The original of all these local dramas was New York in 1848, or, as it was called during its long run of twelve weeks at the Olympic in that year, A Glance at New York. It was a play of shreds and patches, hurriedly and carelessly stitched together by Mr. Baker, the prompter of Mitchell’s famous little theatre, in order to cover the nakedness of the programme on the night of his own annual benefit. It had no literary merit, and no pretensions thereto; and it would never have attracted public attention but for the wonderful “B’hoy” of the period, played by F. S. Chanfrau—one of those accidental but complete successes upon the stage which are never anticipated, and which cannot always be explained. He wore the “soap locks” of the period, the “plug hat,” with a narrow black band, the red shirt, the trousers turned up—without which the genus was never seen—and he had a peculiarly sardonic curve of the lip, expressive of more impudence, self-satisfaction, suppressed profanity, and “general cussedness” than Delsarte ever dared to put into any single facial gesture. Mr. Chanfrau’s Mose hit the popular fancy at once, and retained it until the Volunteer Fire Department was disbanded; and A Glance at New York was fol-lowed by Mose in California, Mose in a Muss, and even Mose in China. Mr. Matthews, in an article contributed to one of the magazines a few years ago, records the fact that during one season Mr. Chanfrau played Mose at two New York theatres and in one theatre in Newark on the same night.
The Mulligan Guards, The Skidmores, and their followers were the legitimate descendants of Mose, and they came in with the steam-engines and the salaried firemen, who took away the occupation and the opportunities of Sykesy and Jake. Harrigan and Hart began their theatrical management at the Theatre Comique, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1876, and introduced what may be called the Irish-German-Negro-American play, illustrating phases of tenement-house life in New York, and amusing everybody who ever saw them, from the Babies on our Block to Muldoon himself, the Solid Man. Mr. Harrigan wrote his own plays; both he and Mr. Hart were inimitable in their peculiar line as actors, and they were wise and fortunate in their selection of their company, which included Mrs. Annie Yeamans, “Johnny” Wild, and other equally talented artists, for whom “Dave” Braham, the leader of the orchestra, wrote original and catching music, which was sung and whistled and ground out from one end of the country to the other. Mr. Harrigan is a close observer and a born manager, and his productions have been masterpieces in their way. He puts living men and women upon the stage. He has done for a certain phase of city life what Denman Thompson has done for life upon a farm; and he is more to be envied than Mr. Thompson, because no class of theatre-goers enjoy his productions more than do the living men and women whom his company, with real art, represent. But, alas! his plays are not the great American plays for which the American dramatic critic is pining; although, like The Old Homestead, and Shenandoah, and Horizon, and Metamora, and Fashion they approach greatness, if only in the fact that they have introduced, and preserved, a series of purely American types which are as great in their way as are the dramatic characters of other lands, and greater and more enduring than many of the Americans to be found in other branches of American literature.
SCENE VI.
THE SOCIETY DRAMA.
“Full of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great showing.”—Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2.
A few extracts from the prologue which Mr. Epes Sargent wrote for Mrs. Mowatt’s Fashion, in 1845, will give a comparatively correct picture of the feeling which existed between native playwrights and the dramatic critics of this country towards the end of the first half of the present century, and will show how strong was the prejudice then existing against dramatic works of home manufacture. The comedy was purely original; its writer was an American, and a woman; its scenes were laid in the city of New York; and Fashion was emphatically an American play.
At the rising of the curtain on the opening night Mr. Crisp was discovered reading a newspaper; and he spoke as follows, the italics being Mr. Sargent’s own:
“Fashion, a Comedy! I’ll go—but stay—
Now I read farther, ’tis a native play!
Bah! home-made calicoes are well enough,
But home-made dramas must be stupid stuff.
Had it the London stamp ’twould do; but then
For plays we lack the manners and the men!
Thus speaks one critic—hear another’s creed:
Fashion! What’s here? [Reads.] It never can succeed!
What! from a woman’s pen? It takes a man
To write a comedy—no woman can!
******
But, sir—but, gentlemen—you, sir, who think
No comedy can flow from native ink—
Are we such perfect monsters, or such dull,
That wit no traits for ridicule can cull?
Have we no follies here to be redressed?
No vices gibbeted? No crimes confessed?
******
Friends, from these scoffers we appeal to you!
Condemn the false, but, oh, applaud the true!
Grant that some wit may grow on native soil,
And Art’s fair fabric rise from woman’s toil!
While we exhibit but to reprehend
The social vices, ’tis for you to mend!”