Plays and players, leaves from a critic's scrapbook

Front matter

■HII

JIHHBIHIh

HHIIii^^H

Preface

DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN AMERICA

The question has often been asked in this country, Can there be absolutely free and untrammelled criticism of the drama in the daily newspaper 8 ? The recent case of the New York Times and the Shuberts aroused a vast amount of discussion, some of which it may not be amiss to resuscitate with a view to arriving at a more or less definite conclusion as to the status of newspaper criticism.

A year ago last March Alexander Woollcott, dramatic critic of the Times, reviewed "Taking Chances," a Shubert production; in his review, he spoke of its being "not vastly amusing," of its plot being "quite absurd," the second act "vulgar and tedious," and characterized the whole as a "bedroom farce." The review called forth a public statement from the Shubert office to the effect that "some of the critics, lacking in humor, may try to make you believe that somewhere there is something just a little bit off the line in Taking Chances.' " The managing editor of the Times was the recipi-

vii viii PREFACE

ent of the seats for the next Shubert production, but it was stipulated that Mr. Woollcott should not be permitted inside the theater. Mr. Van Anda, the managing editor, a man who, in the words of Samuel Hopkins Adams, "holds to the old-fashioned creed that a newspaper should be edited by the editors and not by the advertisers," returned the tickets forthwith. A short while after, Mr. Woollcott purchased seats at the Maxine Elliott Theater, was refused admittance, and at once brought suit against the management to establish his right to enter a theater after having bought tickets. And the Times therewith refused to take all Shubert advertisements, and for nearly a year to mention any Shubert play, actor or production. The deadlock remained, then, until the Shubert office, of its own accord, invited Mr. Woollcott to return to their theaters, and the Times, in turn, resumed its relations with them by accepting advertisements and press "stories."

The whole case may at first appear very much in the same light as the cases of other critics of Walter Prichard Eaton and the New York Sun, of Channing Pollock, of Percy Hammond; but there are two highly significant points to which attention must be directed. First, contrary to the usual custom, it was not the Shuberts who withdrew their ad-

PREFACE ix

vertising from the Times, but the Times that refused to accept Shubert "copy"; and, finally, it was the Shubert office that came to the Times, after the courts had given the Shuberts the right to exclude Mr. Woollcott from their theaters, and invited Mr. Woollcott to return; and this in spite of Lee Shubert's statement that "During all this period that this man has been writing these things about our plays and of the plays that were produced at our theaters, the New York Times received on an average of from $600 to $700 a week for advertising the very plays which this man condemned. We paid the paper on an average of $35,000 a year."

The law, many times tested, is clear: the management of a theater can exclude whom it likes; it is a private concern, not a public institution. And yet, the Shuberts invited Mr. Woollcott to return to their houses. They lost no love for Mr. Woollcott : they needed the paper.

Now, the New York Times happened to be able to afford to do without the $35,000 a year from the Shuberts; had it, however, like some New York newspapers, and most others, been unable to sustain the loss, it would have had to discharge Mr. Woollcott. In that event, the Times would have found it necessary to heed the credo of the Shubert office :

x PREFACE

"If it becomes known that any production that is made in one of our theaters is sure to be condemned by one of the leading papers in this city, that producer will not bring his production to our theater unless we exclude the dramatic critic of that newspaper from the attraction. I have been threatened that unless I get fair commented [!] criticism for a production made in my theaters, that the production will be taken elsewhere. ,,

The simple method of the Times, employed without malice, with no threatenings, without blare of trumpets, has triumphed. It is not moral, it is not exactly pleasant to reflect upon, but it is efficacious ; it is the only possible weapon with which to combat the decidedly unethical weapons of such managers as declare that (referring to the Times critic) "The plaintiff, from the commencement of his employment with the New York Times, has shown his bitter feeling and animosity against the defendants and has uniformly written scathing articles concerning the productions made by the defendants and each of them."

There are perhaps half a dozen New York newspapers able to do what the Times did, and possibly a few more than that outside the metropolis. A great many of the weeklies and most of the monthlies

PREFACE xi

are likewise free to say what they please, but these last are valuable chiefly as leisurely comments, and not as critical estimates directly affecting audiences from day to day.

