright is bold only in 
 the sense that he has dared put forth dog-eared and 
 perfectly false cajoleries anent amazons as new ideas. 
 
 The macaronic vacuity and stultiloquence of the 
 alleged big moment in the exhibit, a scene whose 
 " fierce vital logic" (as one of them expressed it) 
 turned several erstwhile sane London critics into 
 piskashishes, may be conveyed without an undue 
 flow of perspiration. An adolescent girl meets on 
 a Bank Holiday with an adolescent Don Juan. * * * 
 More asterisks. * * * Discovery by parents. 
 " He must right the wrong he has done her by mak- 
 ing her his wife." * * *" Very well ; I will." * * * 
 then the girl, thus: "But I will not marry him! 
 It was my fun as much as his ! He's been forced 
 into marrying me, because he really loves Beatrice 
 Farrar. You call him a blackguard and now you 
 want me to marry a blackguard and reform him. I 
 want a real man. I want to be a free woman!" 
 In effect, just this. Nothing more. 
 
 What sweetish, highly lacquered pish; what old- 
 fashioned facetious immateriality; what elegant pop- 
 gunnery I Where Phillips, a thinking man, manipu- 
 
STANLEY 223 
 
 lated the basic elements of this same theme adroitly 
 and with a show of cool reason, Stanley has merely 
 theatricalized it and, by inoculating it with an un- 
 conscious but none the less present sentimentalism 
 and with an ignorance of organic chemistry, has 
 reduced it to terms of college boy caterwaul, purple- 
 cravated iconoclasm, lukewarm pseudo-sex-socialism. 
 The girl pretends to refuse to marry the young man, 
 despite the slight evasion, on the ground that he is 
 a blackguard. Inasmuch as by her own tongue he 
 is no more the blackguard than she, and inasmuch, 
 to boot, as the young fellow is logically quite the 
 " real man " in every sense, is this not pure rouge- 
 stick walla-walla? With the girl's charge that, any- 
 way, the young man loves another, we behold the 
 entrance of the slaying, consuming sentimentality, a 
 mouthing on the girl's part that definitively kills her 
 " free woman " rant on the spot. And any physi- 
 cian will bear out the contention that Fanny Haw- 
 thorne's " big speech " and defense of her position 
 based on the assertion that the amusement of the 
 liaison was mutual amounts to nothing but theatrical 
 soshpudding of the spooniest order. I seem to be 
 losing my patience — I, who once even sat through 
 Mr. Hartley Manners's piece The Indiscretion of 
 Truth, to any speech in the stilty dialogue of which 
 one might have signed " yours truly " and had a let- 
 ter. Stanley's soupgon, " I want to be a free 
 woman," analyzed, means next to nothing. It is 
 just a dainty little quasi-suffrage startler thrown 
 
224 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 across the footlights to what female doodles happen 
 to be out front. In short, this main episode upon 
 which his entire play rests, and for which it has been 
 decked with bays and studded garters, is Shaw gran- 
 villebarkerd, everyday common sense pierrelotid, 
 the New York Journal ringlinged, theatricalism the- 
 atricalized — it is revolutionary in the sense that 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox is revolutionary; it is daring 
 in the sense that an illustrated advertisement of 
 ladies' underwear is daring. 
 
 There is material for a more than moderately 
 Interesting drama on this topic, but Mr. Houghton 
 and his oblique sitting-room cynicism were scarcely 
 the twain to cope with it. Fanny Hawthorne might 
 find for herself a defense (if that be the word), and 
 build to a truly worth-while climacteric dramatic 
 scene, in the pages of the celebrated English patholo- 
 gist Almroth Wright, in the utterances of the awe- 
 inspiring Diane de Poitiers of the heart of Henri II, 
 in the lamentations of the sophisticated mistress of 
 Louis XIV, or in the retorts and rapier thrusts of 
 Pompadour and of naughty Montespan. Or she 
 might find an excellent flaunting, devoid of all 
 Houghtonese sophistry, in what has been left us by 
 Madame de la Tour, by Jules Janin and Beaumelle. 
 Or in the pages of Wedekind's Hidalla. Or in the 
 blood heating thrills of Tristan and Isolde. Or in 
 a slender book by Helen Woljeska called A Wom- 
 an's Confessional. Or in the cutting slashes of the 
 angelically ferocious Madame Rachel. Or in the 
 
STANLEY 225 
 
 trembling Evening Star of Tannhauser. Or, if she 
 were conversant with ancient Greek psychophysical 
 documents, in the green foods with which her par- 
 ents had economically and unthinkingly overfed her. 
 Or in an adaptation of the psychological records of 
 instinctive action, such, for example, as my excellent 
 old tutor Professor Edward Bradford Titchener 
 used to illustrate in the case of the cage-reared 
 migrant that beats its wings against its cage at the 
 approach of winter in its endeavor to fly south, al- 
 though it has never flown south. 
 
ON "SPICY" DRAMA 
 
 For years, every now and again In the publicity bul- 
 letins of plays and novels there has confronted my 
 vision the description adjective " spicy." And for 
 years I have enlisted my fullest intelligence to pene- 
 trate to its exact meaning. Recourse to the dic- 
 tionary : 
 
 Spicy, «. Fragrant, aromatic, piquant, smart. 
 
 Examination of the works themselves has failed to 
 reveal to me any qualities that seemed appropriately 
 to be described by the word or its synonyms. If a 
 husband discovers that his wife has been making 
 eyes at the coachman, I fail to see how the fiction 
 effect Is either fragrant or aromatic. If a model 
 tells an artist that she cannot marry hira but that 
 she will become his mistress, I fail to deduce how the 
 thing is either piquant or smart. Had the model 
 told the artist that she would not become his mistress, 
 we should, indeed, have had something both piquant 
 and smart, but certainly not as the matter stands. 
 The whole case has baffled me. I have been told 
 that " spicy " means " naughty." But in place of 
 naughtiness, I have found stupidity — and naughti- 
 ness is never stupid, save when persons are given to 
 affectations or live in poor quarters or cannot under- 
 
 226 
 
ON "SPICY" DRAMA 227 
 
 stand the Japanese point of view. Paris and Bing- 
 hamton, N. Y., are the only two communities I have 
 ever visited where the word " spicy " has seemed to 
 be least abused and where its definition has seemed 
 most satisfactorily unveiled for me. In Paris, 
 " spicy " refers only to the effect of an acute de- 
 lineation of the emotions and actions of apt human 
 beings when the policeman is on the beat. In 
 American literature of stage and library, what is 
 termed " spicy " is often merely the portrayal of the 
 emotions and actions of dunderheads when the po- 
 liceman is not on the beat. In other words, when 
 an American writer wishes his characters to be 
 " spicy " he usually succeeds only in making them 
 lawless; while the Frenchman never forgets for an 
 instant that in life it is silly and foolish and unsafe 
 to break the law when you can bribe the policeman. 
 
ON CRITICS 
 
 There are two ways in which a critic may procure 
 for himself a reputation for trustworthiness and ra- 
 tionality. The one way is to concur consistently in 
 the public's momentary mental attitudes; the other 
 is to abide stanchly and unremittingly by the pub- 
 lic's fondled traditions. For a man who earns his 
 living by criticism, who looks upon criticism as a 
 routine office occupation, like bookkeeping or clean- 
 ing inkwells, these ways are by all means the wisest 
 and safest to pursue. Not only do they preclude the 
 possibility of one's losing one's source of livelihood, 
 as well as the probability of frequent callings to ac- 
 count by disgruntled advertisers, but in addition they 
 secure for the critic the position and adulation that 
 is the plump portion of all who, to speak generally, 
 appreciate that a gentle appraisal of Years of Dis- 
 cretion is the better part of valor and that Eva, 
 with all its faults, looked at from another point of 
 view is " Ave " — all hall ! 
 
 There are two ways in which a critic may win for 
 himself a reputation for prejudice and dubious judg- 
 ment. The one way is unsentlmentally to accept 
 things mainly for what they are worth; the other 
 is unemotionally to express the opinions thus de- 
 duced. These latter ways are provocative of large 
 
 228 
 
ON CRITICS 229 
 
 and passionate discomfort. In the first place, they 
 are certain to bring down upon the critic's head the 
 stigmatizing crimination of youthfulness. In the 
 second place, they are logically certain to invest the 
 critic with an odious air of attempting to be spec- 
 tacularly original. And, in the third place, they 
 may in due time succeed in alienating him from his 
 sustaining loaf and jug. For these excellent rea- 
 sons, the latter practices are to be approached cau- 
 tiously and not without some bonny misgivings. 
 Had Bernard Shaw been an American, he would un- 
 doubtedly have been put back on general reportorial 
 work (probably assigned to cover the Ohio Society's 
 banquet) the afternoon after his first gutting criti- 
 cism (of Grundy's Slaves of the Ring) appeared in 
 the paper. Had Sarcey been an American, his re- 
 fusal of the Legion of Honor, on the ground that 
 its acceptance might influence his critical honesty 
 in the future, unquestionably would have been looked 
 upon by the public and his colleagues as merely a 
 gaudy stratagem to conceal his dishonesty in some 
 other unsuspected direction. 
 
 The metempirical attitude toward dramatic criti- 
 cism is a strange and awesome coccus. It labors in 
 devious manners its machinery to massage. In 
 France, for instance, the attitude is such that any 
 critic who writes of Hervieu unfavorably will at no 
 time and under no circumstances be received into the 
 Academy. Inasmuch as almost all the French news- 
 paper critics are known publicly to be unchaste 
 
230 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 (many of them, like Pierre Wolff, de Flers, Felix 
 Duquesnel and Pierre Veber are admittedly merely 
 press agents for one another's wares ; de Flers even 
 went so far as to persuade his present employer to 
 discharge the regular critic so that he, de Flers, 
 might assume the post and thus see to it that his own 
 plays did not lack sufficient praise), what criticism 
 of comparative worth there is in Gaul is limited to 
 the periodical publications. And in the latter, only 
 that modern criticism that is pilfered bodily from 
 Geoffroy's elaborate Cours de Litterature Drama- 
 tique, written about eighty years ago, is regarded as 
 fearless, constructive and sane. The policy of hush 
 is beloved of the Gauls. Only that which is favor- 
 able to the dramatic scriveners of La Belle France 
 is regarded as honest criticism. Thus, although 
 even to a child's eye it was evident that the Russian 
 influence of Tolstoi in the theme of forgiveness for 
 adultery, of the woman's right to happiness, was to 
 be clearly observed in the French drama of the last 
 years of the nineteenth century and more recently 
 in Le Pardon of Lemaitre, in La Deserteuse of 
 Brieux, in Le Bergail of Bernstein, in the Colibri of 
 Bataille, it was the rule of public opinion in France 
 that, for reasons of patriotism," the fact should be 
 perfumed with critical silence. 
 
 In England, the public expects of its present critics 
 that they devote themselves more assiduously to the 
 cultivation of actors' reputations than to the culti- 
 vation of drama. The actor Is considered very 
 
ON CRITICS 231 
 
 gravely in England. Indeed, he is at times even- 
 looked upon as being of some help to the art of the 
 drama. As we over here only vaguely know, the 
 British public also expects of its theatrical commen- 
 tators that they greet with condescension any foreign 
 products (especially American) that are offered up 
 for their august inspection. I say " only vaguely 
 know " because, despite the speech that comes 
 periodically into contact with our tympani, it is not 
 so much the British critic who is hostile to imported 
 wares as it is his reading public. The British critic 
 is, on the whole, a moderately enlightened member 
 of the guild — but he is a very, very circumspect 
 member. He values his reputation even more 
 greatly than a demi-mondaine values hers. He 
 knows well that even the American Charles Klein 
 is a more apt theatrical plumber than the British 
 Horace Vachell — that The Third Degree (or Find 
 the Woman, as it was called overseas) is a more in- 
 teresting exhibition than Jelf's a block away; yet 
 he knows just as well that it would be silly for him 
 to say so. And, with a weather eye to his standing 
 in the community, he shelters himself under the 
 cover of the two practices wherefrom reputations 
 may be coaxed as nicely in the long shadows of Nel- 
 son's column as in the long shadows of Longacre 
 Square. 
 
ON MONCKTON HOFFE'S DIALOGUE 
 
 Whatever may be the deficiencies of Mr. Monck- 
 ton Hoffe in the matter of playwriting, it remains 
 that he possesses the faculty of inventing what is 
 known on Broadway as " unnatural, no good " dia- 
 logue and what is, therefore, dialogue at once nat- 
 ural and very good. This Broadway and, via 
 Broadway, theatrical American attitude toward and 
 conception of what constitutes good dramatic dia- 
 logue is a strange and awesome emotion. If one 
 were to appraise American human beings by the 
 ritual of their conversation as that ritual has been 
 superimposed upon us by the majority of financially 
 successful American dramatic writers, it would in- 
 evitably follow: 
 
 1. That it is not " natural " for an American to speak 
 save in slang. 
 
 2. That it is " unnatural " for an American to be witty. 
 
 3. That it is not " natural " for an American ever to 
 speak save in " short, crisp, snappy " sentences. 
 
 4. That it is " unnatural " for an American to speak a 
 pure, grammatical English. 
 
 5. That an American only speaks " naturally " when he 
 speaks in terms of " laughs." 
 
 Of course this contention on the part of the finan- 
 cially successful American dramatic writers is by no 
 
 232 
 
MONCKTON HOFFE'S DIALOGUE 233 
 
 means so absurd as it may appear. It has, indeed, 
 a considerable foundation of truth. But, as I have 
 endeavored time and again to show, is it, in view 
 of this fact, not the duty of our playwrights with 
 dreams other than pelf (and should not one have 
 such dreams once one has achieved the pelf?) — 
 is it not their duty to entertain us in the theatre 
 (when they seek to manipulate American characters 
 presumed to be rational, educated and mentally 
 alert) with characters that speak something above 
 the vulgar and arid jargon of grillrooms, dancing 
 restaurants and cheap clubs? 
 
 Hoffe, as I say, presents to our ear dialogue that 
 neither drives us from the fauteuils with a laborious 
 " building up of laughs " nor drives us down upon 
 our spines with an equally laborious artillery of so- 
 called " clever," and hence stupid, epigrams. He 
 gives us a set of mortals who, realizing they are 
 characters in a comedy, convince us with rippling, 
 fruity examples of the best wit of the different 
 classes of society to which they are supposed to be- 
 long. Thus, when Hoffe shows us, let us say, the 
 witty racetrack scamp (as he does in a recent play) 
 he does not, as would our American playwriters, 
 offer us the speech of the racetrack scamp of average 
 racetrack scamp wit (which is little or no wit), but 
 the speech of the wittiest member of the racetrack 
 scamp class. Is not this what we may demand in 
 comedy and farce comedy? And is not this the only 
 manner in which genuine comedy (I am speaking of 
 
234 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 comedy in the best sense) may be developed? Cer- 
 tainly it is. We have only to examine the best com- 
 edies and the methods of the creators of these best 
 comedies quickly to believe it. 
 
THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME SPINE 
 
 On such occasions when one of my old boyhood 
 friends comes to visit with me or when I discover 
 myself becoming much interested in some new girl 
 or when I am invited out to dine — in other words, 
 when misfortune seizes me — I find I may always 
 rely on the attitude of our middle class (which is to 
 say our theatregoers) toward the transient mummer 
 drama to provide me with an antiseptic horse-laugh. 
 Some months ago, there came to us out of Ger- 
 many a ridiculous vaudevillian, one Schaeffer — in 
 his home land a mere entertainer of small children 
 — who was promptly hailed by our local critical 
 Solomons as " the most versatile genius in the 
 world." Thus the jaunty superlative, the dripping 
 of the spectacular saliva. As a matter of record, 
 this fellow is no more the genius than Marceline, 
 plain clown, no more versatile than any number of 
 men one is able quickly to summon to mind. I my- 
 self (an unaccomplished person) am able to do 
 everything this absurd Schaeffer does with the excep- 
 tion of rolling a cigarette with one hand and balanc- 
 ing a papier-mache chariot, which two feats I hap- 
 pen never to have tried. As against the latter, how- 
 ever, I venture a contract for six or seven exploits 
 that would simply stagger the poor feUow. I have 
 
 235 
 
236 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 somehow always regarded versatility, though, as a 
 word intended to dignify something a bit more ele- 
 vated than performing the trick of pulling ribbons 
 out of a person's mouth (a " trick " one may buy for 
 fifty cents in any " magic outfit " establishment) and 
 daubing a nice clean canvas with a barber-shop land- 
 scape and a red-orange sunset. 
 
 I project Schaeffer merely as an illustration of the 
 viewpoint of the local connoisseurs, our landsturm 
 of art and letters. And I proceed a bit more per- 
 tinently to a play called Under Cover. Here the 
 specimen of melodrama that one inevitably comes to 
 read of the next morning as " thrilling." What is 
 this "thrilling" of which we so regularly hear? 
 This devastating siege of the native spine, this ver- 
 tebra-shivering sdrucciolamento ? Let us see. Is 
 it a sensation imparted by the audition or spectacle 
 of something mentally rousing? Something stimu- 
 lating to an adult neither soft-wltted nor drunk? 
 Certainly not. The native spine, as the theatrically 
 experienced George M. Cohan and I once in col- 
 laboration sought to point out, is tickled into a con- 
 dition of trembling awe only by the sudden switch- 
 ing out of a chandelier, the shooting off of a blank 
 cartridge and the sight of a twenty-dollar-a-week 
 actor in a policeman's uniform. That spine, on the 
 other hand, which hopes In the American theatre to 
 be thrilled by the deHcate humor of a Schnitzler, the 
 quick satire of a Thoma or Fulda, the fancy of a 
 RIttner or Ettllnger, the sharp wit of a Rip and 
 
TRAIL OF THE LONESOME SPINE 237^ 
 
 Bousquet, the laughing thought of a Molnar, is a 
 spine destined to a lonely and a hopeless, a forlorn 
 and a disappointed dream. 
 
 When, in this melodrama of Mr. Roi Cooper 
 Megrue's, the Secret Service hero suddenly grabs 
 a gun away from the villain and turns the tables on 
 the latter, my spine somehow experiences a thrill 
 of not one-thousandth the magnitude it receives from 
 such a simple dialogic line as " Life is a prison, with- 
 out bars," spoken by Lord George in that melodious 
 short play of Beerbohm's. When Mr. Megrue's 
 heroine is trapped by the scoundrel of a customs 
 chief, my spine somehow doesn't respond one two- 
 thousandths as much as it seems to when Shaw's 
 Caesar speaks, "Come, Cleopatra: forgive me and 
 bid me farewell; and I will send you a man, Roman 
 from head to heel and Roman of the noblest; not old 
 and ripe for the knife, not lean in the arms and cold 
 in the heart, not hiding a bald head under his con- 
 queror's laurels, not stooped with the weight of the 
 world on his shoulders, but brisk and fresh, strong 
 and young, hoping in the morning, fighting in the 
 day, and revelling in the evening. Will you take 
 such an one in exchange for Cassar?" And when 
 Mr. Megrue's pretty hero breaks the glass of the 
 burglar-alarm box in the dark and the clangor brings 
 the household to his aid, my cheap spine somehow 
 does not tingle nearly so much as when the palpitat- 
 ing wisp of a queen bids of Caesar the Roman's 
 name and Cssar lightly returns, " Shall it be Mark 
 
238 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Antony?" Ah, but then — I am a queer and an 
 outlandish fellow. And the things I like, few others 
 do like. And what need for Mr. Megrue to care 
 what pleases lonely me so long as his play thrills the 
 proletariat by the gallon? 
 
 The simple business is this : the mob is and can be 
 thrilled in the theatre only by the display of antique 
 and hence familiar stratagems — which stratagems, 
 however, the playwright must exercise great cau- 
 tion to render less valid and effective than were they 
 in their original incarnations. This process results 
 in plays which the mob calls " novel." Thus, the 
 " big " scene in Under Cover, wherein the hand- 
 some hero locks all the doors of his boudoir and in- 
 forms the heroine-in-a-nightdress that he is going to 
 keep her there all night unless she tells him who, why, 
 et cetera, is our old friend the " big " scene between 
 Pinero's gay Lord Quex and Sophy FuUgarney. 
 Thus the " surprise " at the end of the play wherein 
 the supposed smuggler turns out to be a detective 
 is of the same " surprise " cast as brought a curtain 
 down on Richard Harding Davis' Ranson's Folly 
 (produced some twelve or thirteen years ago) and as 
 was presented to us in a play by Maurice Baring. 
 Thus the missing Jack-in-the-box necklace device 
 harks back to distant Sardou's Scrap of Paper. 
 Thus the girl-in-the-secret-service set by the powers 
 against the man-she-has-come-to-love is out of Helen 
 Ware's play of three years ago, The Deserters, and 
 out of a round dozen before it. Thus the sudden- 
 
TRAIL OF THE LONESOME SPINE 239 
 
 dark-scene-and-escape-with-subsequent^popping-in-at- 
 other-door is Officer 666, Stop Thief, u. s. w. And 
 so it goes. 
 
 And so it goes 1 
 
ON THE SLAPSTICK 
 
 One night in the Year of our Lord 1896, a tall, thin 
 man walked out upon the stage of a Broadway the- 
 atre, followed by a little fat man. Of a sudden the 
 tall, thin man wheeled about and deliberately poked 
 his forefinger into the eye of the little fat man. In- 
 stantly a bombilation of laughter surged over the 
 auditorium. Men literally shook and rocked and 
 rolled in the violence of their mirth. Women 
 shouted and screamed and went hysterical in an un- 
 controllable ecstasy of merriment. One spectator 
 actually ruptured a blood vessel out of sheer glee. 
 Nose glasses were hurled off their respective bridges 
 by the abrupt rebellion of the muscles of melancholia 
 and were shattered into many pieces. Tears of 
 transport welled up in waves, and the prodigious 
 flood of cachinnation was dammed only by the final 
 advent of physical weakness. 
 
