<h2>SPORT AND THE THEATER</h2>
<p>I remember thinking, long before I came to the United States, at the
time when the anti-gambling bill was a leading topic of American
correspondence in European newspapers, that a State whose public opinion
would allow even the discussion of a regulation so drastic could not
possibly regard "sport" as sport is regarded in Europe. It might be very
fond of gambling, but it could not be afflicted with the particular
mania which in Europe amounts to a passion, if not to a religion. And
when the project became law, and horse-racing was most beneficially and
admirably abolished in the northeastern portion of the Republic, I was
astonished. No such law could be passed in any European country that I
knew. The populace would not suffer it; the small, intelligent minority
would not care enough to support it; and the wealthy oligarchical
priest-patrons of sport would be seriously convinced that it involved
the ruin of true progress and the end of all things. Such is the
sacredness of sport in Europe, where governments audacious enough to
attack and overthrow the state-church have never dared to suggest the
suppression of the vice by which alone the main form of sport lives ...</p>
<p>So that I did not expect to find the United States a very "sporting"
country. And I did not so find it. I do not wish to suggest that, in my
opinion, there is no "sport" in the United States, but only that there
is somewhat less than in Western Europe; as I have already indicated,
the differences between one civilization and another are always slight,
though they are invariably exaggerated by rumor.</p>
<p>I know that the "sporting instinct"—a curious combination of the
various instincts for fresh air, destruction, physical prowess,
emulation, devotion, and betting—is tolerably strong in America. I
could name a list of American sports as long as the list of dutiable
articles in the customs tariff. I am aware that over a million golf
balls are bought (and chiefly lost) in the United States every year. I
know that no residence there is complete without its lawn-tennis court.
I accept the statement that its hunting is unequaled. I have admired the
luxury and completeness of its country clubs. Its yachting is renowned.
Its horse-shows, to which enthusiasts repair in automobiles, are
wondrous displays of fashion. But none of these things is democratic;
none enters into the life of the mass of the people. Nor can that fierce
sport be called quite democratic which depends exclusively upon, and is
limited to, the universities. A six-day cycling contest and a
Presidential election are, of course, among the very greatest sporting
events in the world, but they do not occur often enough to merit
consideration as constant factors of national existence.</p>
<div><br/></div>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN name="p124" id="p124"></SPAN> <ANTIMG src="images/p124.jpg" alt="THE HORSE-SHOWS ARE WONDROUS DISPLAYS OF FASHION" title="THE HORSE-SHOWS ARE WONDROUS DISPLAYS OF FASHION" /></div>
<p class="center"><b>THE HORSE-SHOWS ARE WONDROUS DISPLAYS OF FASHION</b></p>
<div><br/></div>
<div><br/></div>
<p>Baseball remains a formidable item, yet scarcely capable of balancing
the scale against the sports—football, cricket, racing, pelota,
bull-fighting—which, in Europe, impassion the common people, and draw
most of their champions from the common people. In Europe the
advertisement hoardings—especially in the provinces—proclaim sport
throughout every month of the year; not so in America. In Europe the
most important daily news is still the sporting news, as any editor will
tell you; not so in America, despite the gigantic headings of the
evening papers at certain seasons.</p>
<p>But how mighty, nevertheless, is baseball! Its fame floats through
Europe as something prodigious, incomprehensible, romantic, and
terrible. After being entertained at early lunch in the correct hotel
for this kind of thing, I was taken, in a state of great excitement, by
a group of excited business men, and flashed through Central Park in an
express automobile to one of the great championship games. I noted the
excellent arrangements for dealing with feverish multitudes. I noted the
splendid and ornate spaciousness of the grand-stand crowned with
innumerable eagles, and the calm, matter-of-fact tone in which a friend
informed me that the grand-stand had been burned down six months ago. I
noted the dreadful prominence of advertisements, and particularly of
that one which announced "the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look," all
very European! It was pleasant to be convinced in such large letters
that even shrewd America is not exempt from that universal human naïveté
which is ready to believe that in some magic emporium a philanthropist
is always waiting to give five dollars' worth of goods in exchange for
three dollars of money.</p>
<p>Then I braced my intelligence to an understanding of the game, which,
thanks to its classical simplicity, and to some training in the finesse
of cricket and football, I did soon grasp in its main outlines. A
beautiful game, superbly played. We reckon to know something of ball
games in Europe; we reckon to be connoisseurs; and the old footballer
and cricketer in me came away from that immense inclosure convinced that
baseball was a game of the very first class, and that those players were
the most finished exponents of it. I was informed that during the winter
the players condescended to follow the law and other liberal
professions. But, judging from their apparent importance in the public
eye, I should not have been surprised to learn that during the winter
they condescended to be Speakers of the House of Representatives or
governors of States. It was a relief to know that in the matter of
expenses they were treated more liberally than the ambassadors of the
Republic.</p>
<p>They seemed to have carried the art of pitching a ball to a more
wondrous degree of perfection than it has ever been carried in cricket.
