Answer. I enjoy Shakespeare everywhere. I think it would give me pleasure to hear those wonderful lines spoken even by phonographs. But Shakespeare is greatest and best when grandly put upon the stage. There you know the connection, the relation, the circumstances, and these bring out the appropriateness and the perfect meaning of the text. Nobody in this country now thinks of Hamlet without thinking of Booth. For this generation at least, Booth is Hamlet. It is impossible for me to read the words of Sir Toby without seeing the face of W. F. Owen. Brutus is Davenport, Cassius is Lawrence Barrett, and Lear will be associated always in my mind with Edwin Forrest. Lady Macbeth is to me Adelaide Ristori, the greatest actress I ever saw. If I understood music perfectly, I would much rather hear Seidl's orchestra play "Tristan," or hear Remenyi's matchless rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria," than to read the notes.
Most people love the theatre. Everything about it from stage to gallery attracts and fascinates. The mysterious realm, behind the scenes, from which emerge kings and clowns, villains and fools, heroes and lovers, and in which they disappear, is still a fairyland. As long as man is man he will enjoy the love and laughter, the tears and rapture of the mimic world.
Question. Is it because we lack men of genius or because our life is too material that no truly great American plays have been written?
Answer. No great play has been written since Shakespeare; that is, no play has been written equal to his. But there is the same reason for that in all other countries, including England, that there is in this country, and that reason is that Shakespeare has had no equal.
America has not failed because life in the Republic is too material. Germany and France, and, in fact, all other nations, have failed in the same way. In the sense in which I am speaking, Germany has produced no great play.
In the dramatic world Shakespeare stands alone. Compared with him, even the classic is childish.
There is plenty of material for plays. The Republic has lived a great play—a great poem—a most marvelous drama. Here, on our soil, have happened some of the greatest events in the history of the world.
All human passions have been and are in full play here, and here as elsewhere, can be found the tragic, the comic, the beautiful, the poetic, the tears, the smiles, the lamentations and the laughter that are the necessary warp and woof with which to weave the living tapestries that we call plays.
We are beginning. We have found that American plays must be American in spirit. We are tired of imitations and adaptations. We want plays worthy of the great Republic. Some good work has recently been done, giving great hope for the future. Of course the realistic comes first; afterward the ideal. But here in America, as in all other lands, love is the eternal passion that will forever hold the stage. Around that everything else will move. It is the sun. All other passions are secondary. Their orbits are determined by the central force from which they receive their light and meaning.
Love, however, must be kept pure.