 One night some sixteen years later (March, 
 19 1 2), the same tall, thin man walked out upon the 
 stage of a Broadway theatre, followed by the same 
 little fat man. Of a sudden the same tall, thin man 
 wheeled about and deliberately poked his forefinger 
 into the eye of the same little fat man. Instantly a 
 brother bombilation of laughter surged over the au- 
 ditorium. Men again literally shook and rocked 
 
 240 
 
ON THE SLAPSTICK 241 
 
 and rolled in the violence of their mirth. Women 
 again shouted and screamed and went hysterical in 
 an uncontrollable ecstasy of merriment. Long min- 
 utes passed before the audience recovered, before its 
 laughter was spent, before it was able again to con- 
 tain itself. And Weber and Fields had once more 
 — and beyond all question — established the fact 
 that, when all has been said and done, no form of 
 humor, be it the farcical drollery of a Hoyt, the m- 
 sinuating and delicious satirical twistings of a Barrie 
 or a Synge, or the wily jestings of a Bahr or a Mol- 
 nar, is so appealing to American and other suscepti- 
 bilities as that invested in a direct pedal assault upon 
 the seat of another man's pants, in the sticking of a 
 finger into his retina, in a propelling of the stom- 
 achial muscles against the protruding paunch of one's 
 fellow with force sufficient to knock the latter off his 
 feet, or in some other such excruciatingly comical 
 pain-breeding stratagem. 
 
 The slapstick has had many muckrakers. I, in 
 my younger days, have been one of its handsomest 
 assailants. Indeed, I still am. But truth compels 
 the chronicle that I, in company with every other re- 
 viewer in the land, am frequently a hypocrite in this 
 matter of humor — that is, when it comes to writ- 
 ing about it. It is expected of the conscientious 
 critic that he deplore the humor of the swash of the 
 air-puffed bladder, the swat of the rolled newspaper 
 and the " it's raining " of the conversational drizzle. 
 It is expected of him that he ply his pen in vigorous 
 
242 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 pleading for the nativity of a general appreciation 
 of a finer, more literary, more respectable Molierean 
 shape of humor. Upon his shoulders, so he is 
 fondly persuaded to believe, rests the rescuing of 
 the theatre from such of its abysmal sins. To laugh 
 at a man falling on his face? Horrors I To be 
 jocular at the sight of a so-called comedian tweaking 
 the nose of another? Mercy, mercy! And yet it 
 remains, dolorific as it may be and in all faith is, 
 that that same grandiose critic, being a human being 
 in spite of himself and his job, guffaws and holds in- 
 testinal jubilee almost every time a pickle-herring 
 or merry Andrew of the stage pulls another's whis- 
 kers or Imprints upon his companion's hinter an- 
 atomy a great toe. There is, forsooth, good reason 
 for this. There is good reason why slapstick hu- 
 mor, above every other form of humor, commands 
 our laughter, albeit against our wills. And here- 
 with, its fugitive defense. 
 
 The basis of all humor is pain — that is, pain of 
 a not too deep nature suffered by another. Every 
 really effective jest, witty observation, facetious sat- 
 ire in the world's history has been grounded on the 
 discomfiture and troubles in one direction or another 
 — mental, physical, financial or what not — of a 
 fellow man. This is the greatest joke the Book- 
 maker ever saw fit to play on us. His children. He 
 fashioned our hearts so that they would weep at the 
 beholding or hearing of suffering, and our minds 
 
ON THE SLAPSTICK 243 
 
 plus our eyes plus our stomachs plus our ears — four 
 to one — so that they would scream in fine glee at 
 the same thing. Thus is it four to one that we will 
 laugh at him who falls on the icy pavement, at him 
 who bumps his kneecap against a chair in the dark, 
 at the pink-eye, at the headache of the morning after, 
 at the youngster with the green apple abdominal 
 pains, at the woman with shoes too tight, at the 
 bronchial hoarseness of yon fellow's voice, at him 
 who has just lost a five-dollar bill, at him who has 
 been gold-bricked, at him who while shaving has cut 
 himself with the razor, at the person who is thrown 
 to the floor by a sudden lurch of the street car, at 
 the drunken, tottering bum in imminent danger of 
 cracking his skull, at any one who steps on a tack, sits 
 on a pin or gets married — in brief, at each of these 
 and thousands of other equally unfortunate and quite 
 unhumorous personal calamities. 
 
 The slapstick is the symbol, the dramatization in 
 parvo, the juice of the boiled meat of unhappiness 
 and pain. As it comes into forceful and audible 
 contact with Meyer Bockheister's pants, being di- 
 rected thither by the chubby fists of Michael Dill- 
 pickle, it shoots into our minds not only the highly 
 pleasant and laugh provoking thought that Mr. Bock- 
 heister has been made to suffer a temporary stinging 
 sensation of large discomfort, but it suggests such 
 additionally ravishing humors as the possibility of 
 Mr. B'ockheister finding a fine red welt there in the 
 
244 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 morning, and of his being compelled to partake of 
 nutriment in an upright position. To those of us 
 who are blessed with better imaginations than our 
 neighbors, and who are thereby able to glean twice 
 as many grounds for laughter out of the episode, 
 there occurs also the delicious potentiality that Mr. 
 Bockheister's trousers might have been torn by the 
 severe blow, thus necessitating the purchase against 
 his will of 3, new pair, together with the chance that 
 Mr. Bockheister may be able to grab the slapstick 
 away from his aggressor and play a return sonata 
 on the suburban section of the trousers containing 
 Mr. Dillpickle. Anticipation of pain multiplied 
 thus adds to the jocoseness of the occasion. 
 
 That Mr. Bockheister did nothing to warrant the 
 slapstick attack upon his person makes the humor 
 of that attack all the more delightful, because human 
 nature is such that it enjoys seeing people get, not 
 what is coming to them, as the saying has it, but in 
 seeing them get what is not coming to them. Of 
 course our mouths deny this, but our heads tell us 
 it is the world's philosophy — and perfectly true. 
 All forms of humor allied with the slapstick produce 
 the same effects in us. We are brought up on the 
 humor of the circus clown who trips himself up in 
 the sawdust ring and lands on his ear, and who runs 
 headlong into his fellow clown and stands the latter 
 on his head. And the " kid " of us remains in us 
 eternally. Humor of a more dehcate fiber may win 
 our smiles and flirt with our brains, but it takes the 
 
ON THE SLAPSTICK 245 
 
 cruder humor of the chin whisker, the stomach pad, 
 the swishing, swashing slapstick and their blood- 
 relatives to make us let go and launch ourselves into 
 fetes of prolonged ventral joy. 
 
ONE VIEW OF TWO PLAYS 
 
 The nature of the American is such that he Is quick 
 to view as fact anything that is all fiction and equally 
 quick to deny as at all possible of existence any- 
 thing that is part fiction. Mr. George Scarborough 
 wrote and caused to be produced a play given the 
 title The Lure, a play whose theme, as I have here- 
 inbefore observed, was derived with a whoop from 
 the white slave mythology so popular and persuasive 
 at the moment. Being wholly fable, so far as its in- 
 tent, generalization and thematic vitality went, the 
 play was hailed by the cognoscenti of the press as 
 " searching in its truthful and vivid portrayal of an 
 existing and terrifying state of affairs." Of the 
 piece, indeed, the reviewer for The New York Eve- 
 ning Sun went so far as to record: " From first to 
 last, it rings true I . . . The truest act since the big 
 act of The Easiest Way! ... Its sincerity some- 
 thing which cannot be denied. ... It strikes a big, 
 timely and human note. . . . Covers whole white 
 slave question honestly 1 " This same Mr. Scar- 
 borough subsequently produced a piece called The 
 Last Resort, the theme of which was derived (true 
 enough, with no less a whoop than in the previous 
 instance) from the disclosures that brought about 
 the genesis of the movement concerning the recall 
 
 246 
 
ONE VIEW OF TWO PLAYS 247 
 
 of judges, but a theme none the less which carried at 
 bottom a truth as truthful as the falsity of that of 
 The Lure was false. 
 
 What happened? Because his thesis was melo- 
 dramatized with a somewhat more conspicuous lay- 
 ing on of paprika externals than he had negotiated in 
 the case of his earlier play, and because his theme 
 was thus caused more transparently to exhale the 
 vapors of part-fiction instead of, as in his previbus 
 work, deftly repressing the complete thematic fiction, 
 the entire shebang, good and bad lumped together, 
 was committed to the lunacy ward. 
 
 It would appear to the lay eye that the chief 
 trouble with Mr. Scarborough as a writer for the 
 theatre is that he possesses an unmistakable knack 
 for the theatre. Which is to say that he thinks in 
 terms of heroes and villains, " punches " and " sus- 
 pense," thrilling denouements and telling " cur- 
 tains." From such a mind, whatever drama ema- 
 nates must inevitably bear the plague spots of arti- 
 ficiality and hyperbole. Mr. Scarborough is by 
 Charles Klein out of Owen Davis. His characters 
 are not human — even before the actors begin im- 
 personating them. His characters seem to say 
 while they are delivering the playwright's lines: 
 " Pretty zippy dialogue old Scarborough has given 
 us, don't you think? " His " curtains," as the stage 
 argot has it, " plant " themselves so speciously that 
 their effect is gone before they arrive. His heroes 
 are so ungovernably heroic that, by five minutes to 
 
248 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 nine, every discriminating person in the audience is 
 rooting for the villains. And his villains are so con- 
 sistently villainous that, beside them, even Paul Arm- 
 strong's celebrated dirty workers take on the vis- 
 age of angels of heaven. Many a possibly valid 
 theme, such as the one presented in his Last Resort, 
 is Scarborough destined to devastate if he persists 
 in adhering to this Broadway theatrical ritual, the 
 ritual which orders that all life be seen through the 
 glasses of " what will go in the theatre," the ritual 
 that thinks from the stage back to life instead of 
 from life toward the stage. The ritual, in short, 
 that would define, let us say, Socialism as " Any 
 theory or system of social organization which would 
 abolish, entirely or in great part, the individual effort 
 and competition on which modern society rests, and 
 substitute for it cooperative action, would introduce 
 a more perfect and equal distribution of the products 
 of labor, would make land and capital, as the instru- 
 ments and means of production, the joint possession 
 of the members of the community, and would cause 
 Jane Cowl to love George Fawcett and marry him 
 in the last act." 
 
 The story materials of The Last Resort begin 
 with the corruption of a trial judge by a rapscallion 
 of a corporation lawyer, said corporation being de- 
 sirous of sequestering a particularly active legal op- 
 ponent in jail. The scene changes to the court- 
 room and we observe the subsidized member of the 
 bench provoking the objectionable party — who is 
 
ONE VIEW OF TWO PLAYS 249 
 
 our little hero — into an open contempt of court, 
 thereupon consigning him by way of punishment to 
 serve sentence. Our hero takes an appeal, and we 
 next find ourselves in the private consultation room 
 of the Appellate Court, six weeks later. Attention 
 to the plot is here temporarily interrupted by the 
 presence on the scene, in an otherwise unimportant 
 role of court stenographer, of an awfully pretty 
 little blonde girl with wonderful blue eyes. After 
 a while, several minutes after this rare creature has 
 made her exit, one begins to notice that there have 
 been present all the time two other characters. It 
 presently obtrudes upon one that these two charac- 
 ters are judges of the higher court, equally as cor- 
 rupt as was our accommodating friend of the first 
 act. The rapscallion of a corporation lawyer enters 
 and persuades the two bad men to keep our hero in 
 the lock-up. Then — bismillah ! — out of a tele- 
 phone booth near by steps our little heroine. She 
 has heard all — not merely all, mind you, but ALL I 
 Being an old hand at melodramas, however, we im- 
 mediately realize that it will do neither our heroine 
 nor our hero much good — this having heard all, 
 that is — because our old friend " suspense " will 
 demand that our heroine be arbitrarily thwarted by 
 the villains so as to tide the audience over to the 
 next act. In this next act, our hero is elected gov- 
 ernor of the State and, losing his head in the excite- 
 ment of the moment, asks our heroine to marry him. 
 Inasmuch, therefore, as his troubles are now about 
 
250 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 to start with doubled force, this constitutes a happy 
 ending. 
 
 Along Came Ruth, an adaptation of Fonson and 
 Wicheler's La Demoiselle de Magazin, is of the de- 
 pressing species of theatrical entertainment generally 
 described as " wholesome " — obviously meaning, 
 so far as one can make out, full of holes. It is the 
 invariable custom of our theatrical appraisers to 
 designate as wholesome any play (i) that is laid 
 in the country and has a rainstorm for a " curtain " 
 to one of its acts; (2) that contains the spectacle of 
 a little girl at death's door begging her grief -stricken 
 mother not to be sad because " I'm goin' to get well 
 an' strong again, mamma; the doctor tol' me so," 
 when the audience has been apprised that there Is 
 no hope for the invalid; (3) that contains several 
 touching references to Christmas; (4) that discloses 
 the fact in the last act that the little heroine is not 
 an illegitimate child after all, her father having 
 duly married her mother before he left on that fatal 
 j:rip to sea; and (5) that does not imperil the hero- 
 ine's physical chastity. It is, of course, a vital es- 
 sential of all of these " wholesome " dramas that 
 they prevent their audiences from thinking, their 
 wholesomeness being proportioned to their pro- 
 ficiency in this direction. A study of the New York 
 newspaper critiques of the last twelve years uncur- 
 tains the intelligence that only once has the adjective 
 
ONE VIEW OF TWO PLAYS 251 
 
 " wholesome " been employed therein to describe 
 the work of a first rate or even second or third rate 
 dramatist, the flattery having been reserved ex- 
 clusively for the output of the metaphysicians of 
 piffle. The one exception noted occurred in the in- 
 stance of Barrie's Peter Pan. Who in this land has 
 heard of a Shaw play described as wholesome? Or 
 a Galsworthy play (even The Pigeon) ? Or a play 
 by Schmidt, Walter, Bahr, Molnar, Pinero, Haupt- 
 mann, Schnitzler, Brieux, Sudermann, Giacosa, 
 Echegaray? 
 
 Along Came Ruth is evidently " wholesome " by 
 virtue of the fifth clause in the critical book of rules 
 — the corporeal sacrosanctity of our heroine. Our 
 heroine is a superficial, hence amiably natured, little 
 baggage who comes as clerk in Act I to a village 
 store in Maine, and before you can say Jack Rob- 
 inson — or, in this case, Winchell Smith — succeeds 
 in transforming the store into an emporium and the 
 village into a metropolis. On the stage, the only 
 thing that can be reformed more quickly than a down- 
 at-the-heel store or village is a criminal. The first 
 act scene of the Fonson-Wicheler adaptation is laid 
 in " Hubbard's furniture shop in Oldport, Maine," 
 and the second, according to the programme, in 
 the " Hubbard-Bradford department store," but, 
 actually, in the palace of the Crown Prince of Saxon- 
 borgia or some such erstwhile Savage musical com- 
 edy setting. This managerial habit of resorting so 
 frequently to the storehouse for scenery may well 
 
252 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 be applauded on the ground of economy, but it is 
 rather disconcerting to an audience's powers of im- 
 agination. Not long ago, for instance, while wit- 
 nessing a play produced by Mr. William A. Brady 
 and called Don't Weaken, I found myself waiting 
 impatiently for the entrance of Grace George. Un- 
 able finally to contain my disquietude, I begged of 
 the man with me a possible reason for the actress's 
 delayed appearance. " But," said he, glancing at 
 his playbill and making certain, " Grace George is 
 not in the cast." I smiled, indulgent at the fellow's 
 ignorance. " Ho! " I exclaimed. "You can't fool 
 me ! Grace George is always in this scene ! " 
 
 Finding nothing In Along Came Ruth as a play to 
 hold my attention, I devoted the period spent In the 
 cozy, warm theatre (it was very cold out of doors) 
 to speculating upon several irrelevant but highly in- 
 teresting philosophies. Thus, during the first of the 
 three acts, I brought myself to the conclusion that 
 the reason for the large financial success of such 
 plays as Damaged Goods and the like is to be found 
 fundamentally in the one psychologic fact that they 
 provide, through the articulation of a word or words 
 generally hushed by the edict of conventionality, the 
 aural stimulus — the ear shock — the sound concus- 
 sion — the ear emotion — with which the public 
 has been unable previously to gratify Its auditory 
 sense. That Is to say, where the theatregoing public 
 has had its cardiac and ocular sensations and emo- 
 tions provided for by the managers, where it has 
 
ONE VIEW OF TWO PLAYS 253 
 
 been able to find and in due time to tire of heart and 
 eye thrills (induced respectively, for example, by 
 such exhibits as Madame X and the Hippodrome 
 shows), it has not until lately been provided with 
 ear thrills. (Music is to be excepted as, remember, 
 it is only of drama we are here treating I) When, 
 therefore (as I figured out while Ruth was selling a 
 big order of furniture to old Captain Hodge, the vil- 
 lage grouch) , there is given to the public a play con- 
 taining such a tympanum stimulus as is contained in 
 the direction against the ear drum of the hitherto 
 unspoken word " syphilis," the public will rush to the 
 play to receive that sensation as it would rush, does 
 and has rushed, to such exhibits as the Ziegfeld Fol- 
 lies to receive new physical stimuli. 
 
 During the second act (while young Allan Hub- 
 bard was beseeching Ruth to be his wife and while 
 Ruth, who loved him greatly, was refusing him on 
 the ground that there had to be a third act), I rumi- 
 nated over the abject futility of any and all attempts 
 to establish " atmosphere " in the minds of a theatre 
 audience before the rise of the curtain. By convey- 
 ing thus in advance to the audience the sound of 
 birds singing in the woodland, the sound of rain 
 and thunder, or something of the sort, that is. 
 Never once has such an attempt been successful. 
 Why this should be so, I was unable to figure out be- 
 cause the trafiic on the stage was making too much 
 noise. Belasco, in his theatre in Forty-fourth 
 Street West, accomplishes more in the way of guar- 
 
254 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 anteeing the mood of his audiences through the sim- 
 ple expedient of preserving a gentle quiet in the 
 house, a sense of expectant hush, than have any of 
 his colleagues with their attempts toward establish- 
 ing an ante-curtain mood through such preliminary 
 " atmospheric " bosh as a character playing the piano 
 or some darkies singing in the distance. No " at- 
 mosphere " on earth is powerful enough to push its 
 way through the drop curtain. 
 
 During the last act (while old Papa Hubbard was 
 provoking the audience to great mirth by stimulating 
 a condition of intoxication), I set myself to wonder- 
 ing why it never occurs to our more discerning stage 
 producers to command their actor charges in rehear- 
 sal to refrain from indulging in the nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine of the usual thousand mummer gestures 
 that assault an audience's optic nerve during the 
 course of almost every play given to the public. 
 Aside from the patent fact that this ceaseless gestur- 
 ing diminishes to no inconsiderable extent the veri- 
 similitude of a play, does it not occur to the produc- 
 ers that the only persons who make use of gestures 
 are persons deficient in the power of intelligent ex- 
 pression — or Polacks and political speakers, which 
 amounts to the same thing? Forasmuch as actors 
 — I am speaking of plays in general — are supplied 
 with this power of expression by the playwright, 
 where the need of gestures? One gesture, to be 
 sure, sometimes emphasizes a point; but two ges- 
 tures, just as surely, obfuscate it. When a person 
 
ONE VIEW OF TWO PLAYS 255 
 
 off the stage catches sight of the lunar body and re- 
 marks, "Isn't the moon beautiful to-night?" does 
 he accompany his observation with an elaborate 
 maneuver with his anterior limb? Not unless he is 
 drunk ! Why then, when an actor is called upon to 
 execute a similar remark in a play, should it be neces- 
 sary for him, in order to impress his audience, to 
 indulge in the elaborate delsarte of a Bremen 
 kapellmeister? Let us lay all such motions on the 
 table I 
 
ON THE CYCLE NONSENSE 
 
 For some time now, our theatrical managers have 
 been waving verbs in the pages of the daily gazettes 
 to the general effect that the romantic drama is due 
 soon to reappear. Here, one of our managers' 
 most promiscuous amusements. Every year they in- 
 dulge themselves in gratuitous elocution conveying 
 the idea that such and such a style of drama is now 
 temporarily done for and that such and such another 
 style of drama is bound soon again to come to the 
 surface of popularity. In the dissemination of this 
 fragrant buncombe, the managers are assisted in 
 weeks when there is nothing worth while to write 
 about by some of our more celebrated theatrical 
 commentators. 
 
 In other words, there is still left in our civilization 
 a considerable quorum of stanch souls who gabble 
 about " cycles," just as there is a copious group that 
 still calls all harsh, grim plays like Rutherford and 
 Son by the term " relentless " when, in reality, they 
 are Intrinsically and logically not a whit more relent- 
 less (or " ruthless," to quote a synonym frequently 
 used) than light, pleasant plays like Our Wives or 
 The Concert. Relentless means other things than 
 last-act breaking up of homes, suicides and the like. 
 Love, consider, is as relentless, as ruthless, as hate. 
 
