MARY ELLEN. Yes.

PETER. He ain't goin' to trample you down under his hoofs. You're as delicate as them blooms.

MARY ELLEN. I've promised him. PETER. That tree don't remember 'twas bare a month ago. The past is dead. Everything that happened in it's dead. The tree's in bloom. O Mary Ellen, the blooms are sweet.

MARY ELLEN. I've given him my promise.

PETER. When I kissed you, did you think of anything but me?

MARY ELLEN. No! no!

PETER. Where's your heart? Answer me. Ain't it right here by mine where it was a minute ago? Ain't it racin' to git back there? Won't it ache as long as you live if it's never goin' to lay there any more?

MARY ELLEN. My promise! (She has retreated from him and lays her hand on the pile of clothes on the barrel, glances down at them, pulls her hand away and cries out as if they scorched her.)

PETER. His clo'es.

MARY ELLEN. How'd they come here? PETER. I promised Anita I'd burn 'em. MARY ELLEN. You talk about the past bein' dead. There they are, like a risin' out o' the past.

JANE. You'd ought to be down there. (She goes off to the orchard.)

PETER. Adam, all I say is, don't you be that man. (They face each other for an instant, hostile and threatening.)

ADAM. (Getting hold of himself.) Pete, you and I can't scrap like kids. MARY ELLEN. Why didn't she strike Wait till this crowd is gone and we'll talk it over. Better still, wait till to-morrow morning. (He walks off in a direction well away from the orchard and the "crowd.")

me down?

PETER. She didn't see

MARY ELLEN. She did. What's in her mind?

PETER. I never know what's in her mind.

PETER. To-morrer! (He goes to the kitchen door.) Mary Ellen! (Mary El

MARY ELLEN. I'm a bad woman, an' len comes out.) Do you know what I'm she's found it out.

MARY ELLEN. No. But they bring back the days an' nights when I grew old doin' for him, an' all them days an' nights I was true to Nathan Buell.

PETER. Two years o' that time you an' I were gittin' to love each other. We didn't know it. But so 'twas.

MARY ELLEN. Two years ain't twentysix. An' I've promised.

PETER. Don't you love me?

MARY ELLEN. I'd die for you. Is that lovin' you?

PETER. Don't that give me rights over

ye? MARY ELLEN. I tell you I'd die for you. An' I'm doin' what's worse than death. I'm marryin' Nathan Buell.

PETER. (In sudden understanding.) To buy the farm? You're buyin' it for me. MARY ELLEN. Yes.

PETER. For me. You give yourself

for me.

from the merrymaking.)

ADAM. You shirking the crowd, too? You ought to go down, Peter. They're asking for you.

goin' to tell Jane?

MARY ELLEN. No.

I don't know whether it's courage that's drawin' mePETER. It's everything together. An' the word for it's love.

MARY ELLEN. You've crazed me. I've got to think.

PETER. (To Mary Ellen.) I've got to talk to Adam. Go into the kitchen. I won't be a minute. (He opens the door PETER. You ain't got but one thing to for her and she goes.) do. Be ready. For to-night. (Singing PETER. Adam, we've done with this from the orchard, "Come, Lasses and place. Lads," alternating with "Early One Morning.")

PETER, Jane!

MARY ELLEN. Jane! Jane, I never remembered you were in the world. (A burst of singing from the orchard, "Come, Lasses and Lads.")

JANE. (Coming down from the steps, halting a moment and then taking her way toward the orchard.) They're dancin'. You'd ought to be down there.

ADAM.

PETER. NO.

ADAM. Square deal?

PETER. D'ye think I'd go otherwise? ADAM. Want to start out with me and

see what we can make of it?

PETER. I'm not goin' alone.

MARY ELLEN. To-night?

PETER. After they're all in bed, slip out an' come down to Pine Tree Spring. You'll find me waitin' there. We'll stay till early train time.

MARY ELLEN. Shall we take the train? PETER. At the junction. MARY ELLEN. Not the 6:20. PETER. No. We don't want to start off from the depot here.

MARY ELLEN. No. Not Aaron's train. PETER. (With violence, to himself.) The only way to leave 'em is to go. MARY ELLEN. Think o' her.

