7mI.---.---------.

THE PLAYS 0F MMES A. REFINE: FORM AND FORMULA

Thesis for the Segree of Ph. D.
MECHaGAN STATE UNWERSITY
moms L HEMMENS
19-68

   
 
 

LIBRAR

Michigan 323% !
University I!

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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE PLAYS OF JAMES A. HERVE:

FORM AND FORMULA
presented by

THCNAS J. [BF-{ENS

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in English

gm 3841s“?

Major professor

 

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ABSTRACT
THE PLAYS OF JAMES A. HERNE: FORM AND FORMULA

by Thomas J. Hemmens

The plays of James A. Horne are important in the
history of the American theatre primarily because they
were ahead of their thus in presenting realistic, local
color characters and settings and introducing the discus-
sion of social problems on the stage. To the student of
dramatic literature, however, these plays are more inter-
esting as a study in dramatic form, a study which has been
generally overlooked by the historians of the theatre.
Herne's best plays reveal his awareness of basic dramatic
foam, especially when they are viewed in the context of
recent critical discussions such as those by Susanne
Langer and Northrop Frye.

The reviewers and critics of Herne's theatre sensed
something different about his plays, particularly in the
way in which they created deep emotional response from the
audience. In his best and most famous play, §22£2 £3323,
for instance, he carried his audience through a comic form
which became complete in a lengthy, one character panto-
nhne, a dramatic ending which recalls the celebrated
curtain of fig: Cherry Orchard, even though Chekov's play

 

cine twelve years later. The form of Herne's plays is

 

  
 
  
   
  
  
   
  
  
  
   
  
   
   
 
  

Thomas J. Hemmens

realism, melodrama, the problem play, the
' 5}" play, the historical drama. To discover that
f. ”satin dramatic form beneath the formulas is the scheme
:EQS this study.
' :‘j ‘iu . Hhenone considers the theatrical milieu in which
L‘ 5 Me produced his plays, the productions are all the more
w'l‘ll},gynarkable. The theatre audience in America in the 1890's
. ‘ mooted little more than the traditional conventions of
theaettage. If anything unexpected occurred on the stage,
the event was to be a sensational surprise, the sort of
; 'éh‘i’nglhelasco mused audiences with during a long and
'1‘," fitficeaaful career. Herne worked toward a surprise of a
1': xQfl‘farent nature. He gave the audience enough of the sur-
mgloa formula they delighted in--even to the spectacle of a
at}. turkey roasted in a real oven and eaten by real Down
1.th peopleubut he also stirred, perhaps disturbed, the t
' ‘mok responses by creating vital plays that lasted in
. {,3 @1493“ beyond the few hours the audience sat in the

“ 'Qtre. _

Thomas J. Hemens

  
  
   
  
   
  
   
   
    
  
   
  
  

,1. an emotionally satisfying comic ending. In Margaret

‘ Pi, Horne came very close to creating a modern tragedy.
1' tragic experience is dulled somewhat by the social
inosla'go of the play, but the tragic vision generates more
{-3. :Lpsting response to the play than the ephemeral social
‘1") problem of the double standard of sexual morality. For
‘31.? the student of dramatic literature an appreciation of both
_ . grisly! demands an approach that liberates the essential
tern fromthe formulas of the period.

Among the other plays, the fragmentary script of

.3 Gangs; th Davenport remains the most interesting for its

~ ~' detential tragic form beneath the exterior of an epic

' 4 'fllvfl. liar play. The more conventional and melodramatic

 

 

' Ripley: of Horne--_S_g Harbor, Drifting M, Th___e_ Minutemen,
‘ im an _I_r_1___ch of Lie L__i___fe, and Hea_____r___ts of _O__ak—‘-revea1,

; {31% varying success, form caught in the formulas of the

' When one separates the surface formulas which Horne
', so well from the essential dramatic form which strug-
Q for expression even in these weaker plays, the plays

Fbe’ seen as tentative, if only partly successful,

 

    
  

rms OF JAMES A. HERNE: FORM AND FORMULA

lffi” T L‘. 'J 1.

t.il

3!

Thomas Jihnfiomons

A THESIS

. Suhnitted to
' e ' Michigan State University
«in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
department of English

7' Q 1968

 

INTRODUCTION
Chap ter

I. THE DRAMATIST IN THE 1890's THEATRE

II.
III.
IV.

V. GRIFFITH DAVENPORT

VI.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EARLY MELODRAMA

FORM AND FORMULA

ii

SHORE ACRES AND SAG HARBOR

MARGARET FLEMING AND DRIFTING APART

13

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20h
28 3
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363
386

   

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3'“1e I” INTRODUCTION

J :L‘Q.‘ The literature of the 1890's can be read as the
fr'gjuvenilia of a modern sensibility. Critics have explained
-'the mastery of the young Stephen Crane, marvelling at his
early use of symbolism. They have been puzzled but in-

n, trigued by the abandon of the undisciplined Frank Norris.
I {heyhave recovered the work of the young Harold Frederic
.MIed for years in corners of the library. They have
given new critical life to Kate Chopin, hitherto unheard
at bymost of us but now seen as a modern girl writing

" aatories more in the spirit of the new century than the old.
A 'a. ,9 But critical interest in the literature of the 1890's

0 f' <9)

4 \
'~ of” not extended to a detailed examination of the drama.

I ’Qoatre historians have indeed revived interest in the
“A“ Sign, players, and playhouses of the period; but they
#5" . ‘ift‘rarely considered the plays as works of dramatic art--
nothing other than miseum pieces, Tiffany lamps oddly

Jotudy only the literary pretenders among nine-
tin-century American dramas is to miss the
1., exciting, and real story of the American

he A...

 

firtheatre. . . . Literary merit may be almost
totally absent from many of the selections, but
they all have significance in our social and
theatrical history. . . . The introductory essays
tell the story about the play, leaving the story
,and the meaning of the play to unfold undulled
and unprejudiced_ . . . Americans have loved the
theatre and found in it a wide range of pleasure
and stimulation. The following pieces demonstrate
this range of theatrical experience, the colorful
istory of the American theatre.1

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
  
  

Professor Moody includes James A. Herne's §hggg 52335
a popular success of the nineties, as an event in this
colorful story. But limiting the work of Herne--as well
as that of some others in the anthology--to theatrical and
social history is unfair. Herne's plays are theatrical
history: he pioneered in realism of stage technique and
insisted on naturalistic Stanislavsky acting. His plays
3;: social history: he wrote what is accepted as the
first American drama of ideas and explored social problems.
But his plays have another dimension, that of dramatic i
term. Early he wrote conventional theatrical melodramas,
.ltter moVed to what is usually called the well-made play,

A~Qni:finally discovered a dramatic form, episodic, not un-

. g It is this freer form, struggling within the stric-
f Tires‘of formula in the early plays but almost realized in
:tho later plays, that interests the student of literature,

‘-5, ‘ grlfiichard Moody Dramas of the American Theatre 1162-
_.~r (low York, 19 2.), pp. xeITI. *——

 

 
   
  
   
    
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
   
  
 
    
  
  
  

Iv

. ‘ .
vi”:-

’1‘ 3

a“

;pf§;h;~ialty in light of twentieth century studies of

tsggiiatic form, in particular those by Susanne Langer,

.ififiidémhrop Frye, Francis Fergusson, and Eric Bentley.

_‘7 A“: Viewed in terms of dramatic form, these plays, old-

,” fashioned as they may be in surface detail, still have
*shough‘life to warrant study, to suggest, if nothing else,
lthat the American drama did not spring up suddenly with
Eugene O'Neill at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1915, as
many critics suggest.2

Horse's most durable play, Shore Acres, is still

 

produced by amateur groups, the two most recent producflens
itlwsshington, D. C., in l95h, and at Chestnut Hill,
Gonnecticut, in 1960. One can appreciate the recent

3“‘oolflsnt of Herne's son, John, that ”Shore Acres is a

 

 

‘m'maatsrpiece of stage craft, it is fool proof, any stock
aster or school boy can put on a pair of gray whiskers and
N citraiis and 'have 'em weeping in the aisles' just by
siQing the beautiful lines.'3 But there is something more
aj.§§g§§ggg Acres than gray whiskers and beautiful lines.
V'.Y£E§&play~has a vital inner form.

€10 discover that “something more” in Shore Acres and
”'ula.other plays is the purpose of this study. First,
*éEypical of many critics, Horst Franz writes, "Modern

. drama was born in Provincetown . . . n1915, "
:an rlazgrights on Drama (New York, 1965),n p. viii.

 

 

 

 

  

L;

in Chapter I, this study considers Horne and the theatre
of his time, to establish the situation in which the
dramatist worked. Chapter II, “Form and Formula," investi-
gates the problems raised by dramatic formulas in both
practical craftsmanship and critical appraisal, especially
where these formulas tend to obscure or warp the essential
form of the play. Realism and naturalism and dramatic
genres are considered to the extent that they determine--
or deter--the development of form. This chapter is neces-
sarily generalized, examining the playwrighting practices
of the period, as well as twentieth century thinking on
dramatic form.

In Chapter III §hg£g A3323 and §§E Harbor are con-
sidered as attempts to rise above formula into significant
dramatic form. The objection might be raised that the
early work should be considered before these final pieces,
an arrangement which implies some sort of evolution in the
playwright's work. Evolution there undoubtedly was. In A
History 2; the American Drama, Professor Arthur Hobson
Quinn treats Herne's plays as a progression from melodrama
to the study of simple people, although he allows that it
is difficult to put the plays into categories.h The

“Arthur Hobson Quinn A
History 2; the American Drama
V. 2 (New York, 1927), p.,137. ,

A

 

  

5

 

conventional chronological order5 is reversed here; the
critical interest is on the individual plays themselves,
on their form and quality. Hence, the plays that most
nearly realize this form may most profitably be considered
first.

Seeing that Herne did create essential form out of
the formulas of §pppp £2335, one is led to look at Herne's
plays of ideas, Margaret Fleming and Drifting Apppp, a
something other than social tracts or American "Ibsen“
plays. In Chapter IV, these plays are examined in terms
of form. Margaret Fleming, in particular-~which Quinn
anthologized because it "represents the realistic play of
American life, dealing with a great moral problem sincerely
and fearlessly"6--becomes more interesting as attempted
form than as fulfillment of formula. In Chapter V, the
form of the lost Griffith Davenport, a realistic history
play, is analyzed as far as is possible from summaries of
the play and the extant Acts III and IV. Finally, the
melodramas 2gp Minute Egg pf l7ZQ-l7zfi, Within pp ngp 22
His 2522, and Hearts pf 92k are considered in Chapter VI,

not as antiquarian studies in the American theatre but as

gw ”11mm Inch o_f pp? Life 7(1ez9géénearts it? 931i
879 TE uEe H5 0 5 Drif n part
(1888), HE; aret Flmn— —(Ig;%$, 7%Eore Acres ([89 55,

GlPiffith Davenport (I355),3 __g_ HM For (T3§§T

6Arthur Hobson Quinn, Re resentative American Plays,
51:}: ed. (New York, 1938), p'."'EI§'." "

~~
_'

 
   
  
  
  
   
 
   
   
 
   
  
  
    
  
    
  

6

' fern trapped by the formulas of the time. While these
nelodramas reveal little in essential form, they suggest,
asVa final comment, the surprising accomplishment of
Horne, who began his career as a successful actor and
director and playwright in the popular melodrama of the
times, and who came to write plays which remain inter-
esting as dramatic art.

Since the plays and the incidents of Herne's life
will not be handled chronologically in the study, a brief
biographical sketch is in order here.7 James A. Horne was
born James Aherne, February 1, 1839, at Cohoes, New York.
Even though his strict father held the theatre to be a
diversion more suitable to the Devil than to God-fearing
children, fourteen-year-old Aherne sneaked off to a per-
formance in Albany. The play was The Gladiator; the star,
Edwin Forrest. The young man, who could have seen no more
famous combination of actor and vehicle, recalled years

7The sketch is based, for the most part, on James A.

eras: .Rise of Realism ip American Drama (University 0?—
a no, ItEET,‘By Julie A. Herne, the pIaywright's daughter,
who began to gather material for her work about the time
she appeared in Shore Acres with her father, and by Pro-
IQsIOr Herbert Edwards, who completed the work after Miss
fierne's death in 1955, adding valuable source materials
t and occasional critical comments. For material on Herne's
early career, the best primary sources are his own recol-
A leetions, ”Old Stock Days in the Theatre,” Arena (Sep-
“tensor, 1892), and ”Forty Years Behind the Footlights,”
‘9 chli A e (August, 1899). Also contributing to the

} _jtc 'are e comments of Herne's son-in-law, Montrose J.
;.s} in The American Dramatist (Boston, 1925).

 

 

  

 

later, ”No boy who has ever been in the gallery of a
theatre will forget the first time he sat there. No play
will ever be the same to him as his first play.“ He left
the theatre that night determined on a theatrical career.

His first job was as a supporting actor in the
company of a "dog show," an amateur entertainment starring
dogs who leaped, on cue, to rescue a hero or heroine in
distress. His first professional performance followed in
1859 at the Adelphi Theatre in Troy, as George Shelby in
Eagle 2221! Espip. For the next fifteen years, the young
actor--with the more impressive marquee name of James A.
Herne--moved from one theatre to another, playing the
standard repertory: Shakespeare, Sheridan, Dickens, and
leading roles in popular melodramas like Camille, ggpp
Igppg, and Egg Corsican Brothers. He was on stage with
most of the famous actors of the day. During this period
his work as a manager (the director in today's theatre)
began, including one season with a salary of $10,000 at
the Grand Opera House in New York.

With this varied experience behind him, Horne settled
in San Francisco in 187k, as manager of Tom McGuire's New
Theatre, where he began his career as a dramatist adapting
popular fiction for the stage, including Charles Lever's
' Charles O'Malley, Dickens' Oliver M: and Irving's _R_ip

 

van Hinkle. With his young assistant, David Belasco,

§fibrne adapted Emile Gaboriau's pp Corde pp Gen and Watt

 

 

 

and Marriage pl Moonligpt. The most successful collabo-

ration with Belasco, however, was Hearts 2; ka (first
produced in 1879 under the title gppmp).

Herne's leading lady in Hearts 2; ka was his wife,
Katherine Corcoran, who began her career in San Francisco
at seventeen under Herne's direction. Throughout a long
stage life, Mrs. Herne was in many ways her husband's
collaborator. He created the leading roles in his plays
for his wife and himself. During the composition, he read
the plays to her, scene by scene, working her suggestions
into the script.

After Hearts pf ka, Herne began writing the plays
which pioneered new directions in American drama. Egg
Minute Egg 2; 1114-1115, a war spectacle, opened in
Philadelphia on April 6, 1886. The Hernes took the play
on the read, even though it constantly lost money. In New
York, on May 7, 1888, the Barnes starred in his next play,
Driftipg Apppp, a moderately successful temperance drama,
with two acts as a dream sequence. It was this play that
Hamlin Garland saw at a second-rate house in Boston,
prompting him to seek an introduction to the Hernes.
During the next years, he became a constant visitor at

their Ashmont home in the suburbs of Boston and introduced

them to Boston literary circles. With Garland, the Barnes

 

 

Single Tax, and discovered Ibsen and Tolstoy.

Herne's next play, Margaret Fleming, reflects these
new-found interests. It is a piece of stark realism,
using the double standard of sexual morality as a major
theme. The date of the opening, July h, 1890, in Lynn,
Massachusetts, is generally accepted as the beginning of a
drama of ideas in America. The audiences, however, re-
jected the play. At Howells' suggestion, the Hernes
, rented the small Chickering Hall in Boston and produced
} the play there on May A, 1891. The Boston intelligentsia
showed up for a brilliant opening night: Howells, Mary
P Wilkins, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, B. 0. Flower, J. J.

    
  
  
   
  
   
 
  

Enneking, among them. Despite the enthusiastic applause

 

of this group, the regular audience failed to come, and
the play managed to run only a few weeks.

To recoup his losses, Horne turned to theatrical pot-
boiling. He wrote a conventional Irish comedy in the
(gt: Boucicault manner for Tony Farrell. The piece, My Colleen,
served the Farrells as a vehicle for several years. Horne

also wrote Coon Hollow, a comedy with music, on commission

 

 

for Klaw and Erlanger, although it was never produced.
Going against the tradition that an actor of stature does
not take bit parts, Horne accepted a fifteen-minute part
hl.a malcontent negro in Clay M. Greene's Egg Np! §p§£§.

ifgt-a professional matinee-—a matinee at which actors made

 

   
 

10

  

cheered until Herne returned again and again for curtain
calls after his scene, much to the discomfort of the stars
of the show .

During this time, Horne suggested to Howells that he
might play an adaptation of Egg 3132 p; §llgp Lapham.
When Howells, with a collaborator, finished the script and
sent it to Horne for suggestions, Horne saw that the
script would not play in the theatre: it was still more
novel than play. He wrote to Howells, saying that the
only really dramatic scene was the dinner at the Coreys,
the best scene in the original novel, and suggesting that
a novel must be adapted freely for the stage. Displeased
with Herne's suggestions, Howells shelved the play and
remained cool to Horne in the future.

Next came Shore Acres, the play that made Herne's

 

fortune, first produced in Chicago, May 23, 1892, revised
and produced in Boston, February 23, 1893. A local color
piece of New England life, the play was an immediate
popular and critical success. In the next years he played
throughout the country in the role of Uncle Nat, the role
for which he is most fondly remembered in theatre
chronicles.

Not willing to rest with this success, Herne poured
his financial and artistic resources into an adaptation of

Ifielen Gardener's novel, pp Unofficial Patriot, the story

 

" gt a circuit rider turned Union scout during the Civil War.

a
e

 

  

  

11

The play, called Griffith Davenport, opened in Washington,

 

January 16, 1899, and in New York, January 31, 1899, to
praise from many of the critics. But it failed to attract
audiences. A detailed character study with few climactic
scenes, the play was apparently too unconventional for the
usual theatre-goer. But Herne believed he had a good play
and took it on the road, with little success.

In his last play, §pg Harbor, Horne returned to a
regional study of simple folks. The play began as a re-
working of Hearts 2; gap but emerged an entirely different
matter--an atmospheric, almost poetic, evocation of a life
of quiet and order. When the play opened in Boston,
October 2h, 1899, it was an immediate success, but for
Horne the success did not last. Exhausted by a series of
campaign speeches for Bryan and a variety of theatre
activities, including the direction of Israel Zangwill's
Children.p£_£pp Ghetto, he became 111. He continued to
play Captain Dan'l in §25 Harbor whenever his health per-
mitted, but, finally, on the road in Chicago, he became so
ill he could barely move on stage, and he spoke in an
inaudible whisper.

Horne died on June 2, 1901. At the funeral the
American playwright Augustus Thomas spoke the eulogy,
saying in part,

James A. Horne by an undefiled right believed in

hhmself. For useless convention of any kind he
had that disregard which is the mark of genius.

 

12

Whenever a so-called maxim of his art was an
unpleasant bond he turned from it and appealed
successfully to the heart of his public.

It is this art, an emotional form, I wish to dis-
tinguish beneath the prevalent theatrical formulas--the
so-called maxims of his art--in the plays of James A.
Horne.

8Augustus Thomas, "Address at the Funeral Service of

Jameg A. Horne," The Single Tax Review (July 15, 1901),
p. l .

 

 

CHAPTER I

THE DRAMATIST IN THE 1890's THEATRE

   
  
  
  
   
  
   
   
   
   
  
  

Vital and vigorous as the literature of the American
\'>-1890's now seems to us, it went unheralded and unread,
5 except by the critical few, in the new century. The major
”firiters of the period often spoke in an unsettling voice
' to a time not ready to hear what they had to say. In the
fix most recent study of the nineties, Larzer Ziff writes,
Gflhen the transforming events of the nineties subsided 1
: ‘1 into the tranquility of the following ten years, these i
' Y‘ .‘In‘iters appeared to be part of the temporary disorders 7‘
~,?yghich had been thrown off in the now ended spasms of the .1
fl-:;$ decade. But these spasms proved in fact to be not the ‘4
f_;‘aflmwulsions of rejection but the first strong and sure
. “(Fegflpr pains of modern American literature."1
3g: It was in some ways a lost generation in literature,
’73119' Stanley Kaufmann has called it, "The Really Lost
:5rttion,” as against "the celebrated lost generation of
-1920's who were in fact quickly and widely received."2
fgkama, a popular entertainment barely acknowledged as

" ‘ 1mm Ziff, The. American 1820: (New York, 1966),

f Inley Kaufmann, ”The Really Lost Generation,‘I The
r b lic, December 3, 1966, P. 22.

13

 

111.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
   
  
 
  

literature throughout the nineteenth century, was particu-
larly hostile to uninvited voices speaking of unspeakable
matters. At the beginning of the new century, a placid
commercial theatre seemed unaware, at least on the surface,
that a modern American drama had already felt its labor
pains. It is singularly remarkable that the audience did
give a hearing, however capriciously, to the voice of one
forward-looking dramatist: James A. Herne.
Since Horne was by this time, as we have seen, a
respected actor-director-playwright in his fifties, he may
seem something of a veteran in the rebellious company of
the young writers of the period--Crane, Garland, Norris,
Frederic. But those writers who knew him regarded him as
a lively contemporary. Hamlin Garland, for an example,
wrote, “His resiliency at sixty years of age was a
constant marvel to me. He was intellectually young. He
seemed my own age rather than a generation ahead of me.
He was also intellectually hospitable to new ideas and
capable of boyish enthusiasm."3 From his editor's study,
William Dean Howells praised Herne's revolutionary work in
Margaret Fleming, and suggested the Chickering Hall per-
formance of that work in Boston, a performance generally
Considered the first important independent theatre

3Hamlin Garland, "James A. Horne: Actor, Dramatist,

18‘, "1“ Han." Aim. XXVI (1901), p. 283.

k

A

 

 

  

15

Production in America. In 1899, B. 0. Flower, the editor
of the radical Arena, considered Horne the pioneer of the
new drama:

The vision of the philosopher is shadowed forth

in his work. He has striven to be real or true

to life, but his breadth of thought and appreci-

ation of what lies before the race, when justice

and freedom prevail, have invested his work with

a noble idealism which, though transcending the

real, is in perfect alignment with it, and

therefore free from the taint of artificiality

or untruth. It is true that he has in a measure

shared the fate of all innovators, but, thanks

to the rapid growth of intelligence and serious

thinking, he has suffered far less than most of

those who preceded him.
At Herne's death in 1901, The Theatre, the journal of the
trade, praised Horne as “one of the pillars of the nascent
American drama, possessing as he undoubtedly did high in-
tellectual qualities."5

After his death, Herne's reputation as the leading
pioneer of a new drama in the nineties was kept alive by
a few critics. In 1905, The Theatre called him ”the
greatest dramatist the American stage ever had."6 In a
critical survey of the American drama in 1913, Richard
Burton saw Horne as “the most remarkable man of his

hB. 0. Flower, "Mr. Herne's Contribution to American
Dramatic Literature," The Comipg Age, II (1899), p. 395.
5'Current Plays," The Theatre, July, 1901, p. 6.

6"Current Plays," The Theatre, April, 1905, p. 80.

 

  

  

l6

tunes . . . a creative force in the theatre.“7 Arthur
Hobson Quinn, the historian of the American drama, devoted
a laudatory chapter to Herne in the first (1927) edition
of his Histopy g2 gpg American nggg. In l9h0, a critic
wrote, 'Herne's artistic approach and much of his material
looks strangely like what we see around us.“8 In a very
selective anthology of American drama in 1960, Alan Downer
includes only one play from the nineties, Herne's §pgpg
égpgg. And he opens his 1965 collection, American nggg
52g Egg Critics, with Herne's essay, “Art for Truth's
Sake.'l

Herne was clearly the most original dramatist of his
day, “obviously ahead of his time,“ as Sculley Bradley
observes in Egg Literary Histopy 2; Egg United States.9
One of his daughters, Chrystal, a successful actress in
the American productions of Shaw, learned her profession
under her father's training. In 1928, she recalled, ”If
he were in the theatre today he would not need to change.
He was ahead of his time. When I played 'Craig's Wife' in

1925, I had a long silent scene at the end; it summed up

7Richard Burton, The New American Drama (New York,
1913), p. 62.

8Frederick Morton, ”James A. Herne Centenary,"
Theatre Arts Monthly, XXIV (19110), p. 900.

9Litera Histopy of the United States ed. Robert E.
Siriller, 3rd ed. rev. (NEw York, I963), p. icon.

 

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the whole story. The author, George Kelly, had planned it
to do that very thing. It was considered so new. But I
often thought of Father's last scene of 'Shore Acres' so
many years before.”10 The last scene of §pg£g ggpgg is a
seven minute pantomime, in which Herne, as Uncle Nat,
closes the quiet farm house for the night.

Encouraged by a few critics, notably Howells and
Flower, Horne still had to make his way in an unreceptive
mass entertainment industry where such critics could do
little to influence managers and audiences. Garland
wrote, “The remarkable thing about it all was that Mr.
Horne did this work with little or no help or encourage-
ment from the literary critics of the day."11

In fact, the theatre establishment was often hostile
to Herne's innovations. William Winter, the venomous
leader of the New York drama critics--and a thorough
romantic-~attacked every Herne play. In a collection of
critical pieces which John Mason Brown has happily called
”his more or less empty Wallet 2; EEpg,”12 Winter's re-
pugnance to any new stirrings in the drama is evident,
1938)To§e1g320rmsbee, Backstage EEpp Actors (New York,

11Hamlin Garland ”Truth in Drama ,, Literapy World
September 111. 1889, p: 308. ’ "" "'

12John Mason Brown, Dramatis Personae (New York,

1963), p. 238.

 

 

 

  

18

especially in these comments on Ibsen's Ghosts: "Moral
obliquity and mental failure, sequent on inherited
physical disease, resulting from sexual vice, is the
subject of that play, and platitudinous gabble is the
form."13 Winter sensed a menace in this “indefensible

and shameful vagary of a diseased mind."1h He was equally

appalled by Herne's notorious social drama, Margaret

Fleming:

”Margaret Fleming” . . . is one of those crude
and completely ineffectual pieces of hysterical
didacticism which are from time to time produced
on the stage with a view to the dismay of liber-
tines by an exhibition of some of the evil
consequences of licentious conduct. In that
play a righteously offended wife bares her bosom
to the public gaze in order to suckle a famished
infant, of which her dissolute husband is the
father by a young woman he has seduced, betrayed,
and abandoned to want and misery: libertines,
of course, gre always reformed by spectacles of
that kind!1

Winter and the mass audience preferred to idolize

theatre men like Herne's early collaborator, David Belasco,

56:3William Winter, The Wallet 2; Time (New York, 1913»
P. e

1hWinter, Wallet, p. 567.

 

15Williem Winter, Life of David Belasco (New York,
1918), p. 199. What curious-fancy raced in Winter‘s mind
as he conjured up that scene! In no performance of the
play did Mrs. Horne, as Margaret, do more than prepare to
nurse the child, as the lights dimmed and the curtain fell.
In fact, Mrs. Horne suggested the scene to make an im-
portant dramatic point at the climax of the play. See
.Arthur H. Quinn, Ibsen and Horne,“ American Literature,
XIX (May, 19147), P. 1711.

 

  

  

19

whose romantic plays--including such box office favorites
as Madame Butterfly and The Darling gf the §2g3--were
among the most popular of the day. Herne is slighted in
favor of Belasco by other critics. For example, in the
America's p253 21213 series Glenn Hughes writes, "No one
of the writers who was allied with Belasco as a collabo-
rator ever achieved fame or success from an individual
effort.“16 He overlooked Herne who, of course, did win
both fame and success with at least one play, §h2££ A2323.
An unpublished dissertation studying Belasco includes a
consideration of the early collaboration with Herne, but
leaves the distinct impression that Herne more or less
dropped from sight after those early days in San Fran-
01300.17 A historian of the San Francisco stage discusses
Belasco at length, but relegates Herne to the position of
an unhmportant hack.18

In a theatre where Belasco reigned as a self-styled
holy man--"The Bishop of Broadway," wearing a cleric's
collar--Herne often felt alone, even though he had the

16David Belasco, The Heart of Mar land and Other

Pia s, ed. with an intro. by Glenn Hug es and George
Eavage (Princeton, l9hl), p. ix.

 

17Gladys Forde, “David Belasco: An Evaluation of the
llan and His Contribution to American Theatrical History,”
'tnnpubl. dies. (Western Reserve University, l95h).

95 )leEdmund M. Gagey, The San Francisco Stage (New York,
:1- 0 .

 

20

  
    
 
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  

respect of many of his fellow actors. ”At the annual
benefit for the Actor's Fund at the Fifth Avenue Theatre
on Thursday afternoon, March 23, 1899, Horne and his wife,
appearing in the fourth act of Griffith Davenport, were
given an ovation."19 The critics, too, had praised
Griffith Davenport and its carefully controlled production
into which Horne had put considerable money and, more hn-
portantly, what he thought to be his most mature artistic
work in the theatre. But acclaim from the profession and
from critics was not enough to bolster the dwindling
audiences. After a performance of the play, the drama
critic of 222 Brooklyn @251: found Herne and his wife
backstage, heartbroken. Herne said, “I wouldn't mind if
Ithey came to see my play and said it was bad. But they
won't come.“20

Herne was hardly alone in his disappointment with an
audience that wanted to be fed only melodrama and romance-
”Belascosity," in Stark Young's word. Herne's more famous
contemporaries, Henry James and William Dean Howells, both
stung by failure in the theatre, put much of the blame on
the audience. In a letter, in 1895, James wrote that he
had a horror of the audience: he despised "the abysmal

193erbert J. Edwards and Julie A. Horne, James A.
Hornet Rise of Realism in American Drama (Or053:_fialfie:
3517353iti‘Ef'HaIfiE:—T§6KT,‘ET—TVUT 57—73.
2°Ormsbee, p. 17A.

 

21

  
   
 
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
  

vulgarity of the theatre and its regular public.“21
lbwelle, in an introduction to Leonard Merrick's novel
The Actor-Manager, wrote of the depressing prospects for
an ”ambition which seeks fruition in the successes of the
theatre.”22 Howells knew, of course, that he had to
please that audience to be successful, no matter how
backward it might be. Like Dion Boucicault, one of the
successful playwrights of the time, Howells knew that "the
Jury is composed . . . here of the people."23

An awareness of the power of the audience also con-
ditions Howells' fictional playwright Brice Maxwell who
experiences frustrations in the theatre much like those of
Howells. Maxwell argues with his wife, Louise, a Boston
Brahmin:

“It won't do to despise any public, even

the theatre going public." Maxwell added the

last words with a faint sigh.
, “It's always second-rate,“ said his wife
n passionately. Third-rate, fourth-rate! I wish
” you were writing a novel, Brice, instead of a

play. Then you would be really addressing

refined people.“

”It kills me to have you say that, Louise.“

21Brander Matthews, ”Henry James and the Theatre,"
Bookman, LI (1920), p. 39h.
_l 22w11113m Dean Howells, ”Introduction” to Leonard

:§¥ 23Dien Boucicault, "The Future of American Drama,"
‘9 II (1890), p. 6'47.

 

 

 

    

22

"Well, I won't. But don't you see, then,
that you must stand up for art all the more
unflinchingly if you intend to write plays that
will refine the theatre going public or create
a new one.“au

Even though this public might not be refined enough
for the kind of play Howells wanted to write, he would
accept their verdict. Working on a dramatization of Th3
BEES g; §ilg§ Lapham in 1895, Howells wrote to his
collaborator,

I send you the last leaf of the play, which I'm
so grateful to have you prai e. I leav it quite
with you to let Mr. Thorpe he produce; see it
or not. But in no case would I be willing to be
made the victhn of a trial-matinee. That has
happened to me often enough. If you approve of
his doing the play at all, and he will do it in
the usual way, . . . to see whether the common
cry will stand it, all right. But not in a
matinee, here, for every bravo to stab it before
it could get on its legs, and while it was still
kneeling for favor. If it will not please the
general, let us know it from the general.

Try-outs at matinees, often attended by critics and other
theatre people off for the afternoon, was a common
practice in New York in the nineties. Herne had produced
Howells"§£igg figggg, without success, at a professional
untinee. Howells preferred even the despised general
public to such an audience.

2“William Dean Howells, Th3 gtggy 23 5 2121 (New
York, 1898), pp. 31-32.

25W1111am Dean Howells, Life in Letters _o_r_ William
”Dan Howells, ed. Mildred Howells,-§ vols. (Garden Cit ,

my Igzajd pp. 63'6“-

 

 

 

  
 

23

But the general public was not likely to be kinder to
a new play of merit than the more experienced matinee
audience. For one thing, the theatre was a major enter-
tainment for all classes, a social event, quite a
different matter from the theatre today, when, as J.
Donald Adams has observed, the theatre ”hardly qualifies
as a means of mass communication,“ on the simplest cri-
terion of audience 8126.26 For another thing, women made
up the most powerful part of the theatre-going public,
often deciding which plays their men would escort them to
see. One critic has commented, "The spirit of woman
suffrage prevails at the better class theatres. Women's
votes for or against a play count more than men's. If a
piece pleases them it is bound to prosper."27

0n the whole, these women and the men they brought
with them did not want to think when they came to the
theatre, preferring mindless Belascosity. Surveying the
possibilities for the successful production of good drama
under such circumstances, a critic in the gpppp American
Review wrote,

During the last two or three seasons so few good

plays have been brought out in this country that
the theatre has been generally unattended by the

526mm Bentley, What 13 Theatre? (Boston, 1956),
p. 2 7.

27Franklin Fyles The Theatre and Its People (New
-_.!.'ork, 1900), p. 121;. ' —' —'— _ ' "

 

  

2h

more intelligent portion of the drama-loving
public. As a natural consequence, we hear the
cry started by managers, who do not or will not
understand the situation, that people who go to
the theatre do not want to think, but only to
be startled by sensatéonal effects or tickled
by grotesque antics.2

  

Audiences did not improve much after the turn of the
century. Observed Clayton Hamilton, one of our first
serious critics in the twentieth century, “The public of
America, considered as a whole, is not at all interested
in the drama. It is enormously interested in the theatre;
but that is another matter altogether.“29 For Hamilton,
as for other pre—World War I critics, "theatre“ often
meant trickery and the thrill-a-minute play, not a drama
that develops its own life and is likely to outlive a few
instantaneous wonders that fade on the way up the aisle.
“The American public, with its avidity for clever
invention, prefers the ingenuity of new authors to the
matured imagination of writers who have risen above the
initial exercise of cleverness."30

By the nineties Herne had certainly risen above the
clever ingenuity of his early plays with Belasco, plays
like Hearts 2; 25k with a baby who became animated at just

28Julian Magnus, “The Condition of the American
stage}I Npppp American Review, CXLIV (1887), p. 169.

2901a ton Hamilton, Problems pf the Playgright (New
‘Ibrk, 1917 , p. 316.

3°Hmmiltcn, Problems, p. 313.

 

  

25

  

the right tbme and a cat that was made to walk across the
stage and stretch itself at a certain point in the action
of each performance. In the later plays, Herne had
learned to make such extrinsic wonders an intrinsic part
of the drama. For example, the spectacle of stage dinners
was very popular. In Egg §pppy p; g 2131, Maxwell plans
IIto have the dinner served through all the courses and the
waiters coming and going; the events will have to be
hurried, and the eating merely sketched, at times; but I
should keep the thing in pretty perfect form."31 When he
plans to repeat the meal in a later act, his leading actor
agrees: ”It might be the very thing. The audience likes
a recurrence of a distinctive feature. It's like going
back to an effective strain in music."32

Horne was among the first to put a real dinner on the
stage, in Hearts 2; 93k. The meal, however, has no dra-
matic substance; it functions only as a realistic back-
ground for the action. By contrast, in the later §pppg
£2323 the dinner--a full-course country feast with a real
turkey--is more than setting: it is the atmospheric
element that motivates the action of the scene.

But one wonders how many people admired the turkey

tore than the play. Reviewing the production at the

31Howells, Stopy 32 3 Play, p. 5.
32Howells, Story; 3;; 3 Play, p. 10.

 

26

  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  
  

Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco, a critic wrote, “And the
turkey! well the turkey perfumed the Baldwin so invitingly
that it made everybody hungry. The cranberry sauce, the
bread--such slices--the cake, the celery, everything was
real.“33

Herne's spectacle was not, of course, the only enter-
tainment audiences could savor that night in San Francisco.
Published on the same page of the §§p Francisco pally
Report as the review of §pppg AEEEE are comments on a
varied theatrical diet. Fanny Rice, a popular headliner
in farcical sketches, was at the Columbia Theatre: “And
yet there is much wholesome fun in this version of 'At the
French Ball,‘ and the audience . . . last night seemed to
enjoy it very much. It was a large audience, too, and it
laughed heartily over the antics of the star, and ap-
plauded Miss Kate Michelena and George Broderick for their
fine singing. Becky Haight and Ralph Bucknell showed
themselves to be a team of graceful and clever dancers and
came in for a large share of the applause. John Conley
made a hit as the colored servant." At the Morosco Grand
the audience was devouring 222 Thousand M3133 Aggy by the
English melodramatist Oliver Byron: "The play is full of
thrilling adventures, and startling situations, and there
is interwoven with the plot a thread of humor that softens

_ ‘ 33'A Fine Play,” San Francisco Daily Report, February
‘ «:23 1897.

 

27

    
 
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
   
  
   

the serious and sentimental features and keeps the
audience in good humor." At the Alcazar was the "somewhat
familiar“ Saints Egg Sinners, a melodrama popular in
revival into the twentieth century. At the Tivoli, there
was a double bill of Operetta, Von Suppe's Egg Lovely
Galatea and Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience: "Both operas
were handsomely mounted and costumed.“ Across the Bay in
Oakland, and due to open in San Francisco that week, was
Sousa's band, “which pleases all sorts and conditions of
musical taste.” Varied fare certainly, ingeniously served
to suit every taste for spectacle, but hardly nourishing.
This diet was duplicated in theatres across the

country. Edmund Gagey writes, "Whatever performance was
finally chosen, the Broadway seeker after amusement knew
there was little chance of his being disturbed unduly by
contemporary problems or driven to painful thought. He
would count on being moved to laughter or tears, with the
strongest possible emotional stimulation. . . . It was,

on the whole, a pleasant world of make-believe that was

presented on the stage."3’4

If this world of escape was what the audience wanted,

- , the theatre manager was ready to provide it, even though
I. ‘ he was aware of the lack of quality. Howells gives the

3“Edmund M. Gagey, Revolution i2 American Drama (New
Y-'E°’!‘.k’ 19h?) 9 pa ‘ 2.

 

    

  
 

28

manager that much credit: “He knows perfectly well that
it is abject trash he gives: for whatever else the
manager is he is very commonly not a fool. He is often a
man of taste and of sufficient reading; he knows quite
well what is good literature. He merely believes that it
is not adapted to the stage . . .."35 In Egg §pppy pf g
glgy, the manager who reads Maxwell's script expresses the
same attitude: Maxwell's play is good, but it will not
win an audience. A manager, Howells concedes, is a
businessman first: “The manager cannot afford to experi-
ment with literary quality; for it costs so much to
'stage'.a play in these days of material theatre but no
drama, that he can only risk giving the old rubbish in
some novel disguise. . . . So much money has to be put
into the frame of the picture that only the well-known
chrome-effects in sentiment, character, and situation can
be afforded in the picture.“36

In a costly, competitive business, it was perhaps in-
evitable in the monopoly-minded nineties that a few owners,
like the Klaw-Erlanger Syndicate, should gain control of
the theatres, not only in New York but in every major road
city. The Klaw-Erlanger letterhead, "Representing the

35William Dean Howells, "Editor's Study,” Harper's
pagazine, LXXIII (July, 1886), p. 315.

36Howells "Editor's Stud ” i
y Happer 3 Magazine
mIII (July, 1886), p. 315. ’ ’

  

29

  

Principal Theatres and Attractions of America,“ was an
accurate description of the extent of their empire. These
entrepreneurs ran a shrewd enterprize: operating out of
New York, they controlled local productions and created
road companies of the plays and the stars they thought
would be a commercial success. They were not interested
in any product that did not appeal to the easily satisfied
public taste for a standardized diet. A Doll's gpggg and
Margaret Fleming were not likely to get a hearing in their
theatre.

The effect on playwrights was predictable: they were
forced to produce what the Syndicate thought would sell.
The most readable account of the Syndicate, Allen
Churchill's Egg ggggg Engg Egy, gives ample evidence that
the playwrights had little money and certainly no spirit-
ual reward for their work.37 Re-examining the period to
discover why the art of the drama had been neglected in a
corner of the nineties, Sheldon Cheney found that “cen-
tralized control of all the theatres in the land meant
standardization of types of production, so that the dram-
atist who brought forward anything new found every trying-
out ground closed to hhn. 'Kept' playwrights became the
rule. . . . The American playwright for two decades was

37Allen Churchill, The Great White _W_ay (New York,
1962). p. (42- "' _" ‘—

 

3O

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
  
  
   
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
 
  

thus left without laboratory or studio."38

The Syndicate was opposed by independent actors and
playwrights, among them Minnie Maddern Fiske, who was
intent on introducing Ibsen to New York audiences, and
Berna, who had been his own producer in the past. Said
Horne, “It is conceded that I have contributed something
to the literature of the stage and to dramatic art, and I
therefore refuse to be driven from the stage of my country
by the gentlemen who have the lessees and the owners of a
number of playhouses by the throat.“39

Although the Syndicate would not give Herne a hearing
for his plays, nor for that matter an acting Job because
he did not fit the image of the fashionable matinee idol
they preferred amid the decor of their stages, they did
give hbm a job as stage manager (director) because he was
one of the best in the business, and they knew it. But
his employment was short-lived. Trying to get a hearing
for §gpgg A3325, Herne took the play to Erlanger, his boss,
who saw possibilities in the script-~if he could star
Joseph Jefferson, then under contract, as Uncle Nat, the
part Horne had written for hhnself. Herne refused. They
argued. Herne was fired. As Horne left, Erlanger shouted,

38Sheldon Cheney, Egg App Theatre (New York, 1925),
PP. 26-27.

39Norman Ha
. pgood The Stage Ag AmericaI 1897-1900
it “kw York, 1901), p. 22.

 

 

31

  

“And you're the last damned anarchist that ever steps foot
in this office.")'(0 Almost everyone else eventually became
aligned with the Syndicate. Mrs. Fiske and Horne were
notable exceptions; they managed to produce and act in
their plays wherever they could, often in second-rate
houses which lacked the popular luxury the Syndicate
supplied for its customers.

Commercial pressure to give the audience what it
wanted resulted in another theatre condition that hampered
creativity: the star system. The audience liked to see
the same stars in the same roles, or in roles so shnilar
they could well have been the same. Both the actor and
the playwright were left little room to explore new char-
acters in new situations. Of the many artists affected,
most memorably recorded is the experience of the actor
James O'Neill, with whom Herne had played in the early
San Francisco days. In gpgg Egylg Journey Egpp ggggp,
O'Neill's son recreated the thwarted father, doomed to
play the Count of Monte Cristo over and over. The father
(Tyrone in the play) tells what the experience did to hhn
as an artist:

That God-damned play I bought for a song and
made such a success in--a great money success--it
ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune. I

didn't want to do anything else, and by the tune
I woke up to the fact I'd become a slave to the

honerbert J. Edwards, James A; Herne, p. 9h.

   

32

damned thing and did try other plays, it was too
late. They had identified me with that one part,
and didn't want me in anything else. They were
right, too. I'd lost the great talent I once had
through years of easy repetition, never learning
a new part, never really working hard. Thirty-
; five to forty thousand dollars net profit a
’ season like snapping your fingers! It was too
great a temptation. Yet before I bought the
damned thing I was considered one of the three or
four young actors wiph the greatest artistic
promise in America.

 

 

Herne, too, could not escape the pressure to create a

 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
   
 
  

starring vehicle for hhnself. Early in his California
career, he created and produced his own version of ng Egg
Winkle, before Jefferson had secured any clahn to the role
as his personal property. Belasco, one of the dwarfs in
the production, recalled, ”I have seen three ng§-—that of
Jefferson, that of Robert McWade, and finally that of
James A. Herne. This last was a wonderful characteriza-
tion, with all the softness and pathos of the part. . . .
But Fate chose to thrust forward Jefferson as the only ng
that ever was or could be. E happen pp ggpg better.
Jefferson never was the Dutchman; he was the Yankee per-
sonating the Dutchman. But James A. Herne's ng was the
real thing!“2 Winter, the biographer of both Jefferson
and Belasco, could not accept Belasco's judgment: ”Seldom

has so much error and injustice been packed into so small

“IE“. I T 3
gene O Neill Da 3 Journe IntoN t(New
Haven: Yale UniversityLon ress, 1956), pp. m5.

haWinter, Life 2; David Belasco, p. 168.

 

33

 
   
  
  
   
  
 
   
  
  
  
   
  
   
 
  

a p1ace."l(-3 He did not see Herne's Rip.

Winter assumed that Herne put commercial stardom
first: ”Horne earnestly wished for a part in which he
might win popularity and opulence in some degree commen-
surate with those obtained by Jefferson in ng Egg Winkle;
he eventually found it or something like it in ‘Hearts of
Oak,‘ which he acted, far and wide, for many years, and
by which he accumulated a fortune of about $250,000."L")4
Herne did play Hearts 2; Egg for years but lost the
fortune on his unpopular productions of Egg Minute ggg,
Drifting Apggg, and Margaret Flemigg. When those pro-
ductions failed, he could always round up a Hearts 2; Qgg
company and take to the road, where audiences evidently
never tired of seeing the play. Then, with capital re-
newed, he would shelve Hearts 22 Egg and lose his money
in a new production. The audiences that would see Hearts
2; Qgg over and ever would not come to plays like Margaret
Fleming. In fact, after Margaret Fleming, managers feared
that he had lost his old melodrama audience altogether, a
situation which accounts in part for Herne's difficulties
in getting §gpgg Agggg produced.

Herne was respected by many for his refusal to be

lulled into commercial security. One critic of the thus

h3Winter, Life 2; David Belasco, p. 169.
hummer, Life 22 David Belasco, p. 201.

 

3h

   
  
   
    
   
  
   
   
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
   

wrote, ~Had James A. Herne the money-making instinct, he
would (the opportunity was his) many years ago adopted
'Rip Van Winkle,‘ in which his reputation was foremost on
the American continent and confirmed as the greatest
impersonator East and West."hs The critic commended hhn
for avoiding the fate of Jefferson, and of John E. Owens
as Solon Shingle, and of Frank Mayo as Davy Crockett.

Garland, however, took a surprising view of commer-
cial success. Even though he had encouraged Drifting
Apggp and Margaret Fleming, he could not understand why
Horne had to set out in the new direction of Griffith
Davenport when he obviously had a life-long income in
ggpgg Agggg: “Herne's return to speculative producing
seemed foolish to me, for it had plunged hhn once again
into the morass of anxious toil from which 'Shore Acres'
had lifted him. Theatrical folk are like that. They are
seldom content to let well enough alone: 'This time we
are sure to win."')'L6

Only a few others in the theatre shared Herne's
belief that eventually audiences could be made to accept
unconventional new work. Minnie Maddern Fiske, for one,
I ‘ continued to fight to get Ibsen produced: "Oh, I have no
I ' h5”Amusements," Anaconda Montana Standard, April
. fill. 1898. ——— ——
héfiamlin Garland, Roadside Meetings (New York, 1931),

A

35

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
   

patience with those who descend upon a great play, produce
it without understanding, and then, because disaster over-
takes it, throw up their hands and say there is no public
for fine art. How absurd!”u7 Chekhov, facing shnilar
problems in Moscow during this period, was also impatient
with those who blamed the public for the wretched state of
the theatre: “The public is always and everywhere the
same: intelligent and stupid, sympathetic and pitiless,
according to mood. It has always been a flock which needs
a good shepherd and dogs, and it has always gone in the
direction in which the shepherds and dogs drove it."uB An
artist, obviously, cannot give all his attention to the
audience; he must have faith, as Eric Bentley has said,
”that there gEEE be an audience for good work.”-9

Herne, more than any other American dramatist of his
thee, put his art first, his success at the box office
second. His characteristically forthright statement in
1899 is completely uncharacteristic of playwriting of the
thme:

There is no telling whether the public mind will

take kindly to the new. If a man does the best

h7Alexander Woollcott, Mrs. Fiske: Her Views pg
Actors Actigg, and the Problems 2; Production (New York,

3 Po -

haAnton Chekhov, Letters g the Short Story, the
DramaE and Other Literary Topics, ed. Louis . riealand

yew 0?? 115m, p. 9 .

h9Eric Bentley, What EA Theatre?, p. 256.

 

 

 

  

36

he can there is hope for hhn; but, if he delib-

erately compromises what he believes to be true

art for the sake of box-office returns, he makes

a fatal mistake. I hold that the American

dramatist, like the American novelist and artist,

who is striving to be true to life and art, and

who refuses to compromise with the artificial

and false which has so largely ruled in the past,

must as yet be content to live simply and with

small returns. He must measure his success by

achieving something which cannot be claimed by

those who resort to all kinds of expedients to

make money. He finds his reward in the satis-

faction that he is helping rather than hurting

his profession. O
Compromising as he did by turning out hack jobs and di-
recting the box office plays of others, Herne hesitated to
compromise in his own work. He learned his lesson with
the ending of Shore Acres. When McVickers consented to
produce the play in Chicago in 1892, he would not accept
the pantomime ending Herne had written: "Oh, no, my dear
Horne, I fear you have made a mistake. The public will
not wait for that. It is too unconventional. Your story
is told when the young couple have returned from the West
and made up with Helen Berry's father. Let the curtain
fall as soon as possible after the climax is reached.“51
Horne reluctantly gave in and allowed the curtain to fall
on the comic scene where Uncle Nat accidentally fires the
old gun--and the full company is on stage. The play was

50James A. Herne, "The Present Outlook for the
American Drama,” The Coming A e, I (1899), p. 255.

51Lewis G. Strang, Famous Actors 2E the 23y (Boston,
1899), pl 3"".

 

37

   
 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
   
  
   

not successful, partly because this comic ending is
inappropriate to the work.

When Field agreed to produce the play at the Boston
Museum the following year, Herne, fearing that Field too
would object to the ending, resorted to subterfuge--taking
Edward Rose, Field's assistant, into his confidence-~and
planned to play the silent ending. Rose, who was to give
the signal for the curtain, held the curtain after the gun
scene until Herne (Uncle Nat), left alone on the stage,
locked the door, banked the fire, put out the lights, and
by the flame of a candle went up the stairs to retire.
”The result was as Herne had forseen. The audience
followed his pantomime with rapt attention, and even after
the curtain had fallen, was slow to leave the theatre."52
Herne is remembered fondly for this scene, a scene, inci-
dentally, which ante-dates Chekhov's celebrated silent
ending in The Cherry Orchard by twelve years. Alan Downer
praises the scene as an “astonishing tour de force in a
theatre that had always insisted on a thrilling curtain
line.“53 Horne never again compromised his art to please
a manager and his box office. Like their creator, the
protagonists in Herne's plays are usually men and women
52Julie A. Horne, “Biographical Note,“ in James A.
Henna, §hg£g A2332 and chgg 3151s (New York, 1928),

t‘pv. xxiv-xxv.

'L§f B 53A1an S. Downer, American Drama (New York, 1960),

 

38

making a decision, unaided. Reaching a decision, they act
without compromise, disregarding all opposition.

Such determination to develop the drama in his own
way, from his own native materials, was not evident in the
theatre of Herne's contemporaries. Other men simply
avoided writing for a theatre that had little room for the
growth of a significant native drama. They knew that,
unlike the distinctively American fiction of the period,
the drama was hardly identifiable as growing from the
American experience. And chances of success with an
authentic American play were slhn. The result was, as one
critic observed, that "it deters writers who are able to
put their ideas into any other form of literature from
attempting to write for the stage."5u

As the playwrights were shaped by the social back-
ground of life in America, they were also 1hnited by the
economics of the American theatre. A celebrated frontier
actor, Noah Ludlow, presents a comprehensive record of
inland America during the nineteenth century, giving a
clear indication of the roots from which an American
theatre was developing.55 In that theatre, one would
expect the dramatists to reflect the American cultural

S“Julian Magnus, "The Condition of the American
Stage," p. 172.

SSNoah Ludlow, Dramatic Life as I Found It (Saint

Louis, 1880), reprinted with an intro: by Francis Hodge
(New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966).

 

39

background. Such is not the case. As Herne wrote, "I
think that an American drama, dealing with our life and
history in a real way, would appeal to a very lhnited
audience."56 Reviewing a 1917 matinee of scenes from
famous American plays of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, Heywood Broun found one striking defect: the
drama had little relation to American life; “it is naive,
but not sincere."57

There is some doubt that there is any distinctly
American drama at all before the 1890's. In 1886, Howells
wrote, "We still have no drama."58 The playwright Dion
Boucicault wrote, in 1890, "There is not, and there never
has been, a literary institution which could be called the
American Drama."59 Barrett H. Clark, who, interestingly,
made American drama a supplement in his European Theories
23 322 Drama, wrote, "The scissors and paste-pot school of
Boucicault and the others has its place in history along
with Godey's Lady's Book, Currier and Ives prints,
Sandwich Glass, Anthony Comstock and The Tweed Rings.

There is no need of my arguing the question at length:

56Herne, "The Present Outlook," p. 25b.

57New York Tribune, January 23, 1917.

 

58William Dean Howells, "Editor's Study," Harper's
Magazine, LXXIII (July, 1886), p. 315.

59Dion Boucicault, "The Future of American Drama,"
Arena, II (1890), p. 6&1.

MO

I declare flatly that there is no play written by an
American . . . from the very earliest days down to 1900,
let us say, that's in any way comparable as a work of art
to even the average second-rate fiction or verse produced
in this country during the same period."60

The major obstacle to a native drama was European

influence. In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce

 

stated the situation succinctly when he defined a dram-
atist as ”one who adapts from the French." (Herne's
is an adaptation from the French.) In the words of one
critic, ”A century of domestic playmaking had produced
second- and third-rate hmitations of routine European
styles."61 The native health of American drama was, of
course, not the only victim of French infection; it is
sometimes overlooked that French influence was just as
strong in English plays, although the English made an
earlier recovery.62
William Dean Howells was upset by the American taste
for foreign theatricals, especially the French. In 1869,

60Barrett H. Clark, An Hour of American Drama
(Philadelphia, 1930), pp. 21-22.

 

61Jordan Y. Miller, American Dramatic Literature:
Ten Plays in Historical Perspective (New York, 19617,
p. 1x.

62Henry Quilter, ”The Decline of the Drama," Eclectig
Magazine, June, 1887, p. 827.

Al

he reviewed a Boston performance of Offenbach's light

opera spoof of the Trojan War, £3 Belle Helene. Something

 

was morally askew with Americans who could be amused by
it. Such spectacles, he wrote, “draw no life from our
soil; they do not flower and fruit again in our air.

After we have praised these modern plays to their full
desert, we must again recur to their foreign character.
They have no relation to our life as a people."63 But,
Howells to the contrary, nineteenth century Americans were
eager to participate in the European experience.

Herne knew what that audience wanted, but--except in
the early plays-—paid no attention to the other side of
the Atlantic. In an interview he was asked, "Do you
believe that the hour has arrived when the American people
will support the American drama dealing with the life,
history, aspirations, and dreams of the new world, as
readily as they patronize the same originality and ability
dealing with European life?” Herne answered,

There are some writers on the other side of the

water who are doing good work picturing certain

phases of life. They confine themselves for the

most part to the little world called society.

They introduce lords and ladies; they throw the

glamour of wealth and rank around their plays.

That appeals to the average American as much,

if not more, than it does to the European. It

is a fact--a sad fact--that a great many Americans
would like to see a monarchy over here, and these

63William Dean Howells, "The New Taste in Theatri-
cals,” Atlantic Monthly, XXIII (May, 1869), pp. 6h3-6hu.

u2

people all like to hear about the titled
aristocracy. We have a large class of people

who affect a liking for anything European, while
they have a contempt for America. . . . There-
fore, at the present time, I think a European
society drama, with a few titled personages
figuring in it, stands a better chance of success
than an equally well written and stageg American
play picturing the life of our people. U

When Herne did show some originality in writing an
American drama of ideas, the critics were quick to cry
European influence, giving little credit to the possibil-
ity that Herne arrived at his notions of drama from
American experience. In the Chicago Tribune review of
Margar§t_Fleming, the critic bluntly labels Herne as
Ibsen's “disciple," but ”cruder."65 Lars Ahnebrinck

writes of “the Ibsen-inspired play Margaret Fleming."66

 

There is no conclusive proof that Herne was influenced by
67

Ibsen, as Arthur Hobson Quinn has shown. Influence or
not, the interesting fact is that the critics assumed
Herne had to be influenced from abroad. Howells'flctional
playwright, Brice Maxwell, has the same problem. The
critics say of his play, ”In its highest reaches it made

you think, by its stern and unflinching fidelity to the

6hrHerne, ”The Present Outlook,” p. 25b.
65”Music and Theatre,” Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1892.

66Lars Ahnebrinck, The Beginnings 2: Naturalism i2
American Fiction (Upsala, 1930), p. 73.

67Arthur Hobson Quinn, "Ibsen and Herne--Theory and
Facts," American Literature, XIX (May, 19u7), p. 176.

AB

implications, of Ibsen."68 But, for Maxwell "the time had
passed . . . when he wished to have this said of his play,
not because he did not admire Ibsen, but because he pre-
ferred the original quality of his own work."69

The problem was, of course, the American inferiority

complex about things European. The N33 York Globe reviewer

 

of a potpouri matinee of scenes from earlier American
plays, in 1917, wrote, “Why in the name of mediocrity did
we have to be reminded that during the period that gave
Goethe, Victor Hugo, Pailleron, Labiche, Henri Beque, and
Ibsen to the world America's most illustrious contribu-
tions to dramatic literature were the works of James A.
Herne, Bronson Howard, Charles Hoyt, James Edward Murdock,
and Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie? Why rub it in . . .?"70
American plays were inferior, certainly, to the master-
pieces of Europe, but not inferior to much of the nightly
fare in the theatres of the Continent and England.

But the real issue is not so much inferiority as
imitation, pointless surface imitation which suffocated
any American breath in the plays. Daniel Frohman, a
leading producer of the period, wrote, ”The fault with

some of our so-called American plays is that, while the

68Howells, Story 2: 3 Play, p. 128.
69Howells, Story 2: a Play, p. 185.

70New York Globe, January 23, 1917.

 

uh

characters are dressed like Americans and talk like them,
they are simply disguised French and German people under-
going the trials and tribulations incident upon the

"71 Howells remarked

conditions of France and Germany.
that an American cow-catcher on a locomotive that nearly

runs down the hero in After Dark did not make it an
72

 

American play.

While an American drama was not a matter of clear
critical record, it was developing, separate from if not
equal to European drama. A visiting English critic,
William Archer, the translator of Ibsen, recalled that he
was sent to America in 1899 and told that he would find
only plays adapted from the French or native American
plays "which were beneath contempt."73 Instead, he found
what he considered to be vital drama. "Yet," he wrote, in
1923, "I am quite sure that there are many people in
America today who have not wakened up to the new state of
affairs, and are still convinced that there is no American
drama worthmentioningflrn4 On that 1899 trip, Archer was
most impressed by Herne's Griffith Davenport, "as strong

71Daniel Frohman, ”Tendencies of the American Stage,"
Cosmopolitan, XXXVIII (November, l90h), p. 18.

72Howells, “The New Taste in Theatricals,“ p. 6hu.

73William Archer, The Old Drama and the New (London,
1923), po 30

7hw1111am Archer, The Old Drama and the New, p. 3.

 

AS

and human a play as any modern stage can show. . . . One
day, perhaps, this noble and moving picture from national
history may be recognized as the cornerstone of a

national drama."7S Archer also saw Cyrano g3 Bgrggrgg
that season in New York: "Cyrano d3 Bergerac is a wonder-
ful piece of work, and in its right place-~on the French
stage, in the French 1anguage--no one admires it more than
I do. But it sickened me to see all America crowding to
it, while a noble and moving American drama, like Mr.

James A. Herne's Griffith Davenport, was played to the

 

most meagre houses."76

An American critic, writing in 192M of the difficul-
ties of the emerging modern drama at the turn of the
century, could perceive that "the movement started in
England and on the Continent and, as we can now see, in
America as well, though traditional American neglect of
American literature led the first alert critics on this

side of the Atlantic to lay all their emphasis on the

75William Archer, "The American Stage," Pall Mall

Magazine, XX (1899), P. 37.