 256 
 
ON THE CYCLE NONSENSE 257 
 
 Habit is as relentless, as ruthless, as a steely selfish- 
 ness. The Incubus is ten times as " relentless " and 
 "ruthless" as Rutherford; and the former is light 
 satirical comedy. The sun is a thousand times more 
 relentless than the thunder of the storm. Only it 
 doesn't seem to be. The only thoroughly relentless 
 thing in the world of drama, as in the world of 
 actual life, is the inconsistency of human nature. 
 Whenever the critical confraternity perspires " re- 
 lentless " panegyrics upon a play of the order of 
 Rutherford, you may be sure that, however excel- 
 lent the rest of the play may be, it is defective in the 
 blatant and uncompromising — and consequently un- 
 authentic ! — consistency of its central figure's nature 
 — or character, if you prefer the usual word. 
 Write into your play a personage who scowls his way 
 from the rise of the curtain to its final fall and who 
 is compatibly unnatural — and a thousand type- 
 writers will click to proclaim you a wonderful drama- 
 tist, where, as a matter of fact, you are nothing but a 
 nature faker. There is no such personage. I ex- 
 cept only hermits and the insane. 
 
 And this is why, in reviewing Rutherford from 
 overseas before the American scrivening gentlemen 
 became hysterical over its " ruthlessness," I made re- 
 mark: "Its author's pen has skill — of that no 
 doubt may exist; her eyes search aptly into the 
 psychologic plexi of individuals as individuals, but 
 they would seem to fail thus far to descry those 
 plexi, those hearts, skid one against the other, save 
 
258 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 in the most patent sense. We find her a reporter 
 of the individual, of the one. Your real dramatist 
 is the reporter of the two — or three; of the meet- 
 ing place rather than the Morris chair." 
 
 The acute dramatist, a dramatist of the mark of 
 Shaw in Man and Superman, of Brieux in The 
 Three Daughters, of Mirbeau in Business is Busi- 
 ness, appreciates vividly that even the most relent- 
 less-natured of human beings, in contact with other 
 human beings, never remains consistent to the end 
 of the chapter. He may remain consistent to his 
 standards in thought and word, while refuting them 
 with his actions — or vice versa. But whoUy, en- 
 tirely, finally consistent — never ! You sing Ibsen, 
 Strindberg and a blood brother or two into my 
 ear? But the " relentless " dramatic personages of 
 Ibsen and Strindberg are intermittently less indi- 
 viduals than groupings individualized. They are 
 — blame the word — symbols ; they are summaries ; 
 they are creeds, abstract and concrete, assembled 
 under a man's or a woman's hat. Very plainly, 
 any person proficient in humorous details and small 
 dissensions may readily turn this argument into a 
 fool's cap and stick It atop my head (such a per- 
 son might argue, for instance, that such a charac- 
 ter as John Rutherford might, too, be a summary 
 in one body of several living characters — an argu- 
 ment, which, being baseless, would unquestionably 
 be regarded very seriously by the academically In- 
 clined) ; but, while I freely grant that the argument 
 
ON THE CYCLE NONSENSE 259 
 
 has its imposing flaws, I must also freely admit that 
 it contains a certain basic tonic quality that is anti- 
 dotal to much of the nonsense that is peddled on the 
 question in general. 
 
 The theatrical manager or other person who 
 talks " cycles " does so because he is in the custom 
 of regarding the various types of plays not from the 
 genuine viewpoint of thematic action, but from the 
 traditional viewpoint of vocabulary, stage business, 
 costumes and scenery. For example, in the meta- 
 physics of the cycle babblers, a society play is a play 
 in which the characters wear evening dress, lounge 
 luxuriously on the gilt furniture, deport themselves 
 with epigrammatic suavity and ring intermittently 
 for Jenkins. For illustration, a military play is a 
 play in which all the men wear uniforms, in which 
 a horse is heard periodically to gallop outside the 
 house, and in which the current war seems to have 
 been brought about through the circumstance that 
 two men happen to be deadly rivals for the hand of 
 the same girl. For instance, a romantic play is any 
 play the scenes of which are laid in a period previous 
 to 1870, in which complementally the costumes are 
 not modern, in which one of the men characters, 
 glimpsing the leading lady, exclaims: "By m' 
 faith, she is a likely wench ! " and in which every 
 character except the leading lady carries a horse pis- 
 tol or a sword — the leading lady carrying a guitar. 
 To be sure, there is another species of romantic play 
 that the managers recognize. This second species 
 
26o ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 is exactly like the first, except that all the characters 
 are kings, queens, princesses, dukes, royal chamber- 
 lains, prime ministers and handsome lieutenants in 
 the armies of the neighboring kingdoms. 
 
 Others before me have splintered lances in tilt 
 with the cycle hallucination, but it flashes at me that 
 they have missed the salient point of the contention. 
 It is all very spectacular and coordinately ingenu 
 to say that the public is always ready for a good play 
 no matter how many plays like it have immediately 
 preceded it; it is all very well and very easy to mar- 
 shal statistics to prove that in some certain apparent 
 " cycle " of farce, let us assume, a good melodrama, 
 a good satirical play, a good comedy or a good any- 
 thing else has been preeminently successful with the 
 public. But it seems to me that the real feature 
 here is this: What are believed by some to be 
 cycles of public taste for certain different forms of 
 theatrical entertainment are really nothing but cycles 
 of lack of taste (or discernment) on the part of the 
 theatrical producers. 
 
 The managers' minds move in cycles and, having 
 no alternative, the public's taste must follow suit. 
 Whatever intrinsically the public may want, the pub- 
 lic, patently enough, cannot get it until the manager 
 gives it to the public. In time, through some acci- 
 dent or other, the manager happens against his in- 
 tuition to produce the sort of play for which the 
 public has had a hankering for a number of years, 
 and then the manager and other obtuse souls forth- 
 
ON THE CYCLE NONSENSE 261' 
 
 with announce triumphantly that the wheel of public 
 taste has turned round again. Immediately, the 
 manager figures out his coup in terms of externals. 
 If the successful play contains a novel and vivid 
 theme laid in Egypt, the manager forgets that the 
 theme is almost wholly responsible for the good for- 
 tune with which his production has met and deduces 
 the idea that a cycle of Egyptian drama (which to 
 him means pyramids, the Sphinx by moonlight, palm 
 trees and maybe a sandstorm) is upon the world. 
 The subsequent substantial financial success of sim- 
 ilarly scened, very bad plays disgorged by other pro- 
 ducers, contrary to all that has been written on the 
 subject, has nothing whatever to do with a " cycle." 
 Had the first Egyptian drama and its numerous pat- 
 terns been produced five years previous, the same 
 " cycle " story would have extruded itself at that 
 time. But, exclaim you — recalling what I said at 
 the beginning of these reviews — pubHc taste figures 
 in the matter all the same! Certainly. But that 
 taste does not move in cycles. It is always equally 
 bad. 
 
NO. 7 
 
 It Is the commonly accepted superstition of our 
 theatrical audiences that any woman who has broken 
 the seventh commandment is — as a matter of pure 
 course — naturally a breaker of all the others. As 
 a result of this peculiarly heathen attitude, in all of 
 our native-made plays save such wherein the wom- 
 an's misdemeanor is given palliation on the ground 
 that " I was nothing but a child — I knew nothing 
 of the world," an interesting harlot is held in less 
 esteem than a virtuous bore. Just why this condi- 
 tion of affairs should obtain in the theatre I am at a 
 loss to understand, inasmuch as we all know per- 
 fectly well, of course, that outside the theatre things 
 are quite otherwise. However, I suppose the cir- 
 cumstance may be explained away by the fact that 
 our average man's confused notion of a harlot is a 
 woman who: 
 
 1. In France, sleeps in a Louis Quinze bed, falls in love 
 with a young nobleman and eventually dies of consumption. 
 
 2. In England, marries a respectable man, brings about 
 his social ostracism and eventually commits suicide. 
 
 3. In America, wears a red satin decollete dress, frequently 
 remarks "How about a little drink, boys?," is an omniv- 
 orous smoker of cigarettes, crosses her legs when she sits 
 down, and eventually reforms. 
 
 262 
 
NO. 7 263 
 
 It has remained for a woman, Anne Crawford 
 Flexner, to correct, in so far as is possible under the 
 circumstances, this widespread error into which the 
 local theatrical peasantry has fallen. And although, 
 true enough, the lady playwright compromises by 
 conventionally " reforming " her personage at the 
 end of her play (it were too much to hope that every- 
 thing might be accomplished at once) , it yet obtrudes 
 that in the character of Mrs. Oliver, in the play 
 The Marriage Game, Miss Flexner has given the 
 better-grade Sister Seven at least a portion of her 
 just due. 
 
 Had Miss Flexner presented her argument in the 
 form of serious drama instead of comedy, her play, 
 of course, would very probably have brought about 
 its ears the immediate gruntings of the professional 
 Ivanhoes of the community's morals, it being the 
 native mind to object to all truth in the drama unless 
 the aforesaid truth be presented in the comic spirit. 
 This accounts for the occurrence that so many of 
 our so-called serious plays deal in themes which have 
 no foundation in fact. What Miss Flexner has 
 done is to take a platitude — which is to say, some- 
 thing new to the minds of the regular metropolitan 
 theatre patrons — garnish it with a very wholesome 
 and genuine wit and then, in spite of the latter, in- 
 sinuate the result into the heads of the herd through 
 the wise device of casting the central figure, the har- 
 lot, in the person of an actress so good-looking and 
 so wholly entrancing in herself that the herd is 
 
264 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 wooed into acquiescence — not mentally of course 
 (which would be impossible), but physically. 
 
 I have ever contended that, no matter what the 
 moral nature of the role or playwright's designation 
 of heroine or villainess or what not, the real heroine, 
 the actually sympathetic and convincing female per- 
 sonage in an acted play, is generally that actress 
 who, be she what she may in the dramatic demands 
 of the play, is the best-looking member of the cast. 
 Send me a seat from which to review such a bi-moral 
 female-roled play as The Kreutzer Sonata or The 
 New Magdalen or, say, a production of Othello and 
 cast some proficient old battleax for Desdemona 
 and some infinitely less talented but young and 
 very lovely hussy for Emilia, and I promise you a 
 critique that would lose almost any newspaper critic 
 his job ten minutes after it appeared in print! And 
 after my critique has been read and set down as non- 
 sense by aged authorities on the drama, I shall be 
 prepared to have you select the most scholarly critics 
 from among their number and pit them in argumen- 
 tation against me in the public square; and I will 
 guarantee you to criticise their heads off. 
 
LESSONS FOR PLAYWRIGHTS 
 
 HOW TO MAKE AN AUDIENCE FEEL A THRILL 
 
 1. Cause a character to lay a revolver on a table 
 or place a revolver in his pocket, never to refer to it 
 or use it again. In other words, a dramatically un- 
 justified display of a revolver for the specific me- 
 chanical purpose of thrilling the spectatorial spine 
 by placing it in a state of suspense. 
 
 2. Darken the stage when a light stage would be 
 perfectly logical so far as the immediate demands of 
 the play are concerned. 
 
 3. A vivid flash of lightning and sudden, loud 
 thunder-clap. 
 
 4. Cause one character who desires not to be seen 
 to remain on the stage when the footsteps of some 
 one coming are heard approaching nearer and 
 nearer, the character delaying his exit until the last 
 possible moment. 
 
 5. Throw the shadow of a character against the 
 wall of a room by causing the character to carry a 
 lantern or candle in a darkened room. 
 
 6. Smash something. Say an article of furniture. 
 Better still, a pane of glass. Better still, batter in 
 a door. 
 
 265 
 
266 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 7. A woman's shriek or scream. 
 
 8. A character goes into a room off stage, closing 
 the door behind him. Another character enters 
 looking for the first character, approaches the door, 
 tries it and finds it locked. He turns toward the 
 audience with a puzzled, worried expression. The 
 audience will be thrilled. It matters not if the char- 
 acter who is in the room is merely taking a bath or 
 a nap, the audience will respond to the mechanical 
 trick of the locked door. The audience will im- 
 mediately suspect suicide, murder or something sin- 
 ister, however slight may be all reasons for suspect- 
 ing anything of the sort. 
 
 9. Cause a chain lock to rattle heavily when the 
 door of a darkened " den " or room is opened and 
 to fall clanging back into place when the door is 
 closed. 
 
 10. Predict through one of the characters that 
 something thrilling may happen presently even 
 where there is no intention to have it happen. 
 
 11. The faithful old revolver shot. 
 
 12. Place a loud-ticking clock on the premises to 
 heighten the nervous tension of a quiet dramatic 
 scene. 
 
 II 
 
 HOW TO MAKE AN AUDIENCE LAUGH 
 
 I. Cause a man to give another man a resound- 
 ing whack on the back under the guise of friendship. 
 The laugh in this instance may be " built up " stead- 
 
LESSONS FOR PLAYWRIGHTS 267 
 
 ily In a climacteric way by repeating the blow three 
 times at intervals of several minutes. 
 
 2. A man gives a woman a whack on the back, 
 beheving in an absent-minded moment that the 
 woman (to whom he is talking) is a man. 
 
 3. One character steps on the sore foot of an- 
 other character, causing the latter to jump with 
 pain. 
 
 4. The spectacle of a man laden with many large 
 bundles. 
 
 5. A man or a woman starts to lean his or her 
 elbow on a table or arm of a chair, the elbow slip- 
 ping off abruptly and suddenly precipitating him or 
 her forward. 
 
 6. One character imitating the walk of another 
 character who is walking in front of him and cannot 
 see him. 
 
 7. A man consuming a drink of considerable size 
 at one gulp. 
 
 8. A character who, on entering an " interior " or 
 room scene, stumbles over a rug. If the character 
 in point be of the " dignified " sort, the power of this 
 laugh-provoker is doubled. 
 
 9. Intoxication in almost any form. 
 
 10. Two men in heated conversation. One starts 
 to leave. Suddenly, as if fearing the other will 
 kick him while his back is turned, this man bends his 
 body inward (as if he actually had been kicked) and 
 sidles off. 
 
 11. A man who, in trying to light a cigar or cig- 
 
268 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 arette, strikes match after match in an attempt to 
 keep one lighted. If the man throws each useless 
 match vigorously to the floor with a muttered note 
 of vexation the laughter will increase as the strata- 
 gem is prolonged. 
 
 12. The use of a " hell " or " damn." 
 
 13. A man proclaims his defiance of his wife 
 while the latter is presumably out of hearing. As 
 the man is speaking, his wife's voice is heard call- 
 ing him. Meekly he turns and goes to her. 
 
 14. A pair of lovers. They try several times to 
 kiss, and each time are interrupted by the entrance 
 of some one or by the ringing of the door-bell or 
 telephone-bell or something of the sort. 
 
 15. A bashful man and a not-bashful woman are 
 seated on a bench or divan. As the woman grad- 
 ually edges up to the man, the man just as gradually 
 edges away from her. 
 
 16. A character gets his hand stuck in a decan- 
 ter. 
 
 17. A character throws an imaginary object into 
 the wings, whereupon a bell rings. 
 
 in 
 
 HOW TO MAKE AN AUDIENCE CRY 
 
 I. A child in a nightie saying his " Now I Lay 
 Me." If the prayer is concluded with " and please, 
 dear Dod, send my papa back to me," when it is a 
 divorce play, or a military play with father at the 
 
LESSONS FOR PLAYWRIGHTS 269 
 
 front, or something of the sort — or with 
 " mamma " substituted for " papa " if the play be of 
 the "problem" species, — this episode will always 
 exercise a doubly profound effect on the audience's 
 heart. 
 
 2. A scene in which the heroine drops a rose from 
 her corsage after a disagreement with the hero and 
 in which the hero subsequently picks up the rose, 
 presses it to his lips, and stands with the flower in his 
 hand looking in the direction whither the heroine 
 has made her exit. 
 
 3. A man or a woman — or a man and a woman 
 — seated in front of a grate-fire in a darkened room 
 while some one (preferably a girl) is playing the 
 piano softly in the adjoining room. 
 
 4. The playing of an organ either on or off stage 
 in a rural, religious, or any other kind of play. 
 
 5. A scene showing a couple of comrades dying 
 of thirst on a desert. 
 
 6. A scene in which a wayward mother or father 
 comes back and speaks to her or his child without 
 the latter's knowing its parent and with the de- 
 parture of the parent without a disclosure to the 
 child of the parent's identity. 
 
 7. A little child dying on the stage. 
 
 8. A blind girl. 
 
 9. An old and decrepit soldier indulging in remi- 
 niscences of his valorous fighting days. 
 
 10. A tender reference to a picture of mother, 
 either hanging on the wall or contained in a locket. 
 
270 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 1 1. A scene in which a stepmother treats her step- 
 daughter cruelly. 
 
 12. Church chimes on Christmas Eve. 
 
 13. A poor family, with the little son telling his 
 father all the things he has written Santa Claus to be 
 sure to bring him. 
 
 14. A silent moment on a dimly lighted stage, 
 two lovers who have had a misunderstanding being 
 the persons involved in the scene. 
 
 15. Any love-scene played in the moonlight. 
 
 16. The whistle of a railroad locomotive or a 
 river-boat far away in the distance. 
 
 17. In a play laid in the South, the sound of 
 darkies singing in the distance. 
 
 18. A log-fire in the open at night, or a bridge 
 at night. The latter is particularly effective. 
 
 19. A wife or sister or sweetheart, as the case 
 may be, falls to sleep on a divan toward the end of 
 the play; the hero steals quietly to the back of the 
 couch, leans over it, brushes back the woman's hair 
 and kisses her tenderly on the forehead; then puts 
 out the light and tiptoes from the room, turning at 
 the door (through which a light streams) to cast 
 one last loving glance at the sleeper. 
 
 20. An old and faithful darky servant who re- 
 mains loyal to his master through all the latter's 
 trials and tribulations. In a military play, the audi- 
 ence's tears may always be won with a scene in which 
 the old darky begs to have one final word, one last 
 
LESSONS FOR PLAYWRIGHTS 271 
 
 good-by, with his master before the latter is led off 
 to prison or to be shot. 
 
 21. Any scene in which a man forgives an erring 
 woman or in which, when finally won to forgiveness, 
 he goes to her and suddenly clasps her in his arms 
 without saying a word. 
 
 22. The scene wherein a lost child is returned to 
 its mother — accompanied by the latter's cry of 
 " My Baby ! '^ 
 
 23. An errant woman at bay crying out, " I am 
 not a bad woman! " 
 
 24. A character laboring under great sorrow 
 with a smile on his face. 
 
 25. A telegram. The heroine opens it, reads it, 
 clutches it in her hand with a moan and sinks into 
 a chair. 
 
 26. The singing, playing or mentioning of 
 Home, Sweet Home. 
 
 27. A scene showing a father objecting to his 
 boy's love for a certain woman (preferably an 
 adventuress), and with the boy wildly, tearfully im- 
 ploring his father to relent. 
 
 28. A scene in which the leading character, alone, 
 deserted, and heart-sore in his desolate room at 
 night, sadly wonders " what they're doing at home 
 now." 
 
 29. A scapegrace son who, finally repenting but 
 fearful of facing his parents, pours out his woes to 
 his steadfast sweetheart and concludes with " but I 
 
272 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 don't see why I should annoy you with my troubles." 
 The girl then goes up to him and grasping him 
 firmly by the hand indicates that he has in her a 
 constant friend. 
 
 30. A final curtain-scene in which, when the hero 
 is compelled to leave for some far-off land or serve 
 a sentence in prison or something of the sort, the 
 heroine says to him, " I'll be waiting for you when 
 you return." 
 
ON THE HARLOT 
 
 It is one of the peculiarities of the serious theatre 
 that it regards the harlot as one of two hard and 
 fast institutions. Either she is an institution for the 
 complete spiritual and physical annihilation of man 
 or she is an institution for his complete spiritual and 
 physical redemption and uplift. The drama, it 
 would appear, recognizes no middle ground. It is 
 able to conceive of no less positive effect one way 
 or the other. It must be the bass drum or the 
 zither, the mud puddle or the swan pond, pigs' 
 knuckles or terrapin. One rather comes to the con- 
 clusion that in the more temperate and dispassionate 
 approach of the problem in the farce comedies which 
 have handled the subject is to be found the best 
 proof that our farce comedies are often our best 
 serious plays. And the other way round. Com- 
 pare, for example, the profundity of much of 
 Brieux's farcical Les Hannetons with the comicality 
 of much of D'Annunzio's dramatic Gioconda. 
 Compare the thoughtfulness of flippant Anatol with 
 the frippery of Sutro's Two Virtues. Hubert 
 Henry Davies, being an Englishman, views the har- 
 lot as an uplifter. To him the nude ascending the 
 staircase is a mixture of Billy Sunday and hair tonic. 
 In his latest play. Outcast, we are betutored with the 
 
274 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 picture of one of the ladies negotiating the usual 
 redemption business. But Davies can write a bad 
 play with such distinction that he becomes a pleasant 
 theatrical evening. No theatrical Briton of the day, 
 excepting only Galsworthy and Barrie, is quite so 
 facile as he in the trick of adroit and nicely varnished 
 dialogue. What is more, he is a writer of detached 
 scenes of a quality far above the quality of his plays 
 as a whole. In another direction of dramatic form 
 this is true, too, of the American, Mr. Sheldon. 
 Let the latter build a play in its entirety of such 
 sterling material as the organ-grinder scene in Ro- 
 mance, the priest scene in The Boss, or the private 
 supper-room scene in The Song of Songs, and he will 
 strike a notable date into the calendar of dawning 
 American drama. Let Davies write a whole play 
 of the sort of material indicated by two or three 
 scenes between the woman of Piccadilly and Geoffrey 
 in Outcast, and he will deserve at least a portion of 
 the encomiums which my colleagues have already 
 bestowed upon him. 
 