PETER. What's she care? No more'n that tree.

MARY ELLEN. But you're married to her.

PETER. Who married me to her? A man. God Almighty married me to you.

ADAM. I know who the woman is, When I looked at you, when I touched Pete.

PETER. Stop! You've said enough. ADAM. The look on her face! That's why you can't do it. She's as simpleminded as a girl. You can't do it, Pete. You sha'n't.

PETER. Oh, yes, I shall.
ADAM. I won't let you.

you, I knew. You're mine, Mary Ellen, you're mine.

MARY ELLEN. I can't be. You're in wedlock.

PETER. Ain't you been a prisoner all your life? MARY ELLEN. Yes! Yes! (The singing comes nearer and nearer.)

S

O MUCH has been written in books and magazines about that new art of the theater of which Granville Barker is a master that the English stage director's first American production of Shakespeare's "MidsummerNight's Dream" set the whole metropolitan press agog. Column after column appeared in New York dailies, giving innumerable critical impressions of something extraordinary and bold. But these impressions did not form into a definite verdict of success. Associated with Mr. Barker is Mr. Norman Wilkinson, who provides the scenic settings, which are the essence of the "revolution" Mr. Barker has effected on the stage. Aside from these, Mr. Barker's own bronzed fairies come in for extended discussion. Whether or not one can consistently believe in the Barker fairies is the disputed point.

An invitation from Mr. Granville Barker himself to consider his productions at Wallack's from "a pictorial point of view," raises at the outset, writes Royal Cortissoz in the N. Y. Tribune, an interesting point in criticism:

"No work of art can properly be discussed after a preliminary separation of its various constituents into SO many water-tight compartments. If proof were needed it is supplied in this very instance. There is an exhibition at the Ehrich Gallery (for the benefit of the Arts Fund of England) of the designs made by Norman Wilkinson, Albert Rothenstein

and Robert E. Jones for various plays in Mr. Barker's repertory. The drawings, as drawings, have a certain interest. But really to apprehend the virtue that may be in them one must see carried out on

GRANVILLE BARKER

the stage the ideas they indicate-and there one must reckon with the play and all that it implies. The 'picture' cannot be regarded in a dry light, detached from the fundamental purposes of the dramdone on canvas or on a wall. The rest of atist. That kind of picture needs to be the producer lies in his ability to strike a perfect balance between two issues that are, indeed, interdependent.

sources,

"He must beguile the spectator with his picture, as a picture, and yet preserve the dramatic illusion, all life and atmosphere, which is what the spectator is there for. It is an old ideal, which even visited, we dare say, the imaginations of those earlier actors in France and England whose rein the pictorial sense, were so pathetically slim. And save for Wagner, whose stage conceptions included music of a new significance, the 'pioneers' in this field have not been as inventive as it is now the fashion to consider them. There is, no doubt, a gulf between the designs other new types, and the sort of thing of men like Gordon Craig, Bakst and the that satisfied playgoers ten years ago. But it does not necessarily imply that the new men have created a new theatrical

idiom. They are different, to be sure. But are they right? Have they got at the root of the matter? It is a large question, but we got a little light on it at Wallack's."

The principle which Mr. Granville Barker follows in his scenic decorations and stage arrangement is sound, especially when applied to the older works of classic dramatic literature, says Louis V. De Foe in the N. Y. World. According to him, Mr. Barker attempts no more than a return to the platform stage of the Elizabethans, for which the Shakespearean dramas were written, with such improvements in lighting as have resulted from the

later advancement in theater construction and dramatic representation. The older conditions are retained, but without their crudities. If the productions of "The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife" and "Androcles and the Lion" may be accepted as prophetic, the result of Mr. Barker's methods, in the case of the Shakespearean revivals, at any rate, will be to permit the use of a greater amount of the text, to accelerate the action of the plays and to intensify the humanity of the characters. It does not follow that the methods of the platform-stage can be applied successfully to modern plays written and constructed to fill the technical requirements of the picture-stage. There are enthusiastic admirers of Mr. Barker who think they help him by casting reflections upon the art of other producers, especially American producers. Hence, says Mr. De Foe, Mr. Barker needs defense from his ever enthusiastic friends:

"When the latter seek to extol his work by casting misleading reflections upon the productions of our best American stage managers they do Mr. Barker a positive injury. For instance, it was not Mr. Barker's greatest triumph in New York,

as

one speaker at the Drama League meeting said, when David Belasco recently produced 'Marie-Odile' without the use of footlights.