The absolute certitude of the fielding and accuracy of the throwing was
profoundly impressive to a connoisseur. Only in a certain lack of
elegance in gesture, and in the unshaven dowdiness of the ground on
which it was played, could this game be said to be inferior to the noble
spectacle of cricket. In broad dramatic quality I should place it above
cricket, and on a level with Association football.</p>
<p>In short, I at once became an enthusiast for baseball. For nine innings
I watched it with interest unabated, until a vast purple shadow,
creeping gradually eastward, had obscurely veiled the sublime legend of
the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look. I began to acquire the proper
cries and shouts and menaces, and to pass comments on the play which I
was assured were not utterly foolish. In my honest yearning to feel
myself a habitué, I did what everybody else did and even attacked a
morsel of chewing-gum; but all that a European can say of this singular
substance is that it is, finally, eternal and unconquerable. One slip I
did quite innocently make. I rose to stretch myself after the sixth
inning instead of half-way through the seventh. Happily a friend with
marked presence of mind pulled me down to my seat again, before I had
had time fully to commit this horrible sacrilege. When the game was
finished I surged on to the enormous ground, and was informed by
innerring experts of a few of the thousand subtle tactical points which
I had missed. And lastly, I was flung up onto the Elevated platform,
littered with pieces of newspaper, and through a landscape of slovenly
apartment-houses, punctuated by glimpses of tremendous quantities of
drying linen, I was shot out of New York toward a calm week-end.</p>
<p>Yes, a grand game, a game entirely worthy of its reputation! If the
professional matador and gladiator business is to be carried on at all,
a better exemplification of it than baseball offers could hardly be
found or invented. But the beholding crowd, and the behavior of the
crowd, somewhat disappointed me. My friends said with intense pride that
forty thousand persons were present. The estimate proved to be an
exaggeration; but even had it not been, what is forty thousand to the
similar crowds in Europe? In Europe forty thousand people will often
assemble to watch an ordinary football match. And for a "Final," the
record stands at something over a hundred thousand. It should be
remembered, too, in forming the comparison, that many people in the
Eastern States frequent the baseball grounds because they have been
deprived of their horse-racing. Further, the New York crowd, though
fairly excited, was not excited as sporting excitement is understood in,
for instance, the Five Towns. The cheering was good, but it was not the
cheering of frenzied passion. The anathemas, though hearty, lacked that
religious sincerity which a truly sport-loving populace will always put
into them. The prejudice in favor of the home team, the cruel, frank
unfairness toward the visiting team, were both insufficiently
accentuated. The menaces were merely infantile. I inquired whether the
referee or umpire, or whatever the arbiter is called in America, ever
went in danger of life or limb, or had to be protected from a homicidal
public by the law in uniform. And I was shocked by a negative answer.