The first important step has been taken: a rich newspaper can stand behind its critic, against the manager; but what of the paper that must depend on the revenue from each of its heavy advertisers? Obviously, and unfortunately, it must bow down to the dictates of those advertisers.

The whole situation as I have reviewed it in the above-cited example, is considered solely from the point of view of business; the dignity and importance of dramatic criticism as a part of the make-up of our daily newspaper I have not touched upon. Until criticism can be at least fairly free, it is useless to prate of it as an art ; "criticism," dictated by the theater manager or the advertising manager, cannot rise even to the height of good reviewing. This is why we cannot afford to think of true dramatic criticism before we make way for true dramatic reviewing and reporting. So long as it is still possible for a manager to quote, "It is clean. We recommend it," for "It is clean. We have no hesitation in recommending it to the three little girls of 'Alice in Wonderland' who lived at the bottom of xii PREFACE

the treacle well," just so long shall we remain where we are.

And lest I be suspected of the vice of pessimism, let me hasten to state that there are in this country to-day a few dramatic critics endowed not only with first-rate powers of perception and wide knowledge and experience, but with true literary distinction. These critics, for the most part, have been forced to write for magazines and special issues of newspapers ; the remaining few could continue writing for the daily papers because they have been able to establish for themselves a real following of intelligent readers. It is to the critics of these two categories — and, fortunately two or three belong to both — that we must look for a future in the art and practice of dramatic criticism. It is with the hope that the present collection of varied papers, documents of contemporary interest and specimens of true criticism, will arouse a more genuine interest in and love for this difficult and somewhat neglected art, that I have induced Mr. Eaton to allow me to re-print these essays.

Barrett H. Clark.

Almost all of the reviews and essays in this volume have previously been printed in newspapers or magazines, the majority of them being part of a weekly record of the New York stage, contributed during the past six years to the daily press. They are reprinted here without change or addition ; even the occasional prophecies have been left, if only to show the danger of donning Cassandra's robe. There is no pleasure for the critic in trying to doctor an old review, and no profit for the reader; he is almost sure thus to deprive it of its only value — that of an immediate and fresh impression. The writer's thanks are extended to the editors of the Boston Transcript, the Indianapolis News, the Chicago Herald, the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, the New York Times, the American Magazine and the Century, for their kind permission to reprint.

W. P. E.

Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

CONTENTS SECTION I

AMERICAN PLAYS

PAGE

"Kindling" — An Honest Play 12

Broadway Discovers the Arabian Nights ... 34

A Quaint Tale from the Orient 50

What Bishops Do in Their Youth 66

Adventures of a Soul at the Winter Garden . . 75

A Victory of Unpretentiousness 98

The Song of Songs, Which is Sheldon's . . .104

The Poor Working Girl Suffers Again . . .110

"The Unchastened Woman," a Real Character

Study 116

The Easy Lot of the Stage Hero 123

Mrs. Fiske Among the Mennonites 134

CONTENTS SECTION II

FOREIGN PLAYS

A Little Side-Street in Arcady .... A Little Flyer in Joy

An Intimate Theater and an Unusual Play Bernstein and Belasco at their Best .

"The Phantom Rival" and Miss Crews . Barker Brings the New Stage-Craft . A Few Moralizings from "The Weavers" A Twentieth-Century Tragedy ....

SECTION III Shakespearean revivals

155 165 172 179 188

On Finding the Joke in "Othello" . . . .211

Do You Believe in Gold Fairies? 234

"The Tempest" without Scenery 241

Section IV

plays, players, and acting

The Real Foes of the Serious Drama .... 265

Contents

PAGE

George Arliss — A Study in Acting 277

The Man of Letters and the New Art of the

SECTION I AMERICAN PLAYS "The Piper" — New Theater, January jo, igu

One of the most common of tragedies on this somewhat imperfect planet results from lack of proper adjustment or the meeting at the right time of the right elements. A man who might have been a fine actor is born of Puritan parents and wastes his life peddling life insurance, while the daughter of his easy-going neighbors enters on a stage career, thus robbing the world of a perfectly good stenographer. An East Side gutter snipe, with a genius for finance, is left to shift for himself, without training or guidance, and ends his brief career in Sing Sing, while many a business, besides the railroads, is crying for efficient management.