THE EYE AND MR. ZIEGFELD 
 
 The large numismatical success of Florenz Ziegfeld 
 in the field of the music show is in marked degree 
 due to the circumstance that he divides his primary 
 appeal not between the ears and eyes, as do the 
 majority of his compatriots, but between the eyes 
 alone. He appreciates that the American eye is 
 ever mightier than the American ear. He appre- 
 ciates that a Gilbert lyric is as nothing against a 
 shapely torso. He appreciates that a Lehar roulade 
 is as nothing against a bonny face. 
 
 He realizes, does Ziegfeld, that in the theatre or 
 out of the theatre, it is always, or almost always, the 
 eye — rarely the ear — that casts the ballot. It is 
 not, for instance, what Roosevelt says that wins him 
 the mob sympathy; it is what Roosevelt looks. It 
 is not, for example, what Jack London writes that 
 causes him to be remarked as a " manly " and a 
 "red-blooded" author; it is that photograph with 
 the soft collar. He realizes, does Ziegfeld, that 
 what lifted Bryan out of his pristine obscurity was 
 not what Bryan said, but the Prince Albert and black 
 string tie that Bryan wore. That what made a for- 
 tune for Dr. Munyon was not his advertisements or 
 his remedies, but the circumstance that Munyon 
 looked like the public's idea of a doctor. (Would 
 
 27S 
 
276 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 this Munyon have made so much had he looked like, 
 say, Eddie Foy?) He realizes, does Ziegfeld, that 
 Augustus Thomas is hailed by the public as the dean 
 of American playwrights, not because he actually is 
 the dean of American playwrights, but because he 
 looks a great deal more like what the dean of Ameri- 
 can playwrights should look than, for instance, Ed- 
 ward Sheldon or Otto Hauerbach. He appreciates 
 that the public buys a magazine not for what good 
 literature may be in it, but for the fancy picture on 
 its cover; that the public is pro-English and anti- 
 German because tall, straight Kitchener looks a 
 whole lot handsomer in his uniform than short, 
 dumpy von Hindenburg does in his; and that the 
 public knows Annette Kellerman is a great diver 
 because it has had a look at her in a one-piece bath- 
 ing suit. And, realizing and appreciating this, Mr. 
 Ziegfeld has been sufficiently astute to capitalize the 
 public emotion. 
 
 What the result? The eye, attending one of the 
 Follies productions, is so blandished and enticed by 
 a sagaciously picked quorum of girls that it forgets 
 completely that an ear is its neighbor. Indeed, is 
 reminded of the propinquity and existence of an ear 
 only when an eye in the next seat exclaims, " Say, 
 Adolph, lamp the a la Maryland on the left end! " 
 
 According to the professors,^ we possess 32,820 
 
 1 E. Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, 1897. 
 Zeitschrift f. Psychol, u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane, 1896-7 (Miiller). 
 Sensations of Tone (1895) pp. 145 ff. Physiol, d. Gehors, ch. ii. 
 
THE EYE AND MR. ZIEGFIELD 277 
 
 qualities of visual sensation, qualities all equally ele- 
 mental as sensations however diverse the physical 
 stimuli with which they are connected. As opposed 
 to these figures, we are able to discriminate but some 
 550 qualities of simple noise. Thus, albeit some- 
 what obliquely, do we glimpse the vastly greater 
 fertility and importance of the eye over the ear as 
 an organ for music show appeal. The capacity of 
 the eye is, approximately, six times as great as that 
 of the ear — for pleasure or for pain. The latter 
 problem is the producer's. And, truth to tell, it is 
 not so difficult a problem as one might lead himself 
 to imagine. It is patently less troublesome to 
 gratify the eye than the ear. A music lover may 
 tear his hair in agony at the spectacle of a fat 
 soprano invading Richard Strauss where he may rest 
 soothed and calm before the spectacle of a Lillian 
 Lorraine bombarding Irving Berlin. 
 
 Ziegfeld agrees with Jules Lemaitre that when 
 one knows how to look at a ballet, one forgets to 
 listen to the orchestra; one mind would not be suf- 
 ficient at one time for two orders of sensations so 
 subtle and so strong. He agrees with Lemaitre that 
 legs and tights are elements of expression which 
 should not be disdained. He agrees, in short, with 
 Hilaire Andre Beauchois Verdlet Gaston de Reven- 
 court that " when one goes to a theatre to see a 
 musical play, one goes to see a musical play — not 
 to hear one," 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 
 
 The critic who complains that it has been a bad 
 theatrical season is equally a bad critic. There is 
 no such thing as a bad theatrical season. There 
 is, true, such a thing as a bad managerial season and 
 there is, indeed, such a thing as a bad theatregoing 
 season, but, patently, these are not one with such a 
 thing as a bad theatrical season. If a haberdasher 
 opens up a kiosk and displays for sale therein noth- 
 ing but mauve gabardine neckties with elephant' s- 
 breath polka-dots and at the end of the year 
 announces emphatically that it has been a bad season 
 for neckties, the laugh' is on the haberdasher. And 
 quite possibly on the few misguided souls who have 
 gone in for the haberdasher's especial species of neck 
 boa. But certainly not on the season. 
 
 It is the same with the theatre. The fact is, that 
 the worse a theatrical season has been from the 
 bulked standpoint of producer and public, the better 
 that season has been from the standpoint of the 
 separative critic. Nothing vouches so strongly for 
 the prudent and reflective critic's ability as an un- 
 successful dramatic semester. Such an era attests 
 to the verity of the arguments such a critic has set 
 forth. It offers, in his behalf, Incontrovertible 
 proofs that he has been right and that the producers 
 
 278 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 279 
 
 and their suite have been wrong. It eloquently and 
 brilliantly transforms the critic's " flippant sarcasm " 
 into what is suddenly beheld to be surprising sense. 
 And it demonstrates with not a little engine-power 
 the accuracy of the theory that, after all, the umpire 
 may know almost as much about baseball as the 
 player who has just struck out. 
 
 If we were to judge the relations of men and 
 women and the bearing of such relations upon the 
 processes of life from the American adaptations of 
 French plays, we would have to believe that babies 
 were the result of kissing. 
 
 Stars may be divided into two classes : those who 
 are loved by the public and those who are loved by 
 the manager. 
 
 * 
 
 Drama — the erroneous theory that the most im- 
 portant episodes in a man's or a woman's life are 
 the most interesting. 
 
 * 
 
 The arbitrary heroes of the American box-office 
 drama: Jews, husbands, men who never went to 
 college, Western mining engineers, men accused of 
 murder, crooks, Irishmen (if they can sing), army 
 lieutenants and bad painters. The arbitrary hero- 
 ines : governesses who have been seduced by the son 
 
28o ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 of the family, orphans, single women, married 
 women, grandmothers and mothers. 
 
 * 
 
 In essaying to imitate Shaw, most playwrights are 
 completely successful in imitating Shaw's garrulity, 
 though considerably less so in imitating the substance 
 of Shaw's garrulity. 
 
 The Gerry Society — an organization which, by 
 preventing children predisposed to become actors 
 from following their inclination, hopes thereby in 
 time to preserve the drama. 
 
 * 
 
 Programme — 'a subtle device employed by the- 
 atrical managers to persuade an audience to believe 
 that the play it is about to see is going to be acted. 
 
 * 
 
 The test of all theatrical dramatic art is clothes. 
 If you see a play in the playhouse and somehow be- 
 lieve it to be an authentic specimen of theatrical 
 dramatic art but are not quite sure, shut your 
 eyes and picture the actors and actresses imperson- 
 ating the characters (which is to say, the characters), 
 stark naked. If, after this the play remains con- 
 vincing, it is, in every sense, a good play. 
 
 * 
 
 All that is necessary to make the ancient triangle 
 drama impressive to the natives is to inject into it 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 281 
 
 lofty nomenclature (such, for example, as la Com- 
 tesse Marina de Dasetta and le Marquis de Sarde- 
 loup), scenes laid in well buttled, tapestry-draped 
 drawing-rooms, and allusions to St. Marceaux (vin^ 
 tage of '97 ) and the Ritz Hotel. 
 
 It is deplored by some critics that George M. 
 Cohan adheres in his plays to the vulgar atmosphere 
 of Broadway. And yet these are the same critics 
 who most emphatically endorse some British Cohan 
 for sticking to the equally brash, equally local, 
 equally in itself sordid, commonplace and vulgar 
 Manchester. 
 
 Theatrical manager: artist: : artist's model: 
 artist.* 
 
 * 
 
 Farce, as we get it in our theatres, is based largely 
 on the theory that it is awfully funny to be caught 
 in another man's wife's bedroom. 
 
 * 
 
 Speculator — one who sells a two-dollar theatre 
 ticket for fifty cents above the regulation price, thus 
 robbing the purchaser of two dollars and fifty cents. 
 
 * 
 
 Dramatic critic — one who is less concerned in 
 reviewing the impression a play makes upon him 
 
 1 Ninety years old. 
 
282 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 than in reviewing the impression he makes on the 
 
 play. 
 
 * 
 
 It would appear to be the current notion of our 
 newspaper proprietors that the theatre (and hence 
 the advertising columns) will be financially bene- 
 fited through compelling the newspaper reviewers 
 to discharge themselves of a copious praise, and 
 nothing but praise, upon the event of each and every 
 new theatrical production. And yet, who have 
 made the most money: the theatrical figures whom 
 the newspaper critics have habitually vaselined or 
 those whom these same critics have spoofed? 
 George M. Cohan made over half a million dollars 
 in the full face of the low guying that was visited 
 upon him by the newspaper boys in the days when 
 he shouted slang loudest and waved a flag most 
 wildly. George Tyler, anointed regularly by the 
 newspaper boys with sauce Melba, not long ago was 
 adjudged a bankrupt. Harry Von Tilzer last year 
 backed a play which was vigorously — and truth- 
 fully — denounced by the gazetteers as rubbish, and 
 Harry Von Tilzer's right pants' pocket now bulges 
 with bills. Who has the bigger bank account, Mrs. 
 Fiske (who is consistently smeared with caramel 
 juice by the critical boys), or Billie Burke (who 
 more often has come in, and properly, for the critical 
 wallop) ? A. H. Woods made a fortune out of 
 The Girl from Rector's, which the greelys tried to 
 laugh out of court, and lost a fortune on Gypsy Love, 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 283 
 
 which they treated most magnanimously — which, 
 indeed, they went so far as to hail as a fine example 
 of operetta art when it was nothing of the sort — 
 and they knew it. The newspaper proprietors, in 
 brief, are killing the box-office with kindness. 
 They are killing the golden egg that laid the goose. 
 
 * 
 
 Theatrically speaking, an Englishman is a sub- 
 ject of King George; an American, a predicate. 
 
 Psychology — a word used by kind-hearted critics 
 in an attempt to render clear the unintelligible por- 
 tions of bad plays produced by good friends. 
 
 * 
 
 In the theatre, a hero is one who believes that all 
 women are ladies. A villain one who believes that 
 all ladies are women. 
 
 * 
 
 One reason why the galleries of our theatres (as 
 the theatrical managers lament) are no longer filled, 
 as they were fifteen years ago, with newsboys is that 
 all the newsboys are now theatrical managers. 
 
 * 
 
 Fifteen or twenty years ago, pictures of actors 
 and actresses were given away with packages of 
 cigarettes and smoking tobacco. To-day, they are 
 given away with packages of chocolate bonbons. 
 Just what this proves is not altogether clear to me. 
 
2 84 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 But somewhere in it I detect a suspicion of some- 
 thing which seems to hint rather subtly at the emas- 
 culation and effeminizing of the American theatre. 
 
 If, as many of our so-called constructive critics 
 maintain, it is true that our realistic American drama 
 is largely successful in holding the mirror up to na- 
 ture, it must follow as a logical corollary that all 
 the important events in our national life occur in the 
 libraries of private houses and that, whatever their 
 nature, they are always attended by love interest, 
 comic relief and a display of the latest styles in wom- 
 en's gowns. 
 
 * 
 
 According to the American theatre. It is custom- 
 ary in real life for two persons, when speaking to 
 each other, always to stand side by side and direct 
 their remarks to the front wall of the room. Ac- 
 cording to the American theatre, it is also custom- 
 ary in real life for two or more persons, when 
 engaged in a normal conversation, however brief, 
 never to remain seated in their chairs but at periodic 
 intervals to rise, cross the room, walk around the 
 piano, linger at the mantel, cross back and then re- 
 seat themselves. 
 
 * 
 
 Advanced vaudeville — the theory that dill pick- 
 les, whiskers, big stomachs, pancake derbies and 
 William Jennings Bryan are funnier than dill pickles, 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 285 
 
 whiskers, big stomachs, pancake derbies and Cassie 
 
 Chadwick. 
 
 * 
 
 It would seem to be a tradition of our theatre 
 that either amateurs or Arnold Daly must finally 
 be entrusted with introducing to the American pub- 
 lic all the really worthwhile dramatists. 
 
 * 
 
 Nine vaudeville acts out of every ten are based 
 upon the theory that an average human being's 
 capacity for acute suffering is limited to about twenty 
 minutes. The tenth act, on the other hand, is based 
 upon the theory that average human beings do not 
 attend vaudeville shows, and that, as a consequence, 
 vaudeville audiences are abnormal, and hence able 
 to endure exquisite pain for at least half an hour. 
 The tenth act is, therefore, known in vaudeville cir- 
 cles as a headllner. 
 
 * 
 
 For such persons as care no longer for Shake- 
 speare in the theatre, there is, in the main, usually 
 no safer refuge than a modern Shakespearean 
 theatrical production. 
 
 * 
 
 The task of the musical comedy composer is a 
 difficult one. He has to write music that will make 
 an audience forget the librettist's lines. The task 
 of the librettist is not less difficult. He has to write 
 lines that will make an audience forget the compos- 
 
286 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 er's music. Both usually fail. And where they do 
 not fail, the producer generally picks out an awful 
 looking chorus. 
 
 The American theatre and the American drama 
 depend largely upon the following being accepted 
 as inviolable truths : ( i ) that all persons placed 
 on trial before the law, particularly persons accused 
 of murder, are innocent — and that juries are in- 
 telligent; (2) .that the accumulation of great wealth 
 inevitably brings with it unhappiness ; ( 3 ) that melo- 
 dramatic events occur only in the night-time; (4) 
 that our " wives, sisters and sweethearts " care 
 only for stupid plays; and (5) that only comic char- 
 acters drink beer. 
 
 Dramatic technique — the art of saying nothing 
 skillfully. 
 
 Suspense — the highly nervous sensation which a 
 playwright imparts to his audience when, in the last 
 act of the play, the villain seems momentarily about 
 to escape ultimate punishment at the hero's hands, 
 thus threatening to keep the audience inside the 
 theatre for another act. 
 
 The hero in a play is that character who acts as 
 we would like to act if we were placed in the same 
 situation. The villain of the play is that character 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 287 
 
 who acts as we would actually act if we were placed 
 in the same situation. . . . Obviously, this defini- 
 tion does not hold true if the heroine isn't good- 
 looking. 
 
 Symbolism — the subterfuge of spelling " non- 
 sense " with a capital N. 
 
 Spothght — A theatrical device for assisting au- 
 diences to spot bad actors. 
 
 * 
 
 The much ridiculed soliloquy is often a perfectly 
 natural thing. The ridiculing of it is largely the 
 ridicule of tradition. As go most of the plays we 
 see on Broadway, a soliloquy at that is ipso facto 
 just half as bad as a dialogue. 
 
 * 
 
 Burlesque, of the species made popular by such 
 noted impresarios as Sam T. Jack, Al Reeves, Ben 
 Welch and Barney Gerard, owes its popularity and 
 financial success to the theory, accepted by many, 
 that Moulin Rouge pronounced Mulligan's Rug is 
 even more sidesplitting than a fat lady in tights. 
 The basic difference between the form of entertain- 
 ment classified above under the name of burlesque 
 and two-dollar musical comedy is that all characters 
 representing Frenchmen are in the former ca|lled 
 Monsieur Camembert and in the latter Monsieur 
 
288 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Roquefort. Otherwise the retort, " That ain't a 
 name; that's a cheese" is common to both species. 
 
 * 
 
 A first-nighter is one who beHeves that Frank 
 Reicher would be a better actor if he were not such 
 a homely man and that the moon always casts a pur- 
 ple light. 
 
 Which, in the American theatre, is the better 
 known, the more applauded, the more widely and 
 favorably remarked upon: the acting talent of Ar- 
 nold Daly or the bobbed hair of Mrs. Castle? — the 
 producing aptitude of Winthrop Ames or Valeska 
 Suratt's mole? 
 
 * 
 
 Adaptation — the theory that it is perfectly safe 
 for a good-looking young married woman to go to 
 a man's bachelor apartment. 
 
 The local " drama of ideas " of which we read in 
 the newspapers, seems by and large to be grounded 
 on such irrevocable principles as (i) the idea that 
 the mere thought of one's mother is sufficiently 
 puissant to make one see the error of one's ways and 
 repent; (2) the idea that whenever a villain succeeds 
 in getting hold of a hero's revolver and, subse- 
 quently, after taunting the hero, essays to shoot him, 
 the villain is always frustrated through the circum- 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 289, 
 
 stance that the hero has exercised the precaution 
 either to remove the cartridges or load the gun with 
 blanks; and (3) the idea that the back wall of a 
 tenement room always has some of the plaster miss- 
 ing in the upper left-hand corner. 
 
 Amateur Night — Monday, Tuesday, Wednes- 
 day, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at most Broad- 
 way theatres. 
 
 * 
 
 The villain in an American play is that character 
 in the play who, were he a real living man, would 
 in all probability decline to associate with the author. 
 
 * 
 
 A good actor is an actor who is able to interpret 
 with complete naturalness the roles which he plays. 
 Now, obviously, to be completely natural is not to 
 act. Thus proving to us that there can be no such 
 
 thing as a good actor. 
 
 * 
 
 In foreign plays adapted for the American stage, 
 a lady's bedroom may be described as a room in 
 which the audience sleeps. 
 
 * 
 
 In view of the increasing prevalence of the lazy 
 and detrimental custom of so many of our lady play- 
 ers to permit expensive toilettes to substitute for 
 talent and hard work, I have a suggestion to offer 
 
290 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 our more sincere and serious producers, a sugges- 
 tion which — will they carry it out — cannot, I be- 
 lieve, fail in time to improve to a very considerable 
 degree the quality of acting in the native theatre. 
 My suggestion: make the ladies rehearse their 
 
 roles in the altogether. 
 
 * 
 
 Revue — A burlesque form of theatrical enter- 
 tainmont the success of which depends largely upon 
 its ability to convince its audience that the most 
 serious dramas of the season were perfectly ridicu- 
 lous. One cannot, remember, burlesque successfully 
 the Fifth Symphony, Rembrandt, Caesar and Cleo- 
 patra, Schopenhauer's Essay on Women, the cheese 
 pie at the Hofbrau, or anything else of sound intrin- 
 sic worth. 
 
 Dinner — A meal invented for the purpose of 
 getting temporarily not needed characters off the 
 stage. 
 
 Many persons make the mistake of believing a 
 moderately good play can engross one's attention 
 more certainly than a completely bad play. A mis- 
 take, quite obviously. I doubt if there be anything 
 so enthralling for the moment as utter imbecility, 
 boldly, beautifully unconscious of its imbecility. In 
 token of this point of view, is not 10-20-30 melo- 
 drama actually more beguiling while in movement 
 than certain plays artistically and intrinsically by 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 291 
 
 many leagues such melodrama's superior? Is not, 
 actually, such a preposterous marriage of nonsenses 
 as The Whip more hypnotic than a play of the mod- 
 erately worthy aspect of, say, Beauty and the 
 Barge? One hesitates to admit, but is it none the 
 less true? I recall once having seen a performance 
 of the musical comedy called The Moclcing Bird (it 
 was back in 1902 or 1903) with a number of the 
 principal actors in the cast dead drunk, yet going 
 through their vocal and lingual antics with a grim 
 and stolid seriousness; and never, I may tell you, 
 have I been held in so absolute a condition of fas- 
 cination by a piece soberly performed. And who 
 has not been caught firm in one's tracks by some im- 
 becile street corner orator where the lecture of some 
 moderately sane college professor or public ofl&ce 
 holder — on the same subject — has driven one 
 frothing and hatless into the night? 
 
 Paris revues, all of them are (save in the quality 
 of girl) always much the same. The only thing 
 that ever changes in them is the chorus — and all 
 that that changes is its clothes. In relation to this, 
 it has always seemed to me that the script of the 
 libretto of a Paris revue must look very much as 
 follows : 
 
 8 :45 p. M. Enter chorus in cloaks, hats, long gowns, lin- 
 gerie, shoes and stockings. 
 
292 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 9:10 P.M. Enter chorus in hats, long gowns, lingerie, 
 
 shoes and stockings. 
 9 40 p. M. Enter chorus in long gowns, lingerie, shoes and 
 
 stockings. 
 10:05 P- M. Enter chorus in lingerie, shoes and stockings. 
 10:25 P- M. Enter chorus in lingerie. 
 10 :45 p. M. Enter chorus. 
 
