Then he explained in a few words what he had in mind.
Without a moment's hesitation Frohman said, briskly:
"All right, I'll do it."
With these few words he committed himself to an enterprise that cost him a fortune. But it was an enterprise that revealed, perhaps as nothing in his career had revealed, the depths of his artistic nature.
With his marvelous grasp of things, Frohman swiftly got at the heart of the Repertory proposition. When he launched the enterprise at the Duke of York's he said:
Repertory companies are usually associated in the public mind with the revival of old masterpieces, but if you want to know the character of my repertory project at the Duke of York's, I should describe it as the production of new plays by living authors. Whatever it accomplishes, it will represent the combined resources of actor and playwright working with each other, a combination that seems to me to represent the most necessary foundation of any theatrical success.
Frohman stopped at nothing in carrying out the Repertory Theater idea. He engaged Granville Barker to produce most of the plays. Barker in turn surrounded himself with a superb group of players. The most brilliant of the stage scenic artists in England, headed by Norman Wilkinson, were engaged to design the scenes. Every possible detail that money could buy was lavished on this project.
The result was a series of plays that set a new mark for English production, that put stimulus behind the so-called "unappreciated" play, and gave the English-speaking drama something to talk about—and to remember. The mere unadorned list of the plays produced is impressive. They were "Justice," by John Galsworthy; "Misalliance," by Bernard Shaw; "Old Friends" and the "The Twelve-Pound Look," by James M. Barrie; "The Sentimentalists," by George Meredith; "Madras House," by Granville Barker; "Chains," by Elizabeth Baker; "Prunella," by Lawrence Housman and Granville Barker; "Helena's Path," by Anthony Hope and Cosmo Gordon Lenox, and a revival of "Trelawney of the Wells," by Sir Arthur Pinero.
The way "The Twelve-Pound Look" came to be produced is interesting. When the repertory for the theater was being discussed one day by Barrie and Barker at the former's flat in Adelphi Terrace House, Barker said:
"Haven't you got a one-act play that we could do?"