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 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION
 
 Books by 
 ISAAC GOLDBERG 
 
 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 BRAZILIAN LITERATURE 
 
 STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN 
 LITERATURE 
 
 Dramatic Translations 
 
 SIX PLAYS OF THE YIDDISH THEATRE 
 
 First and Second Series 
 
 PLAYS OF THE IT ALLAN THEATRE 
 
 THREE PLAYS, by David Pinski 
 
 TEN PLAYS, by David Pinski 
 
 THE GOD OF VENGEANCE, by Sholom A»ch 
 
 THE HAUNTED INN, by Perez Hirschbein
 
 THE DRAMA 
 OF TRANSITION 
 
 Native and Exotic Playcraft 
 
 By 
 
 ISAAC GOLDBERG 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 STEWART KIDD COMPANY 
 
 CINCINNATI
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 
 STEWART KIDD COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 •: /: •.• 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 The Caxton Press 
 
 "Everybody for Books." This is one of the Interlaken Library
 
 
 LJ' w 
 
 TO MY WIFE 
 ELSIE FRIEDA 
 
 1 
 
 i
 
 THE ACTOR'S PROLOGUE 
 
 Once more the mimicry begins 
 
 With its compounded heritage — 
 
 Of hopes, of rears, of sorrows and of sins. 
 
 Once more a little stage 
 
 Pretends to hold symmetrical a play. 
 
 Pointed by art, or rounded, or made square. 
 
 While all the time not here on the stage but 
 
 there 
 Within you proceeds the authentic play. 
 And each of you, a player. 
 Day after day. 
 
 Performs behind a curtaining breast 
 Some part which we make partly manifest. 
 
 We, too, are living stranger plays than these 
 And wearing, or off-stripping in some inner 
 
 room. 
 Life's mask, of mimicries; 
 But in this role of scapegoat we assume, 
 Besides our own, your solaces, your sins, 
 Your worst, your best. 
 
 And, therefore, whether we appear to jest 
 
 Or to be solemn, we request 
 
 That you let first your eyes and ears and then 
 
 your hands attest 
 Our humanness — if we speak true 
 Some accent of that deeper play containing you. 
 
 Witter Bynner.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 In a sense, despite the title of this book, there is 
 no such thing as a transition drama. Playwrights 
 follow their calling for money or for fame, or for 
 whatever else you will, but not for the purpose of 
 establishing compact compartments in a historical 
 survey. A world always in flux is a world ever in 
 transition; change is the law of life. Indeed, Mr. 
 Dukes, in an excellent book upon the drama, has 
 made use of the term transition in a sense quite the 
 opposite to that which it bears in our present title. 
 Employing as his example the German designation 
 Uebergangsmensch (i. e., one belonging to the transi- 
 tion), he selected it for its connotation of advance- 
 ment to an ever beckoning goal. His conception 
 of transition-men was thus the heroic one of leaders 
 at first reviled, then but half understood even by 
 their admirers, and only at last triumphant among 
 the few who really count. That is a valid inter- 
 pretation and one of which Mj. Dukes made such 
 good use that some ten years later a countrywoman 
 of his. Storm Jameson, elaborated it into a valiant 
 book which, together with that of Mr. Dukes and 
 other contemporary critics of the drama, will re- 
 ceive due consideration in the pages that follow.^ 
 The more current acceptation of transition, how- 
 
 'Mr. Havelock Ellis, in the Postscript to the sixth and final volume of his re- 
 markable Studies in the Psychology of Sex, has expressed the dynamic conception of 
 transition so well that I cannot forbear quoting him (pages 641-642): "But the 
 wise man, standing midway between both parties and sympathizing with each, 
 knows that we are ever in the stage of transition. The present is in every age 
 merely the shifting point at which past and future meet, and we can have no 
 quarrel with either. There can be no world without traditions; neither can there
 
 10 FOREWORD 
 
 ever, is that of a comparative lull in creative ac- 
 tivity and of a period marked rather by the decline 
 from high achievements, by restlessness, experiment, 
 and eager groping. 
 
 It would be easy, of course, to begin a survey of 
 immediate causes with the late madness in Europe, 
 just as the older historians began their tomes with 
 the Creation. But just as the Creation, to modern 
 history, is a rather recent date in the career of this 
 globe, so were disintegrating forces at work before 
 1914, and it may well be that the war, far from 
 being a cause of artistic disintegration, was a vast 
 economic effect of influences that had long been at 
 work in every sphere of human activity. 
 
 In any event, between the peaks lie valleys. If 
 some, like Miss Jameson, prefer to leap from peak 
 to peak, that is their enviable privilege; the exercise 
 is strenuous, but exhilarating, and is taken less 
 often only because few critics possess the seven- 
 league boots that hold the secret of these gigantic 
 strides. Yet there must be occasional repose even 
 from peak-climbing; it is good to rest the eye upon 
 undulating prairies and even modest meadows. 
 They are part of the same mother earth, though 
 not so near the moon, and they have their own 
 amenities. Rome was not built in a day, nor did 
 Ibsen or Strindberg or Hauptmann rise up over 
 night, blown out of an intangible fancy. Let there 
 be no misunderstanding on this score, and let no 
 terrestrial analogies mislea d us; disparagement of 
 
 be any life without movement. As Heracleitus knew at the outset of modem 
 philosophy, we cannot bathe twice in the same stream, though! as «e know t^a^ 
 the stream still flows in an unending circle. There is never a mnrnpnr A^^tY; 
 
 ceTseft:"di'l X I'r^'.rfoT".^'^^^^ and'^'^Pe/a"mo;nfnt'"Xn"\h? Cnik' 
 ceases to die. It is well to greet serenely even the first glimmer of dawn when we 
 
 Z^kTi^TZ^'&i^ S^^ onct";-^a1^7.^ '^^-^^ ^^^^^
 
 FOREWORD 11 
 
 the lofty is the farthest from my intention. If such 
 a modest book as this did not, on the whole, con- 
 tribute to a better appreciation of the outstanding 
 few, I should consider it a waste of time and paper. 
 Not that the lofty few should be left on the lonely 
 heights of their eminence; storms must brew around 
 these peaks and the winds of criticism hurl back and 
 forth. The past has played altogether too much 
 havoc with eminence for us to feel too sure of our 
 opinions. Out of the humbler ranks, however, 
 some day the rare genius arises; it is good to know 
 his ancestry, to learn what men, what works, 
 what spiritual attitudes, preceded him and helped 
 to shape him even as he was casting off their spell. 
 For such is the paradox of the artist; he rebels 
 against the very material he employs. 
 
 The matter of this book is largely so new to the 
 English-speaking world that I have found it neces- 
 sary to include a far greater proportion of expositive 
 detail than I should have wished. Since there is 
 little use in discussing values in the absence of any- 
 thing like concrete examples, I have been fairly 
 generous with outlines of plot and with biographical 
 information. In the case of no country, however, 
 was it my intention to speak of every author or to 
 consider, chronologically or critically, every play of 
 the authors chosen. Where are these plays being 
 written, and under what circumstances? Who are 
 the writers? What are they trying to do? How 
 are they succeeding? These are the questions I 
 first asked myself and which I am now trying to 
 answer. They determine quite clearly the method 
 of treatment: a minimum of biography, attention 
 wherever called for to the content of the play, and.
 
 12 FOREWORD 
 
 most important, the adumbration of a critical 
 opinion. Included in the critical remarks are the 
 opinions of foreign critics upon the work under dis- 
 cussion. My own opinions, which pretend to no 
 finality, are those of an inquisitive, cosmopolitan 
 nature that deals in labels with repugnance, as the 
 necessary evils they are, and that abhors more than 
 anything else such pedantries as cosmic cataloguing. 
 It might be said, indeed, that dramatic criticism 
 itself, like the drama which it deals with, is in a 
 state of transition. Certainly, as far as the English- 
 speaking peoples are concerned, the tendency is 
 away from dogmatism, irrelevant preaching, moral- 
 izing, propaganda of social, economic, and political 
 ideals and what not else that obscures the essentially 
 lyrical nature of art. For this reason I have placed, 
 before the chapters upon drama in various parts of 
 the world, a survey of recent works upon dramatic 
 criticism; I have selected chief! v the books of writers 
 whose attitude enriches my own. Their common 
 attribute is a desire to escape the limitations of 
 academic, traditional thought, to have done with 
 the artificial restrictions that hedge in discussion, 
 which should be as free as the art that it treats. 
 Yet it is instructive to note how each, in his own 
 particular freedom, may reach conclusions not only 
 independent but divergent. For criticism is an art, 
 the critic an artist, and as such, an autonomous 
 being justified by his product alone. 
 
 If, then, this book does not treat of peaks, there 
 may be a few hills in it worth the climb. The 
 Spanish dramatists, for example, may not remould 
 the society in which they flourish, but, on the other 
 hand, they illustrate it and thus make amends for
 
 FOREWORD 13 
 
 artistic shortcomings by serving as quasi-social doc- 
 uments. And, at that, it is a question whether in 
 an occasional play Echegaray, Galdos, or Bena- 
 vente, for all that may be urged against them, have 
 not risen to creative vision. Of the novelty-seekers, 
 the Itahans and Germans seem most active. They 
 may be rash, impetuous, at times ludicrous, yet there 
 is something tonic in their eager restlessness. After 
 all, it is easy to sit by the ancient fires and sing 
 hymns to the past; but that past is always there 
 for us to return to; it has been appraised and re- 
 appraised, and will be yet again. Even where the 
 deed proves abortive, the spirit of the "new" is the 
 essence of all living. Pope's merely shrewd couplet. 
 
 Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
 Nor yet the last to lay the old aside, 
 
 may serve as the miniature vade mecum for intel- 
 lectual cowards; to the adventurous spirit it is but 
 a snivelling rhyme. The Yiddish drama, exotic as 
 it may appear, exhibits all the stages — in highly 
 concentrated form — that have characterized nations 
 with a far older theatrical tradition; it has produced 
 men capable of artistic abnegation and creative 
 vision, and although its claims may easily be ex- 
 aggerated by devotees, it yields its own peculiar 
 contribution to the general story of modern drama. 
 The same may be said of the drama in South Amer- 
 ica, where the stage, for all practical purposes, was 
 born but yesterday. 
 
 In dealing with these milieus, these men and their 
 work, I have made use of every available source to 
 throw light upon the fuller significance of their 
 strivings. The sterner limits of aesthetic criticism —
 
 14 FOREWORD 
 
 I refer to the method followed by Benedetto Croce 
 and his disciples — might reject certain details as 
 superfluous or irrelevant, and I am not sure that 
 such an attitude would be unjustifiable. This is 
 not, however, a book of pure criticism; neither is it 
 addressed primarily to specialists; the nature of the 
 material calls for treatment that shall be at once bio- 
 graphical, historical, geographical, as well as critical. 
 1 am addressing chiefly those seeking more intimate 
 contact with the ebb and flow of dramatic activity, 
 and have thus been discursive, discussive, informa- 
 tive, according to the relative ignorance prevailing 
 upon the subjects under consideration. 
 
 Some of the text has appeared previously in 
 books (as introductory matter), magazines, and 
 newspapers. Though such text has in many cases 
 been thoroughly revised, 1 wish to thank the editors 
 of the various publications for permission to make 
 additional use of the material. Among these are: 
 the Boston Evening Transcript, the Christian Sci- 
 ence Monitor, the New York Tribune, the Literary 
 Review (New York Evening Post), the Freeman, the 
 Bookman, the Stratford Journal, and the Menorah 
 Journal. Among the publishers of books to whom I 
 am similarly indebted are: Mr. Harrison Hale Schafi^, 
 of Luce and Company, Boston; Brentano's; Mr. 
 B. W. Huebsch; the Stratford Co., Publishers, of 
 Boston. 
 
 I wish, at the same time, to point out that much 
 of the matter has been radically altered; one is not 
 so infallible that the years bring no change in out- 
 look or opinion. Wherefore I would ask that, in 
 any case where I have in this book expressed an 
 opinion upon a writer or subject previously dis-
 
 FOREWORD 15 
 
 cussed by me in any article or other book, the 
 previous expression be cancelled and the present 
 one be taken as the more mature. Perhaps not so 
 near the truth — wherever that elusive chit may 
 dwell — but let us cherish a while the illusion that 
 our latest opinions are the best!^ 
 
 In order to preserve a certain unity in each di- 
 vision, occasional repetition has been rendered nec- 
 essary. For suggestions as to possible changes in 
 later editions, the author may be addressed in care 
 of the publishers. 
 
 Isaac Goldberg. 
 
 Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1922. 
 
 ' The plans for this book originally included chapters upon England and Ireland, 
 but the material fast outgrew the limits set. Happily more than one book deals 
 with contemporary English dramatists. For Ireland I would recommend Mr. 
 Ernest A. Boyd's The Contemporary Drama of Ireland.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 9 
 
 Foreword 
 
 Backgrounds of Contemporary Dramatic 
 
 Criticism ig 
 
 Spain ^g 
 
 Jose Echegaray 6i 
 
 Benito P6rez-Gald6s y^ 
 
 "The Generation of '98" g^ 
 
 Jacinto Benavente 96 
 
 Italy 123 
 
 Benelli's New Apostolate 132 
 
 Giovanni Verga I41 
 
 Enrico Luigi Morselli i^e 
 
 Giovacchino Forzano ir2 
 
 Francesco T. Marinetti 160 
 The "Teatro Grotesco": Luigi Pirandello et al. 173 
 
 South America 20c 
 
 The"Gaucho" 211 
 
 Florencio Sdnchez 218 
 
 Jose Antonio Ramos 237 
 
 Brazil: Claudio de Souza 243 
 
 France 247 
 
 A Note on Romain Rolland, Playwright 249 
 
 Georges Duhamel 254 
 
 2 
 
 17
 
 18 CONTENTS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Germany 
 
 267 
 
 Expressionist Theory 
 
 269 
 
 Hauptmann's Der fVeisse Heiland 
 
 179 
 
 Walter Hasenclever 
 
 286 
 
 Georg Kaiser 
 
 302 
 
 Oskar Kokoschka 
 
 2^2> 
 
 Other Dramatists: Sternheim, Kornfeld, 
 
 von Unruh 
 
 Werfel, Goering, Toller 
 
 318 
 
 The Yiddish Drama 
 
 317 
 
 A Historical and Critical Survey 
 
 3^9 
 
 Leon Kobrin 
 
 368 
 
 Sholom Asch 
 
 373 
 
 David Pinski 
 
 379 
 
 Perez Hirschbein 
 
 404 
 
 New Writers 
 
 420 
 
 Russia 
 
 435 
 
 Evreinov and the Monodrama 
 
 437 
 
 The United States 
 
 455 
 
 Eugene O'Neill 
 
 457 
 
 Susan Glaspell 
 
 472 
 
 Index 482
 
 BACKGROUNDS OF CONTEMPORARY 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM
 
 BACKGROUNDS OF CONTEMPORARY 
 DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 Human reason? One might as well ask the reason 
 of life itself. We call evil whatever opposes our good. 
 We call madness whatever opposes our reason. But 
 it's all one. . . . It's all— life ^ the fecund mother 
 of joys and inexplicable sorrows. 
 
 — The Doctor, in Benavente's Alma Triunfante, 
 Act III. 
 
 I 
 
 "Nobody's right — but they all think they are 
 right. . . . A lot they know," murmurs Liliom, 
 in Molnar's play of that name, dying, in his igno- 
 rance, with more wisdom upon his lips than under- 
 standing in his heart. He was speaking of a larger 
 world than criticism, but his words are equally 
 applicable to a realm he would never have com- 
 prehended. There was once, in greater numbers 
 than exist to-day, a type of mind that looked to 
 criticism for certainty, for an escape from feeling 
 and thought rather than an induction into them, 
 for a regiment of names drawn duly up in companies 
 and marshaled according to rank. That type is 
 precisely the kind that asks of criticism the one 
 thing neither it nor life can give and that fails to 
 bring to it or to Hfe the one thing upon which they 
 both are nourished — an open, restless, inquiring 
 spirit. \ 
 
 21
 
 22 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Life itself, except to those who harbor implicit 
 faith, yields no discoverable meaning. The whence, 
 the wherefore, the whither are the sides of a triangle 
 far more eternal than the passional imbroglios that 
 weave their net of sex upon the stage. Only in art 
 does the mystery receive a momentary, illusory 
 solution — a different one in each author and in 
 each work. For a brief while the impressions 
 prisoned in book or play create an illusion of order 
 amid chaos, of significance amid multiform mean- 
 inglessness. "The world asks an ancient query," 
 runs the Jewish folk song. x\nd, as when in our 
 childhood games the Priest of Paris lost his hat, 
 some say this and some say that. Yet, to revert 
 to the fathomless philosophy of the folk song, as 
 ingenuous in its depth as was Liliom in his non- 
 chalant farewell, "the ancient question still remains." 
 
 If, then, we shall not look to art for certainties, 
 neither shall we seek them in criticism. The pompous 
 will continue to emit their Rhadamanthine judg- 
 ments. Let them. The gulls will go on drinking the 
 easy draught; they will have pocketfuls of jabels for 
 every product, and if the work do not fit the label, 
 why, give short shrift to the work! Let them, too. 
 The wiser of us will plod along on our quest for 
 beauty, content with the pleasures of the road and 
 not brooding overmuch upon the destination. Let 
 us, therefore, dismiss at the outset both certainty 
 and the literary hierarchies that it connotes. By 
 no means are we to relinquish the right to entertain 
 opinions; but let us be modest even in our occasional 
 cocksureness. Opinions are only human; they 
 change with us. And what is criticism but the list- 
 ing of disciplined opinions?
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 23 
 
 Life being in our sense of the word meaningless, 
 art often becomes the faith of the faithless. Art 
 imposes a meaning upon things, and one of the meas- 
 ures of the artist is the success with which his inner 
 passion fuses the elements of his make-believe 
 world into a higher reality. If, as Croce maintains, 
 art is essentially successful expression, by that same 
 token there are as many worlds as there are original 
 individuals to express and to appreciate. And since 
 criticism is itself an art, it creates, out of the ma- 
 terials with which it deals, a world of its own, — 
 again different in each critic and in each of the critic's 
 works. The world of criticism, as the world of art, 
 is the world of the individual, the personality. 
 
 II 
 
 Few examples could better illustrate the in- 
 evitable divergence of the most enlightened opinion 
 than the attitude of three of our leading contemporary 
 critics toward one of the most popular of latter-day 
 playwrights. Storm Jameson, as her Modern Drama 
 in Europe reveals, is one of the sternest appraisers 
 of the drama — a veritable Nietzsche in knickers, 
 smashing her way through the idols of the day 
 with almost forbidding asperity. Ludwig Lewisohn, 
 as sensitive as she to the philosophy inherent in 
 drama and even more sensitive to beauty than she 
 or Nathan, is every whit as exigent. Now, what 
 becomes of Sir James Barrie in their hands? 
 
 This is Jameson's estimate:^ 
 
 "Mr. Barrie is not a Romantic, though he is here 
 in their company. His work eludes classification, 
 
 ' Modtrn Drama in Europe. By Storm Jameson, New York, 1920, pp. 211, 212.
 
 24 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 as does the work of all men who are masters of their 
 art. There is nothing like it in the whole of modern 
 drama, and though to be unique is not to be great 
 therefore, few will be found to withhold from Mr. 
 Barrie any honouring word. Yet is 'great* an ep- 
 ithet of too little humanity for his whimsical and 
 tender art. There should be words to do it honour, 
 but they do not come readily, as does the praise 
 we find for plays that leave us heart-whole. They 
 should be gracious words, and kindly, like the work 
 that waits their tribute, needing it so little. 
 
 "But the drama of J. M. Barrie has other qualities 
 than those of grace and loving kindness, and other 
 arts than the wizardry that sets men's thoughts 
 wandering in forgotten places and their eyes search- 
 ing for forgotten dreams. There is pity, infinite 
 pity, and — lest that become intolerable — infinite 
 courage, defying suffering and age and death itself. 
 Pity and courage alike hav^e a fine, keen edge. 
 There is nothing sentimental in the mind that 
 called them out, giving them life and form — the 
 form, maybe, of an awkward boy, or a 'queer old 
 divert' of a charwoman: it is a shrewd mind, quick 
 to see the absurdity of our unconscious posturings 
 even when it smiles at them. 
 
 "And if the true artist is he who makes life finer 
 and nobler than it is, then is the author of ^ualitv 
 Street and The Old Lady S/iozvs Her Medals indubi- 
 tably an artist, touching life with gentle fingers, 
 making it braver, and sweeter to our lips. So that 
 somewhere among the hierarchy of those great 
 dramatists who took gods and heroes and made 
 them types of humanity, must be found a place — 
 lowly, if it is to please him — for the dramatist who
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 25 
 
 took a charwoman and made her a symbol of man's 
 immortal divinity." 
 
 The passage amounts almost to a lapse from the 
 lofty standards set for herself in this most trenchant 
 of contemporary books upon the drama. For a 
 moment she seems to become sentimental with that 
 very sentimentality which she fails to note in Barrie 
 — and how could one help note it in his later plays 
 any more than one could overlook the descent of 
 Maeterlinck in his more recent productions? Almost 
 she exemplifies that unconditional surrender which 
 Professor Phelps prescribes as the sole possible con- 
 frontation of Barrie. 
 
 Nathan occupies here a middle position. To him, 
 Barrie is "the triumph of sugar over diabetes." 
 
 And now Lewisohn:^ 
 
 "His plays are commended for their purity. He 
 surrounds with the gentlest pathos and all the beauty 
 he can comprehend a triviality of soul that is as 
 shameful as one hopes it rare. Spiritual triviality — 
 we come very close to Barrie with that phrase. 
 He makes harsh things sweetish and grave things 
 frivolous and noble things to seem of small account. 
 No wonder he is popular among all the shedders 
 of easy, comfortable tears. He dramatizes the 
 cloud in order to display its silver lining. . . . 
 Barrie's imagination is as uncontrolled as his ideas 
 are feeble and conventional. Yet this is the dram- 
 atist whose position is seriously undebated. This 
 purveyor of sentimental comedy to the unthinking 
 crowd deceives the semi-judicious by moments of 
 literary charm and deftness and mellow grace that 
 recall the years when he wrote Sentimental Tommie 
 
 ' The Drama and the Stage. New York, 1922, pages 177, 178.
 
 26 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 and Margaret Ogilvie. But those years are gone. 
 His noisy stage successes have left him increasingly 
 bare of scruple, of seriousness, of artistic and in- 
 tellectual coherence. They have left him 'whim- 
 sical' and false and defeated in the midst of wealth 
 and fame." 
 
 The humor of the situation lies in this: that the 
 casual reader of Jameson and Lewisohn would 
 almost with a certainty, coming across these pas- 
 sages, have ascribed the first to Lewisohn and the 
 second to Jameson. It is as it Jameson, in her 
 Nietzschean demands upon the drama, had decided 
 for a moment to relent, lest her requirements, grow- 
 ing over taut, strain the bonds of reason. And as 
 if Lewisohn, sensitive to beauty as a matrix to the 
 vibrations of the recording needle, felt a need to 
 harden in the face of a dangerous substitute. Pilate 
 asked two questions too few. He should have 
 added, What is Goodness? What is Beauty? Then 
 the problem d|f art would have been posed in full. 
 Another eternay triangle! 
 