 In order to clear the stage of certain personages 
 in the play as certain occasions arose, a playwright 
 of small artistic status recently resorted to such sim- 
 ple dialogic devices as " Come, let us take a walk " 
 and " I'll go and see how things are in the next 
 room " — or something of the innocent sort. Nat- 
 urally enough, those of our dramatic critics who be- 
 lieve that in actual life people never leave rooms 
 save according to a strict technique, were loud in 
 their protests. Here, one of the most ridiculous of 
 the many purposeless practices of showy theatrical 
 criticism as indulged in on our shore. Some time 
 ago, when an illiterate was made the Belasco butt 
 of a rapacious and scarcely more literate profes- 
 sional theatrical public for purposes of press agent 
 work and to deflect attention from the main point 
 of the argument in hand, much comical ado was 
 made over the manner in which the poor soul had 
 achieved the " exits " of his characters. As a 
 matter of pure fact, several of these exits were in 
 straight accordance with the actual, if homely, truths 
 of everyday actions and were, as such, of twice the 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 293 
 
 virtue of such purely technical coups as Aubrey's 
 artificial Pinero exit in the Drummle jabbering scene 
 of the first act of Tanqueray, as Canon Bonsey's 
 highly doubtful exit after the appearance of Felicia 
 Hindemarsh in the conservatory in the first act of 
 Henry Arthur Jones' Mrs. Dane's Defense, as the 
 starving little Fritz's exit in the second act of Haupt- 
 mann's The Weavers — in short, as any one of 
 many similar purely proscenium stratagems. 
 
 Mr. David B'elasco makes money because, in the 
 physical habilitation of dramatic manuscripts, he is 
 shrewd enough to improve upon life and nature. 
 We talk about Belasco " realism." Belasco is really 
 realler than realism. Instead of holding the mirror 
 up to nature, he holds nature up to the mirror. 
 (Wilde said there are always some critics who quote 
 this hackneyed passage about art holding the mir- 
 ror up to nature, forgetting that the unfortunate 
 aphorism is deliberately said by Hamlet in order 
 to convince the bystanders of his absolute insanity 
 in all art matters.) Belasco appreciates with Wilde 
 that " what art really reveals and should reveal to 
 us is nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, 
 her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfin- 
 ished condition ; that nature has good intentions but, 
 as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out." 
 The public admires Belasco because mere everyday 
 realism, the realism of to-day, world reahsm, is not 
 
294 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 his goal; because he appreciates that dramatic litera- 
 ture, scenic architecture and lighting always antici- 
 pate life and nature. "For what is nature? Na- 
 ture is no great mother who has borne us. She is 
 our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens 
 to life. Things are because we see them, and what 
 we see and how we see it depends on the arts that 
 have influenced us." 
 
 Art flavored the snow of nature with vanilla and 
 decorated it with chopped almonds and we had bis- 
 cuit tortoni. Art took nature's crude orange, a fruit 
 full of appendicitis, removed the danger and gave 
 us the finished navel orange. Art, through the 
 agency of Burbank, has given us flowers nature 
 never even dreamed of being able to create by her 
 own hand. Belasco, through the agency of art, has 
 given us realism so realistically real that nature's 
 realism seems artificial and puny in comparison. 
 Belasco's warm purple Palm Beach moonglow in No- 
 body's Widow, his flowers in the garden of Years of 
 Discretion, his California sun of The Girl of the 
 Golden West — to name but a few of his achieve- 
 ments — surpass nature's efforts at their best. One 
 may almost any time see a mere Shubert or a mere 
 Klaw and Erlanger sunset or moonlit night free of 
 charge by looking out of the window. That's why 
 people go to the Belasco theatre. 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 295 
 
 It is the conventional American objection to a 
 night at the Grand Gulgnol that many of the plays 
 presented there are " too horrible," Says the 
 voyageur: " A play in whith a character is choked 
 to death! Uhhh!" And, saying, he makes him- 
 self a face of large disrelish. Says the voyageur: 
 " A play in which a character dies of cholera ! 
 Uhhh ! " And, saying, he makes himself a nose of 
 much-wrinkled aversion. A queer coccus, this 
 ■voyageur of ours. A play in which a tiresome char- 
 acter is choked to death disgusts him; yet give him 
 a play in which a tiresome character is not choked 
 to death and he is enchanted, bewitched, and pro- 
 ceeds to vote it an amusing and uplifting spectacle. 
 A play in which an objectionable character is made 
 to die of cholera is to him a most odious and depress- 
 ing play ; but give him a play in which the same bore- 
 some character is permitted to get well and con- 
 tinue a spewing of platitudes and he is a delighted 
 and entertained man ; and proceeds to vote it a pleas- 
 ant and agreeable presentation. When .will such 
 misled souls learn that the actually " too horrible " 
 plays are not the French plays of the Guignol brand 
 in which the characters are murdered, poisoned or 
 otherwise put to death, but the American plays of 
 the Daddy Longlegs brand in which the characters 
 are not murdered, poisoned or otherwise put to 
 death. 
 
296 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 I am scarcely one of the profound dolts who 
 loudly debates for "living," "real," "flesh and 
 blood " characters in the drama. I am quite aware 
 of the fact that if a playwright has anything gen- 
 uinely interesting, or even merely diverting, to say, 
 he is at whole liberty to put that something into the 
 mouths of the stock sawdust dolls of the stage, for- 
 asmuch as, proportionately few living, real flesh and 
 blood persons ever having anything worth while to 
 say, it follows that a careless employment of too 
 " real " play characters by the dramatist must suc- 
 ceed in lending to his work a marked air of spuri- 
 ousness and artificiality. Wilde realized this yes- 
 terday as Molnar, Shaw, et al. realize it to-day. On 
 the other hand, when along come playmakers who 
 have little more in their mouths than a tongue and 
 some teeth and a couple of tonsils, it follows that, 
 having nothing interesting to articulate, they needs 
 must place that lack of something interesting in the 
 mouths of " living " characters, characters taken out 
 of life, if they would have their plays seem not spuri- 
 ous and not artificial, but real. Or at least partly 
 suggestive of life. 
 
 Contrary to every word hitherto delivered on the 
 subject, I protest that the only position from which 
 to witness a play is a seat in the very first row. It 
 is a favorite argument against my contention that 
 such a seat, being too close to the stage, tends to a 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 297 
 
 rape of the spectator's imagination through giving 
 him a too near look at the actors in their now obvious 
 rcuge and mascara, at the holes and grease spots in 
 the scenery, at the perspiring, shirt-sleeved prompter 
 in the wings, at the shaky canvas of " marble " 
 castles. So far, so good. But which is the lesser 
 of two evils — to sit in the first row and contend 
 with these after all trivial, easily to be surmounted, 
 barriers to romance and imagination, or to sit fur- 
 ther back in the auditorium and attempt to cope 
 imaginatively with the unraveling of delicate ro- 
 mances over an intervening sea of bald heads? And 
 not only bald heads, but female heads of sticky 
 hirsutal architecture, or glutinous curls and scraggy 
 little tails of back hair, of nauseating, unmistakable, 
 switches and " rats " and coils, the lot gauded up 
 with Broadway rhinestones and dyed chicken 
 feathers? 
 
 Picture yourself seated, say in the seventh or elev- 
 enth or fourteenth row, and attempting to immerse 
 your imagination in the color of the stage with your 
 eyes ceaselessly, relentlessly biffed by such a field of 
 grim realities, gutting ugliness. Picture yourself 
 coaxing your romantic imagination back one thou- 
 sand and one years into the Kismet sultanship of 
 Al Raschid and the beggar Hajj — across half a 
 dozen rows of false hair accompanied by no hair 
 at alll Picture yourself coaxing your romantic 
 imagination into the barge of Rostand's Princesse 
 Lointaine versus the spectacle of grisly human 
 
298 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 deficiencies interposed against your vision. What 
 chance has the imagination and romantic sense of the 
 average theatregoer against so vivid, so immediate, 
 so powerful an antidote ? Were I a theatrical man- 
 ager, I should bar from my orchestra chairs all men 
 without hair on their heads and all women of the 
 " for God's sake sing " variety. Such, would I pack 
 off to sit in the balcony and from the balcony would 
 I bring down all the colored people (did you ever 
 see a negress with false hair? Indeed, no!), all 
 the sailors of the United States Navy (did you ever 
 see a bald sailor? Indeed, no!) and all other such 
 fine specimens of healthy non-lnterferers with im- 
 agination and the romantic sense who are, under the 
 existing order of things, subtly and ignorantly 
 steered by the box-office to that inconspicuous alti- 
 tude. 
 
 A " Japanese play," in the Anglo-Saxon theatre, 
 is any play in which a consideration and study of 
 Japanese customs, morals, attitudes, traditions, char- 
 acter, actions, philosophies and the like are omit- 
 ted in favor of a backdrop showing the peak of 
 Fujiyama, numerous references to cherry blossoms 
 and goldfish, the frequent use of the word " hon- 
 orable," and two beautiful black and gold screens 
 at the right and left upper entrances. The au- 
 thentic Japanese nature of the characters in these 
 " Japanese plays " is suggested to the audience via 
 the programme, which reassures us that the fe- 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 299 
 
 males are appropriately named Something San and 
 the males Something Jiro or Something Yama, via 
 intermittent passages of dialogue in which the Sans 
 speak affectionately of the moon, and via the prac- 
 tice of the Jiros and Yamas of observing somewhat 
 floridly that " The hour of food is at hand " in the 
 stead of " Dinner is ready." In brief, one of these 
 so-known " Japanese plays " is any particularly in- 
 ferior and impossible play whose inferiority and im- 
 possible quality it is hoped to conceal through the 
 liberal application of kimonos and the accepted 
 Anglo-Saxon flowery conception of the manner in 
 which the Japanese speak, a manner which the 
 shrewd and canny Japanese actually affect only when 
 they engage themselves as butlers and valets to sus- 
 ceptible Anglo-Saxons. Thus It has come about that 
 the white theatregoing public's idea of the Japanese 
 is of a race whose lovely daughters are regularly 
 (and with great pathos) seduced and deserted by 
 handsome young American naval lieutenants, whose 
 males run about dressed up like the Liberty Belles 
 and whose women in general spend the day long 
 either hopping around fluttering fans held horizon- 
 tally at their chins or taking flowers from baskets and 
 arranging them in vases. 
 
 Among those who vehemently contradict the 
 legitimacy of the soliloquy's use in the drama may 
 be found all those who believe that a woman, merely 
 
300 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 because no one happens to be around, stops talk- 
 ing. 
 
 * 
 
 " To criticize a dramatic work," said Paul Bour- 
 
 get, " one must ask in the first place for what sort 
 
 of public it was composed." Which may explain 
 
 why there is no such thing as dramatic criticism in 
 
 the United States. 
 
 * 
 
 Whom the gods would destroy, they first make 
 playwrights. 
 
 * 
 
 "He who can, does; he who can't, criticizes." 
 As, for respective example, George V. Hobart and 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 * 
 
 Character actor — one who is expert in prevent- 
 ing his false mustache from coming off. 
 
 Amateur actor — one who, through lack of ex- 
 perience, is less skilled in giving bad performances 
 
 than a professional. 
 
 * 
 
 Moving pictures — the place where bad plays go 
 
 when they die. 
 
 * 
 
 Brieux — a Krupp gun firing spit-balls. 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 301 
 
 At last I have figured out why it is that the char- 
 acter of an orphan girl — such, for example, as that 
 of Judy Abbott in Daddy Longlegs — remains al- 
 ways one of the public's dramatic favorites. An 
 orphan, obviously, has no parents. This, equally 
 plainly, reduces the number of bad actors in the 
 average cast by two. 
 
 I made bold, of a recent evening, to loan my per- 
 son to an audience before a burlesque show at the 
 Columbia Theatre, by name Follies of the Day. 
 Though I do not presume to be a critic of the in- 
 stitution, it would yet seem to me, from sporadic at- 
 tendance, that all burlesque is based upon the theory 
 that the funniest things in the world, in the order 
 named, are : ( i ) a firm of lawyers named Ketcham 
 and Cheatem; (2) a German comedian named Au- 
 gust Furst; (3) any and all references to cheese; 
 (4) a large, bearded, fierce-looking desperado who, 
 when finally he opens his mouth, speaks in a high 
 falsetto; (5) slapping a fat lady in tights upon that 
 portion of her anatomy which corresponds in loca- 
 tion on the map of Europe to Roumania; (6) bark- 
 ing like a dog when sausage is mentioned; (7) a 
 Salvation Army captain proclaiming " We save 
 girls " with the ejaculation on the part of the come- 
 dian " Save me a brunette for Tuesday night "; (8) 
 the vision of a bandanna hanging out of the coat- 
 tails of a so-called "rube" character; and (9) a 
 " travesty " on Three Weeks. 
 
302 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Consider how different is the higher form of en- 
 tertainment known as musical comedy! Generally 
 speaking, musical comedy is based upon the theory 
 that the funniest things in the world, in the order 
 named, are : ( i ) a firm of lawyers named Steele 
 and Skinner; (2) a German comedian named Lud- 
 wig Dinkelspiel; (3) any and all references to an 
 onion; (4) a large . . . 
 
 To me, the old and still popular notion that the 
 theme of a play is none of the critic's business, that 
 it is his business primarily to concern himself with 
 the play as it stands whether the theme be to his 
 mental digestion or not, is entirely silly. Would that 
 I were such an one that I could treat dispassionately 
 and with cool, unbiased, critical eye each and every 
 thesis employed by each and every dramatic writer, 
 regardless of my own prejudices for or against the 
 theses; but, alas, nature has created me otherwise. 
 For example, were a playwright to produce an abso- 
 lutely faultless specimen of dramatic writing concern- 
 ing itself with proving that prohibition is a fine thing 
 or that a husband has a perfect right to shoot the 
 man with whom his wife has dallied, I should prob- 
 ably denounce the work as something worse than 
 drivel. On the other hand, let a playwrighter turn 
 out a much less able piece of dramatic writing prov- 
 ing that intoxication is a thoroughly excellent thing 
 for mankind or that, in the second case, it is the bus- 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 303 
 
 band who ought to be shot, and you will find me 
 aligned with the counsel for the defense. 
 
 The trouble with men who set out to write a 
 political play that shall say something is that they 
 give their leading political character a daughter or 
 a wife and subsequently extract their political drama 
 from the operations of the female upon the male 
 political personage. Quite patently, what results is 
 nothing more than a very old-fashioned parlor 
 drama, which the author fondly imagines to be a 
 vigorous political play because he has called one 
 character a District Attorney and another a Boss and 
 has distributed a number of pungent passages anent 
 " graft " and " the system " amongst the dialogue. 
 
 * 
 
 One of the most diverting circumstances connected 
 with musical comedies whose scenes are laid in Pa- 
 risian restaurants and dance halls rests in the oppor- 
 tunity provided the spectator to study the various 
 stage producers' ideas as to what constitutes revelry. 
 Of course there must always be revelry I No scene 
 laid in Paris would be complete without it. All the 
 girls in Paris always wear pink silk stockings and 
 keep the toes of their right feet at five minutes after 
 six. And the men spent all of their time beseeching 
 Phileep to make haste with the " wine " and assur- 
 ing Angele that they are not married. The " rev- 
 
304 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 elry " that the leading characters in the pieces keep 
 referring to in speech and song at intervals of 
 ten minutes is usually expressed by the lesser char- 
 acters and chorus in three ways: first, by dashing 
 madly across the stage from L. U. E. into an exit 
 at R I ; second, by laughing periodically in loud and 
 sudden outbursts in the wings ; and third, by holding 
 the skirts during the intermittent stroll across the 
 scene about six or seven inches above the Mason 
 and Dixon line established by the drawing-room. 
 
 About every year or so some otherwise respecta- 
 ble fellow conceives the idea that there is a " great 
 big moving human drama " in the theme of the 
 spiritual-minded young clergyman who views the out- 
 side world as a vast and lustful charnel house; who, 
 falling under the charms of a worldly opera singer 
 or actress, is led by her out into " life " and who, 
 after mental alarums and physical excursions, is 
 brought to one of five startling conclusions, to-wit: 
 
 1. That " the good in human beings over-shadows the bad, 
 after all." 
 
 2. That " the spirit is weaker than the flesh." 
 
 3. That " conscience and vows are as nothing in the face 
 of an overpowering love." 
 
 4. That " go where you will, be what you will, do what 
 you will, but Glory come back to me." 
 
 5. That " you have opened my eyes and made me under- 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 305 
 
 stand, dear woman ; I shall hear you singing in my heart for- 
 ever." 
 
 Dramatic criticism — the theory that there is any- 
 thing you can tell a theatrical manager.^ 
 
 By manner of concealing the actual reason for the 
 indefeasible wrestle with Shakespeare toward which 
 our native mummers would seem by and large ulti- 
 mately to itch, it is the custom of the forenamed 
 mummers, once they have publicly laid to with the 
 Bard, to distill interviews In which they make arch 
 observation that " we are only doing Shakespeare 
 because we are unable to obtain contemporaneous 
 plays worth doing." The contrary truth, obviously, 
 being that they are only doing Shakespeare because 
 it is a tradition and a fact of our American theatre 
 that to do Shakespeare, however badly, is thence- 
 forth to be held in profound veneration over the less 
 bumptious performer who has done something else, 
 however well. Four out of five actors who do bat- 
 tle with Shakespeare do so, not because they admire 
 Shakespeare or because, as they pretend, they are 
 unable to obtain suitable modern plays, or because 
 they are consumed with the artistic desire to do 
 something fine for the sake of its fine doing, but 
 because of an overwhelming surge of personal con- 
 
 1 Or an actor. 
 
3o6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 ceit — to which they are willing even to sacrifice the 
 hard-won savings of years, for Shakespeare they full 
 well know is a losing stage feat in these times — a 
 largely baseless conceit to tilt against the scrapbooks 
 of the dinned-in Shakespearean actors of another 
 day. 
 
 The headmost objection to the so-called Man- 
 chester school of drama lies in the circumstance that 
 it reproduces life so precisely that it is correspond- 
 ingly tedious. Curiously enough, when a dramatist 
 seeks to transfer a cross-section of life to the stage 
 he invariably selects an enormously dull aspect of 
 life for his maneuver. Thus it comes about that 
 our inappositely named dramatic " slices of life " al- 
 ways — or almost always — are boresome theatrical 
 visitings with persons who would be equally bore- 
 some out of the theatre. It is an obsession on the 
 part of the playmakers that " slices of life " exist 
 only in the drab regions of the world and among 
 drab personages. The argument that a capable 
 dramatist can take such a region and such a set of 
 characters and make them interesting Is also a good 
 argument; good, however, because it echoes exactly 
 what I have here sought to imply: that, to make 
 them interesting, he has had to rescue them from the 
 monotonous level of actuality and thus prevent them 
 from being humdrum. Life requires the touch of 
 the imaginative artist, the Imaginative philosopher, 
 to make it theatrically palatable. The difficulty here 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 307 
 
 Is that so many of the " imaginative artists " of the 
 playmaking world, when they seek to lodge life en- 
 tertainingly behind the footlights, touch it with an 
 illogical and disassociated imagination. They In- 
 vent electricity In a gashouse. Life as life goes Is 
 a very colorless affair — at two dollars a seat. 
 
 * 
 
 The best critics are the inconsistent critics. Show 
 me a consistent critic, a critic who sets himself a 
 critical creed and abides by that cireed with never a 
 sidestep, never a whispered doubt, and I will show 
 you a critic who is generally wrong. The theatre 
 and its drama are as inconsistent institutions as the 
 surface of the earthly sphere reveals. Dramatic 
 criticism, if definitively and regularly consistent, be- 
 comes, therefore, as proportionately unsound as a 
 brief on nose troubles written twenty-five years ago. 
 
 A nation's point of culture is to be estimated — 
 so far as the theatre is concerned — In proportion 
 to the respect it does not hold for melodrama. The 
 American people love, honor and obey melodrama 
 above every other form of dramatic art. 
 
 When I employ the phrase " American people," 
 I direct reference not alone to the esthetlcally gelded 
 mob made up of what is (redundantly) called the 
 "average" American — that smutty but harmless 
 bird who gets his musical education off a phono- 
 graph or pianola, his knowledge of art from the 
 
3o8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 tooth-paste calendars, his dramatic thrills from Owen 
 Davis and his critical theories from the billboard 
 quotations. But I include as well that other and 
 probably more promiscuous — and infinitely more 
 dangerous — cuckoo, the American who rates him- 
 self above the average and who, in passionate 
 endeavor to justify the bill of lading, devotes him- 
 self assiduously to Robert Mantell in Shakespeare, 
 Brander Matthews's opinions on the drama, and 
 kindred dubieties. Or, in another description, the 
 stamp of mental valet who unconsciously believes 
 that culture Is the state of being bored to death in 
 a fashionable manner — that culture may be gained 
 through a suppression, or at least an Irrigation, of 
 natural tastes and impulses. 
 
 The natural impulse of American taste is toward 
 melodrama. The American wants in his music 
 much blowing into brass and much pounding with 
 sticks on stretched membrane; he wants in his art 
 nudes rather than landscapes — and the nuder the 
 better (he not long ago purchased, within the space 
 of two months, three million copies of the bold hussy 
 taking an autumnal sea bath) ; he wants dirtier scan- 
 dals, cleaner plates, broader or narrower shoulders 
 on his coats, handsomer restaurants and worse food, 
 more governing bodies, more laws, more of every- 
 thing, no matter what it Is, than any other biped on 
 the exterior of the globe. Moreover, in his absurd 
 melodrama of mind, he cares not whether the thing 
 be better or worse than the same thing elsewhere; 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 309 
 
 all he requires is that, whatever it is, It shall be more 
 so. For the middle ground, the halfway, he has 
 small use. 
 