Referees in Europe have been smuggled off the ground in the center of a
cocoon of policemen, have even been known to spend a fortnight in bed,
after giving a decision adverse to the home team!... More evidence that
the United States is not in the full sense a sporting country!</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>Of the psychology of the great common multitude of baseball "bleachers,"
I learned almost nothing. But as regards the world of success and luxury
(which, of course, held me a willing captive firmly in its soft and
powerful influence throughout my stay), I should say that there was an
appreciable amount of self-hypnotism in its attitude toward baseball. As
if the thriving and preoccupied business man murmured to his soul, when
the proper time came: "By the way, these baseball championships are
approaching. It is right and good for me that I should be boyishly
excited, and I will be excited. I must not let my interest in baseball
die. Let's look at the sporting-page and see how things stand. And I'll
have to get tickets, too!" Hence possibly what seemed to me a
superficiality and factitiousness in the excitement of the more
expensive seats, and a too-rapid effervescence and finish of the
excitement when the game was over.</p>
<p>The high fever of inter-university football struck me as a more
authentic phenomenon. Indeed, a university town in the throes of an
important match offers a psychological panorama whose genuineness can
scarcely be doubted. Here the young men communicate the sacred contagion
to their elders, and they also communicate it to the young women, who,
in turn, communicate it to the said elders—and possibly the indirect
method is the surer! I visited a university town in order to witness a
match of the highest importance. Unfortunately, and yet fortunately, my
whole view of it was affected by a mere nothing—a trifle which the
newspapers dealt with in two lines.</p>
<p>When I reached the gates of the arena in the morning, to get a glimpse
of a freshmen's match, an automobile was standing thereat. In the
automobile was a pile of rugs, and sticking out of the pile of rugs in
an odd, unnatural, horizontal way was a pair of muddy football boots.
These boots were still on the feet of a boy, but all the rest of his
unconscious and smashed body was hidden beneath the rugs. The automobile
vanished, and so did my peace of mind. It seemed to me tragic that that
burly infant under the rugs should have been martyrized at a poor little
morning match in front of a few sparse hundreds of spectators and tens
of thousands of unresponsive empty benches. He had not had even the
glory and meed of a great multitude's applause. When I last inquired
about him, at the end of the day, he was still unconscious, and that was
all that could be definitely said of him; one heard that it was his
features that had chiefly suffered in the havoc, that he had been
defaced. If I had not happened to see those muddy football boots
sticking out, I should have heard vaguely of the accident, and remarked
philosophically that it was a pity, but that accidents would occur, and
there would have been the end of my impression. Only I just did happen
to see those muddy boots sticking out.</p>
<div><br/></div>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN name="p130" id="p130"></SPAN> <ANTIMG src="images/p130.jpg" alt="THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE AIR" title="THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE AIR" /></div>
<p class="center"><b>THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE AIR</b></p>
<div><br/></div>
<div><br/></div>
<p>When we came away from the freshmen's match, the charming roads of the
town, bordered by trees and by the agreeable architecture of mysterious
clubs, were beginning to be alive and dangerous with automobiles and
carriages, and pretty girls and proud men, and flags and flowers, and
colored favors and shoutings. Salutes were being exchanged at every
yard. The sense of a mighty and culminating event sharpened the air. The
great inn was full of jollity and excitement, and the reception-clerks
thereof had the negligent mien of those who know that every bedroom
is taken and every table booked. The club (not one of the mysterious
ones, but an ingenuous plain club of patriarchs who had once been young
in the university and were now defying time) was crammed with amiable
confusion, and its rich carpets protected for the day against the feet
of bald lads, who kept aimlessly walking up-stairs and down-stairs and
from room to room, out of mere friendly exuberance.</p>
<p>And after the inn and the club I was conducted into a true American
home, where the largest and most free hospitality was being practised
upon a footing of universal intimacy. You ate standing; you ate sitting;
you ate walking the length of the long table; you ate at one small
table, and then you ate at another. You talked at random to strangers
behind and strangers before. And when you couldn't think of anything to
say, you just smiled inclusively. You knew scarcely anybody's name, but
the heart of everybody. Impossible to be ceremonious! When a young woman
bluntly inquired the significance of that far-away look in your eye,
impossible not to reply frankly that you were dreaming of a second
helping of a marvelous pie up there at the end of the long table; and
impossible not to eat all the three separate second helpings that were
instantly thrust upon you! The chatter and the good-nature were
enormous. This home was an expression of the democracy of the university
at its best. Fraternity was abroad; kindliness was abroad; and therefore
joy. Whatever else was taught at the university, these were taught, and
they were learnt. If a publicist asked me what American civilization had
achieved, I would answer that among other things it had achieved this
hour in this modest home.</p>
<p>Occasionally a face would darken and a voice grow serious, exposing the
terrible secret apprehensions, based on expert opinion, that the home
side could not win. But the cloud would pass. And occasionally there
would be a reference to the victim whose muddy boots I had seen.