And Josephine Preston Peabody of Cambridge, Mass., writes a poetic drama called "The Piper," which takes a prize in England, only to have it produced at the New Theater with a woman in the title part, and thus what might have been a valuable object lesson to the public of the fact that a poetic drama is not necessarily a dull and lifeless thing, is robbed of its chief appeal.

We are not inclined easily to forgive the New Theater for casting a woman, even Miss Matthison, as the Piper. We are not at all inclined to take any stock in the assertion that nobody else could be found for the part. We happen to know that Walter Hampden originally held the American rights to this drama, and we shrewdly suspect that his services could have been secured, even if Mr. Skinner, for whom the part was written, had declined to play it. Furthermore, we are not at all convinced that Jacob Wendell of the New Theater Company could not have played it. At least Mr. Wendell is a man. At least he has a sense of humor, blitheness, dash, charm. It was essential, at any rate, for a proper presentation of the play that some man should assume the title part.

That is as plain as A B C. The Piper was a man. He was not a ladylike man. He was not a somber, plaintive, sobby man. He was free, roving, humorous, kindly, shrewd, combative. He was as male as Chantecler. And there is no more reason why Miss Matthison should have been assigned to the part than why Miss Adams should have played Rostand's rooster. Indeed, there is less reason, for the New Theater is not under a strictly "commercial" management.

It is rumored that Miss Matthison, like Miss Adams, is enamoured of the masculine roles. Such a phenomenon is not new among actresses. The female Hamlets have been legion. Miss Matthison, it is reported, aspires to play the title part in her husband's drama, "The Servant in the House." But that is no reason for letting her do it. Probably she puts altogether too much stress on the power of her elocution. Her delivery of exalted speech is, indeed, beautiful and impressive, though inclined to become exceedingly monotonous at times. But the delivery of exalted speech is not the only, nor even the chief, means to the creation of illusion in a poetic role.

If that role be masculine the first and foremost requirement for the creation of illusion is masculinity. Any theater-goer knows this. A woman can play a boy's part, because she can look as much, or more, like a boy than a man can. But a woman cannot play a man's part as well as a man, and on a stage where for more than two centuries the sexes have assumed each its own characters there is pitifully little sense in her trying. She may succeed in creating something strange and wonderful, but for the normal audience she will never create the character intended by the dramatist.

And another requirement of any role, more important for illusion than a musical elocution, is the personal attribute of humor, if that role be humorous, of pathos if it be pathetic, and so on. Now, the character of the Piper in Miss Peabody's play is full of humor. It is not farcical humor, to be sure. It is the glimmering, half wild humor of a rover down the windy world, of a lover of freedom and the open air, of a hater of shams and meanness. Did you ever know a hater of shams who did not grin in the midst of his most passionate denunciations, or a lover of children who had a sob in his voice*? Can you think of the Pied Piper of Hamelin Town with a sob in his voice? A ring of defiance, of righteous rage, yes. But a sob — never !

Yet Miss Matthison, to whom was entrusted the part of the Piper, has no humor in her playing. She never has had. In all her impersonations she has never once convincingly played a humorous role. She may smile and smile, but you are unpersuaded. Moreover, her monotonous manner of delivery has of late been growing into something perilously akin to lachrimosity. Constantly through "The Piper" she has as distinct a sob in her voice as Caruso in the famed finale to Act I of "Pagliacci." This is not the Pied Piper. This is neither the Piper of tradition, to whom, of course, Miss Peabody must to a certain extent bow, so fixed is he in our imaginations, nor is it the particular Piper of Miss Peabody's play. This is a plaintive woman reading the lines which belong to a full-blooded, defiant, yet deeply humorous man.

When, for instance, Miss Matthison, as the Piper, plays to the children in the cave whence "he" has lured them, "he" dances among them, piping the while, and they are supposed to clap their hands enraptured. Now, Miss Matthison dances amid the little folks most gracefully. Every move she makes has feminine charm, poetic rhythm. And every move she makes destroys by so much more the illusion. The Pied Piper didn't dance according to the approved methods of Delsarte or Miss Duncan. The chances are he didn't dance at all. If he did he probably hopped grotesquely, giving as close an imitation as he could of the inimitable steps of Fred Stone.