 Ill 
 
 We are prepared, now, for the widest differences 
 of opinion as to what constitutes the proper attitude 
 toward the drama and as to what the drama itself 
 may be. And though the most divergent sources 
 yield similar definitions, even here the differences 
 begin with the very rise of the curtain. 
 
 What is a play? 
 
 No, we shall not go back to Aristotle, the eternal 
 precursor; he has a finger in every critical pie, 
 whether or not he is mentioned. To stress our point 
 we need go no farther than our own day.
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 27 
 
 "The only really valid definition of the dramatic 
 is: Any representation of imaginary personages 
 which is capable of interesting an average audience 
 assembled in a theatre." Thus William Archer, in 
 his Playmaking: A Manual of Craftsmanship, page 
 48. That word "average" sticks in one's throat; it 
 explains Lewisohn's half-surprise that a man "can 
 translate Ibsen and write The Green Goddess with 
 equal cheerfulness." 
 
 "Good drama is anything that interests an in- 
 telligently emotional group of persons assembled to- 
 gether in an illuminated hall. Moliere, wise among 
 dramatists, said as much, though in somewhat more, 
 and doubtless too, sweeping words. Throughout 
 the ages of drama there will be always Romanticists 
 of one sort or another, brave and splendid spirits, 
 who will have to free themselves from the definition 
 and limitations imposed upon thern by the neo- 
 Bossus and Boileaus, and the small-portion Vol- 
 taires,'Laharpes, and Marmontels." Thus Nathan,^ 
 whose "intelligently emotional" is so vast an im- 
 provement over Archer's "average" that it excludes 
 it implicitly and connotes an entire attitude toward 
 all of life. »^ 
 
 With a similar impatience, Lewisohn writes -.^ 
 
 "Let us have done, first of all, then, with this 
 verbiage. 
 
 "A play is a dialogue which, when spoken by 
 actors from a platform, holds the minds of men 
 through its culmination toward some physical or 
 spiritual end. 
 
 "The power and depth of that sense of culmina- 
 tion is the measure of the play's dramatic life. 
 
 ' The Critic and the Drama, by George Jean Nathan, New York, 1922. 
 ' The Drama and the Stage. Pages 4, 5.
 
 28 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 "Any dialogue that has dramatic life can be acted 
 on any stage. 
 
 "A born dramatist can write drajna without ever 
 having seen a theatre. If an audience refuses to 
 hear him, it is because the soul of his work is alien 
 I from that audience's collective soul. 
 
 "The popular playwright is not he who under- 
 stands either the theatre or the dnuiia best, but he 
 \ who flatters men most and disturbs them least." 
 
 How far we have gone from Mr. Archer's "aver- 
 age" now! Yet all three definitions carry a sense of 
 liberation trom the old, cramping rules. Nor is that 
 freedom a mere relaxation of discipline, any more 
 than is the newer criticism, with its refusal to erect 
 fixed standards, a renunciation of control. It is, 
 on the contrary, a sterner attitude than ever, a 
 more exacting demand upon self in the advance to- 
 ward complete selfhood — a renunciation, indeed, of 
 external rules that enable one to dispense with the 
 ardors of thought, since all things have their measure 
 foreordained. This shifting of criticism from quasi- 
 objective to avowedly subjective ground, besides 
 clarifying the inevitably personal character of all 
 criticism, imposes new obligations upon the critic. 
 Mere theoretical structures no longer suffice; taste, 
 in Spingarn's' words synonymous at its highest with 
 artistic creation, must go deeper than ever before; 
 far from applying a set of rules from without, it 
 must probe within and re-create the work of art. 
 Far from settling anything, then, such an attitude 
 unsettles everything. It is part of a centrifugal 
 world-spirit that finds expression in such unrelated 
 personalities as a Baroja in Spain, penning; novels of 
 
 ' Creative Criticism. Essays on the Unity of Genius and Taste. By J. E. 
 Spingarn. New York, 1917. This book is indispensable.
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 29 
 
 disintegration; a Shestov in Russia, proclaiming the 
 disunity of philosophy and declaring all things pos- 
 sible; a Rodo in Spanish America, emphasizing the 
 love of truth as distinct from truth itself. (Did not 
 Nietzsche write: "We should not let ourselves be 
 burnt for our opinions themselves, of which we can 
 never be quite sure, but we may perhaps do so for 
 the right to hold and change them?" And has not 
 this, sifted through Mencken, become: "If I knew 
 what was true, I'd probably be willing to sweat and 
 strive for it, and maybe even to die for it, to the 
 tune of bugle blasts. But so far I have not found 
 it"?^) The person of true culture thus grows more 
 and more into the individual, the personality that 
 every true artist contains. Long since released from 
 his tribal loyalties in matters of politics (let us hope 
 so, at least), he is thrown upon his own inner re- 
 sources, and the wealth of those resources determines 
 the richness and the fruitfulness of his perceptions 
 as well as of his response. Criticism is worth pre- 
 cisely as much as the critic. 
 
 IV 
 
 That even the spirit of liberation may tend to 
 crystallize into dogma is shown by the first of the 
 contemporary attitudes toward the drama with 
 which we deal. I call this the Dukes-Jameson 
 theory, because although Storm Jameson, in her 
 recent Modern Drama in Europe, elaborates the 
 aristocratic, philosophic attitude, it was stated suc- 
 cinctly some ten years before by Ashley Dukes, in 
 his Modern Dramatists. "Tolerance smoothes the 
 way of life," he wrote, "but it is the most insidious 
 
 ' In Defense of Women, 2nd ed. New York, 1922. Page xviii.
 
 30 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 enemy of art. It spells compromise, and compro- 
 mise and criticism cannot be on speaking terms. 
 . . ." The work of art is "individual and inde- 
 finable. It will be simply the expression of a per- 
 sonality through the medium of a craft. If the craft 
 fails, the personality may be distorted, but if the 
 personality fails, the craft is useless. The great 
 need of the theatre, then, is not conformity to this 
 school or that, but the service of writers who are at 
 once free spirits and good workmen. I-Veedom is 
 their own possession, but good workmanship can 
 be learned in some measure from the masters."' 
 
 And who are Dukes' masters.'' 
 
 They are implicit in his critical creed: "It is dog- 
 matic, because it is written from a definite stand- 
 point, and its judgments depend upon an absolute 
 standard of value. To write of any group of authors, 
 dramatic or otherwise, without such a standard, is 
 to debase the coinage of criticism and to insult the 
 artist."^ The Dukes standard is what he calls 
 modernity. His modernists are "in touch with, or 
 in advance of, the thought of their own time; . . . 
 their work breaks new paths, offers new forms and 
 modes of expression; . . . the men and women 
 they create do not merely reflect the conditions 
 under which they live and the spirit of their age, 
 but are dynamic, developing continually, offering a 
 criticism of those conditions, and so projecting 
 themselves into the future and making history." 
 Mere imitation gives way to selection; description 
 yields to interpretation. Nor does modernity depend 
 upon modern subject-matter. "Hugo von Hof- 
 mannsthal, who has hitherto based most of his plays 
 
 > Modem Dramatists. By Ashley Dukes. Chicago (n. d.).
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 31 
 
 either upon the tragic legends of Greece or the 
 Italian Renaissance period, is clearly more of a 
 'modern' than Sudermann, who writes of present- 
 day Germany." And, more to our present purpose, 
 in his consideration of John Galsworthy: "It should 
 be the tritest commonplace to say that no play- 
 wright can make great drama out of little people."^ 
 Jameson, in the main, takes the Dukes standard 
 and covers much the same ground in greater detail. 
 Like him, she pivots modern drama upon Strind- 
 berg and Ibsen; with him, she repudiates the whole 
 realistic production. "Expressed in another form, 
 this distinction between good and bad artists be- 
 comes a question whether the artist has given of a 
 superabundant vitality to re-create life, or whether 
 he has merely taken the facts of life to manufacture 
 his work. The first is a sign of strength, the latter 
 a sign of weakness. The first gave us the finest 
 drama of Ibsen; the latter is giving us the plays of 
 Mr. Arnold Bennet." . . . "The drama of to- 
 day is a drama of anarchy; dramatists have forgotten 
 how to imagine finely. They offer us studies of little 
 lives, with nothing of inspiration in them, and they 
 demand praise for fidelity or sincerity; meaning 
 thereby failure to interpret the life they draw, or 
 to create other than a bad copy of what all can see 
 and need no imagination to comprehend. 
 It is Nietzsche's great aesthetic service that he hated 
 this anarchy of the non-artistic, teaching that 
 artists should not see things as they are — they 
 should see them fuller, simpler, stronger.' "^ . . . 
 "Dramatically speaking, souls are not equal. Great 
 plays cannot be written of little souls. "^ 
 
 ' Modern Dramatists. Page 149. 
 
 * Modern Drama in Europe. XIII — XXVI.. 
 
 • Modern Drama in Europe. Page 12.
 
 32 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 To all intents and purposes, then, Jameson and 
 Dukes see the passing drama from the same seats. 
 Neither book is as well known in the United States 
 as it should be, and it is safe to predict for each a 
 growing importance in the library of the theatre. 
 Each is as stern with art as it asks the artist to be 
 with life. Each, in its dogmatism, possesses almost 
 the rigidity of an ethical code, with Jameson in- 
 sisting upon the joy born of power and all but reject- 
 ing any sympathy born of understanding, which is 
 itself a power. Yet toward the end she can write, 
 "To-morrow sleeps in each man's brain," and 
 throughout her valiant volume she dances in the 
 sun of this life's perpetual discontent, aglow with 
 the zest of high adventure. 
 
 Less dogmatic, as exclusive of mediocrity but 
 closer to the core of artistic impulse, is the so-called 
 Carlyle-Goethe-Croce-Spingarn theory to which Mr, 
 Joel Elias Spingarn, in a volume important inversely 
 to its modest proportions, first called serious atten- 
 tion. The battle between the objective, dogmatic 
 critic and the impressionist is as "old as the earliest 
 reflection on the subject of poetry. Modern litera- 
 ture begins with the same doubts, the same quarrel. 
 In the sixteenth century the Italians were formulat- 
 ing that classical code which imposed itself on Europe 
 for two centuries, and which, even in our generation, 
 Brunetiere has merely disguised under the trappings 
 of natural science. They evolved the dramatic 
 unities,^ and all those rules which Pope imagined to 
 be 'Nature still but Nature methodized,' But at 
 
 ' Inasmuch as this is not a book for specialists, I may be pardoned the re- 
 mark that Aristotle did not erect the so-called three unities, which, as Spingarn 
 states, were later evolved. The simple fact needs frequent restatement, for one 
 is constantly meeting, in the most up-to-date works, references to Aristotle as the 
 originator of the famous trio of unities. "It is difficult to believe," writes Gilbert
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 33 
 
 the very moment when their spokesman Scaliger 
 was saying that 'Aristotle is our perpetual emperor, 
 the perpetual dictator of the fine arts,' another 
 Italian, Pietro Aretino, was insisting that there is no 
 rule except the whim of genius and no standard of 
 judgment beyond individual taste. "^ 
 
 To the Germans of the epoch stretching from 
 Herder to Hegel we owe the enunciation of the doc- 
 trine of art as expression. Carlyle interpreted it to 
 the English. " 'There is a destructive and a creative 
 or constructive criticism,' said Goethe; the first 
 measures and tests literature according to mechan- 
 ical standards, the second answers the fundamental 
 questions: 'What has the writer proposed to himself 
 to do? and How far has he succeeded in carrying 
 out his own plan?' " Carlyle, in his essay on Goethe, 
 almost uses Goethe's own words when he says that 
 the critic's first and foremost duty is to make plain 
 to himself "what the poet's aim really and truly was, 
 how the task he has to do stood before his eye, and 
 how far, with such materials as were afforded him, 
 he has fulfilled it." 
 
 Such a conception of criticism involves a radical 
 revision of views. Rules, as rules, disappear. Since 
 each work of art is a law unto itself, genres^ repre- 
 senting an artificial system of cataloguing, follow the 
 rules into oblivion. Style, in the sense of rhetorical 
 embellishment, goes with them, for the work of art 
 is an indivisible entity. Moral judgment of literature 
 becomes an anachronism. "To say that poetry is 
 
 Norwood in his Greek Tragedy (London, 1920, note 1, page 42), "that Aristotle 
 never mentions the 'Three Unities.' On the Unity of Action he has, of course, 
 much to say; the Unity of Time is dismissed in one casual sentence. As to the 
 Unity of Place there is not a word. It is signally violated in the Eumenides and 
 the Ajax." 
 
 ' Creative Criticism. See the entire first lecture, pages 3-44. 
 
 3
 
 34 THE DR.AMA OF TR.ANSITION 
 
 moral or immoral is as meaningless as to say that 
 an equilateral triangle is moral and an isosceles 
 triangle immoral, or to speak of the immorality of a 
 musical chord or a Gothic arch." . . . "No 
 critic of authority now tests Hterature by the stand- 
 ards of ethics." 
 
 It follows, from the Crocean conception of art as 
 successful expression, that technique cannot be sep- 
 arate from art any more than can style — that the 
 epoch and the environment of an artist's labors are 
 of interest as history or sociology, but not as art. 
 These are assumed; the central interest is trans- 
 ferred to what the poet has done with his material. 
 If genres disappear, so must the conception of the 
 evolution of literature and of the origins of art, 
 "for art has no origin separate from man's life." 
 
 I am not asking the reader to accept Cxoce's 
 philosophy; I am trying to prepare him for an appre- 
 ciation of the Croce-Spingarn attitude toward the 
 drama. "We have done," says Spingarn, "with the 
 confusion between the drama and the theatre which 
 has permeated criticism for over half a century. 
 The theory that the drama is not a creative art, 
 but a mere product of the physical exigencies of the 
 theatre, is as old as the sixteenth century. An 
 Italian scholar of that age was the first to maintain 
 that plays are intended to be acted on a stage, under 
 certain restricted physical conditions, and before a 
 large and heterogeneous crowd. Dramatic perform- 
 ance has developed out of these conditions, and the 
 test of its excellence is therefore the pleasure it 
 gives to the mixed audience that supports it. This 
 idea was taken hold of by some of the German 
 romanticists for the purpose of justifying the Shake-
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 35 
 
 spearean drama in its apparent divergence from the 
 classical 'rules.' Shakespeare cannot be judged by 
 the rules of the Greek theatre (so ran their argument), 
 for the drama is an inevitable product of theatrical 
 conditions. These conditions in Elizabethan Eng- 
 land were not the same as those of Pereclean Athens; 
 and it is therefore absurd to judge Shakespeare's 
 practice by that of Sophocles. Here, at least, the 
 idea helped to bring Shakespeare home to many 
 new hearts by ridding the age of mistaken preju- 
 dices, and served a useful purpose, as a specious 
 argument may persuade men to contribute to a 
 noble work, or a mad fanatic may rid the world of 
 a tyrant. But with this achievement its usefulness 
 but not its life was ended. It has been developed 
 into a system and become a dogma of dramatic 
 critics; it is our contemporary equivalent for the 
 'ru.les' of seventeenth-century pedantry. As a mat- 
 ter of fact, the dramatic artist is to be judged by 
 no other standard than that applied to any other 
 creative artist: What has he tried to express, and 
 how has he expressed it? It is true that the theatre 
 is not only an art but a business, and the so-called 
 'success' of a play is of vital interest to the theatre 
 in so far as it is a commercial undertaking. 'The 
 success may justify the playwright,' said an old 
 French critic, 'but it may not be so easy to justify 
 the success.' The test of 'success' is an economic 
 test, and concerns not art or the criticism of art, 
 but political economy. Valuable contributions to 
 economic and social history have been made by 
 students who have investigated the changing con- 
 ditions of the theatre and the vicissitudes of taste 
 on the part of theatrical audiences; but these have
 
 36 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 the same relation to criticism and to the drama as 
 art that a history of the pubHsher's trade and its 
 influence on the personal fortunes of poets would 
 bear to the history of poetry." 
 
 This severe scrutiny of all extraneous elements is 
 the more important since here, in the United States, 
 technique has long been a word to conjure with, 
 and of late there has been a tendency to stress the 
 appurtenances of drama — the scenery, the lighting, 
 the stage mechanism — to the hurt of the creative 
 spectator. Bound up with this, too, is another 
 problem of criticism: the relation of the printed to 
 the acted play. 
 
 "The first to challenge this theory of the drama" 
 (i. e., the so-called "closet drama") "was a scholar 
 and critic of the Renaissance, Lodovico Castelvetro, 
 who published an Italian version of Aristotle's 
 Poetics in 1570. . . . Castelvetro certainly takes 
 issue with Aristotle on the question whether the 
 drama exhibits its real power in the study or in the 
 theatre. 'Non 6 vero quello che Aristotele dice,' he 
 says: it simply is not true, what Aristotle says, that 
 the value of a play can be discovered by reading in 
 the same way as by theatrical representation, for 
 the reason that a few highly gifted and imaginative 
 men might be able to judge a play in this way, 
 whereas everyone, the gifted and ignorant alike, 
 can follow and appreciate a play when it is acted. 
 . . . In order to understand what the drama is, 
 and what is the peculiar pleasure that it afl^ords to 
 men, we must examine the conditions of the physical 
 theatre and realize what is to be found there. The 
 fact that the drama is intended for the stage, that
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 37 
 
 it is to be acted, must form the basis of every true 
 theory of tragedy or comedy."^ 
 
 This prepares us for Diderot's exaltation of the 
 actor as the real creator of the play, and to his theory 
 of what we now call the psychology of the crowd, 
 whicli, as Spingarn points out, had been foreshadowed 
 in Bacon's De Augmentis^ as well as by Castelvetro 
 himself. Lessing, in his Hamburgische Dramaturgic, 
 returns to the Aristotelian conception. "Indeed, he 
 forestalls Lamb's theory that a great play cannot be 
 properly acted at all: 'A masterpiece is rarely as 
 well represented as it is written; mediocrity always 
 fares better with the actors.' " 
 
 The circle of contradictions is complete. Here 
 we have Lewisohn saying that a naturally gifted 
 dramatist need never see the inside of a theatre; 
 and here is Lamb, supported by Spingarn, averring 
 that the audience may remain away as well. The 
 exploitation of crowd-psychology I am ready to 
 dismiss without recall. It is for the most part a 
 concession to the lower tastes of the mob, which 
 can wear frock coats as well as smocks. No one 
 hears anything about crowd psychology when a 
 poet reads his verses in a public hall; everyone con- 
 demns the orator who makes his cheap appeal to 
 this very characteristic of crowds. That appeal is 
 
 ' Spingarn, Creative Criticism. Pages 47-96, lecture on Dramatic Criticism and 
 The Theatre. ^ . 
 
 The best-known contemporary defender of the Castelvetro attitude m this 
 country is Brander Matthews. In his essay on Francisque Sarcey (Studies on the 
 Stage) he says: "A play is written not to be read, primarily, but to be acted. 
 M. Coquelin has recently pointed out that if Shakespeare and Moliere . . . 
 were both careless as to the printing of their plays, it was because they both knew 
 that these plays were written for the theatre, and that only in the theatre could 
 they be judged properly. Seen by the light of the lamps, a play has quite another 
 complexion from what it bears in the library. Passages pale and dull . . . 
 when read coldly by the eyes, are lighted up by the inner fire of passion when 
 presented in the theatre; and the solid structure of the action, without which a 
 drama is naught, may stand forth in bolder relief on the stage." 
 
 r"' 
 (j C <-^^- V*; ^'^^-
 
 38 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 just as cheap when made in an auditorium that 
 houses a drama. Back of every work of art, more 
 important than the nation or the people that gave 
 it birth, stands the individual, the personality. 
 Though as a human heing he may form part of the 
 crowd, as an artist he is its enemy, or at least inde- 
 pendent of its dictates. The crowd, indeed, is the 
 very symbol of that imperfect reality which the 
 artist would not so much escape as make over. 
 Though the product be read or heard or witnessed 
 by the thousands, it is primarily a bridge of expres- 
 sion leading from one to one. Art being, then, the 
 communication of significant personality, the ma- 
 terial and the milieu and the manner are secondary; 
 better still, they are incidental attributes. They 
 are not the essence of art, which lies in a personal 
 permutation of those elements into an organic 
 whole. When the artist's work finds an under- 
 standing goal, the circuit of personality is complete. 
 Art begins and ends in the individual. For it, the 
 "crowd" simply does not exist. 
 
 And, from the standpoint of Croce and Spingarn, 
 representing aesthetic criticism, "the theatre simply 
 does not exist." To such criticism, "a theatre means 
 only the appearance at any one time or in any one 
 country, as Croce puts it, of a 'series of artistic 
 souls.' When these artistic souls appear theatres 
 wiy spring up like mushrooms to house them, and 
 the humblest garret will serve as an eyrie for their 
 art. But all these external conditions are merely 
 dead material which has no aesthetic significance 
 outside the poet's soul; and only in the poet's art 
 should we seek to find them." . . . "To say, 
 therefore, that playwrights write for the stage, that
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 39 
 
 poets write for money, that painters paint to be 
 'hung,' is to confuse mere stimulus with creative 
 impulse." . . . "For the true dramatic critic will trans- 
 fer his interest from the drama itself to the 'laws of 
 the theatre' or the 'conditions of the theatre' only 
 when the lover studies the 'laws of love' and the 
 'conditions of love' instead of the lady's beauty and 
 his own soul." 
 
 The Croce-Spingarn criterion of pure esthetics is 
 a severe discipline. Although, as a strong person- 
 ality and a merry impressionist, George Jean Nathan 
 accepts many of its implications, he rebels against 
 the acceptance of any one theory. "There are as 
 many sound and apt species of criticism as there 
 are works to be criticized. To say that art must be 
 criticized only after this formula or after that is to 
 say that art must be contrived only out of this 
 formula or out of that. As every work of art is an 
 entity, a thing in itself, so is every piece of criticism j 
 an entity, a thing in itself. That Thus Spake Zar- 
 athustra must inevitably be criticized by the canons 
 of the identical 'theory' with which one criticizes 
 Tristan and Isolde is surely difficult reasoning. 
 
 "To the Goethe-Carlyle doctrine that the critic's 
 duty lies alone in discerning the artist's aim, his 
 point of view, and, finally, his execution of the task 
 before him, it is easy enough to subscribe, but 
 certainly this is not a 'theory' of criticism so much 
 as it is the foundation for a theory. To advance it 
 as a theory, full-grown, full-fledged and flapping, 
 as it has been advanced by the Italian Croce and 
 his admirers, is to publish the preface to a book 
 without the book itself. Accepted as a theory 
 complete in itself, it fails by virtue of its several
 
 40 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 undeveloped intrinsic problems, chief among which 
 is its neglect to consider the undeniable fact that, 
 though each work of art is indubitably an entity 
 and so to be considered, there is yet in creative art 
 what may be termed an aesthetic genealogy that 
 bears heavily upon comprehensive criticism and that 
 renders the artist's aim, his point of view, and his 
 execution of the task before him susceptible to a 
 criticism predicated in a measure upon the work of 
 the sound artist who has just preceded him. 
 
