Playwrights on playmaking

by Brander Matthews

These theories of the theater, which I feel to be mine, wherever I may have derived them, I have discussed now and again in the present volume, as I discussed them earlier in the ‘Principles of Playmaking,’ in the ‘Development of the Drama,’ in the ‘Study of the Drama’ and in my biographies of Shakspere and Molière. In many years of lecturing to graduate classes I have found them useful in arousing the interest of students always eager to acquire insight into technic. What a dramatist meant to do—that is something about which we may endlessly dispute. What he actually did—that is something we can test and measure.

B. M.

Columbia University
in the City of New York

CONTENTS

		PAGE
I	Playwrights on Playmaking	[1]
II	Undramatic Criticism	[17]
III	Old Plays and New Playgoers	[37]
IV	Tragedies with Happy Endings	[57]
V	On the Advantage of Having a Pattern	[79]
VI	Did Shakspere Write Plays to Fit His Actors?	[97]
VII	Strange Shaksperian Performances	[119]
VIII	Thackeray and the Theater	[137]
IX	Mark Twain and the Theater	[159]
X	Henry James and the Theater	[185]
XI	Stage Humor	[205]
XII	The “Old Comedies”	[227]
XIII	The Organization of the Theater	[245]
XIV	Memories of Actors	[281]

I

PLAYWRIGHTS ON PLAYMAKING