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INTRODUCTION Page

The Workmanship of the One-Act Play xiii

Theatres of To-day The Commercial Theatre and the Repertory Idea xx The Little Theatre xxiii The Irish National Theatre xxvi

The New Art of the Theatre xxix

Playmaking xxxiv

The Theatre in the School l

ROBERT EMMONS ROGERS THE BOY WILL xxxviii

BOOTH TARKINGTON Introduction 3 BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN 5

ERNEST DOWSON Introduction 53 THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE 55

OLIPHANT DOWN Introduction 77 THE MAKER OF DREAMS 79

PERCY MACKAYE Introduction 97 GETTYSBURG 99

A. A. MILNE Introduction 113 WURZEL-FLUMMERY 115

HAROLD BRIGHOUSE Introduction 139 MAID OF FRANCE 141

LADY GREGORY Introduction 157 SPREADING THE NEWS 159

JEANNETTE MARKS Introduction 179 WELSH HONEYMOON 181

JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE Introduction 195 RIDERS TO THE SEA 198

LORD DUNSANY Introduction 211 A NIGHT AT AN INN 213

STARK YOUNG Introduction 226 THE TWILIGHT SAINT 227

MAURICE MAETERLINCK Introduction 265 THE INTRUDER 268

JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY Introduction 287 FORTUNE AND MEN'S EYES 289

JOHN GALSWORTHY Introduction 323 THE LITTLE MAN 325

The Beechwood Theatre. Exterior and Interior lviii

The Garden Theatre. The original site, and the theatre as it looks to-day lx

INTRODUCTION

THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY

The history of this new form is of necessity brief. Before its vogue became general, one-act plays were being presented in vaudeville houses in this country and were being used as curtain raisers in London theatres for the purpose of marking time until the late-dining audiences should arrive. With the exception of the famous Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris, where the entertainment for an evening might consist of several one-act plays, all of the hair-raising, blood-curdling variety, programs composed entirely of one-act plays were rare. Sir James Matthew Barrie is usually credited with being the first in England to write one-act plays intended to be grouped in a single production. A program of this character has been uncommon in the commercial theatre in America, but three of Barrie's one-act plays, constituting a single program, have met with enthusiastic response from American audiences.

There are two new developments in the history of the theatre that have encouraged and promoted the writing of one-act plays: the one is the Repertory Theatre abroad and the other is the Little Theatre movement on both sides of the Atlantic. The repertory of the Irish Players, for example, is composed largely of one-act plays, and American Little Theatres are given over almost exclusively to the one-act play.

The one-act play is in reality so new a phenomenon, in spite of the use that has been made of the form by playwrights like Pinero, Hauptmann, Chekov, Shaw, and others of the first rank, that it is still generally ignored in books on dramatic workmanship. None the less, the status of the one-act play is established and a study of the plays of this length, which are rapidly increasing in number, discloses certain tendencies and laws which are exemplified in the form itself. Clayton Hamilton sums up the matter well when he says: "The one-act play is admirable in itself, as a medium of art. It shows the same relation to the full-length play as the short-story shows to the novel. It makes a virtue of economy of means. It aims to produce a single dramatic effect with the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost emphasis. The method of the one-act play at its best is similar to the method employed by Browning in his dramatic monologues. The author must suggest the entire history of a soul by seizing it at some crisis of its career and forcing the spectator to look upon it from an unexpected and suggestive point of view. A one-act play in exhibiting the present should imply the past and intimate the future. The author has no leisure for laborious exposition; but his mere projection of a single situation should sum up in itself the accumulated results of many antecedent causes.... The form is complete, concise and self-sustaining; it requires an extraordinary force of imagination."

gives us in the first few minutes of the play his ironical clue to the theme. And this theme is worked out in Mary Fytton's shallow intrigue with William Herbert, which culminates in the shattering of the Player's dream on that autumn day in South London at "The Bear and the Angel."

"I say, I've played.... There's not one man Of all the gang--save one.... Ay, there be one I grant you, now!... He used me in right sort; A man worth better trades."

Wat's verdict on the fair-mindedness of Master William Shakespeare of the Lord Chamberlain's company is borne out by the Player's own,

"High fortune, man! Commend me to thy bear."