 "The Goethe-Carlyle hypothesis is a little too 
 liberal. It calls for qualifications. It gives the 
 artist too much ground, and the critic too little. 
 To discern the artist's aim, to discern the artist's 
 point of view, arc phrases that require an amount 
 of plumbing and not a few footnotes. It is entirely 
 possible, for example, that the immediate point of 
 view of an artist may be faulty, yet the execution 
 of his immediate task exceedingly fine. If carefully 
 planned triumph in art is an entitv, so also may be 
 undesigned triumph. . . . All things considered, 
 it were perhaps better that the critical theory under 
 discussion, if it be accepted at all, be turned end 
 foremost: that the artist's execution of the task 
 before him be considered either apart from his aim 
 and point of view, or that it be considered first, and 
 then — with not too much insistence upon them — 
 his point of view and his aim. ... In its very 
 effort to avoid pigeon-holing, the Goethe-Carlyle 
 theory pigeon-holes itself. . . . That there may 
 not be contradictions in the contentions here set 
 forth I am not sure. But I advance no fixed, definite 
 theory of my own; I advance merely contradictions 
 of certain of the phases of theories held by others,
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 41 
 
 and contradictions are ever in the habit of begetting 
 contradictions. . . . The Goethe-Carlyle theory, 
 properly rigid and unyielding so far as emotional 
 groundlings are concerned, may, I believe, at times 
 safely be chucked under the chin and offered a com- 
 munication of gipsy ardour by the critic whose 
 emotions are the residuum of trial, test, and ex- 
 perience."^ 
 
 Nathan, whose views upon the crowd in the theatre 
 coincide quite with those of Spingarn and the Cro- 
 ceans, takes an opposite stand upon the relation 
 between the printed play and the acted. For once, 
 at least, he is in definite agreement with Brander 
 Matthews, thus proving that criticism, like politics, 
 betimes makes strange bedfellows. "To hold that 
 the drama as an art may achieve its highest end 
 read by the individual and not acted in the theatre, 
 is to hold that music as an art may achieve its 
 highest end played by but one instrument and not 
 by an orchestra. The theatre is the drama's or- 
 chestra. Upon the wood of its boards and the wind 
 of its puppets is the melody of drama in all its full 
 richness sounded."^ 
 
 Something valid there seems in Nathan's attitude 
 toward the Goethe-Carlyle theory that has been 
 elaborated into a rather formidable apparatus by 
 Croce. More valid than ever, indeed, when we con- 
 front some of the Italian's followers, who become 
 more Crocean than Croce. Here is Mr. Ainslie, for 
 example, in the preface to his translation of Ariosto^ 
 Shakespeare^ and Corneille, asserting that "Croce's 
 theory of the independence and autonomy of the 
 
 ' George Jean Nathan. The Critic and the Drama, chapter on .(Esthetic Juris- 
 prudence, pages 3-26. 
 
 • The Critic and The Drama. Chapter on The Place of the Theater, pages 65-66.
 
 42 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 aesthetic fact, which is intuition-expressiori, and of 
 the essentially lyrical character of all art, is the only 
 one that completely and satisfactorily explains the 
 problem of poetry and the fine arts." But Croce 
 himself, in his most recent work, gives the best 
 ariswer to such self-destructive superlativity and to 
 Nathan's impatience with too tightly ringed theory. 
 Commenting upon the word "illogica," he writes 
 that it means "not entirely harmonized," and ap- 
 plies to the system of every man and every phil- 
 osopher, who always possesses some aspect not har- 
 monized and not logical. This aspect, he goes on, 
 is precisely the source whence springs the new 
 thought or the so-called new progress.** It is in- 
 dicative that Croce, in this very passage that treats 
 of the illogicality of Dante's system, parenthetically 
 applies the observation to the systems of all men. 
 Artistic personality thus is a triumph over logic, 
 and Nathan's numerous contradictions, to add yet 
 another to his list, may not artistically be con- 
 tradicted. 
 
 We are not yet done, however, with the varied 
 attitudes of our divergent free spirits. For, just as 
 Lewisohn and Spingarn seem to flout the theatre 
 and the audience, so now comes a young Scotchman 
 and suggests that perhaps criticism itself is false at 
 the very core. 
 
 "What," asks Edwin Muir, "if all the assump- 
 tions on which we have thus far judged art should 
 be — erroneous? What if every system of aesthetics 
 and every criticism should be, not merely wrong 
 here and there, but, by their very existence, the 
 standing, immemorial misunderstanding of art.'' In 
 
 » La Poesia di Dante. Benedetto Croce. Ban, 1921, page 55.
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 43 
 
 short, what if questions regarding the function and 
 the 'meaning' of art simply should not be asked at 
 all, and, in any case, should never be answered? 
 These inquiries have drawn forth and written this 
 edifying essay. ^ 
 
 "My thesis is that art can be comprehended on one 
 hypothesis only, that this hypothesis concerns the 
 universe, and that, in the history of the universe, 
 it has very seldom been consciously held. The hun- 
 dred and one philosophers who have constructed 
 theories of art have certainly not held it: their sys- 
 tems of aesthetics are to be found, each killed with 
 an appropriate comment, in the terrifying appendix 
 to Signor Croce's book. Signor Croce made only 
 one error in that almost infallible work: he should 
 finally, as an exercise in impartiality, have sent his 
 own theory to the guillotine and have become his 
 own executioner. But unfortunately he could not 
 refute himself."^ 
 
 That hypothesis Muir states in the following 
 terms: "Art delights us precisely because it takes 
 us out of the realm of duty, of reason, and of neces- 
 sity. It does not moralize or humanize us nor re- 
 mind us of eternal justice. It carries us into a 
 world which is neither necessary nor necessitated, 
 but perfectly arbitrary and free, and gives us freely 
 something inconceivably rich and magical, not be- 
 cause we deserve it nor even because we 'need' it, 
 but simply as a final golden superfluous drop to 
 our filled cup. Delight is the feeling which we ex- 
 
 ' See the two articles on The Truth About Art in The Freeman for February 
 15 and March 15, 1922. 
 
 ' Croce could not very well commit philosophic suicide, of course; but the 
 reference to his casual passage in the book on Dante, which I give several par- 
 agraphs back, reveals him in a fairly human, even humble, attitude. That one 
 reference indeed might be made the basis for a negation of all philosophy.
 
 44 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 perience when we receive something great or beau- 
 tiful without needing it. And art gives us this 
 feeling. . . . The plainest truth about art is that 
 it is superfluous, and springs out of superfluity; 
 to give it a use one has to strain and falsify not only 
 art, but the terms one uses. ... In the end, the 
 presence in the universe of superfluity is only made 
 possible by setting at the ultimate bounds of ex- 
 istence chance, irrationality, folly. Then all things 
 become, as they are, possible.' Then freedom is 
 gained perhaps for the first time. This choice, once 
 it is made, commits us to several assumptions. 
 For instance, that there is no connexion whatever 
 between a thing's necessity — to the 'world' or to 
 anything else- and its right to exist. Everything 
 exists as a perfectly unnecessary thing: we ourselves, 
 philosophies, literatures, and States, as well as 
 butterflies and planets. It is only after they have 
 come into existence that we make them into neces- 
 saries. We are not entitled to condemn anything 
 because it has no function; on the contrary, to be 
 without a function is to be free, to be rich. The 
 greatest things have been done by men who have 
 had no function; for to do a thing freely is to be 
 great. 
 
 From which premises Mr. Muir deduces the su- 
 perfluity of that other art, criticism. But not on 
 that account should it be abolished, any more than 
 art itself. 
 
 "From all this it follows — that criticism should be 
 abolished.^ On the contrary. It has the same right 
 to exist as every other superfluous thing. Its justi- 
 fication is that it fulfills no use; that it is, like art, 
 
 ' So. too. the Russian epigrammatic philosopher Leo Shestov, one of whose 
 books is actually named in its English Version, AU Things Are Possible.
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 45 
 
 expression. But if a thing is not useful it cannot be 
 important? This is the great orthodox heresy about 
 the universe which makes it such a dull place to 
 live in. The superfluous things are the important 
 things, the justification of life, the saving grace 
 whereby the useful and the necessary are redeemed. 
 For life also is finally expression, and not task nor 
 instrument." 
 
 Mr. Muir, then, has been playing with paradox. 
 In the very act of denying art and criticism he 
 creates them. He is like the vaudevillian who ex- 
 claims, "Women! women! We can't get along with 
 them and we can't get along without them!" Now, 
 that vaudevillian has merely been expressing a 
 fundamentally useless and only half-serious rebellion 
 against an indispensable half of life. So, too, Muir, 
 who cannot get along with criticism and cannot get 
 along without it. 
 
 V 
 
 We agreed, at the outset, not to look to criticism 
 for certainty; surely we have not at any moment 
 here been in danger of encountering it. But, on 
 the other hand, we have encountered something far 
 more precious: a high sense of adventure, of per- 
 sonal freedom, intellectual courage. One thing 
 should, moreover, be definitely impressed before 
 abandoning this survey: that this progression away 
 from fixed standards not only does not shirk the 
 burdens of intellectual effort, but adds to them. 
 It is not that bugaboo of irresponsibility and license 
 as opposed to responsible liberty. There is nothing 
 more intellectually degrading than a supine adher- 
 ence to literary authority; it numbs and even de- 
 stroys the personality. There is nothing more ex-
 
 46 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 hilarating, on the other hand, than the freedom that 
 comes with true selfhood; far from shirking, even 
 in the moral sense, it seeks new responsibilities for 
 the sheer joy of vanquishing them. It is the eternal 
 spirit of nonconformity, conforming only to its own 
 true self. 
 
 From these general considerations we come now 
 to concerns more immediate, if less related, to pure 
 criticism. In a book aiming to throw light upon the 
 current drama in a number of countries the question 
 of nationalism naturally arises. In an era of psycho- 
 analysis, during which the shadow (and sunshine) 
 of Freud is cast upon the novel, the influence of 
 that noted investigator upon the drama is of his- 
 torical and social interest. In an epoch that has, 
 in our own country, witnessed the resurgence of 
 Puritanism, the ancient killjoy of censorship enters 
 a second childhood and compels the artist to take 
 up the cudgels anew. I will deal with these matters 
 summarily, even at the risk of appearing dogmatic. 
 And if a flash of temper gleam forth it is not the 
 lesser part of social criticism — as of any other 
 variety — to be human as well as superior. 
 
 Nationalism in Art. In the sense of propaganda, 
 nationalism has no more place in art than morality 
 or any other set of rules. Neither, for that matter, 
 has internationality. It is an illusion, for example, 
 that advanced drama must follow economics in 
 theme and make the proletariat its hero. In the 
 artistic sense, the Greek dramas are more con- 
 temporaneous with us than many a self-conscious 
 proletarian drama that collapses from sheer hollow- 
 ness. All these attitudes, however, may serve as 
 the passional centre from which radiates a full
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 47 
 
 circle of human significance. Hauptmann's Weavers y 
 incidentally, makes good propaganda for the down- 
 trodden; but that is not the core of the play, which 
 is revelatory and not hortatory. So, too, if Gals- 
 worthy's Strife attracts the radical element, it had 
 its origin in something deeper than a desire to sup- 
 port the working class. Indeed, it is common ex- 
 perience, at every performance of the play, to hear 
 the members of the audience take sides, particularly 
 during the meeting of the strikers' representatives 
 with the company's board of directors. A play that 
 takes sides, however, may be excellent thought, 
 admirable humanity, and what not else, but as a 
 work of art (and that is what we are now interested 
 in) it is as dishonest as a game with marked cards 
 or with loaded dice. So, too, the "national" play. 
 It may be fine patriotism or w"hatever you like, but 
 it is not art, unless that nationalism or internation- 
 alism is at the center, not at the periphery, of the 
 action, — unless these elements are ingredients of the 
 inspiration (if we may talk of art in terms of the 
 cook book), and not the preordained end toward 
 which all events are willy-nilly to be directed. If 
 art is not a pulpit, neither is it a recruiting station. 
 The dramatist, moreover, who writes a play as 
 a conscious citizen of a nation to which he ascribes 
 certain "national" characteristics nms the risk of 
 vitiating his work through false assumptions, even 
 as the critic who interprets that play in the light of 
 those same assumptions. We take it so easily for 
 granted that every German must write ponderously, 
 forgetting the winged words of Nietzsche; that every 
 Spaniard must wallow in blood spilt at the behest 
 of the point of honor, forgetting a Benavente who
 
 48 ^THF DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 floiints all the canons of home-made and imported 
 dramaturgy; that Russians must be morbid, what 
 though Gogol's Revizor punctures the theory. This 
 is not to say that national characteristics do not 
 exist, or that they lack importance in art. But 
 just in proportion as the artist accepts them un- 
 questioningly, and the critic, too, he surrenders part 
 of that free personality which is the sign and seal 
 of the creative genius. 
 
 In literature, nationalism is a term that requires 
 extensive modification even in the minds of scholars, 
 who forget the immense importance of that cross- 
 fertilization which is always going on in the realm 
 of ideas. And ideas have no country. 
 
 National personality is, of course, a different 
 matter. It has been often explained, but in few 
 places, recently, so well as in Sefior Madariaga's 
 book of essays, Shelley and Calder6n. "It is, indeed, 
 in relation to national character that the study of 
 foreign literature is most illuminating, and, if there 
 are such things as foreign literatures, it is less to the 
 multiplicity of languages than to the multiplicity of 
 national characters that we owe them — witness the 
 differences between American and English, Swiss 
 and German, Spanish and Spanish-American liter- 
 atures. A national character may be defined as a 
 set of tendencies determined by the relative strength 
 of the tendencies which compose it. All tendencies 
 are in all men, and that is the basis of human unity 
 and solidarity. It cannot be said that one people is 
 intelligent and another one is not; that one lacks 
 imagination and another one moral sense. All 
 peoples possess all the elementary essences of human 
 nature; but all peoples do not possess them in equal
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 49 
 
 proportions. Hence national character. For a dif- 
 ference in quality is but a synthesis of quantitative 
 differences."^ 
 
 We may sum up the attitude toward nationalism 
 in drama by saying that when it appears as some- 
 thing consciously imposed by the artist upon his 
 material, it is extraneous, — an excrescence, a par- 
 asite, and vitiating; when it is exhaled from his 
 work as one of its integral characteristics, it is part 
 and parcel of the creative personality and, as such, 
 a component of art. 
 
 Freud and the Contemporary Drama. With the 
 psychoanalysts, the various transformations of the 
 theory of sexual repression and their importance to 
 neuropathy we have here no concern. It was cer- 
 tain from the start, however, that Freud was to 
 have an extensive influence upon the literature of 
 the day, particularly as literature itself, from the 
 Freudian standpoint, is a species of dreaming, of 
 wish-fulfillment, amenable to the dream interpreta- 
 tion that has brought fame to this Viennese Jew. 
 Freud himself applied his methods to literary 
 products. In our own country Jones, Coriat, Pres- 
 cott, and others have done the same. The very 
 name of the most widely known "complex" is taken 
 from a Greek tragedy, as is its sister situation. Mr. 
 Albert Mordell, in two books,^ has sought to apply 
 the Freudian method to criticism itself. But psycho- 
 analytic criticism of literature, at best, uses the 
 literary product as a starting-point for biological 
 analysis; it does not properly enter the sesthetic field. 
 Its true function is elucidation, not appreciation, — 
 
 ' Shelley and Calderdn. By Salvador de Madariaga. New York (n. d.)- 
 ' The Erotic Motive in Literature. New York, 1919. The Literature of Ecstasy. 
 New York, 1921. 
 4
 
 50 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 understanding and not beauty, science and not art. 
 It may explain the genesis of a work of art, hut aids 
 aesthetic enjoyment only through whatever* light it 
 may cast upon the foundations ot personality. This, 
 it may be added, is all that the chief Freudians 
 attempt, and they have without a doubt brought to 
 literary investigation some of the most important 
 processes that students have learned.' 
 
 The assertion that we all live a common life 
 in the unconscious gave to universality in art a 
 new meaning; we no longer scratch Russians to 
 find Tartars, we scratch civilization and come upon 
 savagery. More important still, the Preudians 
 centered interest upon the necessity of the liberated 
 personality; the literary process thus becomes syn- 
 onymous with released repressions. Writers, always 
 in search of new themes, were bound to seize upon 
 the unknown continent discovered by the new 
 Columbus; they were bound, too, to render them- 
 selves and the discoverer ridiculous by over-emphasis, 
 misapplication, inartistic use of material, and all the 
 other exaggerations into which novelty beguiles the 
 unwary. Sophocles, writing as an artist probing 
 the human soul, knew nothing about psychoanalysis, 
 nor about the (Edipus situation, yet Freud went to 
 him for a symbol; the difference between the an- 
 cient Greek and Mr. D. H. Lawrence is that the 
 one knew nothing about these "complexes" and the 
 other — despite his natural gifts as a novelist and a 
 
 ' I would refer the interested reader to a recent volume issued at WaahinRton: 
 Psychoanalysis and the Drama, by Smith Ely Jeliffe and Louise Brink, 1922. 
 The plays considered as texts for psychoanalytic doctrine are Chesterton's Magic, 
 Gliddens and Marcin's Eyes of Youth, Raphael's Peter Ihhetson, Tolstoi's Re- 
 demplion, Kennedy's The Army WUh Banners, Benrimo-Ha2elton's The Willow 
 Tree, Hazelton-Cochrane-Benrimo's The Yellow Jacket, Barrie's Dear Brutus and 
 Benelli's The Jest. The danger of such studies as these is that value as a text 
 may be confused with asthetic value, and I am not sure that the authors have not 
 fallen more than once into this very error.
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 51 
 
 dissector of souls — seems to know nothing else. 
 Sophocles, to continue the strange comparison for 
 the sake of our point, anticipated Freud by being 
 true to human nature; Lawrence, particularly of 
 late, is true rather to Freud. I do not disparage his 
 novels, of which I admire the earliest most. I do, 
 however, believe that the author's self-conscious 
 Freudianism has spoiled page after page of his work; 
 much in this should have been saved for his little 
 treatise, which, thank Heaven, he did not decide to 
 turn into a novel as well, with all its misty mysticism 
 and involved psycho-poetry. 
 
 We shall note, then, in one country after the 
 other, how the newer dramatists, like their fellow 
 novelists, were quick to seize upon the psycho- 
 analytic suggestions: Glaspell and O'Neill in the 
 United States, not to mention the lesser fry, who 
 were sure to misunderstand and garble; Evreinov 
 in Russia, whose monodrama, as I try to show, 
 fairly follows the Freudian dream-structure and at- 
 tempts to apply the single-person point of view; 
 some of the "grotesque" school of Italy, who, not 
 content, like Wedekind, to write plays that sug- 
 gest a nightmare, actually direct that the actors 
 shall employ the nightmare technique; the German 
 Expressionists. Not that the dream mechanism is 
 new upon the stage; but the contemporary dramatist, 
 as often as not, makes a conscious use of it as the 
 result of the Freudianism in the air; and by Freud- 
 ianism I mean not merely the particular theory of 
 Freud, but the psychoanalytic atmosphere in gen- 
 eral. To the critic the question is, not how success- 
 fully the artist has proved Freud, but how success- 
 fully he has used this suggestion, as any other, to
 
 52 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 create a vital play. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, 
 all did it before Freud himself was dreamed of; 
 others will do it in spite of the contagion of Freud- 
 ianism. Each generation mj.ist have its intellectual 
 slang of thought, if so we may call it. The day be- 
 fore yesterday we spoke in terms of Spencer and 
 Darwin; yesterday it was Nietzsche; this morning 
 it was Freud, this afternoon Einstein. To-morrow 
 — ? These are but incidentals to the artist, who 
 must speak a language of all time; if Freud can 
 provide the inner stimulus, let it be he; or any other, 
 provided the work of art appear. 
 
 Ceusorship of the Stage. Mention of Freud and 
 censorship in the same breath tempts one to amusing 
 animadversions upon the psychology of the reformer. 
 Somewhere the irreverent Mencken has expressed a 
 fear that few of them would be equal to the most 
 ordinary temptations; as Freud might put it, their 
 very super-activity as reformers is itsell a form of 
 combating the impulses within them which they 
 would throttle in others. But I leave this to the 
 psychopaths, who, I hope, will make a good job of 
 it. My own concern here is with the censors and 
 the stage; the stage daily seems to be getting the 
 worst of it. 
 
 To state my personal attitude in the shortest pos- 
 sible form: I am unequivocally opposed to any 
 form of censorship whatsoever. Rather than yield 
 to the reformers on the most minor point, as 
 a playwright I would withdraw from*the field and 
 write plays to be printed for private distribution. 
 Let us distinguish between art and business, how- 
 ever. There is a fortune invested in the theatre as 
 a commercial institution; managers must live; so
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRTICISIM 53 
 
 must playwrights; if that hving coUides with power- 
 ful reformers, the managers — none too eager as a 
 body for the interests of art — are as business men 
 justified in seeking to placate the powers. But let 
 not these powers deceive themselves; they are not 
 advancing public morality one step by such a 
 "conversion" of the managers, who, were it possible, 
 would send them all a-packing at the first oppor- 
 tunity. Having said which, let us leave the man- 
 agers to their business, and may it prosper. 
 
 The censor has no more right to dictate to the 
 artist than has the manager himself. And to dic- 
 tate in matters of sex is to choke the stream at its 
 very source. Jameson has sneered at the importance 
 given to sex in the contemporary play, relegating it 
 as a factor in life to a position far below that of the 
 Nietzschean will to power. No doubt the future 
 will witness a diminished position occupied by sex 
 in daily thought and in art, for with a change in 
 attitude toward our moral problems — and there are 
 few things in history that change so often and that 
 agree in different countries so little during the same 
 eras — will come a lessening of the morbid preoccu- 
 pation with a beautiful well-spring that the eternal 
 censors have defiled. Yet, Jameson notwithstand- 
 ing, there will be such a preoccupation as long as 
 men are men and women, women; it is an eternal 
 theme; it is at the centre of life, and for the censor 
 ^to govern its expression is ridiculously like letting 
 the prison be run by the jail-birds. If a play is 
 frankly and commercially indecent, that is a prob- 
 lem for the police; we are not interested in it. The 
 artist, however, to the censor, is as east to west, 
 and never the twain shall meet. His business is
 
 54 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 self-expression and self-communication; just in so 
 far as he yields an inch of his ground to the enemy, 
 he surrenders so much of his birthright. Rather sex 
 rampant than any form of censorship, for at least 
 we should be sincere savages. There is no compro- 
 mise here; even thought of compromise is, on the 
 artist's part, surrender. Kor an author's society, 
 then, to treat with the reformers, may be good busi- 
 ness; it is high treason to art. To agree upon the 
 selection of a catholic body of censors may placate 
 the multitude and may educate the censorious; but 
 in principle it is just such high treason. P'or, at 
 bottom, the censorship represents the intnision of 
 theology. It is founded upon the very uncertain 
 proposition that the flesh is evil, — a transvaluation 
 of all art values. It knows nothing of the spirit, 
 much as it may prate about it. It is the negation 
 of art. 
 
 It presents, moreover, another danger, — that of 
 the censorship of ideas. Indeed, the censorship we 
 have just been discussing is nothing but control of a 
 central idea. From the attempt to control the ex- 
 pression of sex to that of controlling expression of 
 unpopular ideas upon economics, politics, and other 
 matters that involve the stability of institutions 
 favoring the dominance of class or caste, is but a 
 short step. Religious repression and politico- 
 economic oppression are ugly twin sisters. 
 
 "You're not a respectable man," says the cajol- 
 ing Mrs. Muskat, trying to flatter Liliom into re- 
 turning to his position at the merry-go-round. 
 "You're an artist." Well, let no such distinction 
 frighten us. Nor the curse of conformity that hangs 
 like a pall over the entire country, until a thinker
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 55 
 
 like Santayana may write: "Though it calls itself 
 the land of freedom, it is really the land of compul- 
 sions, and one of the greatest compulsions is that we 
 must think and feel alike. . . ." Censorship tends 
 to just such conformity; it is the denial of artistic 
 personality; as a member of the body politic, the 
 writer, if he be worthy of his salt, must fight it as 
 best he can; as an artist, he will ignore it. 
 