 In the theatre the American taste (and I include 
 therein the taste of the majority of its professional 
 guides, the newspaper critics) will tolerate little that 
 does not keep the loud pedal screwed to the floor. 
 These guides, furthermore, will for the most part 
 fail to grasp and will consequently withhold their 
 complete endorsement from almost any play of any 
 kind that sidesteps a possible melodramatic treat- 
 ment of theme (however inappropriate). Please 
 bear in mind that I speak here not of admitted melo- 
 drama; but of such patisseries as are known by the 
 names of " philosophical drama," " psychological 
 drama " and the like. Thus, to glance back over 
 the records, we discover that where such primitive 
 philosophical attempts as The Terrible Meek are 
 hosannahed, such exquisite pieces of work as Les 
 Hannetons (The Incubus) are met with silence. 
 The Peter Grimms and the Cases of Becky and 
 Witching Hours, suavely perfumed for the native 
 nostril with much psychological melodrama and cor- 
 respondingly small psychologic sense, send the mob 
 to the carpet in a spasm of eulogistic hysteria, while 
 the cool-minded, less top-of-the-voiced and triply re- 
 spectable Pigeons — assaying more genuine psychol- 
 ogy to the ounce than all the rest grouped together 
 — are left to play to the ushers. 
 
3IO ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 There are numerous kinds of fever — double 
 quotidian fever, fermentation fever, scarlet fever, 
 aphthous fever, ileotyphus fever, thermic fever, 
 malarial fever, levant fever, cyprus fever, carbuncu- 
 lar fever, hemogastric fever, idiopathic fever, 
 yellow fever, typhomalarial fever, spirillum fever, 
 cacatory fever, hay fever, exacerbating fever, en- 
 teromesenteric fever, melanuric fever, pythogenic 
 fever, articular fever, dothienteric fever, hectic in- 
 fantile fever, gastrohepatic fever, petechiel fever, 
 noscomial fever, Chagres fever, gastrosplenic 
 fever, eruptive articular fever, and the strange kind 
 of fever which attacks dramatic reviewers whenever 
 a Scotch play comes along and persuades them to 
 rave over the " quaint charm " of Scotch characters. 
 
 Intrinsically, there is no more " quaint charm " 
 to Scotch characters than there is to Zambesian char- 
 acters or Bulgarian characters or German characters 
 or Assyrian characters or any other such characters. 
 Rather do Scotch characters appeal to us because 
 they lack " quaint charm." The Scotch are a race 
 of unlovely visage, of ear-digging dialect, of harsh 
 mien and tone. Certainly none of these attributes 
 is either quaint or charming. Nor are they com- 
 bined to be characterized as quaint and charm- 
 ing. The truth is, we of the theatre-attending crew 
 are sick of " quaintness " and sick of " charm," and 
 gladden at the sight of stage figures devoid of these 
 stereotyped and artificial qualities. 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 311 
 
 In the yesterdays of the native theatre, there were 
 three dramatic themes that cuddled particularly close 
 to the hearts of the great unwashed. In that era 
 of theatrical sunrise, the pot-wallopper's mind was 
 caressed, his emotions cajoled, his vertebrae agi- 
 tated, through the exercise of the following for- 
 mulas : 
 
 1. A baby girl deserted near a lighthouse, befriended by 
 a gruff but kindly old sea captain given to the constant use 
 of 'backy, and subsequently, to every one's great surprise, dis- 
 covered to be of proud lineage and bulky estate. 
 
 2. A young man beloved of a young woman of high posi- 
 tion; parental opposition to their union on the ground of 
 the young man's inferior social caste ; the denouement bring- 
 ing to light the astounding fact that the young man is really 
 of titled birth, having been stolen from the Manor House by 
 gypsies when a mere babe in arms. 
 
 3. A mortgage on the estates, held by a rascally cousin 
 (who loves the heroine but who is spurned by her) , is about to 
 be foreclosed. This will deprive the heroine and her mother 
 of a home and will cast them penniless upon the cold world. 
 The hero, who also loves the heroine, seeks to baffle the 
 cousin in his nefarious scheme. This the hero finally accom- 
 plishes (and wins the girl) by proving that the rascally cousin 
 forged the codicil to the will. 
 
 Such were " those good old days I " 
 
 The hero in a melodrama is that character who 
 displays spectacularly all the attributes of courage 
 save forethought, inteUigence and modesty. 
 
312 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 The coward is that character who displays spec- 
 tacularly all the attributes of forethought and in- 
 telligence save modesty — in the presence of the 
 hero. 
 
 Star (musical comedy) — a heavenly body. 
 
 * 
 
 A labor play ■. — one that makes the audience 
 
 labor. 
 
 * 
 
 Is there one actress on the American stage who 
 has not, at least once, had her photograph taken in 
 at least one of the following positions: 
 
 1. Looking at a rose? 
 
 2. Reading a copy of the newspaper or magazine 
 in which the picture subsequently was to be printed? 
 
 3. Looking wistfully out of a latticed window, 
 holding onto the portiere with one hand? 
 
 4. Driving an automobile, the name of the make 
 of which happens somehow or other to be con- 
 spicuously observable? 
 
 5. An outdoor picture in which she is affection- 
 ately patting a horse on the nose? 
 
 THAT MIRROR AND THIS NATURE 
 
 That drama and the stage consistently hold the 
 mirror up to life and nature, though a point con- 
 tested by many, is proved beyond doubt by the fol- 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 313 
 
 lowing at once recognizable reflections glimpsed at 
 random in the mirror in question: 
 
 1. It is customary in real life for persons never 
 to consume more than ten minutes in the eating of 
 their dinner. Also for persons always to quit the 
 dinner at the middle course. (Never in the history 
 of the stage's holding the mirror up et cetera has a 
 meal progressed to the dessert.) 
 
 2. It is customary in real life for persons never 
 to complete any sentence beginning with the words 
 " You don't mean." Such sentences, without excep- 
 tion, are spoken in a hushed, tense interrogatory 
 voice, thus: "You — don't — mean — ?" It is 
 also customary in real life for the person addressed 
 never to make oral reply. The person addressed 
 merely drops his eyes and nods his head. Under 
 no circumstances, is the reply ever in the negative. 
 
 3. It is not customary in real life for men under 
 any circumstance to face a grate-fire. Men invari- 
 ably stand with their backs to grate-fires, feet wide 
 apart, and hands clasped behind them. 
 
 4. It is the habit in real life of all intoxicated per- 
 sons, when they essay to speak, to be given to an in- 
 sistent and irrelevant use of the " sh " sound. Thus 
 for instance, all drunks trying to repeat " It is the 
 worst thing I ever saw," would without exception 
 say " Itsh sh worsht shing I ever shaw." 
 
 5. In real life, one drink will cause any woman 
 to become instantaneously intoxicated. All ladies, 
 when intoxicated, giggle. 
 
314 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 6. In real life, all small men who marry women 
 larger than themselves are tremblingly afraid of 
 their wives, who henpeck them unmercifully. 
 
 7. In real life the mistress of the house is of 
 course always careful to see to it that the maid is 
 younger and better-looking than herself — and 
 wears thinner silk stockings. 
 
 8. In real life, men never die of any disease save 
 heart failure and women of any disease save 
 tuberculosis. 
 
 9. In real life, no Westerner ever wears evening 
 clothes that fit him. 
 
 Our ears are constantly being assailed by the howl 
 over the decline in the attendance upon our theatres. 
 Where, cry the managers, the reason, the blame? 
 And they answer themselves, do these self-persuasive 
 spitzbuben, that it is all the fault of the increased 
 ownership of automobiles, the prevalence of the 
 dancing craze and, above everything, the moving 
 pictures. Or they are answered by equally self- 
 persuasive critics, that it is all their fault: that they, 
 the managers, have built too many theatres, that 
 they have taken out their orchestras, that they have 
 sent inferior companies out of New York while ad- 
 vertising them to be the original companies, that 
 they have been given to slipshod productions and 
 to countless bad plays, that they have swindled the 
 public in the matter of selling tickets and that, ac- 
 cordingly, the public has become weary and disgusted 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 315 
 
 and has remained away. Both sides are right. But 
 they have overlooked one of the most important 
 reasons for the decline in the size of audiences. I 
 refer to the lack of attention the managers have be- 
 stowed on their drop-curtains. Consider! The 
 average four act play announced to begin at 8:15 
 sharp rarely begins until 8 :30. The average 
 theatregoer is in his seat at 8 :io. What has he to 
 look at? The drop-curtain. Before the play 
 starts, therefore, he has been looking at that drop- 
 curtain for twenty minutes. Between the first and 
 second acts comes an average intermission of twelve 
 minutes. That makes his contemplation of the 
 drop-curtain of a total to date of thirty-two min- 
 utes. The average intermission between the second 
 and third acts is ten minutes and the same period 
 elapses on the average between the third and fourth 
 acts. The total contemplation is now fifty-two min- 
 utes. Add to this the unavoidable one and one-half 
 minutes' vision of the drop-curtain after the play is 
 over — it taking approximately that time for the 
 aisle to clear — and you have a theatregoer who has 
 had to spend some fifty-three and one-half minutes 
 of the time he has been seeking amusement in the 
 playhouse doing what? Looking at the same 
 deadly drab, unsightly, uninteresting, depressing 
 piece of cloth! Consider what happens to a married 
 man who sees too much of his wife. To a man who 
 looks experimentally into the grim monotony of a 
 lark's mirror. To a man whose flat windows look 
 
3i6 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 out into a dark and colorless court. May not It be 
 the same with the theatregoer so far as the theatre 
 is concerned? May he not be tired into disloyalty, 
 hypnotized into a condition of somnolence, strain to 
 get away — and stay away ? Very probably. I, 
 therefore, make this plea : Managers, look to your 
 drop-curtains ! Install half a dozen in place of the 
 present, conventional, one. And see to it, if you 
 would keep what audiences you still have left, that 
 the curtains you buy be artistic, beautiful, restful, 
 eye-delighting, soothing. 
 
 * 
 
 "Realism" — The theory that what we already 
 have seen and already know must be more interest- 
 ing to us than the things we have not yet seen and 
 the things we do not yet know. 
 
 * 
 
 It is a curious circumstance that on the stage, no 
 matter how many or of what nature or station 
 their suitors, rich girls always fall in love as fol- 
 lows: I. With an artist. 2. With a secretary. 
 3. With a bridge builder. 4. With a man whose 
 brother owns a big sheep ranch in Rhodesia. 5. 
 With an Englishman who several years before 
 single-handed had quelled a mutiny in India. 6. 
 With a lawyer. Of course, in real life, no one ever 
 falls in love with a lawyer. In real life, rich girls 
 always fall in love with a young pimply-faced stock- 
 broker who waltzes divinely, with the clerk at the 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 317 
 
 summer hotel or with the chauffeur. Or, where 
 they don't fall in love, they marry a young man in 
 their own set. 
 
 * 
 
 A " new " farce, a French-British-American- 
 West-Forty-Second-Street affair, was recently put on 
 in a New York theatre. The plot of the " new " 
 farce consisted of the following original ingredients : 
 
 2 Squirting seltzer siphons. 
 
 4 Stampings on other man's corn. 
 
 3 Lusty whacks on other man's back. 
 
 1 Falling screen revealing to wife husband having lunch- 
 eon with a beauteous hussy. 
 
 3 Hells. 
 
 5 Damns. 
 
 2 Fainting women. 
 
 7 Quasi-risque allusions to a bed. 
 I Remark " Parlez vous Deutsch?" 
 I Remark " Sprechen Sie Frangais?" 
 
 3 Thrown plates. 
 
 I Remark upon use of patent pocket cigar lighter: "Gee, 
 it worked ! " 
 
 I Surly old admiral. 
 
 I Militant suffragette in black and white checked skirt. 
 
 I English Johnny named Algernon. 
 
 1 Irascible old " colonel." 
 
 3 Mispronunciations of central character's name to pro- 
 voke a laugh. 
 
 2 Excitable French waiters. 
 
 I Ordering of everything on the menu with " AND a cup 
 of coffee." 
 
3 1 8 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 4 Repetitions of " SIT DOWN ! ! " 
 3 Attempts to sneak out of room on tiptoe with long 
 strides. 
 
 1 Tapping forehead with remark " Nobody home." 
 
 2 Confusion of identities. 
 
 Once let a farce writer possess the valor to do a 
 farce in which a bed is used for sleeping purposes 
 and a siphon for drinking purposes — ah, but that 
 day is as far off as the vaudeville day which will not 
 reveal a sketch or dance or what not in which an art- 
 ist goes to sleep and dreams that his painting of a 
 beautiful woman has come to life 1 
 
 I do not believe that it is well for a dramatic critic 
 personally to know theatrical managers. I speak 
 from experience. I am acquainted with two or three 
 — and I know that this acquaintanceship has a 
 plump tendency to influence my otherwise honest 
 writings. I find that, knowing these gentlemen, 
 coming Into verbal contact with them, even now and 
 again dropping the " Mr." in Intimate greeting of 
 them, I cannot for the life o' me, try as I will, in my 
 criticisms of their endeavors refrain from dealing 
 with them much more unfavorably than were they 
 strangers to me. 
 
 Usher — A theatrical employe who takes the 
 seat coupon from the theatre-goer, walks down the 
 aisle and points out to the theatre-goer a seat which, 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 319 
 
 in the interesting part of the first act, is discovered 
 by the usher to belong to some one else. 
 
 Why will our American one-tongued playwriters 
 persist in causing their German characters to speak 
 broken English thus: "The fraulein right is"? 
 Inasmuch as, to make one illustration serve as a 
 general text, the German is " Das Fraulein hat 
 Recht," any German just learning to speak English 
 would utter the words in like sequence and would not, 
 as so many Americans believe from their joke pam- 
 phlets, invariably place the verb at the sentence's end. 
 
 * 
 
 "Sympathy" — A sensation of deep pity which 
 an American theatrical audience is ordered to feel 
 for all married women whose husbands cruelly 
 neglect them between the hours of 11 A. M. and 4 
 p. M. in order to earn enough money to support them 
 and for all additional married women whom the 
 aforesaid husbands visit between the hours of 1 1 
 A. M. and 4 P. M. when their husbands have cruelly 
 neglected them in order to earn enough money to 
 support them and the unmarried women whom they 
 visit between the hours of 1 1 A. M. and 4 P. M. In 
 other words, a sensation of heart-moving compas- 
 sion for everybody but men. 
 
 " Suspense " — A sensation of extreme nervous 
 excitement which an American audience is ordered 
 to feel for the future fate of two characters who. 
 
320 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 the audience knows absolutely, will be found safely 
 and happily in each other's arms at eleven o'clock. 
 
 " Surprise " — A sensation of amazement which 
 an American audience is ordered to experience at 
 those particular points in a play where the characters 
 cease to act in a normal, natural manner and proceed 
 to conduct themselves like the ends of chapters in a 
 best seller. 
 
 To be a successful playwright for the American 
 theatre, one must possess the iron-bound convictions 
 that seduction is dramatic, that a sweet and amiable 
 nature will conquer everything, that old people of 
 either sex are interesting, that newspaper reporters 
 never wear overcoats, that " there are two kinds 
 of women — good women and bad women," that 
 disappointment in love is a great tragedy, that a 
 girl can tell the villain's intentions by the way he 
 kisses her, that a girl who is " housewifey " and 
 looks out for a man's comfort will inevitably win him 
 away from the flightier girl who treats him with 
 more or less disregard, that the country uplifts and 
 the city corrupts, that money isn't everything in the 
 world, that Cinderella is a greater piece of literature 
 than Les Miserables and that a rich imagination con- 
 sists merely in remembering what was in day before 
 yesterday's newspaper. 
 
 Axioms of the American stage: 
 I. All heroes are sunburnt. 
 
SOME CASUAL NOTES 321 
 
 2. All heroes are loved by heroines because they 
 are " so big, so clean, so strong." 
 
 3. All men over fifty have gray hair. 
 
 4. All bachelors are named either " Travers " or 
 " young Winthrop." 
 
 5. All villains come from the East. 
 
 6. All Englishmen are dudes. 
 
 7. Every Spanish woman carries a rose between 
 her teeth and a dagger in her garter. 
 
 8. All adventuresses are brunettes. 
 
 9. Wall Street men's wives never love them. 
 
 10. Family troubles always come to a head in 
 the library. 
 
 11. All mothers wear black dresses. 
 
 12. All country girls are pure. 
 
THE STANDING IN THE POPULARITY 
 CONTEST FOR DRAMATIC LINES 
 
 Votes 
 
 400,350 — " Let me pass 1 " 
 
 400,221 — " No — a thousand times no! " 
 
 400,220 — " . . . and then you camel" 
 
 400,216 — "I was a plaything and he cast me 
 
 aside." 
 400,212 — "I saw things through the eyes of a 
 
 child then, but I am a woman now." 
 400,211 — " You will never, never understand." 
 400,206 — " It is right you should know before you 
 
 judge me." 
 400,192 — "I understand, and I forgive you." 
 400,164 — " I'm not really — a — bad — 
 
 woman." 
 400,147 — "It was because I love you that I did 
 
 it!" 
 400,133 — " . . . I believed him." 
 400,129 — "After that, I knew no more un- 
 til—" 
 400,107 — " It's different with a man." 
 400,103 — "If only I could live my life over 
 
 again! " 
 400,101 — "I see it in your eyes, sweetheart, that 
 
 you are telling the truth." 
 322 
 
THE POPULARITY CONTEST 323, 
 
 399,980- — "I'll let nothing come between us — ■ 
 
 nothing! " 
 399,876 — "I tell you she is a good woman; I have 
 
 asked her to be my wife." 
 399,624 — " Every fiber of my being cries out to 
 
 you." 
 398,749 — " If you had any respect for me you 
 
 could not act as you do." 
 398,221 — "What must you think of me?" 
 398,216 — "When I make up my mind to do a 
 
 thing I usually do it! " 
 398,210 — " Come into my arms, dear — and for- 
 
 get." 
 397,628 — " You don't mean ... !I" 
 386,971 — "The truth! I — • want — the — 
 
 truth! " 
 379,854 — "I was a child in knowledge. I knew 
 
 nothing of life, nothing of the world. 
 
 And he was kind to me." 
 376,589 — " He's a MAN 1 " 
 368,238 — " Why mon't you seel Why won't you 
 
 understand! " 
 353,826 — "Go on! Go on!" 
 349,725 — "I'd like a few words with you — : 
 
 alone." 
 337,821 — "Ah, this puts the matter in a new 
 
 light!" 
 322,767 — " Two lumps, thank you." 
 321,889 — "I am innocent! I swear to you, I am 
 
 innocent! " 
 
324 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 321,872 — "Let's sit down and talk it over 
 
 quietly." 
 321,765 — "You've been thinking — what?" 
 321,722 — "We'll go away somewhere, dear, and 
 
 make a fresh start." 
 321,548 — " What must you think of me ! " 
 321,435 — "A gentleman to see you, sir." 
 321,434 — (with an air of resignation) " Show him 
 
 in!" 
 321,348 — " Does it matter where I go — or what 
 
 becomes of me? " 
 321,262 — "I don't know what you'll think of me, 
 
 but — 
 320,989 — " Now you know all! " 
 320,892 — "I can endure this torment no longer! 
 
 If you don't cease, I'll — I'll 
 
 scream! " 
 320,721 — "The happiness of my whole life is 
 
 staked on the result ! " 
 320,655 — "Forgive me, dear, I wasn't quite my- 
 self. I didn't realize what I was 
 
 saying. I'm a brute." 
 320,527 — "Nobody but ourselves need know 
 
 what's happened. 
 319,823 — "May I smoke?" 
 319,500 — "But you've never loved as I have 
 
 loved!" 
 318,928 — (tenderly) " Darling! My darling!! " 
 318,776 — " You wouldn't condemn me if you knew 
 
 all!" 
 
ON "ACTING IS AN ART" 325 
 
 317,881 — "There! You've dragged the truth 
 from mel " 
 
 317,123 — "I'll be waiting for you — when you 
 return." 
 
 316,515 — " He loves me and believes in mel " 
 
 315,829 — " Remember that I have no hope or de- 
 sire in this matter except to clear you 
 in the eyes of the world." 
 
 315,192 — "He just couldn't act this way if he 
 
 KNEW. 
 
 ON " ACTING IS AN ART " 
 
 1. The Hero. — Tall; straight shouldered; slim; 
 hair somewhat curly if possible; blue serge suit; no 
 jewelry; pipe; shoes not too highly polished; derby 
 or (preferably) soft hat; fur overcoat under no cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 2. The Villain. — Inclined to stoutness; must be 
 brunette ; black mustache will help ; considerable 
 jewelry; any necktie but a black one; clothes in the 
 height of fashion ; deep voice ; highly polished shoes ; 
 must wear gloves (to be taken off and slapped 
 against the leg) ; cane; either cigarettes or cigar 
 (never pipe). 
 
 3. The Heroine. — Slim; blonde almost always 
 preferable; must never dress in colors; must never 
 look strong; small handkerchief; shoulders a bit 
 stooped. 
 
 4. The Adventuress. — Tall; slim; must dress in 
 
326 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 colors (never in white or black) ; must wear big hat; 
 liberal dose of jewelry; brunette; clothes must be of 
 fashionable design ; clothes must be cut tight to show 
 off figure. 
 
 5. A Banker. — Fat; fur overcoat; diamond ring; 
 top hat; heavy gold chain across waistcoat; black 
 suit; thick neck; cigar; chamois gloves usually; 
 highly polished cane; gaiters over black Congress 
 shoes; in summer, crash suit and must always carry 
 palm-leaf fan. 
 
