"This is just what one of the modern plays does for you. See, it seems to say, see, you crown of creation, what a crawling creature you are. Your past is what it ought not to have been. Your present is what it ought not to be. 'The future is but the past again, entered through another gate.' Yesterday you were a fool—to-morrow you will be a still greater one. Your best resolutions shall become bitter regrets. You are weak, and you make laws and build governments and create creeds, and they make you weaker yet. All the adornments of your civilization are relics of barbarism. Evolution is too slow for anything, and you cannot get ahead of yourself. You have talked all your life and not uttered an original thought. There have been a few original beings, but most of you are poor imitations—you must follow others. You must have a master, either in heaven, or on earth; you are a slave of society. You strike for freedom and anti-conventionality only when it becomes a fad. You don't understand. Your children cannot teach you anything. You are too old to learn. When you were young you had only your parents to instruct you. Your home rests upon false assumptions. It is a field of battle—or there are no strong individuals in it and all is peace. The theory of heredity is not true—your children are stupid; your wife is a doll, which you have chosen for her pretty cheeks, and, though she is fading, claims the rights of a free-born human being, and does not understand—but what's the use? Of what earthly good can such plays be? Why should we in this free, independent and prosperous country listen to such things? Besides, family quarrels, filial relations, disagreements between relatives are not fit materials for the dramatist. It is none of his business to meddle in such private matters. If there is trouble in the home, if a man and a woman find that one and one is two, if the interests of certain persons, or classes, are against those of others, if people find their religion too small for them and their laws not big enough, why there are courts that they can go to, and legislatures and clergymen and lawyers and Christian Scientists and so many other sources of help and salvation. For a writer it is extremely bad taste to deal with such matters. His mission is to amuse us, and he has no right to abdicate the sovereignty of his exalted office.
"At least that is what we Americans—the majority of our people—think, and if there are writers among us so abnormally serious as to see things otherwise, there is but one thing to do with them—we should send them away to other countries where people like that kind of dreary drama.
"Let them, like Marion Crawford, write for the French stage. The French are not even shocked when they see a real resemblance between life and the drama. In fact they put everything into their plays, all their faults, and I wonder how they can look at these plays. So many things happen in France, and it is all in their books and plays, besides a lot of things that never happen. You cannot in their country escape life and all its troubles by going to the theatre or reading one of their novels. All life's tribulations, turmoil and travail are in them. Not that the people are over-earnest, but that they like something strong, love to be stirred and moved, and are recklessly unafraid of the vertigoes of thought. They have great artists and wonderfully fine writers, but their dramatic works are terribly upsetting. A good performance of 'Camille' breaks a person up for several days. They are a dangerous lot, all the French writers.
"No, we over here do not want such productions. There are plenty of pretty incidents and fables out of our romantic history that we can use on our stage.
Every veteran of our wars tells enough of his own heroic deeds to make a dozen of plays. Then there are so many historical novels, guaranteed to have nothing to do with life, that have not as yet been dramatized. Such plays would help us to understand our grand history.
"But there is lots of room in Europe for our would-be realists, and our government would do well by making an appropriation for their instruction in foreign languages and their deportation to the lands of burdensome intentions, revolutionary movements and problem plays. This would mean peace in our own country.
"There are the Germans, who love Schopenhauer and beer and usually drink the two together. They feel intensely, revel in realism and have the keenest enjoyment of tragedy. Nothing is too sad, sombre, or too stirring for their stage. All the unanswered questions that have vainly troubled the ages are raised in their dramatic and literary works. What an uncomfortable prospect that is! They always have men who writes plays that will never die. They have no shame, these Germans. They feel strongly and openly show it. Altogether they have a passion for the thoughtful, and give the modern playwright with tendencies a splendid opportunity. But what is to be said of a country that can produce such play as Hauptmann's 'Die Weber'—a country that can send fifty Socialist members to the Reichstag? Yes, we can safely send them to Germany, or else to Russia. It would be hard for an American to learn that language, but Russia is the land where they say the most daring, the boldest things in the most candid manner, or without any manner at all. I don't know why it is unless it is because free speech is forbidden in that country. There the play, or the novel, palpitates with life and vibrates with heart-throbs. All the evil and oppression and ruin of the country cries out through its literature and drama, and the people worship such art. Life itself is seen on the Russian stage. This is where we should send our earnest writers. True, there is a censorship in Russia, but the radical utterances of an American author will easily pass the Russian censor.
"There is Norway, where a man like Ibsen, who has made that country the scene of action of all the tragedies of the world, is allowed at large after an exile of many years. Ibsen has held up the Land of the Midnight Sun as a dominion of darkness, yet they like him and are also proud of him in his country. Belgium is another good market for the serious and revolutionary drama. In Spain, Echegaray is doing nearly what Ibsen is doing in Norway, and he has a number of literary companions with similar sombre intentions. Even in England they are beginning to write such plays, and an American can easily learn the English language. It's a good thing that Henry James prefers to live in England, only we ought to put a tariff on his psychological stories. We need not fear. Any and all these countries will serve us as places of exile for our earnest authors.
"But hold on, I've nearly forgotten. Perhaps the expenses of sending these people to Europe can be saved. Let them learn to write in Yiddish, for in the Jewish theatres of the New York Ghetto all sorts of serious, sombre, life-like, problematic and powerful plays are produced."