"Dreadful, isn't it?" and a twinge of compassion for the victim or for
his mother! But the cloud would immediately pass.</p>
<p>And then we all had to leave, for none must be late on this solemn and
gay occasion. And now the roads were so many converging torrents of
automobiles and carriages, and excitement had developed into fever. Life
was at its highest, and the world held but one problem ... Sign that
reaction was approaching!</p>
<p>A proud spectacle for the agitated vision, when the vast business of
filling the stands had been accomplished, and the eye ranged over acres
of black hats and variegated hats, hats flowered and feathered, and
plain male caps—a carpet intricately patterned with the rival colors!
At a signal the mimic battle began. And in a moment occurred the first
casualty—most grave of a series of casualties. A pale hero, with a
useless limb, was led off the field amid loud cheers. Then it was that I
became aware of some dozens of supplementary heroes shivering beneath
brilliant blankets under the lee of the stands. In this species of
football every casualty was foreseen, and the rules allowed it to be
repaired. Not two teams, but two regiments, were, in fact, fighting. And
my European ideal of sport was offended.</p>
<p>Was it possible that a team could be permitted to replace a wounded man
by another, and so on ad infinitum? Was it possible that a team need not
abide by its misfortunes? Well, it was! I did not like this. It seemed
to me that the organizers, forgetting that this was a mimic battle, had
made it into a real battle, and that there was an imperfect appreciation
of what strictly amateur sport is. The desire to win, laudable and
essential in itself, may by excessive indulgence become a morbid
obsession. Surely, I thought, and still think, the means ought to suit
the end! An enthusiast for American organization, I was nevertheless
forced to conclude that here organization is being carried too far,
outraging the sense of proportion and of general fitness. For me, such
organization disclosed even a misapprehension as to the principal aim
and purpose of a university. If ever the fate of the Republic should
depend on the result of football matches, then such organization would
be justifiable, and courses of intellectual study might properly be
suppressed. Until that dread hour I would be inclined to dwell heavily
on the admitted fact that a football match is not Waterloo, but simply a
transient game in which two sets of youngsters bump up against one
another in opposing endeavors to put a bouncing toy on two different
spots of the earth's surface. The ultimate location of the inflated
bauble will not affect the national destiny, and such moral value as the
game has will not be increased but diminished by any enlargement of
organization. After all, if the brains of the world gave themselves
exclusively to football matches, the efficiency of football matches
would be immensely improved—but what then?... I seemed to behold on
this field the American passion for "getting results"—which I admire
very much; but it occurred to me that that passion, with its eyes fixed
hungrily on the result it wants, may sometimes fail to see that it is
getting a number of other results which it emphatically doesn't want.</p>
<div><br/></div>
<div class="figcenter"> <SPAN name="p134" id="p134"></SPAN> <ANTIMG src="images/p134.jpg" alt="THE VICTORS LEAVING THE FIELD" title="THE VICTORS LEAVING THE FIELD" /></div>
<p class="center"><b>THE VICTORS LEAVING THE FIELD</b></p>
<div><br/></div>
<div><br/></div>
<p>Another example of excessive organization presented itself to me in the
almost military arrangements for shrieking the official yells. I was
sorry for the young men whose duty it was, by the aid of megaphones and
of grotesque and undignified contortions, to encourage and even force
the spectators to emit in unison the complex noises which constitute the
yell. I have no doubt that my pity was misdirected, for these young men
were obviously content with themselves; still, I felt sorry for them.
