You say it is possible for drama to reflect life? Very well, then answer me this. In the cabled dispatches from the European fighting countries, there appeared the other day an account of the astounding spectacular heroism, in the face of a death-filled fire, of a German soldier named Ludwig Dinkelblatz. If you can reconcile yourself to the notion of a man named Ludwig Dinkelblatz as the hero of a play of whatever sort, you win.
LVII
Mr. Edward Locke, who wrote “The Bubble,” “The Revolt,” and other reasons for bad theatrical seasons, observed in a recent interview that he always writes his plays by artificial light because plays are always produced by artificial light, and that, therefore, he believed that this was the logical way to go about writing plays. Mr. Locke will agree with his critics that inasmuch as people always go to bed in the dark, it is but logical that, when the lights go out in the auditorium and one of his plays gets under way, they should go to sleep.
LVIII
We hear a great deal of the American drama’s failure to hold the mirror up to nature. This is nonsense, nothing more nor less. The trouble is not with the drama, but with the mirror! The American drama tries to reflect nature in one of the little mirrors women carry in their vanity-boxes. Some day it may learn—as the French drama has learned—that when there’s any reflecting of nature to be done, you’ve got to use a pier glass. We like to believe, we Anglo-Saxons, that all drama lies in mortals’ faces, and that drama’s purpose is merely to reflect, as in a shaving mirror, men’s tears and smiles. The French, a wiser people, know that drama reposes alone in men’s bodies.
FANNY’S SECOND PLAY
NOTE.—In Bernard Shaw’s “Fanny’s First Play,” there are introduced in an epilogue four characters representing as many dramatic critics of London—A. B. Walkley, Gilbert Cannan, etc. These four critics are made by Shaw to discuss the play in their four typical and familiar critical ways. When the play was produced in America it was suggested to Shaw that he come to the United States, study the peculiarities of the local critics, and alter his epilogue so that the indelible attitudes toward everything dramatic of the native criticerei might be lampooned for American audiences. Shaw was too busy. Being possessed of an hour’s spare time and considerable presumption, the present writer essays the task in Shaw’s behalf. “Fanny’s Second Play” may be any anonymously written play.
THE CRITICS
| William Summers |
| Alston Hill |
| Carlton Dixon |
| Lawrence Fenemy |