"All who have a definite knowledge of the theater know that Mr. Belasco's stage is constructed for the, omission of footlights when the artistic needs of his productions demand other methods of lighting, and that, while it is not provided with an 'apron,' it is equipped with an extension which serves much the same purpose. And those familiar with Mr. Belasco's productions in the past must recall that in certain scenes in 'The Darling of the Gods,' 'Adrea,' 'The Return of Peter Grimm' and other plays footlights were dispensed with to great artistic advantage. So it is radically wrong to charge that Mr. Belasco's methods, as applied to his recent production of 'MarieOdile,' were inspired by Mr. Barker's productions or were even an attempt to forestall him.

"How patent must have been all this to Mr. Barker himself was shown by his uncomfortable wincing when the ill-considered reflection against the leading dramatic producer in this country was being made. Mr. Barker's best efforts in New York will not be served by the attempts of his admirers to belittle the best work of our foremost native producers."

Coming now to "Midsummer-Night's Dream," the production of which brought the Granville Barker issue sharply before the New York theatergoer, we find the metropolitan critics dwelling upon the appeal to the eye. That is what strikes them as the really

هذا

new effect. At the best, the "Midsummer-Night's Dream," by which Granville Barker sets such store, only partly "proved its case," so the New York Evening Post says. To all old-fashioned lovers of Shakespeare's text and beauties, the thing was, we are told, full of offense. But it was also, at certain points-"when the imagination of the spectator was encouraged by artful aids instead of being hampered and shocked by arbitrary eccentricity" -satisfactory and illusive. The great and positive merits of the Barker presentation are thus summarized by this observer:

"It had the smoothness which comes of studious and laborious drill; it was rapid, consecutive-having only one break-and, tho played in the main with curtains, it was brilliantly and artistically pictorial. The spacious area provided by the apron stage was utilized to the uttermost with exceeding ingenuity and effect; so that for the first time within living memory the various groups of lovers had free scope for their action and were able to dispose themselves in locations sufficiently

T

SECRET OF

OF

HEATRICAL managers seem agreed that the play for them is the one which gets itself talked about in the proper sense, of course. Nothing does so much for the success of a play as the talking done about it by those who have been in an audience. Dramatic criticisms, advertizements in the newspapers and sensational lawsuits are very well in their way; but the real thing, from the manager's standpoint, is the play that gets itself talked about by people generally.

Now, what is the secret of this? How is the play to be made a theme of conversation? The answer is simplicity itself the play must deal with. those intimacies of life which concern every mortal so directly that when he talks about the play he is talking about his own affairs. We all talk, or rather we all want to talk, about our personal problems of love and life and sin and sorrow. Yet who dares bare his soul? Women, in particular, will go to a play affording them a pretext for conversation about the intimacies of life. They are discussing their own affairs when they talk about such a piece, for example, as "Bought and Paid For." (We read all this in The Sun and, of course, it must be so.) Playwrights try hard to take advantage of this psychological law. Their misses are more numerous than their hits, but occasionally the bell does ring. This is said, naturally, of plays that are plays and not mere spectacles or musical comedies. Ibsen is a supreme illustra

remote to give some support to probability. Here the value of the Shakespearean stage-and the poet's comprehension of its possibilities-was clearly established. And this noble area was again employed with notable effect in the various processions of mortals and fairies, and particularly in the closing scene, where Theseus and his court-virtually constituting themselves a part of the spectators-form a most picturesque audience for the doleful tragedy of 'Pyramus and Thisbe.'

"A good deal has been said about the golden fairies. Personally the present writer does not rate them very highly, but agrees that every man has a right to symbolize fairies in his own fashion."