Assuming for an instant that the official yell is not monstrously absurd
and surpassingly ugly, admitting that it is a beautiful series of
sounds, enheartening, noble, an utterance worthy of a great and ancient
university at a crisis, even then one is bound to remember that its
essential quality should be its spontaneity. Enthusiasm cannot be
created at the word of command, nor can heroes be inspired by cheers
artificially produced under megaphonic intimidation. Indeed, no moral
phenomenon could be less hopeful to heroes than a perfunctory response
to a military order for enthusiasm. Perfunctory responses were frequent.
Partly, no doubt, because the imperious young men with megaphones would
not leave us alone. Just when we were nicely absorbed in the caprices of
the ball they would call us off and compel us to execute their
preposterous chorus; and we—the spectators—did not always like it.</p>
<p>And the difficulty of following the game was already acute enough!
Whenever the play quickened in interest we stood up. In fact, we were
standing up and sitting down throughout the afternoon. And as we all
stood up and we all sat down together, nobody gained any advantage from
these muscular exercises. We saw no better, and we saw no worse. Toward
the end we stood on the seats, with the same result. We behaved in
exactly the child-like manner of an Italian audience at a fashionable
concert. And to crown all, an aviator had the ineffably bad taste and
the culpable foolhardiness to circle round and round within a few dozen
yards of our heads.</p>
<p>In spite of all this, the sum of one's sensations amounted to lively
pleasure. The pleasure would have been livelier if university football
were a better game than in candid truth it is. At this juncture I seem
to hear a million voices of students and ex-students roaring out at me
with menaces that the game is perfect and the greatest of all games. A
national game always was and is perfect. This particular game was
perfect years ago. Nevertheless, I learned that it had recently been
improved, in deference to criticisms. Therefore, it is now pluperfect. I
was told on the field—and sharply—that experience of it was needed for
the proper appreciation of its finesse. Admitted! But just as devotees
of a favorite author will put sublime significances into his least
phrase, so will devotees of a game put marvels of finesse into its
clumsiest features. The process is psychological. I was new to this
particular game, but I had been following various footballs with my feet
or with my eyes for some thirty years, and I was not to be bullied out
of my opinion that the American university game, though goodish, lacked
certain virtues. Its characteristics tend ever to a too close formation,
and inevitably favor tedium and monotony. In some aspects an unemotional
critic might occasionally be tempted to call it naïve and barbaric. But
I was not unemotional. I recognize, and in my own person I proved, that
as a vehicle for emotion the American university game will serve. What
else is such a game for? In the match I witnessed there were some really
great moments, and one or two masterly exhibitions of skill and force.
And as "my" side won, against all odds, I departed in a state of
felicity.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>If the great cities of the East and Middle West are not strikingly
sportive, perhaps the reason is that they are impassioned theater-goers;
they could not well be both, at any rate without neglecting the
financial pursuits which are their chief real amusement and hobby. I
mention the theaters in connection with sports, rather than in
connection with the arts, because the American drama is more closely
related to sporting diversions than to dramatic art. If this seems a
hard saying, I will add that I am ready to apply it with similar force
to the English and French drama, and, indeed, to almost all modern drama
outside Germany. It was astonishing to me that America, unhampered by
English traditions, should take seriously, for instance, the fashionable
and utterly meretricious French dramatists, who receive nothing but a
chilly ridicule from people of genuine discrimination in Paris. Whatever
American dramatists have to learn, they will not learn it in Paris; and
I was charmed once to hear a popular New York playwright, one who
sincerely and frankly wrote for money alone, assert boldly that the
notoriously successful French plays were bad, and clumsily bad. It was a
proof of taste. As a rule, one finds the popular playwright taking off
his hat to contemporaries who at best are no better than his equals.</p>
<p>A few minor cases apart, the drama is artistically negligible throughout
the world; but if there is a large hope for it in any special country,
that country is the United States. The extraordinary prevalence of big
theaters, the quickly increasing number of native dramatists, the
enormous profits of the successful ones—it is simply inconceivable in
the face of the phenomena, and of the educational process so rapidly
going on, that serious and first-class creative artists shall not arise
in America. Nothing is more likely to foster the production of
first-class artists than the existence of a vast machinery for winning
money and glory. When I reflect that there are nearly twice as many
first-class theaters in New York as in London, and that a very
successful play in New York plays to eighteen thousand dollars a week,
while in London ten thousand dollars a week is enormous, and that the
American public has a preference for its own dramatists, I have little
fear for the artistic importance of the drama of the future in America.