 And so we return to poor Liliom: "Nobody's 
 right — but they all think they are right. ... A 
 lot they know." One thing, however, we may 
 know: that amid the eternal uncertainty, we have 
 the right to select, for ourselves, our particular 
 views, amenable to such change as experience and 
 a deeper life may bring; that choosing is either our 
 own work or we are slaves. 
 
 "Every dramatist," Mr. Lewisohn has written, 
 "accepts or rejects the ideas upon which characters 
 act. He shapes the consequences of their actions 
 according to his sense of the quality of the ideas 
 that urge them on. Upon his view of the world, 
 upon his reaction to moral ideas, will depend his 
 choice and conduct of his fable and the end to which 
 he brings the lives of which he treats. It is a better 
 preparation for the career of a dramatist to have 
 watched the actions of a few villagers and to have 
 brooded over those actions at that spiritual core 
 where criticism and creation are one than to have 
 read all the manuals of play-writing and stagecraft 
 in the world and be an expert on lighting and dec- 
 oration. Shun the theatre. It is a place of confu- 
 sion for the dramatist. Beethoven wrote his sym- 
 phonies in a little room. They can be played by
 
 56 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 twenty men or by a hundred, in a barn or a temple. 
 The mechanism of production is not your business; 
 it is your servant. Your business is with man and 
 his world and the ideas that reconcile him to it or 
 drive him to despair. 
 
 "It is, then, his vision of the world and of the will 
 that dictates the dramatist's choice and treatment 
 of a fable. Accident has nothing to do with it; 
 ingenuity has nothing to do with it. You hear 
 stories of plays 'tinkered with on the road.' Mr. 
 Belasco takes a manuscript and rewrites it. A 
 dramatist whose play can be 'tinkered with' or re- 
 written or revised by an alien hand has not begun 
 to comprehend the elementary conditions of any 
 art. His play may not be inevitable under the as- 
 pect of eternity. He is but a man. He is, perhaps, 
 but a manikin. Hut it must seem inevitable to him. 
 It must be so interwoven with his protoundcst per- 
 ceptions, instincts, convictions, that he is willing to 
 labor for it, starve for it, die for it. Unless it is an 
 inseparable part of his own soul's integrity — it is 
 nothing. Why have the managers the habit of 
 demanding changes, revisions, adaptations for the 
 needs of this season, that theatre, a certain star? 
 Because they are not dealing with dramatists at 
 all, but with mechanics, journeymen, hacks. There 
 can be no compromise on this question. This is the 
 final test. Do you think that your play can be 
 changed by another or tor another's convenience or 
 use? Destroy it and work with your hands. This 
 does not mean that your play is perfect. Having 
 destroyed it, you yourself may relive its sources in 
 experience, dig deeper into your own soul, and 
 create it afresh. But if Mr. Belasco thinks he can
 
 CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 57 
 
 use it after laying upon it a judicious hand, be sure 
 that only the fire will cleanse it and your shame."^ 
 
 An age of transition is not one in which the highest 
 attainments of the drama may be studied. Yet it 
 may exhibit the sincere strivings of the artist and 
 reveal the lowly origins of future greatness. In any 
 case, as a human spectacle, it is absorbing. We turn 
 to it now, to view it in the hght of such liberal 
 principles as may have been gathered from the 
 preceding pages. We demand intellectual freedom 
 of the playwrights; we must begin by ourselves 
 possessing it. 
 
 ' World, Will, and Word, in The Literary Review, January 21, 1922.
 
 SPAIN
 
 SPAIN 
 
 JOSE ECHEGARAY 
 
 To all but his countrymen, Jose Echegaray was 
 the author of The Great Galeoto and little else; to 
 the history of his nation's drama he will perhaps 
 remain little more. Yet, when he passed away upon 
 September 15, 191 6, Spain lost one of the most 
 remarkable jfigures that it has reared in recent years. 
 For fatal fertility, for sheer versatility of talents, 
 he was notable even in a land that had produced a 
 Lope de Vega with his fifteen hundred dramas. 
 For four decades he fairly dominated the Spanish ) \ 
 stage, at the same time making for himself a repu- ' ^ 
 tation as scientist, mathematician, publicist, orator, 
 educator, moralist, and, I believe, authority upon 
 bridge construction. Perhaps it was this dazzling 
 career, rather than his few worthy plays, that in- 
 fluenced the Nobel commission, in 1904, to award I) 
 the prize for literature to him, in company of '' 
 the Provencal poet. Mistral. Surely the dramatic 
 output of the protean publicist had earned the dis- 
 tinction more through quantity than quality. Long 
 before 1904 his most significant work for the stage 
 had been completed. In English he had been known 
 through The Great Galeoto^ which has been trans- 
 lated a number of times and given upon the stage 
 in at least two acting versions: that by Maude 
 Banks and a freer (and not altogether adequate) 
 version by Charles Nirdligner, known as The World 
 
 61
 
 I 
 
 62 THE DRAMA OF TkANSITION 
 
 and His IVife, and acted by Faversham. One other 
 of his plays, Mariana^ was also once familiar to 
 English audiences in occasional perfornuinces by 
 Mrs. Patrick Campbell. 
 
 It is now more than forty-five years since Eche- 
 garay made his unpretentious and somewhat ma- 
 ture debut up<jn the Spanish stage, with a clever 
 one-act play entitled El Libro Talouario {The Check 
 Book). Before that date he had been known to the 
 intellectual public in some of the numerous ca- 
 pacities I have just mentioned. His speeches in 
 favor of free trade, especially, had won the approba- 
 tion of the nation's leading minds. But upon the 
 event of The Check Book the public was asked to 
 accept the versatile figure in a new role, and it 
 was not long before the resourceful Spaniard had 
 added another province to his conquests. 
 
 His attraction to the stage was largely the result 
 of the success there won by his younger brother 
 Miguel, whose comedies are still popular in Spain. 
 Echegaray, the older, produced his first play at the 
 age of forty-two — a fact which explains much in 
 the subsequent career of the dramatist. He brought 
 to the stage a vast political acumen, a mature life 
 of constant study and activity, a mind naturally 
 given over to moral, mathematical, and social con- 
 siderations. His was not the steady growth of the 
 artist groping in the recesses of creative fancy; he 
 came to the theatre with a view of life that was well 
 defined. In the drama he saw, not so much a vehicle 
 for art, not a form in which to encase beauty, but 
 rather a means for exploiting his own particular 
 moral principles. He is thus frankly a writer of 
 problem plays, and it must be confessed at the out-
 
 SPAIN 63 
 
 set that for the most part he has allowed his thesis, Y 
 to predominate, much to the cost of any higher ' 
 dramatic art. 
 
 Echegaray, moreover, is in many respects quite 
 as significant to the history of the Spanish stage as 
 he is to the stage itself. Not since the days of the , 
 classical epoch has a dramatic author been received'^ 
 so widely in his own land; he is the first of the 
 modern Spanish playwrights to have procured ample 
 recognition outside the limits of his nation's borders. 
 To him came the vogue that was denied Tamayo y 
 Baus (author of A New Dramd)^ who was an in- 
 finitely more artistic spirit; to him came the pop- 
 ularity that Lopez de Ayala could not attain, de- 
 spite his superior poetic gifts. While much of this 
 popularity may be ascribed to reasons none too 
 flattering to the methods of The Great Galeoto's 
 creator, some of it was due, no doubt, to the more 
 cosmopolitan outlook of this thinker — to his tend- 
 ency to break the bonds of a narrowing nationalism. 
 Where so many of the Spanish dramatists were 
 content to be Spanish, Echegaray, in his best plays, 
 becomes European. 
 
 It is important to notice in connection with his 
 dramas that Echegaray has helped to alter the very 
 pivot upon which the Spanish stage revolves — the 
 so-called punto de honor^ the point of honor.^ This 
 peculiar moral code has for its central idea the 
 absolute chastity of the female. Woman becomes a 
 sublimated concept that is not even to be gazed 
 upon covetously with impunity. The insistence 
 
 • The point of honor has been referred to Moorish influence (Cf. Viel Castel, 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, pages 397, 442, 1841), and to the ItaUans (Donald Clive 
 Stuart, Romanic Review, Vol. I, Nos. 3, 4). It is, in essence, as drama, a special- 
 ized form of the "eternal triangle."
 
 64 THE DRAxMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 upon her lily-white purity becomes a fierce, almost 
 voluptuously virtuous passion on the part of her 
 natural protector, man. For more than two cen- 
 turies the stage in Spain had been trammeled by 
 the point of honor, which is less intelligible to the 
 Anglo-Saxon than to a Latin audience. Not even 
 the great Lope de Vega had entirely overcome the 
 narrowing influence of such an ethical punctilio 
 which, in one of the greatest ot the classical dramas, 
 Del Rey Abajo Xi^iguno {None Beneath the Kin^), 
 by Rojas y Zorrilla, reaches a climax of artistic 
 beauty and irrational injustice to blameless woman- 
 hood. From the standpoint of the piDito de hoyior 
 \ Echegaray's plays may be said to mark a transi- 
 tional stage. The frankly masculine view inherent 
 in the point of honor gives way in his best work to 
 an attitude more just to woman. In none of his 
 pieces, however, does he reach the independence of 
 that more radical spirit, Perez Galdos, as exhibited 
 in the justly noted Eleclra. 
 
 Echegaray's general conception f)f the dramatist's 
 
 sphere may be best studied in the preface to his first 
 
 social drama, Como Empieza Y Como Acaba {The 
 
 ^ Beginning and the End), produced on November 9, 
 
 j 1876. This is also the first of a triolgy which pos- 
 
 I sesses as its motif the persistence of an evil deed 
 
 through several generations. The author's dramatic 
 
 mainspring is here presented as "the logic of fatality," 
 
 which, he says, "dominates when moral libertv 
 
 cedes to passion its place in the human soul." The 
 
 dramatist, then, would have us consider him a 
 
 fatalist, and he has elsewhere said that "Fate writes 
 
 greater tragedies than playwrights," but a close 
 
 study of his several score of plays shows clearly
 
 SPAIN 65 
 
 that his Fate is purely a social phenomenon — the 
 familiar and inevitable opposition of society as a ^* 
 whole to the desires of the individual. 
 
 Of Greek fate there is little or nothing in the ^^ 
 Spanish playwright, although he has succeeded as 
 no other in his own land in giving to the world 
 about us all the characteristics of a cold, imper- 
 sonal, implacable fate. In his better plays he has 
 risen above his theories. We cannot take seriously 
 to-day a dramatist who justifies the incongruities of 
 his work by referring back to newspaper originals, 
 or to such a metaphysical formula as the "logic of 
 fatality." Logic and fate are really two antithetical 
 concepts, and to link them creates a paradox whose 
 ill effect is easily discernible in the many melodramas 
 of Echegaray, where improbability clashes against 
 absurdity and the curtain descends on a crescendo 
 of empty effect. 
 
 The motif par excellence of Echegaray 's dramas 
 is the conflict between two inherently opposing duties 
 or forces. Now it is a daughter who sacrifices her 
 own happiness in order to shield her father from the 
 consequences of an indiscretion; now it is a son who, 
 in order to save his father from disgrace, gives up a 
 happy marriage. Again, we find a scientist pitted 
 against the cohorts of superstition, or a father who 
 assumes responsibiHty for the crime of his illegiti- 
 mate son, thus expiating his own crime against 
 society. The characters of these plays all seem to 
 exist for the satisfaction of their morbid desires for 
 self-sacrifice and expiation. From this standpoint 
 the theatre of Echegaray presents a long procession 
 of illegitimate children, of heroines in ill-merited 
 dishonor, heroes of the exaggerated Hugoesque type.
 
 66 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 villains too often reminiscent of the nickel novel 
 "hair-raiser." So that he has created many situa- 
 jtions, innumerable problems, but little character. 
 
 Of humor there is littJe enough in this serious 
 Spaniard. His moral aim accords ill with undue 
 levity. The most irreconcilable opponent of the 
 ■^'playwright must admit, however, that he excels 
 in harrowing efforts, in a certain gloomy power, in 
 a sheer vehemence and momentum of language that 
 carry along the worst of his plays. Ouite negligible 
 on the whole as a poet, he is scarcely more eminent 
 as a writer of dramatic prose, yet there is a power in 
 , his phraseology, an attraction in his figurative 
 ' speech, in the Oriental profusion of his bizarre con- 
 ceptions, that does much to redeem his other defi- 
 ciencies. There is little continental artistry in the 
 average Echegaray production. He lacked the 
 power of self-criticism, of technical finesse; he was 
 a moral force rather than an artistic spirit. His 
 fancy would penetrate a situation, his mind would 
 supply a contention, his powerful language could 
 easily fuse the whole, and his electric energy thus 
 galvanized a play into existence. 
 
 It may be questioned whether the Spaniard wrote 
 any really notable work after the memorable date 
 oi El Gran Gakoto^ 1881. Since then he added much 
 to the bulk of his labors, but not usually of a quality 
 to enhance his reputation. Beginning in 1874, and 
 writing incessantly, he registered a surprisingly 
 small number of failures for a dramatist of such, 
 prolific talent. In such plays as La Esposa del 1 
 Fengador {The Avenger's Bride) and En el Puno de I 
 la Espada {On the Sword's Point) ^ he actually re- \ 
 vaved the waning melodrama in Spain and lent it /-
 
 SPAIN 67 
 
 new life, infusing a vigor and a cult of the grandiose 
 that he had imbibed from Victor Hugo and the elder 
 Dumas. It was through the younger Dumas and 
 through Henrik Ibsen, together with a host of minor 
 influences, that he was soon led to the social drama, 
 a form to which his very temperament, as well as 
 the traditions of his national stage, was bound -"lil 
 sooner or later to carry him. This, nevertheless, 
 did not prevent Blanco Garcia from writing that the 
 social drama was "more averse than favorable" to 
 his spirit — a criticism, perhaps, that shows a per- 
 sonal aversion to the type of drama rather than a 
 critical distinction. Echegaray was eclectic by 
 nature and environment, and his work reflects the 
 dominant tendencies of his time, yet there is also 
 the imprint of his own rigid personality. 
 
 Three years after his debut he startled his audi- 
 ences with Locura Sa72tidad? {Madman or Saint?) 
 in which the influence of Ibsen first appears to any 
 appreciable extent. The play, one of the three or 
 four worthy companions to The Great Galeoto^ pre- 
 sents many analogies to Brandy which may have 
 inspired the Spaniard in his first signal effbrt. Just 
 as the Norwegian priest sacrifices the spirit to the 
 letter, creating a hell of ruin in his search for heaven, 
 so, too, Lorenzo, discovering that his name and his 
 fortune are in reality not his own, is brought to the 
 verge of insanity by the clash of the two opposing 
 forces — his daughter's happiness in marriage to a 
 noble, which cannot take place under the true state 
 of circumstances (at least Lorenzo's honesty pro- 
 tests against it, despite the plebeian willingness of 
 the parties concerned), and Lorenzo's "duty" to re- 
 linquish his name and fortune. This would destroy,
 
 68 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 too, the happiness of his mother (through whose 
 ruse his plans of sacrifice are frustrated) and of his 
 wife. 
 
 The struggle leads Lxirenzo to the asylum, while 
 we are lett to hope that all will right itself in time. 
 Was Lorenzo a madman or a saint, so to insist 
 upon his duty? 
 
 Between this play and El Gran Galeoto intervened 
 eleven dramas of varying merit, among these the 
 play which, I believe, can well claim the odious 
 distinction of being the worst ever penned by its 
 author — Mar Sin Orillas {The Shoreless Sea). It is 
 one of the puzzles of the human intellect that the 
 mind capable of The Great Galenlo should be able to 
 descend to the puerile ineptitutie and absurdity of 
 The Shoreless Sea. The point ut honor is here urged 
 to farcical extremes — piracy, rape, intrigue, all 
 crowd the stage amiilst a veritable tissue of con- 
 fusions. When a single word might save the insipid 
 heroine, she prefers to maintain an ambiguous 
 silence before her equally silly husband. Repudiated 
 by him, she plunges into the sea. Presently a mes- 
 sage arrives, provine; the wife innocent of the charge 
 which her husband has preferreil against her. Seized 
 with grief at his harshness, the husband follows his 
 wife into the ocean. All of which was so destined 
 by the author from the very start. 
 
 Most of the plays that followed The Great Galeoto 
 tend but to repeat the ever-recurrent motifs of the 
 playwright — illegitimate offspring, outraged honor, 
 malicious slander, social error, fanaticism, materi- 
 alism, snobbery, and so on, through the gamut of 
 all possible social complications. Nor is Echegarav 
 free from such trite devices as "the papers," and those
 
 SPAIN 69 
 
 recitations of antecedent events that usually, on our 
 own stage, take the form of "twenty years ago," 
 etc., to the accompaniment of tremolo music. "The 
 papers," indeed, come near to spoiling such a play 
 as Madman or Saint? 
 
 In The Great Galeoto we find Echegaray at his 
 best. It is with justice recognized not only as the 
 Spaniard's masterpiece, but as an addition to world- 
 literature. For once in his career the author almost -y- 
 frees himself from the devices of cheap melodrama. 
 Here is no villain of the regular type, no hero, no 
 heroine — all are victims of a society which in itself 
 means no harm. Therein lies the essence of the 
 tragedy. The casual remark, the fitting smile, these 
 are the elements that start Madrid talking of Julian 
 and his wife, Theodora, and of Ernesto, their ward, 
 whom the world says is usurping the position of 
 Juhan. With unswerving impetus, with the very 
 impersonality of fate, the play develops to its con- 
 clusion. At the end Julian is killed by the apparent 
 revelation of his wife's love for Ernesto, yet neither 
 the wife nor the ward has been really guilty. Mad- 
 rid's tongues have forced them together — slander 
 has forged its unthinking lies to the heat of apparent 
 truth.i 
 
 Few plays present such a powerful, logical, 
 convincing study of gossip and its evil conse- 
 quences. The art of the play is in its simple power. 
 
 > The name of "The Great Galeoto" is derived from the story of Paolo and Fran- 
 cesca in Dante's Divine Comedy. "Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse" says Fran- 
 cesca as she tells the story of the memorable day when she and Paul forgot them- 
 selves. Galeotto (Galehault) was the intermediary between Lancelot and Guine- 
 vere, and thus did the book they were reading serve as intermediary between Paul 
 and Francesca. Even so does the gossip of the world serve as the intermediary 
 that forces Ernesto and Theodora together. It is interesting to note, in this regard, 
 that the germ of The Great Galecto already appeared in Como Empieza Y Como 
 Acaba. In the latter play the heroine, Magdalena, in reading Dante (together with 
 Shakespeare, a great favorite of the author), comes across the identical passage 
 which suggested the dramatist's greatest work.
 
 70 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 But four personages occupy the central position, 
 yet in them we feel palpitate the heart of the town — 
 they present, indceti, the world in miniature, so 
 keenly do we feel their presence, the effect of each 
 word and of each action. 
 
 This salient drama has been compared to various 
 plays. Sheridan's School for Scandal has been men- 
 tioned as a frivolous antecedent. Othello^ too, has 
 been adduced as an example of the malignant 
 effect of gossip. But in Othello it is the personal 
 villany of an I ago, not the impersonal, uninten- 
 tional force of society, that leads to the tragedy. 
 For El Gran Galeoto is the drama of "They sav." 
 To my mind, a better comparison than either is 
 none other than Much Ado About Nothing. For 
 here we have the comedy of "They say." The plav 
 is all the more comic in that it represents a knowing 
 piece of amiable malice; the Spanish drama is all 
 the more dramatic in that it is the story of an 
 unintentional, impersonal infamy. 
 
 The Great Galeoto reveals the influence of Ibsen 
 in a marked degree. Even more so, speaking di- 
 rectly, does El Hi jo de Don Juan {The Son of Don 
 Juan), which has erroneously been termed the 
 Spanish Ghosts. Frankly deriving its inspiration 
 from the Norwegian tragedy, Echcgaray's plav 
 shows a difference in treatment and in point of view 
 which really entitle the play to be called original. 
 Whereas Ibsen's Ghosts shifts the blame of Oswald's 
 plight back to the society which forced Mrs. Alving 
 to dwell with her debauched husband, Echegaray 
 would seem to indicate that the fault of Lazaro's 
 insanity lay only in his father's failure to live a 
 moral life.
 
 SPAIN 71 
 
 Although the Spaniard goes into such horrible 
 details as would have quite unnerved Ibsen him- 
 self, he yet fails to penetrate into the social basis of 
 his protagonist's insanity. Or, if he does penetrate, 
 he rests his hope for betterment upon the individual. 
 
 Echegaray's play is further complicated by the 
 fact that his doomed hero is engaged to be married, 
 thereby providing a typical Echegarayan struggle — 
 shall he marry, knowing his moral duty not to? 
 Must he then give up his only hope for happiness? 
 Truly terrible in conception and in treatment is the 
 scene where Lazaro's father detects his son, wild in 
 debauch, tippling with the very mistress he himself 
 has known too well. When at last the curtain de- 
 scends on the cry of Lazaro for the sun (borrowed 
 from Ibsen because of its beauty, says Echegaray), 
 the father, in anguish, cries out, "I, too, have asked 
 for it!" 
 
 The coupHng of the names of Echegaray and Ibsen, 
 largely due to this play, has been much overdone by 
 critics who have not taken the trouble to examine 
 the works of Echegaray extensively. There are 
 really more differences between the two than sim- 
 ilarities. In the first place, Ibsen is by far the 
 greater artist. He chooses between prose and verse 
 with discrimination, while the Spaniard seems to 
 waver between the two with uncertainty. Ibsen is 
 the master dramaturge, where Echegaray is too often 
 a bungler with peculiar talents that save his work 
 from failure. Ibsen is an artist in search of ideas; 
 he grows from play to play in both art and 
 thought. Echegaray's art is, excepting three or 
 four plays, a negligible quantity; his ideas are cer- 
 tain from the start — he came with them to the
 
 72 THE DRAMA Ul- IRANSITION 
 
 stage; it is his art that he gropes about for, never 
 to discover it for good, heedless of the critics, intent 
 on moral purpose alone. Mariana and El Imco 
 Dios {The Divine Madman) y 1900, also reveal the 
 influence of Ibsen. The second of these plays has 
 been termed by Fitzmaurice-Kelly, I believe, an un- 
 intentional parody of the Norwegian's symbolism. 
 
 Although both Ibsen and Kchcgaray recognize the 
 role of society in life, yet the Spaniard would seek 
 self-realization in self-repression, while the Norwe- 
 gian hopes for the realization of self through the ex- 
 pansion of self. Ibsen is an out-and-out radical; 
 Echegaray is that peculiar, but familiar, type who 
 to the radical seems conservative and to the con- 
 servative seems radical. 
 
