Jacob Gordin, the Yiddish playwright, contributed an important chapter to the history of the stage, and his art was, I think, a factor in drawing intelligent attention to the East Side. The Yiddish drama, before his time, had not been looked upon with great favor, and there was in this, as in other instances, an implication of the contempt that Americans not infrequently feel for the alien, and also a fear, on the part of members of the older Jewish communities, that the Yiddish theater might retard the Americanization of the immigrant.
Mr. Gordin was one of our early friends, and we found pleasure in our theater parties. The audiences seemed scarcely less dramatic than the performers, and we took sides, perhaps not illogically, with the new school. Upon our appearance interpreters from various parts of the house were sure to offer their kind services. The acting was of high grade, and the fame of some of the performers has now gone far beyond the neighborhood and the city. The stage during this period performed its time-honored function of teaching and moralizing. One of Gordin’s plays that had many seasons of popularity was “The Jewish King Lear.” It depicted the endless clashing between the generations. The Shakespearean Cordelia, on the Bowery stage, is the daughter of character who longs for self-expression and becomes a physician. Another impressive play was “God, Man, and the Devil.” Here was preached the story of man’s fall, not because of poverty, but through the possession of riches. The pious Jewish scribe resists the worldly man and his enticements, but having come into the possession of money he becomes grasping, eager for power, susceptible to flattery. The portrayal of his spiritual downfall gave the playwright opportunity for remarkable delineation of Jewish character. I also found it interesting to take William Archer, the English critic, on his first visit to America, to see Ibsen metamorphosed in “The Jewish Nora,” which was then playing at a nearby theater.
The Italians have now almost abandoned the marionette theater, and we can no longer find on Mott, Elizabeth, and Spring Streets the stuffy little theaters filled with workingmen (and an occasional woman), sitting enthralled night after night while from the wings the fine voice of the reader continued the story of Rinaldo and other popular knights.
The puppet theater was usually a family affair. Its members slept and cooked behind the scenes, alternating in reading the story or operating the puppet figures of knights and ladies. One hot night we strolled from the settlement to a marionette theater nearby to show our guests (among them a theatrical producer) the simplicity of the primitive stage still to be found in the great city.
The Dramatic Club Presented “The Shepherd”
During the story that was then being enacted a doll, representing the infant heir, was dropped in a miniature forest to be rescued by the valorous knight. At that moment the naked baby of the proprietor walked out from the wings, crossed the stage, and snatching up the doll, clasped it tight in her little arms and disappeared. The audience gave no sign that the current of their enchantment had been broken, nor did the reader or the manipulator of the rescuing knight pause for a second in their rôles.
The theaters on the Bowery and in its vicinity advertise Italian opera and occasional revivals of serious drama, but more obvious at present are the lurid advertisements of sensational melodrama. We are plainly under the influence of Broadway and the “movies,” but at the Metropolitan Opera House our neighbors can always be seen in great numbers among the “appreciators” at the top of the house.
A short time ago an unselfish and well-beloved member of the older circle of Russian revolutionists asked me to help him establish a comrade on some self-supporting basis, and began by saying, “Being a literary man, he wants to open a restaurant.” The fact of his being “literary” would immediately bring him custom, and I foresaw another meeting-place for philosophers, poets, and revolutionists, graduates of universities or gymnasia, writers and publicists, students familiar with Kant and Comte and Spinoza.