And from the discrepancy between my own observations and the
observations of a reliable European critic in New York only five years
ago, I should imagine that appreciable progress had already been made,
though I will not pretend that I was much impressed by the achievements
up to date, either of playwrights, actors, or audiences. A huge popular
institution, however, such as the American theatrical system, is always
interesting to the amateur of human nature.</p>
<p>The first thing noted by the curious stranger in American theaters is
that American theatrical architects have made a great discovery—namely,
that every member of the audience goes to the play with a desire to be
able to see and hear what passes on the stage. This happy American
discovery has not yet announced itself in Europe, where in almost every
theater seats are impudently sold, and idiotically bought, from which it
is impossible to see and hear what passes on the stage. (A remarkable
continent, Europe!) Apart from this most important point, American
theaters are not, either without or within, very attractive. The
auditoriums, to a European, have a somewhat dingy air. Which air is no
doubt partly due to the non-existence of a rule in favor of evening
dress (never again shall I gird against the rule in Europe!), but it is
due also to the oddly inefficient illumination during the entr'actes,
and to the unsatisfactory schemes of decoration.</p>
<p>The interior of a theater ought to be magnificent, suggesting pleasure,
luxury, and richness; it ought to create an illusion of rather riotous
grandeur. The rare architects who have understood this seem to have lost
their heads about it, with such wild and capricious results as the new
opera-house in Philadelphia. I could not restrain my surprise that the
inhabitants of the Quaker City had not arisen with pickaxes and razed
this architectural extravaganza to the ground. But Philadelphia is a
city startlingly unlike its European reputation. Throughout my too-brief
sojourn in it I did not cease to marvel at its liveliness. I heard more
picturesque and pyrotechnic wit at one luncheon in Philadelphia than at
any two repasts outside it. The spacious gaiety and lavishness of its
marts enchanted me. It must have a pretty weakness for the most costly
old books and manuscripts. I never was nearer breaking the Sixth
Commandment than in one of its homes, where the Countess of Pembroke's
own copy of Sir Philip Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i>—a unique and utterly
un-Quakerish treasure—was laid trustfully in my hands by the regretted
and charming Harry Widener.</p>
<p>To return. The Metropolitan Opera-House in New York is a much more
satisfactory example of a theatrical interior. Indeed, it is very fine,
especially when strung from end to end of its first tier with pearls, as
I saw it. Impossible to find fault with its mundane splendor. And let me
urge that impeccable mundane splendor, despite facile arguments to the
contrary, is a very real and worthy achievement. It is regrettable, by
the way, that the entrances and foyers to these grandiose interiors
should be so paltry, slatternly, and inadequate. If the entrances to the
great financial establishments reminded me of opera-houses, the
entrances to opera-houses did not!</p>
<p>Artistically, of course, the spectacle of a grand-opera season in an
American city is just as humiliating as it is in the other Anglo-Saxon
country. It was disconcerting to see Latin or German opera given
exactly—with no difference at all; same Latin or German artists and
conductors, same conventions, same tricks—in New York or Philadelphia
as in Europe. And though the wealthy audiences behaved better than
wealthy audiences at Covent Garden (perhaps because the boxes are less
like inclosed pews than in London), it was mortifying to detect the
secret disdain for art which was expressed in the listless late
arrivings and the relieved early departures. The which disdain for art
was, however, I am content to think, as naught in comparison with the
withering artistic disdain felt, and sometimes revealed, by those Latin
and German artists for Anglo-Saxon Philistinism. I seem to be able to
read the sarcastic souls of these accomplished and sensitive aliens,
when they assure newspaper reporters that New York, Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia, and London are really musical. The sole test of a musical
public is that it should be capable of self-support—I mean that it
should produce a school of creative and executive artists of its own,
whom it likes well enough to idolize and to enrich, and whom the rest of
the world will respect. This is a test which can be safely applied to
Germany, Russia, Italy, and France. And in certain other arts it is a
test which can be applied to Anglo-Saxondom—but not in music. In
America and England music is still mainly a sportive habit.</p>
<p>When I think of the exoticism of grand opera in New York, my mind at
once turns, in contrast, to the natural raciness of such modest
creations as those offered by Mr. George Cohan at his theater on
Broadway. Here, in an extreme degree, you get a genuine instance of a
public demand producing the desired artist on the spot. Here is
something really and honestly and respectably American. And why it
should be derided by even the most lofty pillars of American taste, I
cannot imagine. (Or rather, I can imagine quite well.) For myself, I
spent a very agreeable evening in witnessing "The Little Millionaire." I
was perfectly conscious of the blatancy of the methods that achieved it.