 Gloomy as Ibsen himself is Echegaray in his more 
 powerful moments; as insistent as, and less swerv- 
 ing than, Tolstoi in his moral purpose. Unsus- 
 ceptible to the attacks of critics, he has rarely 
 ventured to defend his works except upon the basis 
 of morals. His ideal is at once of the past and of 
 the future. With a vigor that takes him back, on 
 the one hand, to Calderon he unites a modernity 
 that brings him forward, on the other, to Ibsen and 
 the social philosophers. His work, I believe, rep- 
 resents a transitional period in the history of the 
 Spanish stage. As early as 1903 Bernard Shaw had 
 said of him that he was made of the stufl^ that 
 crosses borders — a prophecy which bore fulfillment 
 on the English stage some three years later. ^ 
 
 ' The Sha\'ian endorsement of such playwriRhts as Echegaray and Brieuz U 
 one of the paradoxes of the Irishman's career. In both, Shaw saw more than was 
 there. 
 
 Most of the preceding section on Echegaray consists of a ruthless condensa- 
 tion of a book I wTote upon him as part of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree 
 in Romance Languages (Harvard, 1912). I thought little of Exhegaray then; 
 I think less now — as of so many other things. The doctorial thesis reposes in the 
 university archives. There let it rest in pace.
 
 SPAIN 73 
 
 To say that Echegaray, on the whole, is a bad 
 playwright because he is a belated romantic is as 
 futile a toying with terms as to pronounce any 
 other writer great because he happens to be an 
 opportune realist. Echegaray, in general, is an in- 
 ferior dramatist because the plays themselves are 
 vitiated at their source. They do not develop from 
 a core of passion, produced inevitably by the clash 
 of character and circunistance. They are the arti- 
 ficial result of a passion that they do not contain. 
 
 "Spanish dramatists," writes Storm Jameson, ' » 
 "are making their way towards a national drama 
 almost untouched by the restless spirit that stirred ; 
 Italy. Their conception of life is singularly simple. 
 In Italy a revolt against the forms of modern life; 
 in France, with the exception of Brieux, cynical and 
 witty ridicule of folly; in England, save from the 
 Celtic Shaw, no very savage indignation; in the 
 north, generally, a dramatic view of life limited to 
 social institutions and conditions. But Spanish 
 dramatists, with the rare exception of Dicenta, are 
 not in revolt against anything, least of all against 
 life."^ With the rare exception of Dicenta .^^ Then 
 where was Benito Perez Galdos, whose labors 
 Jameson overlooks in their entirety, what though, 
 as a woman in revolt, she should have been one 
 of the first to proclaim the ideological virtues of 
 Electra? Galdos may not be the dramatist of genius 
 
 ^Modern Drama in Europe. Pages 230-231. 
 
 'Joaquin Dicenta, 1860-1916. Yet Juan Josi, Dicenta's central drama, is not 
 a proletarian play; primarily it turns upon a pivot of frustrated passion. The 
 workingman, robbed of his mistress-sweetheart by his employer, who later dis- 
 charges him for venturing to assert his prior rights, finally slays both the un- 
 faithful woman and her tempter. Of course it is easy to detect a symbol here, 
 if one is so minded, revealing the maddened proletarian slaying both his own 
 interests as well as his employer's in anarchic revolt. The play itself is a strange 
 commingling of realism and romanticism; its sweep is as surely romantic as its 
 detail is true to life. It stirs even the reader, despite its shortcomings.
 
 74 THE DRAMA UF IRANSITIOX 
 
 that Ramon Perez de Ayala' has sought to make 
 him out, but surely he should have merited a few 
 words in a resume of modern Spanish drama that 
 devotes half of its space to Echegaray. Of cajVital 
 importance to the course of modern thought in 
 Spain, eminent as a novelist, beloved as a per- 
 sonality, Galdos bridges the gap between the Spain 
 of yesterday that was Echegaray and the Spain of 
 \to-day that is, upon the stage, Benavente. 
 
 BENITO perp:z o \lu6s 
 
 The life of the noted writer stretches across a 
 span of seventy-five years — years rich in history, 
 not only for his beloved Spain, but for the entire 
 world. Bt^rn at Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands, 
 on May lo, 1845, ^^ ^'^^ ^*^"^ ^° Madrid in 1863 to 
 study law. An unwilling student he was, like so 
 many others of the literary tribe, and, again like 
 them, he drifted into journalism and thence to 
 literature, readily making a name for himself among 
 the Liberal element. As early as this he had already 
 tried his hand at art, for in 1862, at the Exposition 
 in Santa Cruz de Tencrife, he was awarded hon- 
 orable mention for sketches entitled La Ma^daletia 
 and Un Boceto Historico^ as well as for an oil-paint- 
 ing called "Una Alqueria." Nor did his love of the 
 pencil and brush abandon him entirely, for later he 
 illustrated his own books in a manner that called 
 forth the praise of professional artists, and designed 
 the last resting place of his famous friend Pereda. 
 That friendship, by the way, which was begun early 
 in the career of the author who yesterday was 
 mourned wherever the Spanish tongue is spoken, 
 
 « See his Lai MAscaras, 2 vols, 1919, Madrid.
 
 SPAIN 75 
 
 was one of the strangest as well as one of the most 
 beautiful in literary history, and deserves pages and 
 pages by itself; about it, a paragraph presently. 
 
 The man was strangely reticent; it has been sug- 
 gested by a noted Spanish critic that perhaps he 
 put so much of himself into his voluminous produc- 
 tions that he really cared little to discuss whatever 
 he may have omitted; in any case, when asked by 
 even so great a figure as Clarin (Leopoldo Alas) for 
 details as to his early Hfe, Galdos replied in more 
 condensed fashion than a scant encyclopaedic ref- 
 erence. He would offer little beyond the fact that 
 he arrived in Madrid in 1863, and that during the 
 three or four years that preceded the revolution of 
 1868 he made several attempts at writing pieces for 
 the theatre, only one of which he was at all content 
 with, though he was glad that it had never reached 
 the "boards." The passage is important because, 
 years later, when Galdos again approached the stage, 
 this time with a great reputation as a novelist be- 
 hind him, his aims were obscured by critics who 
 were somewhat too ready to discover that the 
 novelist was trying to corrupt drama by grafting 
 upon it procedures that belonged only in long nar- 
 ratives. Galdos, it appears, was in reality return- 
 ing to an early love, and not all Spanish theatrical 
 critics are inclined to agree with Fitzmaurice- 
 Kelly's recent judgment that "his diffuse, exuberant 
 genius was scarcely accommodated to the conven- 
 tions of theatrical form." (Enc. Britannica, nth 
 edition.) 
 
 In 1867 the idea came to him for his first book, 
 La Fontana de OrOy which he himself describes as a 
 work with a certain revolutionary tendency. He
 
 76 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 began it in Madrid, completed it in Spain, and no 
 sooner did he return to Spain than the revolution 
 broke out. He received the new state of affairs 
 most enthusiastically. It was at this stage (from 
 1868 to 1872) that he made the acquaintance of the 
 famous regional novelist, Pereda. At their first 
 meeting it seemed that each had read everything 
 the other had written, and the friendship was dis- 
 solved only by the death of the older man. Here 
 was Galdos, the standard-bearer of liberalism, of 
 anti-clericalism, of modernism in the broader sense 
 of the word, a bosom friend of the man who stood 
 squarely against everything that Hretl him who was 
 later to write Dona Perfecta and Electra. Intel- 
 lectually speaking, black could be no greater con- 
 trast to white than were the ideas and the ideals that 
 animated Pereda and Galdos; yet despite the mut- 
 terings of friends and foes, despite the passing of 
 years that brought them often into conflict, they 
 lived in growing intimacy, traveled much together 
 over the picturesque provinces of Spain, and seemed 
 to symbolize, by their unbroken fellowship, the fact 
 that, underlying all the antagonism which divides 
 men into warring camps, into clashing sects, is a 
 fundamental humanity that bridges all gaps. Is 
 there not something ironical in the picture of Galdos 
 and Pereda shaking hands above the battle, as it 
 were, while down below their adherents fought out 
 the bitter conflict of orthodoxy versus liberalism, of 
 faith against science? Better still, is there not 
 something that laughs gently at sects and sectarians 
 in the familiar story of the determined battle of 
 books that was waged between the Liberal and the 
 Tory? — a battle in which even opponents of Galdos
 
 SPAIN 77 
 
 are forced to admit that Pereda came out second 
 best? The two men met, above even their own per- 
 sonal battles, as man and man. There is, to me at 
 least, something in that friendship which refutes the 
 narrower applications of the theories each held. 
 
 Clarin has described Galdos as he looked in his 
 prime, after he had published several of his Episo- 
 dios Nacionales (those National Episodes which con- 
 stitute a veritable epic of Spanish history, as well as 
 one of Galdos' chief claims to enduring fame) — the 
 forehead that bespoke genius and passions; the pen- 
 etrating eyes that conveyed the impression of ten- 
 derness not unmingled with guile^a certain inno- 
 cent, artist's guile. The author dressed neither well 
 nor badly. He was as little inclined to talk as to 
 write of himself, but on the other hand, made a 
 willing as well as skillful listener, aptly steering the 
 conversation by means of well-directed questions. 
 He had no use for the more rhetorical aspects of the 
 writer's craft; indeed, he has been accused by gram- 
 marians as sinning against the language's purity. 
 With all respect to grammar, it was never meant 
 to worry great writers; if a man has not conquered 
 the prudish chit in his schoolhood days, he must 
 do without her later. For one person who writes 
 well, how many thousands write correctly! Galdos 
 was, moreover, fond of retiring early; he was not 
 what one could call a society man; even the 
 theatre, into which he aspired to attract his own 
 audiences, was a wearying spectacle to him and 
 left him with a headache. A man, then, who be- 
 lieved in hard work and the simple life; who 
 carried on the great tradition of Spanish fecundity; 
 who fought for advanced thought, now leading the
 
 78 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 crowd, now led by it; who virtually made his coun- 
 try's history live anew in a series of romances that 
 have more than once, and by critics of accepted 
 authority, been compared to Balzac for the won- 
 derful array of living characters and to Dickens for 
 the humanity and the humor that inform them. 
 
 Mention of Dickens reminds us, too, that Galdos 
 was much influenced by Knglish literature, with 
 which he was very familiar. His foreign excursions 
 took him most frequently to London and Leopoldo 
 Alas has said that, in his opinion, Galdos would go 
 to Great Britain "tor customs, politics, and men, 
 . . . but not for women." The references to Bal- 
 zac and Dickens are not new; years ago Rafael 
 Altamira pointed out that the resemblance to 
 Dickens was more in the faculty for creating types 
 than in the vein of humor. 
 
 It is said that Galdos' first suggestion for his 
 famous series of National Episodes came from the 
 noted French literary twins, Erckjnann and Chat- 
 rian, who are still considered by many to be a single 
 person, largely owing, perhaps, to the usual coupling 
 of the names by a hyphen. P'or this purpose he re- 
 sorted to a most rigorous plan of documentation; 
 "old charters, old letters, old newspapers were col- 
 lected by him with the minuteness of a German 
 archivist," writes Fitzmaurice-Kelly; "no novelist 
 was ever more thoroughly equipped as regards the 
 details of his period. Trafalgar^ the first volume of 
 the Episodios Nacionales, appeared in 1879. . . . 
 The author's aim was to write the national epic of 
 the nineteenth century in prose, and he so com- 
 pletely succeeded that, long before the first series
 
 SPAIN 79 
 
 ended in 1881, he took rank among the foremost 
 novelists of his time. A second series of Episodios 
 Nacionales . . . was brought to a close in 1883, 
 and was, like its predecessor, a monument of in- 
 dustry and exact knowledge of realism and romantic 
 conception; and he carried on the Episodios Na- 
 cionales into a fourth series, raising the total of the 
 volumes to forty. In fecundity and power of creat- 
 ing character, Perez Galdos vies with Balzac." 
 
 The National Episodes, however, represent but 
 a part of Perez Galdos' prose labors; indeed, there 
 are not lacking Spanish critics who, though they 
 acknowledge the supreme virtues of the Episodes, 
 find the most interesting of the man's novels in his 
 contemporary series — the books dealing with the 
 social and religious problems of modern life. Here, 
 too, his astonishing faculty of observation, his skill 
 in construction, his bold assault upon current evils, 
 his unflagging inventiveness, attest the genius of 
 Galdos. One wonders whether Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 
 the noted English Hispanophile, still considers the 
 prose labors of Galdos broad, but lacking solidity. 
 At any rate, this characterization, which appeared 
 in his history of Spanish literature, is not repeated 
 in the article upon Perez Galdos to be found in the 
 latest edition of the Britannica. 
 
 Among the best of the contemporary novels are 
 Dona Perfecta (1876), which has been used as a 
 text book in our schools, and has been translated 
 into English; Gloria (1877); La Familia de Leon 
 Roch (1878), Angel Guerra (1891). To these many 
 would wish to add the exquisite Marianela (known 
 here in at least two editions for school use, as well
 
 80 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 as a translation into English), and Fortunata y 
 Jacinta.^ 
 
 Gald6s' theatrical career really begins with the 
 production of Realidad^ which was adapted for the 
 stage from two of his prose works, Reaiuiad and lui 
 Incognita. The next year (1H93) witnessed the pro- 
 duction of Lm. Loca de La Casa^ which was followed 
 by La de San i^ninfin^ Los Condenados, and l^o/- 
 untad. In 1896 Dofia Perjecta was translated to the 
 scene. Five years later occurred one of the most 
 important theatrical representations in the history 
 of the Spanish stage: the production of the much- 
 discussed, much-maligned, much-fought, and vitu- 
 perated Electray of which more in a moment. In 
 1902 came /lima y l^tda; next year, Mariucha; 1904 
 saw the dramatization of the excellent novel. El 
 Ahiielo^ which has been likened to King Ijear for its 
 theme. In 191 5 came the socialistic Ceita en los 
 infei-)ios and San Stniun^ and in 191 6, when the 
 author was already past seventy, El Tacaho Salo- 
 m6n. 
 
 Manuel Bueno, the well-known Madrid theatrical 
 
 ' Professor J. D. M. Ford, of Harvarrl, in his r»>c«>nt Main Currmls of Sfxinisk 
 Literature, challpiiKPs GaI^lo^■ en" ' .!|y fair, ouUpolccn 
 
 wx>rd9. /\fter admittiin; that fi.il it he docs tvjt la^lc 
 
 courage, the noted stliol.ir .i'|i- '■ ;.. .. „orthy of unqualified 
 
 praise, for it is on occasion d.i like the i the fanatic. He aanUa 
 
 fanaticism in the reliKioi;s < " i of his t . ,iniard<i, and he cxpoMS 
 
 himself to the charge that he is liini.ielf a fanatic in his methods of doing 90. 
 
 "The DoHa Perjecta, which, out of .il! his novels, has made most noise abroad, 
 illustrates what happens when hia antipathies take one of their most determined 
 form*, anti-clericalism. In thi.-! book he gives but a p)erverted idea of reliKioa, of 
 Catlx>licism as practiced in Spain. No one can prove a rule of life by basins his 
 arguments upon the abnormal, the monstrous the exceptional in human nature; 
 and aRain, the intrinsic Roodness of a relisious s>-stem is not vitiated by the ex- 
 cesses of a few fanatic and unintclliRent believers." Ford advances similar objec- 
 tion.s to other of the Gald6s romances. Here, of course, the reader is more or less 
 unconsciously swayed by his stand upon the matters under discussion. Thou- 
 sands of readers cannot view the books in this light ; perhaps the critic does not 
 exist who can read controversial works with utter impartiality and impersonality. 
 Until criticism shall have been made a science (which means never) such imper- 
 sonality will be a word for critics to toy with. Vet in works of a controversial 
 nature it is doubly obligatory upon the author to play his game fairly. There is 
 food for thought, too, in Ford's statement that Pereda. in those novels in which 
 he tried to refute Galdos' theses, "was too hide-bound in his own conservatism 
 to meet the other novelist eSectively on his own ground."
 
 SPAIN 81 
 
 critic, who is by no means always inclined to op- 
 timistic views upon the national drama, softens per- 
 ceptibly in the presence of Galdos' plays. For the 
 sake of the grandiose themes and their treatment he 
 is ready to forgive him things that could not be 
 pardoned in a writer of less merit. He agrees at 
 once that Galdos has brought novelistic methods to 
 the theatre, but what, he asks, of that? Who has 
 decreed, outside of critics who look upon books and 
 the stage as material for text-book utterances, that 
 all analysis must be confined to the novel and all 
 synthesis to the stage, and that never the twain 
 must meet? Galdos' plays belie that assertion, and 
 that is why his work for the stage is, "like La Celes- 
 tina^ an intermediate form between theatre and 
 novel, possessing the fascinating fibre of the first 
 and the noble eloquence of the second." One must 
 admire, above all, the boldness of the man, he tells 
 .us, in thus flouting the conventional canons of 
 stage-technique. Galdos refused, moreover, to pan- 
 der to the taste for blatant rhetoric that Echegaray 
 knew so well how to satisfy. With all his faults, 
 Bueno receives Galdos into the theatrical fold— he 
 did from the first, when others were finding fault 
 and when the public was turning a cold shoulder — 
 with these affectionate words: "We are with Galdos 
 body and soul, because his work has opened to us a 
 road which, were it not for this great writer, would 
 be irreparably closed to us." 
 
 It is the brilliant stylist and exquisite conteur 
 Ramon Perez de Ayala who has erected Galdos 
 into a quasi-Shakesperean figure, at the same time 
 tearing Benavente rudely from the pedestal upon 
 which contemporary criticism has placed him. With
 
 82 THF DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 reference to both men, the author of that quaint 
 and fascinating book Eelarmino v Apolonio is well 
 worth knowing; he is, to say the least, original, and 
 his. cominentary is such a welcome relief from the 
 pompous maunderings of so many of his inferiors, 
 that it is a tonic, even when one is compelled to dis- 
 agree with him. It is true that his clever remarks 
 are often founded upon the process of giving new 
 meanings to old words and thus polishing up old 
 thoughts, — that, despite his airy manner, he has 
 little new to say. It is true that he has a habit of 
 treating his subjects in tripartite divisions that re- 
 call both Caesar's Gallia and the Ciceronian phrase- 
 ology. It is true, too, that by reading out of Gal- 
 dos' plays a mass of theory, he reads into them an 
 artistic value that is absent. He talks much of 
 impersonality, yet tells us little of Galdos and much 
 of himself. He does not criticize or reveal the play 
 under consideration so much as use it, and avowedly, 
 as the basis of commentary. Now, no one has a 
 quarrel with this sort of thing. Its sole justification 
 is the quality of the man who does it, and in Perez 
 de Ayala, whether as critic, poet, or novelist, there 
 is a distinctly personal savor that creates art even 
 when it leaves one's opinions unaltered. 
 
 To this critic Galdos* work is all nineteenth cen- 
 tury Spain. "In Don Benito Perez Galdos, as in 
 Shakespeare, it is clearly to be seen that the author 
 has conceived the dramatic work as a whole in which 
 at every moment the action is co-ordinated with the 
 place where it occurs, the character with the phys- 
 ical appearance of the personage, the dialogue with 
 the attitude and the composition, the phrase with 
 the manner, the voice with the gesture, — in short.
 
 SPAIN 83 
 
 the spiritual with the plastic element. Without 
 this condition there is no great dramatic art." 
 Again: "This fusion of the figure with the milieu 
 and the infiltration of the ambient with the per- 
 sonage, in the manner of osmosis and endosmosis 
 between the spirit and the environment, is a salient 
 characteristic of the most original and intense of 
 modern literary art, the Russian. It is likewise the 
 dominant trait of the Galdosian production of the 
 entire second epoch or manner, whether through in- 
 fluence of Russian literature, or through deter- 
 minism of the contemporary sensibility, I do not 
 know." Galdos, according to this view, crowns the 
 Spanish novel as Cervantes starts it; he reforms 
 Spanish drama as Cervantes tried to, in the direc- 
 tion of simplicity and realism, although "Cervantes 
 did not succeed in becoming the chief dramatist of 
 his day, and Galdos is, without dispute, the greatest 
 of ours and one of the first in any age or place." 
 
 In what appears, to most, the exaggeration of this 
 last citation there is, none the less, a kernel of 
 measurable truth. Galdos' plays, unlike Eche- 
 garay's, do develop from a core of passion that is 
 the play itself. They reveal a healthy disregard for 
 the conventions of stage technique. They do not 
 yield readily to the arrogant confines of the pro- 
 scenium, and tend to overflow the banks of the ac- 
 cepted form. But in so doing they exercise a liber- 
 ating influence; they rebel, rather than, like Eche- 
 garay's numerous monstrosities, conform. They are 
 the plastic revelation of the thought that they con- 
 tain. Often the personages are so humanly con- 
 ceived and presented that, like all significant human 
 beings, they become symbols — symbols not in the
 
 84 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 sterile sense of allegory, but in the sense of mean- 
 ingful life. It is thus possible for Perez de Ayala, in 
 considering Galdos* Lm Loca de la Casa (1893) to in- 
 dicate Pepetc as the incarnation of egoism and cap>- 
 italism overshooting the mark, and Victoria as his 
 socialistic, counterbalancing wife. Incidentally, the 
 critic points out that Pepcte's "Nietzscheism" pre- 
 cedes by several years Clarin's introduction of the 
 German's name to Spain. It is because of Galdos' 
 power to create the illusion of humanity that Ayala 
 may declare, "Perhaps you sympathize more with 
 some than with others of the figures or personages 
 in Cervantes; but it is certain that their father, in 
 the moment of engendering them, sympathized with 
 all alike. We will say the same ot Galdos' figures." 
 
 So, in his various plays — there are about a score 
 — Galdos is viewed as defending the conservation of 
 the species and the reason, the instinct (conservation) 
 favoring the individual versus the species and the 
 reason favoring the species versus the individual. 
 "Such is the tragedy of human history and the life 
 of man: the perpetual struggle between these two 
 just causes." And what is to reconcile these irrecon- 
 cilables? The will, by which we are to understand 
 the love of love. 
 
 Manuel Bueno, though not the stylist that Ayala 
 is, can speak of Galdos in the same reverential terms. 
 "Galdos' art fascinates me," he has written in his 
 criticism of Mariuc/iay "fascinates me because it an- 
 swers to deep aspirations of youth, because it trans- 
 lates the restless spirit of our times, because it is 
 boldlv destnictive and frank without hypocrisy." 
 In ^Ia^iucha we have a spiritual sister to Ibsen's 
 Nora and Hedda; as she is a rebel, so is the play
 
 SPAIN 85 
 
 regarded as an essay in Nietzschean transmutation 
 of values. 
 
 Of El Abuelo (19O4), Bueno speaks in terms of 
 extravagance unmatched by Perez de Ayala. "Ham- 
 let, spying upon the words and the gestures of his 
 mother and his uncle to track the origin of the 
 crime, is less tragic than the Count of Albrit seeking, 
 through the smiling adolescence of Nell and Dolly, 
 the tell-tale indication of the maternal guilt." 
 Dolly becomes an "Antigone more beautiful within 
 the ideal than the Greek virgin herself." And the 
 play as a whole is "the greatest work produced by 
 the contemporary national theatre. If it were per- 
 missible to assign rank to works of art, I should 
 place it between King Lear and Brand; that is, the 
 most intense of Shakespeare and the deepest of 
 Ibsen. The thinker and the artist have reached, 
 in El Abuelo^ the loftiest height accessible to genius." 
 
 Such admiration, such panegyric, may be under- 
 stood without being shared. There is no question 
 as to the hold which Galdos exerts upon the liberal 
 minds of his nation. In much of what his com- 
 mentators write, the artist is confused with the 
 social personality. Perhaps one must be such a 
 Spaniard as Ayala or Bueno to behold in El Abuelo 
 the tragic eminence assigned to it in the radiant 
 words just quoted. Surely one may range himself 
 among Galdos' admirers without assenting to what 
 seems rhetorical expansion rather than critical com- 
 prehension. 
 
