On the other hand, it must be noted as significant that the playwrights are not tempted to turn novelists; they seem to be satisfied with their own art as the more exacting, and therefore the more interesting. M. Rostand and M. Maeterlinck, Sir Arthur Pinero and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. William Gillette and Mr. Augustus Thomas have not been lured from the drama into prose fiction. The novel is a loose form which makes only lax demands on its practitioners, and which does not require an artist always to do his best. The play has a severe technic, and it tolerates no carelessness of construction. The more gifted a story-teller may be, and the more artistic, the more probable it is that in the immediate future he will seek to express himself in the drama, even if he is also moved now and again to return to the easier path of prose fiction.
And this raises another interesting point. Now that the drama is rising again into rivalry with prose fiction, is not the playwright who allows his piece to be novelized a traitor to his cause? Is he not, in fact, confessing that he esteems the play inferior to the novel? Apparently this is the attitude taken by the more prominent dramatists of the day; most of them publish their plays to be read, and few of them allow these plays to be novelized—altho they might find a superior profit if they descended to this. It is an unfortunate fact that the public which is eager to read prose fiction is not so eager to read the drama. In the dearth of dramatic literature in our language during the nineteenth century, the public lost the habit of reading plays, a habit possessed by the public of the eighteenth century before the vogue of the novel had been established in consequence of the overwhelming popularity of Scott, followed speedily by that of Dickens and Thackeray.
Yet there are signs that the general reader is slowly recovering the ability to find pleasure in the perusal of a play. The social dramas of Ibsen have, most of them, been performed here and there in the theaters of Great Britain and the United States; but they have been read by thousands who have had no opportunity to see them on the stage. So it is with the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw, most of which have also appeared in our playhouses. So it is with the plays of M. Maeterlinck, only a few of which have been produced in the American theater. In time, it seems highly probable that the reading public will extend as glad a welcome to a play by Mr. Galsworthy or by Mr. Booth Tarkington as to one of their novels. But this happy state can be brought about only if the dramatists resolutely refrain from novelizing their plays themselves, and from authorizing novelization by others.
(1913.)
WOMEN DRAMATISTS
I
To some of the more ardent advocates of the theory that women are capable of rivaling men in every one of the arts it is a little surprising, not to say disconcerting, that there are so few female playwrights. The drama is closely akin to the novel, since it is another form of story-telling; and in the telling of stories women have been abundantly productive from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. And as performers on the stage women have achieved indisputable eminence; in fact, acting is probably the earliest of the arts (as possibly it is still the only one) in which women have won their way to the very front rank; and in the nineteenth century there were two tragic actresses, Mrs. Siddons and Rachel, certainly not inferior in power and in elevation to the most distinguished of tragic actors. Why is it, then, that women story-tellers have not thrust themselves thru the open stage door to become more effective competitors of the men playwrights?
Before considering this question, it may be well to record that women playwrights have appeared sporadically both in French literature and in English. In France Madeleine Béjart, whose sister Molière married, was credited with the authorship of more than one play; and in the last hundred years George Sand and Mme. de Girardin brought out comedies and dramas, several of which succeeded in establishing themselves in the repertory of the Comédie-Française. In England at one time or another plays of an immediate popularity were produced by Mrs. Aphra Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Inchbald; and in America Mrs. Bateman's 'Self,' and Mrs. Mowatt's 'Fashion' held the stage for several seasons, while few of recent successes in the New York theaters had a more delightful freshness or a more alluring fantasy than Mrs. Gates's 'Poor Little Rich Girl,' and few of them have dealt more boldly with a burning question than Miss Ford's 'Polygamy.' These examples of woman's competence to compose plays with vitality enough to withstand the ordeal by fire before the footlights are evidence that if there exists any prejudice against the female dramatist it can be overcome. They are evidence, also, that women are not debarred from the competition; and fairness requires the record here that, when Mr. Winthrop Ames proffered a prize for an American play, this was awarded to a woman.