More E-texts

IV. THE ESSAY AND THE DRAMA.

The Essay.

Among contemporary American essayists, Samuel McChord Crothers (born 1857), a Unitarian clergyman in Cambridge, holds a distinctive place. Marked with a frequent touch of humor and a whimsical fancy, his work is reminiscent of that of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Gentle Reader (1903), The Pardoner's Wallet (1905), Among Friends (1910), Humanly Speaking (1912), and The Dame School of Experience (1919) are the titles of his most engaging volumes. Agnes Repplier (born 1858), of Philadelphia, has written seriously and suggestively on many themes. Compromises (1904), Americans and Others (1912), Counter Currents (1915), and Points of Friction (1920) are representative volumes. In A Fireside Sphinx (1901) and Cats (1912) her subjects are less formal and more intimate. Bliss Perry (born 1860), editor of the Atlantic Monthly (1899-1909) and since Professor of English Literature at Harvard, is the author of occasional essays collected under the titles The Amateur Spirit (1904), Park Street Papers (1909), The American Mind (1912), and The American Spirit in Literature (1918). In addition to several monographs on American men of letters, he has also written two valuable texts: A Study of Prose Fiction (1902) and A Study of Poetry (1920). Our most notable representative in the field of literary criticism is Paul Elmer More (born 1864), editor of The Nation (1909-1914). The first volume of his Shelburne Essays was published in 1904; since that date ten successive volumes have appeared under the same general title. Henry Louis Mencken (born 1880), journalist and critic, author of A Book of Prefaces (1917) and a series of volumes, Prejudices (1919, 1920, 1921), together with a study of The American Language (1918, revised 1922), belongs to the "modern" group of writers. Independent and unconventional in his judgments, vigorous and unabashed in the expression of his views, he is sometimes irritating, sometimes amusing and refreshing.

Purely literary essays of unusual interest and charm are to be found in Amenities of Book Collecting and Kindred Affections (1918) and An Amazing Farce and Other Diversions of a Book Collector (1921), by Alfred Edward Newton (born 1863), of Philadelphia, an ardent book-lover and a collector of first editions. In lighter vein are the essays of Charles S. Brooks (born 1878), Journeys to Bagdad (1915) and Chimney-pot Papers (1919), and those of Robert C. Holliday (born 1880), Walking-Stick Papers (1918), and Broome Street Straws (1919). Pleasantly suggestive of the spirit of Thoreau are the essays of Dallas Lore Sharp (born 1870), a professor of English in Boston University, a lover of nature and the life out of doors. Roof and Meadow (1904), The Lay of the Land (1908), The Face of the Fields (1911), The Fall of the Year (1911), Winter (1912), The Spring of the Year (1912), Summer (1913), Beyond the Pasture Bars (1913), and The Hills of Hingham (1916) are representative titles. Stewart Edward White (born 1873) has written vividly of nature in wilder aspects. The Forest (1903), The Silent Places (1904), and The Mountains (1904) contain his best descriptive sketches.

Humor and Philosophy.

The modern institution of the daily "Column" in many of our prominent newspapers has produced a group of writers whose work is not altogether journalistic but has permanent literary value. It was in the nineties of the last century that George Ade introduced his humorous characters Artie, Pink Marsh, and Doc Horne in a series of sketches, followed by his earlier Fables in Slang, in the columns of the Chicago Record. Finley Peter Dunne (born 1867) in another Chicago paper first gave to the public the wit and satire of his well-wrought character Mr. Dooley. Mr. Dooley in Peace and War (1898) was the first in a lengthy series of Dooley books. A later development, the column filled with pungent paragraphs in verse or prose, adding salt and flavor to the editorial page, is now an important feature of the daily paper. Such was B. L. T.'s A Line o' Type or Two, in the Chicago Tribune, the work of Bert Leston Taylor (1866-1921), which merited the national reputation that it gained. The Pipe Smoke Carry (1912) and The So-Called Human Race (1922) preserve some of this writer's wit and wisdom. F. P. A. Franklin Pierce Adams (born 1881), who edited The Conning Tower in the New York Tribune, is represented by the volumes, By and Large (1914), Weights and Measures (1917), and Something Else Again (1920). Don Marquis, Donald Robert Perry Marquis (born 1878), conductor of the Sun Dial in the New York Evening Sun, author of Hermione (1916), Prefaces (1919), and The Old Soak (1921), and of other volumes of light and serious verse, is one of our best contemporary humorists. In 1922 he became the successor of F.P.A. on the Tribune staff. In a somewhat broader literary field is the work of Christopher Morley (born 1890), a writer in the Saturday Review, whose Parnassus on Wheels (1917) and The Haunted Book Shop are narratives especially to be enjoyed by book-lovers; while his Shandygaff (1918), Mince Pie (1919), and Plum Pudding (1921) are more sketchy and more characteristic of the literary journalist.

The American Stage.

Cleverness in the mechanical construction of an acting play and in the handling of a theatrical situation has characterized the work of American playwrights rather than any marked quality of genius in portraying dramatic forces at work in character and conduct. Our stage has not lacked for actable and entertaining plays, many of which have been frankly imitative if not actual adaptations of British or continental productions. Something more in the way of originality and native atmosphere, however, has appeared with the new century and there is a promise of better things to come. Without entering into the details of theatrical history, the general development of dramatic writing in America since 1870 will be briefly summarized.

Melodrama and Realism.