 Let us pause for a few moments upon El Abuelo 
 {The Grandfather), which dates from 1904, three 
 years after Electra. It is, in essence, almost a dram- 
 atization of the Tennysonian lines,
 
 86 THF DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Kind hearts arc more than coronets, 
 And simple faith than Norman blood. 
 
 The Count of Aibrit, a proud nobleman fallen 
 upon evil days, is tortured by a niadtlening doubt 
 as to which ot his gramitlaughters, Dolly or Nelly, 
 is the real daughter of his deceased son and which 
 the spurious. He returns to his former manor at 
 La Pardina to meet his daughter-in-law Lucretia, 
 who at first cannot bring herself to tell him the 
 truth. He decides to watch the chiKlren closely for 
 a sign of the noble blootl to reveal itself by word or 
 deed. .At first perplexed, he decides finally ujxjn 
 Dolly. Yet it is the selfish Nelly who is the real 
 one, as the disgruntleil Senen discloses in a moment 
 of anger against Lucretia, and as Lucretia herself 
 tells her confessor. The Count, fairly crazed, for 
 he has come to love Dolly, decides: "Now I see that 
 human thought, human calculations, anil human 
 plans are as nothing! .All these are nothing but 
 rust that corrodes and decays; what endures is that 
 which dwells within! The soul can never die!" 
 
 What does one see in the play, approaching it 
 without a knowledt^e of its importance to the modern 
 Spanish drama anil equally ignorant of the exalted 
 opinion in which Galdos is held by Ayala and 
 Buenor To speak the humble truth,^a fairly well 
 constructed piece, containing two or three gen- 
 uinely moving scenes, and somewhat marred by the 
 use of such conventional makeshifts as "papers," 
 "proofs," and revelations made by crossed under- 
 lings. There are unnecessary "asides"; unnecessary, 
 not because the "aside" should be ruthlessly rooted 
 out of contemporary drama (I do not believe it 
 need be), but because in this case nothing that they
 
 SPAIN 87 
 
 convey could not with equal ease and greater 
 effectiveness have been conveyed by facial expres- 
 sion and gesture. These defects are compensated 
 for, and richly, by the very intensity of Galdos' con- 
 ception; he saw, what Echegaray may never have 
 imagined, that there is a place upon the stage for 
 calmness, for passion that does not tear itself to 
 tatters. But Shakespeare, Hamlet? Let us be mod- 
 erate, gentlemen! Echegaray, upon the production 
 of El Gran Galeoto, was hailed as a second Shake- 
 speare. Maeterlinck, too, after the presentation of 
 La Princesse Maleine, was brought by Octave 
 Mirbeau to the attention of a skeptical world with 
 the same crushing praise. And, as we shall pres- 
 ently note, Benavente's camp-followers have not 
 lagged behind the procession of puffery. No. It is 
 not here that Galdos' importance lies. Both Eche- 
 garay before him and Benavente after have helped 
 to obscure his service to a stage cluttered with 
 "efectismo" — the easily attained sensationalism of 
 external effects and coups de theatre. Galdos had 
 a glimpse of what the contemporary dramatist, at 
 his best, is rapidly attaining. In a day when "tech- 
 nique" was everything, he despised it. Nor was it 
 because he could not have written in the Scribe- 
 Sarcey tradition; the genius capable of creating his 
 novelistic world was easily equal to a task that is 
 assimilated without too much trouble by any com- 
 petent college student to-day. It was because he 
 felt its restraining influence, because drama to him 
 meant something more than an exercise in form and 
 genre. So that, if the semi-confined outlook of 
 Echegaray may be traced back to Calderon, the 
 plays of Galdos belong rather, like those of Ben-
 
 88 THK I)K AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 avente, in the tradition at Lope de Vega. Ihat way 
 lies a formal freedom which is the mirror of an inner 
 liberation. 
 
 La de San ^uititin (cnglishcd as The Duchess of 
 San i^uentin) belongs to the earlier Galdosian plays, 
 1894. The vv(jrk deals chiefly with the love of young 
 Victor tor the Duchess Rosario, a year younger than 
 he. She is an aristocrat fallen into financial difli- 
 culties; he is the supjwsed son oi Don Cesar de 
 Huendia, a tight-fisted, lecherous, semi-invali(i of 
 rttty-five. Through the Marquis dc Falfan de ios 
 Godos, who has been wronged by Don Cesar, Rosario 
 comes into letters proving that Victor is not the 
 natural son of Don Cesar. This she makes known, 
 choosing Victor, the socialist idealist, in preference 
 to Don Cesar, the crafty widower who has made 
 love to her. The happy couple, representing the 
 union of enlightened aristocracy and the rising 
 proletariat, look to the future with confidence. 
 Where old Don Jose, almost a nonagenarian, sees 
 the death of a world, \'ict(jr and Rosario behold the 
 dawn of a new era. 
 
 The vision of the play is that which inspires most 
 of the author's labors; the whole is vivified by Gal- 
 dos' passion for truth to self, for truth at all costs, 
 for social progress. There are suggestions of Ibsen's 
 Pillars of Society, as well as The If'ild Duck. 
 
 But one cannot help wishing that these unnec- 
 essary asides, these epistolary imbroglios, these mys- 
 teries of parentage and melodramatic revelations, 
 together with the other trappings of a style that 
 is outmoded because it never sank its roots into 
 passional genuineness, were absent. Galdos did not 
 look upon life as does Mr. Galsworthy, for example.
 
 SPAIN 89 
 
 The Englishman sees it deeply, sees it steadily and 
 perhaps whole, yet is prone to treat it as if it laid 
 itself out in patterns of easily grasped symmet- 
 ricality; there seems, at times, and especially in 
 such a later work as The Skin Game^ a readiness to 
 employ stenciled detail in the elaboration of a pat- 
 tern that is meant to be anything but stenciled.^ 
 Something of this same incongruity informs the 
 major portion of Galdos' plays. It is particularly 
 disconcerting in such a piece as Electra^ 1901, which 
 created a veritable furore in the intellectual life of 
 the nation. It was a personal as much as an ar- 
 tistic triumph. As was to be expected, the con- 
 servatives launched their propaganda against the 
 subversive drama. It is recorded that "in one city 
 the actors were obliged to leave the theatre before 
 the performance in order to escape violence at the 
 hands of the clericals. In another, the members of 
 the company were refused lodging and were obliged 
 to spend the night in the streets. Even from the 
 pulpit and the confessional, says Galdos himself, 
 war was waged against the work."^ 
 
 ' This same effect is produced upon me by Galsworthy's The Mob, a play 
 which seems to prove that not even the most noble attitude can make a good 
 piece of art unless the life of art itself be respected. There is more than one appeal 
 in the play to that very mob whose political and emotional unreason is pointed 
 out by the author; as a playwright he appeals to that very mob spirit in his 
 audience, with the effects of passing parades, with the coincidence of Hubert's 
 death in battle at the moment of the first national victory, with the foreshadowing 
 of that death in the dream recited by Hubert's wife. Galsworthy begs part of the 
 question by making the nation at war with a little opponent. Would More's posi- 
 tion have been less logical if the fight were an equal one? And is it the mob that 
 starts wars or ends them? His shorter pieces reveal, in more marked degree, 
 something of the same incongruity that I am trying to explain in Galdos. (See, 
 for example. The First aiid Last, with its sudden entrances, burned "papers" 
 (Echegarayl), union of aristocracy and slums, double suicide, all inside of a one- 
 act play that requires three scenes with thirty hours between I and II and two 
 months between II and III, and the curtain lowered in the third scene to denote 
 the passing of three hours. Yet Phelps can say that "he has never producedany- 
 thing negligible." (Essays on Modern Dramatists. New York, 1921.) 
 
 ' Contemporary Spanish Dramatists: Plays by Perez Galdos, Linares Rivas, 
 Marquina, Zamacois, Dicenta, and the Quintero brothers, translated with an 
 introduction by Charles Alfred Turrell. Boston, 1919, page 11. 
 
 For Galdos" The Duchess of San Quentin as well as for Echegaray's The Great 
 CfaUoto, and Guimera's Daniela see Masterpieces of Modern Spanish Drama, edited 
 by Barrett H. Clark, Cincinnati, 1922.
 
 90 VHK DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Here again we encounter the anomaly of a fresh 
 outlook upon life with an outmoded technique, — 
 an anomaly that seems to mirror the transitional 
 position ot Galdos in both Spanish drama and 
 Spanish thought. The play is an attack upon the 
 imposition ot the religious lite upon healthy young 
 womanhood and the means used to bring this about. 
 (In this play, for example, Electra is told that she is 
 Maximo's sister.) Yet, desjMte all the opposition 
 brought to bear, Maximo, a widcnver with two chil- 
 dren, marries Electra. His successful suit may be 
 taken to symbolize the triumph of science over 
 clericalism in Spain. The thirti act, representing 
 Maximo's laboratory, is an excellent piece of stage 
 symbolism done in the best manner; the action and 
 the symbol here are part ami parcel of each other; 
 just as the metals are fused in the laboratory, so 
 are Maximo and Flectra fused in their artection, 
 antl so has Galdos fused the component elements 
 into an organic unity. It is easy to dismiss the last 
 scene but one, in which Electra beholds her mother, 
 as a visible representation of the maiden's con- 
 science or inner debate, but there are other qualms 
 that seize the critic. Here is the brief scene: 
 
 The Shade: I am your mother, and I come to calm 
 the anxieties of your loving heart. My voice will restore 
 peace to your conscience. No bond of nature unites you 
 to the man you have chosen for a husband. That which 
 you heard was an invention dictated by affection to bring 
 you into our company and to the peace of this holy house. 
 
 Electra: Oh, Nlother, what consolation you bring 
 me! 
 
 The Shade: I am telling you the truth, and I give it 
 strength and hope. .Accept, my daughter, as a test of
 
 SPAIN 91 
 
 the temple of your heart, this transitory seclusion, and 
 bear no ill will to those who brought you here. . . . 
 If marital love and the pleasures of the family call your 
 soul, allow yourself to abandon this sweet attraction and 
 do not pretend to a holiness that you cannot attain. 
 God is everywhere. ... I do not know how to find 
 Him outside of here. . . . Seek Him in the world 
 along paths better than mine, and . . . {The Shade 
 is silent and disappears as the mice of Maximo is heard.) 
 
 Maximo {in the door): Electra! 
 
 Electra {running toward hiin) : Ah ! 
 
 Pantoja {at the right): My daughter, where are you? 
 
 Marq.uis: Here, with us. 
 
 Maximo: She is ours. 
 
 Pantoja: Are you running away from me? 
 
 Maximo: No, she is not running away. . . . She 
 has come to life. 
 
 We have seen that Galdos' critics fall naturally 
 into the habit of symbolistic interpretation, and that 
 Galdos himself so creates his characters that they 
 live as symbols of flesh and blood, not literary al- 
 gebra. So here Pantoja may be regarded as rep- 
 resenting the clerical party; Cuesta, modern busi- 
 ness; the Marquis, the ancient aristocracy, "joining 
 hands with Science (Maximo) to save Spain (Electra) 
 and bring her to a new life." It should be empha- 
 sized, however, that the play is a human progress 
 absolutely independent of any such interpreta- 
 tion. And it is a sad commentary upon Spanish 
 life that when Spaniards do revolt, they must re- 
 volt, in their art, against conditions and views that 
 elsewhere belong rather to the history of mental 
 liberation than to the catalogue of man's contem- 
 poraneous obstruction. ... I write this, and 
 then think of recent happenings in the United
 
 92 THF DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 States. Wherefore let silence be the better part of 
 condescension. 
 
 The remaining plays of Galtlos are in similar re- 
 volt against bigotry, against social convention, be- 
 numbing tradition; Celia en los infiernoSy 191 5, is 
 an addition to the proletarian drama imperfectly 
 projected by Dicenta; Sor Simona^ '9'5> is a proc- 
 lamation of love as the begetter of peace, of hu- 
 manity as the only real country of the world. .And 
 yet Storm Jameson could write that "Spanish 
 dramatists, with the rare exception of Dicenta, are 
 not in revolt against anything, least of all against 
 life." Rather than Dicenta, a distinctlv minor 
 figure, that rare e.\ception should have been Benito 
 Perez Galdos. Surely he was not in revolt against 
 life, but just as surely was he a rebel against the 
 conventions and traditions that impede its freer 
 play. He did not create for the stage a form fullv 
 adequate to the artistic illumination of that spir- 
 itual rebellion, perhaps because he did not see fully 
 into its deeper implications. At any rate, his form 
 impresses one as intermediate; he fought evils rather 
 than illuminated a new day. He was held back by 
 the very past that he opposed. He was himself too 
 deeply rooted in the soil out of which he sought to 
 rise. This, rather than any addiction to special 
 methods, explains his shortcomings as a dramatist. 
 When Ayala and Bueno exalt him to the skies, it is 
 the person and the idealist who is worthy of the 
 praise, not the dramatic artist. Art is a province in 
 which most of us are far nobler than our works. If 
 we would be nobler still, as all lovers of beauty are 
 noble, we should be ready to read the distinction.
 
 SPAIN 93 
 
 "THE GENERATION OF '98" 
 
 It is significant that when the so-called "genera- 
 tion of '98" rose in determined rebellion against the 
 trammelling past of Spain, venting its venom upon 
 Echegaray and all that he stood for, they not only 
 excepted Galdos from that past, but in a large sense 
 built upon him. In a similar situation, the youthful 
 Italians dealt similarly with Giovanni Verga, who 
 was excepted from the condemnation heaped chiefly 
 upon the druggingly sweet D'Annunzio as the con- 
 tinuator and chief abettor of the national vices: 
 cult of woman and worship of the past. It is a wise 
 generation of youths that looks beyond dates and 
 remembers that Youth is an attribute of the spirit 
 rather than a mark upon a calendar. 
 
 Perhaps the most laconic form in which the re- 
 volt of these young men has found expression is the 
 characteristically succinct, tart quintet of para- 
 graphs that Baroja gives to it in his Youth and 
 Ego lair y: 
 
 During the years 1898 to 1900," he 
 writes, "a number of young men suddenly found 
 themselves thrown together in Madrid, whose only 
 rule was the principle that the imjnediate past did 
 not exist for them. 
 
 "This aggregation of authors and artists might 
 have seemed to have been brought together under 
 some leadership, and to have been directed to some 
 purpose; yet one who entertained such an assump- 
 tion would have been mistaken. 
 
 "Chance brought us together for a moment, a 
 very brief moment, to be followed by a general dis- 
 persal. There were days when thirty or forty young
 
 94 THE DR.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 men, apprentices in the art of writing, sat arbund 
 the tables in the old Cafe de Madrid. 
 
 "Doubtless such gatherings of new men, eager to 
 interfere in and influence the operations of the 
 social system, yet without either the warrant of 
 tradition or any proved ability to do so, are com- 
 mon upon a larger scale in all rev't)lutions. 
 
 "As we neither had, nor could have had, in the 
 nature of the case, a task to perform, we soon 
 found that we were divided into small groups, and 
 finally broke up altogether.'*' 
 
 This is far from telling the whole story, of course, 
 but Baroja, in pointing out the lack of cohesion and 
 the subsequent dispersal of the youthful icono- 
 clasts, touches upon two vital considerations. 
 
 The defeat of Spain by the United States in 1898 
 was rather a goad to the rebellion of the intel- 
 lectuals than the cause of the overturn. Dissatis- 
 faction had for a long time disturbed the hegemony 
 of the bourgeois. Had not Costa proclaimed that 
 the sepulchre of the C\d must be locked under 
 double key? And was not the sense of realism — the 
 true heritage of the literary Spaniard— already keen 
 in the liberal Galdos as well as the orthodox Pereda.'' 
 But the intense pessimism of the innovators, be- 
 sides returning to this healthy sense of reality, ac- 
 complished far more. They threw out of the window 
 the cluttering, vacuous rhetoric of the Castilian 
 orator; they sought and found a less turbid, clearer, 
 more plastic poetry; they opened wide the nation's 
 
 ' See the English version by Jacob S. Fassett, Jr., and Frances L. Phillips, 
 New York, 1920, with a pertinent introduction by Henry L. Mencken. 
 
 For the case against the "generation of "98," see the prodigious Historic dc la 
 Lengua y Litrratura CasleUana, comprendidos los aulores hispano-amrricanos, by 
 D. Julio Cejador y Frauca, V'ol. X. Madrid, 1919. The author slashes his way 
 through a thicket of quotations, repetitions, and objurgations until, perhaps wearied 
 by his own protests, he almost sells his case through a frank admission of the 
 benefits conferred upon Spanish literature by the generation he is combating.
 
 SPAIN 95 
 
 doors and let the winds of Europe blow lustily 
 through the house; they scandalized the neighbors 
 with all manner of new-fangled notions. Desultory 
 as their labors were, unconsolidated by community 
 of purpose or awareness of direction, they reshaped 
 the national literature. "In the Hterature of Spain," 
 wrote Azorin (Jose Martinez Ruiz), one of the most 
 noted of the rebels, "the generation of '98 represents 
 a renaissance; more or less ample, or narrow, if you 
 will, but when all is said and done, a renaissance. 
 . . . A renaissance is simply the fecundation of 
 the national thought by foreign thought." And so, 
 upon the minds of Dario, Valle-Inclan, Baroja, 
 Unamuno, Maeztu, Ortega y Gasset, Bueno, and 
 Benavente played the minds of the greater Euro- 
 peans. Through these representatives of the new 
 Spain entered D'Annunzio, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Amiel, 
 Spencer, Verlaine, Nietzsche, and the honorable rest. 
 Nietzsche, Verlaine, and Gautier were general rather 
 than specific influences; each man, for himself, re- 
 sponded to specific stimuli. For Baroja there were 
 Dickens, Poe, Balzac; for Benavente, there were 
 Shakespeare, Musset, and the modern French dram- 
 atists. The Institucion Libre de Ensenanza became 
 a veritable symbol of "national masochism," whose 
 aim was, in Cejador's words, to "de-hispanize and 
 de-Christianize Spain." 
 
 The revolt against the theatre was crystallized in 
 the manifesto issued against Echegaray at the time 
 when the rest of the nation was celebrating his re- 
 ception of the Nobel Prize. 
 
 Benavente, as one of the eager '98-ers, became a 
 participant in the intellectual life of Europe; his 
 prose — even apart from his dramas — shows a sensi-
 
 96 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 tiveness to shades of thought and an exquisite 
 aesthetic adjustment that are the chief contribution 
 of the restless youths among which he grew to 
 artistic maturity. Everything that the theatre of 
 Echegaray is, the theatre of Hcnavente is not. His 
 work, which is not to be fully understood without a 
 knowledge of the insurgents whose ranks he once 
 fought in, forms one of their chief claims upon historic 
 glory. Just as Baroja, in the novel, is seemingly 
 the apostle of a philosophic centrifugalism, so in the 
 drama is Benavente the shifting, disintegrating Pro- 
 tean, as instable as the life he pictures, constant only 
 in his inconstancy. And to cap the brief but lively 
 history of the drama's reliels among the '98-ers, 
 Benavente himself only yesterday received the very 
 Nobel Prize that was the signal for Echegaray's 
 condemnation, and received it^so impatient are the 
 young and so intent upon their own accession to 
 fame — at the very moment that he was the target 
 of powerful thrusts and attacks from which he does 
 not emerge unscathed. 
 
 JACINTO BENAVENTE 
 
 The most outspoken as well as the best-informed 
 of the anti-Benaventians is that same Perez de 
 Ayala in whom Galdos finds his panegyrist. He does 
 not deny the dramatist "uncommon talent, inex- 
 haustible acuteness, fluency, and elegance of lan- 
 guage, copious repertory of rhetorical and scenic 
 artifices. But all these gifts together entail par- 
 ticularly vituperable and harmful consequences, for 
 they are pressed into the service of a mistaken con- 
 ception of dramatic art." Their fruit in Benavente,
 
 SPAIN 97 
 
 according to this analysis, is "pharasaism, sophism, 
 conceptism, which are to ideas what the press is to 
 words." And Benavente's versatility? "Examin- 
 ing, as a whole, in panoramic fashion, the complete 
 theatrical production of Don Jacinto Benavente, we 
 become at once aware that the landscape before us 
 is a strange region whose flora and fauna correspond 
 neither to the torrid nor the frigid zone, but to some 
 epicene, transitional zone in which the climate 
 changes arbitrarily from hot to cold and from cold 
 to hot without ever reaching great extremes." 
 . . . "Benavente's theatre is . . . precisely 
 anti-theatrical, the opposite to dramatic art. It is 
 a theatre of middle terms, without action or passion, 
 and therefore without motivation or characters, 
 and, what is worse, without genuine reality. It is a 
 merely oral theatre, which, for its perfect scenic 
 realization, does not require actors in the true 
 sense. ..." 
 
 In the later plays of the Spaniard, Perez de Ayala 
 discovers a growing apostolic fervor, as, for ex- 
 ample, in La Ciudad alegre y confiada^ which is 
 dubbed "not drama but staged politics." La Prin- 
 cesa Bebe, to him, is "neither passion nor fantasy." 
 La Malquerida (played here by Nance O'Neil as 
 The Passion Flower) becomes a mere "detective 
 play" {drama policiaco). The Governor s Wife is 
 dismissed as a piece that bored the public, who 
 laughed only at the suggestive quips. Not even the 
 quality of Benavente's salaciousness is to Ayala's 
 taste, for, "granted the public's acceptance of a 
 gross reference to sex, a cultured, well-balanced 
 spectator will be less disgusted by the merry, frank, 
 natural, sound allusions, as in the Greek and Latin 
 
 7
 
 98 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 classics, in our classics, in the writers of the Italian 
 renaissance, in Shakespeare, than by the moody, 
 veiled, morbid allusions, which suggest morose, sin- 
 ful pleasures." Again, apropos of Los Cachorros^ 
 "his drama, in my sincere but perhaps mistaken 
 opinion, does not proceed immediately from life; 
 it is intellectual, literary, theatre of the theatre. 
 But within this category of merely literary drama, 
 I believe that Hcnavente, in view of his talent, 
 acuteness, and culture, is many cubits higher than 
 similar authors (for example, Linares Rivas), and 
 that his works admit no comparison with the others 
 of the same species." 
 
 From such opinions as these to the appreciations 
 of Benavente by John Garrett Underbill, who dis- 
 covered him to Fnglish readers and playgoers, and 
 whose translations arwd their accompanying intro- 
 ductions are so easily accessible' as to render any 
 account of the playwright's life unnecessary in these 
 pages, is, in more ways than one, a leap of three 
 thousand miles across the sea. Mr. Underbill is 
 fully aware and duly appreciative of the change 
 wrought by Benavente upon the Spanish stage. 
 "Onlv a master of the theatre could be so inde- 
 pendent of its parade; rather he has espoused every 
 reform by which the stage might be broadened or 
 made more sincere. The theatre has been his work- 
 shop, and after each period of productivity he has 
 withdrawn from public view . . . returning 
 again with a fresh orientation and a keener sense of 
 living values. 'Ah!' he exclaims, in the second 
 volume of his Table Talk, 'let us hav^e done with 
 all counterfeits, of which the most common in the 
 
 ' Plays by Jacinto Benavente. Two scries. New York, 1917, 1919.
 