 6. A Debutante. — Short ; slim ; blonde ; fashion- 
 able dress of soft white material; ribbon or flower 
 in hair; must trip instead of walk and gurgle instead 
 of talk. 
 
 7. Spanish Girl. — Dress of yellow and red; skirt 
 cut fairly short and tight around hips; mantilla; rose 
 held in teeth; fan. 
 
 8. Faithful Negro Servant. — Stoop shouldered; 
 old ; white hair ; must walk with one hand resting on 
 lower part of back; must have a quaver in voice. 
 
 9. Butler. — Tall; about one hundred and sev- 
 enty-five pounds; must stand very erect; must speak 
 in slow and measured tones; must draw mouth in a 
 severe line. 
 
 10. College Boy. — Tan oxfords; pancake or 
 Panama hat with colored band; wide trousers turned 
 up at bottom; clothes of extreme cut; must use 
 phrase "old man" frequently; gold cigarette case; 
 many cigarettes (although pipe of "bulldog" va- 
 riety may sometimes be substituted). 
 
ON "ACTING IS AN ART" 327 
 
 11. Englishman. — Tall; blonde; slender; clothes 
 cut very tight; light walking stick; monocle; must 
 stand with feet wide apart ; must speak with a drawl ; 
 long cigarette holder; handkerchief in cuff; hat tilted 
 far back on head; favorite phrase, " Oh, I say." 
 
 12. Senator. — Tall; rather stout; gray hair; 
 Prince Albert coat; perfecto cigar; carries matches 
 in silver matchbox; gold pencil; handkerchief of ex- 
 tra large size. 
 
 13. Congressman. — Tall; rather slim; Prince 
 Albert coat; brown hair; panatela cigar; usually car- 
 ries newspaper; soft hat with brim of fairly wide 
 quality; look as much like Abraham Lincoln as 
 possible. 
 
 14. Housemaid. — ^White cap; small white apron; 
 black dress; skirt cut above ankles; medium height; 
 brunette. 
 
 15. Countess. — Tall, dress with train whenever 
 possible; lorgnette; aigrette; usually brown hair; 
 very haughty. 
 
 16. Burglar. — Medium height; brown hair; 
 slim; frayed sack suit; stooped shoulders; nervous 
 look and walk; dark lantern; cap pulled over eyes; 
 must need a shave. 
 
 17. Lawyer. — Fairly tall; slim; dressed in dark 
 clothes; rimmed noseglasses which he puts on and 
 takes off intermittently; slightly bald; must say, 
 " Yes, Madam " and " No, Madam " ; must have 
 suave manners. 
 
 18. Southerner. — Rule number one, must use 
 
328 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 " suh " frequently; rule number two, must indicate 
 his fondness for whiskey or juleps; rule number 
 three, must look hke Congressman type, with black 
 string tie added; rule number four, must talk about 
 " God's country." 
 
 ON VILLAINS 
 
 The trouble with most of the villains in our na- 
 tive drama is that they are heroes. The curious, 
 sentimentalized viewpoint of the general run of our 
 theatrical scriveners is such that a mountebank mo- 
 rahty and philosophy urge themselves into their char- 
 acters, with the result that the aforesaid characters 
 frequently impress the separative spectator in an en- 
 tirely different manner than their creators intended 
 they should. Indeed, every now and then I discover 
 that, by closing my eyes and considering the " vil- 
 lain " of the piece in the place of the " hero " and 
 vice versa, with their speeches changed about, I am 
 enabled to enjoy one of these plays and its thematic 
 evolution intelligently and satisfactorily. A villain, 
 by the world's definition of him, is one whose actions 
 are hostile to society in the light of the mental atti- 
 ,tudes of that section of society in which he is in the 
 immediate process of moving. Therefore when, as 
 in the theatre, the section of society into which the 
 villainous character is cast reveals no mental atti- 
 tudes of any kind — save a blind and unsubstan- 
 tiated attitude against the villain (who is called a 
 
ON VILLAINS 329 
 
 villain arbitrarily for the demands of the play) — 
 the villain, being the only person in the xrowd with 
 an idea in his head, to me forthwith becomes the 
 hero. 
 
 In our drama, any man is regarded as a villain 
 who 
 
 1. Acts like a normal, healthy, sensible man in the pres- 
 ence of a woman, provided only the latter be an ass. 
 
 2. Says anything that diverges even remotely from what 
 is accepted as the truth by nine-tenths of the population that 
 patronizes the theatre. 
 
 3. Views his wife as a partner and companion in fortune 
 and misfortune^ instead of a partner and companion only in 
 the former. 
 
 4. Wears good clothes. 
 
 5. Marries, or desires to marry, a rich girl for her money. 
 
 6. Is not liked by the hero. 
 
 7. Is not an American. 
 
 For the past six months, I have been working on 
 a small book which will, when completed, prove 
 definitively, I believe, that were the " hero " and 
 "villain" characters in point turned about — each 
 labeled with the other's name — the device would 
 immeasurably improve the thematic values of four 
 out of every five of our attempted serious American 
 plays. Even in the case of so good a play as The 
 Easiest Way, the villain is actually, in close analysis, 
 found to be the hero. While in such absurdly in- 
 ferior products as The Lion and the Mouse, the 
 confusion in virtues is perfectly patent to any one 
 
330 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 with half an eye or quarter an education in logic. 
 The adjective " sympathetic," when attributed to one 
 of the leading characters in the native drama, is gen- 
 erally applied in all seriousness by playwright, pub- 
 lic and critic to the particular character in the cast 
 who is most objectionable to the observing in- 
 dividual. 
 
 AT THE FOLIES MARIGNY, PARIS, 19 14 
 
 This Revue de Marigny, following an established 
 custom, is as thoroughly French as the French 
 spoken by American actresses in the second act 
 where they direct Marianne, the maid, forthwith 
 to answer the door bell. The leading features of 
 this typically Parisian revue are Mile. Evelynne 
 Thaw, dans le Boston et le One Step, les chansons 
 International Rag, Vous Avez Your Mother's Big 
 Brown Eyes, Then Up La Riviere We Will Row, 
 Row, Row and Alexander's Ragtime Orchestre, 
 Les Jackson Girls, the joke about not thinking about 
 le futur as this is mon birthday and je pense about 
 le present, and similar unmistakably Gallic things. 
 In a word, this French revue (as every French revue 
 in Paris in late years) is not one-half so " frenchy " 
 as the American Ziegfeld Follies — which are not 
 frenchy at all. The only really " frenchy " things 
 I have observed on the American music show stage 
 in the last five years have been Miss Lillian Lor- 
 raine's legs and Miss Elsie Janis's imitation of Gaby 
 
ON ALFRED SUTRO 331 
 
 Deslys. And the only really " frenchy " things I 
 have observed on the French music show stage in 
 the same space of time have been the " sister act " 
 of a couple of American girls named Phillips at the 
 Ambassadeurs and a dance by the American Flor- 
 ence Walton and Maurice at the Olympia. I have, 
 accordingly, come to the conclusion that what people 
 call " frenchy" is not frenchy at all, but really 
 Americany. This accounts for the disappointment 
 of us Americans when we seek the frenchy quality 
 in the Paris revues. It is there, sure enough, but 
 we don't recognize it because it is so familiarly and 
 distinctly American. 
 
 ON ALFRED SUTRO 
 
 Mr. Alfred Sutro, as a maker of plays, somehow 
 generally gives me the impression of a young dra- 
 matic critic; a young dramatic critic, as has been 
 noted, being usually inclined to throw his education 
 around and to concern himself with being assiduously 
 witty. Back of Sutro's work one feels always strain ; 
 back of Sutro's wit one feels frequently irrelevance. 
 I know little about the gentleman save from a con- 
 templation of his numerous plays. For all I know, 
 he may be of soundly trained, well turned, smartly 
 shined mind. He probably is. If he were not, in 
 all probability his plays would ring truer, his humor 
 trickle forth more spontaneously. It is one of the 
 saddest of human paradoxes that the work of thor- 
 
332 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 oughly educated men should have about it a surface 
 tone of artificiality, of something forced and not 
 naturally flowing, where the work of the spuri- 
 ously trained has about it a becoming " natural- 
 ness " and mark of sincerity. I have often tried to 
 figure the thing out — in vain. Why should, for 
 instance, the plays of Shaw give persons the impres- 
 sion of being stiffly posed and painstakingly witty 
 and the plays of such a comparatively inferior in- 
 telligence as Mr. Hubert Henry Davies (to pick 
 the first at hand from many) seem perfectly the re- 
 verse? Probably education makes a man unduly 
 self-conscious. And, after all, what makes a man 
 more human than ignorance, and more "natural"? 
 Why should Shaw's Bluntschli and Burgess, eliciting 
 laughter with the celebrated theatrical trick of word 
 reiteration (Arnold Bennett's pastime!) seem to 
 many mere puppets as compared with the " human- 
 ness " of Davies' Mrs. Gorringe and the Jardines 
 doing the same thing? Particularly as they must 
 realize that, intrinsically, it is Davies' characters that 
 are actually the puppetier of the two sets. Why 
 should the " Magic " of Chesterton (a work of con- 
 siderable; charm) impress its auditors in part as " a 
 muddle of philosophy and infantile affectation '' 
 (I quote W. L. George) and any similarly to be 
 classed play of Barrie's (assuredly a less wise soul) 
 impress its auditors as " so human," " so natural " ? 
 I believe these latter are the usual tributes in the 
 Barrie instance. Nor, I admit, undeserved tributes. 
 
ON FITCH AND WOMEN 333 
 
 Here, in general, a subject for our essayists ■ — if we 
 had any. 
 
 ON FITCH AND WOMEN 
 
 A DRAMATIC critic knows exactly what women will 
 do and exactly how they will act on each and every 
 occasion. And woe be to the young playwright who 
 doesn't know women as he, the critic, knows them, 
 and who causes them to act differently than the critic 
 knows absolutely they would act. For example, an 
 experienced dramatic critic knows full well that 
 every woman who has had a " past " will some day, 
 just as sure as you are born, fall in love with a good 
 man and regret that past. For example, the shrewd 
 critic knows full well that every woman who has a 
 wayward married sister will go to the male rascal's 
 apartments and make it appear to sister's husband 
 that it was she and not little sister who figured in the 
 liaison. He has come lately to know, too, for an 
 absolute certainty, that woman is the pursuer of the 
 male and not vice versa; and he knows, just as sure 
 as Granville Barker made little apples, that every 
 woman who is embraced with undue fire by a man 
 will struggle violently to free herself and, this ac- 
 complished, will shrink from the brute, bury her 
 ashamed and tear-bespattered face in her arm and 
 exclaim: " I realize «ow what you meant! Thank 
 God, I realized it before it was too late! I hate 
 you ! I hate you 1 ! I hate you ! ! ! " 
 
334 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 This comprehensive and authentic knowledge of 
 women that comes to a dramatic critic through pro- 
 tracted experience with women (hi plays) is and has 
 been responsible for many curious things. For one, 
 much of the reputation for " knowing women " that 
 was enjoyed by the late Clyde Fitch. The dramatic 
 critics told the country that Fitch " certainly knew 
 women," and Fitch got his reputation. Although 
 I have not the faintest desire to detract from this 
 Fitch reputation for knowing women, it yet seems 
 to me that, to some extent, it was not a case of Fitch 
 knowing women so much as it was a case of the Ger- 
 man playwrights, of whose writings Fitch was an 
 assiduous reader, knowing women. In another 
 phrasing. Fitch's more accurate dissections of the 
 genus frau were, to a degree, the dissections that had 
 previously been negotiated by Germans. An excur- 
 sion into the popular German plays of the period of 
 the Fitch activity in America will bring this home 
 to you. 
 
 But my point is this : that poor Fitch got his repu- 
 tation for knowing women from the dramatic critics, 
 not from the most incisive and expert work he dis- 
 closed in that frou-frou, frau-frau direction — 
 whether original with him or not — but from the 
 petty chicaneries which (wise soul that he was) he 
 knew he would have to make use of to convince a 
 critical confraternity already steeped beyond re- 
 demption in the artificial scents of stock theatrical 
 feminine psychology. And thus it came about, as 
 
ON BERNSTEIN 335 
 
 it always does seem to come about in American cases 
 like this, that the simple, commonplace and perfectly 
 obvious spectacle of a girl in a kimono doing up her 
 hair with a bunch of hairpins stuck between her lips 
 instead of in her hand was the thing that brought 
 the critical hosannas about Fitch's head and caused 
 to be overlooked his deeper and more significant fe- 
 male analyses — whether original with him or not, 
 I again repeat, being an inconsequent factor in the 
 argument. 
 
 ON BERNSTEIN 
 
 The impression I receive from the plays of Henri 
 Bernstein is of an ignorant man possessed of a spec- 
 tacular vocabulary. This Bernstein is and ever has 
 been a maestro of mere noise, a virtuoso of drawing- 
 room thunders, a primas of scenic pishmlnce. A 
 fourth or fifth-rater at best, he has been elevated 
 to position in our commonwealth only because our 
 critical peoples are such that they are unable to dis- 
 tinguish between being proficient In dramatic tech- 
 nique and being dramatic in proficient technique. 
 
 Bernstein's plays bear the same relation to the 
 drama of modernity that a well-made empty house 
 bears to a home — architecture without life, archi- 
 tecture unoccupied by human beings, a substantial 
 dwelling with the family off on a vacation, a Fifth 
 Avenue residence closed for the summer. We 
 Americans are critically a nation in the constant state 
 
336 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 of having just had three cocktails on an empty stom- 
 ach. We are ever ready and eager to cheer the 
 guesswork of the nearest press agent. We are the 
 back-slappers of the cosmos, the have-a-drink con- 
 vivials of the world of art, the good fellows, the 
 lodge brothers — and the come-ons. A mere press 
 dispatch from London or Paris announcing a new 
 Mars in the dramatic heavens is enough to set our 
 critics to a wild waving of verbs over the deep signifi- 
 cance of the discovery. We welcome all artists 
 but artists. Ask ten Americans which is the better 
 dramatist, Bernstein or Molnar, and the ten will 
 tell you you surely must be joking. The same if 
 you ask for a national comparison of the Irish Lady 
 Gregory and George Birmingham, of the French 
 Bataille and Donnay, of the German Kadelberg and 
 Schmidt. The ten will guffaw — Birmingham a 
 greater artist than the Lady ; ha, ha ; Donnay greater 
 than Bataille, he, he; Schmidt greater than Kadel- 
 berg, ho, hoi 
 
 The last clamor from Bernstein is entitled The 
 Secret, and save for a subtle examination into the 
 character of a woman obsessed by a devastating and 
 unreasoning jealousy, is the usual Act I, Third of 
 July, Act II, Fourth of July, and Act III, Fifth of 
 July — the usual obvious preparation for the ex- 
 plosion of the giant firecracker with the usual ob- 
 vious explosion at the conventional moment and the 
 usual obvious subsequent binding up of the wounds. 
 The last act of the play, with its profuse peddling of 
 
NATIONAL DRAMA 337 
 
 forgiveness on the combined heads of the mob after 
 everybody has beaten everybody else to a pulp, is 
 only another instance attesting to the fact that Bern- 
 stein's mind is nothing but a theatre in alcohol. 
 
 NATIONAL DRAMA 
 CAST 
 British 
 
 Sir Ronald Trevelyan, Bart. 
 
 Lady Trevelyan 
 
 Arthur Trevelyan (their adopted son) 
 
 Nevil Hillary, K. C, M. P. 
 
 The Reverend Alfred Graveshorne (curate of St. 
 Stephens) 
 
 Lady Ashby Moncrief. 
 
 Diana Cravenshaw (clerk at Self ridge's) 
 
 Perkins (butler to Sir Ronald) 
 
 Andrews (butler to Lady Moncrief) 
 
 Morse (butler to Hillary) 
 
 Roberts (servant to Arthur) 
 
 Muggins (servant to Diana) 
 
 Jenkins (butler to Perkins) 
 
 The scene is laid principally in London; the first and 
 third acts at Mr. Hillary's flat in Grafton Street, the 
 second at Lady Moncrief's house, " Willwolly," Sussex, in 
 November of the following year. 
 
 CAST 
 
 French 
 
 Casimir Andraux 
 Henri (his son) 
 
338 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 LuciENNE (his daughter) 
 
 Jacques Poisette (a wealthy manufacturer) 
 
 Marcelle Poisette (his tubercular wife) 
 
 The Abbe D'Areois. 
 
 Pierre Valois (an under secretary at the Academy) 
 
 Lieutenant Wolfgang (a German spy) 
 
 The scene is laid principally in Paris; the first act in M. 
 Andraux's library, the second in Mme. Marcelle Poi- 
 sette's boudoir at midnight, the third in a small town near 
 the German frontier. 
 
 CAST 
 
 jdmerican 
 
 Judge Roger Hamburton (of the Supreme Court) 
 
 JuDSON Telfair (of Telfair & Co., brokers) 
 
 James C. Reynolds (president of the First National 
 Bank) 
 
 Arthur Reynolds (his son) 
 
 Baxter (a warden) 
 
 Dick Travers (a young lawyer) 
 
 Silent Sam ( stool pigeon) 
 
 White, Smith, O'Brien, Murphy, Clancy (police de- 
 tectives) 
 
 Maggie Reilly (a stenographer at Telfair & Co's.) 
 
 Mrs. Reynolds 
 
 Miriam Reynolds (her daughter) 
 
 Alice Addleby (Miriam's chum) 
 
 The scene is laid principally in New York at the present 
 time; the first act at Reynolds' residence at No. i8 Gra- 
 mercy Park West, the second in the brokerage offices of Tel- 
 fair & Co., at No. 49 Wall Street, and the third in the war- 
 den's office at Sing Sing Prison. 
 
NATIONAL DRAMA 339 
 
 CAST 
 
 Russian 
 MiSKA Vasalenavitch Klooglosevtloff (a retired 
 
 professor) 
 Anna Vladimirovna Klooglosevtloff (his wife) 
 Andrievna, Elizaveta, Marina, Marfa, Varvana, 
 
 BiNGA, Maska, Ginka, Paulina (his daughters) 
 VoLGUTZ, Savel, Kuligin, Zowie, Boris, Constantin, 
 
 Alexis, Ivan (his sons) 
 Michailowsky Alexanmiovitch Distcheff (his wife's 
 
 brother) 
 AsTROFF Leonidivitch Zowski (his first cousin) 
 Marina Konstantinova Petrishtsheff (his second 
 
 cousin) 
 BiMBOFF (his third cousin) 
 Butkevitch Spiffvitch Kokoklinghin (his wife's 
 
 step-uncle) 
 Kudrash Ilia Asterika (his grandfather) 
 Dmitri Binghoff Korotskoff (his half-brother) 
 Nastasya Paulovitchna Vitch (his great-aunt) 
 Leonidas Dostevski Klishavitch (his wife's brother- 
 in-law) 
 Feodor Paulovitch Sonoff (his doctor) 
 Klinghoff Abrezkoffvitch Statchoff (his wife's 
 
 doctor) 
 PisHKiN, etc., Dlthidor, etc., Borapatikin, etc. (other 
 
 doctors) 
 Gamboff, Pish, Kudrash, Gregorivitch (epileptics) 
 Sergius Vodkaroff (chief of police) 
 ■DiAPERA (an old nurse) 
 Barons, counts, princes, butlers, butlers' assistants, lack- 
 
340 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 eys, coachmen, cooks, valets, privy councillors, ministers, offi- 
 cers of police, secretaries, law'yers, etc., etc. 
 
 The entire action is laid in the drawing room of the coun- 
 try home of the Klooglosevtloff's, near Moscow. 
 
 CAST 
 
 Scandinavian 
 Countess Christina 
 August (a garbage hauler) 
 
 The action passes in the coal cellar of a castle on St. John's 
 Eve. 
 
 ON NEW SHAW OPINIONS 
 
 The difference between the play characters of 
 George Bernard Shaw and the play characters of 
 many of his contemporaries — the latter insult the 
 intelligence of their audience; the former insult the 
 intelligence of one another. Example: The Phi- 
 landerer. Inasmuch as in the words of the shrewd 
 Mencken " every habitual writer now before the 
 public, from William Areher and James Huneker 
 to Vox Populi and An Old Subscriber, has had his 
 say about Shaw," and inasmuch as The Philanderer 
 has long ere this enjoyed its full share of the general 
 sapience, I hesitate at this tardy day once more to 
 set my own wits against the play. Let me confess, 
 however, that whenever there happens to be a dearth 
 of subjects to write about, I am always prepared to 
 entertain the populace with a couple of new opinions 
 
ON NEW SHAW OPINIONS 341 
 
 about Mr. Shaw and his works, as I have found that 
 (contrary to the belief of my colleague, Mr. Burns 
 Mantle) all one has to do to negotiate such brilliant 
 critical opinions about the Irishman is to utilize the 
 method sagaciously employed by Max Beerbohra. 
 This method consists in thinking up something sort 
 o' clever — something that has absolutely nothing 
 to do with the topic in hand '■ — and then connecting 
 the remark with the subject under discussion through 
 a quotation of the words of some wholly imaginary 
 philosopher or critic. Thus, a new expression of 
 opinion on The Philanderer might easily be brought 
 about in the following manner : 
 
 A. (the thinking up of the something irrelevant, 
 hut sort o- clever^ — Youth may be said to cease in 
 an individual when he no longer enjoys walking in 
 the rain. 
 