Bronson Howard (1842-1908), whose light society comedy, Saratoga, was produced in 1870, was a leader in this development. The Banker's Daughter (1878), Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882), The Henrietta (1887), and Shenandoah (1889) are representative of his serious effort. These are all melodramas -- but melodrama of the higher type. Shenandoah was one of several effective plays built upon dramatic incidents in the Civil War, this particular play reaching a spectacular climax with a picture of Sheridan's ride from Winchester. Similarly inspired were two successful war-plays, Held by the Enemy (1886) and Secret Service (1895), by William Gillette (born 1855), a popular actor whose talent as a playwright has supplied the productions in which he has appeared. In this same field of melodrama belong the plays of Augustus Thomas (born 1859), among which Alabama (1891), In Mizzoura (1893), and Arizona (1900) are good examples of a type of drama reproducing traditional characteristics and local atmosphere. His later work in The Witching Hour (1907) and As a Man Thinks (1911) is of a more modern cast; both plays use the motive of suggestion. A pioneer in the realistic field was James A. Herne (1839-1901), an actor-author from whose intelligent conceptions of dramatic principles the American stage should have gained more than it did. Two of his plays, Margaret Fleming (1890) and Rev. Griffith Davenport (1899), are unfortunately lost; the only copies extant having been burned in a fire which destroyed the Herne home. Shore Acres (1892), with its homely New England atmosphere, was Herne's most successful play and enjoyed long-lived popularity.

Comedy of Manners.

Clyde Fitch (1865-1909), most prolific of American writers for the stage, is credited with more than fifty dramatic productions, many of which were, however, adaptations from French and German sources. A keen observer and adept in theatrical devices, he was especially successful in his society comedies, portraying with good-natured satire phases of life and manners characteristic of New York. Of his numerous plays, Beau Brummel (1890) is a study in character; Nathan Hale (1898) and Barbara Frietchie (1899), as their titles indicate, present historical figures although the treatment is not conventional. The Moth and the Flame (1898), The Climbers (1900), The Stubborness of Geraldine (1902), and The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902) are more distinctive examples of his stronger work.

Purpose and Problem Plays.

Prominent among those who have written plays touching on the more serious aspects of our social, domestic, and economic life are: Charles Klein (1867-1913), who found in the aggressive policies of great corporations the motive of The Lion and the Mouse (1905), and in the extreme methods of police inquisition that of The Third Degree (1908); George Broadhurst (born 1866), whose Bought and Paid For and The Man of the Hour appeared in this same decade; and Eugene Walter (born 1874), author of Paid in Full (1907) and The Easiest Way (1909). Two of the plays of Edward Sheldon (born 1886), The Nigger (1909) and The Boss (1911), may be included in this group.

In Other Fields.

Of a very different type are The Auctioneer (1901) and The Music Master (1904) by Charles Klein, and Edward Sheldon's Romance (1912), plays of sentiment which attained a large success. Redolent of mid-western humor are The County Chairman (1903) and The College Widow (1904) by George Ade (born 1866). The Great Divide (1907), by William Vaughn Moody, an important contribution to the American drama, combines the spirit of the West with that of the East in elemental and poetical treatment of a melodramatic theme. Booth Tarkington's The Man from Home (1902) was that popular writer's first dramatic success; his Clarence (1919), The Wren (1921), and The Intimate Strangers (1921) are better plays. Rachel Crothers (born 1878) is the author of The Three of Us (1906), A Man's World (1909), and other successful comedies.

The Literary Type

Percy Wallace MacKaye (born 1875), son of a well-known actor whose Hazel Kirke (1880) was one of the best among the plays of his time, is perhaps too much the poet to hold a place with the practical playwrights of this generation. His dramas in blank verse, Jeanne D'Arc (1906) and Sappho and Phaon (1907), are supplemented by masques, pageants, and lighter lyric plays in which his poetic art is dominant. Mater (1908), The Scarecrow (1908), Anti-Matrimony (1910), and Thoroughbreds (1911) are representative of his prose plays. Children of Earth (1915), by Alice Brown (born 1857), received a prize of $10,000 offered by a New York producer of plays. It is strong in characterization and faithful to the atmosphere of its New England setting. The dramatic works of Josephine Preston Peabody (1874-1922) are distinctly of the literary type. Marlowe (1901), The Piper (1909), and her later sympathetic prose drama based on the story of Mary Wollstonecraft, Portrait of Mrs. W. (1922), are for the reader rather than the stage.

The Modern Drama.

A new development in our dramatic art is apparent in the plays of Eugene G. O'Neill (born 1888), the appearance of whose Beyond the Horizon (1919), Emperor Jones (1921), Anna Christie (1921), and The Hairy Ape (1922), is the outstanding event in recent theatrical history. Whether, or not, these intense realistic dramas, primitive, sombre, and tragic, are to have more than a temporary influence on the American stage, they are at least significant of the spirit of the vigorous young writers in the modern group who are not content with the traditions of the past and are seeking new standards and new forms.

For Reference, and Reading.

The American Dramatist, by Montrose J. Moses (Little, Brown & Co.), is the best handbook for students of the American drama. The chapter on "The Americans" in The Drama To-day, by Charlton Andrews (Lippincott) contains useful comment. Richard Burton's The New American Drama (Crowell) is general and discursive. Many of the plays cited in the text and many others are now available in single editions and in collections. Modern American Plays, edited by George P. Baker (Harcourt, Brace & Co.), Representative American Plays, edited by Arthur H. Quinn (Century), and the third volume of Representative Dramas by American Dramatists, edited by Montrose J. Moses (Dutton), are excellent. The Drama League Series (Doubleday) includes separate issues of significant productions. Best Plays of 1919-1920, Best Plays of 1920-21 and Best Plays of 1921-22, by Burns Mantle (Small, Maynard & Co.), contain descriptive summaries of the successful plays of each season.

Discuss in my forum

• american literature
• essays
• nonfiction