I
Mark Twain was a born story-teller; he was a born actor; he was not affrighted by the idea of facing an audience; he was fond of the theater; he lived in a time when the drama was regaining its proud position in our literature and when men of letters who had begun as novelists were turning dramatists. Why is it that he did not leave us even one play worthy to be set by the side of the ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’? Why is it that the only piece of his which was successful on the stage, is a poor thing, not wholly his own? Why is it that he did not persevere in playwriting as did his fellow humorists, George Bernard Shaw and George Ade, and his fellow story-tellers, Barrie and Tarkington?
These are questions which must have occurred to not a few of his admirers; and they are questions to which it is not easy to find an immediate answer. Yet there must be an explanation of some sort for this puzzling fact; and there may be profit in trying to discover it. Even if the answer shall prove to be incomplete and unsatisfactory, the inquiry is worth while for its own sake.