 

76Archer, "The American Stage," pp. 25-26. It was
Archer's interest in Griffith Daven ort which preserved
the only surviving manuscript of Act IV. At Archer's
request, Herne sent a copy of the play; Act IV was found
among Archer's papers after his death. Herne's unpub-
lished manuscript of the play was destroyed in a fire in
1916.

H6

European innovators."77

If there was only limited awareness that drama was in
a state of becoming a native product in America, there was
even less awareness of what marked a play as American.
Surveying critical commentary, particularly at the end of
the century, one can find only a few generally agreed upon
characteristics, and even those few are vague. In 1898,
one critic found that all American plays were marked by
strong melodramatic situations, farcical scenes, horse-
play and song and dance, moral sentiments, and poetic
justice.78 Most American plays did exhibit these charac-
teristics, but English and French plays had them as well.
In fact, the newer American drama, of the kind Herne
wrote, deliberately avoided these cliches.

Native subject matter may be a sign that the play is
American. In the nineties, and later, the "real pump"
school built colorful farmhouses, New York restaurants,
slum streets, and second-rate hotel rooms on the stage and
peopled them with American citizens. The producer-
playwright Augustin Daly wrote, "Possibly our national
drama, from a literary point of view, will reach its best
period when native writers vie with each other in

77Percy H. Boynton, Some Contemporary Americans
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 192H), p. 199.

 

78Alfred Hennequin, "Characteristics of the American
Drama," Arena, I (May, 1890), p. 708.

M7

illustrating native character and contemporaneous fashions
and follies. It does not seem easy to get our best play-
wrights to practice in this field of exertion."79 Hamlin
Garland thought that a dramatist should look at life,
”special, definite facts of life," as the subject of his
American drama.80
But the use of native subjects and materials is not

enough to insure a national product if they remain surface

embellishments. Even a play like Shenandoah-~a Civil War

 

play across whose stage General Sheridan rides on horse-
back--is not very American, in the opinion of John.Gaanerfil
Playwright Bronson Howard observed that American drama "is
not by any means confined to plays on American subjects or
with American characters. . . . Subject matter has
nothing to do with the question."82

What, then, was a playwright to do to become an
American?

He could project the American personality, which is

79Augustin Daly, “American Drama," North American
Review, CXLII (May, 1886), p. b88. _ _

 

80Hamlin Garland, “Truth in Drama," Literagy World,
September 1M, 1889, p. 308.

81John Gassner, Masters 2: the Drama (New York,

19u0), p. 63h.

82Bronson Howard, ”American Playwrights on the
American Drama," Hagper's Weekly, Supplement, February 2,
1889, p. 98.

 

 

AB

quite another matter from using native material. Since
the dramatist is the inescapable product of his nation-
ality and inherits its temperament, he reflects, perhaps
without knowing it, something of the national spirit.83

At the turn of the century, William Archer wrote, "No
country in the world, certainly, has attained a more
comprehensive self-realization in literature than America
of to-day. Comprehensive, I say: not necessarily pro-
found; that is another question. American fiction is like
a complete ordnance-survey of the spiritual surface of the
land, already all-embracing, and becoming year by year
more minute in its detail. In this movement the stage has
certainly taken no lead, but it has made a spirited
attempt to follow.“8)4 Archer's English contemporaries
were creating the same kind of national personality on the
London stage, as playwright Henry Arthur Jones insisted:
"My contention is that the English drama should be the art
of representing English life, so far as is possible, in
all its fullness and grandeur and many-sidedness . . . to
exhibit the largest qualities of the most permanent and
vital qualities of English lire."85

83John Mason Brown, Upstage (New York, 1930), p. 8.
8[William Archer, ”The American Stage," p. 25.

85Henry Arthur Jones, Renascence g; the English Drama
(London, 1895), p. 2A2.

A9

Too often in America native materials passed for
native personality, an extrinsic not an intrinsic part of
the work. One critic wrote, "When it fifiational person-
ality] appears as something consciously imposed by the
artist upon his material, it is extraneous; when it is
exhaled from his work as one of the integral character-
istics, it is part and parcel of the creative personality
and, as such, a component of art."86 Herne's plays, as
we will see in detail later, are more than interesting
sketches of American materials. There is, as Archer
observed, a spiritual quality that is at once original
AmeriCan art and universal art, passing the bounds of a
narrow personal world of facts and implications.87

Howells found this quality in both Margaret Fleming and

 

Griffith Davenport.88

 

Along with a personality that is at once national and
universal, as paradoxical as that seems, American drama
developed a mind, becoming "a new intense drama of
thought,” in Sheldon Cheney's phrase.89 Americans,

86Isaac Goldberg, The Drama 23 Transition «aninnati:
Stewart Kidd Company, 1922), p. A9.

 

 

87Montrose J. Moses, The American Dramatist (Boston,
1925), p. 221.

88William Dean Howells, "Some New English Plays,“
Harper's Weekly, January 23, 190k, p. 12A.

89Sheldon Cheney, The New Movement in the Theatre
(New York, 191A), pp. 91-92.

 

 

 

50

however, did not probe as deeply or as subtly as their
European counterparts; they were neither "searching

”90 Playwright

psychologists nor profound sociologists.
Dion Boucicault, prophesying the future of American drama,
recognized that the "rather philosophical and scientific
mind" of the American playwright would "deal with popular
problems of the hour, whether social or scientific."91

Another characteristic of American plays was a
concern with the domestic scene, a preoccupation, as
Arthur Miller says, "not with Man but with the family, the
home, the private life, and . . . with sexuality."92 The
American playwright showed the members of a family “over-
- whelmed by the tragic or comic misfortunes that might
overtake any man,” wrote John Mason Brown.93

Howells felt that the domestic character of American
drama could be a liability: "It is a defect in our play—
wrighting that it [society] does not carry over from the
home to humanity. Its interest does not live from.man to
man, but from men to women, and from women to men; it has

90William Archer, "The Development of American
Drama,” Harper's Magazine, CXLII (December, 1920), p. 79.

 

91Dion Boucicault, "The Future of the American
Drama,“ p. 652.

92Arthur Miller, "On Social Plays," intro. to A View
From the Bridge (New York, 1955), p. 7.

 

 

93John Mason Brown, Upstagg, p. 10.

51

no implications; its meanings are for the given time and

place only.”9u By contrast, Howells noted, English plays
of the period kept audiences busy with their social impli-
cations after they left the theatre: "They compel you to

think of somebody besides the dramatis personae. They bid

 

you consider the whole social world."95 Domestic comedies
and problem plays, the staple of the Broadway stage, have
rarely reached the level of the universal.

An emerging American drama in the nineties, then, had
sentimental, moralistic, and melodramatic elements. It
did use native materials. But, more importantly, it ex-
pressed the American personality and spirit. It was a
drama of thought dealing with social and psychological
problems, at least in a superficial way. And it was con-
cerned with the domestic family scene rather than a
broader social panorama.

A school of American playwrights, writing a native
drama, no longer seems as important today as it did at the
end of the century.96 Modern drama is played on an

guWilliam Dean Howells, "Some New American Plays,"
Hagper's Weekly, January 16, l90u, p. 88.

 

95William Dean Howells, "Some New English Plays,"
Harper's Weekly, January 23, l90u, p. 12A-

96Augustin Daly believed that the drama was a world
wide form, that there was no need for a particular school
of American playwrighting. See "American Playwrights on
the American Drama," Harper'ngeekly, February 2, 1889,
p. 97.

 

52

international stage. Anouilh's waltzing toreadors may
live in a French milieu, Osborne's angry young men may
fight an English class system, Lorca's peasant women may
be trapped by Spanish social conventions, but these
characters are interesting not as studies in native
culture but as sincere human beings raising questions that
people anywhere might ask. The usual American plays of
the nineties rarely developed sincerenative characters,
much less characters with a universal appeal. The first
step toward a larger drama was an intensified Americani-
zation, even though exactly what Americanization meant was
only a hazy notion.

Herne wanted his plays to be American, and he suc-
ceeded. Theatre historian Barnard Hewitt wrote, “Herne
as actor and as playwright was greping toward an American
theatre art comparable to that which Andre Antoine was
creating in Paris and Otto Brahm in the Freie Buhne in
Berlin.“97 ”A truly American dramatist," wrote B. 0.
Flower of Herne in 1899.98 Griffith Davenport was “among
the first forerunners of a newer American drama,” wrote

George Pierce Baker, the director of the famous Harvard

97Barnard Hewitt, Theatre U.S.AL, 1668-1951 (New
York, 1959). p. 257.

98B. 0. Flower, "Mr. Herne's Contributions to
American Dramatic Literature," The Coming Age, II (1899),

p. A014.

53

"Workshop A7."99 “Margaret Fleming is a creation to

 

which we as a literary and stage-possessing nation may
point with justifiable pride, for none of the modern
dramatists of Norway, Russia, Germany, Spain, France,
Belgium or Italy have produced a better,” wrote an enthu-

siastic reviewer in the Chicago Tribune about the 1907
100

 

revival of the play.

It seems strange today that Herne has been so highly
praised by many critics. The praise, though, may not seem
so strange in the context of history, for Herne's achieve-
ment becomes more remarkable when we consider this theatre
which surrounded him. Hampered by the demands of commer-
cial interest and the popular audience that thrived on the
proven formulas, Herne wrote plays that showed a vital
inner form. Although he was never quite free of this
theatre around him, he wrote works which are more interest-
ing as plays than as antiques of a vanished America.

99George Pierce Baker, Modern American Plays (New
York, 1920), p. ix.

 

100W. L. Hubbard, "Margaret Fleming," Chicago
Tribune, January 30, 1907.

CHAPTER II

FORM AND FORMULA

To study the plays of James A. Herne as part of
American dramatic literature--rather than a relic of Amer-
ican theatre--one must first define the nature of drama as
an art form, attempt to discover what qualities in a play
are likely to give it life beyond two hours on the stage.
The search for definition is complicated by two important
considerations. First, unlike any other literary form,
the play is not completely formed until visualized in
terms of living expression; the script, fundamental as it
is to the live product, is not the whole play. Second,
the essential form of a play can be blurred by a variety
of problems inevitably raised in discussion of Herne's
plays, such as the nature of tragedy, the strictures on
the well-made play, and the influence of realism and
naturalism.

Herne may have written tragedy in Maggaret Fleming or

 

he may have written a well-made play in the Scribe manner;

he may have written local color realism in Shore Acres, or

 

he may have created a situation in which his characters
are aware that they are acting out the conventional plot

of the disowned daughter returning to a forgiving family,

SA

 

55

with babe in arms, on a snowy Christmas Eve. 0n the other
hand, in either of these instances he may have been
groping toward a dramatic form that has only tenuous
relationship to the formula of tragedy or of Scribe or
of Realism. A search for form, however, must be conducted
with the cold awareness that no amount of theory can
produce gold in Herne's plays if the prime matter is of a
baser substance. But the search is, nonetheless, worth
the effort: it suggests a direction which a student of
literature might take if he is to consider p1ays--in par-
ticular, the modern American drama-—within his ken.
Beginning his search for essential dramatic form, the
student is confronted by a perplexing variety of defini-
tions of "a play." For example, Alfred Hennequin in an
1890 manual for playwrights offers, "In the broadest sense,
a play is a complete and unified story of human life acted
out on the stage in a series of motivated incidents so
arranged as to excite the greatest amount of interest and
pleasure in the spectator by means of novelty, variety,
contrast, suspense, surprise, climax, humor, and pathos."1
This statement is an accurate description of many of the
clichézriddled plays of the time, with the emphasis on
arousing emotions and responses in the audience and
keeping up their interest by a flow of excitements.

1Alfred Hennequin, The Art 2f Playgrighting (New
York, 1890), p. 83.

 

56

Another early theorist defines the drama rhetorically as
"a species in the genus of fiction" whose business it is
"to produce an intense emotional effect, and such an
effect is most readily aroused by the spectacle of a
struggle. . . . A play, then, is a fight, a sort of a
glorified prize fight."2 Another theorist of the well-
made school makes a play a logical experiment, "a repre—
sentation of a series of events linked together by the
law of cause and effect and marching forward toward a
predestined culmination."3 Even though these formulas may
describe the practice of many plays, they were inadequate
to cope with new forms arising in the drama. William
Archer, whose theory leans toward well-made formulas, was
nonetheless aware of the new forces, particularly in the
plays of Maeterlinck. This awareness perhaps led him to
his vague definition of a play: "Any representation of
hnaginary personages which is capable of interesting an
average audience assembled in a theatre."LL Stark Young,
also attuned to newer drama, avoided precise definition:
"A play is a piece of literature about a section of life
written in such a way that it will go over the footlights,
2Charlton Andrews, The Drama To-day (Philadelphia,
1913), p. 9.

3Clayton Hamilton, The Theory 23 the Theatre (New
York, 1910), p. 3.

 

 

 

 

 

uWilliam Archer, Plgymaking--A Manual 2; Craftsman-
ship (New York, 193A), PITEB.

S7

in such a way that what it has to say it can say in the
theater. That is the sole test. If it can do this it is
a play, good or bad. It is a play in so far as the idea,
the content, of it is expressed in theater terms."5

These definitions share one major conviction: a play
exists, finally, in the living theatre. The script itself
is not the play. Frank Archer, an English actor offering
advice to playwrights in 1892, wrote, "One thing is very
certain, that the MS. of your play as it was first sub-
mitted to the manager, and the play that is being acted
every evening are two very distinct things."6 Under-
standably, the actor added that some of the best things in
the play were probably due to the manager and the actors.
Henry James, too, felt the performance and script insepa-
rable: "I don't see how you can have it unless you have
both, or you can have either unless you have the other.
They are the two blades of a pair of scissors."7 After a

performance of Hedda Gabbler he wrote, "The play, on

 

perusal, left us comparatively muddled and mystified,

fascinated but--in one's intellectual sympathy--snubbed.

SStark Young, The Theater (New York, 1927), p. 68.

 

6Frank Archer, How 22 Write 3 Good Play (London,
1892), pO 3.

7Henry James, "After the Play," New Review, I (June,
1889), reprinted in The Scenic Art, ed. Allan Wade (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 19u8), p. 237.

 

 

58

Acted, it leads that sympathy over the straightest of
roads with all the exhilaration of a superior pace."8
William Gillette, a playwright better known as the actor
impersonating Sherlock Holmes, put the matter as well as
anyone, in an address before the American Academy of Arts
and Letters:

Doubtless you all suppose that when a person
hands you a play to read he hands you that Play--
to read. . . . The person does nothing of that
description. . . . The Play which you were sup-
posed to be holding in your hand is not a Play
at all, but simply the written or printed Direc-
tions for bringing one into being; and that Play
will exist only when these Directions are being
followed out. . . . No one on earth can read a
Play. You . . . imagine as best you can what
the Play would be like; but you could no more
read the Play than you could read a Fire or an
Automobile Accident or a Baseball Game. The
Play--if it is Drama-~does not even exist until
it appeals in the form of Simulated Life.9

If the drama exists, finally, on the stage, what,
then, has drama to do with literature? It depends on what
one calls “literature." Many of Herne's contemporaries
felt that literature was the unnecessary interference of
fine writing. Joseph Jefferson, for instance, said, "You
may have all the good literature you wish in a play,--if
it does not interfere with the play's action. The absence
of fine writing in a play will not injure it if the story

8Quoted in Brander Matthews, "Henry James and the

Theatre," Bookman, LI (June, 1920), p. 391.

9William Gillette, "Illusion of the First Time in

Acting," in Brander Matthews, Pa era 22 Acting (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1958), PP. 129-130.

59

and construction are right. Literary merit will enhance
the chances of success if it be subservient to the
action."10 Belasco insisted the drama had no relation to
literature at all, that "the drama is a thing apart, that
no sort of judgement passed upon it outside of the theater

"11 In his own practice,

is of any significance whatever.
Belasco approached playwrighting in terms of the physical
stage. Working with Henry C. DeMille, in one instance,
Belasco moved about the stage, blocking out the action
before a line was written. From the stage, Belasco said
to DeMille, "Now Henry, give me a speech that begins here,
and takes me over here. Then I turn suddenly like this--
and see the woman I love."12 Thomas Dickinson, a critic
of the period, agreed with Belasco's practice of working
from the actor's point of view: “Kindred as it is to
literature, dramatic art is not literature. It starts
with the expressive functions of the body."13
Even further removed from literature was a non-

literary emphasis on the decor, the spectacle, of the

leoBrander Matthews, A §£B§X 23 235mg (Boston, 1910),
P. .

11"Literature and Drama," The Nation, CXXVII
(November, 1928), p. 511.

 

12Larzer Ziff, The American 18903 (New York, 1966),
p. 3230

13Thomas H. Dickinson, The Case 2f American Drama
(New Ybrk, 1915), p. 32.

 

 

 

60

play. Henry Arthur Jones complained of "the notions
widely prevalent amongst playgoers that a costume play
must necessarily rank higher as literature than the prose
play of everyday modern life."lLL The producer Daniel
Frohman accepted as fact the demise of literature in the
commercial theatre: "Conditions of life are different
from those of the period of the literary drama. The

stage was then the arena for literary giants. Now we can
get our literature in books, magazines, Sunday news-
papers.“ls Joining in the sentiments of commercial
theatre men, William Winter, the leading New York drama
critic, wrote, "If intended for the stage it [a play) must
possess action. If intended for the closet it must
possess literature. There are plays which are good to

act and also good to read, because they contain both
action and literature, but such plays are few, and when-
ever they are acted much of their literature has to be cut
out of them.”16 For many men in the theatre, literature
was something extraneous, something vaguely to do with
fine, poetic writing, not with the life of the stage.

1”Henry Arthur Jones, "Literature and the Modern
Drama," Atlantig Monthly, XCVIII (December, 1906), p. 798.

 

1SDaniel Frohman, Memories of a Manager (New York
1911), pp. 151-152. " ' ’

16William Winter, The Wallet 2f 21mg (New York,
1913) , p. 562.

 

61

Their vision was 1bmited by a narrow definition of
"literature;“ they seem to associate literature with
“literary,“ in a dilettantish sense of that word.

From outside the theatre, Howells could look in and
observe, regretfully, “Our dramatists seem to be submis-
sive to the hmpudent assumption of the theatre that a play
cannot be good if literary, or other than the worse for
its literature."17 By contrast, in English plays, espe-
cially in those of Henry Arthur Jones and Shaw, he could,
"taste the literary quality."18 Howells choice of Shaw
as an example suggests that he had in mind a quality quite
apart from the dilettantish when he found "literature" in
a play.

If theatre people were inclined to look at literature
as an obstacle to effective production, there were those
at the other extreme who, like Charles Lamb before them,
preferred to construct the play in imagination rather than
see it done, often shabbily, on the stage. Odell, the
chronicler of the New York stage, for instance, wrote,
"Personally, I should deem Margaret Fleming, like certain
Ibsen dramas, more stimulating to read than to see in

17William Dean Howells, "The Recent Dramatic Season,"
North Americag Review, CLXXII (March, 1901), p. A69.

18Howells, "The Recent Dramatic Season," p. A69.

62

action on the stage."19 Lamb could read Shakespeare at

home; Odell could not read Margaret Fleming if he wanted
to. It was not printed. Few American plays before 1900
were printed for the sound economic reason that no copy-

right protected them. A printed play was virtually

anyone's property.20

The lack of published plays is discussed by two Henry
James characters in the essay "After the Play":

Doriforth: I mean our contemporary drama. To
begin with, you can't find it--there's no text.

Auberon: So much the better!

Doriforth: So much the better if there is to be
no criticism. There is only a dirty prompter's
book. One can't put one's hand upon it; one
doesn't know what one is discussing. Thers is
no "Authority"--nothing is ever published. 1

With no script available, William Archer wrote, "the

divorce between the stage and literature was so complete

19George c. D. Odell, Annals 2; the New York Stage,
15 vols. (New York, l927-19E9), XV, p. 9.

20When, for instance, an unscrupulous manager toured
the Midwest in his version of Hearts of Oak under the
title Oaken Hearts, Herne had little control over his
property. The best he could do was get an injunction
against the use of so similar a title, and then tour in
his own play. On January 9, 1881, the SE; Louis
Republican ran this announcement: "Hearne's s c 'Hearts
of Oak' combination will open the season at the lympic
theatre this evening. Last season we had Dicky Lingard's
'Oaken Hearts,‘ which Hearne's lawyers said wasn't the
thing. 'Hearts of Oak' has Hearne's name tacked to it as
a guaranty that it is the Simon-pure original and in no
danger of injunctions and lawsuits."

 

21Henry James, "After the Play," p. 236.

63

that people entirely lost the habit of reading plays, and
have as yet imperfectly recovered it."22 However, with
the publication of Shaw and Ibsen they were beginning to
read plays again, and one critic even credits the improve-
ment of the stage to the revival of the written drama.23
Even without a script, a play has been considered
literature for an audience, or “books by substitution."2u
What the script gives to the reader is the barest outline
of dialogue, but that is all he needs. In a narrow sense,
as Clayton Hamilton.wrote, the dialogue is the "only
purely literary element" in a play.25 It is also, Stark
Young wrote, the most important element in the theatre--

"26 For Pirandello, the words are

"what survives is words.
primary: "The literary work is the drama and the comedy
conceived and written by the poet; what will be seen in
the theatre is not and cannot be anything but a scenic

translation, always and necessarily inferior to the

22William Archer, The Old Drama and the New (London,
1923), p. 252.

23Dickinson, The Case 3: the American Drama, p. 31.

 

 

 

2“George F. Reynolds, "Plays as Literature for an
Audience,” University gf Colorado Studies! Series in
Langgage and Literature, IV (July, l9g3), P- 5.

 

 

25Hamilton, The Theogypgf the Theatre, Po 5.

 

 

26Young, The Theater, p. A6.

 

6A

original."27 Some playwrights, he concludes, write only
for translation: "Nothing but material for actors, to
which actors will give life and consistency on the stage.
. . . But for us the theatre must be something else."28
The student of literature works properly with the original,
not the translation, but he works in the knowledge that a
play is intended for performance, where, as Stark Young
explains, the play "is no longer a word on a page but is
translated into another medium, the theatre, where it may
pass from poor literature to at least better theatre, or
shrink from good literature to very poor theatre."29

However, anything other than the dialogue is extra-
1iterary, becoming merely a description of action, not
part of the essential movement of the play as literature.
Susanne Langer has said,

A playwright who writes only the lines uttered

in a play marks a long series of culminating

moments in the flow of the action. . . . Modern

playwrights sometimes write pages of instructions

to the actors. . . . Such "stage directions"

are really literary treatment of the story . . .

because they do not partake of the dramatic

form. . . . The lines of the play are the only

guide a good director or actor needs. What makes
the play the author's work is that the lines are

27Luigi Pirandello, "Theatre and Literature,” in
liaskell M. Block and Herman Salinger, The Creative Vision
(New York, 1960), p. 111.

 

28Pirandello, “Theatre and Literature," p. 112.

 

29Young, The Theater, p. Al.

65

the highlights of a perpetual, progressive action,

and determine what can be done with the piece on

the stage.30

The text, then, has primacy; it is the material with
which the literary student works, even when he thinks in
terms of translation. He creates the dramatic form from
the dialogue, as Lamb preferred to, in the quiet of his

study, which leaves still unanswered the question of what

form emerges as these words become drama.

FORM

Distinctions between literature and play, between
book and stage, however, skirt the basic quality of a
play. Sheldon Cheney suggested this quality when he de-
scribed the "new drama" at the turn of the century as "the
art of soul crisis."31 Even Daniel Frohman, a practical
day-to-day producer recognized that "the subtle quality of
a play is the essence embodied in the feeling it pro-
duces."32 There is little need to labor the point.
Emotion is the basis of the drama, even though emotion is

often lost sight of outside the theatre. "Art," Susanne

3OSusanne Langer, Feeling and Form (New York, 1953):
p. 315.

3J-Sheldon Cheney, The New Movement in the Theatre
(New York, 191A), p. 259.

 

 

32Frohman, Memories, p. 1A3.

66

Langer writes, "is the creation of forms symbolic of
human feeling."33 Robert Corrigan.moves along the same
lines in a recent essay: "Most serious contemporary play-
wrights are dramatizing a condition, and therefore they
need a dramatic form which, as Ionesco put it, 'progressed
not through a predetermined subject and plot, but through
an increasingly intense and revealing series of emotional
states.”3h
From the critic's point of view, the primacy of
emotion raises the problem of the objectification of the
subjective emotional responses: "The initial data for
determining the effect of a play, then, are our own per-
sonal impressions, stripped as far as possible of irrel-
evances; and it is upon them that our critical structure
must always be built. These impressions are strongly
emotional, and it is extremely difficult to apprehend our
emotions intellectually."35 From the director's point of
view the primacy of emotion raises the problem of under-
standing the emotional effect the playwright wants the
audience to apprehend. Alexander Dean, in what was for

years a standard college directing text, wrote of the

33Langer, Feeling, p. A0.

 

3hRobert Corrigan, The Modern Theatre (New York,
196A), p. xvii. '

3SAlan Thompson, The Anatomy of Drama (Berkely,
19142) p p0 ’48.

 

67

emotional quality in art, "The artist or creator must
first have had within himself the highly developed gift of
being deeply moved emotionally and intellectually by some
object in life. . . . Having the greatness to be moved,
the artist then has in turn to move us. The purpose of
art, therefore, is to stir us emotionally and intellectu-
ally in the same manner in which the artist was moved when
he received his inspiration to create."36
Whatever the problems raised by an emotion-based
approach to drama, the approach leads to dramatic art.
Stark Young, a man of the theatre and a man of sound lit-
erary judgment, wrote, "The history of any art is a history
of man's states of mind and spirit, not of the objective
world around him. To be ignorant of that is to be igno-
rant of the theater as an art, and leads to a mere muddle
of resemblances and recognitions, a confusion between life
and the theater."37
The idea of the primacy of emotion in the drama is,
of course, nothing new. William Arrowsmith, the classical
scholar, complains of violation of the emotional experi-
ence of the Greek drama: "Up to now the most conspicuous
failure of both the traditional and the new critics in
respect to Greek tragedy has been the failure to realize
36Alexander Dean, Fundamentals 2f Play Directing (New
'York, 19A6), p. A.
37Young, The Theater, p. 26.

 

 

 

68

turbulence: turbulence of experience, turbulence of
morality in the process of getting made, and the turbu-
lence of ideas under dramatic test."38 But even if the
concept is not new, the nineteenth century theatre--
blinded by tears of emotionalism-~was too often unable to
perceive essential emotional form. But it is unfair to
suggest that everyone was blind. One critic, for instance,
wrote of the art of Laura Keene, a famous actress, "The
heart writes for the brain; as the mimic scene goes on, a
sort of illegible shorthand creates the impression to
which the drama of the night is entitled."39 The critic
seems to be aware of an emotional base under the drama,
not of surface emotionalism which often passed for emotion.
William Gillette approached acting as if he were recre-
ating an emotional experience in each performance. "Each
successive audience . . . must feel--not think or reason
about, but £221--that it is witnessing, not one of a thou-
sand weary repetitions, but a Life Episode that is being
lived just across the magic barrier of the footlights.
That is to say, the Whole must have that indescribable
Lire-Spirit."ho

38William Arrowsmith, "The Criticism of Greek
Tragedy," Tulane Drama Review, III (March, 1959), p. 3A.

39John Creahan, Life of Laura Keene (Philadelphia:
'ROgers Publishing Company,—1897), p. 39.

"OGillette, "Illusion of the First Time," p. 133.

69

George Pierce Baker taught his playwrighting class at
Harvard that from emotions to emotions is the formula for
any good play: "The greatest drama . . . uses action much
less for its own sake than to reveal mental stages which
are to rouse sympathy or repulsion in the audience."Ll
William Archer stated in his treatise on playwrighting,
"The dramatic quality of an incident is proportionate to

the variety and intensity of the emotions involved in
it.""2

Critics, playwrights, actors, all agree that emotion
is central. The list of citations could go on, but it

remains only to cite Herne's theory:

The three real essentials of a good play were
these. First, it must be true and must deal in
a real way with some phase of life; second, it
must be expressed in the highest form of art;
third, it must be vitalized by having that which
moves the emotional nature--must have such human
interest as it appeals at once to the heart and
the imagination of the audience. Mr. Zangwill
[the playwright] said that a play might lack the
first two, but if strong in the third essential
it might become a success, though it could not
be called a great play. That was the case with
my "Hearts of Oak." It was as true as I knew
how to make it when I wrote it, and it was ex-
pressed in as good art form as I then knew. Of
course, I see now that it was crude and often
silly; but it did possess the third essential.
It had real human interest--that vital something

"lGeorge Pierce Baker, Dramatic Technique (Boston,
1919), p. 360

u2William Archer, Playmaking, p. 97.

 

70

which held the people and made a strong im-

pression.LL
Such direct emotional experience of truth, Alan Downer
believes, is "the characteristic of the most vigorous
American drama after nearly two centuries of develop-
ment."m‘L

When emotion and appeal to the heart become the cen-
ter of a discussion of the dramatic art, obvious dangers
appear. Too much emphasis can, and usually did in nine-
teenth century drama, "bring forth an empty dramatic shell
that is without the informing light of the true artist's
conception, and is unredeemed by any literary distinction,
but which tricks the emotions into a momentary response.""S
When Alexander Woollcott asked Mrs. Fiske whether emotion
was the essential thing, she replied, "I am afraid of the
word. It has been depreciated by 'emotionalism,' whatever
that may mean."u6 John Gassner is opposed to too much
cant about the importance of emotion in the drama. He

reminds us that "it was emotionalism that made the pre—Druni

"3James A. Herne, "The Present Outlook for the
American Drama," The Coming Ago, I (March, 1899), p. 25A.

 

uhAlan S. Downer, American Drama (New York, 1960),
p. 12.

 

"SSheldon Cheney, The New Movement, p. 261.

"6Alexander Woollcott, Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on
Actors Act ing and the Problems of Productioanew York,
1.9 7 9 pp. ”I590

 

71

nineteenth century stage so abysmally bad.""7 Neverthe-
less, emotion is the basis of dramatic form; one needs
only to keep a balance, recalling that mere emotionalism
is no more drama than pointless slaughter on the highway
is tragedy, though both emotionalism and carnage may be
elevated to drama when they are given artistic form.
Shying away from emotion, one can of course go too
far the other way, into a logical scientific approach to
art. But logic, as one critic observes, "won't work
(unless we mean the illogical nature of human life, logi-
cally presented). Logic in any sense is a test of reason,
and to make rationality the touchstone by which to judge
works which succeed only by an appeal to the emotions is
to fall into the error of neo-classic criticism."LLB Usual
schooling in fact and logic is the education of thought;
artistic training is the education of feeling. The logical
approach is the approach of rhetoric, discursive reason,
which is, as Langer writes, another thing altogether from
art: "Good discourse seeks above all to be transparent,
not as a symbol of feeling, but as a vehicle of sense; the
artistic form is strictly bound to the literal function.

'That is why such writing is not poetry; the writer is not

"7John Gassner, The Theatre in Our Three (New York,
195A) , p. A65.

uaAlan R. Thompson, "Melodrama and Tragedy," PMLA,
XLIII (1928), p. 825.

 

 

72

free to create whatever semblance of intellectual or
hmaginative experience his motif, a discursive thought,
puts in the reach of his imagination, but is committed to
the envisagement of one living experience-~the intellectual
experience of following this discourse."b'9

Art cannot be confused with an exercise in criticism.
"The natural result of the confusion between discourse and
creation,“ Susanne Langer writes, "is parallel confusion
between actual and virtual experiences. The problem of
'art and life,‘ which is of secondary importance for the
other arts, becomes a central issue in literary criticism.
. . . It promises well to throw the whole philOSOphy of
art into a welter of morals and politics, religion and

modern psychiatry."SO

The confusion.may exist in academic
study of literature: "The reason why literature is a
standard academic pursuit lies in the very fact that one
can treat it as something else than art. Since its normal
material is language, and language is, after all, the me-
dium of discourse, it is always possible to look at a
literary work as an assertion of facts and Opinions, that
is, as a piece of discursive symbolism functioning in the

usual communicative way. . . . The essential task of

criticism seems to be to determine what the special mode

"9Langer, Feeling, p. 303.
SOLanger, Feeling, pp. 23A-235.

73

of expression is, and how serviceable it is for saying
what the author wants to say."51

Part of the critic's task is to make some order out
of the emotional stages in the work of art, in spite of
the possibility that, considering the emotional individu-
ality of each critic, critical anarchy may result. Alan
Thompson writes: "Obviously such judgments differ from
scientific or legal judgments since their initial data are
matters not of fact but of feeling; and as everyone's
feeling is and must be peculiar to himself . . . it follows
that no aesthetic judgment can ever be final. It is al-
ways limited by the temperamental peculiarities of the
individual."52 William Archer seems to ask each man to
respond with his inner self and say, "That is true. That
is real."53

In the face of such possible critical anarchy, the
dramatist's task is to select symbols--actions and words--
that are most likely to objectify the specific emotional
state he wants to convey to his audience. Langer's broad
definition of a symbol, ”any device whereby we are enabled

to make an abstraction, including an abstraction of

SlLanger, Feeling, p. 208.
52Thompson, The énatomy oi Drama, p. A9.

S3William Archer, About the Theatre (London, 1886),
pp. 329-3A1.

 

7A

emotion,"5u serves well enough in this discussion. The
symbol chosen need not be limited to a narrow section of
life. Yet if he is to show the spiritual being, the
dramatist chooses recognizable words and actions. As
Chekhov said, and did in his plays, the only way to make
the hero‘s state of mind clear is from his actions; it
cannot be described discursively.55 Herne practiced what
he called "the important principle of selection" in his
own work.56 Especially in his later plays aimest every
action and every word serves as a symbol, an abstraction,
of a state of mind, created for the apprehension of the
audience.

The dramatist's script, then, with its carefully
chosen symbols of emotion is the prhmary interest of the
student. What is added in production.must enhance, but it
should not replace, the original symbolic intent of the
artist. Productions in the theatre have not always paid
close attention to the script; in fact, the literary

student may find the script barely recognizable amid the

S"Langer, Feeling, p. xi.

SSAnton Chekhov, Letters on the Short Stor the
Drama and Other Literary Topics, ed. Louis S. Fr edland
(New York, 192A), pp. 70-71.

56James A. Herne, "Art for Truth's Sake in the
Drama," Arena, XVII (February, 1897), reprinted in Alan
S. Downer, American Drama and Its Critics (Chicago:
University of ChicangPress, 1963), p. 2.

 

 

 

 

A‘-

 

 

75

color and movement and light. Eric Bentley is the most
outspoken of our contemporary critics in condemning the
practices of a theatre that violates the author's script.
In fact, he sees the present unhappy state of the theatre
as a result of a dichotomy of the theatre and the drama.57
As one example of the low estimation the theatre holds for

the playwright's symbolic piece, he describes aixnfbrmance

of Rosmershohm at the Yale Drama School: "I heard the

 

students comment on everything except Ibsen's lines and
Ibsen's meaning. The young men and women could lecture
you on lighting, costumes, géégg, action, direction, but
it seemed not to matter what was being lit, costumed,
decorated, acted, and directed."58 Stark Young, whom
Bentley admires, found the same situation in the Belasco-
dominated theatre: "You rarely, if ever, find Mr. Belasco
going to the bottom of a scene--much less a p1ay--to dis-
cover what is its essential shape and meaning. . . . He
does not create any line, any movement or business, that
carries the essential idea of the scene into what may be
visual truth."59

The emotional effects in drama are not the instant

S7Eric Bentley, The Playwright 23 Thinker (New York:
Meridian Books, 1957), p. 2A2.

 

58Bentley, The Plgywright fig Thinker, p. 2A3.

 

 

59Stark Young, "Belascosity," New Republic, XXXVII
(December, 1923), p. 95.

 

76

tears and laughter of theatrical gimmickry; they are the
product of the playwright's symbolic creation of states of
mind within the total fabric of his play.

Actually, talking about the symbols that present
dialogue and action we are talking about the content of
the play, content which is, as Henry James wrote, fused

with the aesthetic form,60

or, as Stark Young believes,
implied in its form and "not expressed until in its own
kind there is created a form for it."61 For Susanne
Langer, the content of the form is its hmport, or meaning:
"The meaning (or to speak more accurately of a nondiscur-
sive symbol, the vital import) is the content of the
symbolic form, given with it, as it were, to perception."62
Thus, every bit of subject matter must be used for artis-
tic effect, not to be debated but to be presented as
virtual experience.63 Any debate or discourse outside of
the emotional form is undramatic. Mary McCarthy has ob-
served how O'Neill found, in the later plays, that the
accumulated minutiae of action and dialogue become the
60David William Thompson, "William Dean Howells and
Henry James: The Rise of Realism in American Drama and
Theatre," unpubl. diss. (Cornell, 19A7), p. 232. Thompson

reaches this conclusion after a detailed study of James's
criticism.

61Young, The Theater, p. 71.

 

62Langer, Feeling, p. 52.
63Langer, Feeling, p. 256.

77

meaning of the play: "There was no truth or meaning
beyond the event itself; anything more (or less) would be
a 1ie.“6u

The form, then, of drama is an accumulated series of
symbols (the content) intended to express an emotional
state to an audience. It does not capture real life as a
camera captures surface reality; it creates a real life of
emotion and spirit. The camera technique on the stage--
real peOple, real life, real death—~gives only a delusion
of reality; the drama gives an illusion of reality. "The
dramatic is not a copy but an imitation. It is intent
upon effect; and that Coleridge rightly says, is illusion,
not delusion," writes E. E. Stoll.65 The drama, Susanne
Langer explains, is an illusion of experience, which
"always creates the semblance of mental process-~that is,
of living thought, awareness of events and action, memory,
reflection, etc."66

The audience is asked to be aware of the illusion
which is placed before it, not as a piece of feeling which
invites audience participation in the impression the work
makes on them, but as an expression of emotional states,

éuMary McCarthy, Mar McCarthy's Theatre Chronicles,
1937-1962 (New York, 1 , p. 22A.__

 

 

65E. E. Stoll, "Literature and Life Again," PMLA,
XLVII (1932), p. 297.

66Langer, Feeling, p. 2A5.

78

created by the playwright. This distinction between
expression and impression, between form and feeling, be-
tween significance and sensation is essential in an
approach to the drama. Impression takes the point of view
of the actor in front of an audience; expression the point

67

of view of the creative process. It is this distinction,

it seems, that Ibsen had in mind when he wrote, "The Wild

 

Duck just like all my other plays is arranged from the
point of view of the audience and not from that of the
actor. I arrange everything as I visualize it while writ-

ing it down."68

In other words, he was concerned with
what his work was expressing to the audience, not with
what the actor could impress upon the audience. The ap-
proach is directly in opposition to Belasco's method of
writing from the stage.

The audience participation drama of impression--the
eye-watering stuff of mass entertainment--is only delusion,
not illusion. To feel sorry for the broken Lear standing
alone, his daughter dead in his arms, is to reduce him to
the level of the old man next door whose daughter has just

been the victhm of a hit-and-run driver. There is, of

course, an emotional response to that scene in King £323,

67Langer, Feeling, p. 1A.

68Henrik Ibsen, Ibsen: Letters and Speeches, ed.
Evert Sprinchorn (New York: Hill and Wang, 196A), p. 2A3.
Letter dated November 2, 188A, to August Lindberg, the
director.

 

79

but the emotion expressed is of another order altogether.

Perhaps another example will clarify. Romeo and

 

Juliet is taught by some high school teachers because it
is, after all, about some mixed-up adolescents who run
afoul of the unyielding conventions of the adult world, a
chaotic world they did not make. To ask for identificathi
is to ask students to participate, to say, "They're just

like us.“ When Romeo and Juliet was updated for Broadway

 

as West Side Stogy, Bernstein wrote a song for the lovers

 

 

called, "There's a Place for Us,"

a direct appeal to the
young to respond emotionally to their own plight in a
world made by adults which leaves little desirable space
for them. To go back to the original play, unperverted by
adolescent psychology or the Broadway stage, is to find a
very different emotional response, not participation, not
"isn't it too bad things are this way," but an emotional
perception which exists purely in the form of the work;
it has no substance in the world outside of it.

"Of all the questions relating to the drama," Henry
Arthur Jones wrote, "there is none so little comprehended,
so much misunderstood, even amongst the most constant

playgoers . . . as this question of 'being true to life'

on the stage."69 Langer has said, "The whole conception

69Henry Arthur Jones, Ronascence 2f the English Drama
(London, 1895), p. 235.

 

 

80

of theatre as delusion is closely linked with the belief
that the audience should be made to share the emotions of
the protagonists."70 Delusion denies that drama is art.
Realistic objects, truth to life, can reach the level

of significant form, as we shall see later, “so long as
they are set free from their normal embodiment in real
things so that they may be recognized in their own right,
and freely conceived and composed in the interest of the

artist's ultimate aim--significance."71

The danger,
though, is in being satisfied with the surface of life,
the photograph of the real pump or the aroma of a real
turkey being eaten by real Down East people.

Does this illusion have any specific characteristic
that distinguishes it from other illusions which are art?
Miss Langer believes it does. "Storytelling, narration,
is something quite different from story-enactment in a
theater. Many first-rate story-tellers cannot make a play.
. . . They project a history in retrospect."72 Litera-
ture, other than drama, is in the past, completed.
"Literature projects the image of life in the mode of

virtual memory; language is its essential material; the

sound and meaning of words, their familiar or unusual use

7OLanger, Feeling, p. 318.

71Langer, Feeling, p. 50.

72Langer, Feeling, p. 321.

81

and order, even their presentation on the printed page,
create the illusion of life as a realm of events--com-
pleted, lived, as words formulate them-~events that
compose a Past."73

But the drama is not in the past, not in memory
(except drama on the movie screen which, too, is in the
mode of memory, the memory of a dream7"); nor is it exact-
ly in a present moment. It presents "the poetic illusion
in a different light: not finished realities, or 'events,‘
but immediate, visible responses of human beings, make its
semblance of life. Its basic abstraction is the act,
which springs from the past, but is directed toward the
future, and is always great with things to come."75

It is this constant state of becoming-~the sense of
the future-~that distinguishes the drama and creates the
particular sense of tension that is the dramatic experi-
ence. As soon as the lights come up on a bare stage,
there is already the tension between what is there and the
expectancy of what will happen the next moment. It is
this sort of tension DeQuincy is talking about in his
famous essay on the Porter in Macbeth. While we listen to

the Porter's drunken words, we are at the same time aware

73Langer, Feeling, p. 306.
7ALanger, Feeling, pp. All-A15.
75Langer, Feeling, p. 306.

82

of what will happen next, what will happen inside the
castle when he finally does get the gate open.

"This tension between past and future, the theatrical
'present moment,‘ is what gives to acts, situations, and
even such constituent elements as gestures and attitudes
and tones, the peculiar intensity known as 'dramatic
quality.”76 This present filled with its own future,
Langer calls "form in suspense," a whole, indivisible
piece of virtual history.77 Robert Corrigan defines dra-
matic action in the same terms: "Dramatic action is
historical in the sense that the perpetual present of each
moment on the stage is created out of past events and is
directed toward a definite, if yet unknown, future."78

Such then is the nature of the symbolic action we
call dramatic. What structure does that action take?
Structure can be the logical cause and effect of the well-
made play, or it might be an intensified feeling that
Archer calls the passion, the "rhythmic aspect" of the
drama, a logic of emotion.79

In any case, the structure is something the artist

makes as an expressive element in his composition, without

76Langer, Feeling, p. 308.
77Langer, Feeling, p. 310.
78Corrigan, The Modern Theatre, p. xiii.

79Archer, The Old Drama and the New, p. A.

83

which there is no art. Stark Young writes, "There is one
point we recognize too little about all dramas, whether
tragedy, comedy, farce or melodrama. That is the truth of
structure, by which I mean the degree to which the struc-
ture of a drama is part of its idea, as the height of a
table is a part of its truth. . . . In a drama there is a
certain final expression that lies in the sheer order of
its development, in its proportions, in the emphasis of
its parts."80 For the student of literature this appre-
hension of order is a first concern. As Brander Matthews,
among others, has observed, the real literary merit of a
play resides in a solid structure.81
Logic of plot can be a surface thing as in the
Scribe-Sardou school of intrigue of the nineteenth century
drama. However, by the end of the century, as Howells ob-
served, plays were no longer prisoners of tight plotting
in that tradition; something new was emerging: "We be-
lieve that the American Drama, like the American novel,
will be more and more a series of sketches, of anecdotes,
of suggestions, with less and less allegiance to any hard
and fast intrigue."82 William Archer too saw new struc-

ture developing, especially in the looser form of Herne's

80Young, The Theater, p. 63.

 

81Matthews, A Study gf the Drama, p. 20.

82William Dean Howells, "Editor's Study," ngper's
Magazine, LXXIX (July, 1889), p. 315.

8A

contemporary, Maeterlinck, who played down the element of
crisis in the play. Maeterlinck's structure, Archer felt,
was more theory than practice, for in the plays themselves
Archer found that the Belgian playwright "constantly deals
with crisis and often with violent and startling ones."83
What happened to structure when a playwright became
more interested in states of mind than in clever intrigue?
The form, as Howells predicted, was likely to become epi—
sodic, impressionistic, or as Robert Corrigan calls it,
epiphanic: "They have developed a form (Chekhov was the
first to use it fully) which.might be called--to use the

terminology of the new criticism of poetry--contextual or

 

concentric. The structure of these plays, then, is

 

epiphanic; its purpose is to reveal-—literally 'to show
forth'--the inner lives of the characters. . . . In these
new plays a single situation has been stretched to take
the place of plot. This inflation of the situation into
the source of the dramatic action so that it replaces the
plot is the vital secret of the dramaturgy of the new

"8A

theatre. Susanne Langer describes the structure thus:
That rhythm is the "commanding form" of the play;
it springs from the poet's original conception of
the "fabel, " and dictates the major division of
the work, the light or heavy style of its presen-
tation, the intensity of the highest feeling and

83Apcher’ Playmaking, p. A7.

 

814Corrigan, The Modern Theatre, p. xviii.

85

most violent act, the great or small number of

characters, and the degrees of their develop-

ment. The total action is a cumulative form;

and because it is constructed by a rhythmic

treatment of its elements, it appears to grow

from its beginnings. That ég the playwright's

creation of "organic form."

This sort of structure describes Herne's practice in
the later plays, aptly if not completely. 0f Sag Harbor,
for instance, one reviewer commented upon the apparent
lack of plot and "stretches that drag a little."86 In
Griffith Davenport, in one critic's opinion, "he carried
the idea of a chain of episodes, almost to the point of
proving his theory."87 Herbert Edwards finds the movement
of Shore Acres to be much like a symphony.88 Herne's
friend, the artist J. J. Enneking, wrote, "Mr. Herne,
although an avowed realist, a grubber for unadulterated
truth, and a stickler for its objective representation,
d."89

was impressionistically incline

Episodic, apparently formless plays were nothing new

85Langer, Feeling, p. 356.
86Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

87Edwin Krows, Plgywriting for Profig (New York,
1928), p. 35.

88Herbert Edwards and Julie A. Herne, James A; Herne:
Rise of Realism in American Drama (Orono, Maine: Univer-
sity a? Maine, 196A), p. 97.

89Hamlin Garland, J. J. Enneking, and B. 0. Flower,
"James A. Herne: Actor Dramatist, and Man," ggena, XXVI
(September, 1901), p. 285

 

 

86

in drama, as Brander Matthews demonstrates.90 Aristotle
disapproved of them; so, possibly, they existed even then.
They only seemed new at the end of a nineteenth century
that had grown up on the tightly plotted thrill-a-minute
theatre.

A structure and form like this are most often called
poetic-~the description is of the quality of the play as a
whole; the term has nothing to do with diction. The dic-
tion, whether poetry or the baldest prose, is only a
smaller element assimilated into the larger art, much as
the composer asshnilates (and annihilates) a poem when he
makes a song. The discussion over poetry of words in the
drama may continue, seems in fact never likely to end, but
poetry in that sense falls to unimportance as the play
creates a form, which has been called a poetry of the
theatre.91

Susanne Langer considers the drama a poetic art
"because it creates the primary illusion of all poetry--
virtual history. Its substance is an image of human
life--ends, means, gains and losses, fulfillment and de-
cline and death. It is a fabric of illusory experience,
and that is the essential product of poesis. But drama is

9Osrander Matthews, Rip Van Winkle Goes 22 the Play
(New York, 1926), p. 56.

 

91Francis Fergusson, The Idea 2f 3 Theater (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955).

87

not merely a distinct literary form; it is a special
poetic mode."92 In the same sense, Hugh Davies insisted
that the dramatist is a poet simply by his "imaginative
ordering of experience," creating his own myth.93 Or as
Cheney saw it, "The poetry in a play can be measured only
by the breadth and delicacy of the dramatist's vision."gLL
Saroyan's comment that the playwright's art is an
"operation of the imagination in the realm of the normal,
having to do with spirit, rhythm"95 specifies the area in
which this poetic experience is ordered, the spirit. And
Stark Young's observation that the poetry is a force of
life seeking expression, seeking form, also suggests the
inner spiritual nature of a drama.96 Maeterlinck believed
that the poetry of a play is a secondary dialogue of the
soul underlying the actual words, "an intangible and un-
ceasing striving of the soul towards its own beauty and

truth."97

92Langer, Feeling, p. 306.

93Hugh Sykes Davies, Realism $3 the Drama (London,
193A), p. 58.

guCheney, The New Movement, p. 271.

 

 

95William Saroyan, "Coming Reality: Preface to The
Time of Your Life," Theater Arts, XXIII (December, 1939),
p. 3737

96Y

 

oung, The Theater, p. 82.

 

97Maurice Maeterlinck, "The Tragical in Daily Life,"
in Barrett H. Clark, Europgan Theories 22 the Drama, rev.
ed. (New York, 19A7), p. A13.

 

 

88

In this created rhythm of spiritual life, the virtual
history tracing the playwright's vision, lies the poetic.
Herne must have felt something of the kind when he said of

the controversial ending of Shore Acres, "And so you find

 

in 'Shore Acres' an unconventional ending, and one which
it seems to my poor judgement has the merit of poetic
suggestion, if nothing more."98
Francis Fergusson remarks the difficulty of precisely
defining this poetic inner spiritual action (the emotional
form)--especially in distinguishing it percisely from the
ordering of events that make up the surface plot--but he
finds it not unlike the Aristotelian "hnitation of an
action," which Aristotle clearly means to be something
other than plot.99 This kind of action, Fergusson be-
lieves, is defined practically, if not completely, in the
Moscow Art Theatre practice of stating the action in an
infinitive phrase, gygy, in Oedipus the action.might be
defined as "to find the culprit," a definition that encom-
passes both the surface action of the play and the spirit-
ual emotional action.100 The distinction, as Fergusson's
study indicates, is made clear more effectively through

definition. In Herne's case, the action of Shore Acres

 

98Lewis G. Strang, Famoug Actors gf the Day (Boston,
1899), p. 35.

 

89

might be defined as an attempt to find some sort of humane
order in a world disrupted by modern commerce and science,
but the plot of the play is clearly a hoary melodrama. In

a curtain speech at the Chicago opening of Sag Harbor,

 

Herne disclaimed any originality for his story (i.e.,
plot). "But," as a reviewer wrote, “what Mr. Herne justly

claims is originality of methods," creating "what a

"101

painter would call composition. Sgg Harbor creates

 

its own reality of virtual history, art, form.

Again, the concept of inner action, or the real ac-
tion, of the play is nothing new. Good plays of any age
and place have it. But to those searching for distinc-
tions for the modern drama, it often seemed new, if only
because it had so little place in the nineteenth century
drama. Sheldon Cheney, a vocal apostle of the “new move-
ment," wrote, “The new art of the theatre differs from the
old in depicting the inner spiritual forces that are
dramatic, rather than the chance happenings that are
merely theatrically effective."102 Robert Corrigan be-
lieves, "It is certainly clear that the theatre's general
pattern of development during this thme [at the turn of
the century] can.best be described as a gradual but steady

shift away from universal philosophical and social concerns

lOlchicago Journal, March 20, 1900.

 

102Cheney, The New Movement, p. 35.

 

90

toward the crises and conflicts of men's inner and private
life."103 Another critic writes that the new interest was
"in the inner crisis worked out in the outer clash."]’OLL
When the interest remained only in the outer clash, good
drama did not result in the plays produced at the end of
the century, as Walter P. Eaton, a Herne admirer, has
demonstrated.105

At the risk of overstating the point, we can cite any
number of others--critics, historians, actors, playwrights,
directors--who operate from the assumption that this inner
drama is the essence of the form of modern drama. The
1920's critic, Storm Jameson wrote, "From the external
action of a drama concerned with 'facts of life' it passes
to the spiritual progress of human beings.“106 Robert
Edmond Jones, the designer and director, wrote of "the
exploration of man's inner life, in the unexpressed and
hitherto inexpressible depths of the self."107 John Mason

Brown, the critic, felt that realism must stand more than

103Corrigan, The Modern Theatre, p. ix.

10hElizabeth Woodbrid e Morris, Dramgi Its Law and
ts Technigue (New York, 1 98), p. 135.

~—

 

l05Walter Prichard Eaton, The American Stage 23 Today
(Boston, 1908), p. 136.

 

106Storm Jameson, Mpdern Drama i2 Europe (New York,
1920), p. 70.

107Robert Edmund Jones, The Dramatic Imagination
(New York, 19Al), p. 15.

 

 

91

a test of outward truth; it must be spiritual truth behind

the surface veneer.108

Brown found this quality, inter-
estingly, in the work of Herne's daughter Chrystal in

Craig's Wife.109 John Gassner sees modern drama as es-

 

caping surface realism into "a realism of mind and spirit

that penetrates into the heart of some matter."110

Sculley Bradley writes in The Literagy History pg the

 

United States, "In the first years of the new century, the

 

dramas which best stand the test of time are concerned
with the mysteries of the human mind and spirit."111
(Herne's plays, incidentally, were performed regularly in
the first years of the century, much as a popular Broadway
show continues on the road and in revival for several
years today.) Mrs. Fiske, one of the great actresses of
the period, tried to express this inner quality when she
played Ibsen: "Great acting, of course, is a thing of the
spirit; in its best estate a conveyance of certain ab-
stract spiritual qualities, with the person of the actor
as medium."112 And finally, Montrose Moses writes of

108John Mason Brown, "Ramifications of Realism,"
Theater Arts, IX (1925), p. 779.

 

109Brown, "Ramifications of Realism," p. 780.

110John Gassner, "The Playwright Is Not a Camera,"
p. 3?.

111Literary History 2: the United States, 3rd ed.
rev. (New York, 1963), p. 1015.

 

 

112Woollcott, Mrs. Fiske, Po 76°

 

92

Herne's work, "He became interested, as Maeterlinck would
say, in conditions of soul."113
This form, this virtual history of states of mind is
complete in itself and timeless as a Grecian urn.
Tennessee Williams has written, "In a play thme is ar—
rested in the sense of being confined. By a sort of

legerdermain, events are made to remain events, rather

than being reduced so quickly to mere occurrences. The

 

audience can sit back in a comforting dusk to watch a
world which is flooded with light and in which emotion and
action have a dimension and dignity that they would like-
wise have in real existence, if only the shattering
intrusions of time could be locked out."11h "How can a
play become old," Pirandello conjectured, "if it is repre-
sented in action, in perfect, incorruptible form? Only
the time has come in which we have discovered it 'created}
in which all the reasons of its being are seen to consist
in the necessity of its being what it is; and no longer
new, never old, not arbitrary, or obscure, or imprecise,
or unfinished, but finally necessary in every way: that,
113Montrose J. Moses, "The Drama 1860-1918," Chapter

XVIII in The Cambridge History of American Literature,
Vol. III TNEw York, 19A77, p. 285.

11”Tennessee Williams, "The Timeless World of a
Play," introduction to The Rose Tattoo (New York, 1951),
pp. Vlil'ix.

 

 

93

and that alone, which it had to be."115

This expressive organic form is violated when ele-
ments are added for other values--to be photographic, to
impose tragedy, to be melodramatically exciting. In many
of the plays at the turn of the century-~especially those
of Klien, Walker, Broadhurst, and Belasco-~Richard Burton
found that the playwrights were not imitating action but
copying something they vaguely called life and its prob-
lems, something which could be the basis for discursive

116

presentation. The problems of real life cannot be

resolved in a play, as Pirandello has shown dramatically

 

 

~*_-.

lems in a work of art refuse to be reduced to the problems
of daily living. He has said,

Their irreducibility consists in their expression
as representation. Think of Hamlet: to be or
not to be. Take this problem from Hamlet's mouth,
empty it of Hamlet's passion, conceptualize it in
intellectual terms, and in the light of criticism
you.may play with it as long as you like. But
leave it there on Hamlet's lips a living expression,
an active representation of the torment of that
life, and the problem of being or not being will
never be resolved in eternity. . . . And these
problems are in that form, and will always be,

for everyone, problems of life, thus, they live
through the form, through the expression. They

115Luigi Pirandello, "New Theaters for Old," in
Haskell M. Block and Herman Salinger, The Creative Vision
(New York, 1960), p. 123.

116Richard Burton, The New American Drama (New York,
1913) , p. 203.

 

9A

are able to live in this way becauii their
expression is finished, completed. 7

Pirandello concludes, "In Art what was created new remains
new forever."118

Not art for art's sake, but as Herne put it, art for
truth's sake, a truth of organic form. Herne described
the shaping of this form during the composition of S2233
£3332. He worked on the script, first called 223 Egg-
thornes, during a vacation trip to Maine, the setting of
the play:

What an exalted idea of God one gets down in that
old pine state! One must recognize the sublimity
which constantly manifests itself there. . . .

In such a spot a man must realize, if he never
realized it before, that he and this planet are
one, a part of the universal whole. Under the
influence of such spiritual surroundings Tpp
Hawthornes struggled to adapt itself to a new
environment. It sloughed off its old skin and
took on new form and color. Its stage people be-
gan by degrees to assume the character and affect
the speech of the typical men and women of Maine,
imbued with all the spirituality and intensity of
coexistent life. Stage traditions vanished. Egg
Hawthornes lost its identity and emerged a sur-
vival of the fittest, and Mrs. Herne called it
Shore Acreg. I have been autobiographical be—
cause I wanted to show what a persistent force
truth is, and how it compels the unconscious me-
dium to express it. I did not put myself to the
task of writing Shore Acres as it now stands; it
grew, and I grew With it; and while I did not
realize all its spirituality until its stage
presentation set that spirituality free, still

 

 

 

117Pirandello, "New Theaters for Old," p. 122.

118Pirandello, "New Theaters for Old," p. 129.

95

it must have had possession of me while writing,

or I could not so have written.
The experience illustrates what Herne meant when he said,
"Art is a personal expression of life. The finer the form
and color and the larger the truth, the higher the art."1-20

To return again to the literary student who reads a
script in search of form: his task is analogous to the
task of a musician reading a score. The musician.must
have an inward hearing of the work, an imagined sense ex-
perience which turns the score into music--a difficult
task.121 The student of drama reads a script as an imag-
ined sense experience, not as discursive matter. He
begins with the work lg 3232, aware, as Langer says, that
"the understanding of a work of art begins with the intu-
ition of the whole presented feeling. Contemplation then
gradually reveals the complexities of the piece, and of
its import."122

In a theatrical production of the work, a student may
find something quite other than his own imagined sense
experience; he may in fact see something quite unlike the
playwright's imagined experience, which raises again the

vexing problem of reading a play as opposed to seeing it

119Herne, "Art for Truth's Sake," pp. 7-8.

120Herne, "Art for Truth's Sake," p. 8.
121Langer, Feeling, p. 137.
122Langer, Feeling, p. 379.

96

in the theatre. Like all students of the drama, Bentley
feels a strong watchdog interest in what happens to a
script in the theatre:

The defenders of the arts of the theatre are
infected by the commodities of the theatre once
they forget that all the arts of the theatre are
means to one end: the correct presentation of

a poem. It goes without saying that a dramatic
poem is a particular kind of poem: that the
stage poet must visualize stage action in all
its intricacy; and that there is such a thing as
undramatic poetry, as the theatricalists always
remind us; I am reminding them--since they end
by throwing out poetry altogether--that there is
also dramatic poetry. Now poetry which is dra-
matic, being shaped to the human throat, and
directed at the human heart and head, cannot but
be readable. What are the great theatrical
pieces that make boring reading? Is Oklahoma!
an instance? If so, it is comfortingwio know
that the plays of Shakespeare, Congreve, Moliere,
Ibsen, and Shaw are not. Even O'Neill grince
of melodramatists, is highly readable.12

 

When the student of literature reads a play he tries
to apprehend the single impression, the whole not the
fragments. Even when he reads a play that may be consid-
ered only a theatrical curiosity of the nineties, as
Herne's plays have been considered, he reads first for
that single impression and only secondarily for signs of
naturalism or realism or stage techniques and the like.
Herne's reviewers did perceive, sometimes hazily, a larger
form struggling to complete itself in his work. Managers,

for instance, feared that he was getting too "arty" in his

123Bentley, Playwright pp Thinker, p. 2A2.

 

97

plays. 12A Exactly what they meant by "arty" is unclear,
but their attitude is probably reflected in this review

which appeared when Shore Acres opened: "Those who know

 

Mr. Herne need not be informed that there is a large vein
of the poetic genius running through his fibre. He dis—
likes to be tied down and bound by the conventionalities
of the past in his dramatic work, and he prefers to pro-
duce an effect that will appeal to the intelligence and
sentiment of his audience, rather than to arrive at his
conclusions in the old stereotyped fashion."125 A re-

viewer of a revival of Shore Acres in 1910 recognized that

 

it belonged to a dying race of plays, but "it lives be-

"126

cause it is larger than its defects. A reviewer of

the original production of Sag Harbor was puzzled by the

 

form: "As a coherent series of character sketches the
thing is true, and has the pungency and zest of truth.

But Sag Harbor is not merely a series of character

 

sketches, it is also a play; and as a play . . . it fairly
makes you groan."127 The reviewer responded to the truth

of the sketches (the form?) but could not quite make them

12”Julie A. Herne, "Biographical Note," in James A.
Herne, Shore Acres and Opher Playg (New York, 1928),
p. xvii.

125Boston Journal, February 23, 1893.

126

 

Boston Transcript, February 8, 1910.

 

127Boston Evening Transcript, October 25, 1899-

98

out as a conventional play.

Reading Herne's manuscript plays, Montrose Moses
wrote, "I am sure that were his plays printed, even though
they might seem strange to the ear in their sentiments,
their melodramatic passions, the rhythms of life itself
would grip at moments with such force as to give us pause
to think that they were written between 1890 and 1899."128
For rhythms of life, for form, the student of literature
searches as he reads the plays today.

The dramatic form, then, with which we are concerned
is based in emotion which is objectified in symbols of
language and action, creating an illusion of reality, a
virtual history, in an ever-becoming future, not in the
past mode of memory. It may be loosely plotted, but it is
unified by the controlling poetic vision of the playwright
into a timeless entity, complete in its own rhythms of
life, real of itself, not of the world around it.

Essential form can be realized in works that are
called realistic or tragic or comic or well-made problem
plays, but such terms, while they identify particular
qualities of the works, are perhaps best distinguished
from essential form by calling them formulas. The desig-
nation "formulas" is not intended to suggest irreverence,

128Montrose J. Moses, The American Dramatist (Boston,
1925), p. 211-

 

99

but merely to suggest irrelevance to essential form.

The requirements of formula need not strangle the
virtual form of a work. If they do, it is because the
formula is adhered to without understanding, becoming an
end in itself, not a means to expression of an inner idea.

The Old Homestead may be realistic local color of the

 

Spore Acres variety, but does it have virtual form? Death

 

2; g Salesman may be an exercise in modern tragedy, but
does it have form?

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the strug-
gle between formula and form was intense. One instance is
exemplary, the case of Wagner. No matter what Shaw or
Nietzsche may have made of his ideas, Wagner's major con-
tribution to the dramatic species of opera is in essential

form. His one comedy, Die Meistersingpr, is built around

 

the conflict of form and formula. The guild of master-
singers has established formulas for creating poetry and
song, and any aspiring artist must stand trial to prove

his competence within the rules. Young Walter faces the
trial--more for amorous than artistic reasons, to be sure.
Beckmesser, the ludicrous score-keeper of the guild, knows
his formula so well, and follows it so blindly, that be-
fore Walter's trial song is finished, Beckmesser's markings
on the chalk board have defeated the young man's origi-
nality. In the end, Beckmesser is publicly exposed as the

fool he is, and Walter, in an inspired burst of song wins

100

the acclaim of all. But Walter hesitates to join the
guild. Why should he? He has won Eva, and he does not
need the guild's guidance in his own poetry. Hans Sachs
finally convinces him that his free spirit is welcome and
needed in the guild: form can find a place within formula.
Wagner expresses this idea in the emotional form of the
work. By any boy-gets-girl formula, the emotional climax
of the work should come in the victory of Walter's "Prize
ESong," but the real climax, the most moving moment in the
vvorkg comes in the following scene as Sachs convinces
Wéilter to join the guild. And the final chorus hails the
iviLsdom of Sachs, not the victory of Walter.
At the risk of reducing the marvelous complexities of

Dihe Meistersinger to allegory--which it most definitely is

 

n-C>t—-one may remark that the aspiring young Walters of the
Sfiicond half of the nineteenth century, Wagner among them,
hild to fight the guild. Some dramatists, in fear of
BEBckmesser's chalk board, gave in and followed the rules,
tile formulas. But the best of them--Ibsen for an in-
Stanceufound an essential form and learned to live with
tlae established formulas of the well-made play or classi-
<3ai.tragedy, or the newly postulated formulas of realism
ahd natural ism .

The conflict continues into the twentieth century,

‘fhere one could cite Six Characters in Search of an Author

 

‘is a dramatic example. But Pirandello resolves his

101

conflict between the formula theatre and the form-seeking
characters in quite another way: there is no victory

chorale at the end. But that is the twentieth century.

FORMULA: NATURALISM AND REALISM

In literature we try to make a distinction between
Realism and Naturalism. Naturalism is said to have a sur-
face of gloomy and sordid low-life details-~the slice of
life--and a foundation of philosophical determinism. In
the drama the distinction is difficult to make. One can

find in Margaret Flemipg, for instance, a factory girl who

 

is the product of her environment and a lecherous husband
who is the victim of his animal desires. Their union is a
sordid affair; neither has any moral sense. Margaret
Fleming could be called naturalistic.129 But Margaret is
the central character, and she is a triumphant humanist.
The play gains form from the expression of her states of
mind.

One could say, as a theatre critic has, that natural-
ism is "doing things naturally," presenting life as it is
found.130 Or one might say it is "doing away with

129Dorothy S. Bucks, "The American Drama of Ideas
from 1890 to 1929," unpubl. diss. (Northwestern University,

19AA), p. A5.

130Bruce Carpenter, The Way 2: the Drama (New York,
1929), p. 178.

 

102

established forms and principles and the free expression

of anything in anyway."l3l

One might use the term indis-
criminately, as Allardyce Nicoll does: "The producer's
task was to secure an impression of reality on the stage.

This tendency towards naturalism . . .."132

One might
note, with John Mason Brown, that a dramatist "had to
realize that outward naturalism--in other words, those
details devoted to documenting the physical life of the
body--has little to do with, and could only serve as an
impediment to, the interior and spiritual stuffs."133
But one will do better than any of these if he listens to
John Gassner: "Naturalism . . . did not cause any changes
in dramatic form that were not implicit in realism as
practiced by courageous playwrights."l3u That is the
point. Naturalism had little effect on dramatic form. In
fact, in the theatre, naturalism most often defines acting
and setting, but not a play. Since we are concerned with
form here, and naturalism as a literary idea had little

effect on the form of Herne's plays, we will look at it

only briefly, examining those aspects of naturalism that

131Carpenter, The Way pf the Drama, p. 178.

132Allardyce Nicoll, Late Nineteenth CentupygDpama,
1850-1900 (London, 1959), p. 3A.

 

 

133John Mason Brown, prematis Personae (New York,

1963), p. 25.

 

13"John Gassner, Directions ip Modern Theatre and
Drama (New York, 1965), p. 69.

 

 

 

103

had some effect-~mostly bad--on the drama.

The slice of life technique on the stage demanded a
loose construction, or, as one critic said of French
Naturalistic plays, "In a word, a Naturalist play is not
'constructed,‘ and comes to no conclusion; hence it is
neither a work of art nor a lesson in morality."135 The
slice of life, strictly followed, allowed no structure at
all for the play, or more precisely, no action upon which
to build a structure. Another critic observed: "Stage
naturalism chooses background, atmosphere, and mood in
lieu of action."136 He makes a useful distinction: "The
naturalist . . . does not intensify actuality like the
realist, nor does he transform it like the idealist; he
endeavors to reproduce it."137

Thus, if there were a purely naturalistic play, it
would be done without art of any kind. Carried to its
limits, this sort of naturalism might be an eight-hour
show of a man asleep. That is a naturalistic slice of
life, but it is not drama, although it may be argued that
it is art, of a sort. By contrast, dramatic art "consists
in treatment and interpretation. Now naturalism neither

135P. M. A. Filon, Modern French Drama, trans. Janet
E. Hogarth (London, 1898): p. 66.

 

136Fpank W. Chandler, Aspects pg Modern Drama (New
York, 191A), p. 33.

137Chandler, Aspects pi Modern Drama, p. 32.

10A

interprets its material nor subjects it to any process of
treatment."138 Aldous Huxley wrote, "One can imply the
existence of the whole Truth without laboriously cata-
loguing every object within sight."139

Naturalism also descends to the lowly. Alan Thompson
describes the movement as in large part "inspired by the
feeling that the stagey hero of tradition no longer repre-
sented anything real in actual life, and that on the
contrary the little man or woman alone could do so."ILLO
These little men and women dngusted William Winter who
was upset with Daly for exposing the New York public to

L'Assomoir, and even more upset that the Zola play should

 

be popular.]‘"1 Popular, vice may be; but it has no rele-
vance to dramatic form. "No great school or art," Henry
Arthur Jones wrote, with.more indignation than understand-
ing, "can ever be founded upon the study of vice and
ugliness and disease."l"2

Naturalism may concern itself with sociology.

Corrigan describes the invigorating effects of social

138Filon, Moderp Fpench Drama, p. 65.

 

139Aldous Huxley, "Tragedy and the Whole Truth,"
Vgpgpnia Quarterly Review, V11 (1931), p. 18A.

luOThompSOD, Anatomy p£ Drama, p. 10.

1A1w1111am Winter, Life pg David Belasco (New York,
1918), p. 185.

1LizHenry Arthur Jones, Renascence 23 the English
Drama, p . 25A.

 

 

105

interest on the playwrights of the nineties and after:
"Thus for nearly three decades the theatre had a vitality
of spirit and a forcefulness of manner which it had
lacked for better than a century. . . . To the playwright
writing at the time, the human and social problems, which
were the source materials of the naturalistic play, ap-
peared capable of solution if only man and society would
learn to use their common sense."U43 Boucicault, a play-
wright in the period, could find little dramatic source
material in sociological problems: "The drama is no
longer an imitation of human passions and weaknesses; it
is a philosophical school of sociology for the illustra-
tion and argument of ethical problems!"luu He could not
share the zeal for sociology, but he saw it around him in
the work of others.

Naturalism may be scientifically objective or mathe-
matical, in the Zola manner.l"5 The plot should show a
cause—to-effect sequence, a sense of necessity, and it

should show it objectively as a scientific experiment.1"6

1A3

Corrigan, The Modern Theatre, p. xiv.

 

luuDion Boucicault, "The Future of American Drama,"
Arena, II (November, 1890), p. 6A3.

lusEmile Zola, "Preface to Therese Raquin," in
Barrett H. Clark, Eurppean TheoriEs pffthe Drama, rev. ed.
(New York, 19A7), p. A01.

 

 

 

luéPaul L. Soper, "Backgrounds of Naturalism in the
Theatre," Quarterly Journal pf Speech, XXXIII (February,

19117) 3 p0 SI.

 

106

Strindberg said that drama should show even suffering and
death without arousing any emotion other than the joy of
knowing.lu7 However, scientific accuracy, Norman Hapgood

wrote, has little to do with the kind of emotional truth

that a play conveys.u*L8

Naturalism may presuppose a philosophy of determin-
ism--man the victim of forces beyond his control, "a
stress on meaningless mechanism, external causation,"
which "may reduce a tragic hero to a beetle, crushed under
a rock."l"9 The issue of free will vs. determinism, how-
ever, has more effect on the notions of tragedy than on
the form of the play. In a penetrating study of tragedy,

Alan Thompson wrote,

If one genuinely believes it [determinism], he
tends to see men as mere squirming parts of a
blind nature and hence essentially insignificant.
That plays continue to move even such determin-
ists is a sign that few men are able to accept
such a view emotionally, with all its implica-
tions, and suggests that the traditional view
that men are free and morally responsible is not
only something we want to believe, but something
we must believe, if we are to find any signifi-
cance or hope in our lives. If these conclusions
are sound it follows that the deeper a play goes
in the study of human conduct the more firmly it

 

l"7Soper, "Backgrounds of Naturalism in the Theatre,"
p. 51.

luaNorman Hapgood, "The Drama of Ideas," Littell's
Livipg Age, CCXX (February, 1899), p. 166.

 

l"((Orin E. Klapp, "Tragedy and the American Climate
of Opinion " Centennial Review pi Arts and Sciences, II
(Fall, 19sé), pp. A094A10.

 

 

107

must be based on the assumption of free will.
. . Most of the tragic plays of recent

times failed to be tragic . . . because their

power has beepSO undermined by deterministic

assumptions.

What naturalism there is in Herne's plays--slice of
life, ugliness, sociology, philosophy, or scientific
objectivity-~did not affect the larger form. For most
dramatists, naturalism became synonymous with a servile
imitation of nature and had nothing to do with art. John
Gassner writes, "Naturalism began to pall quickly in the
eighteen-nineties. Its objectivity came to be regarded as
cold and forbidding, and its representation of slices of
life ceased to command interest. In due time naturalism
was vulgarized into the mindless sensationalism associated
with Belasco productions and the meretricious photographic
detail of Hollywood motion pictures."151

What effect naturalism did have is associated with
stagecraft (which is where Susanne Langer puts itlse) or
with acting. Herne's stagecraft is always naturalistic
imitation. He furnished his stage with carefully chosen
props--real plows and pumps, and, as detailed earlier,

real food cooked on a real stove. His acting techniques,

too, are founded in naturalism, in this sense of being

ISOThompson, Anatomy pg Drama, P- 21.
151

Gassner, Theatre lg Our Times, p. 13.

 

152Langer, Feeling, p. 317.

108

natural. One theatre chronicler records his practice as a
director: "At rehearsals he had a great knack in di-
recting, and could draw abilities out of players that they
scarcely knew they had. He used to urge them to regard
their parts as real people--to know what those people had
been doing before the play began. The whole life of the
character was what the performer must have in mind. In
Russia, Stanislavsky had not yet started the Moscow Art
Theatre, yet here was Herne using Stanislavsky's philos-
ophy."153 Others have also observed this Stanislavsky
"method" in Herne's work.lsu Carried to extremes such
biographies of characters lead to absurdities like Mrs.
Clarke's study of the girlhood of Shakespeare's heroines.lSS
Garland recognized the extremes in a naturalistic approach
to acting, and he admired Herne's work not because it re-
produced people precisely, which it did not, but because
it "produced that effect upon an audience."156
Naturalism, then, did contribute to the theatre arts,
but as Gassner observed, the contributions to drama were

153Helen opmsbee, Backstage with Actors (New York,
1938), p. 172-

 

15LEdward W. Mammen, The Old Stock Company School 2f
Acting (Boston, 19MB), p. 63.

 

155Mary Cowden Clarke, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's
Heroines in a Series of Tales (New York, 18787.

lséfiamlin Garland, Roadside Neetings (New York,
1931), p- 76.

 

 

 

Q“

109

negligible or were incorporated into the broader movement
of realism.

Herne stands first among the American playwrights who
developed realism into dramatic art. It was his mission,
Alan Downer believes, ”to show the American theatre that
settings and properties could be something more than in-
animate actors, could be useful vehicles for expressing
theme and attitude."]'57 Others in the theatre were slow
in following Herne's lead; some, in fact, could not, or
would not, see where he was going. In 1908, Walter
Prichard Eaton asked, ”How far has the prose drama of
contemporary life advanced beyond the point where Herne
left it? How much nearer is the ideal goal of litera-
ture?”158

The development of realism in the drama was a hesi-
tant, sometimes misguided, progress through, roughly,
three stages: realism of surface, realism of content, and
inner realism.159 Many of Herne's contemporaries remained
behind in the first stage, or, if they moved to the second,
wrote perishable didactic problem plays, more journalism

than drama. Herne observed, ”I am reminded of the

8 157Alan S. Downer, American Drama (New York, 1960),
P. 0

158Walter Prichard Eaton, The American Stage 2; Today
(Boston, 1908), pp. 12-13.

159Downer, American Drama, p. 8.

110

erroneous impression which some people entertain as to
what realism on the stage means. As I understand it there
is poetry and hmagination in realism. Perhaps I do not
correctly interpret the meaning of the word, but I have
met so many different opinions on the subject that I have
come to the conclusion that no one has a very clear
conception of just where realism begins and ideality
leaves off.”160
A major source of the confusion over realism arose
from the misconception that life should be a mirror of
nature--that is, literally holding up the mirror to see
the surface of natural objects and real people reflected
perfectly in it--allowing the shadowy reflection, itself
not real, to pass for substance. Belasco, for instance,
put such a reflection as his proper goal on the stage:
”As I conceive it, the purpose of the theatre is to hold
the mirror up to nature. I know of no better place to
obtain the effects of nature than to go to nature it-
self.”161 The stories of Belasco's attempts to reproduce
nature are legion. For the finalé sunset of 222.§££l.2£
£22 Golden.Eggt, he sat for several evenings observing
just such a sunset over the California hills, then tried

to reproduce that effect in his stage lighting. Puccini

160Boston Journal, February 25: 1893'

161Toby Cole and Helen K. Chinoy Directin the Play
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company: [5535, p. [50.

lll

created the effect in a few strokes of poignant music in
his operatic version of the play, as The Girl and her
lover ride away into the sunset singing, "Adio, California.”
Puccini captures at least some of the emotional effect of
the united lovers; Belasco captured only the sunset. Or
in Madame Butterfly, Belasco divides the action in his
play by Butterfly's night-long vigil: "During the vigil
the night comes on. Susuki [the maid] lights the floor-
lemps. The stars come out, the dawn breaks, the floor
lights flicker out one by one, the birds begin to sing,
and the day discovers Susuki and the baby fast asleep on
the floor; but Madame Butterfly is awake, still watching,
her face white and strained.”162 The effect of this scene
is to reproduce the marvel of seeing night turn to day
before your very eyes, on the stage. It is interesting to
note what Puccini does with the same scene. The stage
effects remain the same but with the music of the haunting
”Humming Chorus,” he leads his audience through the pathos
and longing of Butterfly's vigil, ended ironically by
music depicting the life of the bustling harbor below,
where her unfaithful lover waits. The passage is still
pretty much scene painting (Puccini too has birds singingL
but it has at least some emotional content, even if it

162Arthur Hobson Quinn, Re resentative American
Plays, 7th ed., rev. (New York, , p. 3 .

112

tends toward melodramatic pathos.163

Not only did the sights and sounds of nature pass for
realism, they attempted to be better than nature itself.
An anecdote in point was making the rounds at the turn of
the century. At a rehearsal, Henry Irving upbraided a
stage hand for a poor imitation of thunder the man had
produced. “Please, sir,” replied the man, ”that wasn't me
that made the noise. It's the real storm outdoors: it's
ragin' so 'ard I couldn't 'ear you tell me when to be-
gin.”16h Such real reproductions of nature, it was
assumed, were exactly what the audience wanted in those
pro-movie days. Brice Maxwell, the playwright in The
Stag: 23,5 Play is well aware of this desire. Observing
the bathers at a public beach, he remarks drearily:

I’m surprised . . . that some realistic wretch

hasn't put this sort of thing on the stage. It

would be tremendously effective; if he made it

realistic enough it would be attacked by the

press as improper and would fill the house.

Couldn't we work a sea-bathing scene into the

”Second Chapter?” [his play in progress]. It

would make the fortune of the play, and it would

give Godolphin [the leading actor] a chance to

show his noble frame in something like the

majesty of nature. . . .* We could have Atland

[the hero] rescue Salome, and Godolphin could

flop round among the canvas breakers for ten
minutes, and come on for a recall with the,

163The music which bridges these two acts can be
played as one piece, without a break in the action, as in
the Belasco play. In the opera house, however, an act
division is usually observed after the "Humming Chorus.”

16“Andrews, The Drama To-day, p. hB.

113

gigginiésboth dripping real water all over the

Such a scene is what John Mason Brown would call ”the
fairy-tale version of realism, an effortless gift for the
appraisal of external values and a relentless determinathx1
to go no further."166 The effects may be real, but the
play remains tied to the smiling aspects of life.167
Godolphin, for instance, is not likely to drown in the
canvas breakers. The sequence ends, has to end, happily.
The American playwright, Brown has said, "exercises the
right, and his audiences prefer it when he does so, of
slapping on a fairy book ending of happiness and sunshine
and virtue triumphant.”168 The effect is literal, not
literary, or, as Robert Edmond Jones remarked, the plays
seem to be “dictated by the village iceman or by a parlor
maid peeping through a keyhole.”169 Journalism of this
sort seeks only what belongs to the sensational moment;
literature is made of more permanent Stuff than bathing
bullies and beauties, literally rendered.

Nor is historical accuracy the point. E. E. Stoll

165Howells, Th2 Stogy‘gf'g Play, p. 81.
166JohnMason Brown, Upstage (New York, 1930), p. 16.

167Bernard R. Bowron, ”Realism in America," Compara-
tive Eiterature, III (1951), p. 273.

168Brown, Upstage, p. 10.

169Robert Edmond Jones, Dramatic Imagination, p. 132-

11h

has pointed out that O'Neill's New England is not a true
history picture and should in no way be judged on that
ground; it has nothing to do with the play.170 Herne's
New England, too, is not a real picture but an imaginative
recreation of the locale. No real New England man would
disrupt his anniversary celebration as Martin does in
§hg£g‘§gggg, no matter how perturbed he might be.171 Of
course, he must interrupt, for the development of Herne's
play, but in life it is questionable that even a New
England farmer would exhibit such bad manners.

The error of literal representation lies in the atti-
tude it takes to the audience. It hopes not to egpress
anything to the members of the audience but to hmpress
than into participating in the play, to feel that they
too, if so moved, could plunge into the canvas breakers
up there behind the footlights. Susanne Langer writes,
”The representation power of art becomes a haven of refuge,
a guarantee of meaning in the familiar mode of actuali-
ty."172 Such work ”evokes feelings which obscure the

mmotional content of the form."173 The audience is given

a shallow critical power to judge a play by how well its

17°Stoll, ”Literature and Life Again,” p. 286.
171303ton Globe, February 21, 1893.

172Langer, Feeling, p. Sh.
173Langer, Feeling, P. 52-

115

surface corresponds with what they know, or think they
know, about the surface life around them. One is reminded
of the Citizen and his Wife in.2hg Knight 3£_thg Burning
Pestle. They interrupt a play with the demand that it
present things they know, trying to turn a romance into a
”realistic” play with a hero recognizable from their own
literal background.17u

To give the audience such.simple-minded power has
nothing to do with art. Stark Ybung has written, ”How
disastrous it is to arm an audience with some plausible
and single-minded realism! To set abroad in the theatre
of a democracy so dangerous a theory as that which says
that any man can judge the art of theatre by comparing it
with what he knows to be our daily facts, is disastrous.”175

He explains:

Here on the one hand is realism, basing its

truth on actual surfaces of living, seeming to
assume that it gives us things as they are. On
the other hand is democracy, in which all are

born equal, the pupil is as good as the master,
the ass as good as the rider. . . Everyone,
then, being naturally familiar with things as

they are and being born equal to anyone else is a
born judge of the theatre: Everyman is a full-
blown critic. Nothing, so far as this Every man
can tell, is needed but for him.to estimate how
much this art that he observes is shmilar to life,
not to life abundant, everlasting, and mysterious,

17“Beaumont and Fletcher The Knight_ of the Burnin
Pestle. in Six Plays, ed. C. B. Wfiee or London, 1915,.

1758tark Young, ”Realism in the Theatre," Yale
Review, XVI (1926), p. 12h.

116

but to daily surface displayed to his eyes and

ears. . . . Exactly as democracy has flattered

him, the politician and the wheedling press,

telling the merest hmbecile that he has a right

to judge his government's imperialistic prob-

lem . . . so too has the realistic theory

flattered hum. All he needs to know is nature

and life. He can tell you whether the work of

theatrical agt is true or not, by comparing it

with life.17

A particular type of realimu, local color, was most
likely to appeal to the audiences of the nineties as a
theatre piece they could participate in, and judge.
Reading reviews, it is difficult to decide whether they
saw a difference between Shore Acres and plays like Denham
Thompson's The Old Homestead. Both plays show the surface
of quaint New England life. For’many, one suspects, there
was little difference between Josh Whitcomb and Nathaniel
Berry. Both were recognizable real people, people much
like the city audience may have known in earlier days in
rural surroundings. One commentator observed the hm-
pression.made by Denham.Thompson's play, a series of
tableaus of country life: ”The old New York or Boston or
Chicago merchant, his fashionable but warm-hearted wife,
ah! they forget these times of club-life and opera-box in
this play. They are carried back to the countrified en-

vironment and feelings of childhood. The present seems

176Y’oung, “Realism in the Theatre,“ p. 116.

117

unreal, the theatrical hours seem the truth."177

In an impression like this, the play is not the thing;
rather the scenery and the properties, homely and recog-
nizable, are most important. A sector of a vanishing
America is captured for an increasingly industrialized
audience. In Dramatic Technique, George Pierce Baker,
explained how these plays were often.made: ”A writer
thinks of some setting that will permit him a large amount
of local color. . . . Recognizing or not that most of nus
local color is unessential to the real action of the play,
he does see that one or two incidents which are necessary
and striking may be set against this background."178

0f §h232 £2523, one critic observed, "All the practi-
cal appliances of our everyday life are there,-—whee1bar-
rows, scythes, tin dinner horn, cooking stove, and every-
thing you can think of down to numberless babies."179
Ingredients like these, he concludes, make the play “one
of the sweetest, most truthful representations of New
England life and character that has been presented.”180
When Herne created the local color of the Old South in

177Frederick E. McKay and Charles L. Wingate, Famous
American Actors 3f‘ggggy (New York, 1896), pp. 391-3957'—

178George Pierce Baker, Dramatic Technique (Boston,
1919). p. 2h .

179Boston Times, February 26, 1393.
180Boston Times, February 26: 1893-

118

Griffith Davenport, for instance, Montrose Moses praised
his handling of the simple details of Southern life, but
felt he had gone too far in over-accenting the "darky
characteristics” of his slaves.181 They become interest-
ing studies in themselves, ”real” negroes unlike the con-
ventional minstrel negro of the stage, but to make them
real Herne developed them.with such detail that they tend
to step out of the background, the local color, where they
belong. However, Horne felt such detailed development
particularly necessary in Griffith Davenport because ”the
conditions are peculiar to a time and place now unfamiliar,
and these in themselves so largely affect the psychologi-
cal development of the characters, that a clear grasp of
than is essential."182

The result was often a confusion between local color
realism.and the purposes of the drama. A reviewer of Sgg
Harbor said, ”Mr. Horne . . . has carried his creed to
such an extent that even his friends gasp at his temerity.
Stage realism.to be the most effective should be an
adjunct rather than a leading motive. . . . But when
realism is in preponderance and other and more vital mat-

ters are made subservient, and are only employed as foils,

181Moses, The American Dramatist, p. 220.

18ZMarco Tiempo, ”James A. Herne in 'Griffith
Davenport,'” Arena, XXII (1899), P. 380.

119

then its value is not only lost, but it becomes tedioustB3
Aside from setting, local color attempts to capture
realistic character types on the stage. Often, as ob-
served previously, these characters were the unsOphisti-
cated inhabitants of a rural America which disappeared
when the industrial revolution brought sophistication to
New England.lau The ”stage Yankee“ is one such type.
Certainly both Uncle Nat in.§hggg‘§g£gg and Captain Dan'l
in.§gg Harbor are the end products of a long tradition,
going back at least to Jonathan in Royal Tyler's Th3
Contrast.185 More direct ancestors for Herne's characters
are found in plays like Woodworth's Th3 Forest R223 or
Jones's Silver S222, although they are cruder than Herne's
creations.186 By the nineties the Yankee was often a
”simple-minded, phenomenally shrewd old man from New
England, with a soul that soared no higher than the finan-
cial value of a bar'l of applesass."187 In other words,
he had become simply a stage convention. By l90h, Howells
observed of 923 N2:_Minister by Denham.Thompson that it

laBBogton Transcript, October 25, 1899.
18“Boston Globe, February 21: 1893-

18SMarston Balch, ”Jonathan the First,” MLN, XLVI
(May, 1931), pp. 281-288. "'"'

186Arthur Hobson Quinn A Histo of the American
22223: 2 vols. (New York, 1927)TIT,'£¥2T,' '— -------

187Laurence Hutton, Curiosities g; the American Stage
(New York, 1891), p. ho.

120

used the genre without adding anything either real or
dramatic; ”it seemed a bad composition of all the old
conventions of the rural drama."188 Another reviewer, who
saw Charles Doty's Common.§gg§g Bracket in 190h, wrote,
”In the emotional rural drama the highest point was reached
by the late James A. Horne. The tendency of recent plays
of the kind, by reason of the commercial instinct to
please at any cost is toward conventionalism,“189
But Herne's stage Yankees are not the conventional
type found in the ”by gosh” drama. He comes closer to the
real materials of the regional play, a concern with folk
mores and folk beliefs and folk wisdom which are the essen-
tial lines that form the composition.190 Moses specifies
the main distinction of Herne's plays in his article in
the CambridggHistogy 2; American Literature: “Herne's
observation was based on profound appreciation of charac-
ter and human relationship, and the Yankee-type drama was
u191

dependent on outward eccentricity.

Drama in the formula of local color--the sumple,

188William Dean Howells, ”Some New American Plays,”
Hagper's Weekly (January 16, l90h), p. 90.

189'Current Plays,“ Theatre Mggazine, V (February,
1905). p. 33.

190Felix Sper, From Native Roots: ‘A Panorama 2; Our
Regional Drama (CaldweII,-IHEEB: The Caxton Printers,

9 Pf???

1910ambridgg Histogy‘gf American Literature, III, 285.

121

nostalgic creation of a bygone era--may seem strange to a
modern reader, with an atomic-age sensibility. Robert
Corrigan, writing particularly of the rural plays of Lorca
and Synge, said that regional plays ”are filled with human
significance, and they celebrate affirmatively man's
greatness, his inevitable defeat, and the possibility of
spiritual victory. But as much as we are moved by these
plays, we must ulthmately reject them as irrelevant to our
tunes. For most people living in highly industrialized
urban situations, these rural dramas can evoke only nos-
talgia. . . . It is a world in which the individual
insists upon.making every relationship a personal one--an
heroic society based upon the feudal aristocratic values
of honor, generosity, and revenge.”192

Thomas Beer, in Th2 M2213 Decade, considered Herne
the best representative of the type.193 But the question
for the student in search of drama is not one of type but
of exception. Did Herne go beyond the confines of the
type, the formula of local color, to create a larger form
in his drama? Are the plays to be regarded, as Arthur
Hobson Quinn suggests, as ”largely a combination of senti-

ment, humor, and faithful reproduction of humble sailors

l92Corrigan, The Modern Theatre, p. xv.

193Thomas Beer, Th2 Mauve Decade (New Ybrk, 1926),
p. 1170

122

and rustics”?19h Is this drama to be considered only a
part of the same literary movement which recognized the
fiction of Sara Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins, as Garland
thought?195 Those are the important questions when one
studies the plays.

Local color drama is a limited formula; the broader
realistic drama is not lumited by geography or nostalgic
antiquarian study, even though its surface elements may be
much like those of local color--settings which are usually
recognizable, characters who are convincing human beings.

Realistic settings began to be important long before
the rural drama had established itself. Sometime around
18h0 a strange thing happened on the stage: David Hill
discovered what he called a photograph, reproducing real
life, and by 1850 dramatic realism.began to crystalize as
a form of stage production, in acting, decor and mgggflgg
ggégg; such develOpments were effected by 1870.196 Im-
portant to this development was the box set, used possibly
for the first time in 1862, replacing the ”unrealistic"

drop and wing sets.197 Along with the box set came an

lguArthur Hobson Quinn, The Literature 23 the

American People (New York, 1951), p. 806.

195Hamlin Garland,‘A Son‘gf the Middle Border (New
'York, 1921), p. 332.

8196Gassner, Directions iglModern Theatre and 23552:
p.10

197Mammen, The Old Stock Companx, Po 30-

123

increasing use in stage furniture, replacing the stock
furniture and settings of the earlier theatre. “The aver-
age theatre of the sixties had about eight sets: a rocky
mountain pass, a dark wood, a light landscape, a throne
roam, a center door set, a chamber, a kitchen, a prison,”
with a few pieces of interchangeable furniture.198 When
these meager trappings were replaced by individualized
settings and furniture to suit the individual play, there
was a strong possibility that decor could submerge the
drama. Two Henry James characters discuss the possibility:

Auberon: Very likely that's the future of the
drama . . . an immense elaboration of the picture.

Dorriforth: . . . an hmmense elaboration of the

picture and an immense sacrifice of everything

else. . . . I have no doubt that the scenic

part of the art . . . is only in its infancy.

. . The probapgg extension of the mechanical

art is infinite.
Frank Archer gives this advice in his manual on playwrit-
ing: ”The public has been taught to look for this costly
display, and with the keenness of competition what was
once a luxury has become a necessity. Without this elab-
orate treatment many plays would have no chance of proving
acceptable."200

William Archer thought that the whole business of

198Mammen, The Old Stock Company, p. 30.
199James, ”After the Play,“ p. 232
2°°Frank Archer, How to Write a _G____ood P13 :11. p. ’45 -

12b,

realistic settings was suspect, had, in fact, little to do
with the realistic drama: ”Either you are familiar with
the thing represented or you are not; in the former case
you learn nothing; and have merely the childish pleasure
of admiring on the stage the real pump you see every day
in your own backyard; in the latter case you have no means
of testing the truth of what you see and must simply take
the word of the author."201 Especially must one take the
word of the author in an exotic play. In Madame Butterfl ,
for instance, Belasco allows the Japanese bride to punch
out three peepholes in the paper windows in her home, as
she keeps vigil for her lover. No audience apparently
questioned the realism of this act.202 But it is most
unlikely that a well-bred Japanese girl would carry out
such willful destruction on her house. Audiences, though,
had nothing to judge by, if they did not know Japanese
customs. They accepted the playwright's use of the
setting.

This new-found ability of the stage to be photo-
graphic, to spend its time and money on scenery and decor,

had a profound effect on the plays written for it. As

201w1111am Archer, About the Theatre, pp. 330-331-

202Nor do audiences today question Butterfly's action
in some productions of Puccini's opera, even though the
current MetrOpolitan production, directed by a Japanese,
shows her sliding back a panel.

125

Cheney has observed, the play was secondary to setting.203

Only when playwrights were dramatists first and mechanics
second, like Herne, did the setting become just one element
in the total production.

These settings were populated with people who could
be found in life. In Herne's plays there are fishermen,
farmers, a small-thme businessman, a circuit rider. As
noted before, these characters were created with a
Stanislavsky-like fidelity to a whole biography, to a
living person who has a past that has led him to his pre-
sent moment of action.

Such are the ingredients of the formula we have
called the first stage of realism--a realism of surface--
real people acting in real places. The reasons why such
a concept of realism is not likely to produce drama are
obvious if we reflect on the earlier discussion of form.
Hamlin Garland believed that realism was not a theory but
a ”condition of mind."20u He wrote, ”It [realism] has
only one law, to be true, not to objective reality, but to
the objective reality 23,2hg author 3323 it.”205 The
critic J. A. Symonds also felt that ”realism.is the pres-

entation of natural objects as the artist sees them, as he

203Cheney, The New Movement, p. 102.

 

20hHam11n Garland, ”Ibsen as a Dramatist,“ £3323, II
(1890), p0 82.

205Garland, ”Ibsen as a Dramatist," p. 72.

126

thinks they are."206 The artist cannot reproduce the
actual, only what he idealizes as his vision of the real.
Stark Young writes that he must ”convey pure idea” rather
than recognizable materials for their own sake.207 He
creates an ideal world of illusion, of virtual history,
not a temporal world of delusion, of actual history.
”Realism,“ Mary McCarthy believes, ”is forever beg-
ging the question--the question of reality. To find the
ideal realist, you would first have to find reality."208
Stark Ybung has said, ”To say that realism shows us life
as it is, became long ago such nonsense as only a simple
soul indeed would swallow, since at the very outset there
is no is-ness to life."209 Herne, too, was under no delu-
sion that a mirror of life could pass for art. He knew he

worked in an art form where "the ideal was the choicest

exrression of the real."210

The assumption that real objects and real men can be
presented on the stage, however, may be artistically

viable when such presentation is arranged to heighten our

206John A. Symonds, ”Realism and Idealism” Littell's
Livigg Age, CLXXV (October, 1887), p. 11h.

207Stark Young, ”Realism.in the Theatre,” p. 120.
ZOBMcCarthy,lghgg££g Chroniclgs, p. 229.
209Young, 'Realism.in the Theatre,” pp. 115-116.

210Garland, "James A. Herne: Actor, Dramatist, and
Man,” p. 286.

127

perception of them. William Archer wrote, "It [realism]
presents the commonest objects to us . . . and behold!
these commonplace things leap into new clearness and
undreamt of significance.”211 Even the "real pump" may
show us something if it is presented in a new light and
our attention is concentrated upon it through the artist's
selection and interpretation. Ibsen was always irritated
when peOple saw his plays as life rather than art; he
insisted on illusion and not reality as the basis of art.2212
But his ”contemporaries, and many of his critics and
commentators, failed to observe the ritual of handing over
their identity with their coats in the cloakroom as they
came into the theatre, and walked in, bringing with them
the conventions and prejudices of ordinary life, not
adopting those of the stage."213 One anecdote may serve
as summary statement on stage realism of the surface
variety. The noted French actor Got, who created the role
of the hunchback Triboulet in Hugo's Lg figi‘Slgégggg
(better known today in Verdi's operatic treatment,
Rigoletto) said as he prepared the part, I'I shall simply
elevate my shoulders in those scenes where I wish to call

attention to the fact that Triboulet is hunchbacked. . . .

leArcher, About the Theatre, p. 335.

212Peter F. D. Tennant, Ibsen's Dramatic Technique
(Cambridge, England: Bowes and BEwes, I958), p. 16.

213Tennant, Ibsen's Dramatic Technique, p. 15.

128

If I have merely the appearance of a bump, I shall be able
to make it disappear in those passages when Triboulet
ought to be simply terrible and pathetic.”21u Just enough
illusion to suggest the reality, but not too much photo-
graphic effect to cause a distraction from the intention
of the drama .

In the second stage of realism, the dramatist went
beyond the surface of life around hhm, and explored con-
temporary problems, both social and philosophical. Real-
iam became a teacher. Emma Goldman, for instance, saw
the theatre as a platform from which to awaken social
consciences: ”Perhaps those who learn the great truths of
social travail in the school of life, do not need the mes-
sage of the drama. But there is another class whose number
is legion, for whom the message is indispensible. . . .
Therefore another medium is needed to arouse the intellec-
tuals of this country, to make them.realize their relation
to the people, to the social unrest permeating the atmos-
phere. The medium which has the power to do that is the
Modern Drama, because it mirrors every phase of life and
embraces every strata of society."215 When the modern
dramatists became concerned with these social problems,

21hrArlo Bates, “Realism.and the Art of Fiction,”
Scribner's Magazine, II (1887), p. 2H7.

215Emma Goldman, The Social Si nificance g; the
Modern Drama (Boston, I9Ih), pp. 6-;

129

Storm Jameson wrote, they identified the drama with an
attack on existing convention, religious, social or intel-
lectual.216 Drama became concerned not with the older
questions of spiritual values or ethical questions, but
with material and social values, man and his fellows in

the social contract.217

”In the new plays,” Shaw stated,
”the drama arises through a conflict of unsettled ideals
rather than through vulgar attachments, rapacities, gener-
osities, resentments, ambition, misunderstanding, oddities
and so forth."218 In his own practice this conflict led
to discussion as a major source of the action. Examining
Ibsen's practice, Shaw wrote of a method which could
describe his own practice as well, ”Formerly you had in
what was called a well-made play an exposition in the
first act, a situation in the second, and an unravelling
in the third. Now you have exposition, situation, and
discussion; and the discussion is the test of the play-
wright.”219 Sheldon Cheney puts it another way: “In the

drama of thought story development is emphasized not for

its own sake but as an illustration of theme. . . . The

216Jameson, The Modern Drama, Po 136-

217Arthur Nethercott, ”Drama of Ideas," Sewanee
Review, XLIX (l9hl), p. 378.

218George Bernard Shaw, The intessence of Ibsenism,
3rd ed., reprinted by Dramabooks ifiew YbrE, 1937), p. 175.

219Shaw, Qpintessence, p. 171.

130

play is not developed primarily for a big scene . . . but
for a burning idea, for social passion."220
John Gassner sums up this second stage as "ahmost
forensic” in form and in tone, existing primarily for the
presentation of ideas and the examination of issues.221
The popular theatre of the nineties, and after the
turn of the century, did not think highly of such dramas
of ideas, as might be expected. William Winter, for an
instance, wrote, “Ibsen and his followers have altogether
mistaken the province of the Theatre in choosing it as a
fit median for the expression of sociological views,--
views, moreover, which, once adopted, would disrupt
society. . . . Since when did the Theatre become a proper
place for a clinic of horrors, and the vivesection of
moral ailments?'222 Daniel Frohman the manager, wrote,
”It must be remembered that the success of a play is due
largely to attractiveness, a subject for discussion around
the family hearthstone. . . . Unfortunately the 'problemfi

play or the freak drama always suggest subjects that are

not only often immoral, but portray phases of life, which,

220Cheney, The New Movement, p. 263-

BHZZIGassner, Directions lg Modern Theatre and Drama,
p. .

222William Winter, ”Ibsenites and Ibsenism,” in
Montrose Moses and John Mason Brown, The American Theatre

33 §g_e_1_1_ 21 _I_t_s_ Critics, 1152-19311 (New-York, 19311), p. 95.

131

though common, are grim and unattractive, if not actually
repulsive.“223
As Herne's plays reflect the first stage of realism
with their real kitchens, real meals, and real, down-to-
earth people, they also reflect this second stage of a
content of ideas that concern men in their daily life.
S2232 £2522, for instance, exhibits Herne's conversion to
Henry George's Single Tax. The plot hinges, in part, on
land speculation, involving a division of the old farm
into plots for a resort development. The play can be seen
as a condemnation of such speculation in the results it
has on the lives of simple, honest people. At the time of
its production the play did evoke considerable discussion
as a play of ideas based on Henry George.22}4 Even after
he became rich (ironically, with this play) Herne remained
a devoted follower of George until death.225 In a eulogy
in.ghg Single 12; Review, Henry George's son recorded
Herne's comment that his father's philosophy ”explained
what before was to him inexplicable, and that he would do

all in his power to preach it."226

223Frohman, Manories gf‘g Manager, p. lhh.

22kg. H. Waggoner, ”The Growth of a Realist: James
A. Horne,~ New England Quarterly, XV (March, 19h2), p. 63.

225Herbert Edwards, ”Horne, Garland, and Hen
George,’I Anerigan Literature, XXVIII (1957), p. 36 .

226 n w
Henry George Jr. James A. Herne Single Tax
Review, I (July 15, 1901): p. l. ' "‘

132

Also in Sgggg Agggg Herne puts in the hands of his
heroine a copy of Howells' A Hazard‘gf New Fortunes as an
example of advanced ideas. In Margaret Fleming, Horne
considers the then burning issue of women's independence.
On the surface Margaret resembles Ibsen's Nora, but only
on the surface, as we will see in detail when we examine
that play. It is for this use of ideas, the important
second stage in realism, that Horne is valued by many
critics. John Anderson, for instance, wrote, ”Here was
an idea, and it takes an idea to make the theatre live.
America was beginning to feel its way to a drama of its
own."227 Jordan Miller considers Horne ”the most hmpor-
tant American proponent of the realistic 'problem play.”228

It is obvious that this second stage had its limita-
tions. The use of the theatre as a sounding board for
problematic ideas is no more guarantee of drama than is
the attempt to present real peOple and real places. The
danger in such a play is the lure of ascending the pulpit
rather than the stage. Alan Thompson wrote, ”The drama-
tist with a thesis faces a dilemma: forcing his characters
to fit the thesis renders them unreal, but subordinating
his thesis to life-like characterization renders it

227John Anderson, The American Theatre an__c_l the Motion
Picture in America (New-YBrET_I9387, p. -___—-

228Jordan Y. Miller,.American Dramatic Literature
(New Yerk, 1961), p. 38.

133

confused or insignificant."229 Sheldon Cheney makes a
shnilar observation: ”Because the drama of thought is so
clearly a social force, it is easy to distort it to mere
propaganda, completely losing sight of the sensuous and
emotional elements, leaving only something drab and
didactic, like a sermon or a school lesson."230

Arthur Miller presents a cogent summary of the effect
the drama of ideas has had on playwrights subsequent to
the nineties: ”In today's America, the term 'social play'
brings up images which are historically conditioned, very
recent, and I believe, only incidentally pertinent to a
fruitful conception of the drama. The term indicates to
us an attack, an arraignment of society's evils such as
Ibsen allegedly invented and was later taken up by left-
wing playwrights whose primary interest was the exposure
of capitalism for the implied benefit of socialism or
communiam. The concept is tired and narrow, but its worst
effect has been to confuse a whole generation of play-
wrights, audiences, and theater workers."231

The real contribution which the drama of ideas has
made to the development of the drama is in its preparation

for the third stage of realism in the drama; an inner

229Thompson, Anatomy 2: Drama, p. 78.
230Cheney, The New Movanent, p. 26h.

231Arthur Miller, 'On Social Plays,” introduction to
A View from the Bridge (New York, 1955). P. 3.

13h

realism of spirit. Miller, again, writes: ”The tremendous
growth in our consciousness of social causation has won
for these writers [Shaw and Ibsen] their victory in this
sense: it has given us a wider consciousness of the
causes that form character. What the middle of the twen-
tieth century has taught us is that theirs was not the
whole answer. It is not enough anymore to know that one
is at the mercy of social pressures; it is necessary to
understand that such a sealed fate cannot be accepted."232
When.man no longer accepts and discusses social problems
and ideas but reacts to them, as Miller implies, the drama
moves on an amotional base not a conceptual base.
Pirandello puts the distinction between a drama of ideas
and a mature drama based on an.emotional framework in
terms of criticism: ”Because contemporary criticism does
not give enough weight to the absolute difference between
the philosophical problems set forth through concepts in
an intellectual construction and the problems of life ex-
pressed in the immediate representation of art--creator of
form, in this sense inviolable--very often today this
criticism.of contemporary works of art avoids probing as
deeply as it could, not merely into the representation of
spiritual debate accidentally expressed in the work, but
into the very objects of that debate, and tries instead to

232Arthur Miller, ”On Social Plays," P. 13.

135

discover its logical contradictions and looks only at the
conceptual design of the work of art. . . . But the con-
ceptual framework, on the one hand, is absolutely nothing
more than a pretext, a stimulus to create, and, therefore,
in the evaluation of the created work . . . could not and
must not find a place.“233

No one denies that good drama has always been con-
cerned to some extent with ideas, but if a play is
concerned with ideas alone, it is unlikely to be drama.
Even Shaw, whom we certainly think of most often in terms
of ideas, wrote, I'The material of a dramatist is always
some conflict of human feeling with circumstances; so
that, since institutions are circumstances, every social
question furnishes material for drama. But every drama
does not involve a social question, because human feeling
may be in conflict with circumstances which are not insti-
tutions, which raise no question at all, which are part of
human destiny.“23h Sheldon Cheney stresses the importance
of emotion to the drama of thought: “The drama of thought
is emotional drama with the emphasis transferred to under-

lying theme, appealing to the emotions and through them to

233Pirandello, ”New Theatres and Old,“ p. 12h.

2314George Bernard Shaw, ”The Problem.Play--a
Symgosium’ in Shaw 32 Theatre, ed. E. J. West (New York,
195 ), p. 59.

136

the intellect."235

Robert Brustein speaks specifically of Ibsen's Ghosts,
a drama of ideas with another dimension: “The validity of
the work is preserved because, on its deepest level, the
drama of ideas is always kept subordinate to a pattern of
tragic action. The central character, Mrs. Alving, is not
simply a raisonneuse, mouthing the author's opinions, but
also a tragic protagonist whose suffering demonstrates the
hollowness of even.the most emancipated opinions when not
backed with radical acts.”236

Thus, the final stage in realism in.the drama: the
inner drama of the spirit. When.Alan Downer writes, "Reab-
ism of character and situation are a prelude to realism of
action,” he uses ”action“ in the sense Francis Fergusson
or Susanne Langer use the term, the emotional action which
gives form to the work.237 Shnilarly John Gassner says,
”The pioneering realists . . . had in view neither plot
nor spectacle, regardless of the degree of illusioniam or
verishmilitude in production. Verishmilitude, for than,
was a.means for furthering a meaningful experience, just

as plot was regarded merely the means for sustaining an

23SCheney, The New Movement, p. 262.

236Robert Brustein, Seasons 23 Discontent (New York,
1965). p. 58-

237Alan Downer Fift Years gf.American Drama, 1900-
1950 (Chicago, 1951), p. E

137

action of social or psychological character."238

Another
critic speaks of this inner reality as “the result of an
analytical or psychological process within the artist's
mind« and a “reproduction of this process in the medium."239
The use of the word “psychological” is not to be confused
with the psychoanalyst's practice, but rather it refers to
the creative process by which the artist orders and ex-
presses the basic emotional states-—or ”soul states”--to
his audience. The final stage of realism, as we have
discussed at length earlier in the consideration of form,
is itself a realization of essential form, virtual history,
not representational reality.

One critic summed it up: "Thus our conclusion is
perhaps not a very striking one: that a certain amount of
realism is to be found in all periods of the drama, and
that it is not the particular asset of any period or
school."'2’4O Such an awareness led Mrs. Fiske, the actress,
to say of Ibsen's plays: ”I have found in his plays that
life-sized work that other players tell us they have found
in the plays of Shakespeare.'zhl And again, ”Many a play

238Gassner, Diggctipns lg Modern Theatre and Drama,

p. A7.

239Paul L. Soper, ”Backgrounds of Naturalism in the
Theatre,” p. 50.

2l-ioDavies, Realism.ég the Drama, p. 120.
2Lil-Woollcott, Mrs. Fiske, p. 60.

138

is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from
the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, some-
thing you can.gg£g£, something you can walk about in.
There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself."2)+2
No one would clahm that Herne's plays stand in any-
thing like the same rank as Ibsen's; yet there is that
same quality in his realism, a life-sized expression of
inner truth, not simply a homely backdrop of local color
or an exposition of ”modern ideas.” One chronicler of the
theatre, observed that his effects were too quiet to
satisfy the theatrical taste of the time: ”Like Duse,
Horne wanted to discard all tricks.”2u3 The comparison
is illuminating. Eleanor Duse wanted to do away with
surface tricks as Horne did. Even though.many who saw the
actress understood none of what she said, she conveyed to
her American audiences all the spiritual stages, the inner
development of the character through her external actions.
At tunes Horne seems to lose this thread of inner
realism.in the p1ays--concentrates too heavily on the
surface, or seems to be preaching an idea for its own sake.
When he does, the formulas of realism.hinder his inner
essential form from.developing. At his best, in §§2£g

Acres, he rarely loses the thread.

2haWoollcott, Mrs, Fiske, p. 61.
2h3Onmsbee, Backstagg with Actors, p. 171.

139

FORMULA: THE WELLAMADE PLAY

At the turn of the century, realism--especially that
brand of it served up as slices of life-~was regarded by
many as a healthy substitute for a wellwmade play prepared
from proven recipes by a master of the craft. Brice
Maxwell, the playwright in Howells' EEE.§£2£I.2£ 5 Plgy,
for instance, tried to free his realistic piece from the
conventions of the well-made play, but at every scene in
his script, he was advised by his star, Godolphin, to make
changes more or less structural to keep the play within
the conventions: “There was no end to his [Godolphin's]
inventions for spoiling the simplicity and truthfulness
of Maxwell's piece.”2hh Godolphin looked upon a play as
a recipe which would become a palatable product only after
constant trial and error with the quality and quantity of
ingredients.

Like the fictional Maxwell, the critic Ludwig
Lewisohn found such recipe theatre to be the most stulti-
fying obstacle in the path of an.emerging drama: "The
theory of the 'well-made' play installed the ingenious as
lords of the theatre and discredited the creative energy
of the great masters at the expense of their supposed
craftsmanship. It opened the doors of dramatic art to the

21mHoweiie, The Story 2; 5 Play (New York, 1898),
pp. 20-21.

1&0

type of mind that likes to solve conundrums and disentangle
puzzles and invent a new can-opener and treat the business
of both literature and life with astuteness, deftness, and
decorum."2)+S Lewisohn cites Bronson Howard and Augustus
Thomas among his contemporaries as examples of this kind
of playwrighting.286 Howard had remarked, in fact, of his
own work that he was unsuccessful when he tried tolggigg
plays: success came only when he tried to 22119 than?)47

Playwrighting is, of course, a craft, just as the
arts of fiction and poetry are crafts; and the playwright
must learn its elements. But Eric Bentley deplores the
notion that a play, particularly a Broadway-bound vehicle,
is built and patched, “pieced together, not composed with
one mania passion and intellect, but assembled by the
ingenuity of all who stop by at a hotel bedroom, preferably
during the rehearsal period."2u8 When a play is thus
constructed, playwrighting is denoted from the fine to the
useful arts, and not very useful at that.

If one looks upon a play as a patch work, he is pri-
marily concerned with structure and with the plot,

2("SLudwig Lewisohn, Th3 25353 Egg Egg §£ggg (New
Ybrk, 1922), pp. 90-91.

2M’Lewisohn, 2132 My; _a_n_<_l_ Egg m, p. 91.

2“7"Chronicle and Comment,“ Ihg_§223222, 1 (February,
1900), p. 51h.

S:hBEric Bentley, What 3g Theatre? (Boston, 1956),
p. 2 .

ihi

character, and conflict worked out within that structure.
The first of these elements, plot,--in the sense of a good
story which moves swiftly--is easy to mistake for drama.
Even if there are, in one critic's way of thinking, only
thirty-six plots, or more precisely, thirty-six basic
situations which.might be elaborated, the dramatist is by
no means boxed in: what he does with the story is what
matters.”49 Rather than emphasizing the basic situation,
George Pierce Baker defined plot as the ”story proportioned
and emphasized so as to accomplish, under the conditions of
the theatre, the purposes of the dramatist."250
Attention to arrangement and proportion in the plot
is the starting place for the wellamade play, as Donald
Stuart, a historian of the modern drama has pointed out.251
Eugene Scribe, among the most famous draftsmen of the well-
made play, was concerned above all else with plot that
moves along swiftly, so concerned, in fact, that it is
usually the incidents alone which develop in his plays.
Even Baker taught his classes the principle that "the in-
terest of the audience must be pointed by the incidents of
2("gGeorge Pierce Baker, Dramatic Technique (Boston,
1919). p. 63.
250Baker, Dramatic Techniqpe, p. 59.

251Donald Stuart, The Devglopment gf Dramatic Art
(New Yerk, 1937), p. 517.

1&2

the plot."252 But when the incidents of the plot become
the sole excuse for the play, the play is, more often than
not, a more excitement. Belasco is so easily the lack-
lustre example of all that is worst in the theatre of the
nineties that his practice comes to mind perhaps tooinuek-
1y: in this case, his acknowledged method of starting
with a plot idea and building a scenario from it is an
illustration of the extent to which emphasis on plot sit-
uations can be carried. He once remarked, ”Putting a

plot together was an easy matter; we had only to get a
series of eccentric situations, with love scenes and
bright lines."253 For Belasco, the possibilities of uti-
lizing the cigarette-case gun carried by E. H. Sothern in
ngg Chunley was a sufficient spark to fire off an entire
scenario.

When the playwright concentrates on plot, we have
pretty much the same old thing because ”in nine cases out
of ten it is built of material which has been used so many
times before that the carpenter who puts it together knows
whether or not he can trust it to sustain its own
weight.”258 The appeal of such well tried plotting is

irresistible. Even Henry James felt the necessity for

252Baker, Dramatic Technique, p. 55.

253w1nter, 293 Life 23 David Belasco, Vol. I, p. 3h3.

25“James L. Ford, "The Independent or Free Theatre of
New York,” Lippincott's Magazine, XLIX (1892), p. 375.

1&3

using it in his dramatization of The American, insisting
that while he loathed the method, he recognized "that his

only chance was in having, in a businesslike way, the

courage of it."255 He did, for an instance, keep a re-
mantic secret from his audience until the end of the play.
The early Horne plays also suffer from.sn excess of this
careful plotting. In Hearts 2f 925, everything works out
too smoothly in the well-worn plot of two men loving the
same woman. When Horne later used this same plot for §gg
Harbor, he called it ”an old story”--apparently assuming
that most of the audience could guess the obvious resolu-
tion of the triangle-~and turned instead to matters of
character and mood.

Wellanade plays often carry their ingenuity into a
subplot, more or less related to the main plot. When
there is no relation at all between.main and subplot, when
the two plots cross only occasionally if at all, the well-
made play falls apart. One of the hangovers of melodrama
in Herne's Driftigg 52233 is a secondary plot developing
the fortunes of two aspiring actors whose paths are fre-
quently forced to cross the paths of the main characters,
geographically, but have no contact, dramatically, with
the main plot. If these characters can be justified in
any way, it is as comic foils for the near-tragic main

255Henry James, Selected Letters, ed. Leon Edel
(London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956), p. 1&8.

lhh

characters. Horne himself found the subplot the weakest
element in the play when he reconsidered it years later.256

If the subplot is to be an integral part of the well-
made play, it must be directly involved with the main
action. Howells' Brice Maxwell discovers that the subplot
is only getting in the way of the serious play he is
trying to write. He finally decides that he has in fact
two plays and must write one serious play and one light
play, ”with the semi-comic motive of the love-business for
the motive of the whole” because ”the sin-interest will
kill the love-business, or the love-business will kill the
sin-interest.”257

Had Maxwell's playwrighting venture been postponed a
decade, he would have found himself under less pressure to
produce quick moving plots and subplots. Already in 1889,
Howells remarked his ”heresy that for a play a plot of
close texture is no more necessary than for a novel; that
for either, in dealing with modern life, it would be an
”258

anachronism, During the run of Shore Acres, Horne is
said to have remarked that the play of plot was "dead as a

doornail.”259 In Ibsen's Ghosts, Garland found "hardly

256Horne, ”Art for Truth's Sake,” p. 6.
257Howells, The Story gf’g Play, p. 70.

258Howells ”The Editor's Study,” Harper's Magazine,
LXXIX (July, 1889). p. 319.

259Ormsbee, Backstagg with Actors, p. 17&.

1&5

anything approaching plot.”260

The emphasis on involved plotting seems old-fashioned
today, but to say that it is old-fashioned is not to deny
that an interesting plot can be a central element in the
play. The twentieth century de-emphasis of plot has not
gone unlamented. Eric Bentley, for one, has remarked of
the well-made plays of Scribe, ”Plot without much else
makes better drama than.much else without plot."26l
Bentley is not in harmony with those critics who praise a
playwright for getting rid of dramaturgy: "Since the
onset of naturalism half a century ago, we have had a
spate of 'truth,‘ and by now we are again willing to ac-
knowledge that life is not art for the reason that chaos
is not cosmos. Which.means, among other things, that we
are willing to recognize the merit of the greatest non-
genius of the drama, Eugene Scribe.”262 A few years ago,
Howard Taubman reviewed an off-Broadway revival of
_Boucicault's intricately plotted The Octoroon and found it
“honestly affecting."263 He surprised himself by becoming

260Hamlin Garland, "Ibsen as a Dramatist," 5533;, II
(June, 1890), p. 75.

261Bentley, 313133 Lg Theatre?, p. 67.

262Bentley, £222.12 Theatre?, p. 67.

263Howard Tauhnan, ”Theatre: Fun and Kisses," Th3
New York Thmes, January 28, 1961, p. 13. See also Sidney
KEBIEE:-” -year-old Drama Still Speaks,” New York Times,

January 22, 1961, II, p. 3. Kaplan found that thE pliy
held the audience in spite of some creaking moments.

1&6

involved in the plot.

But, on the whole, nostalgia for the older formulas
of plotting, devised to hold the audience's attention to
the exclusion of everything else, finds little sympathy in
the theatre today. More important for modern dramaturgy
is the emphasis on the well-made, logical structure with
attention to exposition, climax, denouement, and matters
like the gggggpé’fgigg. When a critic in the nineties
discovered the virtues of a Pinero play or a drawing room
comedy he was most likely talking pure wellrmade structure.
If, on the other hand, he approached Shaw's TEE EEQ.§EBE£'
meg after an evening with Pinero, he would find a detached,
ironic awareness of the well-made structure: Shaw is not
taken in by what the characters are supposed to do to
build the structure of his play, even though he makes his
characters act, puppet-like, precisely as they must to
fulfill those requirements. When Tanner at the end of the
play resigns hhmself to Ann, he accepts her dominant ”Life
Force” at one level, but in the well-structured comedy he
also accepts the inevitable denouement of that structure
when he says, ”The trap was laid from the beginning" and
”It is very easy for you to call me a happy man: you are
only a spectator. I am one of the principals; and I know
better.” Part of the fun in the play is that Shaw too, of
course, knows better.

In the nineties and after, essays and texts written

1h?

to guide the playwright invariably focused on the well-
made structure. William.Archer in Playmaking, for example,
divides his book into a discussion of The Beginning, The
Middle, and The End, conciously indebted to Aristotelian
division.261+ He considers separate chapters on such mat-
ters as exposition, foreshadowing, logic, the peripety,
probability, climax, and anti-climax. Brander Matthews in
.£.§22§I.2£.£22.23522 states his primary concern with ”the
structural framework which the great dramatists of various
epochs have given their plays.”265 George Pierce Baker,
not as restricted as either of these, nevertheless con-
siders matters of proportion and arrangement.266 In such
a critical atmosphere, playwrights predictably were con-
cerned with well-made structure. H. L. Mencken, intro—
ducing an edition of Ibsen's plays, observed, "He gave
infinitely more thought to questions of practical drama-
turgy--to getting his characters on and off stage, to
building up climaxes, to calculating effects--than he ever
gave to the ideational content of his dramas.”267 Chekhov

was concerned with well-made structure in quite the

26“Archer, Playmaklgg (NOW Ybrk, 193h)o

265Matthews, m 2; 1:23 2:35, p. v.

266Baker, Dramatic Technique.

267E. L. Mencken, ”Introduction,” The Master Builder

Pillars of Society, Hedda Gabler (New YBFE: Boni and

Liveright: n. ., Intro." dated 1917), p. ix.

1&8

opposite way: he wanted to do away with convention.
Criticizing Maxim Gorky's £23 22331 Bourgeois, he found
the major defect to be a conservativism, a too ready
reliance on the accepted.268

Without denying the validity or the desirability of
well-made structure, it is sensible to suggest at least
three major requirements of that structure that can become
for playwrights mere form to be followed and for critics a
provident measuring stick to guage the playwright's suc-
cess: the emphasis on logic, the concept that a play is a
draftsman's blueprint (often the blueprint of a pyramid)
and the rigid attention to conventional devices.

The first of these, logical structure, led the play-
wright to a syllogistic formula like William T. Price's
notion of the ”Dramatic Proposition,” which he explained
as ”the brief logical statement or syllogism of that which
has to be demonstrated by the Complete Action of the
play.”269 The beginning he calls the situation; the mid-
dle, the cause; the end, the result. Since the propositkni
must include all that is in the play from beginning to end,

it is analogous to the writer's task of being forced to

268Anton Chekhov, Letters on the Short Sto the
Drama 329 Other Litera To To s—TNew York: HInEon.,—B31ch
and Company, I92E), p. i7 . letter to Maxim Gorky.

269wiiiien T. Price, ”The Dramatic Proposition," in
Barrett H. Clark, European Theories of the Drama (New

York, 1987). P. &87T

1&9

sum up his entire essay in what textbooks sometimes call a
thesis statement. One of Price's students, Edwin Krows
wrote a.manual, aptly titled Playwriting for Profit, to
help the novice to structure his play as a syllogism.270

A play written with careful strokes of logic may
easily satisfy an audience that likes to see a puzzle
worked out, but a list of such plays is not likely to
include many of the world's lasting works for the theatre,
plays which do not easily reduce to logic. One could, for
instance, attempt to reduce Oedipus‘ggx to a sort of logic:
There is trouble in Thebes (beginning), Oedipus is the
source of the trouble (middle), and thus the discovery
that Oedipus is the source of the trouble brings relief to
Thebes (conclusion). But such an approach.makes the play
something of a grand murder mystery, which may be one way
to approach it. With.many enduring works of the theatre,
one is hard put to find a logical pr0position that will
even begin to encompass the action of the play. If one
always expects logic in his play he may be looking for
something that is not there, nor should be there. Brander
Matthews felt that the only logical and for William
Gillette's Secret Service (1895) was tragic. As he under-
stood it, the play had carried the audience “straight to
the tragic and which is the only logical issue of the

8)270Edwin Krows, Playwriting for Profit (New Yerk,
192 .

lSO

circumstances and the characters, and then at the culmina-
tion, when the prompters hand was on the bell to ring down
the curtain, the author suddenly reprieved his hero and
married him off in the twinkling of an eye."271 Matthews
suggested that the comic scenes in the play were partly
responsible for the failure, on the part of the audience,
to take the play as tragedy.272 But there is in fact no
more of a development toward a logical issue of characters
and circumstances in the play than there is in spy thrill-
ers today, and the illogical romantic ending fits.
American plays, like the American novel and the temperament
out of which it is created, rarely sacrifices the romantic
to an exercise in cold logic. In Herne's plays the strain
of romantic idealiam is much too strong for reason to
prevail.

This strong amphasis on logical structure in the well-
made play carried with it the requirement of a carefully
blue-printed arrangement in an emphatic order of climax.
Freytag's pyramid is a celebrated attempt to provide a
graphic realization of the movament of a play: one side
of the pyramid-~the rising action-~ascends to the climac-
tic apex, and the other side--the falling action--

271Matthews, Study 93: the Drama. p. 196-
27aflatthews, Study of the 23522: Po 196-

151

descends.273 This sort of structure unfortunately suggests
a mechanical craftsmanship. Critics have observed that it
has the defect of suggesting that the dramatic intensity
falls away in the latter part of the play.27h The student
of drama, especially the modern drama, encounters too many
plays that will fit the pyramid only if forced to do so.
For instance, if the student has the task of graphing ging
9225, it is entirely conceivable that he could say the
climax of the action is the heath scene and that all that
follows is falling action, or he might decide that the
clbmax occurs in the first scene when Lear gives away his
kingdom, and that the entire play is falling action. Such
diagramming games, however, have little to do with the
emotional action which gives the play form.
Branderinatthews suggested a revision of Freytag's
pyramid to avoid the suggestion that the latter part of
the play was a falling away. He suggested that a play be
represented by an ascending line from beginning to end, 1"a
diagram of interest."275 While this revision.may remedy
some of the deficiencies of the Freytag pyramid, it still
suggests that a play can be easily graphed, mechanically.
Another manual for playwrights suggested that the dramatist

273Krows, Playwriting for Profit. P. 71.
27hKrows, Playwriting for Profit, p. 71.
275Matthews, Studz'gf the Drama, p. 213.

152

make his scenario a kind of diagram showing rises and
falls so that ”he sees their proportions, and builds them
up or pulls them down to suit their relative i.uiportsnce.":’176
Even recently, playwrighting texts have suggested an es-
sentially well-made structure. There is, for instance,
Selden's ”Iron Checklist” of the structural parts:

P--preparation, exposition

A--attack, word or act to precipitate the conflict

S--struggle, the conflict

T--turn, climax

O--outcome, ending277

Of these parts, the handling of the exposition--the
skill with which the playwright manages to communicate
necessary information in the first act--has long been con-
sidered a test of the playwright.278 One hoary method of
dispensing information is to bring the domestics on stage
for a chat about the activities of their superiors. A
more subtly made play allows the exposition to unfold
gradually within the development of the action. In Ghosts,
for instance, Ibsen passes along much valuable information
in the opening dialogue between Regina, the servant, and
Engstand, her father, but at the same thme introduces a
dramatic conflict that is necessary to the theme and

27(”Franklin Fyles, The Theatre and Its People (New
York, 1900), pp. 116-117.

277Kenneth MacGowan, A Primer of Playwriting (New
York, 1951), p. 1614-.

278Matthews, Study 25 the Drama, p. 18h.

153

development of the play.

From exposition, the playwright moves through his
attack and a developing conflict toward the clhmax, the
turning point of the action, defined by Baker as the scene
which produces the strongest amotion in the audience.279
There can be several clnmaxes in a play, but if the struc-
ture is to be a pyramid, the high point should be the one
scene in which all of the forces at work in the play come
together in an emotional splash. The clhmax passed, the
playwright may still have problems with the falling action.
The use of an explanatory fifth act is common in nine-
teenth century plays, and playwrights of the nineties were
slow to turn away from the practice. Thus, the structure
typical last act where all is explained, and each char-
acter is neatly disposed of. The problem.with such a
technique, as George Pierce Baker has pointed out, is that
the suspense which could keep interest until the end of
the play is lost, and the audience spends the last few
minutes not anticipating but knowing exactly what will
happen, waiting for the careful knots to be tied off in
prearranged bows.280

Such a well-made structure, with its careful beginning,

2798aker, Dramatic Technique. p. 213.
280Baker, Dramatic Technique, p. 211.

15h

middle, and end, damanded several technical devices and
conventions, most notably the scene giggirg, the obliga-
tory scene, the scene which is shown in action on the stage
because the structure demands that it must be. These
scenes usually involve a struggle of contending wills,
”the interview wherein there is the actual collision of

”281 William Archer considered the

the several resolves.
interview between Griffith Davenport and Governor Morton
in Griffith Davenport such a scene.282 Interestingly,
this scene gave Herne problems in his first draft. Orig-
inally, he felt obliged to bring President Lincoln on
stage for the interview with Davenport, but Lincoln dom-
inated the scene, destroying the dramatic struggle within
the protagonist. Berna substituted Governor'Morton as
Lincoln's emissary, thus fulfilling his obligation to put
the scene on the stage but at the same time keeping the
focus on Davenport.‘

Also necessary to the well-made formula is a struggle,
a conflict, of which Brander Matthews wrote, “In every
successful play . ... we shall find this clash of con-

tending desires, this assertion of the human will against

strenuous opposition of one kind or another."283 Walter

281Matthaws, Study 3; the Drama. P. 106-

 

282Archer, Playmaking. P. 25“.
283Hatthews, Study 33; L112 2223. 13. 91+.

155

Prichard Eaton, another exponent of the well-made play,
found struggle to be ”the essence of drama . . . at the
heart of every true play.”28u Henry James expands upon
the role of conflict: ”A play appears to me of necessity
to involve a struggle--a question of whether and how, will
it or won't it happen? and if so, or not so, how and why?--
which we have the suspense, the curiosity, the anxiety,
the tension, in a word, of seeing, and which means that
the whole thing shows an attack upon oppositions."285

An examination of typical plays of almost any time
and place will discover a contest of wills at the dramatic
core. But to remain valid for succeeding generations of
playgoers, such conflicts must develop out of the wills of
complete characters, not merely out of ideas in opposition,
for ideas that suggest vital conflict to one generation
may seem unimportant to another. One critic has posed the
question this way: ”Confronted with the society of today,
where the familiar conflicts of . . . the drama are be-
coming less and less hmportant, what is left for the
playwright to do?“286 For instance, feminine chastity

eBhWalter Prichard Eaton, The Drama l2 English (New
York, 1930), P. h.

285Henry James, a letter dated 1909, in Brander

Matthews, “Henry James and the Theatre," Bookman, LI
(June, 1920), p. 392.

 

286Edouard Bourdet, "The Play in Transition," in
Edith Isaacs, Theatre: Essays en the Arts 2£_the Theatre
(Boston, 1927), p. 5H.

156

and fidelity--an age-old source of conflict-amay carry
little weight today for some audiences. But when the con-
flict over feminine chastity involves a strong conflict
between the wills of fully developed characters, as in
Othello, the idea of fidelity cannot be dated, within the
context of the play.287

William Archer tried to avoid the problem.of putting
too much emphasis on the struggle by renaming it a crisis:
”A play is a more or less rapidly-developing crisis in
destiny or circumstance, and a dramatic scene is a crisis
within a crisis, clearly furthering the ulthmate event.”288
Archer's crisis is, however, little more than an undefined
new term, no more specific nor inclusive than what it re-
places. Baker rejected it, suggesting that in the modern
drama any conflict or crisis in the older sense is an un-
warranted expectation: “Surely inertness, supineness,
stupidity, and even torpor may be made to excite emotion
in an audience. Conflict covers a large part of drama but
not all of it.”289

What'replaces conflict in the older sense, or to be
more precise, what gives dramatic vitality to the conflict,

is complete characters through whom the conflict is

287Th0mp80n: Anatomy 52 Drama, 13. 1’45.
288WilliamArcher, Playmaking, Po 36-
289Baker, Dramatic Technique, p. hu-

 

157

expressed. In the more mechanically formulated well-made
plays, characters may be little more than vehicles to move
a neatly structured plot along. Often, character is lost
to stereotype in a role easily assigned to a ”character

actor.” When Garland wrote to Howells of his plans for A

Member gf the Third House, Howells replied, “I'm inter-

 

ested by what you say of the drama and if you can fit your
character play to some character actor, you'll succeed."290
More perhaps than Howells suspected, his advice was along
the lines of the play-making formulas suggested by play
builders like Frank Archer who believed that it made
little difference whether the plot was arranged for the
characters or the characters for the plot.291 Archer was
the captive of a formula that called for characters who
could be found in the standard equipment of the old stock
company--The Leading Man, The First Old Man, The Comedian,
The Villain, The Juvenile (male), The Leading Lady, The
First Old Woman, The Comedienne, The Soubrette, The Inge-
nue, and The Juvenile (female).292 So firmly entrenched
were such concepts of casting that Archer prophesied, ”We

290William Dean Howells, Life in Letters of William
Dean Howells, ed. Mildred Howellst’2-v3TT_T§Erden—5Tty:—
NT??;‘I§§877 Vol. I, p. ho7.

291Frank Archer, How 23 write a Good Play (New York.
1892), p. 82.

292Alfred Hennequin, Art 2; Playwrightlng (Boston.
1890), pp. 81-82.

158

may safely assume that as they have lasted so long, they
are sure of a fair popularity in the future."293 Typical
of such characters were the stage Yankee, into which type-
casting critics tended to place Herne's Uncle Nat, and
”loafer” characters, into which they cast Joseph Jefferson
for life.

But such type-cast characters were not to survive as
the center of the modern drama (which is not to say that
their varied descendants are absent from the current stageL
The reason for this shift in characterization was apparent
to Baker: “Fundamentally, type characterization rests on
a false pramise, namely, that every human being may be
adequately represented by some dominant characteristic or
small group of related characteristics. All the better
recent drama emphasizes the comic or tragic conflict in
hmman beings caused by many contradictory impulses and
ideas.'29u Considering the plays which Baker had at hand
to observe, it is easy to accept his denial of the utility
of stereotypes in a new drama, but later in this century
the stereotypic approach to character has been reevaluated
as a useful beginning pattern in communicating character.
Once the basic pattern of a character has been discovered,

we can begin to understand the function of that character

29""Baker, Dramatic Technique. Po 235°

159

in the play as a whole. Patricia McIlrath has written,
”Any indictment of characterization merely because a
stereotype is symbolized is inaccurate and shallow."295
But starting from a basic pattern the playwright can try
for ”individualized behavior--the basic conflict of

character."296

The appeal of stereotypes is to a low-
level of organization in thinking. Plays like Hearts of
Oak appeal at that level. But with the same basic system
of stereotyped organization, the playwright can build a
more elaborate, complex character whose appeal is to a
higher order. Herne attempted to raise his stereotypes
in Hearts g; 933 to a higher level when he rewrote than
in Sag Harbor.

To effect this higher appeal, the playwright chooses
his actions, his plot situations, to reveal the complexity
of character. Henry James remarked that Ibsen's great
quality was “his habit of dealing essentially with the
individual caught in the fact.'297 To catch the character
in the fact of his actions is to return to an emphasis on
plot, but in a different way than in the carefully plotted
plays of the early French school, where the plot develops

295Patricia McIlrath, “Stereotypes, Types, and
Characters in Drama,“ Educational Theatre Journal, VII
(March, 1955). p. 5. "_'_—""_—"'

296McIlrath, ”Stereotypes,” p. 5.

297Henry James, The Scenic Art, ed. Alan W860 (NOW
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, l9h8), p. 255.

160

outside of character. In newer plays, plot and character
are not treated as separate entities.298 It should be
noted here that extreme emphasis on character, outside of
plot, may be equally undesirable. Robert Corrigan has
said, ”Whenever the personality of the character, rather
than the action of which the character should be a part
becomes the playwright's chief concern, dramatic process
dissolves into explanation."299

Stark Young, ever a reliable index of the trends in
modern drama, treats character as one aspect of plot:
”The dramatist discovers creative actions, actions expres-
sive of his characters. A plot in a play derives from
these actions brought into combination, as they meet and
cross one another, in the world of life that they embody
and express. If the characters express themselves in
their actions, and the sum of their actions haplies the
plot, it follows that the plot includes, or can at least
include, tham both, and can be therefore of all the ele-
ments in the play the most inclusive, and therefore most
largely and completely expressive of the play's essential
idea or quality."300 We are back to one of the oldest

comments on the drama, back to Aristotle's observation
298

299Robert Corrigan, The Modern Theatre (New Yerk.
196“): p- 11.

300Young, The Theater, pp. 50-51.

Thompson, Anatomy g£_Drama, p. 80.

161

that the primary element in the drama is the plot, plot
that is conceived as part of an organic whole developed
from the inner lives of the characters of the play, the
psychology of the characters, not as a carefully built
structure within which to place characters who will move
it forward. The modern drama becomes more a matter of
character development than of plot structure. The play-
wright builds his play, as Eaton observed, with ”situation
held down to a minimum, while the maximum sense of life
unfolding itself from the characters is sought."301

The practice of Ibsen, who worked within a wellamade
framework, is typical of the modern approach to handling
character and plot: "Before I write down one word, I have
to have the character in mind through and through, I must
penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. I always
proceed from the individual; the stage setting, the dra-
matic ensemble, all of that comes naturally and does not
cause me any worry, as soon as I am certain of the indi-
vidual in every aspect of his humanity. But I have to
have his exterior in.mind also down to the last button,
how he stands and walks, how he conducts hhmself, what his
voice sounds like. Then I do not let him go until his

«302

fate is fulfilled. Gerhart Hauptmann worked in.much

301Walter Prichard Eaton, ”Revolt from Realism,“
Virginia Quarterly Review, X (l93u), p. 519.

302A, E. Zucker, Ibsen: The Master Builder (New York,
1929), p. 19h-

162

the same way, with ”characters hmbued with the fullest
vitality by my spirit . . . spiritually strong men and
women, who have become capable of making Judgments."303
Observing the work of playwrights like these around
hum, William Archer, whose manual Playmaking tends to the
welldmade tradition, found that he needed to make room
for this inner development of character if he were to
allow living space for the newer drama. His approach to
the drama, more descriptive than prescriptive, suggests
that characters do not change but that characterization is
rather an unveiling, a disclosure.30h A natural develop-
ment was to expect the characters to change onstage, not
in offstage action, as was too often the case in plot-
centered plays. The audience, Baker wrote, "balked more
and more at hearing of changes instead of seeing them."305
To men working in a theatre thoroughly bound to
formulas of the well-made play, the audience may have
seemed slow to balk at conventions, but gradually there
was a place for the subtle wellamade plays of Ibsen and
others. Shaw observed, overstating the point, in the
Qnintessence 25 Ibsenism.that “the writer who practices

303Gerhart Hauptmann, “On the Drama,“ trans. F. B.
Wahr in Robert Corrigan, The Modern Theatre (New York,

l96h). p. 51.
30“Archer, Playmaking, Po 373-
305Baker, Dramatic Technique, p. lhO.

163

the art of Ibsen . . . discards all the old tricks of
preparation, catastrophe, denouement, and so forth without
thinking about it."306 Aware of what was required of them,
playwrights like Horne nevertheless set out on their own,
without thinking so much about breaking formulas as about
making effective expression in the theatre. They were
moving toward what Susanne Langer has said of the essential
illusion of the play: ”The illusion which constitutes the
work of art is not a mere arrangement of given materials
in an aesthetically pleasing pattern; it is what results
from the arrangements, and is literally something the
artist makes, not something he finds."307 Such.an.attitude
toward arrangement and structure allows creative possibil-
ities and avoids the sterility of formulas and pyramids
and neat beginnings and endings that once earned the play

the encomium ”wellamade.”

FORMULA: MELODRAMA

In a discussion of the well-made play, especially in
its early stages, I have suggested several characteristics
that also describe melodrama: the emphasis on surface ex-
citament of plot, characters designed to fit into the plot

306George Bernard Shaw, The uintessence of Ibsenism,
3rd gd. (1922) reprint by DramaBook (New York,_l95?),

p. 1 3.
307 a
Langer, Feeling, p. 6 .

l6u

(as opposed to characters who create plot), and exciting
climaxes. Unlike the wellqmade play, melodrama shows
little proclivity for inner psychology and logic. For
psychologically developed characters, melodrama substitutes
a fearful identification with a character who escapes from
a perilous situation into a ”happy ending,” adding along
the way the vicarious pleasure of power and success and
the salving altruiam of senthmentalemotions. For logic,
melodrama supplies a world that is indifferent to reason.
It does not attempt to make its audience believe that it
is witnessing reality; in fact, the audience is invited to
participate in the illusion by cheering the hero and
applauding his escapes.308

The audience for a nineteenth century melodrama came
into the illusory world of the theatre in a carnival mood.
Horne tells one characteristic incident during a perform-
ance of Pizarro. Charles B. Bishop was playing the
Sentinel.

Now it happened that ”Pizarro” was on the

boards for the evening of the day on which Bishop

was married to Miss Josephine Parker, who had

long been the popular chamberemaid of the stock

company. Bishop rehearsed his part in the morn-

ing, was married in the afternoon, and duly

appeared as the Sentinel at night. The scene

is ”corridor of prison." The Sentinel is dis-

covered on guard, passing to and fro armed with
spear, hehmet, shield, and buckler. Rolla enters

308Alan Thompson, ”Melodrama and Tragedy,” PMLA,
XLIII (1928), p. 82h.

165

and endeavors to obtain access to the dungeon.

He carries the customary bag of gold, filled with
broken china which Jingles temptingly, and seeks
to persuade the Sentinel. Then come the lines:

Sentinel: Wouldst bribe me? I know my duty
better.

Rolla: Soldier, hast thou a wife?

Sentinel: I have.

Here there was a wild burst of applause from the
audience, which took Bishop quite unawares. It
was the first thme he had received a round of
applause at that point: but he was not long in
realizing its significance, and with that came a
sinking feeling as he thought of the next lines.

Rolla: And children?
Sentinel: Four honest, lovely boys.

Then followed such a roar as I suppose was
2:;?§086f0r° or afterward heard in that thea-

In such an atmosphere, melodrama sufficed. Most crit-
ical observers think of melodrama, chiefly, as rigging the
consequences of probability in manipulating a plot and the
happy ending. William Archer, for instance, defined melo-
drama as "illogical and somethmes irrational tragedy."310
Ludwig Lewisohn wrote, “Melodrama, it is commonly held,
owes its character to astute plotting and to moments of
intensely heightened conflict. The briefest observation
of our stage destroys that theory at once. The average

melodrama is structurally stupid.”311

309Borne, ”Forty Years Behind the Footlights," The
Coming A 6, II (August, 1899), p. 126.

310Thompson, ”Melodrama and Tragedy,” p. 816.

311Lewisohn, The Drama and the Stage, p. 32.

166

The quick resolution of every complication and the
happy ending escape the logical emotional conclusions in-
herent in the structure of the action. A popular example
is Daly's Divorce in which Borne acted in 187h. The title
of the play suggests social problem drama, but in the play
the divorced couple, Lu and DeWolfe, are reconciled in a
sudden reversal at the end, and remarry. The earlier
divorce, granted through the chicanery of a lawyer, is
presented as an exciting exercise in legal strategy,
allowing the playwright to ignore any of the vital ques-
tions which the problem.of divorce might easily have
stimulated in 18711,.312 A.melodramatic ending of another
kind is the result of a law of the drama--Bronson Howard
for one considered it a law--that a pure woman cannot die
on the stage. She must be saved, structural logic to the
contrary. An erring woman, of course, can die as the
audience ”looks on with complacent tears."313 Dumas'
Camille may still bring a tear, complacent to be sure, as
she expires on the operatic stage. Melodrama bothers
itself with final truths only so much as it chooses.

Borne never quite avoids the illogical structure so
characteristic of melodrama. Even in the low-keyed §hggg

312Marvin Felheim, The Theatre of Augustin Daly
(Harvard University Press, l§§65, p.—Tl77

 

313Jordan Y. Miller, American Dramatic Literature
(New York, 1961), p. 8.

l6?

égggg, he inserted the melodramatic lighthouse scene in
Act III, a scene which Nilliam.Archer found ”hopelessly
out of key with the rest of the play.”31u Alan S. Downer
suggests that “real success eluded Herne because of his
tendency to overwrite the clhmactic scenes."315 But the
melodramatic elements in Herne's plays did appeal to
contemporary audiences, and his promoters somethmes turned
this appeal into boxoffice lure. In one poster advertising
§hggg‘§grgg, Uncle Nat is shown looking earnestly down at
Helen saying, ”I ain't yer father, Nell."316 Inside the
theatre the customer would discover that the line is a
kindly prelude to Uncle Nat's rustic advice to his niece.
Like this misleading poster, the melodramatic excite-
ment creates an emotion in the audience which is a trick,
an empty response. One critic puts it this way: ”The
emotional expression exceeds the emotional content."317
Herne, however, accepted the formula-ridden.melodramas for
what they were; he wrote, ”They deal with life as it goes

on around us; they all have a spark of truth; they possess,

31hArcher, Playmaking, p. 20.

315Alan Downer, Fifty Years 2; American Drama (New
York, 1951), p. 31.

 

3160ra1 s. Coad and Edwin Mime, Jr., The American

Stage Vol. 1h in The Pa eant 2; America (New Haven:
a e University Press, I929), p. 236.

 

317Bruce Carpenter, The Way 2; the Drama (New Ybrk:
1929). p. 122-

168

in a degree, that human interest which appeals to the
emotional nature. Hence, in spite of their crudities and
artificiality, they are frequently'moneybmakers; and that

is about all that can be said in favor of them.“318

FORMULA: TRAGEDY

The appeal of both melodrama and tragedy develops
from the prerequisite of arousing emotional response. To
point out the less than serious nature of the emotion in
melodrama is not to dismiss it as beside the dramatic
point. Melodrama has been called ”poetry in the rough”319
and ”tragedy that has approached the ridiculous instead of
the sublime."320 Alan Thompson writes, ”No tragedy has
ever succeeded on the stage which has not been built
solidly on a basis of 'melodrama,' that is to say, that
a tragedy must first excite the identifying emotions . . .
before it can pass to the universal one."321 The differ-
ence is that tragedy gives a wider range to the emotions,
a universal experience caused by deeper reflection upon
the incident to discover how the emotion aroused harmonizes

318Berna, “The Present Outlook for the American
Drama,“ 2113 Coming £53, I (March, 1899), p. 25k.

319Norman Hapgood, ”The Drama of Ideas," Littell's
Living A e, CCXX (February, 1899), p. 163.
320Cheney, New Movement in the Theatre, p. 2H9.

321Thompson, ”Melodrama and Tragedy," P. 835.

169

or jars with the past experience and habitual faiths of
the audience.322 The lesser appeal of melodrama is almost
uncivilized, basically innocent, arousing response in un-
complicated natures.

Like melodrama, tragedy may be considered illogical,
if we mean logic in a syllogistic sense, not in the sense
that there is a natural (logical) illogicality to life.
Rather than logic we can expect plausibility of action
which arises from reasonable motivation of characters. In
that sense, as Clayton Hamilton has said, there are few
lhmitations on plausibility in.melodrama where the charac-
ters are made to fit the invented incidents, but in tragedy
”we demand an unquestionable inevitability: nothing may
happen . . . which is not a logical result of the nature
of . . . [the] characters.”323 The audience responds
emotionally to these characters, with excitement in melo-
drama, with reflection in tragedy. The response is
different because the basic emotional form is different.
Establishing the different order of emotional form in
tragedy is complicated by the confusing variety and profu-
sion of commentary on the subject. For our purposes here,
the discussion will be lhnited to those areas that illumi-

nate the tragic quality in Herne's plays.

322
323

Thompson, ”Melodrama and Tragedy,” p. 828.
Hamilton, Theory 2£_the Theatre, p. 129.

170

By some definitions, tragedy may be impossible in our
times: Krutch, for example, has shown that tragedy in a
classical sense hardly fits the modern temper.32h A soci-
ologist has suggested that Americans can have little
understanding of tragedy, for it does not fit the American
spirit.325 Arthur*Miller is a celebrated case of a play-
wright who finds it necessary to try to remake the old
definitions of tragedy to fit the contemporary tragedies
he writes. Even those who find M 33 a Salesman lacking
as tragedy find at least enough resemblance to the genre
to argue the point, at 1ength.326

It seems reasonable to assume that concepts of tragedy
are both a reflection of men and of their times, and are
interesting for that reason. It seems reasonable, too,
that concepts of tragedy can go just so far in saying
something about the work of art. To be able to cite a
particular play as ”tragedy” according to one man's vision,
or version, is of interest as it illuminates the work and
its likeness or unlikeness to other works. But the

324Joseph Wood Krutch, ”The Tragic Fallacy," The
Modern Tauper (New York, 1929). pp. 115-1h3.

325Klapp, ”Tragedy and the American Clhmate of
Opinion,‘' pp. 396-h13.

326George Jean Nathan, ”Death of a Salesman,“ in The
Theatre Book of the Year 19g8-19g9 (New Yerk, l9h9),
pp. §7§-§85. ‘Uofisidering w a is usual in tragedy, Nathan
concludes that plays about the common man do not belong,

except under rare circumstances, in ”The temple of drama-
tic art.”

171

conclusion that a play is or is not a “tragedy"I is of no
more final interest than deciding that it is ”comedy,
history, pastoral, pastoral—comical, historical-pastoral,
tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,
scene individable, or poem.unlimited."

Particular concepts aside, emotion is, as has been
suggested, the central quality of tragedy--emotion that
leads us, as Alan Thompson has said, “to impassioned
contemplation of ulthmates. To a person thus reflecting
as well as feeling, emotions become generalized."327
Edith Hamilton writes, ”Tragedy's one essential is a soul

w328

that can feel greatly. But emotion without form, deep
feeling without consequent reflection, is not enough for
tragedy.

Tragedy seeks its form, as all plays do, in the mythos
or plot-structure in the Aristotelian sense, Northrop Frye
has observed.329 What is this particular plot structure--
mythos--that becomes a tragedy? The event, the thing that
happens in a tragedy, Northrop Frye writes, is the move-

ment of the hero to a perception of ”the determined shape

of the life he has chosen“ and a contrasting perception of

327Thqmpson, Anatomy 2E Drama, p. 273.

328Edith Hamilton, "Tragedy,” in Edith Isaacs,
Theatre: Essays 32 the Arts 2; the Theatre (Boston,

9 P0 -

329Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton,
1957), p. 207.

172

the uncreated personal life he has forsaken.“33o Our
response should be, ”This does happen.’' Susanne Langer
describes the rhythm of the mythos of tragedy as ”the
growth and full realization of a personality.”331 She
sees tragedy as ”form in suspense”: ”The prime agent of
tragedy is heroic; his character, the unfolding situation,
the scene, even though ostensibly familiar and humble, are
all exaggerated, charged with.more feeling than comparable
actualities would possess. This intensification is neces-
sary to achieve 'form in suspense'. . . . The tragic
ending must recapitulate the whole action to be a visible
fulfillment of a destiny that was implicit in the begin-
ning.”332 Man, in Langer's view, conceives of life as a
journey, a single span with death the inevitable end.
Even when he is reconciled to this inevitable end, he
still tries to realize himself--his own personality-~by
living as much and as intensely as possible in that span.
Tragedy presents such a man, conscious of his destiny and
his lhnitations, acting out the plot, the mythos of his
life.

This man has, in Unamuno's phrase, ”a tragic sense of

life.” And it is this sense, this tragic vision which

33°Frye, Anatomy, p. 212.
331Langer, Feeling, p. 352-
332Langer, Feeling, p. 357.

173

Sewall considers central to tragedy: "It is the sense of
ancient evil, of the mystery of human suffering, of the
gulf between aspiration and achievement. It colours the
tragic artist's vision of life (his theoretic form) and
gives his works their peculiar shade and tone. It speaks,
not the language of symbolic thought but through symbolic
action, symbol and figure, diction and image, sound and
rhythm. Such a recognition should precede any attempt to
talk 'systematically' about tragedy, while not denying the
value of the attempt itself."333 In such a vision, the
event which evokes the response ”This must be“ is primary,
the explanation if it is secondary. We respond with pity
and fear in almost a folk sense that we are witnessing a
common fate and, as Ludwig Lewisohn wrote, ”a terror lest
we wrong our brother or violate his will, not lest we
share his guilt and incur his punishment."33h It awakens
in us an amotional awareness of the community of human
suffering.335 The essential emotional form in tragedy
leads to no solution of problems (what problems are
finally solved, like succession to the throne of Scotland
or Denmark, are tangential to the essential form). The

333Richard S. Sewall, “The Tragic Form,“ Essays in
Criticism, Iv (October, 19510, p. 3118.

33hLudwig Lewisohn, "A Note on Tragedy," in Moses
and Brown, The American Theater, p. 196.

33SLewisohn, “A Note on Tragedy,“ p. 196.

17h

rhythm of tragedy leads us through the resolution of a
personality. In a broader sense, it cannot come to more
than a temporary resolution for that 233 man, for even if
his sorrows are ended, the inevitable sorrows of man are
not. Sewall writes, “Basic to the tragic form is its
recognition of the inevitability of paradox, of unresolved
tensions and ambiguities, of opposites in precarious
balance.”336

The form is concerned with an inner action of personal
discovery and realization, not with the outer workings of
Fate or naturalistic, determined forces. The suffering
and sorrow which come to the tragic hero come from his own
willful choice. Lear, for instance, chooses and sets in
motion his own destiny when he divides the kingdom. In
the superstitious world of his Britain, men likeCHoucester
may talk about the stars and fate, but they are talking
about the external, and uninteresting, forces that blind
them to a perception of the willful personality who can
and does create his own world. Lear lives out the des-
tiny, conscious of the alternate destiny he has forsaken
when he made his choice. As Cordelia, the emblem of the
life he has given up, becomes more and more prominent in
the play, Lear's awareness of the consequences of his

choice increases.

33639u311, ”The Tragic Form," p. 183.

175

In the plays of Ibsen, the characters are on the
surface caught in a web of inevitable circumstance, but
the outer circamstances--society and heredity--do not
interest us as they may have interested Ibsen's contem-
poraries. Instead, his plays remain interesting, in part,
for ”the action of the tragedy as it was lived in the
minds of the responsible participants."337 Even so silly
and wrong-headed a woman as Hedda Gabler remains inter-
esting because of the strength of the personality she
tests against the action of the play she is in. If she
is seen only as a woman fighting for a social cause or
as a doomed victim of her family, there is no tragedy. As
Sewall has said, "When man's affairs are reduced to an
affair with the social order, or environment, or the
glands . . . the muse of tragedy walks out."338 If the
past of the character (his environment and heredity) be-
comes merely a destroyer of his future, there is no
tragedy. But if these past forces clash within the char-
acter forcing him to choose a destiny, he is potentially
tragic.339

E. E. Stoll has described this inner clash as

337Thomas H. Dickinson, Outline of Contemporary
w (New York, 1927). pp. BET-U77” '—

338Sewall, ”The Tragic Form,” p. 351.

339Winthrop H. Root, "The Past as an Element in

Naturalistic Tragedy," Germanic Review, XII (1937),
p. 177.

 

176

distinguishing the kind of tragic hero the Elizabethans
could make--man facing the externals of villains or Fate--
and the modern hero-aman facing an inner fate; the tragedy
of each period, he writes, reflects the taste of the
times}!+0 Similar comparison can be made with the myth-
ical tradition of Greece which treated Fate as a mysterious
power inherent in the world rather than in the man. Yet
in the Greek plays, as Susanne Langer has observed, the
interest centers on the man who will act out the fate in
a series of occasions which the world will provide:3u1
What he [the tragic hero] brings is his poten-
tiality: his mental, moral, and even psychical
powers, his powers to act and suffer. Tragic
action is the realization of all his possibilities,
which he unfolds and exhausts in the course of
the drama. His human nature is his Fate. Des-
tiny conceived as Fate is, therefore, not capri-
cious, like Fortune, but is predetermined.
Outward evengfl are merely occasions for its
realization. 2
In Oedipus Rex the interest is not in the external Fate
but in the way Oedipus chooses to confront that Fate.
Sophocles' play begins at the point where Oedipus begins
to realize his own personality as he discovers the occa-

sions that have made him what he is, Oedipus The King. It

is instructive to note by comparison that Cocteau's modern

3h0$toll, “Literature and Life Again,” p. 289.

3""1Langer, Feeling, p. 353.

3h2Langer, Feeling, p. 352-

177

version of the story, The Infernal Machine, chronologically
follows Oedipus through each of the fateful occasions
until he becomes the victim of the machinery of Fate. But
Cocteau's play is not tragedy, it is modern irony. Fate
as force, Miss Langer demonstrates, is something other
than tragedy, while fate as oracular prophecy works as an
intensifying symbol of the necessity that was really given
with the agent's personality.3h3

The tragic poet is not interested glggg in forces and
laws but in man's perception, however dim, of some sense
of order. Northrop Frye describes the heroes' relation
with law as ”the mystery of their communion with that
something beyond which we can see only through them, and
which is the source of their strength and their fate
alike. . . . Tragedy seems to lead up to an epiphany of
law, of that which is and must be.“3uu In the hero's
perception lies his victory, a spiritual victory that
transforms the character. Sewall writes, "Perception is
all that can be summed up in the spiritual and moral
change that the hero undergoes from first to last and in
the shmilar change wrought by his example in those around
him."3l+5 The change comes by suffering: ”I suffer, I

3h3Langer, Feeling, Po 3530
3mFrye, Anatomy, p. 208.
BhSSewall, ”The Tragic Form," p. 356.

178

will to suffer, I learn by suffering; therefore I am."3h6

This sufferer is more than usually aware of the world
around hum, of paradoxes and disappointments, and of the
gap between what he aspires to as ideal and what he lives.
An insensitive sufferer is merely pathetic, not tragic.
Edith Hamilton tells the story of a seven-year old girl in
Roman history, the daughter of a.man.judged guilty and
condemned to death, and so herself condemned to die. As
she passed through the crowds to her execution she cried
and asked, ”What have I done wrong? If you will tell me I
will never do it again.”3’+7 The story is heart-breaking,
but the experience is not tragic. By contrast, in the
context of Lear's play we can feel and reflect with him
upon the tragedy of Cordelia's death, so seamingly mean-
ingless that she too could have asked her executioner,
”What have I done wrong?"

If the tragic hero's victory is a spiritual rise in
perception, why is it so often accompanied by a fall in
position or strength? The hero does not fall, as Frye has
shown, because of a moral flaw or by fate; rather he falls
because he chooses to exchange one condition for another

when he enters a life of his own creation.3u8 Frye says

3M’Sewall, ”The Tragic Form,” p. 353.
3H7Hamilton, I'Tragedy," p. 88.

3u8Frye, Anatomy, p. 211.

179

of The Fall, “As soon as Adam falls, he enters his own
created life, which is also the order of nature as we know
it . . . a world in which existence itself is tragic.”3u9

Nor does tragic man fall through pride, at least not
pride alone. Sewall has written that "pride, like every-
thing about tragedy, is ambiguous."350 Pettiness and
arrogance are likely to be as much a part of his pride as
his independence and his humanity. He may have pride when
he recognizes the life he has willfully created for him-
self, but that pride is, as we have said, his victory, not
his defeat. To say that Hamlet or Oedipus or even Willy
Loman is too proud and must fall is to pass a moral judg-
ment and to by-pass the tragic action. Arthur Miller
describes the pride of the tragic hero: ”As a general
rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I
think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in
the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his
life, if need be, to secure one thing-~his sense of per-
sonal dignity."351 Miller's hero, Proctor, in Th2
Crucible, is a significant embodiment of this principle as
he defends and is willing to die for his name, which to

3u9Frye, Anatomy, p. 212.
350Sewall, “The Tragic Form,“ p. 352.

351Arthur Miller, ”Tragedy and the Common Man," The
New Ybrk Times, February 27, l9h9, II, pp. 1, 3.

180

him means his integrity. To his opponent, Governor
Danforth, he is simply stubborn and proud and too eager to
become a martyr. But Proctor's pride is the pride of
tragic man who, recognizing the life he has made, plays
out the part he has chosen. His wife, Elizabeth, gives
the tragic epitaph in the last line of the play: “He hath
his goodness now.” It is not beside the point to note

here that The Crucible has never had the commercial suc-

 

cess of Miller's earlier, more ambiguous tragedy, Eggth
2:13.8a1esman. In that play, it is never quite clear
whether Willy Laman is acting merely to take the easy way
out or in realization of the destiny he has created; yet
this ambiguity seems to:make Willy more acceptable to
audiences. Strong tragic figures like Proctor are not
easy to accept today. A sociologist has suggested why
Americans are reluctant to accept such heroes and why, in
general, they fail to understand tragedy: ”The average
American, while he may admire a martyr with a clear-cut
cause of service, does not like to follow a course through
to tragic consequences. He has too much sense, for one
thing. There is in him the spirit of the world, of com-
promise, of opportunism. He is proud of being flexible,
able to start in a new direction when one line of action
peters out."352

352Klapp, "Tragedy and the American Clhmate of
Opinion,” p. #11.

181

But the tragic hero must be something out of the
ordinary. If he is reduced by an attempt to humanize him,
to cut down his proud heroics, his play loses the force of
tragedy. Consider what happens to Cocteau's Oedipus when
the classic man of myth is reduced to a slangy, naive
country boy confronting the modern world of a decadent
France. He is not tragic, even in the last act which
begins and ends where Sophocles' play does. Or consider
what happens to the Antigone when Anouilh reduces it to
the setting and mileu of Vichy France. Anouilh's Creon is
more human--a dictator with a problems-but his decisions
seem to be the result of expediency not of tragic choice.

In these modern French plays, the mythical characters
are presented more or less realistically. Since the devel-
opment of realism.in the late nineteenth century, tragedy,
some critics say, has disappeared from the stage. There
is a doubt that characters who are drawn closely from
scientific observations of life and developed as products
of their everyday environment and heritage can be tragic
at all. (The problem.is particularly relevant to a dis-
cussion of the so-called thesis plays of Horne.) Mary
McCarthy, for one, believes that heroes in so-called real-
istic tragedies are more histrionic, less tragic, than
real tragic heroes: ”There is always a stillness at the
center of the Shakespearean storm. It is as if the real-

ist, in reaching for tragedy, were punished for his hubris

182

by a ludicrous fall into bathos. Tragedy is impossible by
definition in the quotidian realist mode, since . . .
tragedy is the exceptional action one of whose signs is
beauty."353 When the realist tries to show everything,
what Aldous Huxley calls the Whole Truth, he is writing a
form incompatible with tragedy where “the artist must iso-
late a single element out of the totality of human experi-
ence and use that exclusively for his material."3su
Lionel Abel, for another, feels that while tragedy is not
impossible today, it is unlikely because "authentic trag-
edy, which can give a stronger feeling of reality than
'realism,‘ implies an acceptance of values which contemp
porary writers are unlikely to hold."355

Whether tragedy is possible or not, it is different
in a realistically oriented theatre, as a later'examination
of Margaret Flaming will show. It is useful to end this
discussion, for the moment, with Gassner's distinction
which allows at least some room for tragedy in the modern
world:

In my view, the distinction is fundamentally one

i: 3h;i%¥%%%fige2%e%§%§%£e§%théggzggggzaliggtizns,

353McCarthy, Theatre Chronicles 1937-1962, p. 222.

8 3Sl‘Huxley, ”Tragedy and the Whole Truth,” pp. 181-
1 2.

183

lhmited to 'psychology' or social situation . . .
and the wide prospect of a world-view that per-
meates . . . 'high tragedies.’ In so far as the
world-view is omitted, diminished or obfuscated
by'modern realism, sociology, or psychological
science, modern drama cannot at best rise higher
than 'low tragedy.’ The characters of the drama
may struggle intensely, but their stakes and the
author's gamgét in treating them are likely to

be limited.

Even when the modern temper seems to bar the possi-
bilities of a tragic spiritual victory, the playwrights
have not stopped trying. Even so sensational a play as

Williams' Sweet Bird 2; Ybuth comes at least close to

 

tragedy in its final scenes as the hero waits for his des-
tiny, his castration, to be accomplished. What is more
likely to bar tragedy is a too strict adherence to the
formulas of tragedy as they have been defined classically
and redefined ever since. If a critic tries to apply
Aristotelian definition to modern tragedy, the modern play
has difficulty measuring up. But such.measuring may be as
much an injustice to Aristotle as it is to the modern play,
for Aristotle wrote no formula. He described what he saw
in the successful typical tragedy of his time. Later
critics who have canonized the Aristotelian definition
have placed an unnecessary restriction on the playwrights
to conform to the formula; some have taken up the chal-

lenge of the definition, in our thme notably Arthur Miller.

356John Gassner, The Theatre lg Our Times (New Ybrk,
195M, Po 70-

18h

With Herne, however, there is little evidence to suggest
that Aristotelian definition is a factor at all. His
training in the drama came in a theatre which called the
heroic drama of the late eighteenth century ”tragedy.“
The first play he saw produced, Th3 Gladiator, evoked an
immediate melodramatic effect, but called for little re-
flection from the audience. Alan Downer has written that
Americans had neither the time nor the instinct to see
life in the new nation as offering possibilities for tragh:
contemplation.3S7 It is entirely reasonable that Herne
and his contemporaries in the theatre would call Drifting
52233 a tragedy, unconcerned with classical definitions
and precedents. But Herne did sense the tragic vision,
the tragic form discussed above.

The critics, also, may be blinded from seeing and
feeling the tragic form if they worry too much about the
disputable elements in the Aristotelian definition, “Trag-
edy, then, is an hmitation of an action that is serious,
complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embel-
lished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several
kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the
form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear

effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."

357Alan S. Downer, American Drama (New York, 1960),
p. 3.

185

The important elements of this definition are in
harmony with the discussion of form above. "Imitation,"
something that is made, not something natural. "Of an
action,’I the series of occasions, of events, the mythos
which allows the character to act out his destiny.
”Serious,” concerned with universal relationships of man
and his destiny. ”Magnitude,” in the personality of the
willful tragic hero, unusually sensitive to his tragic
human condition and raised by his sensitivity above the
plodding day to day problems. ”Complete,” the resolution
of a personality.

Other elements in this definition, however, may seem
to ask for more than the basic form; but the case is
rather the other way around: too much is asked of them.

”Language with each kind of artistic ornament" may
suggest inflated ”poetic" language, a high diction. Trag-
edies of the past may exhibit language not common in
ordinary usage, especially the language of verse forms.
While no successful playwright transcribes actual speech,
he may create the rhythm of natural speech--as modern
poets do--and his ”ornament” is more controlled than we
can expect to find in ordinary speech. In Williams'
_§treetcar‘N§mgg Desire, for instance, the ape-man, Stanley
Kowalski, describes the sex act as ”getting those colored
lights going.” The hmage, out of context, is a strange

one for this semi-literate animal, but in the context of

186

the play it seems natural enough, fitting into the pattern
of color and light that runs through the dialogue and the
setting.

In Herne's plays, too, the language--at least in the
intense dramatic moments--is not natural speech but a kind
of artistic ornament. But the diction seems natural in
the context of the play. In some nineteenth century plays,
however, the playwright uses ornate--and archaic-~ornament.
Boker's Francesca g5 Rimini indicates the pervasiveness of
the belief that high tragedy had to have a special diction

ramoved from the world of men. The Prince 23 Parthia in

 

the eighteenth century, generally considered the first
play written and produced in America, is so inflated as to
be ridiculous. In our own century the verse plays of
Maxwell Anderson remain interesting experiments in blank
verse tragedies, although they are not, certainly, in the
inflated style of the nineteenth century.

Another misunderstanding is of the character of the
hero. In The Poetics the hero is '‘an intermediate kind of
personage, a.man not pro-eminently virtuous or just."

That he is also a noble man of high station in most clas-
sical tragedies has caused some confusion, a confusion
that has led to misunderstanding that the tragic hero must
be noble.

Hennequin's 1890 handbook of playwrighting, for in-

stance, suggests, “Tragedy calls for characters of unwonted

18?

strength of will and depth of seriousness, events of great
significance, and an elevated style of diction, usually
verse.”358 Another critic of the period writes that an
author glorifies life by putting "magnified characters in
ideal situations, working out exceptional plots."359 He
insists this is a law of tragedy that has stood the test
of time and is not likely to yield to new theories. The
form of tragedy does not require so exalted a man; he
needs only perception and sensitivity, the power to feel
his tragedy. That power is most easily discerned in an
extraordinary man, but it is available to men of any con-
dition. If modern.man, particularly modern.American:man,
has no readybmade magnificent people to supply as heroes,
he must look for the extraordinary man.in the guise of the
average American citizen.

One other Aristotelian comment can stand in the way
of recognizing the basic tragic form: I'pity and fear,"
which the destruction of the hero evokes, and the attend-
ant catharsis. First, it is necessary to understand
exactly what is meant by pity and fear. Pity does not
mean patronizing sorrow for one less well off than we are.
Rather, we pity because we feel, for the moment, the

tragic hero's vision of the sorrowful life we share with

353Hennequ1n, Art 3; gpalwrighting, p. 35.
359Hapgood, "The Drama of Ideas,” p. 160.

188

him. Fear does not mean terror or horror at what is
happening to the hero, with a thought that there but by
Grace go I. Rather, we fear in the sense that one is
“God-fearing”; we are in awe and wonder at the event we
see another human being go through. We fear for him not
in personal identification with his situation but in con-
cern for his human situation as he is pushed to his lhmits.

That leaves us with the problem.of catharsis. If we
are to be purged, as is often said, of pity and fear, we
might be forced to conjecture that the tragic hero acts
out a Fate we identify with, and when he pays the sacri-
fical price, he does it in our place. Symbolically, such
an effect might happen, as in the great tragedy of The
Cross, but dramatically-~in a play--it does not happen.

It is just as unlikely to believe that audiences at
Epidaurus put themselves in the place of Oedipus as to
believe that a modern sephomore might do so.

Two comments by Walter Prichard Eaton in 1908 are
relevant here: “It [tragedy] is no longer a cathartic for
the modern.mani Its blood and physical death are primi-
tive to the point of disgust. . . . Violence and murder
are very far away from us. There is something pitifully
archaic in the classic tragedy. . . . At best, death in
the modern drama inspires a shudder of physical repugnance.
. . . Not what end a man meets but what use he makes of

his life before he dies is now what interests us, or what

189

effect he has left on those behind.“360 "Perhaps death is
not a tragedy, after all. Perhaps for us heavy-eyed
children of the Twentieth Century life is a tragedy. Such
doubts, at any rate, have sounded the knell for the so-
called tragedy of the classic theater. A.modern audience
cannot share its reality.“36l Eaton.misses the basic
tragic form when he places such hmportance on the shudder
of death. In tragic form, as we have shown, death (or
whatever other tragic resolution) is the final completion
of a personality who has acted out his created life. The
effect is not a shudder but a sense of inevitable com-
pleteness. We are moved beyond the pathos of pity and the
shudder of fear to a certainty--the one certainty-~and we
are left with what Northrop Frye calls buoyancy. We find
a sense of completeness we cannot find in the uncertainty
of our still uncreated and uncompleted lives.

The form of tragedy, then, we may discover if we are
not misled by misunderstandings that reduce the elements
of the form to formula. A recent reconsideration of the
dramatic form.of tragedy, Metatheatre by Lionel Abel,
claims that the modern theatre is free of the older forms,
that in fact the older concepts of tragic form are no

longer applicable. What does Abel mean by the term he has

360Eaton, The American Stage 2; Today, pp. 32u-325.

361Eaton, The American Stage 2; Today, p. 326.

 

190

invented, “metatheatre”? It is “the necessary form for
dramatizing characters who, having full self-consciousness,
cannot but participate in their own dramatization. Hence,
the famous lines of Jaques, Shakespeare's philosopher of
metatheatre, 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players.”362 He extends the definition:

The plays I am pointing at do have a common

character: all of them are theatre pieces about

life seen as largely theatricalized. By this I

mean that the persons appearing on the stage in

these plays are not there simply because they

were caught by the playwright in dramatic pos-

tures as a camera might catch them, but because

they themselves knew they were dramatic before the

playwright took note of them, . . . But then the

playwright has to acknowledge in the very structure
of his play that it was his imagination whigg

controlled the event from beginning to end. 3
For Abel, Hamlet is the first metaplay: "For the first
time in the history of drama, the problem of the protagonkm
is that he has a playwright's consciousness.“36h More ob-
vious examples are plays like Six Characters in Search.2£
an Author or Enrico IX or the current MaratZSade.

All of these plays just mentioned contain, not by
coincidence, plays-within-plays as well as characters who
are concerned with giving form to a drama which seems to
have no form or in which they are miscast. Pirandello

commented that the ”only technique” is “the will thought

362Abe1, Metatheatre, p. 79.
363Abel, Metatheatre, pp. 60-61.
36hAbel, Metatheatre, pp. 57-58.

191

of as free, spontaneous, and immediate movement of
form."365 These descriptions of the form echo our earlier
discussion where the hero is the agent shaping his own
destiny or--if one accepts the metaphor of the world as
stage--creating his own play. Formula is eclipsed.

Abel considers the realistic plays of Ibsen as a
modern case study of a playwright sensing the essential
tragic form, but hampered by the formula of the necessi-
tarian structure thought to be at the center of all
tragedy as it is at the center of Greek tragedy. He
suggests that while Ibsen's own view of the world was
closer to Shakespeare's or Calderon's (whose Lifg ig’g

Dream could be a subtitle for Metatheatre), Ibsen "devoted

 

his genius . . . to unifying his critical and highly real-
istic observations of middle-class life in Norway with a
dramatic form derived from Sophocles. There was a great
perception in this effort of Ibsen's. He must have re-
alized that no form of drama gives such a compelling
effect of the real as does the form of tragedy. . . . Why
not combine the realist's critical attitude of mind with
the tragic poet's feeling for the ulthmately real in ac-
tion, and thus produce the most overpowering illusion of

reality ever achieved by any dramatist?"366 The result,

365Pirandello, “Theatre and Literature," p. 109.
366Abel, Metatheatre, p. 108.

192

Abel claims, is that a wrong belief was propagated for the
fifty years after Ibsen that with the necessitarian form
of Greek tragedy, but without its metaphysics, tragic form
was still possible and valid in the modern theatre.367 It
has been observed often enough that Ibsen's later plays
are straining to break out of the tight necessitarian
structure of a H3923 Gabler, and do suggest that a dif-
ferent dramatic form is at work. Th3 Master Builder, for
instance, is a strange tragedy. In a usual reading of the
play, the builder, Solness, can be seen as the inevitable
victhm of his pride, caught in a chain of cause and effect
leading to his fall. But viewed another way, in terms of
the broader tragic form discussed here, he can be seen as
a character who creates his own structure and then ironi-
cally but willfully dies as he falls-~1iterally and
figuratively-~from that structure. Hilda's exclamation at
the end of the play makes sense in no other context: “But
he mounted right to the top! And I heard harps in the
air.” The words are like Elizabeth Proctor's “He hath his
goodness now.” Realistically, both comments are ironic,
and beside the point, if Proctor and Solness are seen only
as having fulfilled a necessitarian fate of cause and

effect (as in the well-made play). The reaction is “What

367Abel, Metatheatre, p. 79.

193

a fool! He could have avoided that."368 But in the
context of tragic form leading to ultimate victory, the
statements strike the right tone of epiphany, bringing the
plays to a tragic close.

Because of this conflict between the formula of an
inevitable Greek-like fate in Ibsen's plays and the freer
form that is the real tragedy, we may be left confused.
Abel writes, ”There is an artificial imposition of fate on
his characters, which today makes us feel some of Ibsen's
greatest works are clumsy and contrived."369 The inade-
quacy of the necessitarian formula has not been formally
challenged until recently, but ”its inadequacy was felt
by the best playwrights of the present century."370

In contrast to Ibsen, Abel observes, Chekhov wrote
plays that soften the conflict and break down the well-
made structure, for in his plays fate appears as distant
and delicate, and his characters seem completely aware of
themselves as acting out roles.371 But Chekhov's plays
are comedies, however often they may be played as

368Teaching both plays in undergraduate classes, I
find this the inevitable reaction. After all, the
students say, Proctor had only to sign a piece of paper
which didn't mean anything, and Solness should have had
better sense than to listen to a silly girl like Hilda;
he knew he couldn't clhmb the tower. '

369Abel, Metatheatre, p. 109.

37oAbel, Metatheatre, p. 79.

371Abel, Metatheatre, p. 109.

 

19h

tragedies. Many so-dubbed metaplays, including Chekhov's,
end happily. "But," Abel writes, "many of them can do
what comedy can never do, that is, to instill a grave
silence-~a speculative sadness--at their close. They can
do this without being tragedies, which.means, without
making us believe that the events presented, responsible
for our sadness, happened once and for all."372 The con-
cept of metatheatre is thus useful, if for no other reason,
because it calls attention to the basic form of the play
and de-emphasizes the formulas of tragedy and comedy. But
talking about comedy is to jump ahead of this discussion;
so we proceed to a consideration of comic form, with this
observation: as Margaret Fleming may be considered
Herne's Ibsen ”tragedy,” with conflicts in form and for-
mula similar to those Ibsen experienced, so Shore Acres
may be considered Herne's Chekhov “comedy,” a completed
form which held its audience in absolute silence during.
the last seven.minutes of the play, so completely caught
up in the epiphanic actions of Uncle Nat (a character be-
come playwright, and created by a playwright to be played
by him) that it was reluctant to break the silence with

applause.

372Abel, Metatheatre, p. 59.

19S

FORMULA: COMEDY

The discussion of metatheatre-~however valid the
term-~indicates the problem with too careful a distinction
in terms like ”tragedy" and ”comedy.“ The terms tend to
merge in some plays, producing a hybrid. Everyone has
heard of "tragicomedy"; who knows exactly what it is?
Tragedy and comedy do, of course, appear in the same play.
It may even be the case, as Northrop Frye has said, that
tragedy in some classic forms is often the part of a
larger comic pattern, as in the tragedy of the Cross,
where the imminent comic resolution--the resurrection--
hovers over the action, or in the Greek tragedies where
the concluding satyr play suggests a comic rebirth of the
hero.373 The trilogies of the Greek drama, standing alone
without the satyr play, also suggest a larger comic pat—
tern. What is the Oedipus gp gplpppp if not a comic
rebirth and reconciliation within which the tragic Oedipus
335 is only a part? Or what is the ending of the Oresteia
if not a comic resolution at the end of a series of tragic
happenings? To reverse this pattern-~to shift from a
comic prospect to a tragic ending-~13 difficult. fiipg
p253, for instance, seems to be moving to a comic reso-

lution in the reunion of Cordelia and Lear, when the

373Frye, Anatomy, p. 215.

196

action reverses to tragic. Audiences for years were much
happier with a comic ending--a traditional wedding--than
with the apparently sudden tragedy.

Even though the line is sometimes hard to draw be-
tween comedy and tragedy, and the two may appear in the
same work, there is nevertheless a clear distinction in
the forms. The distinction is not in theme. Susanne
Langer has demonstrated that ”tragic theme” and “comic
theme” are not determinants of form, but more of a “means
of dramatic construction."37h The distinction is made
quite clear, however, in terms of the action. The tragic
character, as we have shown, works out his destiny--his
career--in a pattern determined in advance by a choice he
makes. We feel a sadness as we see him.complete the
rhythm that leads to his death (or to the resolution of
his career). We can call it his Fate. But comedy is ”es-
sentially contingent, episodic, and ethnic; it expresses
the continuous balance of sheer vitality that belongs to
society and is exemplified briefly in each individual.“375
The hmage of comedy is Fortune, not Fate. Langer explains,
”Destiny in.the guise of Fortune is the fabric of comedy;
it is developed by comic action, which is the upset and

recovery of the protagonist's equilibrium, his contest

37hLanger, Feeling, p. 326.
37SLanger, Feeling, p. 333-

197

with the world and his triumph by wit, luck, personal
power, or even humorous, or ironical, or philosophical
acceptance of mischance.“376 That is the essential dif-
ference. A play that develops man's destiny with a sense
of capricious chance, Fortune, arouses a comic response; a
play that evolves his destiny with a sense of fulfilling
and completing a pattern of life already set in.motion
arouses a tragic response. In a long standard textbook,

Understandipg Drama, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Heihman

 

make the same distinction, in slightly different terms:
comedy is the world of compromise; tragedy, the world of
absolute commitment to ultimate issues.377 Langer, again,
writes that tragedy exhibits "self-consummation"; comedy,
”self-preservation."378
These distinctions are clear enough in theory; in
actual dramatic practice, the forms become fuzzy. In 1890,
Hennequin observed that "no one any longer thinks of writ-
ing pure tragedy for the stage, and, on the other hand,
the most salable comedies are those which have a few

«379

touches in them of genuine pathos. Pathos there may

be, as in Herne's comedies, but the form, the celebration

376Langer, Feeling, p. 331.

377Cleanth Brooks and Robert B. Hellman, Understand-
ing Drama (New York, 19kb,), pp. 386-387.

378

 

Langer, Feelipg, p. 351.
379Hennequin, Art pf Playwrightigg, Po 95-

198

of life which is comedy, remains identifiable. "Comedy is
an art form,” Susanne Langer writes, "that arises natu-
rally whenever peOple are gathered to celebrate life. . .
For it expresses the elementary strains and resolutions of
animate nature . . .3 it is an.image of human vitality
holding its own in the world amid the surprises of un-
planned coincidence."380 This rhythm of living, offeeling
life, moves a comedy along to a sensation of what an ex-
citing matter it is to be alive and to stay alive in a
world that often moves to fulfill man's destiny under the
whimsical spirit of Fortune. Brice Maxwell, the play-
wright in Howells' The Story 3; 3 Plgy, creates a play
that is ”full of the real American humor; it makes its
jokes . . . in the face of the most disastrous possibil-
ities.”381

Maxwell understood that the individual incidents (or
jokes) are comic only in the larger view of a temporary
triumph over the surrounding world. But it is possible to
mistake the jokes or the wit within the play for the com-
edy itself. In a comedy, ”laughs" are poetic elements,
part of the total structure. Langer writes, “The

joke . . . seems as funny as its occurrence in the total

380Langer, Feeling, p. 331-
381Howells, Story 2; p Play, p. 128.

199

action.makes it."382 For instance, in Man and Superman,

 

there is something mildly amusing in Ann's line, spoken
after John Tanner's long discussion of politics:. "I am so
glad you understand politics, Jack: it will be most use-
ful to you if you go into parliament." In the context of
the successive events that have been building up in the
play, however, the line is a “laugh." It is a good llpg,
but it is a better gygpp in the play.

Stark Young describes this organic nature of comedy
as ”a general conception that pervades a whole performance,
something that is like a bath of light by which the per-
formance is surrounded and from which it achieves a witty
radiation."383 What strikes the observer is the dramatic
illusion of comic life, not an isolated glance at life.

What is the usual action-~the succession of events--
that creates this comic illusion? Classically, a young
man in love faces a sequence of obstacles which he must
overcome to achieve the final celebration in the play--
marriage. Usually, a major obstacle is an older man who
also wants to marry the girl, and, to complicate things,
the old man may be the young man's father. Such a de-
scription fits Moliere's‘gpp Mlpgp, for instance, but it

does not fit many other plays (e.g., Moliere's The

382Langer, Feelipg, p. 3&7.

383Stark Young, “Character Acting,“ Theatre Arts,
IX (December, 1925), p. 818.

200

Misanthrppe). Rather than naming the obstacles, we can
say, more inclusively, that the hero encounters a variety
of obstacles in his way to the girl. These obstacles, if
they are other characters, usually have some kind of a

mental bondage, as again in The Miser, where Harpagon is

 

clearly limited by his miserly vision. In Herne's Spppg
£3333, Martin, the major obstacle to the love story, is
limited by his material and paternal self-interest.

The comedy may also reflect a cyclic-~almost ritual-
istic-qmovement from a normal world to a second world
outside of the normal where the resolution is set up--as
in the forest scenes in.Midsummg§ Nigpt's‘gggpme-and back
again to the normal world where the ends are tied up in a
celebration or a feast.38h This final feast celebrates
not the end of a life, as tragedy does, but the beginning
of a new social organism, Frye writes, “Tragedy usually
makes love and the social structure irreconcilable and
contending forces, a conflict which reduces love to pas-
sion and social activity to a forbidding and imperative
duty. Comedy is much concerned with integrating the
family and adjusting the family to society as a whole;

tragedy is more concerned with breaking up the family and

38("Northrop Frye, “The Argument of Comedy,” in
En lish Institute Essa 3, ed. D. A. Robertson Jr. (New
York: Columbia UnIversity Press, l9h9), p. 68.

201

opposing it to the rest of society.“385 The resolution in
comedy, then, combines an individual release with social
reconciliation. The reconciled society thus created in-
cludes as many people as possible, especially the charac-
ters who have been in opposition. Thus at the end of
Mpph.Agp‘Apgp§ Nothing, Don John, the villain, is captured
and returned to the society, and even though he is not
onstage in the final celebration, he is included in the
final society when Benedick declares, in the last speech
in the play, that he will "devise . . . brave punishments
for him [Don John].” In Shore Acres, Martin, the villain,

 

is also a part of the final celebration which is, signifi-
cantly, Christmas Eve, a celebration of the birth of a new
order.

The final scene of a comedy is a triumph, however
temporary, over the surrounding world.386 It may be
viewed also as an “epiphany,” in Northrop Frye's word,
where an enlightenment occurs, where the I‘undisplaced
apocalyptical world and the cyclical world meet."387 Such
scenes usually occur on islands, towers, lighthouses,

ladders, and staircases, Frye suggests.388 (It fits,

385Frye, Anatomy, p. 218.
386Langer, Feeling, p. 3&8-
387Frye, Anatomy, p. 203.
388Frye, Anatomy, p. 203-

202

perhaps too neatly, to point out that Herne played the
last “epiphanic” scene of Shore Acres on a staircase.)

Such, then, is the form of comedy, a sequence of
events that leads over all obstacles and mischance to the
celebration of a new life, a new society. There is a
”happy ending" in the sense that we are watching a birth
at the end of a comedy. When, instead of emphasizing this
basic form, the comedy contrives a happy ending outside of
the organic structure, or when it emphasizes "laughs" for
their own sake outside of the structure, the form may be
lost in formulas of comedy.

A ”moral,“ too is outside of the form of comedy,
which has no moral quality both Langer and Frye agree.389
We learn from comedy an exhilaration at living, not in-
struction on how to live. Nor is comedy spiteful, some-
thing dishonorable to our human nature. Meredith wrote,
”Those who detect irony in comedy do so because they

choose to see it in life."390

In the comedies of Horne,
certainly, there is neither spite nor irony. Today, by
contrast, we have "black comedy” which reflects not so
much a shift in view of what comedy is as a shift in view
of what life 13. Yet even the form of such so-called

389Langer, Feeling, p. 326 and Frye, "Argument of
Comedy,” p. 62. .

 

39°George Meredith, An Essa on Comed and the Uses
2; the Comic Spirit (New YBr , 977, p. 8%. 7*

203

"black comedies" often moves in the essential comic form,
to a triumph of a new social order--a birth--even though
along the way there may be disconcerting excursions into
spite and irony. To use a recent American play as an
example, Kopit's 9p Dadl Poor Dad ends with a mildly tri-
umphant hero who does see a new place for himself in the
limited social order that emerges at the end of the play.
Proceeding now to a consideration of Herne's most
commercially and critically successful comedy, Shore Acres,
we will look for a sense of significant comic form rising

above the formulas which clutter the play.

CHAPTER III

SHORE ACRES AND SAG EARBOR

 

In Shore Acres and Sgg Harbor, Herne demonstrates his

 

grasp of the essential, organic comic form. When he loses,
occasionally, his hold on that form, his hand is guided by
the mechanical intrusion of good jokes, melodrama, and
sentimentality and by the ponderous demands of stage real-
ism, Since §pppgjéppgp was Herne's greatest success with
audiences, and ramains his most interesting play with the
critics, a detailed scene by scene analysis of the play is
more rewarding than a close analysis of Spg Harbor. The
forms of the two plays are shmilar, though §gg Harbor is
more loosely developed. The central plots of the plays
are quite different, though both plots are old and reli-
able staples of plotting. First, then, an analysis of
§pppp Apppp before a consideration of the form and formula
of §gg Harbor.

The plot of Shore Acres is contrived upon the worn

 

conflict between the domineering father and his defiant
daughter who rebels by marrying a man other than her fa-
ther's choice, and is sent away from the old homestead
into a raging storm, only to return, babe in arms and suc-

cessful husband in tow, to the forgiving father as the

20h

205

curtain falls. Herne has threaded a subplot of land
speculation, which reflects his conversion to Henry
George's theories, throughout this central conflict. The
resolution of the subplot is a refined version of the end-
ing of what has been called 'rube comedy,” where the coun-
try man triumphs over the crooked speculator who usually
has city connections.1 The two plots are, as we shall see,
inseparable. When reduced to bare summary the central
plot sounds like the standard excitement of melodrama, yet

the critic for the Boston Post found that there was "abso-

 

lutely nothing sensational in the plot,"2 and the Boston
Timpp found ”little or no plot.”3 Both comments suggest
how effectively Herne transformed this calcified skeleton
into a living thing.

How little the plot had to do with the play that came
across the footlights is indicated in the review of the
Boston Evening Transcript: ”No outline [of plot] can do
justice to the overflowing humanity of the play-~to its
sweet lifelikeness; to its fearless handling of great pas-
sions; to its deep and lovely ethical impression.“h The
form of the play which develops as the shuple plot becomes

lFelix Sper, From Native Roots: A Panorama of Our
Regional 933.113 (Caml'K—I—d—ahmm: W - -—

2Boston Post, February 21, 1893.

 

3Boston Times, February 26, 1893.

“Boston Evening Transcript, February 21, 1893.

 

206

drama is a movement of the comic spirit which shows a
triumphant man overcoming the obstacles a capricious For-
tune puts in his way and finally achieving a new community,
a new social order. The spirit which guides this movement
is not the young man who overcomes the senex iratus to win
the girl, but the humanitarian and tolerant character of
old Uncle Nat (Herne's starring role).5 Net's triumphant
reconciliation of opposing forces is reflected in the
subtitles Herne supplied for the individual acts: Act I,
”Hayin' Time,” a picture of an established rural community
order disrupted by modern liberal thought (Darwinism, for
instance) and the corroding influence of business specu-
lation; Act II, "The Silver Weddin',“ the established
family community disrupted by the same forces; Act III,
”Havin' an Understandin'," the climax in which Uncle Nat
gains control; Act IV, "Me an' the Children," the denoue-
ment in which Uncle Nat becomes the benign patriarch of a
new society and leads the children's Christmas celebration

and the acceptance of the new baby.

ACT I: ”HAYIN' TIME“
The setting, a reproduction of “Shore Acres Farm,” is
created for the inevitable proscenium frame through which
5In one version of the play, the title was, aptly,
Uncle Nat. Herne's manager felt that Shore Acres or Shore

Acres Subdivision, which emphasize the topicaI subplot,
wouId Be more—likely to attract an audience.

 

 

207

the audience is invited to peek in on and eavesdrop on
somebody else's real life. In this case, the proscenium
concept is appropriate to the play; it is not simply what
Robert Brustein has called an “escapist illusion."6 We
are tired of the proscenium today. The movies can do it
all so much.more effectively. As early as the 1910 re-
vival of Spppp‘épppp, one critic observed, ”Nobody on
earth is gratified by such stuff any more. We the 'peepul'
turn aside into the picture show instead. The pictures
are cold and flat, and they tire the eyes; they please,
nevertheless, because they copy the life we are living at
the minute.“7
In 1893, however, Herne's audiences were grateful for
the peek at the realistic pictures of his scenery--the
real pump and the real farmimplements.8 Although some
complained of the ”too great prolixity of detail,“9
Herne's description of his setting shows some sense of

selectivity.10 George Pierce Baker prescribed the remedy

for unnecessary clutter in a play: "selection with one's

6Robert Brustein, Seasons 2: Discontent (New York,
1965) , p. 2800

7Boston Transcript, February 8, 1910.

8Boston Post, February 21, 1893.

9Boston‘ggmmonwealth, February 25, 1893.
10Shore Acreg and Other Plays (New York, 1928), p. 5.

All subsequent references to this standard edition of the
play will be cited in my text.

208

purpose clearly in.mind.“ll Herne's purpose is clear, and
every detail of his setting becomes functional in the
course of the act.

The outdoor scene is the Berry farm--a section of the
farmhouse and dooryard at the right, a section of the barn
and barnyard at the left, with a road running across the
back of the stage. In the distance is Berry Light which
becomes the setting for Act III. The setting establishes
the Berry home as part of a larger community before the
play moves inside in Act II where family life is completeiy
disrupted. Herne's directions also insist on an over-
hanging cover of trees, gently swaying in the wind at the
beginning of the act, creating a sense of movement, of
expectancy. The sound effects are birds, buzzing insects,
and a distant mowing machine, all suggesting activity--
something about to happen. When the curtain rises, Millie,
the four-year-old Berry child, is playing in the dooryard;
she is another scenic element in this rustic idyll. The
purpose in this opening scene is to create a static im-
pression already stirring toward change (projecting its
own future, Susanne Langer would say).

Things begin to happen immediately as the mail car-
rier comes, picks up the outgoing letters, and deposits a
newspaper (which we later learn is the Bangor Wpig).

8 11George P. Baker, Dramatic Technique (Boston, 1919),
p. 9.

 

 

209

Isolation is broken by this intrusion of the outside
world. The brief scene between Millie and the mail car-
rier--a piece of candy and a kiss--sets the tone, too, of
the unaffected, childlike ways of these people. For all
of the reviewers, the scenes with the children throughout
the play were among the most interesting, interesting
enough for one reviewer ”to immortalize the play all by

“12 Herne's decision to open the play With a

themselves.
child actor is shrewd, for the scene tells the audience
exactly what kind of a play he is to see, or at least sug-
gests a basic quality of the play.

The idyll is broken as Helen Berry, seventeen, and
Uncle Nat appear in the middle of a conversation. Helen's
first line sets up the major conflict in the plot: ”Yes,
I know, Uncle Nat, perhaps I oughtn't. But Father makes
me mad when he talks as he does about Sam” (p. 8). Nat's
reply, ”Things'll come out all right ef you'll only heve
patience,“ sets up the assurance that runs throughout the

play that everything will, under his direction, come out
all right.13 The comic expectation of a happy ending is

12Boston Evenipg TranscrLEE, February 21: 1893-

13Herne's use of dialect in the script of the play is
difficult to transpose into New England, Down East speech.
He was obviously not able to approximate that speech on
the printed page. Yet the Bostonians who heard it in the
theatre thought they were hearing the real thing. Knowing
how Herne coached each actor, it is probable that he could
approximate the dialect orally.

210

always clear in the play, even when things look darkest.
Ludwig Lewisohn's description of this expectation fits
Herne's practice: ”In sentimental comedy the purpose of
clouds is to have a silver lining. The silver lining is
carefully planted from the start and in the last act ir-
radiates the visible horizon. It is a perfectly open
secret; the playwright would fare 111 who refused to play
the game."m

The scene presents the exposition amoothly enough.
Helen is a girl of advanced ideas ready to defy Martin,
her father. She is not like Ann, her mother, who is sub—
missive to Martin's commands. But, most important, the
scene establishes Nat as the spiritual father of Helen, a
relationship which will become more important as the play
moves on. When Helen says she wishes Nat were her father,
his reply is ”That ain't right, an' you know it" (p. 9).
His attitude will change.

The scene is interrupted by the off-stage arrival of
Mr. Blake's carriage. Here the skillful handling of the
exposition breaks down. Helen tells Nat that Martin wants
her to marry Blake, the local shopkeeper. Nat is supposed
to be surprised and frightened at the news which he quite
reasonably might have known earlier, considering his close
relationship with Helen. But Herne is following

luLudwig Lewisohn, The Drama and the Stage (New York,
1922), P. 29.

211

established practice by introducing the character and his
relevance before he appears on stage, a practice he had
avoided with Helen and Nat who introduced themselves to
the audience. In performance, the expectancy of Blake's
arrival and the interest in his relationship with Helen
may easily cover this awkwardly planted piece of exposi-
tion. But it creeks anyway.

Before Blake enters the scene (we learn later he went
into the barn to find Martin), Joel Gates and his "little
Mandy” drift into the farmyard from the road. Gates is a
problem.in the play structure: he is an interesting local
color study and an eccentric character part, but is he an
organic part of the play? The part was played, in the
Boston production, by George Wilson, a well-known char-
acter actor. Every reviewer singled out his performance
for special praise. For instance, “Mr. Wilson has a char-
acter bit in Farmer Gates. His make-up was a work of
art-~his walk and intonation was [pig] admirable."15
Herne describes him: "He is small and slight, his face
weather-washed, kindly; his keen little eyes seem.to be as
a child's with a question in them, always asking, 'What is
it all about anyhowi--I d'know!’ He is never seen without
Mandy. Her whole little personality is part of his; the

15Boston 3233, February 21, 1893. Deviations from
accepted usage occur with some frequency in newspaper

reviews. Subsequent deviations in quotations from reviews
will stand unnoted.

212

nondescript, faded clothing, the rhythm of movement. The
faraway look in the old face is repeated in the apple-
blossom beauty of the child” (p. 10).

Gates appears in.many of the important scenes of the
play. And for a good reason. He is the lowest level of
this particular society; he owns only seven acres of land
and does odd jobs for others. He is always outside of
this society or barely on its fringes. He and Mandy own a
very special world of two. Only at the end of the play is
Mandy left under the paternal protection of Uncle Nat, and
that action is projected for the next day. In this first
appearance of Gates, Uncle Nat tries to shake hands with
Mandy, but she hides behind her father who says, "Don't
never seem t' want t' play with nobody or nothin' but me"
(p. 11).

Then occurs a piece of exposition--filling out Gates's
background--which pleased Herne when he recalled it in
answer to a charge that his realistic play left nothing to
the imagination. He cited this passage:

Uncle Nat. She's a-growin' ain't she-~growin'

jes' like a weed. Myb-my! How like
her mother dooze she look, don't she?

Gates. Yeh. Gits to look more an' more like her
every day in the week.

Uncle Nat. I suppose-—yeh hain't never heard
nothin' of her-~sence--hev yeh, Joel?

Gates. No--nothin' (p. 11).

Horne explains, "Now Joel is a grass widower. His wife

213

ran away with another man; but nothing occurs in the
dialogue concerning her except the above. Does not that
leave something for the imagination?"16 The exposition is
subtle enough to prompt one reviewer to refer to Mandy as
a ”mother—bereft girl."17 But it is a sample of Herne's
understatement. He does not spew out the whole sensa-
tional story but merely suggests it, leaving Gates and
Mandy rather shadowy drifters in the society of the play,
and an essential part of the hmpression Herne is building
up.

Gates also serves a more immediate plot function. He
has come to borrow Nat's gun, “01' Uncle Sam'l," to kill a
fox, even though in his far-away manner he almost forgets
to ask for it. The gun becomes important later in the
play. In this scene the comic attitude toward the gun is
established. Even though the gun is always loaded, it is
more a toy than a weapon in the play. Joel's fox hunt be-
comes ridiculous later when his fox turns out to be a
skunk. In this earlier scene, Nat and Joel play with the
gun; their attitude is ”that of two boys gloating over a
treasure" (p. 12), and their game is farcical. When Nat
tells Joel to aim his gun at someone else, Joel replies,

”There ain't nobody else handy,” and Nat responds, ”I swan

16Boston Journal, February 25, 1893.
17Boston Commopwealth, February 25, 1893.

21h

that's too bad“ (p. 13). All of the scene is funny, but
it stretches too far for the joke-~and it stretches beyond
the meek character of Joel which has already been estab-
lished. It is with this sort of scene that the reviewer
for the Boston Commonwealth found fault, ”an occasional
stooping too far to earn a laugh.”18 Susanne Langer
writes that laughs in a good play are poetic elements;
“the delight we take in it is the delight we take in some-
thing created for our perception, not a direct stimulus to
our feelings."19 The effect of this scene relies on no
perception, only on the qualified fear that the gun can go
off. Yet it is easy enough to see why Herne wanted to
keep this scene: it shows the constantly playful, child-
like side of Uncle Nat, even though those characteristics
are sufficiently established elsewhere.

When Joel leaves, the play creaks again. Another es-
sential piece of exposition has to be established, Nat's
pension. Helen, who has been in the background during the
last scene, playing with Millie, asks if Sam Warren has
done anything about Nat's back pension, a sort of legacy
which an audience expects to be given at just the right
moment in the play. The question has been prepared for in

the previous scene with Joel when Nat explains that Uncle

18Boston‘gommonwealth, February 25, 1893.

19Susanne Langer, Feelipg and Form (New York, 1953),
PP o 3&1'3’42 0

 

215

Samil is his gun from his Civil War experience with the
Sixth.Maine, Company A. Helen has been deliberately left
in the background of that scene, and her question has no
relation to her action at the moment, especially since she
leaves for a stroll immediately after the fact is estab-
lished that Sam will undoubtedly be successful in getting
Net's pension. Again, Herne seems to lose control of the
play. The point must be made, but it is only vaguely
connected with the action.

With Helen gone, Nat asks Millie to ride in hisidmml-
barrow; he will be the horse for her carriage. They leave
the stage empty. In the stage directions, Herne gives a
motive for this exit: ”He starts off as if he might be
going to get fodder for the noon meal of the anhmals, when
he notices Millie” (p. 1h). It is difficult to see how on
the stage the motive would come across as anything other
than what it is: a ruse to clear the way for a new scene.
In fairness to Herne, it can be said that the innocence of
the wheelbarrow scene contrasts effectively with the
scheming of Blake and Martin in the next scene. But the
movement of the play, its machinery, becomes obvious.

The audience has already heard enough about Blake and
Martin to expect some sort of villains. These expecta-
tions are only partly fulfilled, for Herne deliberately
breaks the stereotypes. Horne observed that the stock

villain had a ”kind of omnipotent and omniscient power

216

which was taken for granted on the part of the audience."20
Blake, the traditional villain who takes a mortgage on the
old homestead, has some of the surface trappings associ-
ated with the part, but there is a difference.

He is a man of forty years; he has black hair,
and his side-whiskers are close cut. The rest
of his face is cleanly shaven. He is dressed
in a grey business suit, "store made;" the cost
is a single-breasted frock, very slightly cut-
away, buttoned with one button at the breast.
He wears a white laundered shirt, and a rather
high standing collar with a black readyamade
tie. His hat is a silk one, old, but not bat-
tered, brown at the edges of the crown and
brim, . . . He carries a buggy whip, an old
white one. He has a black silk ribbon watch
guard around his neck, and a gold watch. He
is portly and well-to-do, but jovial. He is
rather good-looking, and has the air of a con-
tented, cheerful business man, shrewd, but not
cunning or mean; he is always smiling (p. 15).

Martin, who is linked with Blake throughout the play, also
wears a black hat and a black handkerchief around his neck,
and he is carrying a jackknife. (Uncle Nat, by the way,
wears a ”good-guy” white straw hat.)

The visual hmpression these two characters make when
they enter only partly reinforces the impression made by
earlier comments of other characters. Herne adds a piece
of pantomime to their entrance that tends to cast the im-
pression in a less than sinister light. Traditionally,
the villains could be expected to work out their schemes
in a clandestine atmosphere. Here, in the center of the

20James A. Herne, "Forty Years Behind the Foot-
lights,” The Coming Age, II (August, 1899), p. 12h.

217

farmyard, they are joined by Perley, the hired girl, who
goes about her normal routine, collecting the mail and the
provisions left on the porch. She takes the paper from
the mail bag and gives it to Martin, without a word.
Blake and Martin are a part of the normal routine of the
farm.

We meet them in the middle of a conversation. Blake
is saying, "No sirree. I tell yeh, Martin, the day 0'
sentiment's gone. We're livin' in a practical age. Any
man's liable to go to bed poor 'n wake up a millionaire"
(p. 16). Martin is convinced that his hesitation to cut
up the farm into building lots for summer homes to attract
city folks is only a matter of sentiment. Just because he
and Nat promised their mother never to sell the farm is
not practical reason enough to hesitate, when there is a
chance of getting rich. The scene is much too long, as
they plan their avenues and driveways and corner lots, but
Herne drags the scene out to make his social point: land
speculation is a corrupting influence. Herne falters be-
cause he is caught up more with a thesis than with the
drama in hand: the ”problem.play” is painfully evident.

The conversation moves from social issues to a family
one: Martin thinks he can control whom his daughter will
marry. The irony, considering what the audience knows
about Helen, is too obvious. To Blake's observation that

”girls are beginning to think they've a right to marry who

218

they please," Martin responds with pride, "Net my girl"

(p. 20). The next move is to discuss Sam, who has snared
Helen's interest. He is damned for being a "red-hot
Swedenborgian“ and reading “lunatics” like Spencer and
Darwin. He is also damned for being a “home-a-pathic
physician,” not a country doctor. In particular, he is
trying to cure “ol' Mis' Swazy“ whom everyone has given up.
Herne follows through on this detail, as he does on others,
with remarkable subtlety. Later, Sam tells Helen that
Miss Swazy is getting better, but in Act II at the dinner
we learn, casually, that her place is up for sale.

This scene is the weakest point in Act I. The move-
ment of the play seems to stop while we listen. Herne
tried to break the stereotyped villains, but he was unsuc-
cessful: they are still a bore. He tried to explore
social issues, but he preached. As a result, the charac-
ters are puppets who have no appeal to the emotions-~not
even to disgust or fear, for they are too mechanical to
inspire either. The fault was obvious to contemporary
reviewers. The Boston Evenipg Transcrip_: "Martin was
earnest, forcible and intelligent, but had a touch of the
conventionally theatric queerly at odds with the absolute

k ”21

lifelikeness of the others' wor The Boston Thmes:

"Perhaps the one conspicuous inconsistency in the play is

21Boston‘Evening Transcript, February 21, 1893.

 

219

Martin. He is . . . sordid, sour, selfish, and disagree-
able."22 The Boston Globe critic speculated that if there
were a fifth act, Martin should turn up as "a highway
robber or incendiary, if he thought he had anything to
gain from it."23

After this scene which fumbles with formula, Herne
picks up the movement again. Helen comes back from her
stroll, her arm around her fourteen-year-old brother,
Young Nat. The dialogue is brief and to the point. Young
Nat urges Helen to marry Blake because it will be to his
advantage in Blake's store where he is employed. His
motives, like Martin's, are selfish. Herne handles Young
Nat much more skillfully, however, than he does Martin.
Young Nat is involved in playful teasing with his sister,
especially about the existence of Hell which she refuses
to believe in. Yet his selfish motives are clear, espe-
cially when Sam.Warren comes on, playfully twists his ear,
sending Nat off uttering a threat to get even with Sam for
treating him like a child (and also ruining any chance of
Helen's marrying Blake). The action of this scene is the
only planting for Nat's later involvement in the plot; it
is so playfully and subtly handled that Young Net is es-

tablished not as a villain but as a young man trying to

22Boston Times, February 26, 1893.

23Boston Globe, February 21, 1893.

220

assert himself, a characteristic important in the end of
the play.

What follows is a conventional love scene between
Helen and Sam, marred again by Herne's insistence on

bringing in topical problems, in particular that raised by

 

Howells' A Hazard pf New Foptunes, financial speculation.
The scene ends when Sam reveals his decision to go West.
They are interrupted by Martin who brings up Semis various
apostasies, which leads to a fight, broken up by Helen.
The scene is beautifully paced. In his stage directions,
Herne asks for "a quick staccato, which reaches its height
in Helen's cry of terror as the two men clinched. Then
there is a pause, and the rest of the scene, until Martin
leaves the stage, is completed in tense low tones that are
portentous of trouble” (p. 29). The conflict is obvious
visually as the provincial Martin enters leading a horse
and discovers Sam and Helen reading Howells' novel to-
gether. Then Herne carefully paces the rhythm of the
scene using mostly short, quick exchanges of dialogue,
stichomythy, to build to the dramatic climax, the fight.
Two things are especially admirable about the form of this
scene. It depends little on exposition, but builds only
on the emotional rhythm of the action, creating an inten-
sity that should tell the audience in terms of feeling
that the conflict is now irreconcilable. The point has

been made discursively in much of the earlier exposition,

221

but here it is made dramatically. And second, the scene
projects the future of the play, its own future; even
though Sam is ordered away, he is clearly the future vic-
tor in this conflict, for Martin exhibits only “active
hate” while Sam's attitude is one of "simple manly poise"
(p. 29).

Ann, the mother, enters as Martin leaves, to call the
family to dinner, and she apologizes to Sam for not being
able to include him in the invitation. She knows her
husband too well. Sam replies that he would not enjoy the
meal now anyway. (Sam is not included in any of the
feasts in the play until the final reconciliation).

Ann, introduced here only briefly, but very important
when the play comes closer to family problems, is an in-
teresting character, partly because she is the only Herne
character he acknowledged as drawn from life, from his
memory of his mother, Ann Temple Herne.2u She is affec-
tionately drawn throughout, especially as it becomes
apparent that Uncle Net is her spiritual husband, just as
he is the spiritual father to her children. Her habit of
repeating the end of her sentences (e.g., "I hup Martin
hain't seen yeh; I say, hain't seen yeh.") seems prepos-
terous when one reads the script. But in performance
Herne evidently molded a character whose speech patterns

2“Julie A. Herne, ”Biographical Note," in Shore Acres
and Other Plays, p. ix.

 

222

were not only eccentricities but a revelation of her
frustrated character, a woman who is so used to being ig-
nored by her husband that she falls into the habit of
repetition ”as though the person she were addressing had
not heard her" (P. 33). Reviewers found touches of ines-
capable pathos"25 and "the heart of motherhood pulsing
forth in word and act and smile and deed."26

When Ann goes back inside, there is a brief, tender
farewell scene between Sam and Helen, remarkable for its
avoidance of sentiment and its concentration on the ap-
proaching catastrophe. The scene ends with a note of what
Herne calls in the stage directions ”fatality.“ Helen
says, “I don't want to quarrel with Father if I can help
it. I'll have to someday I know--but I want to avoid it
just as long as I can” (p. 3h).

Sam leaves, and the mood is broken by three short
scenes that Herne must have inserted to bring the audience
attention back to the lively, child-like atmosphere that
dominates most of the act: the other two Berry children,
Mary and Bob, come home from school arguing about Bob's
“bad-boy" desire to go swimming; four farmhands come in
kicking a football on their way to wash up for dinner and

have a mock fight with Joel Gates who ducks one of them in

25Boston Evening Tranggript, February 21, 1893.

 

26Boston Commonwealth, February 25, 1893.

223

the trough (Joel has no reason to appear, except for this
comic business); and Uncle Nat returns as he left, a horse
pulling Millie in her wheelbarrow-carriage. They play at
the water trough, and then she returns to her sand pile
for the rest of the act. The mood could have been rees-
tablished without all of this horseplay. Just the scene
with Millie and Uncle Nat, already prepared for by their
previous exit, would have been enough. The rest, the chil-
dren and the farm hands, is a digression into local color
eccentricities and realism (football, typical New England
school children). Herne is giving his audience the little
vignettes it liked, but he is also pausing too long in the
movement of his play.

The action is resumed when Martin confronts Nat with
Blake's land scheme. It is the climax of the act,
bringing together several threads that have been clearly
established: the land, Nat's position as the g3 £5333
head of the family, the marriage of Helen and Sam, leaving
the farm for the city, and the breaking of family ties.
The conflict between Martin and Nat has been inevitable
throughout the act; each clearly represents an opposing
view of life. To dramatize this conflict, Herne chooses a
subject for their conversation that at once brings them
together and shows how far apart they are: their dead
mother. Now, this subject is by its nature sentimental;

but it need not be treated sentimentally, and Herne avoids

22h

sentimentality admirably. It is as if Uncle Nat had heard
Blake's earlier injunction that one cannot be a victim of
sentimentality in these practical days.

The mother is buried on a knoll looking out over the
sea, in one corner of the farm. If the subdivision were
completed her body would have to be moved to a cemetery.
With little show of sentiment Uncle Nat concedes, "Mr.
Blake mus' be right. So go 'head an' build, an' git rich,
an! move up to Boston ef yeh want to. Only, Martin-~don't
sell thet. Leave me thet an' I'll build on't an' stay an'
take keer o' the light, as long's I kin--an' after thet--
why--well, after thet--yeh kin put both of us in a
cimitery ef yeh hev a mind to" (p. h2). Uncle Nat accepts.
He moves with change but still holds onto his promise to
his mother that she should be buried in the knoll over-
looking the sea where her husband drowned. In this scene
Herne gives himself (Uncle Nat) the only set speech in the
act, a long description of the mother's reaction to the
father's death. Uncle Nat spins out the narrative with
specific details but no sentimental commentary, even
though the dangers of tombstone sentimentality inherent in
the subject are inescapable. The narrative reveals Nat's
inner state.

Herne thought he had avoided sentimentality in the
scene: "I might have described the bedraggled condition

of the mother who had lain out all night in the pelting

225

rain storm. . . . But to my mind the play is better
because there is something left for the intelligent spec-
tator to supply. The brief simple telling of that sad
story is more eloquent than any word painting could make
it."27 Herne was given special praise for his acting in
this scene. At the time of the l90u revival with James
Galloway as Uncle Nat, the scene again brought comment:
Galloway ”gave proof of his ability to deal with the heart
interest in his speech to Martin regarding their mother's
grave, a speech which the actor regards as 'fat,' but
which, in the hands of the incompetent becomes mere
bathos."28

When the Drama League presented scenes from old Amer-
ican plays in 1917, it chose this scene from Shore Acres.
One reviewer of that occasion, Heywood Broun, thought the
scene was ”hardly fair” to Herne, observing that it was
”pleasant that the moist, carnal tombstone sentimentality
which pervades the scene has lost much vogue in the
twenty-five years since 'Shore Acres' was produced."29

Louis Sherwin in the New York Globe reacted differently:

 

”Another sad blow to the pride of this generation was a

bit from 'Shore Acres.‘ Of course it dripped

27Boston Journal, February 25, 1893.
28Boston Transcript, September 6, 190u.

29119.! 32213 221211.112. January 23, 1917.

226

sentimentality, dripped it loudly, volubly, proudly. But
when we consider the 'B' Gosh' drama of this season, have
we any right to feel superior?”30

Fashions change, of course. This scene would be dif-
ficult to produce for an audience today, but with an actor
who could sense the control Herne wrote into the scene, it
could play, especially since it falls at this climactic
point in the act where the audience should be feeling not
so much for Mother as for the building emotional state of
the dramatic situation, as it has developed within the
character of Nat throughout the act.

The act ends in a characteristic leveling off. Horne
usually avoided the dramatic curtain in the later plays.
Ann rushes in, picks up Millie who has fallen asleep in
the sand, calls Bob from swimming, and motions Martin into
the house for dinner. To Uncle Nat she says, ”Come
Nathan'l, your dinner'll be stun cold. I say, stun cold“
(p. A3). Uncle Nat stands in silent meditation as the
curtain falls. Each act ends with Nat alone on the stage,
silent.

In Act I, then, all the exposition is laid-~the gun,
Young Nat's threat to Sam, the land scheme, Helen's inde-
pendence, and the rest—~but more important Herne has taken

his audience through a series of incidents that involve it

30New York Glgbe, January 23, 1917.

 

 

227

emotionally in the deep feeling of humanity, the need to
know and understand, that is at the moment felt and under-
stood only by the character of Uncle Net. The child-like
innocence of the beginning of the play is going to change.
The unstable community must break up and reform. Herne
mishandles this movement when he fondles local color eccenr
tricities and social problems, and when he relies on
convention for his exposition and exits and entrances.

But on the whole, the movement of the act carries the
audience into the climactic emotional state of the tomb-
stone scene, then tapers off as Uncle Nat reflects si-

lently upon what has happened.

ACT II: ”THE SILVER WEDDIN'”

The setting for Act II is the Berry farmhouse kitchen,
the center of life in the New England home. Pictures of
this setting have been reproduced in anthologies as an
illustration of typical realistic decor, for there is
another pump with running water, a real stove with a real
fire going, a boiling pot, lots of crockery. Each of
these items becomes functional during the act, but that
function is not always dramatic. At times, the bustle of
activity resembles a cooking school not a play. But the
over-all impression of the scene which emerges from both
Herne's stage directions and the pictures of the setting

is one of stability and security, the community room of an

228

affectionate, though slightly archaic society. The
impression is exploded by the end of the act.

Until the arrival of the guests, ten pages into the
script, there is no action except the preparation of the
dinner. The audience is expected to watch the cooking of
”cranberry sass,” mashed potatoes, and a turkey. To keep
some human dramatic element in the preparations, Herne has
inserted a series of vignettes: the children playing with
the anniversary presents; Millie making doll bread; Tin,
an Irish lad, sparking Perley, the hired girl; arguments
over the right degree of tartness in cranberries and the
position of a stove damper. The vignettes are clever,
often funny, but the impression Herne is trying to commu-
nicate is established effectively long before the scene is
over. Too much fondness for realistic detail again gets
in the way of his drama.

One point essential to the future development of the
drama is clearly established during this scene: Uncle Nat
has tentative control over the workings of the house, as
he seems to have tentative control over the farmyard at
the end of Act I. He acts as if he is in charge of the
kitchen, even though the women maneuver around his control.
Crisis situations, however, are his to manage. He removes
the turkey from.the oven, and he must see that Millie is
cleaned up (”Ef I didn't tend to her, I'd like to know who

would”). Martin is significantly absent from the scene, a

229

fact reinforced by an ironic comment which ties off this
scene and introduces the next. As the guests arrive
Captain Ben says, “Hello, Nathan'l, Many happy returns of
the day.” Nat replies, ”Don't get things mixed, Cap'n.
This ainit my fun'ral“ (p. 55). And, of course, it is not
his, even though the celebration will become the funeral
for family life as it has been known in this room.

The arrival of the guests is also too long, tiresome,
and quaint. But the reviewers and the audience were on
the whole delighted. The Boston Commonwealth called them
”bits of pungently and deliciously quaint work."31 The
Boston Transcript reported, "The group . . . at the anni-
versary feast are little wonders of delightful make-up and
suggestive action . . . inimitable picture of the irascible
Squire and his fussy wife . . . the gnarled old skipper
and his rosy, wholesome helpmate."32

Finally, when the guests have been ushered into the
off-stage sitting room to await the call to dinner, the
play starts to move again. The audience has been enter-
tained by these charming vignettes, but like “The Dance of
the Hours” in 23 Gioconda, the interlude merely passes
time with only a vague connection to the action of the

drama.

 

31Boston Commonwealth, February 25, 1893.

32Boston Evening Transcript, February 21: 1893-

 

230

Blake and Martin enter. Helen is alone on stage.
Martin repeats his disapproval of Sam and goes off to wel-
come his guests. Blake remains with Helen. Their conver-
sation develops the emotional states skillfully. Even
though Blake wears the traditional villain-black suit, his
character in this scene begins to emerge as a simple, and
rather pathetic, shopkeeper, who is unable to see beyond
the biased confines of his shOpkeeper world. He opens the
conversation by going directly, and tactlessly, to the
point: Sam tried to borrow a hundred dollars from him,
but Blake offered a thousand dollars if Sam would leave
Helen alone and never come back. Sam's answer was that
”he'd see me in Hell first" (p. 59). Blake's motives are
interesting. Understanding only the language of money, he
is so completely wrapped up in his desire for Helen that
he debases himself in every way possible and forces her to
hurt him. Helen's only reply is "Hfimi" Then Blake con-
tinues to debase himself. He admires Helen for standing
up to her father, even though that means defeat for him.
He promises her the only gift he can understand, “half of
every dollar I make for the next twenty years.“ He asks
her if he's too old for her, showing he has no vanity. He
asks if he is too orthodox for her and grants that she can
stay home from.meeting and read novels if she wants to.

He will even "read ppgm‘pppkp with you" (p. 60). Blake

finally declares ”I'm goin' to have you Helen, or die

231

a-tryin'," but Helen gives him a hard look, and he adds,
"Nothin' underhand though-—nothin' underhand" (p. 61).
Blake is obviously no stage villain holding the mortgage
on the farm to win the farmer's daughter. He is pathetic.
All of the reviewers praised the role: "Mr. Hudson,
Josiah Blake, looks and acts the typical Yankee trader to
perfection. It is capital.”33

From a lack of understanding with Blake, Helen can be
expected to go to the understanding Sam, where she belongs.
This exit is quickly accomplished when Nat comes in and
sends her off to the barn, making the excuse to Blake that
her pet speckled pullet fell in the rain barrel. 'For the
benefit of the audience, Nat explains to Helen in a stage
whisper (Blake is on the other side of the stage) that Sam
has the hundred dollars. Here, Herne falls back on one of
the old conventions of exposition. He must establish that
Sam has the noney for the later intrigue of the act, and
he does it in the easy way-~a stage whisper--rather than
through action. Herne had used this convention often
enough in the early melodramas, but it is out of place
here. Even Hennequin, that author of a very conventional
manual of playwrighting, wrote in 1890, “The stage whisper,
except as a broadly comic effect, is out of date. Aparts

and asides are now delivered in an ordinary tone of

33Boston Times, February 26, 1893.

232

voice."3u But in 1913, one critic observed that the
“time-honored convention, the conversation entirely audi-
ble to the spectators but unheard by other characters,
still flourishes."35 Herne, too, had not quite escaped
the time-honored convention.

The guests come in for the feast, which becomes much
more than a stage spectacle. It is a happy community
celebration of the twenty-five year survival of a family
order, attended by a cross-section of the community at
large. The six guests include representatives of the sea,
the farm, and the professions. Everyone behaves in his
characteristic role: the visitors exhibit their quaint-
ness; Nat humbly takes ”the part that went over the fence
last" (p. 65); Martin thinks of the meal in terms of cost.

Then Joel Gates and Mandy drift in to return Nat's
gun. They too are asked to join the feast, but Joel re-
plies, "No, I'm too s'iled. Ef I'd 'a' knowed you was
hevin turkeyb-I mean company, I'd 'a' cleaned myself up a
bit” (p. 67). He is coaxed to stay, but he will not eat
at the table. He and Mandy sit down to one side, where
Mandy, who never speaks in the play, shows here her first
”childish joy” as Joel feeds her. They complete the

31"Alfred Hennequin, App pf Playwriting (Boston,
1890), p. 15h.

3SCharlton Andrews, The Drama To-day (Philadelphia,
1913), p0 530

233

community gathering, even while they remain outside of it.
Everyone is gathered except Sam Warren and Young Nat.

The talk at the table moves to the prospect of the
land boom, and each character shows his enthusiastic in-
volvement in it. Even Gates joins in with an offer to
sell his seven acres for ten or fifteen thousand dollars
because "it'd make a great buildin' site fer Vanderbilt 'r
Rockenfeeder 'r any 0' them far-seein' fellers" (p. 70).
The mood is broken abruptly when Martin reveals, "ponder-
ously,” that a surveyor has been on his property and that
he does intend to sell. For the first time in the play,
Ann shows spirit. She says "proudly and defiantly,“ “You
wonit move mg up to Bangor, not ef you git as rich as
Methuselum” (p. 71). Martin immediately links Ann and
Nat; both have tried to browbeat him. Their joint oppo-
sition is the first hint in the play of a love triangle--
the aged one of two brothers in love with the same woman.
Herne used it earlier in Hearts 2; 935 and was to use it
again in §pg Harbor.

When the argument reaches the point that Martin
shouts, “I'm durned of I don't sell the hull thing, hump
stead, graveyard an' every dum--” (p. 72), Young Nat
rushes in announcing that a hundred dollars has been taken
from the safe in Blake's store. Now, it is strange that
Young Nat has not been included in the family celebration.

Even though Horne had to keep him out for plot reasons

231;

that are cleared up later, that reason is hardly enough.
The actual reason is that Young Nat is, as Helen said in
Act I, selfish, not thinking of himself as part of the
family unit and the values it stands for. He is at this
point in the play more of an outsider than Gates. Young
Nat tells the gathering what persons had been in the store
before he discovered that the money was missing, and he
draws out the name of Sam Warren, at which Blake shouts,
"Hg stole it" (p. 72). Helen, who knows only that Sam has
the money, but not where he got it, defends Sam. Martin
moves to strike her, but Uncle Nat grabs Martin's arm.
Martin rushes to the corner to get the gun Gates has just
returned, vowing to shoot Sam, Uncle Nat "quietly, but
with authority . . . takes the gun and puts it back in the
corner” (p. 7h). Helen ”springs towards Martin . . . with
hands clenched. Uncle Nat catches her. . . . The tension
is broken, and Helen bursts into tears, her head resting
on Uncle Net's breast” (p. 7b). The guests leave quietly,
and Perley furtively gathers up the remains of the feast
and retreats to the woodhouse to eat her dinner.

There is a lull, but Herne brings up the tension
briefly as Martin prepares to leave. Martin threatens
Helen in a speech that ends with an emotional outburst
summing up his own fear of the threat which Sam and change
are to him: "Ybu're not of age yet, my lady. I'll show

Sam Warren thet ef my grandfathers was monkeys, they

235

wa'n't thieves“ (p. 75). Young Nat blocks Martin's way
for a moment, a suggestion that he already regrets the
furor he has caused. Then a mechanical despondency falls
on the scene. Helen absentmindedly takes a cup of tea.
Ann stands dazed, her back to the audience. And Nat sinks
into a chair.

Herne shows complete control of the rhythm of dramat-
ic emotion in this scene. What appears to be potential
melodrama becomes instead a movement of hatred, passion,
disorder, and stunned resignation. The passions that come
over to the audience arise out of the melodramatic situa-
tion as it is transformed into drama.

Uncle Nat observes to Ann that "our turkey" came to
an untimely end. And it is their turkey, for the cele-
bration turned out to be more an emblem of the union of
Ann and Net than of Ann and Martin. Ann reflects the
completely demolished society as she leaves, "I'll never
look a neighbor in the face again" (p. 75).

Net clears up the suspense about Semis possible theft
when he tells Helen that he gave the money to Sam, bor-
rowing it from a fund he and Martin had been building to
buy a tombstone for Mother's grave. The revelation at
this point almost wrecks the emotional movement of the act,
even though the revelation is needed to satisfy the audi-
ence's doubts. Herne has used a well-worn trick to build

audience suspense--keep back the essential information.

236

Net's reluctance to acknowledge the loan earlier is, how-
ever, in keeping with his character, but the revelation
still creeks.

The rest of the act is a quiet discovery and renun-
ciation. At Net's suggestion, Helen decides she must
leave with Sam, for “this'll never be home to me anymore”
(p. 77). Net arranges for Captain Ben to take Sam and
Helen secretly on the Lip y App,his cat-boat, when he
sails that evening. Nat not only arranges the elopement,
he gives Helen his mother's wedding ring, for Sam to use
at the earliest Opportunity. He tells her to think of him
as she sells past the lighthouse where he will be on duty
that night: "Jes' as yeh git to the light, you look over
there an' sez you to Sam, sez you--there's ol' Uncle Net's
eye--sez you--he's a-winkin' an' blinkin' an' a-thinkin'
of us” (P. 79). And then his final speech in reply to
Helen's wish that he come out West for a visit: "(Hip

face taking 22.3 look pf logging, with something 2: renun-

 

ciation,] I said--p'rheps--In that there palace o' yourn
yeh used to talk 3' much about when yeh was little. Re-
member when yeh was little how yeh.used to say that when
yeh growed up, yeh'd marry a prince an' live in a gol'
palace, an' I was to come an' see yeh, an' yeh was to
dress me all up in silks, an' satins, an' di'monds, an'
velvets--" (p. 80).

This fairy-tale story aptly expresses Net's inner

237

state, the sense of a father's loss, without sentimen-
tality, as he stands alone in the deed kitchen which had

been the scene of so much life at the beginning of the act.

ACT III, SCENE i: "HAVIN' AN UNDERSTANDIN'"

The end of Act II is the emotional climax of the play.
What should remain is the working out of a new order--
which does in fact happen in Act IV. But Herne wrote Act
III, with the guidance of the old melodrama and stage
spectacle which he knew so well. William.Archer, as noted
earlier, felt the act simply didn't belong in the play.
And, indeed, it serves little purpose other than to estab-
lish one important piece of exposition and to assert in
action Uncle Nat's effective opposition of Martin, which
is already clear.

The scene is the interior of Berry Lighthouse. There
are the usual realistic trimmings--cans, oars, boethooks,
and the rest. The only functional part of the set is a
boathook and the stairway leading up to the light. There
is a tremendous storm outside. Uncle Net is sweeping the
floor when Martin comes in with the not surprising news
that Helen is gone. The conflict, carried over from Act
II, is re—established immediately. Martin asks, ”I'm.her
father, ain't I?” Nat replies, ”Yeh didn't act '3 ef yeh
was today" (p. 82). Martin gives up all claim to her when

he wishes the Liddy Ann would sink in the storm and she

 

238

and Sam would drown, especially since he suspects that she
had to get married to the free-thinking Same-a reaction
which nails him down to his stereotype of the father who
sends his erring daughter out into the storm. That accu-
sation is too much for Net. He springs at Martin's throat.
Just then the light dime and goes out because, as Nat
guesses, Tim.forgot to trim the lamp. Nat tries to go up
the stairs to light the lamp, but Martin blocks his way,
insisting that he hopes the EAEEI.£EB will wreck against
the rocks in the darkness. When Martin refuses to give in,
Net reveals his most personal secret: he could have mar-
ried Ann but characteristically gave her up to Martin, as
he had given in to Martin all of his life. Nat concludes:
”Her child is out ther--my child by rights'. . . . I
give yeh.the mother, but I'm damned if I'm a-goin' to let
yeh.murder the child" (p. 86). The triangle, two brothers
in love with the same woman, has been lingering in the
background of the play. Now it becomes specific. And it
is tied to Net's position as true father of the family.
The two men fight. Martin is defeated and "blindly
gropes his way out into the storm” (p. 87). But the fight
has been too much for Uncle Nat. He does not have the
strength to climb up the stairs to light the beacon, and
the scene ends with his desperate cry, "God help me! I
hain't got the strength" (p. 87). This curtain line, like

the others in the play, leaves Nat on stage alone, but

239

with a difference. It is a melodramatic expediency to
prolong suspense. It resolves nothing that went on in the
scene. But Herne needed it so he could indulge in the
spectacle of shifting scenes to the storm outside this

lighthouse.

ACT III, SCENE 11: "THE 'LIDDY ANN' IN A SOU'EASTER"

EXTERIOR of Berry Lighthouse.
(Note: The storm noises are well worked u. pg-
fore the scene 0 ens. The ate 6 is comple e y
dark,-§§ Lg the grant pz—Ehe thea??e.7
Scene: An expan§p_§: wild, storm-tossed waves,
with the-Tighthouse, g dark, shadowy bulk
risipgffrom the rocky coast pp the le t. The
rain is ourlfi in torrents the thunder roars
Egg lT—hEenin fIEshes. The boom of g ship's
gpp 1p heard above ppg pip pf the EEorm ppg 12
he darkness the "Liddy Ann,“-§Ioop-rigged and
under reefed jib, makes her way sIoWIy throu h
the heavy seas, from right 32 left. She £3 22:
her course and perioust near the rocks. At
TaterveIs pp; un—Booms gpg she sends pp dIEtress
signaIs. The ngures pf Cgptain Ben, Dave
Bur ess Gabe Hi patrick, and Bill Hodgekinsy
2p weII 33 Sam and Helen; can pg dimly discerned
on board. The shouts of Captain Ben giving
EEders and—Ehe re IIeE—oflthe crew are drowned
5 the nBTEe-BT'_hp starm: _E§p g zg§_moments
pppfwfiddy Inn" tosses heIplessly ip £22 dark-
ness. hen 3 tin Iight appears—pp the lowesp
window 22 the ighthouse. For 3 second i3
wavers then slowly rises from window to window,
pp Uncle Net climbs E22 stairs pp thE t3wer. lg
gnother moment the light 1p the tower blazes
forth, showin the _Liddy Apfiw—her course. A
shout pg reIIef oes u from those pp the boat,
and as the "Liddy Ann makes her way sETEly past

the FBckg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE CURTAIN FALLS
This is the entire scene. It is obvious that nothing
dramatic is accomplished that would not have been done if

Nat had climbed the stairs at the end of Scene i. What is

2h0

accomplished is melodramatic suspense and spectacle.
Exactly how Herne staged the scene is unclear. But such
seascapes were not uncommon on the nineteenth century
stage. Wagner's 222 Flying Dutchman ends with the Dutch-
man's ship sinking beneath the waves, in the distance.
Today, that spectacle is staged with projections, but in
the older productions, a real miniature ship went down.
For the most part, the audience loved such spectacle.

The Boston Tfimes described the scene: "Here the scene

 

changes and we have an exterior view of the lighthouse.
The 'Liddy Ann' is being tossed about by the waves, but
the light appears just in time to save her from.going to
pieces on the rocks. This is one of the most realistic
scenes of the kind ever presented in Boston, and that is
saying a great deal.“36 The Boston Post reported, ”The
change from the interior to the exterior of the light is
very cleverly handled and elicited loud applause."37 But
even in the nineties such scenes were not applauded by
everyone. The Boston Budget was most critical: ”This is
the one serious blemish of the play; and the fault was the
more apparent Monday evening, when the schooner turned out

to be a cat-boat with sail full set in a heavy wind, and

36Boston Times, February 26, 1893.

 

37Boston Post, February 21, 1893.

2H1

her port and starboard lights on the wrong sides."38 This
comment is particularly interesting because it finds fault
not with the concept of such a scene but with its inept
realism, The Boston lepp too found the scenes melodra-
matic, but “it may be suspected that they were introduced
as a concession to the box office.“39 Interestingly, one
of Herne's severest critics, William Winter, found this
scene to be the "one vital dramatic ingredient" in the
play.“0

The point need not be labored. Horne could do good
melodrama for his audiences, and here he has conceded to
do so, even though he did use the scene to also restate
the conflict in the play. But the scene does not belong

in the movement of Shore Acreg. One critic wrote that it

 

”breaks in on the quiet and even key of the play."hl And

when that happens, the dramatic form is forgotten.

ACT IV: "ME AN' THE CHILDREN"
The movement of Act IV is quiet and thoughtful,
leading to what Northrop Frye might call an ”epiphany.“

There are occasional boisterous interruptions in this

38Boston Budget, February 26, 1893.
39Boston Globe, February 21, 1893.

hOWilliam Winter, Life 23 David Belasco (New York,
1918), p. 200.

uISan Francisco Chponicle, February 23, 1897.

2&2

movement, concessions to the audience's love of action.
The setting is again the farmhouse kitchen of Act II, fif-
teen months later on Christmas eve. The movement of time
in the play is from summer (Act I), to fall (Acts II and
III), to the dead of winter (Act IV). The movement of the
action is from the workings of a living society through
its decay into the sleeping deadness at the beginning of
Act IV. But as Christmas is a festival marking the cele-
bration of a new order, so Act IV develOps as a celebration
that projects a new order for this society.

When the curtain rises, Ann is mending stockings,
Martin is sitting dejectedly holding the blueprint map of
his farm which has been laid off in lots, and Young Net is
reading. Perley and Uncle Nat are playfully dressing the
children, Bob, Mary, and Millie, for bed. The first line
in the act is Young Net's as he looks up at the playing
children and remarks, cynically, "I tell yeh there ain't
no Santy Claus! It's y'r father and mother" (p. 90).
Uncle Nat reassures the children that Santa Claus does
exist and advises Young Nat that even if he doesn't be-
lieve, he should not undermine the beliefs of others. The
annual hope which the myth of Santa Claus brings into the
dead of winter is transformed during the act from myth to
the values of selfless human giving.

The children hang up their stockings and invite Young
Net to join them.and hang up his. He repeats his heresy,

2u3

"There ain't no Santy Claus." Millie threatens him with
the fate of non-believers. "Ybu won't go to Heaven of you
say thet" (p. 92). The children go up the stairs to bed.
Millie lingers to say goodnight to Martin who momentarily
breaks his depression to kiss her, but lapses back into
his isolation, failing to respond to her wishes for a
Merry Christmas.

There follows a brief, tense scene, foreshadowing the
failure of the land scheme, in which Ann demonstrates her
new control of her husband. The tension is broken when
Net and the children run back down the stairs, still
playing games. Finally, they go to bed. There is a short
comic incident between Ann and Ybung Nat, which continues
to develop during the act. Ann takes his book, a dime
thriller in which "The Black Ranger's got the girl in his
power an' Walter Danforth's on his trail" (p. 96), and be-
comes absorbed in it, while Young Nat sits thrumming on
the table.

Next, Uncle Nat has another set speech, a skillful
one in which he works from rambling observations on the
snow storm and Christmas to the land development scheme.
The speech initiates the first reconciliation in the act
when Nat shows Martin how proud he is of the project. As
usual, Herne gives Nat action, tracing the avenues on
Martin's map, rather than direct statement, to create the

emotion of the scene. Martin's reply is hardly one of

21th

reconciliation, "Ef you hain't got nothin' better t' do
than to set there a-devilin' me, I'd advise you to go to
bed“ (p. 98). But, as we find out in the next speech,
this is the first time Martin has spoken to Net since the
scene in the lighthouse, fifteen months earlier. Martin,
however, remains an improbably grim Scrooge during the
rest of the scene: “Merry Christmas--Humph! I'd like to
know what I've got to be merry about“ (p. 98). The prob-
lem with the character of Martin is the same as before:
he is too mean-spirited to be believable. He does, of
course, make a perfect foil for Uncle Nat, but when Herne
created the foils, he lost all sense of balance, in favor
of hip character, Nat.

Continuing the reconciliation, Nat asks Martin to
help him fill the children's stockings. Martin's reply is
pathetic, spoken "half-softening," "I hain't got nothin'
to put in 'em“ (p. 99). Net asks Ann to help him: "Come,
Me, let's you and me play Santy Claus" (p. 99), but Ann is
so absorbed in the excitements of The Black Ranger that
she doesn't hear him. Young Nat finally helps with the
presents, exclaiming triumphantly, “I pplg yeh 'twas yer
father and mother all the time” (P. 99). Uncle Net's

reply is significant: “It ain't yer father and mother

 

this time-~it's yer Uncle Nat, by George!” [They both

laugh.) (p. 100).

Martin softens when he observes that Nat might have

I. I!" ill-'11

2115

bought a badly-needed new overcoat to replace his army
coat, instead of spending the money on such foolishness.
This comment serves a practical function, in addition to
showing the softening of Martin, by planting once again
Net's connection with the army and the possible pension.
Next, Ann joins the distribution of presents, after she
ruins Young Net's story by telling him the fate of The
Black Ranger.

The muted, forced family celebration has been suf-
ficiently established to move on to a visitor from the
outside, Blake, who adds to the impression that something
is missing in this celebration. He is lonesome, especial-
ly at Christmas, for he has no family. Ann's thoughtless
suggestion, ”Ybu ought t' got married long ago,‘I brings
from him a sigh and ”I never saw but one girl wuth‘pgyyp'
and she wouldn't hev pp? (p. 102). The image of Helen, so
obviously missing in this celebration, is planted once
again, assuring the audience that she will turn up shortly,
if expectations are to be fulfilled. The land plot is
brought up again as Blake tells Martin, at one side of the
stage, that the Land Company has failed and that he and
all the others in the community stand to be ruined. At
just this point, the other plot reappears as Sam and Helen
pass by the window at the back of the set and Uncle Nat
goes out to meet them. Blake and Martin continue to talk,

the conversation becoming more desperate and depressing.

2H6

Herne is skillful here in juxtaposing the ruination in one
plot against the hope of reconciliation in the other.
Blake who functions, with Martin, in both plots must be on
the scene, even though the probability of his dropping in
with ruinous news on Christmas eve is not in character.

He did have another reason for coming, but that is, unfor-
tunately, kept a secret until the right moment later in
the act.

Nat comes in with Helen's baby, teasing Martin that
he found it on the doorstep. Martin's reply is character-
istic: “There's too many babies here now" (p. 105). When
he learns, a moment later, that the baby is Helen's he
still suspects that Sam has never married her. His stere-
otype is complete, for here is the picture of the abandoned
daughter coming in from the snow storm, the fruit of her
folly in her arms, to ask forgiveness. The picture is
quickly dissolved, and it is Martin who must go out to
meet Helen and ask forgiveness. This turnabout on stere-
otyped characters and situations is characteristic of
Herne.

Faced with the necessity to make a quick and improb-
able reversal in the stereotype of Martin, Herne breaks
another rule. The reconciliation of father and daughter
is an obligatory scene. The audience has been waiting for
it, but Herne does not oblige. He moves the meeting off-

stage, avoiding both melodrama and sentimentality. When

2&7

Martin returns with.Sam and Helen, he is a changed man,
even apologizing for his behavior to Sam. The change in
character is too quick in any case, but Herne makes it
more probable by avoiding the actual change on stage. And
the audience should not be bothered by a change that it
has expected. It was inevitable in the play. When re—
viewers noted that Martin was inconsistent and "too forced
and metallic,“42 they were reacting to the quickness and
the inevitability of the change.

Blake, too, is drawn to the baby. When Martin at
first rejected the possibility of any more babies, Blake
had quickly offered to take it (p. 105). Now, he to rec-
onciles himself with Sam and Helen, and he takes the baby,
saying that he also can "learn“ to handle babies, ”same's
the rest of yeh“ (p. 112). He is learning what is missing
in his life, and he begs Helen ”wistfully” for permission
to see the baby whenever he likes. Blake's conversion is
completely believable, if overdone, because it is well
prepared for by his lonesome reflections on family in the
early part of the act.

Blake also ties up one plot thread that has been
hanging loose since Act II. The money Sam supposedly
stole was later found under some old papers in the back of

the safe. The revelation leads to another. Young Nat,

h2Boston Budget, February 26, 1893.

2&8

the cynical outsider in this family, admits that he hid it
there to get even with Sam for twisting his ear: "I was
sorry the minute I done it and I'd 'a' told long ago only
I was afraid of a lickin'" (p. 110). The reason why Young
Nat blocked Martin's exit in Act II finally becomes clear.
Now Ann threatens him with.mild punishment, but he won't
take it. He thinks he is a man (he is wearing long pants
instead of knickerbockers for the first time in the play)
and he will not stay after tomorrow, Christmas: ”I'll go
out West an' be a cowboy 'r somethin'--you see if I don't“
(p. 110). As final punishment, Ann asks him to hand over
his Black Ranger book. From the top of the stairs, he
throws it, almost hitting Perley: "Take yer 01' book! I
don't want it" (p. 111). Ann becomes hysterical and asks
Martin to stop him, But it is Uncle Nat who settles it
all, advising, "You set him to milkin' ol' Brindle to-
morry--she'll knock all the cowboy out of him" (p. 111).
All laugh. This resolution of Young Net's function in the
play is essential to Herne's movement. He does not simply
tie up the plot thread, but he shows the constant force
for change which exists and must be accommodated in a
living society. Earlier Martin could cope with Helen's
desire for change only by opposing it, saying that the old
values are right. Uncle Net is more understanding of the
conflict between the generations, not insisting on his own

values, but suggesting time to let the young think it out.

2M9

Who is still missing in this celebration? Whom does
the audience expect to see? Joel Gates and Mandy, and, of
course, they drift in. Gates' motive this time is to ask
the Berrys to keep Mandy a short time during the next day,
for he has an emergency odd job to do in a home which has
the measles. And, for the first time in the play, Mandy
cannot go with.him, Nat gives Mandy a doll from among the
presents, and Ann says, ”She musn't be lunsome tormorry—-
she must comeover and spend this Christmas with us" (p.
113). The drifters, too, find a home, however temporary,
in this new order. Gates is in a more cheerful mood than
at any other time in the play, but much of his cheerful-
ness takes the form of jokes that add little to the action.
For instance, when he arrives, he mistakenly assumes that
Ann, who is holding the baby, is the mother: "I hadn't
heard any rmmours afloat 'bout your hevin' --" (p. 111).
When he is told that the baby is Helen's, he responds,
"I'll tell yeh, Nathan'l, thet West £3 a growin' country
an' pp mistake" (p. 113).

Martin has yet to reveal to the rest of the family
that he is ruined by the land scheme. When he does, there
is general depression. He needs $1500 to pay off Blake's
mortgage, and Blake cannot give him.time because he has
taken on more than he can handle and must assign the mort-
gage. Now Fortune finally smiles. It has been capricious

enough in the course of the play, most disastrously when

250

for no clear reason the city folk decided they would
rather build at Lemoine than at Shore Acres. Blake sud-
denly remembers that aged messenger of good Fortune, a
forgotten letter, which quickly reveals that Net's back
pension of $1768.92 has finally been approved. Although
the arrival of the letter is coincidental, it is not im-
plausible; at this point in the comedy, the audience is
waiting for some messenger to come in and save the day.
The action simply fulfills those expectations, without
raising any serious questions of probability. The notion
that the pension will come through has been planted often
enough to suit Herne's realistic demands, but this final
intervention of Fortune has nothing to do with realism.
It is the Spirit of comedy.

Nat humbly refuses to touch the pension, but finally
decides to give it to Ann if Martin will deed the farm
over to her. It is, he says, his first real wedding pre-
sent to Ann. And here the other plot, always in the
background--two brothers in love with the same woman--
comes closer to resolution. Net and Ann will rule the new
order. Broken and greatly touched, Martin says, "I'd know
as I've got a right to say either yes or no. I'll do
whatever you and Mother wants I should. I hain't got a
word to say" (p. 118).

The play is obviously over, but Herne needs an action

to bring it to a close. He has two choices, and he uses

251

both. The first is a rousing finale, comic, with everyone
onstage. Since Uncle Sam'l, the gun, was instrumental in
winning the pension, Uncle Nat takes her down with praise:
”Well, 01' gel, yeh've got yer deserts at last. Yeh not
only saved the Union, but, by Gosh, yeh've saved this hull
family" (p. 118). Then Nat does a mock manual of arms.

Ag Uncle Nat starts 33 present arms, the gun
goes off suddenly. 13 must pp loaded p2 fig 39
make 3 great smoke and not too much noise.

23332 lg p movemepp pf general excitement and
panic. Helen's first_phought lg £93 hp; baby,
and she rushes over to Ann and takes it i3 her
arms. Gates piEks pp—Mandy,—heels_1pj§hg aTFI
and head down, and rushes pp the door, right, pp
if 22 save her anyway. “Hg stands frantically
pewing the door lg the attempt 33 find the latch
and ppcape with Mandy out pf harm's way, giving
TrIghtened little ggsps pp hp does pp, Ag ppp
smoke clears ewa the others all gather apound
Uncle Net who sypIeIns that the §xp16310n_pas 3p
acéident. They are all excitedly talkipg and
lgpghipg, and completely obliviou§ pf Gates, who,
.2§.£EE anic dies down, comes 23 his senses and
turns h s attention.£p Mandy. She ip completely
Envelgped 13.223 wFa s and hp has some d fficulty
in gettIng p33 righ slag-up, When pp finally
EIscovers her fest, hE Sets p33 pp 222 groungy
TTees her head from Its wrappings, smooths her

heirw. . .wkisses he? and croons over her (PP.

ITS-119).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The broad farce of the scene is typical of an 1890's end-
ing. It was at this point that McVickers insisted the
curtain be dropped in the try-out performance in 1892, in
Chicago.

But Herne's play has not been.moving toward farce,
even though it can incorporate this broad comic scene of

celebration into its movement. The play has been, rather,

252

a celebration of the idealistic human spirit which endures
change. There is one more scene after everyone leaves.
The last line in the play is Martin's: "She [Ann] ought
to 'a' had you. 'Twan't jes' right somehow“ (p. 120).

Nat is left alone on stage, the patriarch of a new society.
Herne's stage directions for this scene include what Uncle
Nat is supposed to be thinking during the scene. But more
to the point is what the audience saw and felt. One
chronicler recalled: "As Uncle Nat Berry, he stood alone
in the farmhouse kitchen. All the family had gone to bed,
but Uncle Nat waited to do the last 'chores.‘ He looked
at the fire in the cook stove and set the dampers for the
night; he wound the clock; he kicked a rug against the
crack under the door so that the cold wouldn't come in.

He made everything warm and safe. After that, he took his
candle, lit it, and slowly climbed the stairs. Then the
curtain fell.“l‘l3 Lewis Strang, a chronicler of the actors
in the period, wrote, ”With an ineffable smile, unlike that
of any other actor on earth, the kind old man puttered
about, and at last . . . felt his way to the stairs and
slowly climbed to his chamber, the curtain falling as his
bent form disappeared at the head of the stairs."uh

h3Helen Ormsbee, Backstage with Actors (New York,
1938), p. 171.

 

uuLewis Strang, Famous Actors of the Day (Boston,
1899)) PP. 33‘3“.

253

Montrose Moses remembered the "flexibility of his facial
expression which depicted the full beauty of his charactefl'
in this scene.)45 Moses compared the scene with Maeter-
linck's conception of the static drama where little action
suggests a tremendous interaction of forces and feelings.
The scene is static, quiet, uneventful, but it is a culmi-
nation of all the force and feeling in the play, a final
illumination that makes a statement dramatically of the
idealism Faulkner expressed many years later in the Nobel
Prize Address, "I believe that man will not merely endure:
he will prevail. He is immortal not because he alone
among creatures has an inexhaustible voice but because he
has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice
and endurance."

Herne was the idealist, the American romantic, who
believes in the perfectibility of man. He said, "I be-
lieve that every human being has a certain amount of
divinity--that is, God--within him; just as much God as he
is capable of holding. And he gives out just as much of
the divinity as he is capable of expressing. And I believe
that if he were not bound down by unjust social laws, that
if he were free, the divinity would grow and deve10p and
propagate its species.“46 He believed that "there can be

LLSMontrose Moses, The American Dramatist (Boston,
1925), p. 215.

uéMoses, American Dramatist, p. 227.

 

25h

no true art without soul."u7 Even while he confessed
himself a believer in the teachings of evolution--"I know
that nothing is stable“uB--he tried to express in his
dramatic form.the only kind of stability he could find in
a world of flux and change: the inexhaustible human
spirit.

In his acting of Uncle Nat, Herne expressed this be-
lief. Although there are no “quotes,” no epigrammatic
lines in the play to state the belief, the play itself is
the statement. The actor, as Stark Young wrote, is the
medium for the expression of "quality, idea, emotion, a
dramatic moment."ug In Uncle Nat, Herne created a medium
for such expression. His daughter recalled, "It had been
Herne's often expressed wish to play one last great part
before he died, and he had written Uncle Nat with that idea
in.mind. Into the character he had put all of himself,
his thoughts, his feelings, all that life had taught him,
until it had become a living, vibrant thing."50 Herne
fulfilled his wish. One critic wrote, “Nathaniel Berry

lives under his touch, displaying--with a fidelity that so

“7Chicagg Inter-Ocean, May 17, 1897.

hBHerne, "Old Stock Days in the Theatre,“ The Arena,
VI (September, 1892), pp. u01-u16.

 

ugStark Young, "Character Acting," Theatre Arts, IX
(December, 1925), p. 808.

SOJulie Herne, "Biographical Note," p. xxiii.

255

clearly approached nature that one never thought of the
art of acting--the kindly humor, the gentle pathos, the
innate strength that made Uncle Nat so loveable a member
of the human family."51 Another wrote, "Both truth and
joy are to be found in . . . 'Shore Acres' which we might
make the mistake of thinking of as too homely and common-
place. The joy comes from the thoroughgoing kindliness of
the author's conception of human character, and his right
attitude toward life. The old lighthouse keeper becomes a
personal friend of the auditor, it is good to have known
him. . . . [It is] such a lovingly faithful transcript of
the human scene that a blasé Broadway audience will sit
silent and intense as the final curtain descends. We are
merely saying good-by to that same well-beloved old light-
house man, before he retires for the night."52 The
highest praise, perhaps, came from Herne's friend, Hamlin
Garland, who said the character of Uncle Nat "expressed
the man as I know him."53

Finally, Herne has written a real comedy, marred to
be sure by the formulas that Herne could not quite shake

off, but a real comedy nonetheless. Let Susanne Langer's

SlStpang, Famous Actors, p. 35.

52Richard Burton, The New American Drama (New York,
1913). p. 6h.

S3Hamlin Garland et. a1., "James A. Herne," Arena,
XXVI (September, 1901;, p. 283.

 

256

recent definition stand as a final comment on Shore Acres.

 

”Real comedy sets up in the audience a sense of general
exhilaration, because it presents the very image of 'liv-
ingness' and the perception of it is exciting. Whatever
the story may be, it takes the form of a temporary triumph
over the surrounding world, complicated, and thus stretched
out, but an involved succession of coincidences. This
illusion of life, the stage-life, has a rhythm of feeling
which is not transmitted to us in separate successive
stimulations, but rather by our perception of its entire

‘Qggfigl£--a WhOIe world moving into its own future."SLL

Sag Harbor

 

The comic quality that illumines Shore Acres is

 

clouded over in Sag Harbor, even though that play has been

 

called “a second Shore Agggg.”55 0n the surface, the play,
Herneis last, seems to be even farther from the formulas

of his day, for it is a calm, almost uneventful idyll made
up of a series of random scenes. 0n the surface, too, it
seems to have the same strain of idealism found in Shggg
A3333, for it is a description of the simple passions of
innocent people. But the play fails as a whole-—as a

Gestalt; it somehow does not quite come together into a

SL’rLanger, Feeling, p. 3&8.
SSBoston Traveler, October 25, 1899.

 

257

total effect. The events and ideas do not find a clear
form for expression. The fault lies partly in the charac-
ter Herne created for himself, Captain Dan, who may have
the beliefs that Uncle Nat expressed but has not been
created as an expression of those beliefs in the form of
the play. The fault lies, too, in the careful realism and
prolixity of detail-~qualities that made it unique in 1899,
but seem tedious today. And finally, there is fault in the
heavy melodramatic plot at the center of the play.

A scene by scene analysis is not necessary to explain
these faults, but a summary of the plot is a necessary
prelude to further discussion. This is a summary of the
plot as one reviewer saw it develOp on the stage; it'is
typical of other summaries:

Two men and a woman-~an old situation in-
deed, as the author concedes; but there is only
one other, and beyond that there is no drama.
In this development of the familiar theme two
brothers are in love with the same woman: Ben
Turner and Frank, the younger brother, ask
Martha Reese's hand in marriage. An orphan,
cared for from infancy by the older brother,
Ben, she decides gratitude and duty require her
to marry her benefactor, though she thinks she
loves the younger brother, Frank.

Two years pass. The disappointed lover
envies his brother the prize he has won, returns
to the old home and promptly makes mischief; a
conversation is overheard by the husband and he
learns that the marriage choice was a sacrifice.
There is the crux of the play, and the unraveling
of the tangle supplies the only real “situations"
of the piece. Finally the husband and wife are

258
reunitgg and the younger brother turns to another
woman.
The plot is, as Herne admitted in his subtitle for the
play, "An Old Story." In a speech at the Boston opening,
however, he added that he had tried to tell the old story
in a new way.57

In Shore Acres, Herne had used the standard plot of

 

two brothers in love with the same woman as a subtle back-
ground to his main plot, giving it prominence only at the
end of the play, and even then it is used only to express
dramatically the conflict in the main plot between the
inhuman Martin and the idealistic Nat. But in Sag Harbor,
the triangle is the plot, and Herne is unable to rise
above the conventionality which that plot bmposes on his
play. Martha is too obviously in love with Frank to make
her sacrifice in.marrying Ben appear anything other than
absurd. The first time she comes on stage, she is talking
of Frank, not Ben. She carries Frank's picture in her
locket. She has even been involved in another triangle
over Frank: she and Jane Cauldwell have been childhood
sweethearts of Frank, but Martha was the most favored.
Captain Dan recalls an incident when Frank carried Martha

safely over a creek but dropped Janie in: "I always thought

56Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

 

57Boston Traveler, October 25, 1899.

 

259

"58

he done that on purpose.
Martha is tied to Ben by a sense of duty that is also
unbelievable dramatically because Ben is not presented
sympathetically early in the play. He is, Captain Dan
says, "the dog in the manger," who will neither marry
Martha himself nor let anyone else marry her (p. 183).
Martha chooses Ben in a scene of such distress that is ob-
vious, to the audience at least, thatshe loves Frank.
Her rationalization that she loves Frank as a boy and Ben
as a man makes no sense. Add to all of this Ben's nobil-
ity as he offers to step aside and let Martha marry Frank,
and the whole situation becomes improbable. Conventionally,
yes, she would put duty above love, but dramatically, her
choice is sheer stubbornness. Few reviewers, though,
found anything wrong with this contrivance; they expected
and accepted the conventional sacrifice for duty. But the

reviewer for The Boston Evening Transcripp found it "the

 

quintessence of madness. So much so that it puts you im-
mediately out of touch with all three characters, to the
point of your becoming absolutely indifferent as to what
may happen to them. The thing is pure melodrama, and as
the hinge of the play, infects the whole plot."59 The
58In Shore Acres and Other Plays (New York, 1928).

All subsequent references to this standard edition of the
play will be cited in my text.

 

59Boston Evening Eganscripp, October 25, 1899-

 

260

comment is not quite fair, for much of the later interest
in the play develops as Martha learns to live with her
decision, but the decision itself certainly creaks in a
sentimental way.

Equally melodramatic is the handling of the Act III
revival of the triangle, two years later. When Martha
tells Frank that she feels she must stay with Ben whatever
her true feelings, Ben overhears the conversation and in-
terprets it to mean that she wants to be with Frank. His
decision to go away to the Klondike and leave them togeth-
er is too sacrificial to be believable. But what saves
the scene from.being complete melodrama is the focus Herne
keeps on Martha, who protests that Ben has failed pg; in
this crucial moment. The brothers threaten to murder each
other, but Captain Dan puts the focus where it should be:
”Just now, you're killin' her--the woman who loves you
both“ (p. 22h).

The Act IV resolution of the triangle is also a
little hard to believe. Frank has been nasty and moody
throughout the play, gaining very little sympathy. Martha
had told him, in Act III, "You're morbid, I tell you, and
you're making life very hard for yourself--and for me.

And you're worrying Ben" (p. 221). When Frank finally
gives up all claim to Martha, he turns to Jane, who has
been waiting around, conveniently, for him all these years.

One reviewer wrote that the reconciliation at the end was

261

logical except for one particular: “The one particular is
the parcelling off of Frank. The idea is right enough,
but his change in favor of Jane, even though she does all
the wooing, seems a bit sudden."60 It is not actually all
that sudden, for Frank has been paired off with Jane in a
long comic scene in Act III, even though his thoughts are
on Martha. For at least one reviewer, the change was not
only sudden but out of character and an undeserved good
fortune: “After three or four attempts to betray his
brother's wife he hardly merits encouragement from the
only other 'possible' person in the drama."61
Herne's “old story” becomes the center of the play,
and it is a difficult center to build a vital drama around,
for it invites too many cliches of stage convention and
plot develoPment. The handling of exposition and plants
is contrived in keeping with the central plot. For in-
stance, the most prominent thread in the play is concerned
with the problems arising from marriage. Those problems
are planted at the beginning when the story of Annie
Truesdell is told in an off-hand way-~just a bit of village
gossip.

Freeman. Did yeh hear that Annie Truesdell's
married?

Cap'n Dan. No-o-o?

60Boston Journal, October 25, 1899.

 

61Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

262

Freeman. Yes, married yisterday.

Cap'n Dan. Who'd she marry?

Freeman. That New York pants drummer. The fellah
that had that mammoth pants sale here
last winter.

Cap'n Dan. Yes yes!

Freeman. She's goin' to live with his folks in
New York (p. 130).

Then Captain Dan and Elizabeth tease each other about
their fifteen-year courtship, a piece of information
dropped with no preparation:
Cap'n Dan. Say, 'Lizbeth, you and I have been
courtin' in this innocuous desuetude
sort of way nigh on to fifteen year.

Elizabeth. I've enjoyed it, haven't you?

Cap'n Dan. Yes yes! But we don't seem to get
any closer together.

Elizabeth. We've got so's one chair does for
both Sunday evenings.

Cap'n Dan. You know blame well what I mean. . . .
I'm not getting any younger--an'
you're--

Elizabeth. Don't finish it. I know exactly what
you are going to say.

Cap'n Dan. What now?

Elizabeth. YOu were going to say, I'm getting to
be an old maid.

Cap'n Dan. I wa'n't neither. I was goin' to say
you've got your full growth (p. 131).

Then Freeman, a widower of one year, appears with one of
several girl friends, Frances Towd. Freaman believes all

women want to marry him: "There's so many of 'em wants me!

263

She's [Frances] offered me seventy-five dollars and a set
0' double harnesses for a half-interest in the business"
(p. 136). When Freeman leaves, he drops a plant, telling
Dan that Ben.must be told what they already know. The
plant turns out to be about marriage too--Ben should marry
Martha, his ward, because she loves him. All of these
earlier discussions of marriage certainly do set up the
audience for the important scene when Ben considers mar-
riage, but there is an excess of planting.

The Klondike gold-rush, later a possible exile for
either Frank or Ben, is planted just as carefully. It is
introduced first as gossip--butter costs two dollars a
pound there (p. 197). Then Captain Dan, for no reason,
asks if Frank has the gold fever yet (p. 203). The con-
versation at the Act III dinner turns to the Klondike, and
Ben declares he would go if it were not for his wife,
Martha, and the baby (p. 211). There is certainly no sur-
prise later when Ben decides to resolve the triangle by
going to the Klondike.

Perhaps the most awkward plant in the play occurs
when Hosea, the local bartender, interrupts the dinner
with some comic business but manages to drop the fact that
there is a show in town, a bit of information which sets
up Frank's next speech: “My gracious, I forgot there was
a show tonight. Will you go, Miss Cauldwell?" (p. 21h).

Not all the exposition and planting is so mechanically

26h

handled. The climax of Act II, a wild celebration of Ben's
engagement to Martha, depends on the fact that these
simple people are unaccustomed to champagne.
Ben. Hold on, boys, there isn't going to be
another stroke of work done here today--
George, run over to the Nassau House and
get me a bottle of champagne.

Cap'n Dan. Say--git two of 'em--one for me--
cha'ge it.

George. Champagne's always chargedi. Quarts or
pints?

Ben. Quarts!
George. Kee-rect!

Elizabeth. Why, George Salter, where are you
going in such a hurry?

George. 'Scuse me, Miss Turner, can't stop.
I've got to get two quarts of champagne.

Elizabeth. What in time are you going to do with
that stuff?

When the champagne is served, their innocence is estab-
lished through action as well as words. No one knows how
to pour it. The taste disappoints them. The slow build-
up of childish abandon during the scene is very effective,
leading finally to an attack of double vision for Eliza—
beth and an unsteady acceptance of Dan's proposal, an
acceptance that would have been improbable under any other
circumstance.

Conventional plot devices accommodate the melodrama
which Herne employs in the play. The picture in Martha's

locket leads to a mistaken identity: Ben thinks the

26S

picture is of him when in fact it is of his brother who
looks like a younger Ben. When Martha conveniently and
conventionally loses the locket, and Captain Dan finds it,
the truth is of course revealed to Ben. The convention of
the overheard conversation is also used when Ben and
Captain Dan return unexpectedly and eavesdrop on the love-
quarrel of Frank and Martha. In both instances, Ben
discovers crucial information through hackneyed devices.
Somehow, the familiarity of the devices of discovery
and the abundance of conventional exposition in the play
did not bother most members of the audience: one reviewer
wrote, ”It contains no incident that can be termed improb-
able."62 That is obviously inaccurate, but it reflects
the mood of the audience. Most reviewers, in fact, found
the play practically plotless, for Herne had buried im-
probability beneath a heavy veil of realism. The reviewer

for The Bgston Post decided that realism was the only

 

theme of the play.63 For another reviewer, there were
”living, moving beings who live a story--not puppets who
merely counterfeit one.“6u He praised the play as the
summit of naturalism, that is realistic reproduction of

daily life. One authentic resident of Sag Harbor, the

62Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

63Boston Egsp, October 25, 1899.

6(“Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

 

266

Long Island village, is reported to have said after seeing
the play, "By gosh, sir, it was us and no mistake."65
The most immediate source of realism is the setting,
but Herne does not go to the excesses of Shore Acres in
this play. The setting is ”a minor consideration“ in the
total effect.66 The movement in settings is similar to
that in Shore Acres, from an exterior scene into a family

room. But the movement here is not as organic. The first

act of Shore Acres could not take place anywhere except in

 

the farmyard. The first two acts of Sag Harbor could take

 

place almost anywhere, before we move into the house two
years later. Herne chose the shipyard and the shop, most
likely, for the scenic possibilities and for a sea-coast
atmosphere, but the setting serves no function in deter-
mining the events of the act. It is merely a backdrop.

In Act I, Herne adds an obvious lighting effect, a gradual
sunset and twilight, that is functional, suggesting the
gloom that builds during the act.

Like the setting, much of the realistic business is
not essential to the play. The songs, for one, seem to
serve only as interesting interludes. Almost every member
of the cast is given a chance to sing. In Act I, Freeman
begins "The Poor Workhouse Boy,” which Captain Dan takes

65Mark Sullivan, Our Times: I, The Turn pf the
Century (New York, 1926), p. 223.

 

ééggstgn Journal, October 25, 1899.

 

267

up because it reminds him of the orphan, Martha Reese (p.
139). Captain Dan ends Act II with a merry song, showing
his delight in being engaged to Elizabeth (p. 193). Even
Frank loves singing (p. 207). Although the songs usually
fit the characters and the situations-~to some degree--and
may help to create the atmosphere which the drama itself
has not developed, they are largely extraneous, adding lit-
tle other than a kind of folksy local color to the pro-
ceedings. The most obvious extraneous song is the finale,
"All Through the Night,” which Martha sings for no reason
at all-~except that it makes a good curtain, expressing
the sentiment that Love now watches over them all.

There is an abundance of pointless business in the
play. The live baby gets special attention on stage, when
its function could be served just as well offstage. Un-
like the children in Shore Acres who are made an integral
part of the action, Martha's baby is a scene-stealer when
more important action is going on. One critic observed
that the live baby distracted the audience.67 For in-
stance, the baby is onstage when Ben, Frank, and Martha
meet as planned on Easter morning to settle their problem.
The baby in the background serves no purpose, for its ex-
istence as a complicating factor in the problem has been

well established.

 

67Margaret Mayorga, A Short History 2: the American
Drama (New York, 1932), p. l80.

 

268

Most of the business connected with Freeman, a
comedian's part, is not necessary, even though it is funny.
The dinner in Act III finally disperses not because of
tensions within the plot but because of Freeman's absurd
jealousy of Jane and his petty conceits about women.
Captain Dan tells him, "Next Saturday night, you'd better
stay to hum, you long-legged, red-haired gawk. You've
sp'iled everythin'" (p. 215). Compared to the dinner

scene in Shore Acres, where family and community tensions

 

disrupt the dinner, this dinner and its conclusion are
clearly undramatic.

Characters, too, are added for no apparent dramatic

purpose, even though reviewers thought they were "gems"68

and "superb" sketches.69 Herne includes a passing Easter
parade of village folks on their way to church:

People are seen passing the window on theirw _Iy

to church. The p_ople must be simple,etypica4

native people, none of them characters in the

play, dressed for Sunday; and must be caref—le

rehearsed to be in conversation, serious and

IT ht $ll“ varying T_nwalk, talk, and expression
29 .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The scene is a pointless spectacle of character types.
More specifically tied to the play, but still unnecessary,
are old Mrs. Russell, a widow, and William Turner, the

father of Ben and Frank. Mrs. Russell has one useful

68ghicago Journal, March 20, 1900.

69Boston Evening Transcript, October 25, 1899-

269

function in the play: she helps to create the mood of
change and endurance in the opening scenes of the play
with a long discussion of her husband and the whaling in-
dustry that was once the life of Sag Harbor. She sums up
her cycle of life, "Yes, I love Sag Harbor. I was born
here-~I married Cap'n John here, and I guess I'll be
buried here now. I'm proud of the Harbor, but somehow it
isn't the same--that is, to me" (p. 1A2). How much the
old heroic life she knew has degenerated is illustrated by
Captain Dan's story, told in counterpoint to hers, of his
recent adventure driving three whales ashore. Mrs. Russell
makes him admit that they were "just everyday, 'round-here
whales,“ not the great sperm whales of her memory (p. lhl).
Mrs. Russell is also used for comic purposes--e.g., a foil
for the lady-killer Freeman at the dinner (p. 209)--or she
just gets in the way--e.g., when she chats with William
Turner before the dinner (p. 200).

Old Mr. Turner too is quaint and comic and unneces-
sary. His comic caricature is built on his crotchety
refusal to go out of his way to serve the customers of his
warehouse. For instance:

Turner. You send over and get y'r truck, or I'll

gzydanged if I don't chuck it into the

George. I'll drive over with you now, Uncle
Billy.

Turner. I'll be danged if yeh do. I ain't goin'
over there now.

270

George. Well, when'll yeh be there?
Turner. That's my business. When a man gets to
be as old's I be, he don't want to keep
a-runnin' over to that dock every five
minutes in the day, for you nor nobody
else (p. 162).
Turner's crotchet is the source of farce whenever he is on
the stage. At only one point is his character connected
directly with the action of the play, a five-line exchange
with Frank, in which Turner shows his preference for the
older brother, Ben (p. 171). Both Turner and Mrs. Russell
are added attractions that could be dropped.

Freeman Whitmarsh's girl friends are equally superflu-
ous, even though they are funny. Frances Towd does man's
work, vows she will wear bloomers, and preaches women's
rights: “WOmen are going into everything nowadays. Ar—
chitects, doctors, lawyers, barbers--they 1232 out West“
(p. 136). Frances also has a vulgarly comic head cold and
sniffles. Miss Bailey, a tall masculine woman, is a sci-
entific manicurist, who also lectures "on 'Degeneration.'
Free to women Tuesday night and men Thursday night" (p.
288). Both of these caricatures belong handily with Free-
man, himself a caricature of a man so completely caught in
the false image of himself that he causes all sort of
petty troubles in the play. (It is he, for instance, who
starts the rumor that Martha is in love with Ben.) As

Herne draws Freeman, he is reminiscent of one of Bergson's

definition of the comic: "An individual is comic who

271

automatically goes his own way without troubling himself
about getting in touch with his fellow-beings."7O
Interesting topical allusions, like interesting char-
acters, are in the play for their own sake, not for dra-
matic purposes. Herne was up with the times in his use of

the land speculation theme in Shorg Acres, but he also

 

tried to make it an intricate part of the play. In Sgg
Harbor, the topics are incidental: Frances Towd affirms
women's rights; Captain Dan and Elizabeth discuss a new
confection, roasted peanuts, which is running competition
with old favorites like caramels (p. 188); the whaling
industry is discussed with a detail that recalls Melville
in his more tedious technical moments (p. 1&2): the church
has become a business (p. 213); and so on. Literary allu-
sions, too, are not an integral part of the p1ay--as they
are for the most part in.§pp£g A3333. Elizabeth reads to

Dan at night; her current choice, Puddin' Head Wilson. A

 

Whitcomb Riley poem is recited:
When God made Jim, I'll bet you
He didn't do anything else that day
But just set around and feel good (p. 177).
This literary excursion is pointless.
After the recitation of the poem, Freeman and Cap'n

Dan indulge in a humorous exchange which is, unfortunately,

characteristic of many of the laughs in the play.

7OHenri Bergson, Laughter (New York, 1912), p. 13h.

272

Cap'n Dan. Did yeh ever see him?

Freeman. Who?

Cap'n Dan. Riley's Jim.

Freeman. Not to know him. Have you?

Cap'n Dan. No, not 'at I remember.
Humorous exchanges like this are inserted into--not built
into--the play even at the more serious moments. Most of
these lines are designed to get an audience response not
for the play but for themselves. For instance, the expo-
sition early establishes that Elizabeth is afraid of
contact with men, even though she enjoys, in a rather
perverse way, being the object of Cap'n Dan's ardent pur-
suit. After the point has been made by action and dialogue,
Dan explains,

Cap'n Dan. We'd have been married too, long ago,

if it hadn't 'a' been for the book 0'

Genesis.

Ben. What's the book of Genesis got to do with
it?

Cap'n Dan. Scared her. All them begats (p. 1M3).
This scene was considered ”unaccustomed frankness” by one
reviewer.71 Another reviewer found similar risque jokes
disconcerting: ”In 'Sag Harbor' there are some remarks
meant to be frank examples of real conversations that add
nothing to the play and detract a deal. When Marble
[Cap'n Dan] says that Frank's aunt [Elizabeth] will not

71Boston Journal, October 25, 1899.

 

273

allow him to return home and wear a mustache 'because it
is sloppy at the table' he sounds a false note; when Mrs.
Russell sententiously declares that she had but one baby
and 'had to go to sea to get that' nothing is added to the
refinement of the tale, and her remark that 'Rome wasn't
built in a day' when Marble complains that he has no baby
is not exactly improving."72

Some of the jokes in the play are developed on comic

misunderstanding:

Freeman. [Referrin to the boat,] Got the old
girl H I

au ed—But, I see.

Elizabeth. '[Haughtily.] Got what old girl
hauIEE out, Freeman Whitmarsh?

 

Freeman. The “Kacy.”
Elizabeth. Oh! I beg your pardon (p. 129).
The incident recalls Gates mistaken assumption that Ann,

not Helen, was pregnant, which intrudes in Shore Acres.

 

Herne also inserts visual, farcical jokes. Frank rolls up
Jane's music roll for her. The jealous Freeman, who thinks
he is Jane's escort, unrolls it and ceremoniously rolls it
up again (p. 216). Captain Dan sits on wet paint (p. 187).
His valise keeps popping open (p. 2h8).

It all adds up to what the Boston Transcripp called

"too much comic relief."73 There is, in fact, too much of

72Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.
73Boston Transcript, December 9, 1913.

 

27h

everything in the play--too many caricatures, too many
incidental jokes, too much realism. As the reviewer for
the Boston 2232 wrote, the play "needs some changes in the
way of condensation and, let it be hoped, in the way of
elimination."7u

The possibility of condensation is particularly
strong in Herne's character part, Captain Dan. As sug-
gested above, he is involved in much of the extraneous
humor of the play, and he certainly exists as a local
color oddity. One of his peculiarities is an old-maidish
fussiness. He is, Elizabeth says, an ”old fuss-budget"
(p. 197). He does the housework, and he likes to gossip.
He wears Elizabeth's tie because he likes it--"there's so
much red into it” (p. 227)--and he likes to douse himself
with cologne. There is a pathetic kind of truth when he
tries to assuage Elizabeth's fear of marriage: "You
wouldn't be livin' alone with no man--I'd be your husband"
(P. 133). Uncle Nat shows some of these same characteris-
tics-~he puts on an apron and controls the dinner prepara-
tions--but his fussiness is not evident except when it
gives a little humor to the unnecessary scene of the
dinner preparations.

Captain Dan's nose is always in other people's af-

fairs. He listens to Freeman's gossip about Martha and

7uBoston Post, October 25, 1899.

 

275

Ben, and promptly tells Ben that Martha loves hhm, thus
setting the triangle plot in motion. When the plot is
being worked out quite conventionally in the last act by
the three characters involved, he steps in and tells a
long allegory of ”Browns" and ”Smiths" who had the same
problem as Frank, Martha, and Ben. Their reaction to his
intrusion is exactly what one can expect from the audience
at this climactic point: "They are all a little taken
aback at the interruption. Frank, with a bored look, sits
on the bench at the piano. Ben turns away impatiently.
Martha stares wonderingly" (p. 235). The long story, of
course, gives Herne the set speech he and his audiences
liked, at the expense of the dramatic movement. The

Boston Transcript, for instance, found it effective; "At

 

no time did the audience sit more quietly."75 But the
speech is ”dragged in by the heels.“76

Captain Dan has nothing organic to do with the cen-
tral plot, and that is a major weakness. He becomes a
curious abstraction whose humanitarian idealism is not
worked out dramatically. He cannot be the controlling
comic spirit no matter how mechanically he is forced to
fit that role. As one reviewer said, he is not a "picture

of noble, self-sacrificing manhood" as Uncle Nat and

7SBostgn Transcript, December 9, 1913.

76Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

276

Griffith Davenport are.77 He becomes a sort of stage
manager for the plot, setting it in motion and resolving
it--but he does it outside of the plot itself, like a
puppet master. He may be ”modern“ in the sense that he
seems to be aware of the theatricality of his character
and his play, but he cannot be said to direct, or write,
the play he is in, no matter how much he wants to.

It goes its own way. The characters of the triangle
become central, and their situation denies the possibility
of comedy. They do overcome all obstacles, but the obsta-
cles are not so much those of Fortune or chance as the
inevitable result of Martha's decision to marry Ben. The
triangle follows its own dramatic movement until it is
completed and Martha becomes, in a sense, triumphant when
she reaps the anguish and eventual understanding implicit
in her decision. The plot is at the least serious, with
tragic overtones, certainly not comic. Yet one might well
find it in a well-made play. Even though the action moves
to its inevitable close, the playwright keeps the resolu-
tion in suspension, in the well-made tradition, by consunm:
reversals--now Martha seems to lean toward Frank, now
toward Ben; Frank wants her, Ben gives her up. Dutifully
she remains with her choice, her husband, overcoming the

obstacle of Frank's persistence, and Frank is, obviously,

77Boston Post, October 25, 1899.

 

277

no simple comic obstacle--like Martin's "stubborn father"
or Blake's “rich suitor." He is a passionate force deter-
mined to pull her away from Ben.

This serious plot-—what one reviewer called "the
crimson thread of tragedy"78--is at odds with the comic
atmosphere of the play, and it is the most damaging weak-
ness. Herne clearly intended the comic to be in control,
transforming the ”old story" melodrama, and even though he
was unsuccessful, the comic form is obviously trying to
find expression in the play.

When Herne clabmed no originality, only "originality
of method,"79 he was echoing his belief that "it is the
shmple things in life that are to me the most dramatic."80
He tried to show life as a series of episodes, loosely
linked, that by their very structure express a comic atti-
tude, a shmple statement about change and flux and human
endurance. The method recalls Chekhov who also insisted
his plays were comedies, even when their plot lines become
serious.

Herne's idea of presenting an unsensational flow of
life in §gg Harbor is evident in the structure of events,

already discussed to some extent earlier. Each scene

78221252 £22921. March 20, 1900.
”$128.52 £93221. March 20, 1900.

80Flynn Wayne, "Herne and His New Play, 'Sag
Harbor,'" National Mggazine, II (1899), P. 39h.

278

moves almost without cause into the next, and the movement
pauses, as life pauses, to pick up insignificant human
vagaries. One reviewer wrote, accurately, "It is really
more a series of pictures than one connected story."81
Two examples will, perhaps, demonstrate this movement more
fully. Act I begins with Elizabeth and Captain Dan
playing Cat's Cradle. The game is interrupted by technical
talk about the overhauling of a boat and then by gossip--
Annie Truesdell's marriage. Dan and Elizabeth have a long
scene of coquettish courtship, spiked with anti-romantic
chatter about Dan's new teeth and his bad habit of chewing
tobacco. They are interrupted by the comic interlude of
Freeman and Frances Towd. Then Ben and Captain Dan remi-
nisce about Martha as a baby and about her shiftless
family. Her father was a "good riddance" when he died of
cholera, and the novel-reading mother died of grief. Ben
thinks the story is pathetic, but Dan finds it funny.

Then Mrs. Russell enters and talks about the good old
whaling days and the marks of progress around Sag Harbor.
When she leaves, Dan tells Ben that he and Freeman believe
Martha loves hum. Martha enters and joins in talk about
her childhood with Frank and Jane. They are interrupted

by the absurd Freeman, who tells Martha to remember that

he will be ready for marriage as soon as his year of

Blemimmnal W. July 13, 1901.

279

mourning is up. Then, finally, Ben proposes to Martha,

who asks for one night to think it over. The plot compli-
cates quickly when Dan finds Martha's lost locket and tells
Ben the truth, that Martha loves Frank. And just then

Frank comes in, and the brothers meet. Dan blames Freeman
for the impending trouble, and the curtain falls. In out—
line, the movement of the act is from.desultory scenes into
a quickening pace as the triangle plot takes on prominence.

As another example, in Act III, before the dinner,
there are three separate conversation areas on the stage.
Jane is a moving focus to lead the audience from.one unre-
lated conversation to another. She talks first to Dan and
Martha about the joys of children, then.moves to the piano
to flirt with Frank, while the others talk in the back-
ground. Her conversation with Frank becomes inaudible
when Captain Dan, now with another group by the fireplace,
asks Freeman if he is keeping company with Jane, and the
focus shifts to that group. This scene moves smoothly,
naturally, without much point other than to capture the
variety and ahmlessness of social conversation.

These are not isolated examples of the movement of
the play. Except when the serious plot dominates the sit-
uation, there is a constant shifting of individual pictur-
esque scenes of homely, unsensational life. Even at the
point when the triangle is quickly resolved after Dan's

narrative, in a scant five lines, the talk turns lightly

280

to the practical and natural pleasure of eating breakfast
(19. 239).

Mostly, the talk is about marriages, deaths and
births, and growing up, the constant ups and downs of
human happiness. As Elizabeth says, "Everybody's happy
tonight, anyway, if they never are again" (p. 218). The
play ends with the celebration of Easter and a prmmise of
the continuing cycle of life, as Dan finds out that he is
to become a father, thus completing a cycle of hope that
began in his opening line in the play, during the Cat's
Cradle game, ”Yep--that's the only cradle we're ever
likely to need, I guess" (p. 128). The audience is made
to feel, as one reviewer said, ”that the situation has re-
turned to a normal and comfortable state of happiness."82
It is not difficult to see that Herne was trying to create
a simple picture of the flow of ordinary lives, a comic
picture that ends, always, with a new order of society and
reasserts the endurance and the triumph of man over obsta-
cles. The attempt was, the Boston Traveler observed,
"something unlike any precursors. Like its author the
play is sui generis."83

As suggested earlier, the loose comic form is almost

Chekhov-like, if one accepts the description of Chekhov's

82

Boston Transcript, December 9, 1913.

83Boston Traveler, October 25, 1899.

281

plays as having no protagonist, no plot in the sense that
a hero wills something, no unified action, and no dramatic
economy of dialogue.Bh Herne's play is an.imaginative
”composition.”85 At thmes, it admits an awareness of
being a play, a work of the imagination, not a picture of
life. Most aware of this theatricality is Jane Cauldwell
who is ”a departure from stage ingenues"86 and the most
interesting character in the play. Jane knows that the
serious part of the play is preposterous and cannot be
taken as real. "How is it going to end?" she asks lightly
(p. 185). She can say, with a smile, of the whole thing,
"It's a tragedy, isn't it?" (p. Zhl). She even wants "to
play a part in this domestic drama--[with.A little laugh.|

 

'Two Loves and a Life'" (P. 2h2). Her detached awareness
of the “play" she is in suggests the attitude the audi-
ence is expected to take, but as the reviews indicate, the
audience didn't respond quite that way. It is the same
attitude Captain Dan takes when his story settles the tri-
angle. He asks how good his performance was, and he is
pleased when Elizabeth replies that it made her cry (P.
233).

81'Alan Thompson, Th3 Anatomy‘gf‘ggamg (Berkeley,
19h2). p. 333.

85Chicago Journal, March 20, 1900.

86Anaconda Standard, July 31, 1901.

282

But the theatrical attitude and the comic form are
not strong enough to encompass the serio-tragic plot of
the triangle, comfortably. The obstacles presented in
that plot are not comic obstacles, caprices of Fortune,
but potentially tragic obstacles, clearly at odds with the
comic form Herne is trying to create. Enough of that form,
however, shows through so that audiences then, and readers
now, can appreciate how unorthodox a play he attempted,

and how nearly he missed success.

CHAPTER IV
MARGARET FLEMING AND DRIFTING APART

Arthur Hobson Quinn finds tragedy in Margaret Fleming
and Drifting Apg£§.1 And he gives Margaret Fleming the
rank of Herne's best play.2 To rank one of Herne's plays
as "best” is misleading because in each of his plays,
Herne tried to accomplish something a little different.

An attempt to compare‘SQQEEDAgggg and Margaret Fleming,
for instance, is frustrating if one compares his realism,
or his freedom from cliches, or his characterization.

Both plays are realistic, both avoid cliches only part of
the time, and both have at least one character--Uncle Nat
and Margaret--who is alive and enduring. What one can
compare, of course, is the essential form of the two plays,
the emotional rhythm that expresses an idea or a spiritual
state dramatically; yet even the forms are not easily com-
pared, for‘égggg A2333 is essentially a comedy, and
Margaret Fleming is essentially a tragedy, while both
contain elements of the complementary genre. What makes

1Arthur Hobson Quinn, A Histor pf the American Drama
from the Civil War 32 the Present Day, rev. ea. (New York,

T975)”. 161':

2Arthur Hobson Quinn, Representative American Plays,
5th ed. (New York, 1953). 10. SI;

283

28h

more sense, then, in studying Herne's plays is an analysis
of how well they maintain the artistic unity of the basic
form and how well it can embrace whatever happens into the
script. In.§22£2.£2£2£9 as we have seen, the comic form
is dominant. In the later comedy, §Ag Harbor, by contrast,
Herne seemed unable to control the thread of tragedy which
runs through the comedy.

Both Margaret Fleming and Drifting Apgpp are made of
potentially tragic materials, but both also have strong
social messages which must be worked into the form of the
play. The question for analysis is how successful was
Herne in finding a form for the materials that could con-
trol the ”problem.play” messages, as well as his old
standbys of local color, realistic detail, and melodramatic
conventions. George Pierce Baker wrote, "A dramatist will
do well, then, to know clearly before he begins to write
whether he wishes his story to be melodrama, tragedy,
farce, or comedy of character or intrigue. Unless he does
and in consequence selects his illustrative material so
that he may give it artistic unity, he is likely to pro-
duce a play so mixed in genre as to be confusing."3

A detailed analysis of Margaret Fleming, first, will
demonstrate to what extent Horne appears to have a clear
unifying purpose in.mind in the composition of the play,

3George Pierce Baker, Dramatic Techniqug (Boston,
1919), p. 112.

285

and then an examination of the earlier Drifting Apggp will
consider parallel problems. Both plays present initial
textual problems. In Drifting Apggp, only an earlier
version of the play, not the final script, exists. In
Margaret Fleming, we have only summaries of the early ver-
sions and a final script which Mrs. Horne recreated from
memory about l9lh.

The early version of Margaret Fleming is of value to
this study because it suggests, by comparison, how Horne
came closer to a unified form as he directed and revised
the play. Of the several summaries of the action of the
early version--first played at Lynn, Massachusetts in 1890
and later in Chickering Hall, Boston, and in New York in
1891--two are particularly revealing because they come
from reviewers of disparate tastes and sympathies. Hamlin
Garland reviewed the Lynn production for the Boston Eggp-
script, and Edward Dithmar reviewed the New York production
for the‘Ngg,Yp£k‘Tgmgg. Their accounts are similar, but
their attitudes are quite different, Dithmar reflecting
the usual New York critics' patronizing attitude to real-
ismr-best exemplified by their leader William Winter--and
Garland reflecting the growing interest in realism among
the Boston literati. Dithmar describes the opening scenes:

The first scene of Act I is the office of

Philip Fleming, a gray-haired young man who drinks

too much brandy. Philip has a young wife, a year-

old baby, and a nice home to keep them.in. He
enters his office, removes his hat and overcoat,

286

sits at his desk and reads his letters. A
visitor is announced, one Joseph Fletcher, a
vendor of soap, cough medicine, and cement for
broken china. He was formerly an employee of
Fleming, and the object of his call seems to be,
principally, to get a drink of rum for nothing.
A second caller is Dr. Larkin, Fleming's family
physician, whose mission is more serious. Be-
fore he has a chance to impart it Fleming has a
scene with the telephone. He talks with his
wife about the baby's birthday and dinner, and
also with the baby, who is understood to remark
by telephone, "Ah goo.”

Then Dr. Larkin is permitted to come to the
point. He has been called to attend a poor
woman, Lena Schmidt, in childbirth. She has
been employed by Fleming. She has suffered
greatly--the physician enters into particulars
on that head. She has been delirious, and has
unwittingly spoken the name of her betrayer.
Fleming gets pale and nervous. The physician
scowls and lectures, and threatens. Fleming is
compelled to promise he will visit the girl be-
fore she dies. Therefore he telephones to his
wife that he cannot be home to the birthday
dinner, takes a large drink of brandy, puts on
his overcoat, takes his umbrella, because it is
raining now, and goes out.

In the second scene the home of Fleming is
revealed. The baby has just had her bed-time
bath, a custom to be condemned, by the way,
because one tub bath a day is enough for a year-
old child, and that in the morning. Mr. Horne
should reconsider this highly dramatic point.
Too much praise, however, could not be given to
the pictorial accuracy of this scene. The dis-
play of linen, particularly of those articles of
«infant apparel known to women of all ages as
”diddies, is most tmpressive. Well, the child
is put in its crib, and the German nurse tells a
story of misery to the child's mother, Margaret
Fleming. Her sister has gone astray, and is
dying. The nurse vows vengeance on the betrayer
when she learns his name. Mrs. Fleming gives her
a ”night off," so that she may go to her sister.

Then Margaret stands by the bedroom.door and
sings softly to the baby, who is restless. While
she is singing Philip enters, wet, pale, agitated.

287

His wife is worried by his ill looks, and
prescribes hot lemonade, a mustard footbath, and
extra blankets. A conversation between husband
and wife here indicates the course she will pur-
sue when she learns of her husband's perfidy.

He is embarrassed in business, and has called a
meeting of his creditors. Yet he has put $1000
in a savings bank for the baby, and produces
also a paid-up insurance policy on his life in
the infant's favor. He has, moreover, settled
his house upon his wife. These benevolent ac-
tions the wife rebukes somewhat sternly. The
house must go to pay his debts.“

By contrast, Garland tells this last scene briefly, catch-
ing the movement of the emotional content without dawdling
over bothersome realistic details:

The next scene shows Margaret happy in her
motherhood, with her baby--a most inthmate and
beautiful home picture. She has for nurse Maria,
a German woman of middle age. It is developed
that Maria is the elder sister of the mill girl
whom Fleming has ruined, and that she has come
to town in search of her. Maria is a strong
piece of character writing, humorous, but with .
a sort of volcanic energy of hate. She loves
Margaret very deeply. Philip returns late,
gloomy, ashamed, sullen, but Margaret drives
away his dgjection, and baby makes him forget
his crime.

Act II opens with a domestic scene which Dithmar dis-
misses with "Philip is left, lying on the floor, playing
with baby, who has a canton-flannel elephant and a woolly
dog, while Margaret, having instructed the new cook about

“Edward A. Dithmar, “James A. Herne's Mar aret
Flomin ,” New York Thmes, December 10, 1891, reprinted in
The IE

erican Theatre 23 Seen.py Its Critics 1152-19EQ,
ed. Montrose 3. Moses and John Mason Brown ( ew Yor ,

193A). pp. 1u2-1u3.

5Hamlin Garland, ”Mr. Herne's New Play," Boston
Evening Transcript, July 8, 1890.

288

the 12 o'clock dinner, goes out."6 Garland ignores the
details and captures the quick succession of emotional
states in the scene, which are essential to the impact of
the nursing scene which follows it:

Fleming has fully recovered his usual care-
less humor. Dr. Larkin calls; he is treating
Margaret for weakness of the eyes. He advises
Margaret to get Philip away for awhile, and,
catching Philip alone, tells him to get Margaret
away. She is threatened with blindness, a fa-
tality attendant on childbirth in her mother's
family. But Margaret has promised Maria to go
to see her sister and also to conceal the poor
girl's history from her husband. The doctor is
very savage with Fleming, tells him his wife's
eyesight is periled, cautions him about letting
any information of Lena's history reach her--
the shock might drive her blind, even insane.

Then follows the controversial third act (the second
part of Act II in the New Yerk productions). Dithmar's
summary is again concerned more with details than with

dramatic movement:

When she reaches the cottage where Lena
Schmidt has found shelter the girl is dead.
Her puny infant is starving. The girl's sister
has found a letter, written by Lena to Philip
Flaming, which tells the whole story. She
shows it to Margaret in a burst of anger, and
threatens to take Philip's life. The meddling
physician is there to try to protect Margaret,
and to tell her that she is in danger of blind-
ness which is hereditary in her family, as
certain.maladies are hereditary in the families

6Dithmar, p. 1111.1.
7Garland, ”Mr. Herne's New Play."

8The act-scene division varied with the productions
of Mar aret Flemin . I follow the divisions in the
revised, pubiisfied version.

289

of Ibsen's characters. But Margaret can take
care of herself. She quiets the German woman
by the influence of her cahmness, and sends a
note to Philip demanding his presence at the
cottage. Then she is left alone with the new-
born infant, who is wailing piteously from
hunger. Margaret is agitated, naturally; she

is angry beyond words; all the hope has gone

out of her life. Dr. Larkin would have told her
not to try to nurse Lena's child at that moment.
She ought to have known better herself. But it
is after all Mr. Herne's fault. All realists
encounter an impenetrable brick wall of fact
sooner or later when writing for the stage.
Poets have the poet's license. Well, Philip
staggers into the room just as Margaret has
decided what to do with the child, and the
sagacioug prompter rings down the curtain just
in time.

Garland, by contrast, again ignores the details and sug-
gests the movement of the scene as he saw it:

The third act takes place in Mrs. Burton's
cottage, where Dr. Larkin is horrified to

meet Margaret. He hmplores her to go home,

but she refuses, and inquires about the unfor-
tunate girl and is told she has just died. In
an impassioned scene Maria thrusts the terrible
truth upon Margaret and threatens Fleming's
life. Margaret sends Dr. Larkin away and sends
a note to Philip. As she waits in agony too
great for tears, the light goes out of her eyes.
She hears the wail of the new-born starving
baby; its pitiful cries move her motherhood to
its depths, she takes the poor waif to her
breast, and as Fleming, too awed and appalled
to speak, stands watching her, the curtain
falls.

Up to this point the early version reported by Dithmsr
and Garland is shmilar in its basic movement, though dif-

ferent in minor details, to the revised version published

9Dithmar, p. 1&5.

10Garland, "Mr. Herne's New Play."

290

by Quinn in his anthology. After the cottage scene, the
early version skips four years time and moves to three
other settings. Garland's summary of the early version
follows:

The intensity of interest finds welcome
relief in the next act in the change of scene,
four years later, to Boston Common where Joe
Fletcher has a peddlar's stand. He has with him
Margaret's child Lucy, five years old, whom he
believes to be his wife's sister's child.
Fleming comes in broken and dejected, and in
conversation with Joe tells the story of his
wife's disappearance, of his own failure in
business, and of his own remorse and hopeless-
ness. In speaking about the child Joe becomes
convinced that she is Margaret's child, and
takes Fleming home to let him see for himself.
The scene changes to a store on Hanover street,
where Maria is again living with Joe. Here
Lucy is waiting on customers. Miss Edwards, a
worker in the mission school, comes in to get
Lucy for a vacation in the country. After she
goes out, Margaret, feeling her way with a cane,
enters, inquiring for Miss Edwards. Lucy knows
her as a visitor to the mission schools, which
Margaret had been in the habit of visiting,
hoping to hear of her child. While talking
with the child she hears and knows Maria's
voice, and the hope that this little waif is
her child leads her to demand the name of the
mother. Maria sullenly insists it is her
sister's child. Margaret is going away in
despair, Lucy clinging to her dress, when Maria
breaks down, pleads to have Margaret take the
child and herself away with her. Margaret con-
sents and takes the child, Maria promising to
follow. But when Joe and Fleming return, the
hate she feels for Fleming makes her pitiless
and she tells him.she has sold the child.
Fleming goes out, and while Maria is gloating
over her subtle revenge, the curtain falls.

The last act takes place in the office of
inspector of police, a scene which Mr. Horne
has studied carefully from life. Margaret and
the child (which she knows is here), Philip,
Joe and Maria are brought in. After a little

291

prelhminary examination the inspector leaves them
alone "to arrange matters." . . . The wronged
wife faces the shamed and broken man with a
patience, kindness and yet firmness that holds
the spectator literally enthralled. . . . With
her pale face and sightiess eyes turned upon her
husband, Margaret tells him she cannot go back
to him. ”The wife-heart has gone out of me.
Only the mother-heart remains.“ He accepts the
judgement and they clasp hands. The inspector
comes in and seeing them standing thus, rubs his
hands jovially. "Ah! you've come to an under-
standing, I see." "Yes,” replies Philip, “we
understand each other." ”Better than we ever
did before," adds the voice of Margaret. The
inspector bows them out, returns to his desk,
rings a bell. "Send Davis in," and the play is
ended; life is going on jpst the same with the
inspector and his world.

In summary, these acts may seem long and tedious, and
in fact the plot sounds like the complications of Drifting
£22££ which we consider later in this chapter, but the
play itself was spiked with enough action and melodrama,
as this summary shows, to keep up the interest in the play
after the clhmactic nursing scene. These interest-getting
devices we have noticed before in Herne's work--the inter-
esting variety in setting, an outdoor scene on the Common
for color and an indoor scene in the police station to
give Herne the chance for a study from life; the effects
of lower class environments; the quaintness of Joe's ped-
dler stand; the spectacle of the aging Philip and the
blind Margaret; the melodramatic recognition scene as

Margaret discovers the child; and a last act in which the

11Garland, "Mr. Herne's New Play."

292

threads are carefully untangled. Quinn suggests that
there was comedy as well in these scenes, and it is cer-
tainly likely, considering what we know about Joe Fletcher
and Maria.12 Most of these added attractions disappeared
in the new fourth act which follows the cottage scene and
ends the play in the revised version.

Before we turn to that revised version, there is
still one other relevant item in the earlier version, a
variant ending. In Roadside Meetings (1931), Garland re-
called that the play ended like this:

After having refused reconciliation with her

husband, Philip Fleming, Margaret was left

standing in tragic isolation on the stage, and

as the lights were turned out one by one, her

figure gradually disappeared in deepening

shadow, and when the heavy, soft curtains,

dropping together noiselessly, shut in the

poignant action of the drama, no one moved or

spoke. The return to the signal world in which

we lived was made silently.

This ending was apparently used in the Chickering Hall
production in May, 1891, and again in the New York produc-
tion Dithmar saw in December, 1891.1“ The variation is,
perhaps, minor, but it shows Herne using the silent cur-

tain for an exact opposite effect from the end of Shore

Acres. Uncle Nat's silent triumph is a triumph for the

12Quinn, History, p. lhh.

13Hamlin Garland, Roadside Meetings (New York, 1931),
p. 77.

l“Quinn, History, p. 1H1.

293

whole family, for Man, as he closes up the house. Marga-

ret's silent triumph is personal—-”tragic isolation"

Garland called it--and it certainly brings little change
in the world of police justice which surrounds her at the
moment. Nor is there much relief in sight for her physi-
cal defeat--the blindness--or much hope for a new happy
life with her restored child.

Either way--Margaret alone, or the police inspector
returning to his routine--the ending of the play was too
bleak for contemporary tastes, and Herne was persuaded to
write a new last act for the 1892 Chicago performance.
That version, Quinn insists, is the one printed in his
anthology.15 These various endings of the play are not
textual matters of interest only to the historian tracing
the various productions of Margaret Fleming; they raise
the question of what is the logical (and emotionally via-
ble) ending for the play after the cottage scene, for in
all versions the first part of the play stays essentially
the same. Mrs. Herne has been accused of ”tempering“ the

15Arthur Hobson Quinn, "Ibsen and Herne--Theor and
Facts," American Literature, XIX (May, 19u7), p. 17 .
That Horne actually wrote—this revised last act is dis-
puted, but Quinn establishes the fact on the evidence of
a letter from Julie Herne. Others feel that Mrs. Herne

wrote the last act. William Winter, in his usual distaste
for Herne, decided that she wrote the whole play.

29h

original.16 But she feels the revised version I'iszmore
unified and preserves the tone more securely."17 An exam-
ination of that version should clarify the matter.

The revised version opens with a few tidy additions
by Mrs. Herne.18 The opening dialogue with Bobby, the
office boy, establishes Philip as a kind-hearted boss, in-
terested in the boy's future. The mill manager, Foster,
enters next, worried about business problems which Philip
dismisses with ”Nothing's going to happen."19 Then
Williams, the foreman, comes in to discuss a broken supply
belt for which Philip quickly makes a replacement order.
These three brief scenes are essential to establish the
public image of Philip--a first impression-~as an easy-
going and essentially good-hearted man before the meeting
with Joe Fletcher in the next scene which exposes his past,
hidden life of too much liquor and too many girls. Philip
tells Joe about his successful marriage and his attempts
at reform, admitting, ”I've got more than I deserve, I
guess” (p. 52h). Joe acts as a foil to Philip, for he too

16Dorothy S. Bucks and Arthur H. Nethercot, ”Ibsen
and Herne's Margaret Fleming,“ American Literature, XVII
(January, l9h6), p. 318.

17Quinn, Histor , p. 1&6.

18Quinn, ”Ibsen and Herne,” p. 173.

19Mar aret Flemin in Arthur Hobson Quinn, Re re-
sentative Amer can.__gyg, 5th ed. (New Yerk, 19 ,

p. 322. Hereafter, re erences to this standard edition
of the play will be cited in.my text.

295

has been married to a good woman but his wife left hum, a
situation which brings from Philip, "If my wife left me,
I'd kill myself" (p. 52h), thus setting up the course of
action he takes in Act IV. There is extraneous humor, as
one would expect from.Herne (who played Joe in Boston),
particularly a set speech involving an Irishman, a priest,
and whiskey, which serves little purpose except to get a
laugh, but the figure of Joe does act as an effective foil
to the newly assumed responsibility which Philip has ac-
cepted, especially when Dr. Larkin, the conscience of the
play, enters and calls Joe ”a sad example of what liquor
and immorality will bring a man to. He has indulged his
appetites until he has no real moral nature left" (p. 52h).
This judgement also applies to Philip, it quickly develops,
for Dr. Larkin has just come from Lena's bedside. The
revelation is interrupted by the phone call from.Hargaret
which seemed to bother Dithmar. But the phone call is
rhythmically right, making the image of Philip's new life
a part of the stage action as the threats of his past are
revealed. The doctor preaches to Philip about ”what
brutes such men.as you are” (p. 525). In a reading of the
play, this moral condemnation of the double standard of
sexual.morality may seem overstated, but in the context of
the movement of the act which has been building sympathy
for the young husband, Philip's reply, "Oh, come now,
doctor, aren't you a little severe?” (p. 525) is likely

296

to express the audience reaction to the scene. Certainly,
Dithmar's review indicated that reaction. The doctor, the
conscience, unreasonably forces Philip to agree that he is
bound, ethically, to visit the girl, and lie to her, to
say that he loves her so she won't “lie there and die like
a dog” (p. 526). Philip's reply is reasonable enough-~he
has never told her he loved her, which it turns out in her
Act III letter is the truth. The doctor leaves, and the
scene ends with a brief exchange with Foster, which shows
Philip making a quick business decision and humanely con-
cerning himself about Williams, the foreman, who is getting
too old for the job. Philip goes out into the rain.

The movement of the scene is swift--pausing only for
Joe Fletcher's jokes--in detailing the inner state of
Philip. That state is mostly a moral void, filled only by
one thing: his sincere and deep devotion to his wife, a
devotion which is threatened in the course of the scene by
Philip's past which he had hoped was gone. The ”problem"
of adultery and the double standard are stated discursively
by Dr. Larkin; the audience responds to the problem.omo-
tionally through the effect it has on Philip's state of
mind. It is likely, however, that in 1890 some members of
the audience might take Dr. Larkin's high moral tone as
their point of view, but in the movement of the entire
scene, his preaching is clearly a dramatic catalyst, not

a lesson. Thus, when Quinn and others emphasize the

297

"problem play” aspects of Margaret Fleming,20 they are on
the wrong track, even though 1890 audiences were simply
not ready to see beneath the problem into the drama. A
characteristic attitude is Hennequin's: "Adultery may,
indeed, be hinted at in American plays, as it may even
form an important element in the plot, but it must not be
seriously discussed or even presented as a problem. In
fact, the subject must not be presented as a question at
all, but as a sin.”21 If auditors could think only in
terms of sin, they were blinded to the inner drama. "No
really 'nice' persons were supposed to talk about it,“
wrote one reviewer at the 1907 revival.22

If that is how his audiences could be expected to re-
spond, Herne was not willing to make concessions to them.
In a lecture in St. Paul's Universalist Church, he con-
ceded that people had made the theatre what it is, but a
"true artist . . . has never descended to their level."23
He felt that the theatre should have a moral influence as
a factor in society, but he insisted that the theatre
makes its moral message clear in different terms which the

20Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Literature of the American
iifii—FANBie‘EZE‘Ea i‘ifiilaefi;.3?§:$§3.i°’€$2§?‘m p 60.

, .

21Alfred Henneguin, “Characteristics of the American
Drama,” Arena,I 190), p. 708.

22Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1907.
23Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 17, 1397.

298

church and church members should learn to accept. McVicker
in a little book, Egg Press, App Pulpit 32g ppg‘gpggg,

made much the same point: “The audience in the theatre,
unlike the congregation in the church, is always moved."2h
In this scene the audience is "moved” by Philip's colli-
sion with a.moral problem, not by Dr. Larkin's preaching
about it. (It is not accidental that Horne chose a doctor,
not a member of the clergy, for his emblem of strict moral
conscience in the play. The doctor, the scientist, carries
more authority in the Flemings' world.)

Susanne Langer has said that ”art does not affect the
viability of life so much as its quality. . . . In this
way it is akin to religion, which, also, at least in its
pristine, vigorous, spontaneous phase, defines and develops
human feelings.'25 The quality of life, human feelings,
is Herne's concern in Margaret Fleming, as elsewhere. His
concern, Alan Downer writes, is with ”humanity,” the basis
of a refined ”inner realiam,‘I the final stage in the de-
velopment of realism.26 Surface realism is remarkably
integrated into the inner movement of this opening scene.

2
._... 22222.. 2222322: 22% -.-——;.——— $.22 ——-

ecture at Central Music Hall, November 28, 1882.

h ZSSusanne Langer, Feeling and Form (New Yerk, 1953),
p. 02.

26Alan S. Downer, American Drama (New York, 1960),
p. 7.

299

The office routine is important only as Philip reacts to
it. The one false note in the scene is the intrusion of
the quaint Joe Fletcher.

Scene two of Act I develops the image of the happy
home life Philip has projected in the telephone conver-
sation in scene one. In this scene Dithmar found too many
details of babies and domestic life. Actually, the scene
is not long, and Margaret's happy motherhood is played in
counterpoint to Maria's distress over Lena's unhappy moth-
erhood, a counterpoint which eliminates sentimentality.
Contrast this scene with the fondling of the baby at the
beginning of Act IV of §gg Harbor, and the dramatic con-
trol is clear. Martha's baby is pointless spectacle;
Margaret's is a dramatic emblem of her motherhood. The
scene opens with that emphasis, for Margaret is buttoning
her blouse: ”No—-no--no! You little beggar. You've had
your supper” (p. 527), a normal action foreshadowing the
later abnomal nursing of another “beggar.”

The disturbing element in the opening part of this
scene is not the abundance of realistic detail but Lena's
sister Maria, Joe Fletcher's abandoned wife, who quite by
coincidence turns up as nursemaid in this happy home. The
coincidence is unbelievable, but quickly forgotten once
she begins to compare Lena's and Margaret's happiness, for
the emotional--not the conventiona1--movement of the scene

takes center stage. Her bitterness and threatened revenge

300

("But, by Gott, I vill find dot man oudt, und I vill choke
it from his throat“) is a strong contrast to Margaret's
kindness and sympathy for the fallen woman. What is es-
tablished immediately is Margaret's forgiving, humane
attitude, even though no "nice” woman is supposed to
think about such things, much less condone a girl who goes
astray. Maria makes that point, ironically, when she begs
Margaret not to tell Philip because ”he is a fine gentle-
man, und if he knowed about pgg--he might not like to have
mg by his vife und child" (p. 528). She does not know he
is the father. Thus, the two strongest motives in Marga-
ret's character--her mother-love and her humane desire to
know and understand the plight of others--are established
in this first impression, and established quickly beneath
the surface action of the problem.play plot.

Maria leaves. Margaret turns down the lights and
sings a mournful lullaby: ”Blow, Blossom goo-into the
world below--I am.the west wind wild and strong-~blossoms
must go when they hear my song. Go little blossom, go--
into the world below. Rain, rain, rain is here. Blossoms
must learn to weep” (p. 528). 'Unlike too many other of
Herne's songs, this one is an integral part of the move-
ment of the scene, not only suggesting the sad cycle of
innocence and experience but introducing the blossoms mo-
tif which is associated with Margaret throughout the play.

When Philip enters, pale, weary, listless, he asks,

301

”Why are you in the dark, Margaret?“ (p. 528) The irony
may be heavy-handed, but it sets the tone for this domestic
scene which concludes the act. Margaret mothers him as
she has mothered her baby. She tries to understand the
motives that forced him to miss the baby's birthday dinner.
When he reveals his plans to deed the house to her to save
it from approaching financial problems in the business,
she is immediately selfless and, thinking she understands
his motives, refuses his offer. When she tells that Joe
Fletcher had visited her that morning, she is mildly
amused by the fracas that resulted when Joe faced Maria.
She does not condemn either party. The act ends as Philip
accepts her ministrations, ”All right--'boss.'” And she
intuitively sums up his spiritual state: “You know,
Philip, dear, you gave me the strangest feeling when you
stood there--the rain dripping from you-~you didn't look a
bit like yourself. You gave me a dreadful fright. Just
like a spirit! A lost spirit. Now, wasn't that silly of
me?” (p. 531)

There is an intense emotional content in this scene,
depending in part on the dramatic irony growing out of
Margaret's innocence, but depending in larger part on the
characters' inner states, so obviously in conflict, but
expressed in only the most quiet of actions. Howells ob-
served, “This quiet is the one true touch in it; and it is

so true that it imparts a color of veracity to the whole,

302

which the spectator has to look at twice to find a
reflected light. . . . Strong emotions may be expressed
without the least noise."27 Another critic has written,
"He [Herna] had abandoned 'action' for a drama of inward-
ness, concentrating upon the psychological conflict."28
The forces that are closing in on Margaret are all the
more menacing because they are hidden, and they are not
merely social forces but personal forces that must affect
her valuation of her life, lived until now in such inno-
cence that she is kind to fallen women and mildly amused
by the marital problems of others. Her collision with
these forces is inevitable, but what the audience is in-
terested in is not the forces themselves but the way
Margaret, as a personality, will react when the collision
comes--the future into which this drama is moving. She
has already shown an intelligent perception and a superior
control that are potentially heroic.

In Act II, she moves closer to the inevitable con-
flict, by her own choice. The act opens as Dr. Larkin
introduces one new force against which she must contend:
”You say you have no pain in the eyes?“ (p. 531) and she
admits to an occasional dimness but refuses to wear

27WilliamDean Howells, "Editor's Study," Hagper's
Magazine, LXXXIII (August, 1891), p. A77.

28Herbert Edwards "Howells and Horne," American
Literature, XXII (1951), p. A38. _.__.__...

303

glasses. There follows some overworked irony as the
doctor and Margaret discuss Philip.
Doctor. You take good care of him, don't you?
Margaret. I've got to . . . he's all I have,
and men like Philip are not picked
up everyday, now, I tell you.

Doctor. No, men like Philip Fleming are cer-
tainly not to be found easily.

But the doctor is quickly cut short as Philip enters with
a rose he has picked for Margaret--the first rose of the
season. He puts it on her breast, even though she regrets
that the flower has been plucked. The flower motif may
seem obvious in the telling, but in the rapidity of stage
action, it is a subtle touch.

The next scene between Philip and the Doctor is tedi-
one because the doctor is tedious. When the doctor gives
a full explanation of Margaret's illness, glaucoma, with
the medical details, and then insists righteously that
Philip must protect Margaret from any strain, the doctor
is an undramatic bore. Philip had declared that he wanted
to tell his wife ”this whole miserable story“ (p. 532),
and the doctor is even more tedious when he insists Marga-
ret must be kept in ignorance; his own.moral code-~the
"right" thing--does not work in this situation, and he
must encourage Philip to live a lie, even though that de-
ceit will lead to a greater shock for Margaret.

There follows a brief comic scene with Philip, Joe,

30';

and Maria. Maria throws Joe out, bodily, and Philip goes
after him. The scene might be seen as a comic restatement
of the marital troubles of Philip and Margaret, but it has
no place in the movement of the act. Its only function is
to get Philip off the stage so Maria can extract the promr
ise that Margaret will visit the dying Lena, who, strangely,
wants to see Margaret. Margaret chooses to go in spite of
the earlier warnings that she should not strain herself.
Before she leaves, two brief exchanges of dialogue
jar the serenity of the scene. One is about Philip's
cigar smoking. In two earlier instances, Dr. Larkin has
refused Philip's cigars because he cannot take a gift from
a man he can no longer respect. Philip's reaction is in-
difference. Now Margaret is upset by Philip's cigar smoking
because he must not smoke while he is taking the medicine
which Dr. Larkin has given him. Philip at first says he
will give up the medicine not the cigars, but Margaret
prevails, and he gives up the cigars. The second exchange
is about baby's eyes, which Philip thinks are becoming
more like Margaret's, an observation which elicits a pro-
test from Margaret. The scene ends as Margaret leaves to
visit Lena. Her final reminder is ”Don't forget your
medicine, and please don't smoke when.my back is turned”
(p. 536), reinstating the emblem of Philip's guilt, the
cigars, in juxtaposition to her own secure happiness.

Both blindness and Philip's guilt converge on her in the

305

climactic third act.

Act III is short and powerful, concentrating com-
pletely on Margaret's discovery of the real world that has
been hidden beneath the illusion of security which has
blinded her in her own living room. Herne avoids strong
visual contrast between that bright world and the dark
world in which Lena is dying. Mrs. Burton's sun-lit cot-
tage where Lena has found refuge is no hovel but a ”neat,
plainly-furnished sitting room” (p. 536).

The movement of the act is unified, reaching first a
melodramatic climax, then an emotional climax, with none
of the usual Herne digressions into problems or realism or
comic relief. It opens with an empty stillness, soon
broken by the wall of the new-born infant, a wail which is
finally solaced at the end of the act when Margaret nurses
the child. A brief exchange between Mrs. Burton and Dr.
Larkin establishes the necessary exposition: Lena is dead;
before she died, she scribbled a note; her child needs
mother's milk.

Margaret enters and ignores the doctor's pleas to go
home, for she is sure that she can be of some help to
Maria, at least. The doctor lies to her, saying that
there is contagion in the house, and she prepares to leave,
thinking of the safety of her own child. But Maria pre-
vents her in a burst of near-insanity, showing the death-

bed letter Lena has written to Philip. This is the

306

melodramatic climax of the act, but the effect on Margaret
is not melodramatic. She wants only to read the letter,
but finds that she cannot make it out. As the doctor had
predicted, the emotional stress is affecting her nervous
system.and her sight. The fact is shown dramatically by
her action, nothing is said. Maria reads the letter aloud
and then continues her melodramatic tirade, threatening to
rush out and kill Philip with a pistol. Margaret caimly
stops Maria. Herne's control of this first climax in the
act is remarkable, for he gives all of the melodrama--
including the convention of the death-bed letter-~to Maria,
while he keeps the interest on.Margaret's inner state,
never expressed in words until after she has disarmed
Maria. Then follows a quiet two-line passage. The doctor,
”overcome by the situation,“ but understanding little of
what is really happening to Margaret, says in desperation,
”For God's sake, Mrs. Fleming, let me take you out of this
hell.“ Margaret's reply is alive with her own perception:
”Ah, doctor, you cannot take Epig pg}; out of my breast”
(p. 539) .

Then she makes her choice. Without hesitation, she
sends a note to Philip demanding him to come, in spite of
the doctor's protests. In one last attempt to stop her
from carrying out her choice, the doctor tells her what
the audience already knows: if she continues under this

stress, she will go blind, and may even endanger her life.

307

But she has made her choice and orders the doctor away.
Margaret. Then, let me be the doctor now, and
I order you to leave this house at
once.
Doctor. You are determined to do this thing?
Margaret. [Ki-.322 finality.] Yes.
After she dismisses the reasonable doctor's advice, she
impatiently grants Maria's plea for forgiveness, made on
her knees, and sends her away. Neither reason or melo-
drama have any part in the tragic role she has chosen to
play. Nor does the social or moral problem of adultery.
Before Philip returns, Herne carefully moves his action
away from.the "problem" to a universal theme-~life-giving
motherhood--which makes all else seem.minor in the emo-

tional climax of the act.

Mrs. Burton brings in the crying infant, and leaves
again to find something to feed it. In the bright sun-
light of the room, Margaret's sight begins to fail, but

she seems to find an inner vision.

Margaret. Bring a 1amp--it's getting dark here.
She is still in the same attitude py
he ~table. There‘i? a silencp, then

t3? chiia's waii arouses her. She
EETfm turns her Eeaa in its direE—ion--
and tries to quiet ii— Hush--child--
Efish-- Then shE reaches out her hand
as if to ere-- here-~poor
Iittie thi—_.-—Don't fret-~it's no use
to fret, child-~be quiet now-~there-—
there, now. [She turns and slowl
gropes her __y to the so a sits on
the edge of Ag; and—feeis for the— 2
child and *entl ats i_, She— murmurs
softinT us --ba y--go to-Eieep.

 

308

[Thegg is g silence while a soft flood
o?_§unshine la 3 about he?. 5 pity-
153 half smile lits ahross her face.
She utters a faint sign 22g again
dFifts away into that inner conscious-

ness where she evidently finds peace.
Igain the child is restless-~it a-

rouses her and, hhpeless pf comfhrtin
itI she’takes it 13 her arms. Ktter
g moment she EIses £2 her fhet and
stumbles toward the table. ‘She knocks
against the low Chair. g; the same
moment Fhllip Fleming dashes breath-
lessly into the room thropgh the door

right. §g_ auses in horror 33 Marga-
ret raises her head. her e as wide
open, staring into his--he§_ ace calm
and remote. She huhhes the child

softl and sits in the low chair.
Fhili stands in.dfim5 amazement watch-

_pg her. The thild Begins to—Tret her

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

a ain. She—Eeems ho e ess 3? comfott:
_pg __p -Then scarcely constious 2_
what she lg doin suddenly with an
Empatltht, swift movemeht she unbfit-
’tons her dress to give nourishment to

the child whenlthe picture fades away
into darkness.)

The effect is what Gassner has called “the quality of

l

tragic enlightenment,” not linked to psychology or social
situation.29 It is not restricted merely to what Quinn
found in this scene: "The strength of that dramatic ac-
tion in which, with few or no words spoken, the relations
of human beings are developed or revealed with the fatal
swiftness which is the essential quality of great dramatic

moments."30 Nor is it easy to believe what Howard Taubman

29John Gassner, The Theatre ip.Our Times (New Ybrk,
195,4) 3 p0 700

30Quinn, History, p. 1M4»-

309

called touches of sentimentality and melodrama in this
scene.31 As we observed earlier the emotion in melodrama
is, after all, only of a lower order than that in tragedy;
good tragedy always has tinges of melodrama, tinges not
taints. If the audience is aware that Margaret is acting
out the tragic role she has chosen for herself in action
which best expresses dramatically how that choice has led
inevitably to her new awareness, the rest is beside the
main point. The scene has the quality of tragedy in Mar-
garet's perception of what is happening to her. It is as
the contemporary reviewer in‘ghg Nation suggested, ”a
clhmax as tragic as any that ever was put on the stage”32--
and if one need qualify--at least in 1890. The entire act
has a unity of movement which makes the climax seem inevi-
table in terms of Margaret's character, from the opening
wail of the infant to the closing action. One reviewer
wrote of "the great third act--it is an act truly great,
not alone in its dramatic situation but in the simplicity
and directness with which it is built up."33

And Mrs. Horne from all reports captured that move-
ment in her acting, showing an understanding of exactly

31Howard Taubman, The Making 2; Egg American Theatre
(New York, 1965), p. 1137-

32L. McKinley Garrison ”Herne's Margaret Fleming "
Nation, 011 (May 1h, 1891),’p. 399. ’

330hicago Tribune, January 30, 1907.

310

what was to be expressed. One contemporary critic cer-
tainly responded to the tragic impact of Margaret's
realization, not to.melodrama or sentimentality:

”The acting of Margaret Fleming in this scene,
as interpreted by Mrs. Herne, has seldom been
approached on any stage. I was never so pro-
foundly moved by a dramatic representation as
I was the first thme I witnessed this awful
scene. It was tragedy in the supreme sense of
the term. The auditors forgot all save the
beautiful wife whose Joy and love and devotion,
as witnessed in the preceding scene, had won
all hearts, and now is overwhelmed by a grief
far worse than death--a grief which pierces
the soul and banishes all light of pleasure
from.life, while upon the heels of this awful
discovery comes, as is so frequently the case
in this strange life of ours, another calmmity
only second in terrible severity Margaret
suddenly becomes totally blind. 3”

If one accepts the interpretation that this scene is
a tragic climax in which.Margaret perceives and accepts
the consequences of her choice, that she has in fact real-
ized a new dimension in her personality and no longer
believes the illusion of the false personality of the de-
voted wife in a perfect home, then the dramatic problem,-
the problem.in form--is how to bring the play to close, to
a sense of completeness. The problem is intensified be-
cause the tragic movement may seem to end with Act III,
but form requires a levelling off, a chance to feel the
effect of the tragic personality.

By now, it should be obvious that the original Acts

31”B. 0. Flower, "Mr. Herne's Contribution to Dramatic
Literature," The Coming Age, II (October, 1899), p. 398.

311

IV and V are not the right ending, piling more misfortune
and suffering upon Margaret and Philip, and dragging the
comic Joe and the melodramatic Maria back into the action.
It is all pathos and melodramatic intrigue which clearly
do not develop the tragic, personal triumph of Margaret at
the end of Act III, but merely drag out her defeat. That
the original acts are superfluous was clear to at least
some of the original audience.35 The present ending is
more appropriate, for it shows the new, stronger Margaret
and it brings a note of humane understanding--even though
it too contains some superfluous material.

The act opens seven days later with the two charac-
ters Margaret dismissed in Act III, Maria and Dr. Larkin.
They establish the time interval and little else. When
Margaret enters from her flowers in the garden, there is a
brief scene with the doctor which has more point. It de-
velops around the care of roses--Margaret's flower--when
bugs eat out ”the heart of every rose." Once that has
happened, Margaret says, there is no use in doing anything
about this crop of flowers, but one must be prepared to
start all over again next year. The doctor replies that
the world needs strong women like Margaret. Her reply is
personal: ”What does the world know or care about women

like me?” (p. Shl) The use of the roses as an emblem.for

35Garrison, "Herne's Margaret Flemin ," p. 399.

312

Margaret's own condition may seem a little clumsy, but it
has been prepared for, and it quite smoothly takes the
place of more obvious moralizing.

Foster arrives to say that Philip is outside and
leaves after some pertinent but dispensable discussion of
his always-cheerful.mother. Margaret asks the doctor to
send Philip in, thus neatly avoiding an onstage confron-
tation between the doctor and the erring husband which
would bring back too much mmphasis on the moral issue.
Philip asks forgiveness, but Margaret says that "there is
nothing to forgive" (p. 5&2), for she is past the stage of
melodramatically forgiving-~as she has already demonstrated
with Maria.

A tentative reconciliation seems possible until
Philip calls her his "wife.” ”The wife-heart has gone out
of me,” she replies and begins a preachment on the double
standard of sexual.merality which is the weakest point in
the act and has nothing at all to do with the movement of
emotional states. But it was difficult to avoid bringing
back the “problem.play” which certainly interested contemr
porary audiences. Margaret ascends the pulpit:

Margaret. It is not a question of forgetting or

forgiving-- Can't you understand?
Philip? Suppose--I--had been un-
faithful to you?

Philip. [With 3 m 22 repugnance.] Oh, Mar-
garet!

313

Margaret. There! You see! You are a man, and
you have your ideals of--the--sanc-
tity--of--the thing you love. Well,
I am a woman--and perhaps--I, too,
have the same ideals. I don't know.
But, I, too, cry "pollution."
Philip. I did not know. I never realized be-
fore, the iniquity--of myb-behavior.
Oh, if I only had my life to live over
again. Men, as a rule, do not consider
others when urged on their desires.
How you.must hate me (p. 5&3).
This sensational ”problmm” even promoted the play. One
advertisement reads, “A forcible discussion of the Woman
Question. What woman could blame her?“36
This sensation passes as the problem play is disposed
of, and the drama comes back on the stage. Philip asks a
return of the "old Margaret." She replies with tragic
conviction, "Ah, Philip, the old Margaret is dead. The
truth killed her" (p. 5&3). The new Margaret takes him
back into the home to assume the responsibility of raising
both of the children. Philip is perplexed when he learns
that Margaret has brought his bastard into the home, but
she replies, ”You must teach him never to be ashamed of
her [Lena], to love her memory-~motherhood is a divine
thing--remember that, Philip, no matter when, or how" (p.
Enh). This is the new Margaret putting into words what
her action at the end of Act III has already demonstrated.

Philip tells her of his attempted suicide, and Margaret

36Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1892.

31h

replies, "That was a cruel thing to do" (p. Shh). When he
again hOpes he can win her back, she says, "I don't know.
That would be a wonderful thing. Ah, dreams! Philip!
Dreams! And we must get to work." She moves to the table
working with her flowers while he "steps buoyantly into
the garden” to see the two children, among Margaret's
blossoms.

Except for the preaching, the revised last act is a
satisfactory completion of the action of the play--no joy-
ous reunion, no final embrace, only a tentative agreement,
on which a life might be built in new terms. There is
even a slight hope, suggested by Dr. Larkin earlier in the
act, that an operation.might cure Margaret's blindness.
But the Joy, the triumph that illuminates Margaret's face
as she looks out into the darkness as the curtain falls,
is not the hope that she will be cured nor that her old
family life will be restored. It is a triumphant recog-
nition of her new and strong character.

Each act has ended with Margaret and Philip alone on
the stage, each time in more estranged circumstances, and
in this last ending they are still apart on completely
different terms than at the beginning. Margaret's attempt
to make meaning out of what has happened to her may bring
them together. Whether they come together again, though,
is unimportant as far as the play is concerned, for what

has happened is enough, as one critic has said, to make

315

the handling of "the 'unforgivable sin' of unfaithfulness
as worked out by Philip and Margaret Fleming completely
plausible."37 Margaret makes it plausible, for the play
has been an emotional movement in her character (a char-
acter, incidentally, which.Quinn ranks with Isabel
Archer38) as she becomes not just a ELEE but a woman who
is an active agent in choosing her own personality, coming
to, if you will, a kind of "epiphany“ of illumination. At
a lower level of illumination it may be what Moses thought
it to be: “a close tragedy of a woman's struggle to esti-
mate at its full worth the animal instinct in.man.”39 But
it is also her own estimate Margaret is taking. If the
play has reminded some observers of the work of Ibsen, the
comparison is valid if the observers mean the kind of
inner tragedy Ibsen wrote, in which a Nora or a Hedda
moves to a final realization of herself, not as a placard
for women's rights, but as a woman.

It is not necessary to say that Margaret Fleming is
Herne's ”best“ play, but one can say it is a successful
tragedy within the limits of realism.and it is, as Howells

37Jordan.Miller,.mmerican Dramatic Literature (New
Ybrk, 1961). p. 80. ——

38Quinn, Histor , p. lul.

39Montrose Moses, The American Dramatist (Boston,
1911), pp. lOl-lOZ.

316

thought, ”American to its fingernails,”uo concentrating on
a family situation but moving beyond that into a tragic
triumph of personality.

Drifting Apart

William Archer suggested that Horne was "vaguely
struggling towards a new form in his early plays," even
though they were "of rather old-fashioned type.”hl
Drifting Apggt, which Herne wrote just before Margaret
Fleming, contains enough evidence of that struggle to be
of more than passing interest to the student of drama}:L2
Professor Quinn finds the play of interest mostly for
historical reasons: a progress toward greater realism and
the early use of the dremm scene in.American drama.”3 But
this lhmited view fails to consider the form of the play.

Horne has attempted, unsuccessfully, a potentially
tragic play within a comic framework. The play within the
play, the dream sequence of Acts III and IV, fails as

hOHowells-"Editor's Stud ,” Harper's Magazine,
LXXXIII (August, 1891), p. h? .

hIWilliam.Archer, ”The.mmerican Stage," Pall Mall
Magazine, XX (1899), p. 32.

haThe earlier.melodramas, Hearts 2; Oak, The Minute
Men, and Within 2g Inch.g£ His Eire, show only a very
vague sense of form, as we see In Chapter VI.

h3Arthur Hobson Quinn, ”Introduction" to The Early
Plays 2; James A; Horne (Princeton, l9h0), p. Ix.

317

tragedy because it creates no completely realized tragic
personality. The play as a whole, the comic frame, fails
because it is not strong enough to move the audience back
into a comic expectation after the near tragedy of the
dream scene. The drama is also handicapped by a greater
reliance on cliches than the later plays, in both the
comic and serious portions, although the effect of the
cliches is strikingly different in the two portions.

A critical discussion of Drifting Apggt is compli-
cated by textual problems. The only existing version is
an early one titled flag; the Fishermen's ghilg, and it is
from all accounts inferior to the play Horne produced.
Quinn states, “It is hardly fair to judge Herne by this
preliminary draft.”hh How much the revision differs from
the original is evident in the following excerpts, the
first from.the standard early version, the second repro-
duced by Garland, evidently from the manuscript, in an
article in.2§g 53225. The scene occurs at the beginning
of Act II.

Discovered: Margaret discovered in rocker knit-

tigg; Mar 'gt table cuttin out 5351 clothes:
Jack gfi glass E1 wasHsEana shaving; c ean w to

ghirt 23 e in recess, stockings ready E;

Jack. [Washing his face and neck thoroughly lg
water and sin ing all the time andw
3r in._EImsel on the towel. gin 8 "Oh!
The

re was _e_. jolT—y miller onceI ved

thuinn, "Introduction,” p. ix.

3l8

happy“ on th___e_ river Dee") There, that's
over. Now, “Mary, where's my clean shirt?

Mary. There, Jack, on mother's bed, and your
collar and handkerchief all ready.

Jack. 0h, Lord--Lord--what a little wife you
are-~eh.mother! ain't she just the bless-
edest little wife in the world? [Goes
off]

Margaret. That she is, Jack, and you see that
you prove the best of husbands to her.

Jack. [Outside] Oh! Never fear me--say,
mother, don't you forget to hang up the
stockings. Will ye?

Mary. Oh Jack! What nonsense!

Jack. [Outside] No nonsense about it; Christmas
is CErlstmas! It comes but once a year--
I'm.goin' to have the stockings hung up--
and I'm.going to have lots of holly--and
mince pie and goose and a regular New
England jollification, there now: [Com-
‘Fég out] So, for fear you might fora

lTll just hang them.up myself.
[Comes out with stocki_gs4 one long black
one, one'long gr ay one, and_ one man's
b__]_.____ue woolen s__o___ck] Say, Mary hain't you
got no better stocking than this?

 

Mary. Why, Jack, what ever are you going to do?

Jack. Hang up the stockings I tell you--[She
triesa to et them! uts them behlnd
ow, it'sm no use llttle woman,
a n'EuT n' to give Santa Claus any
excuse.8 0Ha! Ha! Ha! So mother you just
give me some pins.

Mary. Jack, did you ever think that perhaps
next Christmas there might be another
stocking, a tiny one, Jack, to hang in
the chimney corner?

Jack. Why, Mary child, there's tears in your
eyes. [Goes 52 wipe eyes with the work

Mary.

Jack.

Mary.

319
she hasI sees it's a bab 's dress Why
Bless my soul, whath tfils? J ,

Do you remember Bella and John in Our
Mutual Friend-~that I read to you?

Yes, perfectly.
Well, there are sails Jack--sails for

the little ship that's coming acrflgs the
unknown sea--to you and me, Jack.

Following is the same scene as Garland reproduced it:

Jack.

Mary.

Jack.

Mary.

Jack.

Say, Mary! D'you know, I can shave.my-
self better'n any barber that ever honed
a razor?

I always told you you could, Jack, if
you'd only try.

Feel my face now--ain't it as smooth as
any baby's?

Feeling his face] ‘Yes Jack as smooth
£3 any gig Baby's. ’ ’

Oh! say, look here now, thet ain't fair:
a feller don't know nothin' till he's
forty, does he, mother? Old baby's! I
ain't too old to love you, Mary, that's
one thing. I've loved you ever since
you was knee-high to a grasshopper. I
rocked you in y'r cradle--I'm.blessed if
I didn't make the cradle you was rocked
in, didn't I, mother?

Margaret. Yes, Jack, an' d'ye remember what yeh

Jack.
Mary.
Jack.

made it out of?

A herrin' box.

I married the man I love, Jack.

Honest?

hSIn The Early Pla s of James A; Herne, pp. 116-117.
Hereafter, references 0 tfils standard edltion of the play
will be cited in.my text.

320

Mary. Honest?

Jack. Kissing her Then what'n thunder you
gant o tIlEJabout a feller gettin' old
for? Where's my clean shirt? Say,
mother, don't you forget t' hang up the
stockin's.

Mary. Oh! Jack, what nonsense.

Jack. No nonsense about it. Christmas is
Christmas. It only comes once a year
an' I'm goin' to have the stockin's
hung up. So for fear you'd forgit 'em
I'll hang 'em myself.

Mary. Please, Jack, give me those stockings.

Jack. Now it ain't no use, little woman. Them
stockin's is a-goin' up. Mother, you
give me three pins.

Mary. Don't you give hum any pins, mother.
Suppose the neighbors should come in and
see those stockings hangin' up.

Jack. Let 'em.come in. I don't care a conti-
nental cuss. Why, Mary, everybody wears
stockin's nowadays, everybody that can
afford to. I want the neighbors to see
'em, then they'll know we've got stockin's.
[Holdin EB 3132 three stockings] Got one
ap ece anyhow.

Mother. Oh, Jack, Jack! you'll never be any-
thing but a great overgrown boy, if
you live to be a hundred.

Mary. Jack!
Jack. Hey?

Mary. Did you never think that perhaps next
Christmas there might be another
stocking, just a tiny one, to hang in
the chimney corner?

Jack. Why, Mary, there's tears in your eyes.
Goes 22 wipe her e es with the work she
as n her hands: 3 a ab s dress

—‘ -———.—A— +5'r—3

§l3ss my soul. What's-this, ary

321
Mary. Do you remember Bella and John in "Our
Mutual Friend" that I read to you?
Jack. Yes. Warn't they glorious?
Mary. Well, those are sails, Jack, sails for
the little ship that'fl coming across the
water for you and me. 6
These two excerpts have been reproduced here at length
as their own commentary on Herne's revisions. There are
two significant differences in these versions. First, the
language of the early version tends to be stiff and unnat-
ural, while the language of the later version is easy and
natural as one would expect from Herne after reading Shore
Acres or Sag Harbor or Margaret Fleming. Second, the
early version barely suggests possibilities for the actors
to develOp a characterization, while the revision supplies
sufficient details and dialogue to suggest what Mr. and
Mrs. Horne (Jack and Mary) were able to express of the
simple, happy home life. Howells wrote,
We ourselves think that no more delicate effect
could be achieved than that it makes in the
homliest scenes of the play; and if we speak of
that passage in which the man talks out to the
two women in the kitchen from the little room
adjoining, where he is putting on his best
clothes for Christmas, and whimsically scolds
them for not being able to find his things, and
intersperses his complaints with bits of gossip
and philosophy and drolling, it is without the

least hope of persuading artificial people of
the value of such an episode, but with full

ubflamlin Garland "Mr. and Mrs. James A. Horne,"
Arena, Iv (October, 1691), pp. ShS-Su6.

322

confidence that no genuine erson can witness it

without feeling its charm.”9
The revised version--which impressed Garland enough to
lead hhm to seek a meeting with Herne--opened with Act II
of the earlier version, omitting the pointless Act I with
its unnecessary exposition, humor, and spectacleJ‘L8 The
play evidently went through a third revision in which
Garland was involved: “Under that influence of my opti-
mism, he took heart and began to revise 'Drifting Apart'
for the third time. It was stated at one time that I was
working with hum, but as a matter of fact I never sug-
gested a line in any of his plays, though he read them to
me scene by scene. In this case, I followed his revisions
day by day, encouraging him to cut out the very lines
which his theatric advisers considered most vital.“49

In the early version, prepared before Herne met
Garland, however, there is ample local color realism, side
by side with the conventions one might expect. The set-
tings are quaint local pictures. Jack's cabin in Act II
”represents an old ship's cabin: no plaster or whitewash,
all oak timber with heads of wooden pegs, iron bolts, nuts,

etc., . . . ship's locker against L. side of cabin,

h7William.Dean Howells “Editor's Study," Hagper's
Magazine, LXXXI (June, 1890 , p. 15h.

uBHamlin Garland, “Roadside Meetings of a Literary
Nomad,” Bookman, LXX (November, 1929), p. 251.

tharland, Roadside Meetingg, p. 71.

323

washstand with pitcher of water, bowl, soap, . . . roller
towel at stand, clothes rack, pegs, with Southwestern
coat . . . old fashioned leaf table at window . . . clock
and ornaments on mantel, kettle steaming and singing on
hob, cricket chirping on hearth” (p. 115). In this set-
ting, Garland particularly liked ”a sewing machine posing
as a flower stand, a characteristic touch of fidelity to
humble life such as I had never seen on the stage."50 The
characters, too, are simple and quaint local color por-
traits. Mary paints herself as a "Daisy in the field" (p.
107) and ”a child of nature” (p. l06).

The local color atmosphere of the play is strangely
at odds with the conventions which surround it. The plot
is a conventional temperance plot. Mary, the good wife,
soon to be a mother, has reformed Jack, who drank too much
before he was married. Like Philip under Margaret
Fleming's influence, he is trying to be a good husband,
but, also like Philip, his past habits catch up with him.
He comes home drunk and sprawls in a stupor on the ship's
locker, the emblem of his past, wild life. Mary shrieks
and faints. Jack's mother prays. The next two acts, the
dream sequence, show the effects of drinking on family
life. Because Jack has abandoned Mary, she has been

forced to live with a wealthy man to support herself and

SSOGarland, "Roadside Meetings of a Literary Nomad,"
p. 2 l.

32h

her child, passing as his wife. She says, "I sold the
mother to save the child" (p. 129). Eventually, of course,
she does intend to marry the man, Percy. Jack turns up at
a fancy ball and disgraces her. They move to a tenement
house where the child dies of cold and starvation, and
Mary quickly follows because ”she is waiting for:me--she
wants her mother” (p. 133). The dream ends, and Act V
opens with Jack struggling awake from.bis nightmare, re-
morsefully vowing never to drink again, as he is accepted
into Mary's forgiving arms.

The standard drink drama is much in evidence. Jack's
love of what he calls "a social glass" is established
early in Act I before the marriage; then in Act II, Mary
brings it up again, with no motive for her action. Even
on her deathbed, in the dream scene, she begs, "Don't
drink Jack! Be brave-~be my old, old Jack once more" (p.
13h). Herbert Edwards and Julie Herne state that there is
”no explicit preaching“ in the play,51 but Mary, like
Margaret, does at least point out the evils of the problem,
adding popular moral appeal that belongs in.melodrama.

M. Willson Disher, a scholar of the pepuiar melodrama,
wrote, ”Drink dramas, now [1939] a favourite butt for
present mirth, made public drunkenness so rare, if not

51Herbert Edwards and Julie A. Horne, James A; Herne
(Orono, Maine, 196k), p. #1.

325

extinct, that the modern mind has no knowledge of it."52
The claim may be extravagant, but thesis melodramas have
been acknowledged as conditioners of public attitudes.
The dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin, for an instance,
has been credited with awakening public interest in the
problem.of slavery.53 Herne knew the tradition from his
earliest professional acting job--in.ggglg Egglghgggig.

Unlike the problem play content of Margaret Fleming,
however, the problem of drink in Drifting £2335 takes over
too completely, and the real drama of two people whose
relationship is destroyed by the problem becomes subordi-
nate to the formula of the problem play.

The emotional form of this drama of human relation-
ships is further handicapped by the formulas of conven-
tional melodrama. There are soliloquies (p. 108), which
Horne later abandoned, saying, "To have the characters
'think aloud' is an easy way out of it."5u Asides are
used for the conventional purpose of thinking aloud and
for humorous remarks. A laugh is promoted, for instance,
when Silas says of an old actor, “He was a powerful
musicianer, I've seen hum play the trombone and Macbeth

52M. Willson Disher, “Melodrama and the Modern Mind,"
Theatre Egggg, xxx (April, 1939). p. 152.

SBMcVicker, The Press, the Pulpit and the Stage,
p. 70. "" ""' ""

ShHerne, ”Old Stock Days in the Theatre,“ Th3 Arena,
VI (September, 1892), p. hlo.

326

the same night. He's dead," and Percy replies, aside, "He
ought to be” (p. 111). There is also the conventional
climactic curtain in each act. Act I ends with an ominous
thunderstorm breaking in on the celebration of Jack and
Mary's engagement. As lightning strikes Jack's ship at
anchor in the harbor, the superstitious fisher folk all
kneel and sing “Rock of Ages." Act II ends with Jack
falling drunk and Mary shrieking. Act III ends with the
disgrace of Mary: ”As for you.madame-I--pity you--but--
leave--my'house--go.” Act IV ends with the remorseful
Jack picking up Mary's body. It is the quietest curtain.
Act V ends with a general celebration-~and the singing of
a temperance song. The quiet, levelling actions that
Herne used as curtains in the later plays are not evident
here, except to some extent in Act IV.

Just as conventionally old fashioned as the clhmactic
curtain is the abundance of song and spectacle in the play.
As we have seen, Horne usually put songs in the plays, but
in the later plays the songs are likely to become part of
the domestic dramatic action (e.g., the lullaby in Mgggg-
EgglFlemigg). In Drifting 5233!, there are, among others,
a rousing welcome song for Jack in Act I, Silas's "The
Girl I Left Behind Me,” and a waltz song complete with
chorus and dancers in the Act III ball. None of these has
anything to do with the drama; they are entertainment.

Some of the background music, however, was apparently

327

effective, especially in the serious fourth act. Garland
described it as "a wailing little melody” which ”came to
embody for me all the pathos and defeat which lay in the
failure of the play."55

Spectacle in the play includes a ship coming into
port and a generous snowstorm drifting into the doorway of
Jack's cabin. The spectacle of a baby dying on stage with
a vision of angels coming to her and the spectacle of a
drunk coming home were, of course, nothing new to an audi-
ence that was expected to respond with familiarity when

Hester includes Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ten Nights ig‘g Bar-

 

323m among the plays she has seen (p. 110).

The drama must also carry the burden of a comic sub-
plot centering around the stage ambitions of Silas and
Hester. In his essay, ”Old Stock Days in the Theatre,“
Herne stated that the low comedians were never left out of
the bill, even if the drama has to be stretched to make
room for their routines.S6 Most of the business and dia-
logue of Hester and Silas has nothing to do with the main
action. Hester indulges in comic misunderstandings and
malapropisms:

Hester. Oh, Mr. Seward! You're in love, hain't

you-~ha! Ha! Ha!

SSHamlin Garland, "On the Road with James A. Horne,"
Th2 Centur , LXXXVIII (August, 191A), p. 575.

56Home, ”Old Stock Days," p. hll.

328

Percy. As a natural consequence--with a rich-
only-to-please himself in the world
young fellow, on the one side, and the
sweetest, prettiest girl in the world
on the other.

Hester. [With 3 low curtsey] Oh! Mist-e-r-
Seward--

Percy. Good gracious, Miss Barton, I didn't
mean you.

Hester. Why, you said a rich young fellow on
one side and the sweetest, prettiest
girl in the world on the other, didn't
ye?

Percy. Yes--I confess I--

Hester. Well! Hain't you on the one side and
hain't I on tother?

Percy. Yes--there's no denying that-~but--I--I--
Hester. There, there--don't stammer, it always
puts me in perspiration to hear anyone
stammer--ha! ha! ha! I forgive ye--
it's only another image scattered.
Percy. Idol shattered!

Hester. Oh! Yes--Idol shattered. I knew it
was some kind of hmage--(p. 109)

There is a large supply of puns in the play. Hester de-
scribes a popular theatre which has “special provisions
for families from.the country desiring to eat lunch in the
theatre,” to which Percy replies, "Why! Of course, they
could not eat lunch without provisions--see?" (p. 109)
There are bad jokes about mispronunciation, ”yatch" for
”yacht," for instance.

Hester and Silas also have comic business, for exam-

ple in Act III:

329

Enter . . . Hester handsomely attired in what
is rsugposed to be a stage dress, with a— ver

 

 

on ra n which is carried b Silas. 5
ll evenin ress withv gy tight pants-
Itons. As Hester sees Mapy,v she makes a rush

 

towards her. Silas not startin uickl“
enou h ostw and the train comes off
in hisa hands. Picture. #Hester's dress is“
made so that it is cm lete even without— the
ra n —she does not Ehow that it
oes airectly to-thy. Silas Etahtso His smayedfi
looks at Hester then at dress? r es to s ea
€é§ ton ue cleaves _3 roof _2 his mouth: heaps
s 5 i

us ness 32 ust a moment. He must not

over do this 4-_po n 38 to” Hester then toh hi -
thou ht str lite—him

se n des air.

he hahtil to las hhe train just then servant
maid enters, down usthihcasg, and—hhosses. e
sees her, tgps her on shOfilder and presents—her
with train. She accepts, curtseyg very iEwT
Eisses her she is iieased° curtseys aain hee

ows, s e exits T5.

 

 

 

Later in the act, as might be expected, Silas's tight pants
split.

In.Act I, Hester has a piece of comic business when
she plays the flirtatious interview with Percy, which is a
comic replay of the serious interview between Mary and
Percy in the preceding scene. In this sort of comic con-
trast lies the possible justification for the existence of
Hester and Silas: their subplot leads to a successful
union, while the main plot leads to separation. But it is
not justification enough. Herne later said that Hester
and Silas were the weakest element in his play.57

Silas and Hester also serve a topical function in the

play which has little to do with the main plot. They are

57Quinn, Histogy, p. 138.

330

a burlesque of stage-struck youngsters, and provide Horne
with an opportunity to make mildly satirical comments
about the popular theatre of his day. They are engaged
for a one-night stand with ”mepey's Dramatic Constel-
lation," a touring company. The playbill reads: ”Town
Hall, Gloucester, extraordinary attraction. Engagement at
enormous expense of the young, beautiful and talented
comedienne, Miss Hester Barton, assisted by the incompa-
rable musician and pharmacoepist, Mr. Silas Cummings, who
will appear for one night only, Thursday, December 25, in
conjunction with.lempey's Dramatic Constellation in a
monster programme. . . . N. B. weather permitting band
chariot, drawn by six snow white Arabian steeds will
parade the principal streets at nine A. M. and one P. M."
(P. 119) The chariot turns out to be "Aleck Pearce's ice
cart with flags over it,” and the horses become Arabian
with a coat of whitewash.

Later, in the dream, Hester and Silas are successful

members of Lampey's company:

Hester. You must know my dear that I'm Lampey's
stock star now, and such a favorite. I
have a carriage to aid-Trom--stop at
all the best hotels.

Silas. She don't know that I have to peddle

appetite pills and corn salve on the Q.T.
to pay the bills.

Hester. And I have an understudy--and Silas,

he's Juvenile Tragedy and leads the
orchestra.

331
Silas. EAside] Orchestra! Clarionette and one
dd e.

Hester. You ought to see Silas play “Alonzo the
Brave. Oh} my, but he is splendid and
then at the end, in the great scene
where he takes the poison, he crawls of
L. H., in dying agony and plays the
slow music to let the curtain down; he's
great-~Lampey says he's a better actor
than Booth.

Silas. I guess I am, but Booth gets more pay
(p. 1210.!

Even though the humor is obvious, Horne was appealing to
an audience that was tired of that sort of theatre and
ready for the more serious drama he offered in Act IV and
two years later in Margaret Fleming. Ironically, the play
was such a poor box office success that Herne was forced
to play in popular-priced houses on the road, which fea-
tured melodramas and farces and "rowdy audiences . . .
accustomed to 'tank plays' (melodramas which featured a
tank of water into which the villain threw the hero or
heroine)."58

Finding all of this in the play-~conventiona1 local
color, conventional plot, conventional spectacle, conven-
tional problem, conventional humor--one may wonder how
Archer could find Herne ”vaguely struggling towards a new
form.” There are, in fact, two forms struggling for ex-
pression beneath these conventions. Least successful is

the comic frame of Acts I, II, and V, a domestic comedy of

58Edwards, James A; Herne, p. ha.

332

rural life, a kind of play Herne developed more subtly in
§h2£g 52333 and §gg figgbgg. The obstacles which stand in
the way of these comic characters are caprices of Fortune
not of Fate or Destiny. It is chance more than choice
that makes Jack a drunkard. Mary says, early in Act I,
”All our people here drink more or less. They seem to
inherit it from their cradles. It is as natural for fish-
ermen to drink as it is for the fish they risk their necks
to catch" (p. 108). When Jack comes home drunk, Mary
readily forgives him, as if she had expected it to happen
sometime in the normal social world of the village. In

the most famous of the drink dramas, The Drunkard by W. H.

 

Smith, the protagonist, Edward, like Jack, drinks too much
in a social situation. Even though Edward knows he has
had enough, he cannot refuse the invitation for one more
glass, until by the end of the scene in the bar in Act II,
he does not realize what he is doing: “Walk, yes, I can
walk-~what's the matter with.my head?"59 The drunkards in
the nineteenth century temperance plays are not weak char-
acters as much as victims of circumstances. The message
is to avoid the temptation of the first drink, for after
that the man has no control over hhmself.

The movement of the drink drama is essentially comic,

59w. H. Smith, The Drunkard or the Fallen Saved in

Richard Moody, Dramas from the American Theatre :2§2-
1909 (New Yerk, 15655, p. 252.

333

toward a celebration of a triumph over circumstances and

of a new secure home life. The Drunkard is subtitled The

 

Fallen.§gggg; the audience knew Edward would eventually be
rescued from his tempter, and the play ends with the sing-
ing of "Home Sweet Home.“ In Drifting Apart, too, there
is no doubt in the comic framework of the first two acts
that Jack will be saved, and the expected triumph in Act V
of his new condition is celebrated by the entire cast,
singing “Turn YOur Glasses Upside Down."

This standard comic movement, however, is interrupted
by Herne's play within the play, the dream scene of Acts
III and IV, which ends not with the salvation of the hero
but with the death of his devoted wife and neglected
child--clearly not the appropriate ending for the action
started in Acts I and II. Even in The Drunkard where Ed-
ward becomes a bum loafing around the Broadway bars while
his wife (another Mary) and child are starving in a cold
tenement garret, there is hope that Edward can be brought
back by the intervention of the noble rustic, William, who
arrives just in thme to save Mary from disaster.

In Drifting Apart, there is no William waiting in the

 

wings to save the day. Mary and Jack are on their own.
Although Jack has already been reformed by Mary's love,
they have been unable to overcome their disgrace, and Jack
can find no work to bring bread to the starving family.

The child is so hungry that Mary finally tells Jack to "go,

33h

beg, steal, murder, but bring food to my starving child"
(p. 132). After he leaves, once more to search for bread,
the child dreams of death coming for her in a gold and
silver ship. In a short time both child and mother are
dead and Jack is left in grief-stricken distraction. It
is no wonder that papular audiences did not respond favor-
ably to the play, for even after the sop of the happy
ending in the fifth act, where the play within the play is
finally revealed to be Jack's nighhmare, the audience was
left with the impact of the serious ending, incompatible
with the comic ending. Horne had tricked them emotionally
by first leading them.into the standard comic form, where
they could watch suffering in the comforting knowledge
that everything would come out right, and then by making
them feel dramatically and emotionally the pain of suffer-
ing and death in Act IV. To reinstate the comic framework
in Act V only compounded the deceit.

The fault is not that the audience would not accept
the serious play within the play but that it ggglg not
accept a play that promised comedy but gave near tragedy.
Herbert Edwards and Julie Herne state that the logical
ending is not the happy one which Herne was ”forced” to
use.60 But the happy ending is the right, the logical,

conclusion to the comic movement of the drink drama of

60Edwards, James A; Horne, p. hl.

335

Acts I and II, even though it is wrong for the dream
sequence. Mrs. Herne was closer to the truth when she
observed that “audiences resented the discovery that their
emotions had been harrowed by what was after all unreality,
while the tragedy was too keen for it to be appreciated
for its own sake."61 '
Another problem with the dream sequence is the con-
fusion in psychological point of view, a problem which
would not, probably, bother Herne's audience in 1888.
Jack is the dreamer, yet he mixes elements into his dream
which he is not likely to know about, even though the
audience has seen these elements foreshadowed in Acts I
and II. For instance, it is clearly established that
Percy wants to wed Mary, but Jack is never made aware of
this fact in the action. Also, Percy tells Mary in Act I,
“Have you no fears that this pernicious habit may grow
upon hum and one day wreck his life and yours--yes--even
that of the unborn babe of which you Just spoke" (p. 108).
The statement is a summary of the dream play, yet Jack is
never dramatically aware of the potential disaster, while
Mary is. Quinn states, “Any competent dreamer will recog-
nize the confusion of motivation in the third act, espe-

cially in the relations of Mary and Percy, as quite in

61Quinn, History, p. 138.

336

keeping with a dream in Jack's mind."62 What actually

happens in the dream is plausibly a working out of the

fears that are in Mary‘s mind, as established in Acts I
and II.

Who, then, is the tragic protagonist of the dream
sequence? Mary or Jack? Garland thought it was the wifeks
tragedy: "We understand it all by the sufferings of the
wife, with whom we alternately hope and despair.“63 Mrs.
Herne, who acted Mary, also felt “the spirit" of the
fourth act in her part.6h A case can be made for Mary as
a tragic figure who triumphs in the realization of the
strength of her personality. Certainly, those who saw Mrs.
Horne in the part experienced that sort of tragic reali-
zation, even though it is barely hinted in the script.
Mary is in control of herself during the death of child,
no hysterical wailing (like the tears that accompany the
death of Little Eva in 213913 22132 (Labia), only the pa-
tience and fears of a loving mother accepting the inevi-
table. She does not blame Jack or liquor, but, like
Margaret Fleming, becomes a figure in a universal dream of

motherhood.

62Quinn, "Introduction," p. ix.
63Garland, “Mr. and Mrs. James A. Herne," p. Shh.

6LLEdwards, James A:_Herne, p. hl.

Little

Mary.

Little

Mary.

Little

Mary.

Little

Jack.

Mary.

337

Margaret. No, mama, it went away, and
the sea got still again, and pretty soon
I looked up and I saw such a beautiful
ship, all gold and silver, coming right
to us, and it came and took you and papa
and granima and me and dolly, and sailed
away to the most beautiful land. It
seemed like the fairy land you used to
read to me about, and ah! mama, look!

[Raisin u in bed° Mary holds her] The
shIp-—call2papa--quick.

There is no ship darling, you are
dreaming still.

 

Margaret. No mama, there--don't you see?
Look! the angels sailing over it, they're
callin us mama. Come! [She gets _2 in
bed. Mary holds her and t'Tes to calm

.5631

There, there, my child, lie down. [ Al-
most frantic; she realizes that death
has comeI b_1__T_t_ d_er__res n__o__t giv ewayJ

Margaret. Don't you hear mama? They are
calling you too. Come mama, or the
beautiful ship will be gone. Quick!
[Makes a steep Ah mama, C in 1 give me
your hand a all dark now; can't see
the ship, it's all dark. Where are you,
mama?

[Holdirg her Lg her arms] Here darling,
here.

 

Margaret. Kiss me, mama. I wish papa
would come, will he know that the ship
took you and me? There it is again, I'm
coming, I--goodbye papa, come mama, come!
see! I--[She dies. Mary lays her down
closes her‘ e as akes her hand_ and hIdes

er ownT ea ntHe 5e d cIthe .——The
door Bu urs en. ”Jae en ers ffoIIo wed
fl Hester isgngTIW EIs Iaaen‘w t

00

See! Mary! food! food! at last.

Too late, Jack, she's dead.

333

Hester. Mary--see--we've found you at last.
Mary. Oh! Hester--she's gone-~my beautiful baby,
my little Margaret's gone--see--isn't she
beautiful? See the smile upon her lips--
she is waiting for me--she wants her
mother. Yes--baby--I'll come to you--
Jack-~I love you Jack--I forgive and love
you-~but I cannot stayh-I must go with
baby--don't blame me--and don't mourn, it
was to be (p. 133).
Melodrama and sentiment, of course, drip from.the child's
speeches, but in Mary there is a touch of dignity. Howells
was impressed by the ”flashes of power“ in Mrs. Herne's
performance, but he also felt that ”the death of the starv-
ing child, affecting as it was at the tbme, was a forced
note, with that falsetto ring which the death of children
on the stage always has."65
The protagonist in the dream, however, is not Mary
but Jack. He is potentially a.more tragic figure than the
victimized Mary, for he comes to realize what his actions
have led to. At the end of the ballroom.soene, Jack ac-
cepts, completely, the separation from.bis wife: "I do
not come to ask you to share my lot--I have none to offer.
The hospital and when strong enough, the sea is my only
refuge now-~I will not take from you the life within your
grasp” (p. 129). In the death scene, he does realize the
new strength of her personality, his new role as devoted

6SHowells, ”Editor's Study,” Harper's Magazine, LXXXI
(June, 1890), p. 15h.

339

husband, but his final realization is blurred by his mental
condition, a state of shock (somewhat like the suicidal
ravings of Willy Loman, although Willy is less melodramat-
to).

Both characters, then, have a trace of the tragic
potential; yet the dream play casts neither clearly as a
tragic protagonist, and neither is able to rise above the
melodramatic surroundings they find themselves in. Even
though Quinn, Garland and others felt the dream sequence
to be tragedy, and Howells felt "a sort of dumb passion
that powerfullymoves,"66 the characters are not cast in a
position where they can make a personal choice and come to
realize the inevitable working out of that choice. They
can move an audience to tears, but they cannot effect
their own personalities with tragic--rather than pathetic--
dignity.

That the characters are cast in this dream melodrama,
however, is a minor accomplishment for Herne the play-
wright. When he takes a lurid melodramatic plot and tries
to move it to a higher level he creates, perhaps unwitting-
ly, ahmost a burlesque of the papular melodrama. Garland,
for instance, dismissed the dream sequence as "convention-
al.“67 An incident like Jack's account of his five-year

66Howells, "Editor's Study," Harper's Magazine, LXXXI
(June, 1890), p. 15h.

567Garland, ”Roadside Meetings of a Literary Nomad,"
p. 2 1.

3&0

wandering--a ship wreck, ”living death” on board a Chinese
pirate, escape and return home only to find Mary gone, and
finally finding her living in Percy‘s mansion-~13 a staple
of melodrama which Herne used in Hearts of 925. Boucicault
also used a stmilar plot in Hunted 2232 23 The 232.2l122
g£_flg£y Lgig§.68 Even Hester is aware of the melodrama as
the guests discover the ragged Jack at the ball; she says,
“Now for the fifth act” (p. 130). 'Seen as melodrama,
rather than as tragedy, the dream sequence is more appro-
priate to the play which surrounds it, for the melodramatn:
plot can be encompassed by the comic frame, as it is suc-
cessfully in §hg£g‘§gggg and with less success in §gg
Harbor.

But Herne went too far in the conclusion of his melo-
drmmatic play within the play, especially for his audiences
who mistook melodrama for tragedy and could not understand
that the dremm scene is distorted into unreality by the
kind of theatrical gimmickry that Herne avoided in the
simple, homely comic framework of his play. They were
conditioned to take it all seriously and were bound to be
confused. Even at the end of Act IV when Jack's wandering
mind begins to move back to the real world of the cottage,
preparing for the opening of Act V, they were likely to
see only the conventional melodramatic grief, not the slow

68The plot is summarized in John Creahan, The Life of
Laura Keene (Philadelphia, 1897), p. h9.

3&1

struggle Jack is making to recover from his drunken dream.

The transition is quite smooth:

Jack.

[Who has not moved stares wildly around
'3 Bod

and-333's? Ma? and goes to her;
Why Mary gIrI, wHat iE-the matterrwI
you, child? Oh I see-~well--well--I'll
not go out tonight. . . . Come let's
fill the stockin's, perhaps in a year
there may be another stockin' hangin'
here. Ha! ha! ha! . . . Why, what
place is this. I won't stay here, come
Mary, let's go. [He _l_____ifts her a_n__d an
arts her in his arms' her dead body_ 8
III?) Fit he IE-stron Let's go home,
ack to the "die home Inr Gloucester--
Kisses £1.93] Poor child--I have so
oved--so wronged you. But I'll make
amends--I'll drink no more, come. Mother,
be sure you put plenty of onions in the
stuffin'--Mother--see--here's Mary--she's
not well, poor girl--quick, food. She's
starvin', I tell you--come Mary, we'll go
home--home--home--[ [Movingr towards the
door with deadJ

Picture and Curtain

Act V

The scene is the same as Act II, Jack's cabin.

JEEE IE—Eslee“ as He Bad'fEIIen at the end of
£33 IEZ’ Mar ry_ is sewigg. '-

Jack.

In hi___§_ slee ] No--no--you shall not tear
or away rom.me--I tell you she is not
dead--let her go-- Furiousl I tell you
let her go--I--do you hear S rin s 22
Let her go. [Mar has sto ed wor at h s
first ravings an comes own] Us 5 her go--

I'II brain the—fIrst man ~who--[§i sees

Mar then Mar aret then mother Ma ary,
mother-- witha wIId dggy] A ream' Thank
God! A dreamt

The transition is visually smooth, even though it is un-

likely that Mary, so immediately forgiving in the followhng

dialogue, would have let hhm lie there all night. Acts III

3&2

and IV, then, are not tragic, even though the potential is
there. In the total form of the play, the dream makes
more sense as a melodramatic play within the comic frame,
which closes not with the deathbed scene but with the
comic reunion and celebration of the short fifth act.

Both Margaret Fleming and Drifting £2333 develop from
the premise of the problem.play. Both create strong and
humane women characters who try to understand and to live
with their husbands' problem. Margaret Fleming moves
beyond the problem into domestic tragedy, from.which
Margaret emerges as a triumphant personality. Drifting
52233 is essentially a comedy, interrupted by a bleak
melodrama in which the potentially tragic Mary and Jack

are unable to realize themselves.

CHAPTER V

GRIFFITH DAVENPORT

 

Of Herne's Griffith Davenport Quinn wrote, "That it
was not a popular success remains among the unsolved mys-
teries of the stage."1 While this chapter does not attompt
to solve that problem in theatrical history, it will sug-
gest why the play could not become a meaningful expression
to Herne's audience--and why, for the same reasons, it
remains today the most interesting, even if not the most
artistically successful, of Herne's plays. Griffith
Dayenport is not memorable as a popular realistic history
play nor as melodrama, although it is a good example of
these genres; it is memorable as a character study devel-
oped in a series of episodes which illuminate the humane
and tragic personalities of Davenport and, to a lesser
extent, of his wife Katherine.

As with all of Herne's plays, except §§2£g_éggg§ and
Hearts 2; 933, there are textual problems.2 The unique
manuscript was destroyed in a fire at Herne Oaks, and only

1Arthur Hobson Quinn, A Histogy‘gg the American 253mg
from the Civil War 32 the Present Day, rev. eai TNew York,
T533)TE.’IB€T—' "" *"

2Herbert Edwards and Julie Herne, James A; Herne
(Orono, Maine, l96u), p. 170, n. 78.

 

3M3

Bun

Acts III and IV have been found. The synopsis of Acts I,
II, and V published by Professor Quinn were supplied by
Julie Horne who played Emma West in the production. Since
all of the evidence is not in, it is risky and perhaps too
easy to speculate critically about the play, but there is
enough evidence to support claims that the play is one of
the better plays produced in nineteenth century America.
Those critics who saw it were amest unanimous in their
praise. Strang said that up to the last act, which he
felt was anti-climactic, it was "not only the strongest
and most artistic drama written by an American playwright
during the past decade [1890], but . . . it is the greatest
American play ever produced."3 Richard Burton found it
”perhaps the most thoughtful and consistent treatment of
the Civil War theme written in the country.“+ Montrose
Moses considered it "one of the greatest of our war
plays.“S Brander Matthews remembered it clearly "after
the lapse of a quarter of a century."6
Such external evidence attests to the artistic
1899)fL;wii9?trang, Famous Actors of the _51 (Boston,

hRichard Burton, The New American Drama (New York,

SMontrose Moses, The American Dramatist (Boston,
1925), p. 219.

6Brander Matthews, "Makers of American Drama," The
Mentor, XI (March, 1923), .8.

3A5

success of the play with Herne's contemporaries. An
examination of the internal evidence which is available in
the remnant of the play suggests that their claims, while
excessive, were valid.

Critics were hmpressed by the successful handling of
familiar elements-~the historical realism and the thesis.
As historical record, however, the play is of limited
interest, even though Herne to capture the authenticity of
southern attitudes drew upon his own youthful recollections
of the war and extensive notes, made during a tour of the
South with Shggg 53323. One contemporary observed that
the conditions in the play seemed "remote" because "we of
the present generation are too close in.time to the
slavery struggle to get its perspective--too far from it
in thought and ideals to realize it at once with clear-
ness."7 The play also includes a discussion of politics
and "an honest attempt to set forth on the stage the
causes that led to that tremendous conflict,"8 as well as
a detailed discussion of military maneuvers in the Shen-
andoah valley to such an extent that Richard Moody
observed, "The enormous complexity of the military prob-

lems was at the center of the play."9

7Marco Tiempo, "James A. Herne in Griffith Davenport,"
Arena, XXII (September, 1899), p. 381.

8Strang, Famous Actors, p. 20.

9Richard Moody, America Takes the Stage (Bloomington,
Indiana, 1955), p. 16 .

3&6

All of this is presented with realistic fidelity to
the decor the atmosphere of the Old South. The four
solidly built settings in the play include the exterior of
the Davenport mansion and a Georgian drawing room which
Horne and his wife furnished with carefully chosen an-
tiques. "Every night before the curtain rose, Katherine
Herne was on the set, attending to the little touches that
gave the scene its charming atmosphere."lo To assure
accurate reproduction of the southern dialect approximated
in the manuscript (Quinn eliminates it in the published
version of Act IV), Herne made a pronunciation table based
on the dialect he observed in the South. Realistic de-
tails of southern life are found in almost every scene--
escaping slaves, southern courtesy, carriages, southern
belles, horses. The opening scene of Act III illustrates
the natural ease with which Herne spins out these details.

Interior of Daven ort's stud . Sue dis-

covere fi1‘Tn“SH‘§3?EI‘hEEE‘%3 left dee 1—

THEEFEEted n a “pap_r-covered ~" ream Boo .

Judy enters—from French window carr in parrot
23 perch. Crosses and *exIts In to d n m-room.

 

 

Judy. Yo' kin cuss all yo' wants ter--yo' cuss
wo'ds don' skeer me. Ah's used ter 'em.
Ef ah own' yo' ah make yo' say yo' pra'rs
night 'nfl mawnin', 'deed ah would.

Roy. Phew! By Jawge, this is a great day! Ah
wish ah was twenty-one! What yo' reading
Sue?

10Julie A. Herne, "Commentary on Act III of Griffith
Davenport," American Literature, XXIV (November, 2 ,

p. 351.

 

Sue.

Roy.

Sue.

Roy.

Sue.

Roy.
Sue.
Roy.
Sue.

Roy.

Sue.
Roy.
Sue.
Roy.
Sue.

Roy.

Sue.

Roy.

31+?

A dream book.

A dream book? Gaosh, ah thought only the
niggahs read dream books.

Look heah, Roy Davenpoht--if ah am yo'
sistah—in-law, yo' needn't classify me
with the niggahs. Ahflm not one of the
Davenpoht slaves guite yet.

No, if yo' weah yo'd be free. That's a
paradox, see? Theah awe no mo' slaves in
the Davenpoht family, yo' know, they awe
all free and get wages now.

Bev's Jerry isn't free, and mah niggahs
awe not free, thank goodness! Roy?

Well, sistah?

Does Bev know a light-haided gi'l?
Yes.

Who is she?

Do yo' mean a light-haided oh a light-
haihed gill?

Light-haihed. What did ah say?
Yo' said light-haided.

Oh!

Emma West's got light haih.

Yes, but she's not in love Bev.

Ah ce'tainly hope not. What have yo' got
into yo' haid about a light-haided gi'l?

Why, this book says, that fo' a bride to
dream that she is being married is a sign
that some woman of the opposite sex--

Opposite s-e-x?

3M3
Sue. Opposite complexion ah should have said!11
Ah do believe ah'm light-haided mahself!
History also supplies a thesis for the play--the in-
humanity of slavery. Herbert Edwards and Julie Herne

”12 Herne

consider the play ”essentially a thesis play.
was sympathetic with Negroes, as he was with all oppressed
peoples. He interpreted the part of a malcontent Negro in
The New South with such conviction that he stopped the
show, and he introduced the work of the Negro poet Paul
Dunbar to William Dean Howells, who wrote a favorable
review.13 In Griffith Davenport, when an escaping slave
commits suicide upon capture, his owner kicks his body and
says, ”There goes $1500.” For some critics there was too
much discussion of this problem. Hapgood, for instance,
writes, ”Even to the thoughtful spectator, excellent
speeches by Negroes are hurt by too great length, a long
disquisition on slavery is felt to be unsuited to the
theatre."lu But the problem play element is distinctly
in the background of the play. It is a starting point for
the action in Acts I and II, providing motives for

11"Act III of Griffith Davenport," American Litera-

ture, XXIV (November, I§§25, pp. 332-333. Hereafter;w
citations to pages of this work will appear in my text.

 

12Edwards, James A; Herne, p. 132.
13Edwards, James A, Herne, p. 168, n. 66.

1“Norman HangOd, The Stage in America (New York,
1901) 9 pp. 63-6160

 

3M9

Davenport to free his own slaves, but even at that moment
the dramatic interest is centered on the effect the action
has on Davenport and his family, not on the problem of
slavery. After that action, slavery is mentioned only
occasionally in the script. The formula of the preaching
problem play, which had been a handicap to Herne in
Margaret Eleming and Drifting Apart, is effectively con-
trolled within the structure of the p1ay--it cannot take
over.

Nor were the war and the problems which precipitated
it Herne's main concern in the play. Years before he
wrote Griffith Davenport, he remarked that "the next play
on the subject must of necessity deal, not with heroes and
battles, defeats and victories, but with the effect of the
war upon the lives of a single family or group of people."15
The larger background of the historical conflict is pre-
sented through the conflict within the Davenport family,
husband and wife, brother and brother, on Opposite ideo-
logical sides. Katherine says, ”It's a serious mattah
when two hot-haided factions--determined to have theah own
way, no mattah who suffahs through it--take it upon them-
selves to settle any question. We have it right heah in
ouah hmme. Yo'--(alluding to Griffith)--on one side,
Beverly on the othah, it's--it's symbolic of the whole

15Julie A. Herne, "Biographical Note," in Shore Acres
and Other Plays (New York, 1928), p. xxvi.

350

country" (III, 338).

The members of the family, however, do not become
flat political abstractions but fully realized people
caught up in the conflict. Richard Moody writes, "The
emotions and thinking of Herne's characters were complex
and confused. Katherine Davenport was an ardent believer
in the southern cause, but her feeling of loyalty to her
husband was so strong that not until the final scene was
she able to break from him and act in behalf of her

southern compatriots."16

In Act IV, Beverly, a Confed-
erate officer, writes to his mother, "I wish now that the
war had never been. . . . Don't let Roy go into the
[Union] Army."17 Griffith, too, hesitates to become active
in the conflict, refusing Lincoln's direct order to become
a Union scout because he will not offend the southern
sympathies of his wife. The larger conflict which divides
the family of the nation is presented visually, at times,
in the blocking, the stage directions. For an instance,
when the neighbors come to drive Davenport from his Vir-
ginia home, Herne puts the neighbors on one side of the

stage, opposed to Griffith and the family on the other—-

except for the vacillating Katherine who is at center,

16Moody, America Takes the Stage, p. 166.

 

17Act IV of Griffith Daven ort in The Early Plays of
James A. Herne (Princeton, I§EOE, p. 150. Hereafter,
citations to pages of this work will appear in my text.

351

thus focusing the conflict on her personal anguish, rather
than creating a direct clash between the forces of slavery
and abolition. She decides that they must leave Virginia,
not for political reasons but because the family has been
insulted (III, 3A2). All climactic scenes in the play
center on the personal tragedy, framed by the larger com-
munity disorder. Act IV, for example, ends as Katherine's
son, her husband, and the husband of her slave Sallie go
off to fight for the Union. The focus is not on the heroes
but on the two women, Katherine and Sallie, left alone,
planning to return to the old home in the South.

Northrop Frye has shown that personal tragedy and the
history play are complementary forms, that they can
merge.18 It is a matter of proportion and emphasis. In
Griffith Davenport the political framework is always clear,
mainly through the recurring image of Lincoln who is, as
William Archer observed, "the master-spirit" in the play.19
In four of the five acts, Herne used important dates in
Lincoln's career as the background for the action: Act I,
April, 1860, ”Coming Events Cast Their Shadows," Act II,
May, 1860, ”The Nomination of Abraham Lincoln," Act III,

November, 1860, ”The Election of Abraham Lincoln," Act IV,

18
Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton
1957). p. 28h. ’ ’

19William Archer, Playmaking (New York, 193k), pp.
ZSu-ZSS.

352

March, 1862, "An Unofficial Patriot," in which Lincoln
orders Davenport into the service of the country. In the
last act, April, 186u, there is no specific political
reference to Lincoln's career, but the final scene, the
reconciliation of Katherine and Griffith on the steps of
the old home, contains conversation in which they discuss
Lincoln as they sort out their own views.20 Davenport,
throughout the play, holds views Similar to Lincoln's. He
is not an abolitionist at the beginning, for he wants only
union and reconciliation.

Herne controls melodrama in the play as carefully as
he controls the realistic history play. There is a sug-
gestion of standard melodrama in the scene in Act III when
the neighbors force Davenport to leave his home, but, as
we have seen above, the interest in that scene is on
Katherine, not on the open conflict. There is a jarring
note of melodrama in the incident of the suicidal slave,
but again the interest is not as much on the melodramatic
violence as on the effect on the characters, in this case
on Davenport, who is moved a step closer to freeing his
slaves. The most melodramatic scene in the play occurs
when Davenport is taken prisoner, coincidentally by his

son, a confederate officer. Hapgood calls the scene

20Hapgood, The Stage in America, p. 67.

353

"conventional,"21 and from the summaries it seems to be,
but with one important difference: the focus seems to be
on Davenport, who is captured as a result of his decision
not to follow the army he has led through the Shenandoah
valley but to remain behind and find his way to the old
home and Katherine. Since there is no cOpy of the scene
extant, it is impossible to say how much Davenport domi-
nates the melodramatic elements of the capture. It is
clear from reviews, however, that the melodrama was barely
evident throughout the play. John Corbin wrote, "If any
one wishes to realize to the full the conventionality of
what usually passes for dramatic structure, and the shal-
lowness of the usual stage climaxes, let him go to see Mr.
Herne."22 Lewis Strang wrote, "I can appreciate his
efforts to avoid the conventional."23 ”To the few,"
Hapgood wrote, "the drama is calm, delicate, moving; to
the many it is tiresome."2)+

To the many, the play could not be a success in its
own time. Herne acknowledged, "People who really want to

enjoy 'Griffith Davenport' must bring their brains as well

21Hapgood, The Stage in America, p. 66.

22John Corbin, "Drama," Harper's Weekly (February 11,
1899), p. 139.

23Strang, Famous Actors, p. 26.

 

2hHapgood, The Stage in America, pp. 63-6u.

 

BSA

as their pocket-books to the theater."25 He had trans-

formed his source, Helen Gardener's novel Ag.Unoffigial

 

Patriot, into something quite unlike the usual history
play. The usual history play, Robert Corrigan has said,
traces "the history of an individual who is born, grows
old, and dies."26 Gardener's novel shows the early stages
in Davenport's career, as a circuit rider, but Herne shows
only the important scenes in which his inner self is re-
vealed. In his study of the inner states of his hero,
Herne comes close to the creation of a tragic figure.
Davenport is not the victim of fate or of circumstances.
There is, as Tiempo observed, an inevitable quality in his
character.27 In Act IV he seems destined to make the
final choice which leads to the destruction of his old
life; yet he is free to make that choice in response to
his inner sense of loyalty and duty, not in response to
outside pressures.

He makes three major choices in the play. The first,
to free his slaves, is in part an emotional response to
the horror of slavery he sees acted out before him in Act
II. The choice seems inevitable in the structure of the

38:STiempo, "James A. Herne in Griffith Davenport,"
P. .

26Robert Corrigan, The Modern Theatre (New York,
196u), p. xvii.

 

27Tiempo, "James A. Herne in Griffith Davenport,"
p. 377.

355

act, for the audience has been stirred, as Davenport has
been stirred, to want an end to the degradation of slavery.
His second choice, to leave his home in Act III, seems in-
evitable in the face of social pressures from his neighbors.
In neither instance is he acting with complete freedom,

for he is guided in part by his emotions and outside
forces. Katherine recognizes the inevitable quality in
each of these choices and remains with him, contrary to
her own convictions in both instances. When he makes his
final choice, however, in Act IV--to become a Union Scout--
Katherine leaves hum. She recognizes that he can decline
Lincoln's request if he wants to. Even though the pressure
of a presidential telegram demands action, the order itself
is not binding on Davenport. Governor Morton, Lincoln's
emissary, is aware of that, for he builds his strategy
carefully to play upon Davenport's inner sense of duty; he
cannot rely on the hope that Davenport will acquiesce to
the power of the president's office.

When Governor Morton suggests that Davenport's knowl-
edge of the Virginia countryside is invaluable to the
Union, Davenport replies, "Hold on, Governor, hold on!
When I first came here we talked that all over and agreed
to hoe in our own cornfields" (IV, 151). Morton continues
to plead his case—-that Davenport is the only man who can
do the job-~but Davenport replies "with.much feeling" that
the South is his home. He cannot fight against her. He

356

must remain neutral. The governor tries another approach:
when he takes out a map of the Shenandoah and allows
Davenport to point out how useless it is, Davenport's in-
terest is captured. When the governor suggests, however,
that Davenport go as a chaplain, "an unofficial patriot,”
he forces Davenport to become more deeply committed, for
the governor knows that the former circuit rider is not
the kind of a man to act as a scout under the false guise
of a man of God. Davenport reacts as expected: "No. If
I do this thing, I'll do it outright" (IV, 153). Governor
Morton offers a commission as a Colonel, but Davenport
still hesitates: "I shall be a spy, all the same, in my
own heart-~I shall be a spy" (IV, 15h). Then the governor
makes his last move: he presents Lincoln's order, and
comments as if the discussion were concluded, "YOu'll
probably have to go into commission at once" (IV, lSh).
When Katherine reads the president's telegram--"0rder
your man, Davenport, to report to me immediately. A.
Lincoln”--she is indignant: "Well--I--your mag,
Davenport-~the presumption" (IV, 155). Her answer to
Davenport's dilemma is to tear up the order, a choice
which is open to him. When she is told that Governor
Morton considers it Davenport's duty to comply, she puts
the issue clearly: "Governor Morton is not dictator in
this family" (IV, 156). She already has two sons fighting

in this “brutal war," and no one has the right to take her

357

husband from her. When she argues her love for him, he
responds by recalling the horror of war--"young sons like
yours dragging bleeding lhmbs,“ "terror stricken horses
trampling down these wounded boys" (IV, 158). His duty is
to serve humane ends, to act to bring a swift conclusion
to the war. Even though Katherine has always respected
his unselfish.motives, she makes one last appeal to their
love, but he answers, "This is not a question of your life
or my life, or of our love for each other. The life of
the nation is at stake" (IV, 158).

She allows him to go his chosen way. But she will
not remain with him. Her duty is where her heart is, in
the South, doing whatever she can to help her people.
Through the consequences of the earlier decisions she
could stay with him, for he clearly had little freedom of
choice, but in the final decision, where he has free
choice, she cannot stay with him. He has chosen to place
hhmself in a universal role, a martyr to a higher cause,
rather than remain in his role as her husband, neutral to
what is going on in the world around him. He must follow
the consequences of that decision alone.

Davenport attains heroic stature in that decision.

In Act V, he leads the Union Army successfully through the
Shenandoah valley, betraying his former homeland to her
enemy. When his job is done, however, he makes another

choice: rather than rest secure in the stereotyped role

358

of the conquering hero leading the Union Army on to victory
in Richmond, he decides to find his way, alone, back to
the old home and Katherine. Carrying out this personal
mission, he is captured by Confederate scouts. As a
prisoner of war, he sees Katherine for the last time in
the play as he is led off toward Libby Prison. Their rec-
onciliation is, from the accounts in the summaries, a
recognition that he has fulfilled his chosen destiny.
There are no recriminations or regrets, only a quiet scene
of understanding as they sit alone on the steps of the
mansion.

Although both Uncle Nat in Shore Acres and Griffith
Davenport are humanitarian idealists, Davenport is not as
likeable as Uncle Nat, who tempers his idealism with prac-
tical common sense and humor. Davenport becomes so com-
pletely idealistic by the end of the play that he is
almost unsympathetic. His choice to obey Lincoln makes
little sense on any rational or practical bases, as
Katherine points out; his inner loyalty to the ideal of a
unified nation in which all men are free overrides prac-
tical and personal concerns. Brander Matthews found “a
certain austere nobility" in the play.28 This quality,
which raises the play, and its central character, close to

tragedy, is probably what alienated Herne's audiences.

28Matthews, "Makers of American Drama," p. 8.

359

Corbin thought there were too few of the lighter qualities

of m 5333;; in the p1ay.29
What lightness Corbin could find was, he felt, not

strong enough ”to survive the peculiarities of their

"30 These peculiarities were qual-

dramatic presentation.
ities which can be called "Chekhovian," qualities which
make the play seem ahead of its time. Herne is concerned
with the psychological development of his characters, as
contemporary critics clearly saw.31 The motivations are
often confused and complex, never stereotyped or simple.
For instance, Davenport's agonizing reversal from neutral
to patriot in Act IV is the result of several motives--his
love of Lincoln, his Christian ideals, his recognition of
the military situation, his inability to act deceptively
as a spy, his hatred of war, his disavowal of slavery, his
sense of duty to conscience, and his love for his family
and at the same time his love for his country. Each of
these motives has been established in short fragmentary
episodes earlier in the play. "Conditions of soul,"
Montrose Moses called them. They constitute the form of
Herne's play, fleeting, often inarticulate, moments that

29Corbin, “Drama," Harper's Weekly (February 11,
1899), p. 139.

30Corbin, ”Drama,” Harper's Weekly (February 11,
1899), p0 1390

831Tiempo, ”James A. Herne in Griffith Davenport,"
p. 3 O.

360

reveal the inner man. Corbin found this quality in the
play distressing. Although he admitted that many of the
incidents and situations were interesting, he felt the
whole was "so fragmentary that there is really no story to
follow. . . . They take no definite form in one's mind."32
He thought many of the scenes irrelevant and aimless,
leading to no conventional climaxes. The climaxes are
subdued and unconventional. Even the major climax, as
Katherine allows Griffith to go at the end of Act IV, is
quiet. When Katherine sees that argument is useless, she
says, “Well, then--go,” and she immediately announces her
decision to return to the South. Griffith realizes the
rightness of her decision and the scene ends quickly as
they kiss tenderly and part, with no tears.

With such subdued climaxes (subdued at least by the
standards of Herne's contemporaries), the many incidental
scenes could easily seem to be pointless; but each suggests
a state of mind. For one instance, before Governor Morton
begins to persuade Davenport in Act IV, Davenport reads
aloud a long letter from his son Beverly in the Confederate
Army. The letter is dull and rambling, unless we see how
it acts upon Griffith, dramatizing for hum the tragedy of
a family and a nation divided, and preparing, in part, for
his acceptance of Lincoln's call. For another instance,

32John Corbin, "Drama," Harper's Weekly (March h,
1899), p. 213.

361

the random chatter of Sue and Roy at the opening of Act

III (the act in which Davenport decides to leave home)
about the ”light-haided gi'l" shows Roy to be quite the
opposite of his brother Beverly and suggests, though
vaguely, why he will oppose Beverly later. On the surface,
the scene is a caricature of southern frivolity; under-
neath, it reveals Roy's deeper attitudes.

The acting in Herne's production was also subdued, in
harmony with his script. Corbin complained that the ac-
tors dealt "rather with the repression of feeling than
with its utterance." "Mr. Herne," he felt, ”appears never
to have an emotion of any kind. Mrs. Herne's utterance is
less handicapped, and therefore more appealing, though
still far from being positively expressive. Their acting
tends toward monotony. . . . Yet, granting their con-
vention of repression, the depth of feeling they portray
is marvellous."33 Herne instructed his actors to underact.
For example, in Act III, the old woodsman, Lengthy Patter-
son, is deeply moved by Davenport's decision to leave his
home. He cries silently. Herne directs, "The actor must
not wipe his eyes, nor brush his hand across them; he
must make no demonstration of crying" (III, 3h8).

To suggest that the play has a Chekhovian quality is
not to say that it ranks with the plays of Herne's Russian

33Corbin, ”Drama," Harper's Weekly (February 11,
1899), p. 139.

362

contemporary. In the American drama of the 1890's,
however, the play is unusual in these qualities of frag-
mentary snatches of life, seemingly irrelevant incidents,
repressed dialogue, subdued clhnaxes, and unusual as well
in the form which achieves unity by revealing the succes-
sive inner emotional states of the characters. With only
two acts of the script to examine in detail, it is impos-
sible to make extravagant claims for the success of that
form, but these remaining acts demonstrate Herne's aware—
ness and control of a dramatic form unique in its own
time, and they suggest how close he came to developing a
character who creates his own destiny with a tragic
awareness of the consequences, not only for himself but

for the world he has known.

CHAPTER VI
EARLY'MELODRAMA

It is pointless to expect a developed form that moves
through.emotional states in Herne's early melodramas, The
Hearts of Oak. The plays are almost completely restricted
by the form of the popular melodrama of surface excitement
and spectacle. Stereotyped characters declaim their
emotions in the old way, as expression told before an
audience, not as expression of an inner emotional state
revealed through dramatic action. Yet in a few isolated
scenes Herne's plays suggest what might have been.

The Minute M23 22 lj7u-1715 is the most interesting
of these early plays for two reasons other than the traces
it contains of Herne's later handling of form. It is his
first play without a collaborator, and it is an informative
contrast to his later history play Griffith Davenport. As
a history play, The Minute Men 23 lz7u-1725, according to

 

one observer, catches "the atmosphere of the War for Inde-
pendence" with an abundance of realistic detail.1 At the
end of Act II, there is a tableau of The Battle of Concord,

1Arthur Hobson Quinn, A Histor of the American Drama
from the Civil War to the Present Day’TNew York, l§36),

P. 137.

 

363

 

 

36h

"rehearsed and arranged from plates that will prove most
acceptable."2 The scene previous to this one, however,
breaks historical accuracy by introducing Herne's heroine,
Dorothy Foxglove, into the battle as a vivacious patriot
rallying the Minute Men to the cause. Unlike Griffith
Davenport, whose adventures as a Union scout were modeled
on Helen Gardener's father, Dorothy Foxglove exists no-
where except in Herne's imagination. Act IV ends with
another tableau, The Battle of Bunker's Hill, again based
on famous paintings of the battle. The final curtain in
the play descends on still another tableau, less histor-
ically accurate but certainly in the spirit of the time:
"Drum Corps playing. They march off. . . . Then a com-
pany of soldiers with their officers. They march off.
. . . Cannons boom. Bells ring. Second Company. Same.
Drum Corps. Third Company. Yankee Doodle. All the
ladies, handsomely dressed, strewing flowers. General
Washington on horseback-~accompanied by his Generals all
made up in character and on horseback. More soldiers.
The stage is completely filled. Characters shout. Ladies
wave their handkerchiefs. Soldiers all shout. Washington
lifts hat. Grand Tableau" (pp. 98-99).

Another atmospheric thread running through the play

2Earl Plays of James A. Herne, ed. Arthur Hobson

Quinn r nceton, T5u05, p.-71. Hereafter, references to
this edition will be cited in my text.

365

is the spirit of the New American, creating a sense of
history if not history itself. Dorothy embodies that
spirit when she rejects her role as the daughter of a
British Colonel and declares that her title is "one of
which I am very proud-~An American Girl” (p. 8H). Ann
Campbell, a rustic stereotype, spends most of her time in
the play trying to become an active member of the American
militia: "America's my country! ’An' if it comes to a
fight, I can carry a musket an' use it too as well as the
next man" (p. h7). During all of Act III she walks "a la
militaire" and declares at one point that if Congress were
to call up women, she would "raise a regiment on 'em thatfli
lick Satan out'n the same nwmber 0' Red Coats an' make 'em
wear petticoats afterwards" (p. 72). Her moment of glory
comes as she assists in the capture of a British squad.
Reuben Foxglove is another American type, the frontiersman
who exchanges his woodsman's clothing for the uniform of a
Continental sergeant: “We've took the swaddling clothes
off'n the child Independence and dressed him in Conti-
nentals--no more creepin' for him. He's got to walk alone
now! An' afore King George knows it he'll walk clean
through the British Armies" (p. 91).

Although each of these characters adds to the general
atmosphere, none of them controls that atmosphere. They
are merely picturesque sketches, unlike Griffith Davenport,

who contains within his character the conflict of the

366

larger political and historical struggle. Because his
action can symbolize, in a sense, the historical action,
the larger conflict becomes dramatically meaningful. In
The Minute Men of l]7u-l775, most of the characters are

 

museum figures who tell us about the conflict, but do not
allow us to experience it in the expression of their inner
emotional states. One character, however, has the poten-
tial for more complete dramatic develOpment, Sir Frederick
Shelton, a minor character in the melodramatic formula of
the play. He is loyal to King George but in sympathy with
the cause to which his daughter, Dorothy, and her friends
have dedicated themselves. At the end of the play, Dorothy
asks him, "Father! Is it right that you go--ngw? Right
that you should sever every earthly tie--Right that you
should fight against . . . the husband of your child
[Dorothy's husband)?" His reply is the final speech in
the play (before the tableau with Washington): "Hush! A
soldier has no choice. Love is strong, but honor and duty
are impregnable. I go. But if I live, I will return to
pass my days among you--and ask no sweeter resting spot
than in a land hallowed by a mother's sufferings--blessed
by a daughter's love" (p. 98). Even though his choice is
presented as a melodramatic clichéL-love vs. duty--there
is in Sir Frederick a potential play, a play that could
develop history in terms of the personal tragedy Herne

created in Griffith Davenport. Sir Frederick's inner

367

conflict is the same that troubled Davenport, and it is
resolved in the same way: he will follow the path of
conscience, hoping all the while that when his call to
duty is served, he can come back to love and family. This
last speech is the only moment in the play that Sir Fred-
erick's conflict is expressed--and then it is expressed in
words which are hollow because the conflict which could
make them dramatically moving has been developed in only
one other moment in the play-—when he releases his daugh-
ter's American friends unharmed. And that action occurs
offstage and is reported later.

No character in the play is developed in enough depth
to express in emotional terms the meaning of the Revolu-
tion. But then no play of the Revolution has ever been
completely successful on the American stage. Dunlap's
Anggé'has a place in theatre chronicles, but its hero is
little more than a stereotype of the misunderstood martyr.

Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge had only limited appeal.

 

Walter Prichard Eaton could find no drama of interest on
the subject.3 In 1898, when Herne saw Bernard Shaw's
treatment of the subject in The Devil's Disciple, he
wrote, "I think that play barely escaped being a great
piece of work. Mrs. Herne was with me when I saw it. The
first two acts were distinctly great, and Mrs. Herne said,

368

'Now, here is a great play.' We were both delighted; but
after the second act it went off into driveling melodramalh'

Herne's own play is so completely bound up by the cone
ventions of driveling melodrama that no other form is
discernible. The plot is intricate, filled with short
exciting scenes--a surprise capture of a British squad,
an Indian attack, a virtuous heroine in the clutches of
the villain, two foundlings eventually returned to loving
parents (the identity of one discovered from a locket
given the girl by her dying mother, the identity of the
other revealed by a vengeful villain in a moment he sup-
poses to be a triumph).

Laced through the melodrama are scenes of rustic
humor between Ann Campbell and the woodsman Reuben, an
early role Herne created for hhmself. The comic plot in-
volving their mature courtship has much of the simple, and
pointless, humor Herne worked with later in Sag Harbor in
the characters of Captain Dan'l and Elizabeth. A more
successful comedy in the play develops in the relationship
between Dorothy and Lieutenant Smollet, a British grena-
dier. In Act I, Dorothy lectures Smollet on the difference

between "Colonists" and "Americans,"

and praises liberty,
"the grandest word ever uttered by the tongue of man" (p.
53). Realizing that she has been discourteous to Smollet,

brJames A. Herne, "The Present Outlook for the
American Drama," The Coming Age I (March, 1899), p. 25h.

369

an Englishman, she asks forgiveness and begins a game of
toy soldier with hhm.

Smollet: Oh! I am to be decorated? What for,
pray?

Dorothy: Gallant conduct in the field! [Pinning
a le paring on his left breast]
Tgat's for polishing the sflver. [Puts
22a ca right breast:] That's for clean-
ing the windows so nicely!

 

 

Smollet: You are too good!

Dorothy: [Putting one 23 left ear] That's for
being the dear, good-natured, courteous
gentleman that_you are.

 

 

Smollet: Thank you!

Dorothy: [Putting one on right ear] .And this,
wear as the colors of your lady whose
beauty you are to defend against all
comers!

 

Smollet: Believe me, I will prize the last be-
yond all else in life!

Dorothy: There! Now stand up! And let me see
how you look on dress parade! [He has
the an af a les. She puts him—Tn
Eosi on:| Attention!’ Heads up! TE.
Later, in Act III, Smollet must fulfill his military
duty and take Dorothy prisoner in order to return her to
her father, Sir Frederick. She begs him to release her
for the sake of their earlier friendship, but when he re-
fuses, she respects his loyalty to his duty but deceives

him into surrender.

Dorothy: Do you remember the day I decorated
you with apple parings?

Smollet: I shall never forget it.

t .

 

Dorothy:

Smollet:
Dorothy:
Smollet:

Dorothy:

Smollet:

370

You used to call me your little
Captain.

And shall be proud to do so still.
Does it become me?

Everything becomes you! It is a
pleasure even to be the object of
your sport!

I wonder if you have forgotten our
drill. Let me have your sword. Now!
Attention! Heads up! [Comin close
pp Lil-E] Lieutenant Smol et-- Lau Hin J
You are my prisoner! [Ha laughs; She
a3 once changes her manner and says—1p
low quick decisivefitonesj—‘If—you
attempt“?o move but as'I dictate, I'll
send a bullet through your brain.
[Throwing away sword apa uickl
snatching pistol from his belt, cocking
$2 and pointing l£.EE his Bead.1

 

 

 

 

 

My dear Miss Foxglove-- (p. 77)

Their final meeting in Act V is a scene of tender under-

standing:

Dorothy:

Smollet:

Lieutenant--I am indebted to you for
many acts of kindness. How shall I
thank you for them?

Lightly, but with a strata of deep

eeling undermeathj— Pshaw! —I've done
no h ng any Ether—fellow wouldn't have
had himself cashiered for the privi-
lege of doing! The society of a
charming lady-- Bows. She smiles] is
not so often thrown n the way of a
poor devil of a soldier that he can
afford not to be civil! True-~I did
at one time hope that you--[She looka
at pap a ealin l ] ‘Well--no matter.
[Seriously] I‘ve passed the happiest
hours of my life in your company. If

I, in return, have afforded you any
amusement--

 

 

371

Dorothy: Pleasure-~let us call it pleasure,
Lieutenant!

Smollet: Pleasure! Why, I'm.content--and if
circumstances will only permit--I will
dance as merrily at your wedding as if
it were my own. [Bows vegy ceremoni-

ously.> She curtséys very low.]
P.

 

These scenes have been reproduced here in some detail,
for they are-~along with the scene between Sir Frederick
and Dorothy--the only moments in the play which give a
suggestion of the kind of drama Herne could eventually
write, expressing inner emotional states through loosely-

structured vignettes. The Minute Men 23 171u-1125 might

 

have developed into a moving play if Herne had explored
the emotional relationships between Dorothy, the American,
and Smollet and Sir Frederick, the British, but such spec-
ulation, of course, does not save the play in its present
form. Instead of concentrating on inner development,
Herne wastes his dramatic energy on the surface excitement
of melodramatic episodes which rarely suggest the inner
lives of the characters who overpopulate his play.

In contrast to the unrealized possibilities in The

 

‘———-~—

early collaboration with Belasco, is a standard melodrama
which adheres so closely to formula that a critic is
forced to invent traces of form. In his History pf ppa
American Qpaaa, Professor Quinn wisely dismisses the play

with the comment that it is "of interest as the first

372

instance of collaboration of Horne and Belasco."5 In the
introduction to the edition of Herne's early plays, Quinn
writes, "It is not on the whole unskillful."6

In the conventions of the melodrama it is not com-
pletely unskillful, but it is crude and unpolished. In
spite of Belasco's statement that it was "an instant suc-
cess,"7 Professor Edwards! evidence suggests that the play
did not draw well.8 The script and what little we know of
the production indicates that the play should have been
popular, for it had adequate spectacle, an involved plot,
and exciting climaxes.

The most impressive spectacle is a fire which destroys
a mansion onstage. Belasco uses red and yellow silk
streamers to make his conflagration as realistic as pos-
sible, and then, to heighten the effect, he directs the
madman Cocoleu to step from the flaming building carrying
a child to safety. The combination of a "mad scene" and
fire is spectacle enough for one play, but there is more--
a shooting and an onstage death from poison. The plot in

which these events occur is essentially a detective story,

SQuinn, History, p. 130.

6Arthur Hobson Quinn, "Introduction" to Early Plays
a; James A; Herne, p. vii.

7William Winter, The Life pf David Belascp (New York,
1918), PP. llB-llu.

8Herbert Edwards and Julie A. Herne, James 5; Herne
(Orono, Maine, 196A), p. 28.

 

 

373

and the audience is kept in suspense until the end when the
real assassin is discovered. Strong climaxes support the
suspense. The curtain for Act III, for instance, descends
on the Countess's accusation of her former lover as the
murderer of her husband: "Yes, I believe him guilty! May
Heaven bring down on his head the misery he has inflicted
on.mine!"9 In the manuscript that speech is followed by
anti-climactic advice from the detective: "Calm yourself,
madam! Calm yourself! Justice shall be done!" (p. 16)
This speech, however, was crossed out in the manuscript
and "was evidently not used in the acting version,"10 thus
insuring a strong curtain.

Elements like these suggest that the play should have
pleased an audience used to melodrama, but there are weak-
nesses in the handling of the conventions. The exposition
at the opening of Act I, for instance, is crude. Two
characters, who later have little to do with the play,
tell members of the audience what they need to know about
the hero, and the hero himself shows off his gun and ex-
plains that one barrel is empty, a fact the audience needs
to know to establish his innocence. Act IV opens with the
maid speaking to herself about all the incidents that have
occurred since the curtain fell on Act III. The

9Early Plays of James A. Herne, p. 16. Hereafter,
references to this-Edition Will—be-cited in my text.

10Quinn, Early Playa, p. 16 fn,

 

37h

conventions of asides and soliloquies, used in both of
these scenes, are handled with little skill. At one point
in the play the playwrights even forget to follow the con-
sequences of these standard conventions. In Act I, the
Countess exclaims in an aside, "If I were free, I would be
his [her lover's:]wife. God! Luckily, that thought never
occurred to me before. Murder!" (p. 6) Jules, her lover,
standing beside her at that moment repeats her words later,
"Then she exclaimed, 'Oh, God! Luckily that thought never
entered my brain before. Murder!" (p. 23). In the con-
vention of the aside, he could not hear her comment.

There is also a lack of skill in the handling of co-
incidence, always to be expected in melodrama, but carried
to absurdity here. In Act IV, the Countess appears in
Jules! cell for no reason whatever. In Act III, her hus-
band wanders in to overhear her conversation with Jules.
He is supposed to be in bed, ill. Ironies are also blunt,
and unexplained. At the end of the play the Countess
graciously gives Jules to the innocent heroine and plans
to enter a convent, as any sinning woman in melodrama
should, unless she has been killed off before the final
curtain. The irony here, however, is that the heroine,
Dionysia, has earlier declared that she would go to a con-
vent if only Jules might be free of the murder charge.

Standing around in all of this crude melodrama are

characters who have no life beyond their stereotype-~an

37S

innocent, self-sacrificing girl, a jaded French Countess
who keeps a lover, an aging Count married to a woman too
young for him, a not so bright detective, a comic maid
flirting with a comic doctor, and a loyal, old retainer
who believes in the hero's innocence. The one character
who has any potential for life is Jules, for he might make
a choice and follow it through to establish his individu-
ality, but he simple-mindedly accepts what is happening
and makes no attempt to find meaning in it: "I am inno—
cent and can face death like a man. You have done all you
could for me, but fate has ordained it otherwise" (p. 36).
He makes only token attempts to do anything for himself,
preferring, rather smugly, to remain the stereotyped inno-
cent victim and ignoring the rhythm of dramatic life.

If there is any rhythm of life or any sense of form
in the play, it is in a kind of movement we are familiar
with in the nineteenth century Operas which are still
produced today, where the audience is moved by a succes-
sion of exciting climaxes only vaguely explained in the
plot. There are two interesting "love duets," for in-
stance, between Jules and each of the women in love with
him, and there is a violent confrontation between these
two women as the innocent comes to sacrifice all to the
villainess, if only Jules can be saved. And there is, as
noted, a "mad scene." But movement, on the whole, is too

sketchy and uncontrolled to make a sustained impact.

376

To examine Within ap 2222 pg Hia_ Life in more detail
would add little to the present discussion. Enough has
been said to suggest where Herne began his career as a
playwright. His collaborator Belasco continued to polish
the conventions of this play into very skillful melodrama,
but Herne began to move in another direction, already
evident in his last collaboration with Belasco, Hearts 23
est.

To establish in a practical way the division of au-
thorship in the script of Hearts 2i gag is impossible
today. Quinn suggests that Acts I, III, and VI are Hernehn
on the authority of Mrs. Herne.11 William Winter assumes
that Belasco created most of the play. He quotes Belasco

as saying of Herne's contribution, "He did a lot of good

work on it. . . . He introduced a lot of Rip Van Winkle

 

stuff."12 Since the script has more traces of the flip lap
Winkle stuff than of the earlier excursion into French
melodrama, one can agree tentatively with Mayorga's ap-
praisal that the whole "suggests Herne's manner rather
than Belasco's,"l3 for there are several scenes which ex-
plore the lives of the characters quietly and in realistic

detail. These scenes seem to be at odds with the

11Quinn, History, pp. 135-136.
12Winter, Life of David Belasco, p. 199.

13Margaret Mayorga, A Short History of the American
Drama (New York, 1932), p. 213.

 

377

melodramatic framework into which they are supposed to fit.

The plot is a mélange of mistaken identity, sacrifice
of love for duty, and a retelling of the Enoch Arden story.
Terry Dennison believes, mistakenly, that his ward Chrystal
is in love with him, when she is actually in love with his
other ward Ned Fairweather. Chrystal marries Terry and
sends Ned away because she must be true to her sense of
duty, repaying Terry for his many kindnesses in raising
her after she had been left an orphan. Terry, of course,
finds out about his mistake too late, and departs on an
expedition to the polar regions, returning at the end of
the play to hear of his wife and child one last time be-
fore he dies. In the interim Chrystal marries Ned. In
the final death scene Ned and Chrystal recognize Terry's
generosity.

This melodramatic framework is principally the work

of Belasco, adapted from an English play, The Mariner's

 

Compass. Herne did not know about Belasco's source until
after the play was produced. Belasco's spectacular touch
is evident in several scenes, and notably in the storm in
Act I, a realistic tour de force: "All the effects used

in the act, the movement of the sea, the noise of the surf,
the rain and storm effects are practical. The storm, from

the moment it begins, increases gradually, until the end

378

of the act, when it becomes furious."lu At the end of the
act, a ship breaks up on the horizon, and the men on shore
haul the survivors to safety with a life line. Act II in-
cludes the spectacle of a real mill wheel in full opera-
tion, "forced into rapid motion by a stream of real water"
(p. 272). The spectacle of a real baby and a cat are also
probably Belasco's invention. He recalled them years later
as evidence of his "faith in the little things."15 When
that baby was onstage, it created its own spectacular
drama which has nothing to do with the rest of the play.

A stage direction suggests the attitude toward the baby as
spectacle: "All of this business can be elaborated as
Baby gets used to the stage and to the people. Whatever
the Baby does must be acted upon by the actors and taken
advantage of, as it is impossible to set down in so many
lines just what the Baby will or will not do, so watch out
for the star's humor" (p. 291).

Although the Spectacle of the baby in Act III may
have been Belasco's idea, most of the script of the act is
Herne's, on the authority of Mrs. Herne. Herne had a
chance to experiment with the quiet scenes of daily life
which occur in all of his later plays. For instance,

1[J'James A. Herne, Shore Acres and Other filgyg, p. 257.

Hereafter, references to this edition of the play will be
cited in.my text.

 

lsSheldon Cheney, The New Movement 12 the Theatre
(New York, l9lh), p. 160.

 

379

there is a long scene between Uncle Davy and the baby in

which he sings to her, counts her toes, makes her feet
dance in time with his tune, and tosses her in the air,
affectionately. The scene leads to a comic argument be-
tween Uncle Davy and Aunt Betsy, a spinster, over the
proper handling of babies. Herne was to use scenes like
this in later plays to develop the humanity of his major
characters. But Uncle Davy is a minor local color char-
acter who does not function in the framework plot of the
play.

There is a dinner in this play, too, foreshadowing
Herne's later use of that realistic device. In Hearts of
925, the dinner is mostly comic by-play, perhaps justified
as a prelude to the serious melodrama which follows it
when Terry discovers that he has lost his mill and his
money because a bank has failed. But the main justifi-
cation for the scene is the opportunity to examine the
everyday actions of everyday people.

While these scenes have little function dramatically,
they do illustrate, as Professor Edwards has pointed out,
"Herne's growing conviction that audiences are more inter—
ested in people than in action itself."16 The success of
the play for many years on the road indicates that Herne's

assumption was valid. He had yet to learn how to weave

16Edwards, James A, Herne, p. 32.

that interest in people into the total form of his play,

making the static scenes threads in a unified design, as

380

he was to do later in plays like Griffith Davenport.

A few detailed scenes of this kind, however,
vance the dramatic action of Hearts of Oak. The most

successful occurs in Act V when Little Chrystal meets her
father, Terry, who has returned from his long arctic voy-

age. She does not know him of course, and he

His gradual

go away, leaving Ned to take care of his wife
builds throughout the scene.

is a typical Herne scene between an old man and a child,

amusing and

Terry:

Little
Terry:

Little

Terry:
Little

Terry:

Little
Terry:
Little

Terry:

realization of the results of his decision to

ahmost comic.

No! No! No! You need not call your
mother, child, I do not want anything.

Chrystal: [Surprised] No!
No!

Chrystal: I'm so so sorry. 'Pon your
word?

'Pon my word.
Chrystal: Ain't you fooling?

No, my child, I have all I want. When
I was discharged from the hospital they
gave me some money.
Chrystal: Was you in the hospital?

Yes.

Chrystal: What did you steal?

I didn't steal anything.

do ad-

is blind.

and child,

The first part of the scene

381

Little Chrystal: Then you must 'a' killed some-

body, didn't you?

Terry: No--I didn't kill any one (p. 315).

The bantering mood changes to a scene of understanding
between the generations as she leads him to the flowers by
the monument erected in his memory by Chrystal and Ned.
When she leans against his knee, responding to his paternal
kindliness, she reminds him of his own child.

Terry: But I want you to come here and let me
tell you of my own little girl.

Little Chrystal: Have you got as nice a little
girl as me?

Terry: I hope so--but I haven't seen her since
she was a tiny thing in her cradle.

Little Chrystal: I wish you would go and find
her and bring her to my house to play with
me. Won't you please? (p. 317)

A recognition scene follows. Avoiding an obvious lachry-
mose scene, Herne develops the action slowly, dramatizing
much of the feeling and sentiment in action rather than
statement. When Little Chrystal finally sits on his knee,
he gives her a kiss, but in the intensity of his emotions
he becomes too forcible, and she pushes him away "pet-
tishly."
Terry: Chrystal, I want you to put your arms

around my neck-—you put your little

arms around my neck--and try--try hard--

Oh--so hard-~to make believe that I'm

your father. Only let me hear your

little voice call me father once-~only

once! Try my child--try for God's sake--
try-~hard--hard--hard!

382

Little Chrystal: Oh, I can't! You ain't a bit
like my pa. Mama says he was so strong,
and big and tall and brave and handsome--
oh--so handsome! And you ain't big and
tall and handsome. And every night I see
him-~just as Mama says he used to look!--
see him in.my dreams (p. 320).

The act ends as she leads him along to join the wedding
festivities. It is never explained why she is not in the
church attending her mother's wedding.

While this scene depends on melodramatic irony and
sentiment for much of its effect, it moves, on the whole,
smoothly and quietly because Herne has created a series of
simple actions to occupy the child and the old man rather
than a forthright expression of their deeper emotions. It
is the kind of scene he would later develop in even
quieter tones. The final scene of the play is also sur-
prisingly restrained, even though it has more than enough
sentimentality. Terry pretends to be a friend of the
supposedly dead Terry.

Terry: When he found his time had come, he

dragged himself to my side and said, "If
ever you live to return to Marblehead--

I want you to find out Chrystal--that's
my wife," he says, "and give her this.
It's a lock of my baby's hair. . . .

Kiss her for me and say I sent it; she'll
believe you. And if you find her married,
why Ned'll be her husband, and he won't
mind." And then he said, "Tell my little
baby to put her arms around your neck and

call you father. It is my last wish."
Little Chrystal: Father!

383

 

Chrystal: [Realizes 223 the first time 322$.lfi
%§,3%§§1;§u Egirzéllgh’ Ned’ Ned'

Ned: Hush, darling. He willed it so (p. 329).

Quinn writes of this scene, "The last scene might in
incompetent hands seem sentimental, but in Herne's per-
formance the dignity of Terry's self-sacrifice secured the
sympathy of his hearers."l7 In The Literary History of
the United States, Sculley Bradley writes, “Uncounted
thousands wept."18 Audiences were moved because Herne had
developed his sentimental characters with quiet actions
which only suggest the deeper emotional movement under-
neath. He is not free, of course, from the melodramatic
framework which constantly threatens to turn the play into
sensation, nor is he free of the language of sentimen-
tality. Herne realized later that the play was an artistic
failure: "It was very crude and faulty in many ways, but
it did have the human touch which is the one absolutely
vital thing in any play that is ever to be a success."19

In Terry there is a suggestion of the strong-willed

hero whose choice of action leads to a definition of his

humanity. He takes all the blame on himself for what has

17Quinn, History, p. 135.

18Sculley Bradley, Literar lgistory of the United
States (New York, 1963), p. 100 .

19James A. Herne, "Forty Years Behind the Footlightsfl'
The Coming Age, II (August, 1899), p. 127.

381i

happened (pp. 305-306). When he comes back in the final
acts, he returns only to understand the effects of his
choice. Even though there is too much of the sacrificial
lamb in his character for him to be completely believable,
his actions are plain and quiet enough to suggest human
dignity and to avoid melodramatic stereotype. As Herne
conceived him and played him, he has the making of a
tragic figure, but the plot he finds himself in is too
contrived and the language of his speeches is too charged
with sentimentality to allow him to achieve tragic stature.
When Herne rewrote this play as Sag Harbor, he changed it
to a comedy, eliminating the primitive tragic elements.
Martha (Chrystal) stays with Ben (Terry) while Frank (Ned)
pairs off with a new character, Jane. By the time of Sag
Harbor Herne realized the improbabilities in his early
script and reshaped it into an entirely different form.
Hearts 2;.ng is a fitting end to a study of Herne's
plays, for we end where he began to realize those qualities
which we have seen develop in his later plays. Never com-
pletely free of the formulas of his time, he nonetheless
transformed the carefully observed truths of everyday life
into plays which, as we have seen, approach the significant
forms of tragedy and comedy, and eXpresses his humane
vision of life. While a study of Herne's plays does not
suggest a fervent claim for recognition of an unappreci-

ated playwright "lost" among the antiques of the 1890's

385

theatre, such a study does provide commentary upon the art
of the drama--both what was considered art in the older
formulas of the drama and what endures as essential dra-
matic form. Herne was, as his plays bear evidence, more
concerned with the quality of his art than with a few
hours entertainment in the popular theatre. "Art," he
wrote, "is a personal expression of life. The finer the
form and the color and the larger the truth, the higher
the art."20

20James A. Herne, "Art for Truth's Sake in the Drama,"
The Arena, XVII (February, 1897), p. 368.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Plays and Articles by James A. Herne

"Art for Truth's Sake in the Drama," The Arena, XVII (Feb-
ruary 1897), 361-370.

The Early Plays of James A. Herne. Edited by Arthur H.
Qui— . Vol. VII of AmerTcETs Lost Plays. Princeton,
19h0.

"Forty Years Behind the Footlights," The Coming Age, II
(August 1899), 121-129.

 

 

"Act III of Griffith Davenport," prefatory note by Arthur
H. Quinn and commentary by Julie A. Herne, American
Literature, XXIV (November 1952), 330-351.

 

 

Margaret Fleming, revised and edited by Mrs. James A.
Herne, in Representative Americainla s, 5th ed., edited
by Arthur H. Quinn (New York, 1938 , 21-58h. -

 

"Old Stock Da 3 in the Theatre," The Arena, VI (September
1892), hOl- 16.

 

"The Present Outlook for the American Drama," The Coming
Age, I (March 1899), 253-255.

 

Shore Acres and Other Pla 3. Revised and edited by Mrs.
James A. Herne. New York, 1928.

A Selected Bibliography--Books and Periodicals

Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: A New View 23 Dramatlg Form.
New Ybrk, 1963.

 

Ahnebrink, Lars. The Beginnings 23 Naturalism in American
Fiction. Upsala, 1950.

 

"American Playwrights on the American Drama," Har er's
Weekly, Supplement (February 2, 1889), 97-105.

386

387

"The American Playwright's Tightening Grip on Life," Cur-
rent Opinion, XLVIII (February 1910), 201- 20h.

 

Anderson, John. The American Theatre and the Motion Pic-
ture in America. New York, 193.

 

 

Andrews, Charlton. The Drama To-Day. Philadelphia, 1913.
Archer, Charles. William Archer. New Haven, 1931.

Archer, Frank. How £2 Write a Goog Play. London, 1892.

 

Archer, William. About the Theatre. London, 1886.
. America To-Dgy. London, 1900.

 

. ”The American Stage," The Pall Mall Mgg-
azine, XX (1899), 23-37.

 

 

. "The Development of American Drama,"
HaraerTs Magazine, CXLII (December 1920), 75-86.

 

 

. The Old Drama and the New. London, 1923.

 

 

. Playmakingr-A Manual 22 Craftsmanship.
New York,—l93h.

 

 

Arrowsmith, William. "The Criticism of Greek Tragedy,"
Tulane Drama Review, III (March 1959), 31-57.

 

Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway Scrapbook. New York, 19h7.

Baker, George Pierce. Dramatic Technique. Boston, 1919.

 

. Modern American Playg. New York, 1920.

 

Balch, Marston. "Johathon the First, " Modern Language
Notes, XCVI (May 1931), 281-288.

 

Balmforth, Ramsden. The ProblemP and Its Influence on
Modern Tho_ght and Life. New Yo rk, 1928.

Bates, Arlo. "Realism and the Art of Fiction," Scribner's

Magazine, II (August 1887), 2&1-252.

 

Beaumont and Fletcher. The Knight of the Burning Pestle.
Edited by C. B. Wheeler. London, 1915.

Beer, Thomas. The Mauve Decade. New York, 1926.

 

388

Belasco, David. Pla s Produced Under the Direction of
David Belasco. ew YorkiTprivately print ed), 1925.

 

. "Stage Realism of the Future," Theatre
Magazine, XVIII (September 1913), 86-88, 90.

 

. The Theatre through Its Stage Door. New

 

 

York] 1919.
Bentley, Eric. The Plgywright 33 Thinker. New York, 19h6.
__ . E225.l2 Theatre? Boston, 1956.
Bergson, Henri. Laughter. New York, 1912.

Blake, Ben. The Awakening 2: the American Theatre. New
York, 1935.

 

 

 

Block, Anita. The Changing World $9 Plays and Theatre.
Boston, 1939.

Block, Haskell M. and Herman Salinger. The Creative Vi-
sion. New York, 1960.

Blum, Daniel. A Pictorial Histogy_ of the American Theatre.
Philadelphia,-1960.

 

Boucicault, Dion. ”The Decline of the Drama,” North Amer-
ican Review, LXXV (September 1877), 235- 2h5.

 

. “The Future of American Drama," Arena II
(November1890), 6&1-652.

 

Bourdet, Edouard. "The Play in Transition," in Edith
Isaacs, Theatre: Essa s on the Arts of the Theatre

(Boston, 1927), 51-

Bowron, Bernard R., Jr. "Realism in America," Comparative
Literature, III (1951), 268-285.

 

 

 

Boyesen, Hjalmer H. "The Drama of Revolt, " The Bookman, I
(February 1895), 38h- 388.

Boynton, Percy H. American Writers 23 American Literatugg.
Boston, 1936.

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A Selected Bibliography--Newspapers
Anaconda (Montana) Standard, April 2M, 1898.
Anaconda (Montana) Standard, June 11, 1901.

Anaconda [Montana] Standard, July 13, l90h.

Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston

Boston

Budget, February 26, 1893.
Commonwealth, February 25, 1893.
912229 February 21, 1893.

$1223, October 25, 1899.
Journal, February 25, 1893.
Journal, October 25, 1899.

3232, February 21, 1893.

Post, October 25, 1899.

 

Times, February 26, 1893.

 

Transcript, July 8, 1890.
Transcript, April 29, 1891.

 

Transcri t, May 7, 1891.

 

Transcript, May 9, 1891.
Transcript, February 21, 1893.
Transcript, October 25, 1899.
Transcript, September 6, l90u.
Transcript, February 8, 1910.

Transcript, December 9, 1913.

 

Transcript, May 22, 1920.

 

Traveler, October 25, 1899.

h06

Chicago Chronicle, May 17, 1897.
Chicago Evening Post, March 21, 1900.

 

Chicago Inter-Ocean, July 8, 1892.

Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 17, 1897.

Chicago Journal, March 20, 1900.

Chicago Record-Herald, June h, 1901.
Chicago Record-Herald, January 30, 1907.
Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1892.

Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1907.

Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1907.

The Des Moines Capital, February 23, 1907.
New Ybrk Evening Post, January 23, 1917.

 

New York Glppg, January 23, 1917.

New York Herald, January 12, 1877.

New York Herald, October 31, 1893.

New York Timpg, January 22, 1961.

New York 21233, January 28, 1961.

New York Tribune, January 23, 1917.

New Ybrk prlg, January 23, 1917.
Philadelphia 233239 June 3, 1901.

St. Louis Republican, January 9, 1881.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 1897.
San Francisco Epily Report, February 23, 1897.

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MICHIGAN STRTE UNIV. LIBRARIES
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