 SPAIN 99 
 
 theatre are these: the confusion of the vapid with 
 the literary, of the dull with the profound, of the 
 extravagant with the new, the banal with the poetic, 
 the gross with the courageous and bold. All these 
 equivocations invariably end in one other — an 
 empty house, which is explained by saying that the 
 play failed because it was art, and the public was 
 unable to appreciate art. But the true art of the 
 theatre is to do good business, and to do good busi- 
 ness you must do good art. Shakespeare and 
 Moliere were both managers, and as managers both 
 made a great deal of money.'^ 
 
 "No dramatist is less theatrical, yet none has 
 written more theatrical plays. . . . The real 
 dramas of Benavente, in which he has expressed his 
 impressions of life without hesitation or reserve, and 
 made a distinctive contribution to the theatre, are 
 far more numerous" (i. e., than his secondary one- 
 act pieces, musical plays, translations from the Eng- 
 lish, Catalan, and French and occasional pieces.) 
 . . . "Benavente has . . . tried his hand at 
 almost every genre, and he has been successful in 
 them all — peasant dramas and the tragedy of blood, 
 so long associated with Spain in the minds of for- 
 eigners, satires of provincial and metropolitan so- 
 ciety, of the aristocracy, dramas of the middle class, 
 court comedy in the most subtle and refined of 
 forms, in which by birth and breeding the person- 
 ages are all royal. He has written romantic com- 
 edies and dramas, rococo spectacles, imaginative 
 fairy plays of genuine poetic worth. Only the play 
 in verse has remained unattempted, implying, as it 
 
 ' A brief but effective refutation of such an oft-repeated fallacy as occurs in 
 Benavente's talli of Shakespeare and Moliere is made by Ludwig Lewisohn in his 
 The Drama and the Stage, pages 16, 17.
 
 100 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 no doubt does, through its diction a certain artlfi- 
 ciaHty in the very process of thought.' In all these 
 different genres he has moved with consummate 
 ease, without the suggestion of effort, until the 
 drama of character has seemed the most facile and 
 casual of arts." 
 
 In Benavente's style Mr. Underhill discovers one 
 of the most complex and highly personal in litera- 
 ture. The Spaniard is concerned not so much with 
 ideas as with thought in process of formulation. 
 Plot, as such, is of secondary moment, while the 
 tendency of the man's art is altogether "away from 
 the plastic toward the insubstantial, the transparent. 
 What he had accomplished with satire he next 
 essays with plot, turning his attention to its sec- 
 ondary and suggestive values, to the inferences 
 which wait upon them, and the atmosphere which 
 they create." All this is interesting not only for 
 its illumination of Benavente's method, but for its 
 analogy with procedure that is loosely labeled Ex- 
 pressionist and associated with the young German 
 experimenters rather than with Benavente in Spain 
 or O'Neill in the United States. The futuristic 
 currents, it may be added in passing, flow weak 
 upon the Spanish stage; they are almost confined to 
 the prose and poetry of such groups as the Ultra, 
 with an affinity to the Dadas and the host of pullu- 
 lating "isms" that run the continuous literary 
 vaudeville show of Europe. 
 
 Truth — let us be careful with that chameleon- 
 word — does not always lie in the middle. But in 
 the case of Benavente, if Underbill does him some- 
 
 ' Recent Italian dramatists have in practice disproved this theory. There is 
 no valid argument against the poetic play. All it needs is — poets.
 
 SPAIN 101 
 
 thing more than justice, surely Ayala does him 
 something less. Men do not write fourscore plays 
 of unvarying merit. If they are Latins they suffer, 
 even more than Anglo-Saxons, who are fond of 
 considering themselves a colder race, from the un- 
 due praise and the undue depreciation of friends 
 and enemies; they acquire a quantitative outlook 
 upon output; they mistake theory for execution, 
 theme for projection. So that we may agree at 
 once that not every play by Benavente is worth 
 reading or producing; that critics like Ayala have 
 been unjustly harsh, as critics like Bueno and 
 Andres Gonzalez Blanco have been unjustly eulo- 
 gistic. ''Shakespeare returned to life," exclaims 
 Gonzalez Blanco, ^ writing of the play Senora Ama^ 
 "would sign this drama with pride!" (Shades of 
 the immortal Will, what comparisons are committed 
 in thy name!) Donina, declares Manuel Bueno, 
 referring to one of the protagonists of La Noche del 
 Sdbado {Witches' Sabbath) "is a creature that recalls 
 the women of Shakespeare," whereupon, in his en- 
 thusiasm, he makes of Portia the daughter of Shy- 
 lock I^ Now Witches' Sabbath is a highly original 
 and interesting production, — one of the cycloramic 
 spectacles that form, for some, the chief contribu- 
 tion of Benavente to the technical renovation of 
 modern Spanish drama. But why burden it under 
 such a mountain of praise? Nor, on the other hand, 
 should the excess of his critics be allowed to obscure 
 the genuine values of the dramatist. 
 
 Benavente, as is now well known, was, in his 
 earlier days, a traveler with a circus, perhaps a 
 
 ^ Los Dramaturges Espaholes Contempordneos, p. 131 et seq. Valencia. 
 • Teatro Espanol Conlempordneo, pp. 144-151. Madrid.
 
 102 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 performer in the ring. His entire output for the 
 theatre may be viewed as a vast circus ring with 
 Hcnavente as sprightly, antic master, cracking his 
 whip and summoning in dazzling succession a motley 
 of clowns, now cynical with the sneer of satire, now 
 sad with the traditional heritage of the mummer's 
 melancholy, now provocatively admonitory, now 
 nonchalantly anarchical, but ever the conscious 
 clown of the ring. There is, in the man's most 
 characteristic labors, a sophistication that almost 
 militates against depth ui passion; whether he weeps 
 or he cries, he is never so absorbed that he cannot 
 pause for introspection, for seH-analysis. It is no 
 accident that his beginnings, toward the end of the 
 nineteenth century, arc made in satire, and that his 
 most famous work, fjjs hitereses Creados (played in 
 the L'nited States as The Bonds of Interest and in 
 England as The Bias of the If 'arid) is satire so sub- 
 limated that, from viewing mankind as a tangled 
 string of puppets, it takes the logical step of con- 
 verting them frankly into puppet figures upon the 
 stage. Remember that Henavente's plavs, like 
 Baroja's novels, for all the madrilenismo of both 
 writers, are centrifugal; they proceed from a com- 
 mon center, but do not return; they elude ready 
 classification because they were born of a spirit 
 hostile to the artificial ease of order. There is 
 neither morality nor immorality in Benavente, who 
 is amoral, and Martinez Sierra is right in changing 
 his figure when he says that Benavente's work re- 
 sembles him as if it were himself "reflected in a 
 mirror ... or rather, in the flowing crystal of 
 a brook."^ To characterize the man's work — as 
 
 • See his Introduccion to the Neli»on edition of three Benavente plays (Los 
 Interests Creados, Al Natural, Rosas de Oloho).
 
 SPAIN 103 
 
 apart from whatever artistic values we may assign 
 to it — one needs words that do not stand still, that 
 mock, that snicker, that brood, that shift forever 
 restlessly like the colored glass of the kaleidoscope, 
 into patterns new and alluring. The stupid itera- 
 tion of Echegaray, who could not even in El Gra?i 
 Galeoto abandon his shabby artifices, gives way to 
 colorful variety; even when we know that the new 
 patterns are but bits of tinted glass thrown together 
 at a venture by a turn of the kaleidoscope, we are 
 grateful for the change. 
 
 It is not necessary, even were it here feasible, to 
 go over every play that Benavente has written. 
 Some of them are avowed trifles that fulfill their 
 purpose of enlivening the passing hour; nor should 
 one overlook, even among these, such a deep little 
 episode as La Verdad {The Truth) ^ in which a young 
 lady, placed in a position where she may, if she 
 desires, overhear in hiding what her sweetheart has 
 to say about her to his boon companions, finally 
 refuses the opportunity. For, if there is a hypocrisy 
 of virtue, may there not be, too, a hypocrisy which 
 assumes vices? And whatever her sweetheart says, 
 whether complimentary or derogatory, — how is 
 she to know which words carry the real truth? Then 
 there is the bonbon called El Principe ^ue Todo Lo 
 Aprendid En Los Libros {The Prince Who Learned 
 Everything Out of Books), written for the Children's 
 Theatre he founded, together with the actor Porro- 
 d6n, in 191 1. This is a charming little juvenile 
 satire, not without application to adults, containing 
 mild gibes at the court, at book-learning, and the 
 "practical" life, and constituting, in certain minor 
 respects, a young folks' Don Quixote. For the prince
 
 104 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 believes all he has read in the fairv books, — only in 
 this case the strength of his belief carries him through. 
 Tonino, the buffoon, with his stomachic greed, is the 
 Sancho of the play as La Vieja, the prince's good 
 fairy, is the Dulcinea who "comes true." 
 
 The characteristic Benavente is to be found 
 rather in such arresting performances as La Gober- 
 tiadora (1901), Lm Noche del Sdhado (19O]), Lm 
 Princesa Bebe (published in 1905, but withheld from 
 the stage until 19O9), Los Intereses Creados (1907), 
 and Im Malqiierida (191J). In these his satire, his 
 irony, are at their most pungent; his wit is at its 
 sharpest, his skill at suggesting psychology through 
 a minimum of words and actions most fine. Around 
 these, and the few others that might be grouped 
 with them, are clustered a score of minor works, 
 illuminative of his best rather than illustrative of it. 
 As, for example, El Automdvil (1902), which followed 
 fast upon Alma Triuyijaute of the same December. 
 If I mention The Automobile at all, it is because in 
 this fairly clever farce I seem to find a sort of "re- 
 hearsal" for the writing of the widely acclaimed 
 Bonds of Interest of five years later. Its essential 
 theme is the same as that of Los Intereses Creados; 
 Margarita, former sweetheart of Federico, steals him 
 away in an automobile just bought from the Mar- 
 quis by Hilario, father of Federico's affianced, Maria 
 Luisa. A scandal results, and the engaged couple 
 break off, though at bottom still in love. Marga- 
 rita is a romantic, stage-struck madcap; she half 
 convinces herself that she will ennoble her char- 
 acter by "renouncing" Federico (a la Dame aux 
 Camelias!), and before she is through, she has so 
 entangled the virtuous men and ladies that they are
 
 SPAIN 105 
 
 forced to accept in silence her fanciful and theatrical 
 explanation of Federico's "escapade." Here, as in 
 the later play, cleverness devises its own extrica- 
 tion; there are a number of funny scenes, but the 
 distance between this and The Bonds of Interest is 
 continental; in The Automobile the persons are 
 largely puppets; in Los Intereses Creados^ the pup- 
 pets are more than persons, living a life that is their 
 own and a symbolic life dependent not upon ar- 
 bitrary, parallel meanings, but upon the significance 
 that radiates from all genuine personalities. Bueno, 
 a fellow '98-er of Benavente's, has been extravagant 
 in praise of the other piece. Alma Triunfante. "It 
 is the elegy of life's nothingness," he writes,^ "of the 
 tragic void of our souls." Perhaps. But Bueno is 
 too prone to discuss ethical implications rather than 
 the aesthetic index of the play, which is not very 
 high. A woman, crazed by the loss of her child, has 
 been in the asylum for five years, during which time 
 her husband has a child by another. This she dis- 
 covers when she returns to her house. Rather than 
 admit her knowledge, however, she would feign a 
 return of insanity, so as to remove herself from his 
 path. He, sincerely penitent, is led to confess all 
 to her, whereupon she accepts the daughter as 
 partly hers and pardons all concerned. Her doctor 
 has been deceived, while the priest has known the 
 truth all along, through the wife's confessor, and it 
 is through him that she is led to the more human 
 conclusion. The doctor-priest balance swings evenly 
 between science and religion, which are reconciled 
 in an all-embracing human love. As here, so in 
 Rosas de Otono (1905), pardon and hope seem the 
 
 ' Teatro Espanol Contempordneo, pages 137-144.
 
 106 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 woman's lot. There is sympathy for woman, yet 
 she is depicted as being too weak in will to accom- 
 plish what her intellect approves. She may rebel, 
 but gives in at last, while man purchases forgive- 
 ness at the price of a little hollow Hattery, Here, 
 as in La Fuerza Eriita (190S), Martinez Sierra be- 
 holds support of bourgeois morality; there is a closer 
 analogy, however, between Unite Force and Alma 
 Triunjante^ wherein the emphasis is placed rather 
 upon sacrifice than upon pardon. And those who 
 assert that Bcnavente is never "preachy" would do 
 well to consult the close ot Iji Fua-zn Brnta. To this 
 group we may assign Los Malhechores del Bien {The 
 Evil-Doers of Goody 1905), which is not, as some have 
 maintained, an anti-clerical diatribe. It is a satire 
 against the essential immorality of a certain type 
 of charity-giving as prevalent in England as in 
 France, in Germany as in the United States, — a con- 
 descending patronage that robs its beneficiaries of 
 will, manhood, personality. 
 
 Benavente, in an interview, is reported to have 
 expressed a choice ot Senora Ama (1908) as his best 
 play. For that reason, as well as because of the 
 commendations that Gonzalez Blanco and his ilk 
 have laid upon it with a trowel, it is worth while 
 dwelling upon tor a paragraph. It is in three acts. 
 The protagonist is much in love with her erring 
 husband; she overlooks his numerous transgressions 
 and even prides herself upon his conquests, for if 
 he is so popular with the ladies, then all the more 
 credit to her for having won him. . . . But when 
 a child begins to grow in her bosom she becomes 
 strict, for no bad example must be set before the 
 boy (so she wills the sex) after he is born. . . .
 
 SPAIN 107 
 
 Once again she forgives her husband, assuring him 
 that heaven has done the same. There is httle 
 effectiveness to the play whether as psychology, 
 action, character portrayal, or narrative. "This is 
 worse than among the Moors!" exclaims Rosa in 
 the first act. "Then there's no religion here, no 
 morality, no shame?" . . . "Quit your fussing!" 
 is Julita's reply. "There are simply men and 
 women. . . ." Yes, but for an advanced play- 
 wright like Benavente, too many of the men reap 
 the pleasures of vice, while the women are left with 
 the solace of virtue, — a sweet word that one finds 
 in the dictionaries. Yet who shall blame overmuch 
 if he depicts his people as they are? These are not, 
 after all, his best plays. They are not the ones he 
 wrote in the mood of Princess Bebe^ of which he 
 declared: "Sometimes I say what I think, some- 
 times I have regard for the opinions of others." 
 No; in these, he has a certain "regard for the opinions 
 of others," which is good business and ratifies what 
 the author has written in connection with art and 
 money-making. 
 
 Rather let us return to the salient series that 
 starts with La Gobernadora. In these one imagines 
 one discovers Benavente in the core, not upon the 
 rim, of his work. The satire and the irony in them 
 are not the detached commentary that may be found 
 in his lesser social pieces; they are the overtones of 
 the action and the personages, vibrating with the 
 fundamental tone and coloring its timbre. The 
 very frames merge with the pictures they contain 
 until they dissolve in the variegated detail. It was 
 Benavente, not Echegaray, that Shaw should have 
 "discovered" circa 1903. Far more versatile than
 
 108 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Pirandello, the Spaniard more resembles his English 
 contemporary in his radiant technical insouciance, 
 his ventilation of current notions, his ready wit, his 
 intellectual curiosity. One looks in vain through 
 Benavente, however, for Barbaras, Candidas, pre- 
 dacious Anns and their life-force brood. One looks 
 in vain for meticulous stage-directions, which Ben- 
 avente avoids, and logorrheic prefaces. The Span- 
 iard lacks almost entirely the Irishman's ethical pre- 
 occupations, though, curiously enough, no one has 
 come away from Shaw with a hampered sense of 
 personal liberty. Benavente's is not a discursive 
 world; it is rather a compact, pyrotechnic institu- 
 tion where the rockets glare, the wheels spin a while, 
 and then the display is over. He dazzles the mind 
 and leaves the heart curiously indifferent, — perhaps 
 because he is himself an intlifferent spectator. Once 
 again, like Baroja, he produces the impression of a 
 man who has sat down upon the banks of life to 
 watch the stream flow by. He does not, like Shaw, 
 plunge into the waters and get himself gloriously 
 wet; he is like those shapely maidens who expend 
 their effort upon a beautiful bathing suit that is 
 never meant to be kissed by the waves. But — and 
 this is the important consideration — he has pro- 
 jected into his best works just this instable, aloof, 
 yet inquisitive attitude toward life, and drama can 
 do little more than vivify an attitude. 
 
 The governor's wife of the play thus named is 
 one of Benavente's wise brood who works her will 
 upon the surrounding society through a subtle 
 knowledge of human nature. "She has made her 
 husband, and she knows how to recall every detail 
 of the making that she may gain some new end.
 
 SPAIN 109 
 
 She can switch back and forth between two deci- 
 sions as one who flies gracefully from the trapeze of 
 opportunism to the trapeze of self-interest. Next 
 to nothing in the life of the town escapes her inter- 
 ference. She plays off the townsfolk to her ceaseless 
 advantage. She can keep the proper secretary, guide, 
 counsellor, and friend to her husband — and agree- 
 able lover to herself. And all this she does with a 
 marvelous savoir-faire^ a bird-like vivacity, an in- 
 imitable grace, the lightest of innuendo. Like a 
 knowing lark, she scales singing the heavens of self- 
 interest and self-will. If for a moment she flutters 
 downward, this Dona Josefina still charms piquantly. 
 With reason she tempts comediennes. Mrs. Fiske 
 should play her in America. 
 
 "This precious pair are well companioned — in the 
 gubernatorial 'palace' — by a bent-shouldered, soft- 
 spoken old henchman, who knows every byway of 
 duplicity, hypocrisy, and self-interest in Moraleda; 
 in the town itself, by a whole troop of fitting deni- 
 zens. Across the scene comes and goes 'the richest 
 man in Moraleda,' who would order its morals and 
 manners, its downsittings and uprisings according 
 to his own notions and for his own profit, and who is 
 by no means choice or considerate in his methods. 
 The spectator salutes him as one well known in the 
 Moraledas even of pure and young America. Be- 
 hind him trail a gabbing wife, a shallow, pettish 
 daughter. Near her are two, three, and four gal- 
 lants, pretending to the ways of the frivolous, know- 
 ing world as it appears, say the 300 miles from the 
 nearest capital. Again the spectator salutes them 
 gladly; ten chances to one he has encountered them 
 no farther away than our own Middle V\'est. In
 
 no THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 the middle distance or farther into the offing a 
 tradesman, an actor, a manager, the rector of the 
 university, women 'snippy' and women vacuous; 
 while here and there passes and repasses a distinc- 
 tively Spanish character — for the most part folk of 
 the bull ring. All these dwell together busily, even 
 happily, in Moraleda, because they are all tarred 
 with the same stick— the stick with which Hcna- 
 vente first prods and smears the governor, the gov- 
 ernor's lady, and the rich, the mean, the arrogant 
 Don Baldomero. The end of the stick is sharp, the 
 acid on it bites through the tar. Details aside, the 
 comedy of The Governor s Wife is as true as tnith, 
 and as savorv, in Moralcdas the world over. Out 
 of the tares of human nature Benavente has brought 
 to bloom a flower of the theatre. Into fifty novels 
 Balzac had need to pack his 'human comedy.' 
 The Spaniard has compressed his into one brief 
 play."' 
 
 Even more kaleidoscopic than La Gobemadora is 
 the Witches' Sabbath {La Noche del Sdbado), sub- 
 titled by the author "a novel for the stage inlTve 
 tableaux." But this scenic novel does not employ 
 the technique of the Galdosian play, in which the 
 author of the National Episodes deliberately flouted 
 theatrical convention and mingled genres in a manner 
 to astound the academic. Neither does it revert to 
 the habit of some of Benavente's lesser plays, in 
 which the plot is narrated rather than presented in 
 action and word. It is dramaturgically akin to the 
 Expressionistic methods that it preceded; to such 
 slices of life as Molnar's Liliom; to the irregular 
 
 > H. T. Parker, in the Baton Evening Transcript, May 19. 1920. on a day follow- 
 ing the performance of the play, in Underhill's translation, by the Harvard Dra- 
 matic Club. Cambridge, Mass.
 
 SPAIN 111 
 
 stage patterns that Wedekind employed before 
 Kaiser, Hasenclever, and the other new Germans, 
 that Hauptmann has used in such recent plays as 
 Der Weisse Heiland^ and that one, William Shake- 
 speare by name, used in blissful ignorance of our 
 contemporary "isms." It is a free form that is the 
 result, or rather the other aspect, of a free concep- 
 tion. Shall it irk us that the work is not Spanish 
 in atmosphere or psychology.^ The action, supposed 
 to take place in a winter resort upon the Riviera, 
 /'situated near the boundary between Italy and 
 France," has, in reality, a less local setting, and the 
 boundaries are more exactly those between no two 
 countries, but between you and me. With his early 
 fondness for the lector whom Drinkwater but yes- 
 terday brought to our stage in his Abraham Lincoln^ 
 Benavente prologues his play — as he is later to do 
 with The Bonds of Interest — with a brief, poetic 
 prelude. 
 
 It is Saturday night. Earth, sea, and sky blend in 
 refulgent harmony — light, waves, mountain tops, and 
 groves smile with the freshness of a world new-born, 
 ignorant of sorrow and of death. Gods and heroes, 
 nymphs and fawns should inhabit this enchanted shore; 
 love and wisdom alone are worthy to contemplate its 
 beauty. The idylls of Theocritus and the eclogues of 
 Virgil breathe the spirit of its poesy, or if perchance a 
 poet of our unquiet time may turn to it to glorify his 
 melancholy, let it be the divine Shelley, worshiper of 
 the eternal harmony of Beauty, Truth, and Good, who 
 refused to set bounds and limits to the infinite, adoring 
 God in all his works. The ritual of his worship shall be 
 the passionate litany of the holy poet of Assisi, the 
 universal lover, who greeted all things with his song of
 
 112 THE DR.AMA OF TILAXSITION 
 
 ardent flame: Brother Sun, Brother Sea, Brother Birds, 
 Brother Wolf — all brothers! 
 
 Into this enchanted scene, by Nature so lavishly 
 endowed, comes man. It is the fashionable winter season 
 — d la mode — man has chosen his earthly paradise well; 
 for paradise indeed it is. He flees from the cold and the 
 chill of the North, but he brings the chill of his life with 
 him; he flees from his life, but his life follows and over- 
 takes him. Every pathway beneath his feet opens into 
 an inferno like Dante's, above whose portals is inscribed 
 the legend: 
 
 Through me the way is to the city dolent, 
 Through me the way is to eternal dole. 
 Through me the way among the people lost. 
 
 \Miereupon the motley tale begins. A sordid 
 story of a mother, Iniperia, mistress of Prince Flor- 
 encio, and Donina, daughter of Imperia, who loves 
 Nunu but cannot win him. Nunu, knowing his 
 power over Donina, tries to trade her to her mother's 
 paramour. Donina, trapped in a low resort and 
 defending herself against the Prince's attack, slays 
 him. For a while she is kept alive by the attentions 
 of Nunu, — attentions purchased by her mother, 
 unknown to the languishing daughter, — until, the 
 secret of his assiduity out, she dies, while her mother 
 leaves with the other Prince, Michael Alexander. 
 