The entrance of the ballad-monger gives Master Will an opening for a punning jest and, the action continuing, shows him sympathetic to the strayed lady-in-waiting, tender to the tavern boy, magnanimous to the false friend and falser love.

One method of characterization which the author allows herself to use in this play, no doubt to heighten the Elizabethan illusion, is rare in the contemporary drama: when this "dark lady of the sonnets" flees "The Bear and the Angel," the Player breaks forth into the self-revealing soliloquy, found so frequently in his own plays, and continuing as a dramatic convention until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

A one-act play, then, has many structural features in common with the short-story; its plot must from beginning to end be dominated by a single theme; its crises may be crises of character as well as conflicts of will or physical conflicts; it must by a method of foreshadowing sustain the interest of the audience unflaggingly, but ultimately relieve their tension; it must achieve swift characterization by means of pantomime and dialogue; and its dialogue must achieve its effects by the same methods as the dialogue of longer plays, but by even greater economy of means. But when all is said and done, the success of a one-act play is judged not by its conformity to any set of hard and fast rules, but by its power to interest, enlighten, and hold an audience.

THEATRES OF TO-DAY

THE COMMERCIAL THEATRE AND THE REPERTORY IDEA

The term "Commercial Theatre" is rarely used without disparagement. The critic or the playwright who speaks of the Commercial Theatre usually does so either for the purpose of reflecting on the cheapness of the entertainment afforded, or in order to call attention to spectacular receipts.

In this country the Commercial Theatre stands for that form of big business in the theatrical world that produces dividends on the money invested comparable to those earned by the most prosperous of the large industries. This system has been, on the whole, a bad thing for the drama, because managers with their eye on attractions that should yield a return, let us say, of over ten per cent on the investment, have been unable to produce the superior play with an appeal to a definite, though perhaps limited audience, and have had to offer to the public the kind of play that would draw large audiences over a long period of time. The "longest run for the safest possible play" is thus conspicuously associated with the Commercial Theatre. As Clayton Hamilton says: "The trouble with the prevailing theatre system in America to-day is not that this system is commercial; for in any democratic country, it is not unreasonable to expect the public to defray the cost of the sort of drama that it wishes, and that, therefore, it deserves. The trouble is, rather, that our theatre system is devoted almost entirely to big business; and that in ignoring the small profits of small business it tends to exclude not only the uncommercial drama, but the non-commercial drama as well." Here he makes a distinction between an "uncommercial" play, that is, a play that is a failure with all kinds of audiences, and the "noncommercial" play, which is capable of holding its own financially and yielding modest returns.

In the days before the pooling of theatrical interests in this country there were indeed long runs, but in many of the large American cities "stock companies," composed of groups of actors and actresses all of about the same reputation and ability, were maintained that kept a number of plays, a "repertory," before the public in the course of a season and gave scope for experiment with various kinds of plays. But the "star system," which has now become common, has tended to drive out the "stock company" idea, with the result that the average company rests on the reputation of the "star" and dispenses with distinction in the "support." With the decay of the stock company, the repertory system, in the form in which it did once exist here in the Commercial Theatre, has also declined.

Both in Great Britain and in America the repertory system, long established on the Continent, has been reintroduced in order to combat the practices of the Commercial Theatre. For the most part the new repertory theatres have been endowed either by the State or by private individuals. "Absolute endowment for absolute freedom," has seemed to at least one American the only means of delivering the drama from commercial bondage. This phrase of Percy MacKaye's expresses his cherished belief that endowed civic theatres, which should encourage the participation of whole communities in a community form of drama, are what is needed in a democracy. John Masefield, in the following lines from the prologue written for the opening of the Liverpool Repertory Theatre, has found a poetic theme in this idea of an endowed theatre:

"Men will not spend, it seems, on that one art Which is life's inmost soul and passionate heart; They count the theatre a place for fun, Where man can laugh at nights when work is done.

If it were only that, 'twould be worth while To subsidize a thing which makes men smile; But it is more; it is that splendid thing, A place where man's soul shakes triumphant wing;

A place of art made living, where men may see What human life is and has seemed to be To the world's greatest brains....

O you who hark Fan to a flame through England this first spark, Till in this land there's none so poor of purse But he may see high deeds and hear high verse, And feel his folly lashed, and think him great In this world's tragedy of Life and Fate."

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