You never in your life saw a child enraptured by Isadora Duncan, but there never was a child yet who wouldn't follow Fred Stone to the ends of the world.

In other words, Miss Matthison here is doing exactly what has been done so often before in the poetic drama, making it seem absurd to the average audience. She is taking the life, the naturalness out of it. She is making it artificial, "artistic" and hence unillusive. She can do more harm by five minutes of such pretty posing than she can do good by a whole evening's musical recitation of the verse.

Now, all this comment wouldn't be worth the time it takes to read it, let alone the time it takes to write it, were "The Piper" one of those ordinary "poetic dramas" which have been turned out with the regularity of clockwork for many a year, only to fail on the stage, if they ever reached the stage, not because they were poetic, but because they were not human, vital, interesting and uncontaminated with pose and the straining after "literary" speech.

But "The Piper" is not such a play. It is a human and an interesting narrative, badly constructed, to be sure, in its central portions, so that the second and third acts "sag," but full of life, color, simple emotions, and the talk of human beings.

Because the dramatic interest is not sustained in the central portions, "The Piper" can never rank as a completely successful play. The author has made the grave error of building up her leading "clash of wills" not between two persons seen at the struggle, but between the Piper and the figure of Christ on a roadside cross; that is, in the brain and heart of one character, revealed through soliloquy. Save with a poet of great genius and an actor of equal force such a method is hopeless. But none the less her play does have enough sheer dramatic value and enough popular interest to win a wide public, to charm them by the music of its verse and the human quality of its story.

It is important, then, that such a play reach a public only too ready to scorn the poetic drama, under the best possible conditions — that is, with its human appeal telling at the full value, its direct, simple emotional quality made the most of.

To put a woman in the title part is to strike at the roots of its human appeal, to rob it of naturalness, of illusion; to fill it with pose and affectation. We prefer as a people to-day the realistic drama of contemporary life. Would we endure for a moment seeing a woman play the leading male role in "The Boss," or "The Man of the Hour," or "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingf ord" «? Of course we would not, and of course we should not. But by some crazy process of reasoning some of us seem to io PLAYS AND PLAYERS

suppose that the poetic drama can be treated in quite a different manner, that it may be "artistic" for a woman to play male roles in such drama, though everybody is perfectly well aware that it is totally inartistic and futile for her to play male roles in the drama of the hour.

After all, this attitude not only is an insult to the poetic drama, since it presupposes a kind of unreality and lack of sanity in that form, but it is the greatest possible foe to the popular acceptance of the poetic drama. That drama, to succeed with the mass of theater-goers, must seem real, human, interesting, close to the life of the people. It never succeeded in any nation, at any time, when it was not real and vital to the people. It never succeeded when it was treated as an exotic, as something remote and "artistic," and it never will.

There is no reason why it should.

If it is something exotic, remote, then it isn't worth doing at all. If it is to be treated any differently from the drama which is real and vital to us, there is no reason on earth why we should go to see it. The poetic drama is of value only in so far as it can persuade us that it is just as much drama as the prose form, with the added beauty of heightened speech and a more exalted spiritual outlook.

PLAYING THE PIPER n

It is the great superiority of "The Piper" over most of the recent attempts at poetic drama that it can persuade us of this. Even at the New Theater, in a production admirable in nearly all respects save the sex of the leading player, it in no small degree persuades us. But the persuasion might have been complete and the play a popular success had the mistake not been made of casting a woman in the title role. Hence that error is of considerable importance, for it vitally concerns the spread of poetry on our stage.

"KINDLING"— AN HONEST PLAY

"Kindling" — Daly's Theater ', December 5, ign

Two or three weeks ago, when four women stars all came to town at once, it was remarked that the two more popular and expert players, Miss Barrymore and Nazimova, were exploited in presumably the best foreign plays to be had. The other women, Miss Illington and Miss Ferguson, had to fall back on untried, native material.

Behold, of the four plays, "Kindling," in which Miss Illington is appearing at Daly's, is by far the most effective for American audiences, and next to it in interest ranks "The First Lady of the Land," in which Miss Ferguson is appearing. We hardly need better proof of the waning of adaptations on our stage, or of the English play which has nothing to recommend it above our own product except a London run.