I saw in it no mark of genius. But I did see in it a very various talent
and an all-round efficiency; and, beneath the blatancy, an admirable
direct simplicity and winning unpretentiousness. I liked the ingenuity
of the device by which, in the words of the programme, the action of Act
II was "not interrupted by musical numbers." The dramatic construction
of this act was so consistently clever and right and effective that more
ambitious dramatists might study it with advantage. Another
point—though the piece was artistically vulgar, it was not vulgar
otherwise. It contained no slightest trace of the outrageous salacity
and sottishness which disfigure the great majority of successful musical
comedies. It was an honest entertainment. But to me its chief value and
interest lay in the fact that while watching it I felt that I was really
in New York, and not in Vienna, Paris, or London.</p>
<p>Of the regular theater I did not see nearly enough to be able to
generalize even for my own private satisfaction. I observed, and
expected to observe, that the most reactionary quarters were the most
respected. It is the same everywhere. When a manager, having discovered
that two real clocks in one real room never strike simultaneously, put
two real clocks on the stage, and made one strike after the other; or
when a manager mimicked, with extraordinary effects of restlessness, a
life-sized telephone-exchange on the stage—then was I bound to hear of
"artistic realism" and "a fine production"! But such feats of
truthfulness do not consort well with chocolate sentimentalities and
wilful falsities of action and dialogue. They caused me to doubt whether
I was not in London.</p>
<p>The problem-plays which I saw were just as futile and exasperating as
the commercial English and French varieties of the problem-play, though
they had a trifling advantage over the English in that their most
sentimental passages were lightened by humor, and the odiously insincere
felicity of their conclusions was left to the imagination instead of
being acted ruthlessly out on the boards. The themes of these plays
showed the usual obsession, and were manipulated in the usual attempt to
demonstrate that the way of transgressors is not so very hard after all.
They threw, all unconsciously, strange side-lights on the American man's
private estimate of the American woman, and the incidence of the
applause was extremely instructive.</p>
<p>The most satisfactory play that I saw, "Bought and Paid For," by George
Broadhurst, was not a problem-play, though Mr. Broadhurst is also a
purveyor of problem-plays. It was just an unpretentious fairy-tale about
the customary millionaire and the customary poor girl. The first act
was maladroit, but the others made me think that "Bought and Paid For"
was one of the best popular commercial Anglo-Saxon plays I had ever seen
anywhere. There were touches of authentic realism at the very crisis at
which experience had taught one to expect a crass sentimentality. The
fairy-tale was well told, with some excellent characterization, and very
well played. Indeed, Mr. Frank Craven's rendering of the incompetent
clerk was a masterly and unforgettable piece of comedy. I enjoyed
"Bought and Paid For," and it is on the faith of such plays, imperfect
and timid as they are, that I establish my prophecy of a more glorious
hereafter for the American drama.</p>
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<h2><SPAN name="VII" id="VII" />VII</h2>
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