The most notable part of the Barker policy to some critics is his repertory idea. That word repertory is very unpopular among theatergoers, notes the Brooklyn Eagle. Mr. Barker is, in fact, it notes, giving a repertory at Wallack's, altho he is not calling it that. But Mr. Barker himself explains that by repertory he does not mean the "hurried scraping together of old favorites, so-called because they are

249

things of which everybody has got tired." On the contrary, he says in the New York Sun: "I mean a theater which is constantly and therefore the more happily enjoyed in the creation of new work, doing of as great a variety as it is capable, a theater whose history will not be made up of failures and successes but only of popular and less popular plays, which will exist side by side. For instance, you have welcomed our 'Androcles and the Lion' and our 'Dumb Wife.' There seems no sign that they will outwear their welcome before the end of the season. have been kind to our 'MidsummerNight's Dream.' We hope that will take its share of the weekly bill for as long a time. In a few weeks, tho (we work, of course, neither as perfectly nor as swiftly as we would wish), we shall hope to present you with yet another play or two. And then if you want all three or all four done during a week, and it is humanly and mechanically possible, you may have themwhy not?"

THE PLAY THAT GETS ITSELF TALKED ABOUT

tion. His plays are pretexts for conversation about our own intimate emotions and rebellions. Hence it matters little whether they be "dramatic" in the technical sense.

From this standpoint, the failure of so many plays this season seems amply explained. By failure is meant not necessarily a piece that makes no money for the producer, but a play that does not, in any sense, last. "The Rented Earl," for instance, is made out by Charles Darnton, in the New York Evening World, to be a play that can not be talked about because there is nothing in it to talk about:

You

"I don't mean for a moment to imply that Mr. Field is not a good American. But I must say he is not a good playwright. His comedy has nothing that even approaches a 'situation' until a society lady, for revenue only, kisses the titled Englishman in order to pocket a cool thousand or two in the very tick of time arranged by his jealous rival who brings in the adoring heroine. The rest is merely talk, and not very bright talk at that.

"Say something positive,' urges the simple girl at one point.

"Not on your tintype!' responds the obliging visitor to our slangy shores. "The humor is all of the obvious variety, while the native types are such

crude specimens that only indifference keeps you from blushing for them. Mr. Field displays his only originality by placing his kowtowing Americans in Lenox. He probably realizes that Newport has been done to death. His play follows 'The Man from Blankley's' in the idea of an earl who is 'rented out' to a social climber at $1,000 a day by an enterprizing New Yorker who has all the earmarks of a press agent. To save the piece-if anything could save it-the Earl is really a decent sort of idiot, and in the end he makes this clear to the enraptured niece of the parvenu who has 'rented' him. Accordingly, in his cowboy outfit from Bond Street, he takes the adoring young creature in his arms and makes a silly speech about the ranch where they are to live happily ever after."

Playwrights are so familiar with the rule regarding a piece that can be talked about that they go too obviously to work. The war drama illustrates this point. There is so much talking about the European war that a play

Terry, just brought out at the N. Y. Comedy Theater. Of this play the N. Y. American says:

"The plot, said to be based on real episodes which occurred near Cromer, deals with the plot of two German boardinghouse keepers, mother and son, disguised under the assumed name of Sanderson, to betray the secrets of their adopted country to the Kaiser. They are aided in their task by a German valet, of incredible obviousness, called Fritz, and by a naturalized lady known as Fräulein Schroeder. "Opposed to them are Christopher Bren, a young Englishman, of the shamstupid type now so familiar through the popular magazines, and Miriam Lee, both of the Secret Service.

"Between them is a group of stupid boarders, including John Preston, a Mem

ber of Parliament, his daughter Molly (in love with Brent) and Percival Pennicuick, a recruit for Kitchener's army.

"Brent, having failed to join the British forces, is at first suspected of cowardice. Later, to cloak up their crimes, the Germans think fit to denounce him and his

placent dowagers, present and future. The closest he gets to a woman is as a queen of burlesque or a female baseball player. No man is less like a regular woman than is Mr. Eltinge in corsets. He is overblown, conspicuous, blowsy, and his seedy voluptuousness is a part of his successful game. He is more Hermes than Aphrodite."

