All Rights Reserved
The articles that make up this volume originally appeared, at various times, in Collier's Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, The Associated Sunday Magazines, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, Ainslee's Magazine, Smith's Magazine, and The Green Book Album. The author desires to thank the editors of these periodicals for permission to republish.
The Gorham Press Boston, U. S. A.
TO THE LADY WHO GOES TO THE THEATER WITH ME
CONTENTS
| [INTRODUCTION] | |
| Wherein, at union rates, the author performs the common but popular musical feat known as "blowing one's own horn" | 13 |
| [THE THEATER AT A GLANCE] | |
| Being a correspondence school education in the business of the playhouse that should enable the veriest tyro to become a Charles Frohman or a David Belasco | 19 |
| [SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT] | |
| Being reminiscences of the author's nefarious but more or less innocuous career as a press agent | 48 |
| [THE WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS] | |
| Being a discussion as to which pursuit is the more painful, with various entertaining and instructive remarks as to the method of following both | 90 |
| [THE PERSONALITIES OF OUR PLAYWRIGHTS] | |
| Being an effort to outdo Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G. D. Roberts at their own game—which is speaking literally | 122 |
| [STAGE STRUCK] | |
| Being a diagnosis of the disease, and a description of its symptoms, which has the rare medical merit of attempting a cure at the same time | 164 |
| [ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY] | |
| Being an account of intrepid explorations in the habitat of the creatures whose habits are set forth in the preceding chapters | 192 |
| [WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS] | |
| Being something about the process by which performances are got ready for the pleasure of the public and the profit of the ticket speculators | 221 |
| [THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER"] | |
| Being the sort of title to suggest a treatise on suicide, whereas, in point of fact, this chapter merely confides all that the author doesn't know about acting | 262 |
| [SOMETHING ABOUT "FIRST NIGHTS"] | |
| Wherein is shown that the opening of a new play is more hazardous than the opening of a jack-pot, and that theatrical production is a game of chance in comparison with which roulette and rouge-et-noir are al as tiddledewinks or old maid | 284 |
| [IN VAUDEVILLE] | |
| Being inside information regarding a kind of entertainment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range | 316 |
| [WITH THE PEOPLE "IN STOCK"] | |
| Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality, red silk tights, Blanche Bates, Thomas Betterton, second-hand plays, parochialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other interesting topics | 347 |
| [SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH THE GODS] | |
| Being an old manuscript with a new preface—the former dealing with a lost art, and the latter subtly suggesting who lost it | 378 |
| [THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE] | |
| Wherein the author considers comedies of manners, and players who succeed illy in living up to them | 408 |