William Gillette once said to an interviewer that "plays were not written, but were rewritten." The experience of many play-wrights would support that statement. In the case of Bronson Howard, the autobiography of his 'Banker's Daughter' certainly does so. His most profitable play, perhaps, and the one which also brought him the greatest popular recognition, was 'Shenandoah'. That play was produced by a manager, who, after its first performance, believed that it would not succeed. A younger and more hopeful one saw in it its great elements of popularity, and encouraged him to rewrite it.
Mr. William H. Crane, in a recent felicitous talk to the Society of American Dramatists, said that the 'Henrietta' was played exactly as its author had delivered it to the actors, without the change or the need of change in a single word, and with only the repetition late in the play of a line that had been spoken in an early act. That fact does not exclude the possibility of rewritings before the manuscript came to the company, but rather, in view of Bronson Howard's thoroness as a workman and his masterly sense of proportion, makes such rewritings the more probable. The effect, however, of his rewriting, wherever it may have been, and the slow additions of his daily contributions, was that of spontaneity.
Some philosopher tells us that a factor of greatness in any field is the power to generalize, the ability to discover the principle underlying apparently discordant facts. Bronson Howard's plays are notable for their evidence of this power. He saw causes, tendencies, results. His plays are expositions of this chemistry. 'Shenandoah' dealt broadly with the forces and feelings behind the Civil War; the 'Henrietta' with the American passion for speculation—the money-madness that was dividing families. 'Aristocracy' was a very accurate, altho satirical, seizure of the disposition, then in its strongest manifestation, of a newly-rich and Western family of native force to break into the exclusive social set of New York and to do so thru a preparatory European alliance.
He has a human story in every instance. There is always dramatic conflict between interesting characters, of course, but behind them is always the background of some considerable social tendency—some comprehensive generalization—that includes and explains them all. The commander from his eminence saw all the combatants: he knew what the fight was about, and it always was about something worth while. Bronson Howard never dramatized piffle.
He was an observer of human nature and events, a traveler, a thinker, a student of the drama of all ages. He had been a reporter and an editorial writer. His plays were written by a watchful, sympathetic, and artistic military general turned philosopher.
Augustus Thomas.
(June 1914).
[The Autobiography of a Play]
As read before the Shakspere Club of Harvard University