"Kindling 5 ' is the work of a California newspaper writer, Charles Kenyon. It is said that Mr. Kenyon has previously written several vaudeville

sketches, but that this is his first long play. It has

"KINDLING"— AN HONEST PLAY 13

much of the crudity and alternate stiffness and naturalness of the first play of a promising writer. But, like Joseph Patterson's "The Fourth Estate," it has in combination with the crudity, or rather behind the crudity, a certain quality of sincerity and directness that make it worth attention, and that lift it at times above all considerations of technique.

"Kindling" is the story of Maggie Schultz, wife of a stevedore, and the scene is her miserable home in a tenement. Maggie's husband is one of those German laborers who reads and goes to meetings and has social theories, and is consequently called "dangerous" by the master class, which doesn't want any theories except its own. One of his theories — which, if it is often held in the slums, is certainly seldom practiced — is that people like him and Maggie should not bring children into the world, to grow up to almost inevitable illhealth in the gutters — human kindling. This theory he dins into Maggie's ears, and he is aided by certain settlement workers who trail their silk gowns a little too ostentatiously through this play.

But Maggie represents the dumb, irrepressible maternal instinct of the female of the species. She accepts the doctrine, but her answer is that if it is wrong to bring children into a slum world, then the way out is to escape from the slum world — not to have no children at all.

She and Heinie want to get out to Wyoming. Heinie hasn't the money. There is a strike on, and he cannot earn money. But, as Mr. Kipling has informed us, the female of the species is more deadly than the male. There is no passive resistance in Maggie's maternal code. Besides, it is a secret between her and the audience that the baby is already more than theoretical. Maggie steals to get money, so that he may be born in the pure air of Wyoming.

A good deal of the dramatic machinery by which this theft is accomplished, and by which it finally becomes known to the husband, is plausible enough. It is simply not fitted together into a smooth-working engine. Again, after Maggie confesses to her husband that a baby is really expected, and he realizes the true reason for her theft and sturdily stands by her, the final act is not quite firmly knit to sustain the suspense as to Maggie's fate, though, of course, in the end the rich people whom she has robbed drop their charge against her and presumably realize a little better the dread problems of poverty. In spite of these defects, however, the second and last acts of the play are poignant and sincere, and it is a very hard-hearted theater-goer indeed who

"KINDLING"— AN HONEST PLAY 15

can hear Maggie say, as the final curtain leaves her in her husband's arms, "Maybe there are roses in Wyoming," without a choke in the throat.

It happens that Miss Illington was last seen in New York in "The Thief." In that drama she played the part of a woman who stole, not from sheer dishonesty, but to dress well enough to keep the "love" of her husband, as love is understood in the French drama. Technically the Bernstein play is as far superior to Mr. Kenyon's piece as the great traditions of French playwriting are older than ours. But yet the crude American drama has something for us the other has not. It has a spiritual quality, it has honest and unaffected sympathy for the poor, it has a fair and square recognition that social relations go out beyond the boudoir into the slums and tenements. It thrills us less than "The Thief," it pleases less by well ordered action and suspense, the delight of craftsmanship; but what it loses thus it more than makes up in sympathy. It came unheralded and undescribed into New York. It won its way on its merits. These are the merits of honest purpose, warm sympathy and a deep, if crude, emotionalism.

Bernstein is interested in drama, Mr. Kenyon in human beings.

Miss Illington, as Maggie, has never played better. She does not, to be sure, attempt to reproduce a German dialect; she does not carry her character acting that far. But neither does she "talk tough." She strives for, and usually she achieves, a kind of rough, honest speech which marks well enough the social and intellectual level of her supposed Maggie, and then it appears to be her whole object to make Maggie a type of the maternal instinct struggling with whatever primitive weapons it may against the grim inhibitions and injustices of our modern industrialism. She never "shows off" in her acting in this play. She has no fine clothes to wear, and she acts the better without them. She slumps down into a rather dumpy, corsetless figure, and carries conviction to the eye as well as the ear. Her confession to her husband is a simple, sincere, touching piece of work. If the preceding scene of cross-questioning is not so effective, that is rather the dramatist's fault. Her final moments in the play are truly touching and beautiful. The part is a good one, an honest one, and one which appeals to the elemental sympathies of an audience. She has been wise enough to realize it, and has tried for no fireworks.

THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM