The great play of the future must be a play of the times, must deal
with the real things of life, must balk at no expression of modern
tendencies, must reveal the skeleton in the twentieth century
cupboard.
The days of the historical romance are happily ended. Such milk and
water diet is food not fit for men. The new dramatist must provide us
with strong meat, properly served by players of intelligence and
insight, if dramatic art is to be rescued from the slough into which
it has so miserably sunk. The question is: Can America produce a
writer of sufficient originality, a manager of sufficient courage, an
actor of sufficient understanding to give the public what it asks?
If such there be, their names are not Clyde Fitch or David Belasco,
Charles Frohman or Daniel Frohman, Richard Mansfield or Amelia
Bingham.
JAQUES.
=Artistic Disarray=
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;--
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction--
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher,--
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly,--
A winning wave deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,--
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,--
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
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