 B. (the quotation of the wholly imaginary phi- 
 losopher or critic) — As Doctor Herman P. Eier- 
 fresser, the illustrious German commentator on the 
 theatre and author of that admirable and penetrat- 
 ing work, Uberbrettl' und Unterbrettl', has ob- 
 served: "To satirize a fad or current craze, 
 playwrlters almost invariably attempt to achieve 
 their purpose through youthful characters. In these 
 theatrical satires, the children are ever set satirically 
 against their parents, never the parents satirically 
 against their children. Why is this? Do older 
 persons never succumb to fads and crazes? It 
 would seem to me that a genuine satire of fads were 
 
342 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 best to be accomplished through such characters as 
 would be supposed already to have grown circum- 
 spect and wary as to fads with age." 
 
 C. {the consequent new opinion about The Phi- 
 landerer) — Although Doctor Herman P. Eier- 
 fresser, the illustrious German commentator on the 
 theatre and author of that admirable and penetrat- 
 ing work, tJberbrettr und Unterbrettl', has observed 
 that " to satirize a fad or current craze, playwriters 
 almost invariably attempt to achieve their purpose 
 through youthful characters, etc.," Mr. Shaw, in his 
 satirical burlesque of the Ibsen mania which he calls 
 The Philanderer, has generalized his satire by indi- 
 cating, albeit indirectly, that, age or lack of age, 
 youth may be said to cease In an individual only 
 when he no longer enjoys walking in the rain. 
 That Shaw's older characters, Cuthbertson and 
 Craven, were still youthful by the terms of this defi- 
 nition, is made rather clear by the dramatist through 
 assigning to Cuthbertson and Craven professions 
 which emphasize the necessity of, and consequent 
 liking for, an exposure to the elements, to-wit, the 
 professions of dramatic critic and mihtary man. 
 
 It's very simple. 
 
 MANAGERIAL THEATRICAL TRADITIONS 
 
 Tradition No. I — " The public hasn't never 
 cared and don't never care about plays dealing 
 with actors, stage life and the theatre I " 
 
ON NEW SHAW OPINIONS 343 
 
 For Example^ 
 The Critic 
 The Show Shop 
 Fanny's First Play 
 Zaza 
 
 Peg Woffington 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur 
 Mistress Nell 
 Trelawney of the Wells 
 
 Tradition No. II — ^" The public don't no longer 
 care about plays with trial scenes I " 
 
 For Example 
 On Trial 
 
 The Butterfly on the Wheel 
 Madame X 
 
 The Legend of Leonora 
 Common Clay 
 Young America 
 
 Tradition No. Ill — " The public hasn't never 
 and don't never care about the kinda plays that end 
 with death." 
 
 For Example, 
 East Lynne 
 The Climbers 
 Camille 
 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin 
 Trilby 
 
 The Second Mrs. Tanqueray 
 Cyrano de Bergerac 
 
344 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Tradition No. IV — "What's the use of putting 
 on good plays? The pubHc won't go to 'em and 
 you'll only lose money! " 
 
 For Example, 
 Androcles and the Lion 
 Candida 
 The Concert 
 Kindling 
 
 Cffisar and Cleopatra 
 Peter Pan 
 
 * 
 
 Granville Barker has been hailed by many of my 
 critical colleagues as something of a genius merely 
 because he has removed the footlights from his 
 stage. Mind you, merely because he has removed 
 the footlights from his stage ! If it be just to name 
 Mr. Barker a genius for this, may it not be more 
 than just to name some of our producers of Broad- 
 way triple geniuses? They have removed from 
 their stages not merely footlights, but acting and 
 drama. 
 
 The Menu of Comedy 
 Tripe 
 Spaghetti 
 Limburger Cheese 
 Pumpernickel 
 Grape-nuts 
 Dill pickles 
 Lemons 
 Macaroni 
 
AMERICAN MUSICAL COMEDY 345 
 
 Noodles 
 
 Soused mackerel 
 
 Chop'Suey 
 
 Hash 
 
 Pork chops and gravy; 
 
 Wiener schnitzel 
 
 Frankfurters 
 
 Grape-juice 
 
 Horse meat 
 
 Squash 
 
 and 
 A small demi-tasse 
 
 AMERICAN MUSICAL COMEDY 
 
 American musical comedy depends utterly and pre- 
 cisely upon twelve things, without the existence of 
 which American musical comedy would be an impos- 
 sibility. These twelve things are: 
 
 1. The moon. 
 
 2. Women's right legs. 
 
 3. Women's left legs. 
 
 4. The United States naval marines. 
 
 5. The bass drum. 
 
 6. Newark, New Jersey. 
 
 7. The idea that all Germans have big bellies, chin whis- 
 kers, speak unintelligible English and are engaged in the 
 brewing business. 
 
 8. The idea that all Frenchmen are given, in moments of 
 pleasurable excitement, to kissing all the men in the vicinity. 
 
 9. The idea that all Englishmen are tall, grotesquely thin 
 and extremely witless. 
 
346 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 10. The idea that all Spaniards are relentlessly vindictive, 
 carry daggers, dress to resemble a fruit salad and wear im- 
 movable scowls. 
 
 11. The idea that rich men invariably fall in love with 
 poor girls 
 
 and 
 
 12. Gilt furniture. 
 
 * 
 
 BETTING ODDS ON AN ACTRESS'S 
 AMBITION 
 
 lOO to I — To appear in a play in which she out- 
 wits Richelieu. 
 
 99 to I — To appear in a role written for herself 
 by herself. 
 
 90 to I — To appear in a play in which she im- 
 plores and beseeches her lover not to think that of 
 her! 
 
 80 to I — To appear in a play in which she ex- 
 cuses her sin because she was " just a mere child 
 . . . not really a bad woman ! . . . Oh, God, what 
 have I done that I should be made to suffer so I " 
 
 70 to I — To appear in the following roles at the 
 following ages : 
 
 I. At 40 in the role of a 28-year-old girl. 
 
 II. At 45 in the role of a 25-year-old girl. 
 
 III. At 50 in the role of a 21-year-old girl. 
 
 IV. At 55 in the role of a 19-year-old girl. 
 V. At 60 in the role of a 16-year-old girl. 
 
EIGHT REASONS 347 
 
 65 to I — To appear in the genre of role asso- 
 ciated with the name of Mrs. Leslie Carter, in other 
 words, a role scented with spectacular cocotterie and 
 pyrotechnic flapdoodle. 
 
 50 to I — To appear in a role that displays her 
 as possessed of all the multifarious godly attributes. 
 
 40 to I — To appear in the role of a queen. 
 
 38 to I — To appear in the role of a prin- 
 cess. 
 
 35 to I — To appear in the role of a countess. 
 
 25 to I — To appear in a role that calls for 
 numerous males to lay down their lives for her. 
 
 15 to I — To appear in a role that calls for 
 several suitors to seek her hand in vain. 
 
 I to 1,000,000 — To appear in the sort of role 
 for which she is actually best suited. 
 
 EIGHT REASONS WHY THE MOVING 
 
 PICTURES ARE HURTING THE 
 
 REGULAR THEATRES 
 
 I. Because one may witness a moving picture 
 play without being bored at regular twenty-minute 
 intervals by ten minutes of irrelevant, stop-gap dia- 
 logue while the leading film is off stage changing into 
 another Lucile gown. 
 
 II. Because the pubhc Is not compelled to read 
 at least twice a week that this or that film is reported 
 engaged to a prominent polo player. 
 
 III. Because a film never keeps the curtain wait- 
 
348 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 ing just because the manager has declined to hire it 
 a private car for its next week's jump from New 
 lYork to Newark. 
 
 IV. Because a film does not wear its handkerchief 
 in its cuff, nor its watch on a black silk ribbon 
 stretched diagonally across its evening shirt, nor 
 Brilliantine on its hair. 
 
 V. Because at no time during a moving picture 
 play does the author of the play come out on the 
 stage, in response to applause intended for the play 
 alone, and make a speech. 
 
 VI. Because, as yet, the adapted French farce has 
 not invaded the moving pictures. 
 
 VII. Because, at a moving picture play, one can- 
 not hear the actors' pronunciations. 
 
 VIII. Because one may go to a moving picture 
 play with the supreme comfort of knowing that even 
 if the leading lady does try to imitate Ethel Barry- 
 more's speaking voice, one can't hear her! 
 
 Vaudeville — French: from " va " (second per- 
 son of imperative of verb " aller ") meaning " go "; 
 " de " meaning "to"; and " vil " (adj.) meaning 
 " base, vile, low." Hence : to go to something low. 
 
STAGE FURNITURE 349 
 
 DEFINITIONS OF STAGE FURNITURE, 
 ETC. 
 
 Table — An object on which the hero pounds his 
 fist when defying his wife or the villain. / 
 
 Door — A place to hesitate at. 
 
 Grate — A place wherein a packet of old letters 
 casting aspersions upon the heroine's character is 
 burned in Act III. 
 
 Mantelpiece — An object whereon the hero rests 
 his head when his wife or sweetheart is relating to 
 him her " past." 
 
 Tea-table — An object utilized to pad out scenes 
 until the play begins again. 
 
 Writing-desk — An object in the drawer of which 
 a revolver is secreted. 
 
 Chair — (See "arm"). 
 
 Arm — That part of a chair on which characters 
 in a " society play " sit. 
 
 Piano — An object whereon the villain lays his 
 hat and stick. 
 
 Bed — (See Sarcey's Quarante Ans de Theatre 
 Francais) . 
 
 Gas-Meter — An object to be displayed promi- 
 nently when the poverty of the characters is desired 
 to be emphasized. 
 
 Door-mat — An object over which a comic char- 
 acter trips. 
 
 Portieres — Objects against which the leading 
 lady poses. 
 
350 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 Library — A room wherein everything transpires 
 but reading. 
 
 Bedroom — A place in which the bachelor tem- 
 porarily hides the leading lady. 
 
 Electric chandeHer — An object that never lights 
 up for at least two minutes after a character has 
 turned on the switch. 
 
 Alcohol cigar-lighter — An object designed to in- 
 dicate affluence. 
 
 Vase — An object designed to be smashed by the 
 
 hero when angry. 
 
 * 
 
 Stage censor — one appointed by the public to 
 keep from the public such plays as the public wants 
 to see. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF DRAMATISTS 
 
 Barrie — Chopin playing blind-man's-buff among 
 the rose-bushes with Master Gabriel. Grandma 
 reading George Moore to Little Willie. A tenor 
 singing Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep. The 
 sound of a zither in a circus sideshow. 
 
 Shaw — i-|-i=3;3 = o. A drowning man 
 coming up for the fourth time and screaming wildly 
 for a glass of water. Nietzsche playing pinochle 
 with Harry Von Tilzer. 
 
 Arnold Bennett — Ladies' Day at the Players' 
 Club. " Climbing the Alps with Burton Holmes." 
 
IMPRESSIONS OF DRAMATISTS 351 
 
 A race to the death between two swans in Central 
 Park. Reading through all of Webster's Diction- 
 ary to find the meaning of the word " zephyr." 
 
 Stanley Houghton — Havelock Ellis address- 
 ing a debutante dancing class. Firecrackers on Sun- 
 day. Gorky and Gaby Deslys playing Tobani's 
 Hearts and Flowers on tin cans, with a whistling 
 obligato by Brieux's niece. Mrs. Pankhurst in the 
 harem. 
 
 Granville Barker — Shaw at the age of six 
 reading Man and Superman. Beef Extract and 
 rosewater. A surgeon, after an operation for ap- 
 pendicitis, closes up the wound with pink court-plas- 
 ter. Ivan Caryll playing the Nibelungen Ring on a 
 mouth-organ. 
 
 Augustus Thomas — 1 + 1 = 2; 2 + 2 = 4; 
 4 + 4 = 8; 8 + 8 = 16; 16+16 = 32. Moth- 
 balls in the pine-woods. 
 
 Bayard Veiller — A dynamite explosion at 
 Huyler's. Cries of " Help I Save Me ! " from the 
 bathtub. Revolvers and biscuit tortoni. Search- 
 lights at high noon. 
 
 Wedekind — Strindberg kissing Elinor Glyn. 
 Anna Held singing in the Chicago Stock Yards 
 under the management of the late Mr. Elbert Hub- 
 bard. Alexis Carrel in the Eden Musee. A lullaby 
 rendered fortissimo on cornets. 
 
 George Broadhurst — The exclamation point 
 at the end of a Herbert Kaufman editorial. A 
 
352 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 trombone in the next flat. A wedding announce- 
 ment in 24-point type. 
 
 Alfred Sutro — White gloves cleaned with gas- 
 olene. The Easter fashion parade on Sixth Avenue. 
 Apricot brandy and citronella. 
 
 If, as some argue, dramatic criticism is futile and 
 should be abolished because two critics will fre- 
 quently hold diametrically opposed opinions as to 
 the same play, is it not equally true that the United 
 States of America is futile and should be aboHshed 
 because of Republicans and Democrats? 
 
 * 
 
 It is the annual lament of our theatrical mana- 
 gers, upon returning from abroad early each autumn 
 and after having scoured America for available ma- 
 terial, that it has been impossible for them to dis- 
 cover any so-called theatrical novelties. Why, 
 pray? The feat should be perfectly simple. Let 
 me suggest a few dramatic novelties which they have 
 overlooked : 
 
 1. An "eternal triangle" play in which "the 
 other man " is older and homelier than the hus- 
 band. 
 
 2. A Wall Street play in which the husband, at 
 the chmax to the second act, does not hear a news- 
 boy in the street below calling out the news that 
 there has been a panic and that, consequently, he is 
 ruined. 
 
IMPRESSIONS OF DRAMATISTS 353 
 
 3. A play in which a young American and an Eng- 
 lishman figure and in which the Englishman gets the 
 better of the young American. 
 
 4. A play during the action of which the heroine 
 is called upon to play the piano and in which she does 
 play it — instead of having it played off-stage 
 synchronously with the movements of her, fingers. 
 
 5. A labor play in which one act does not show 
 the pitifully poverty-stricken home of one of the la- 
 borers at the factory or mill, with some member of 
 his family dying of tuberculosis because of lack of 
 proper nutrition. 
 
 6. A musical comedy without a reference to the 
 Elks. 
 
 7. A musical comedy in which the German come- 
 dian has a normal German name like Schmidt, Kraus 
 or Becker instead of Dingleblatz, Bierheister or 
 Donnerwurst. 
 
 8. A respectable bachelor apartment. 
 
 9. A play in which a middle-aged bachelor with a 
 ward does not finally marry the ward. 
 
 10. A play in which both New York and a little 
 country town figure and in which New York is al- 
 lowed, in the comparison, at least one good qual- 
 ity. 
 
 1 1. A military play in which the road over which 
 the courier has ridden with the dispatches has not 
 been dusty. Also a courier who isn't breathless 
 when he arrives. Also such a play in which the 
 enemy is not on the point of crossing something. 
 
354 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 12. A court-room scene in which the leading 
 woman doesn't faint. 
 
 Herewith I offer a scene from a version of 
 B'rieux's play, Damaged Goods, characteristically 
 adapted for the tender sensibilities of our American 
 audiences : 
 
 Doctor: Twenty cases identical with yours have been 
 carefully observed — from the beginning to the end. Nine- 
 teen times — you hear, nineteen times in twenty — the 
 woman caught a cold from her husband. You think that 
 the danger is negligible; you think you have the right to 
 make your wife take her chance, as you said, of 'being one 
 of the exceptions. Very well ; you shall know what you are 
 doing. You shall know what sort of disease it is that your 
 Wife will contract without so much as having her leave 
 asked. Take this book — it is my master's work — here, 
 read for yourself. I have marked the passage. You won't 
 read it? Then I will! {He read passionately.) " I have 
 seen an unfortunate woman changed by this disease into a 
 sneezing demon. The nose turned red, the eyes became 
 bleary and watery and the — " 
 
 George: Stop! For pity's sake, stop! 
 
 Doctor: I shall not stop! I shall read to the end! I 
 shall not refrain from doing right merely for fear of up- 
 setting your nerves. (He goes on.) " And the speaking 
 voice, once soft and musical, became thick and catarrhal — 
 all its beauty completely destroyed." There, that will do! 
 And you are willing to run the risk of inflicting that disease 
 on a woman whom you say you love, though you cannot 
 support even the description of it yourself ? And pray, from 
 
THE PLOT OF A BELASCO PLAY 355 
 
 whom did this woman catch a cold? It is not I who say 
 all this: it is the book. " From a man whose criminal folly 
 was such that he was not afraid to enter into marriage, as 
 was afterwards established, with marked grippe symptoms." 
 What that man did is what you want to do ! 
 
 THE PLOT OF A BELASCO PLAY ^ 
 
 Jacques Dupont is a poor artist who lives in an 
 inn with real green shutters. During a Beautiful 
 Belasco Sunlight Effect he and his wife, who is drink- 
 ing real Vermouth from a glass bought at the 
 Tiffany Studios, have a quarrel. An art-dealer en- 
 ters through a real door. Jacques shows him one 
 of his paintings, which he places in such a position 
 that the audience may observe it is a real water- 
 color, but the dealer refuses to buy it as a Gorgeous 
 Belasco Twilight Effect begins to permeate the 
 scene. From her cottage nearby, with a real and 
 completely furnished room visible through the real 
 glass window, the sympathetic little Maria observes 
 poor Jacques' plight and seeks to aid him with some 
 real money she has saved, but Jacques, as a Lovely 
 Belasco Purple Evening Light Effect gets under 
 way, declines. After Maria returns to her real cot- 
 tage, she turns on a real gas jet and its light becomes 
 plainly visible to the audience through the real win- 
 dow. Then Jacques removes his real coat and 
 walks hopelessly toward the realistic sea on the 
 
 ^The Temperamental Journey, in this case. 
 
356 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 backdrop to end his troubles in suicide as a Superb 
 Belasco Crimson Setting-Sun Effect streaks the 
 horizon. 
 
 The second act passes In a studio in New York 
 decorated with real paintings. Jacques, whom 
 everybody believes dead, returns and is discovered 
 by his friend Shepherd after the latter has pulled up 
 the blinds gradually and permitted the studio to be 
 suffused with a Magnificent Belasco Morning Sun- 
 light Effect that is timed exactly to the raising of the 
 blinds. Jacques goes into a room off-stage, in which 
 the audience can observe real chairs when the door 
 is opened, and takes a shower-bath, the sound of the 
 flowing water being perfectly life-like. Despite his 
 friend's urgings, Jacques determines to remain out 
 of sight in the real room off-stage and keep up the 
 deception. 
 
 In the last act, after the two beautiful Belasco 
 lamps haye been removed from the aisles by the ush- 
 ers (an act which occurs three years later in a room 
 in Shepherd's house that is furnished with a hand- 
 some real baby grand piano and real pictures and a 
 real mantelpiece and real rugs), Jacques confronts 
 his deceitful wife while through the real glass win- 
 dows one may observe a Surpassing Belasco Day- 
 light Effect. And, in the end, Jacques and the 
 sympathetic Maria — as a real maid retires dis- 
 creetly from the real room — indulge in a real kiss. 
 CURTAIN {real). 
 
A RUBBER-STAMP COLLECTOR 357 
 
 FROM THE COLLECTION OF A RUBBER- 
 STAMP COLLECTOR 
 
 ( The hero, turning wildly on his wife with a 
 scream.) 
 
 " You're a low-down, lewd, bawdy jade — a 
 lecherous, depraved, lickerish baggage — a foul, 
 ruttish, loathsome hussy — an incestuous mopsy — 
 a shameless harridan — a gross wench, a debauched 
 trull, a riggish trollop, a lascivious Jezebel, a wan- 
 ton Messalina, an obscene Aspasia, a dissolute, 
 meretricious, impure, unclean Delilah ! ! I ! " 
 
 (A few minutes later, when he has regained his 
 breath,) 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sweetheart. I didn't mean 
 what I said. I wasn't myself. I'm sorry. For- 
 give me." 
 
 CONVENTIONAL CONCEPTIONS AS TO 
 HOW AN ACTRESS SHOULD EXPRESS 
 THE EMOTIONS 
 
 1. Great Stress — Distending and contracting 
 the upper portion of the corset a dozen times in 
 quick succession. 
 
 2. Grief — Looking into the grate fire and bit- 
 ing the lower lip, meanwhile clutching a handker- 
 chief in the right hand. 
 
 -J. Joy — Crossing rapidly three times from left 
 to right and right to left, periodically ejaculating: 
 
358 ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE 
 
 "Oh, I'm so happy! " — Suzette, the French maid, 
 the meanwhile standing up stage, looking on in a 
 state of puzzled alarm and Inquiring finally: "Is 
 ze madame not feeling well to-day? " 
 
 4. Anxiety — Clutching the red velvet portiere 
 with the right hand and looking fixedly out of the 
 window, the left hand being resolved into a fist and 
 pressed against the left cheek. 
 
 5. Fear — Bending the stomach inward at the 
 waistline, open hands pressed tightly against the 
 breasts, mouth half open. This method may be 
 varied by leaning against a table, fixing the gaze 
 hard at the audience and saying, in a hushed voice, 
 "Oh, my Gawd I" 
 
 6. Indifference — Elevating the eyebrows, shrug- 
 ging the right shoulder, going over to the mantel- 
 piece and carelessly sniffing the flowers In the vase. 
 
 7. Doubt — Sitting at a writing desk and biting 
 the end of a penholder. 
 
 8. Anger — Jumping up from a chair and sweep- 
 ing from the room, slamming the door with a bang. 
 
i'-c. 
 
' i- re "111 •iji'i-''