The difficulty with the Eltinge productions is always that Mr. Eltinge, not the play, gets talked about. Hence he is always changing his pieces. This is the trying feature of all appeal to the dramatic instinct which is merely spectacular. There must be changes and changes, and every change is an experiment. Managers of this sort of theatrical enterprize can never stick

long to one thing, altho even in their variety there is a certain sameness. Thus the New York Evening Post says of the latest feature at the New York Winter Garden:

"One Winter Garden show is so like

conversational stream. This trick can be turned; but it must be turned with infinite skill. Has the author of "Inside the Lines," Earl Derr Biggers, exhibited this skill? We glean these impressions from the criticism in the New York Sun:

"This is another hot-off-the-griddle war play, just as 'The White Feather' is. All the characters represent brief and abstract chronicles of the times. There are more points of resemblance between the two plays than the theme. The hero in each is an Englishman, altho his patriotism is more than once impugned. He is just pretending to be a German in order that he may crush the genuine spies before they are able to whisper 'Der Tag' too often.

"The play opens at no less important a fortress than Gibraltar. The proprietor of the hotel is a spy for Germany and so

is the barber. So is the Indian servant of

an English army officer. But the greatest

of all the spies is coming; he is supposed One of the things awaiting his arrival is the destruction of the fleet lying off Gibraltar. One of the things he does on his arrival is to make love to an American girl who is among the tourists from our country marooned there by the outbreak of the war. It is in the end, after he has more than once led her to doubt him and then brought her back to faith in his love, that the English spy, set in the guise of a German to catch a spy, wins the American for his wife."

to be an officer in the army.

"In the opening act, Brent discovers a secret wireless plant behind the Sanderson fireplace. Ere long, thanks to his almost Godlike wisdom, he detects Fritz in the act of sending messages to Germany by carrier pigeons. Lastly, by making use of the hidden wireless, he

learns that a German submarine is soon to raid the neighboring harbor and gives warning, just in time, to the British Admiralty.

“Need it be added that, in the last act, the German spies are bagged?"

impossible to be sure twelve hours afterward whether the features that stand out in the memory belonged to the new show, or the last show before the new one. 'Maid in America,' produced last night before a characteristic Winter Garden full house, is not less lavish in displayscenic and otherwise-than its predecessors. Thanks to hints taken impartially from Chin Chin, Granville Barker, the Times Square subway contractors, David Belasco, the ancient Greeks, and George M. Cohan, the effects of costume and setting were more picturesque if not more extravagant than usual-some of them were, in fact, extremely good. Of noise and girls there was not noticeable lack, but the absence of battalions of capering young men in evening clothes, so conspicuous an item in the last Winter Garden offering, may be recorded with a certain degree of relief."

"It may be said that Mr. Eltinge is a frivolous person of the theater in whom permanent tradition may not imbed itself; but he has gained a fortune in his peculiar field, and he is one of the two or three players whose name distinguishes a playhouse in our dramatic metropolis-a

theater where there is now on view a collaboration of the Messrs. Sheldon and Sudermann, 'The Song of Songs.' So he must be reckoned with. Mr. Eltinge, I venture to say, is not a female impersonator. He impersonates a female impersonator, and that most unwillingly and unskilfully. When he assumes the silks and laces of a woman he is obviously muscular, baritone, and husky, and as wholesome as a college boy who in skirts cavorts before large concourses of com

If it be urged that the making of a play capable of arousing talk is difficult, the fact must be admitted. That is why we have so few great playJules Eckert Goodman do not get themwrights. Richard Harding Davis and

Trap" just put on at the Booth Theater

selves talked into the list with "The

in New York. The critics seem agreed that in expanding a vaudeville sketch into a real play, nothing memorable has resulted in the way of compelling talk. The play did not come home to anybody, being what the critic calls “artificial." One could not talk about it, the New York Telegraph believes, with a sense of discussing realities of personal experience. As for "The Clever Ones," Alfred Sutro's three-act comedy, which had its first New York performance at the Punch and Judy Theater, it, according to the Sun, is a polliwog. That is, it is all head, for the first act tells most of the story and suggests the rest of it:

"Peter Marable, a rich, uncultured hop merchant, has a daughter, son, wife and