 Plot in Benavente is of itself next to nothing. In 
 his dramatic pointillage the detail is almost all. 
 Now it is a snatch of dialogue: "We become impos- 
 sible socially," says Leonardo, "not because of what 
 people know about us, but because of what they 
 imagine we may know about them." "Precisely," 
 replies Etelvina. "We ought always to say what 
 we know of everybody, not out of malice, but in the
 
 SPAIN 113 
 
 interest of truth and good feeling. All of us are 
 made of the same clay. Virtue is merely relative — 
 it consists of those vices one does not possess. If it 
 had been virtuous not to eat apples, and I had been 
 Eve, man would never have fallen. I cannot abide 
 the sight of apples; although I do not complain of 
 those that eat them. No doubt they have good 
 reasons." Or, as the Signore says, somewhat later: 
 "For the most part, people know about as much 
 about life as they do about the theatre — they see 
 the play, that is all; the real show goes on behind 
 the scenes." (Here, it seems to me, Benavente has 
 uttered an unconscious critique of his own drama; 
 one does get the impression, often, that his per- 
 sonages are keeping something from the spectator.) 
 Again, it is an entire section of the play that stands 
 out as a miniature piece within a piece, as in the 
 original third scene of this scenic novel: 
 
 We are like witches, says Imperia, meeting on 
 Saturday night. I was a little girl when I first heard 
 the legend, and you remind me of it now. There was a 
 poor woman who lived near our house. She was very old, 
 and apparently very respectable. She lived alone, and 
 you would have said that she was a good woman. Her 
 house was clean; she worked in the garden by day, busy 
 with her flowers, or fed the pigeons; at night she sewed a 
 little on her quaint old clothes. She was never idle — 
 it was a calm and peaceful life, lived openly in the sun. 
 But people said that she was a witch, and every Saturday 
 at midnight, as the clock struck twelve, she mounted a 
 broomstick and flew away to the witches' lair, and there 
 with the other witches she did homage to Satan; and if 
 you could surprise them then, you would see them as 
 they really were. One day, some time later, at dawn on a 
 Sunday morning, the old woman was found dead, out of 
 
 8
 
 114 rHK DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 her bed, at some distance from her house, in an o[>cn 
 field, and there was a dagger in her heart. But nohotly 
 coulii ever find the assassin nor discover any motive for' 
 the munler, nor C(juld anyone ever explain the reason 
 that woman should have been fouml in that place on 
 that morning, when she had been seen closing the door 
 t)f her house as usual the night before, and in the morning 
 when they carried the body there, the door was still 
 closed. 
 
 RiNALDi: Hut you don't really mean? . . . Non- 
 sense! Then you would have to believe in witches. 
 
 Imperia: No, not in such witches. But there comes 
 a Saturday Night in all our lives, even the most peaceful 
 of them, when our souls, like the witches, fly to their lairs. 
 Wc exist f(jr ilays to reach one hour which is vital and real. 
 Then our witches' souls take flight, some toward their 
 hopes and ambitions, some toward their vices, their follies, 
 others towanl their loves— toward something which is far 
 from and alien to our lives, but which has always smoul- 
 dered in us, and at heart is what we are. 
 
 Such is the quasi-Freudian witches' sabbath of 
 the play, which, if any palpable deduction may be 
 made from its rapidly reeling visions, suggests a 
 defense of the soul's repressions. "To achieve any- 
 thing in life we must destroy reality," concludes 
 Imperia, "and thnist aside the phantoms of fact, 
 which confuse and hem us round, to follow the only 
 reality, the flight of our witches' spirits on Sattirday 
 Night, as they turn to their ideal — some toward evil, 
 to be lost in the shadows forever liktf" spectres of the 
 night, others toward good, to dwell eternally in it, 
 the children of love and light."' It js the Ibsen 
 
 ' The excerpts are from Mr. Undcrhiirs translation of the play as it appeared 
 in Poet Lore, spring number, 1918. The same issue contains a suggestive article 
 by Mr. Underbill on "Benavente .\3 a Modem."
 
 ^ SPAIN 115 
 
 call to selfhood that echoes in the words of this 
 puppet-woman. Perhaps the characters talk now 
 -and then as if they were preaching at the audience? 
 It is not enough to reply that Shaw's personages are 
 merely the playwright's mouthpieces, something in 
 tjie manner of yesterday's trick motion picture in 
 which every performer in the play had the same 
 face. Modern conversation is a reflection of modern 
 problems. Intelligent folk are forever discussing 
 life. There is more drama in a searching analysis 
 of vital contemporary issues than in all the action 
 that ever packed a melodrama circus. 
 
 Storm Jameson, who beholds in Benavente the 
 hope of the Spanish drama, is wiser than those 
 Spaniards who have called the versatile Jacinto 
 foreign in artistic spirit. Behind his affinities with 
 the modern Frenchmen and contemporary culture, 
 she beholds the spirit of Lope de Vega, with that 
 classic spirit's tradition of suppleness, his skill in 
 construction, his "splendour of movement and 
 music; hving, distinctive characters. Only a new 
 creative activity could give fresh life to his pageant 
 of emotion and colour, filling it with the more com- 
 plex life of modernity, taking the highest from past 
 and present, and making it afresh for the new age. 
 . . . His (i. e., Benavente's) comedies have ex- 
 quisite fantasy, poetic grace, technical perfection, 
 and intellectual distinction. Where they fail is in 
 an occasional careless handling of their finest qual- 
 ities. . . . Fantasy overshadows reality, to the 
 "marring of dramatic proportion." 
 
 It is in The Bonds of Interest that she finds the 
 quintessence of these qualities, — a piece none the 
 less original, provocative, illuminating, salient in 
 
 r
 
 116 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 modern drama, for its failure when offered to New 
 York by the Iheatre Guild in 1919. Small need to 
 go out of Spain for its forenmners, — realistic, in- 
 dividualistic Spain with its roster of ribald rogues 
 that begins with the sixteenth-century Lazarillo de 
 Tormes and comes right down into our own day. 
 Nor, as we glance toward the past for the inevitable 
 rivals who said our g(x)d things before us, should we 
 forget, in considering the contemj'K)rary breaking awav 
 from stage forms, that already at the chjse of the 
 fifteenth century Spain had its Tragicomedia di 
 Calisto V Melibea (the famous Celestina). This play, 
 a novel in dialogue, has in its various editions six- 
 teen, twenty-one, and twenty-two acts. Realism, 
 pessimism, passion, imagination, — all these are in 
 the medieval work of the Jewish laywer, Fernando 
 de Rojas. It is g(K)d that we should recall betimes 
 our eternal con tern pxiraries. 
 
 The play by which Benavente is best known out 
 of his native land is a symbolic, marionette drama 
 in which are restored to a new and glorious life the 
 puppets of the Commedia dell' Arte. .And the play, 
 not the plot, is the thing. Crispin, the shameless 
 cynic, archetype ot wordly rascality, paving the 
 way for Leandro's marriage, so that the debts they 
 have both incurred may be paid, is a veritable 
 human summary of the will to achieve. He is the 
 minor Mephisto to Leandro's minor Faust. He is, 
 rather than a separate individual, another of Le- 
 andro's selves, — the grosser metal that holds to- 
 gether the golden nobility of his master's soul, or, 
 to invert our philosophy, the adventurous spirit 
 that transcends Leandro's bourgeois ethics. It is 
 Leandro who, redeemed by true love, is ready to
 
 SPAIN 117 
 
 confess his life-lie; it is Crispin who prevails upon 
 him with more worldly counsel, and who, by his 
 uncanny cleverness, so embroils the other puppets 
 in a network of inter-related interests that they 
 cannot expose his own misdoings without doing hurt 
 to themselves. Such plays illuminate life by epito- 
 mizing it. 
 
 Yet note how Benavente is himself the cynic 
 even in the prologue that he puts into the mouth 
 of Crispin; how, after presenting the play as a child 
 of the antique farce, lifted by Lope de Rueda, 
 Shakespeare, and Moliere to high estate, he offers 
 it as "a little play of puppets, impossible in theme, 
 without any reality at all. You will soon see how 
 everything happens in it that could never happen, 
 how its personages are not real men and women, 
 nor the shadows of them, but dolls or marionettes 
 of paste and cardboard, moving upon wires which 
 are visible even in a little light and to the dimmest 
 eye. They are the grotesque masks of the Italian 
 Commedia dell' Arte, not as boisterous as they once 
 were, because they have aged with the years and 
 have been able to think much in so long a time. 
 The author is aware that so primitive a spectacle is 
 unworthy of the culture of these days; he throws 
 himself upon your courtesy and upon your goodness 
 of heart. He only asks that you should make your- 
 selves as young as possible. The world has grown 
 old, but art never can reconcile itself to growing 
 old, and so, to seem young again, it descends to 
 these fripperies. And that is the reason that these 
 outworn puppets have presumed to come to amuse 
 you to-night with their child's play." 
 
 Here we have a sort of anti-technique; an art that
 
 118 Till-. DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 seeks not so much to conceal irsch as to invite 
 attention to its operation. It is one ol the many 
 signs of the reaction against realism that stirs u\xm 
 the stage of every nation and invatles not only the 
 precincts of scenery and playcraft, but even of 
 acting,' Ihc prologue is spoken in the mood of 
 the man who tlcclaims it; the epiK)gue, from Silvia, 
 is a mirror ot her own gentle soul: 
 
 You have seen how these puppets have been moved 
 by plain and obvious strings, like men and women in the 
 farces of our lives — strings which were their interests, 
 their passions, and all the illusions and |>etty miseries of 
 their state. Some are pulled by the feet to lives of rest- 
 less ami weary wandering; some by the hands to toil 
 with pain, to struggle with bitterness, to strike with 
 cunning, to slay with violence and rage. But into the 
 hearts of all there descends sometimes from heaven an in- 
 visible thread, as if it were woven out of the sunlight and 
 the mcxmbeams, the invisible thread of love, which makes 
 these men ami women, as it docs these puppets which 
 seem like men, almost divine, ami brings to our fore- 
 heads the smile and splendors of the dawn, lends wings 
 to our drcxjping spirits, and whispers to us still that this 
 farce is not all a farce, that there is something noble, 
 something tiivine in our lives which is true ami which is 
 eternal, and which shall not close when the farce of life 
 shall close. 
 
 And just as Crispin and Leandro are but varying 
 aspects of the same individual, so are the Crispin 
 of the prologue and the Silvia of the epilogue but 
 varying aspects of the author himself. 
 
 It is this dualism in Benavente that explains, if 
 it does not wholly justify, Ayala's accusation of 
 
 > See Macgowan's Tht Theatre of To-morrow, pages 148-159.
 
 SPAIN 119 
 
 preachiness. One might, as a critical tour deforce, 
 go through the Spaniard's dramas and play the 
 game of citing Scripture against the Scriptures. 
 Benavente could thus, on isolated evidence, be made 
 out an anti-upper-class satirist {Gente Conocida), a 
 sentimental bourgeois {Rosas de Otono), a psycho- 
 logical investigator (La Malquerida), and what not 
 else. So that, if Jameson attributes too much to 
 Benavente's feelings when she says of him that he 
 "cannot always hold his naked hate and anger from 
 tearing in pieces the dramatic fitness of speech and 
 character," she hits the nail on the head in the 
 crisp statement that follows fast upon the other: 
 "The short measure of the dramatist is filled up by 
 the preacher. So that not all the radiant beauty of 
 style, nor the clear, deep passion, nor the tender- 
 ness, can carry his tragedies to the peaks that first 
 catch the sun. Yet he does fly, and the wings are 
 the wings of a god." Nor are those who know her 
 theory of the modern drama surprised to find her 
 interpreting Crispin as the man who "will live 
 dangerously or not at all. This is more than ex- 
 quisite dialogue, more than fantasy in perfect form: 
 it is an artistic criticism of life, the highest form of 
 comedy; a criticism of the world in which the noble 
 must needs save himself by the baser, where love 
 and morality are pawns in the game of the masters 
 of life. And through it all, beneath the grace in 
 which it clothes itself, is the pulse of creative life." 
 And, were she seeking support for such an interpre- 
 tation, she would find plenty in Benavente's Princess 
 Beb6, wherein Princess Helena bluntly asks, "How 
 would any human life be possible if we were not 
 able to outwit the social laws?" Yet it is this same
 
 120 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Helena who can inquire: "Why this insane desire 
 to shut ourselves off from each other, to ticket and 
 classify ourselves, to create distinctions between us, 
 and fancy that we are superior to our fellows, when 
 we are all equal and all belong to the same race, 
 the poor, despised, human race, which spends all 
 its time dividing itself and hating itself and marking 
 itself off into classes and castes and individuals, 
 when all the sympathy and all the love in our hearts 
 which might bind us together would be too little 
 even then among so many to alleviate the sorrows 
 of life?" It is quite as difficult to pin his creatures 
 down as to glue the label to his elusive self. 
 
 Benavente's significance to the drama of to-day — 
 and it would receive a prompter recognition did he 
 write in l-rcnch in a capital so proclaniative as 
 Paris of its minor and major glories — lies in a ver- 
 satility that is more than mere dramaturgic virtu- 
 ositv. Mis restlessness, his cynicism, his emotional 
 dualisjn, are part and parcel not only of our peculiar 
 modernity, but of every richer nature that has 
 brooded upon the tragi-comedy of lite. Hence his 
 shifting of attitudes, his disregard of conventional 
 form, his creative instability. Hence, too, the 
 fusion, not always complete, between reality and 
 fantasy. Echegaray was merely prolific; Benavente's 
 fecundity is qualitative as well as quantitative. 
 Echegaray stamped ready-made ideas into the pre- 
 vailing dramatic forms; Benavente's intellectual 
 resiliency created its own amorphous ambient. Yet 
 something in the man's intellect seems to suppress 
 the emotional fervor that alone could nourish living 
 creatures rather than sublimated symbols. His
 
 SPAIN 121 
 
 plays, with their thin fables and their rich dialogues, 
 suggest those pages of the Talmud in which islets 
 of text are submerged in an ocean of commentary. 
 Not so much excess of emotion, as Jameson would 
 have it, but excess of intellectuality, interferes with 
 the dramatic fitness of speech and character. Can 
 this be a prevision of our future society, wherein, as 
 in Shaw's latest legend of longevity, the flesh and its 
 passions shall have evaporated into atmospheric 
 thought? And shall the fruit of the Shavian re- 
 bellion be nothing but this fleshless abstraction from 
 the carnal roots of life? No, youth will have none 
 of it, not even a youth that is born wise out of 
 Shavian eggs hatched in Methuselania.^ 
 
 ' I must postpone to some other occasion a consideration of the two Quintero 
 brothers, Serafin and Joaquin, who are so intimately connected with the history 
 of the genero chico in Spain. Inasmuch as they would prove of particular interest 
 to those interested in the one-act play and the little theatrp, I may mention that 
 the best treatment of them in English may be found in the Introduction to the 
 text edition of Doiia Clarines and Manana de Sol, by S. Griswold Morley. The 
 Quinteros' Malvaloca is published in New York; their A Sunny Morning, is most 
 easily available in Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays, edited by Frank Shay and 
 Pierre Loving (Cincinnati); The Fountain of Youth {La Flor de la Vida) is also 
 issued at Cincinnati.
 
 ITALY
 
 ITALY 
 
 Italian critics of the drama, who are not any more 
 cheerful than the rest of the tribe, have as much 
 reason as any to bewail the low state into which 
 the drama has fallen. There have not been lacking 
 scholars who even deny that a genuinely national 
 stage exists; since Tullio Fornioni, in 1885, started 
 the ball a-rolling it has been given powerful shoves 
 by such men as Mario Pilo, Salvatore Barzilai and 
 V. Morello. Only yesterday Signor Guido Ruberti, 
 in his closely packed two-volume book upon // 
 teatro contemporaneo in Europa^ renews the discus- 
 sion, and in his section upon the realistic Italian 
 drama (I, 211) declares bluntly, "The truth is that 
 Italy has never had a truly national theatre." In 
 the ensuing commentary he indicates that there is, 
 in the very nature of the Italian people, a certain 
 quality that is anti-dramatic in effect; the spiritual 
 and material difficulties experienced by the nation 
 while other countries were conquering a greater or 
 less degree of liberty caused it to turn in upon itself, 
 accustoming it, perforce, to a "singular mental 
 habit of adaptation and conciliation; a remarkable 
 equilibrium that succeeds in fusing within itself the 
 most diverse tendencies, harmonizing them in a 
 supreme ideal that is neither skepticism nor austere 
 faith, neither absolute indifferentism nor unreflect- 
 ing passion, yet feeds upon and communicates all 
 these." The Italian conscience, moreover, unlike 
 the Slavic, finds its great problems settled in ad- 
 
 125
 
 126 TUF DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 vance by its creed, thus removing, ur at least greatly 
 modifying, one of the mainsprings of iiramatic ac- 
 tion. In the jx)werlul scenes of passionate crime 
 the critic sees but added pr(K)f of the primitiveness 
 of his people; upon them, he tells us, the currents 
 of modern thought make little impression. 
 
 For much of the delay in the achieving of a 
 national theatre the influence of I-Vancc is blamed, 
 — the same France' in whom Spanish-American 
 critics fear a denationalizing allurement, in whom 
 Portuguese students behold a decentralizing siren, 
 in whom Brazilian youth of autonomous aspirations 
 point out a Gallicizing evil. .Again, the presence of 
 so many well-defined regions, each with its own 
 psychology, its own pride, its own determination to 
 preserve its spiritual independence, acts as a hin- 
 drance to the formation of a distinctly recognizable 
 national drama. The Italian dialect stage is an im- 
 p)rtant institution; Rome, Sicily, Milan, Bologna, 
 Venice, Naples, — these are, from the stand['K)int of 
 the drama, fairly nations within a nation, and even 
 the better-known Italian playwrights are proud to 
 write for them. \'erga and Pirandello are intimately 
 associated with their native Sicily, Bracco with his 
 beloved Naples, Sabatino Lopez with his Tuscan 
 birthplace. 
 
 If, then, it is yet a problem whether Italy's drama 
 be tnily national as an institution, there can be no 
 question as to the activity of its stage. The war, 
 as everywhere else, precipitated an intellectual tur- 
 moil; forces that had been slowly gathering burst 
 forth as if caused rather than merely hastened by 
 the conflict; there were sudden conversions, as wit- 
 
 ' "Questa Italia teatrale che ha per capo Parigi," says Benelli in the foreword 
 to his newest play. .4{i.
 
 ITALY 127 
 
 ness the philosophical volte-face of Giovanni Papini 
 in his often beautiful yet often tediously maunder- 
 ing Storia di Crista and the just as maundering but 
 far less beautiful play by Sem BeneUi, called AH. 
 In such novels as Mario Puccini's Viva V anarchial 
 and Borgese's Rubb, one could see the wavering of 
 the Italian intellectual. The light cast by such books 
 as these illuminated the turbid maelstrom of swirl- 
 ing ideas; to be sure, the light fell upon confusion, 
 yet out of that confusion something like compre- 
 hensible units of activity emerge, not without sig- 
 nificance for the immediate future of the country. 
 Marinetti's Futurism, only part of a larger lunacy, 
 may not be dismissed in toto any more than may the 
 German Expressionists or the once rampant Dada- 
 ists, whose wild exploits, often meaningless, are yet 
 not without meaning. The so-called "grotesque" 
 theatre, similarly symptomatic of a social state, is 
 clearer in performance and claims at least one sig- 
 nificant figure in Pirandello. Such poetic attempts 
 as Morselli's Glauco and Forzano's Sly show that 
 even in the midst of disorder may come plays of 
 sweetness in which something of classic permanence 
 inheres. If these days, then, show for Italy Httle 
 in the nature of definite, indisputable accomplish- 
 ment, the era is one of experiment in many direc- 
 tions. 
 
 There is Francesco Scardaoni's proposal for a new 
 theatre that shall become nothing less than a temple; 
 it must not be defiled by problems nor be clouded by 
 too much poetic incense; it must house pure beauty. 
 In the ecstatic words that conclude his essay upon 
 a new "Theory of the Tragedy," which forms one 
 of the two prefaces — not to speak of an autobio-
 
 128 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 graphic postlude — to his recent phiy AV/ Grande 
 Silenzio he proclaims: 
 
 "The stage is an altar upon which Beauty consecrates 
 its rites, and Beauty is the religion of life. 
 
 "All the rites of all religi(jns were originally tragic 
 pantomime; metaphysical deviations ami false divinities 
 prevented development and dispersed values. 
 
 "Without tragic celebration no rites exist, and without 
 rites there is no religion. 
 
 "Whence it appears that the religion of Beauty is 
 supreme. 
 
 "The temples became theatres; it is now rime for the 
 theatres to become temples."' 
 
 This doctrine the writer develops in a rather 
 long essay, in which he advances the "unity of 
 beauty" as the sole worthy unity. Truth to tell, 
 he has but changed names. His new unity is hardly 
 novel. lie does perform a valuable service, how- 
 ever, in pointing out that the interpretation of life 
 upon the stage may be infinite, and should not be 
 restricted to a single point of view, and that because 
 of this variety of existence, the opportunity for 
 beauty by combining experiences into new harmonies 
 is rich. And since we must have "isms", he presents 
 us with a new one: "Dramatic Polyphonism." Here, 
 however, he has touched upon a genuinely important 
 consideration. He would, for example, deny su- 
 premacy even to dialogue upon the stage.^ Con- 
 ventional text-books upon the drama usually assert 
 that dialogue is the distinguishing attribute of the 
 
 • It is interesting to note that the Russian SoloRub has, in his Theatre of the 
 Single Will, developed a simil;ir theory of the theatre as becoming once again a 
 temple. ". . . The hour will come," he says, "when, in the transcendence of 
 body and spirit, we shall come together in liturgical ceremony, in sacramental 
 rites." 
 
 'Compare Evreinov's subordination of the spoken word in hie "monodrama."
 
 ITALY 129 
 
 drama — that no sooner do two people get to con- 
 versing than the elements of drama are already 
 present. Not so for Signor Scardaoni. Just as we 
 have become accustomed to doing away with lay 
 figures like the regular hero, heroine, villain, comic 
 man, and so on, and witness with pleasure plays in 
 which the personages fuse into the natural group of 
 human beings that they form off stage, so does 
 Scardaoni look forward to a drama in which even 
 dialogue has been robbed of its supremacy and been 
 made to fuse with the other elements of the play — 
 the pauses of silence, for instance, the words, ges- 
 tures, lights, colors, which combine to establish a 
 "cosmic zone." 
 
 Scardaoni's essays repay the reading. Like all 
 enthusiasts, he has simply forgotten to extend his 
 theories to the tolerant point of allowing other views 
 of the stage. Even as he refuses to allow dialogue 
 to dominate the theatre, forcing it to fuse with 
 other elements into a perfect whole, so he should be 
 willing to recognize that not even his cult of beauty 
 should occupy the stage-temple to the exclusion of 
 all other forms. Just because life is so manifold in 
 its phases we are ready, nay eager, for new aspects 
 of the drama. But just as surely is it impossible 
 for any one aspect to sweep aside all the others 
 with an essay. 
 
 There is Achille Ricciardi, with his interesting 
 Theatre of Color. His book, II Teatro del Colore^ is 
 dedicated to Gabriel d'Annunzio, who first invited 
 him to write it, and he promises to follow it with 
 another that shall occupy itself with an "artistic 
 offensive." Despite the fact that the book saw the 
 light only in recent years, the theories contained in
 
 130 THE DR.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 it were developed as far hack as 1906, and it is not 
 without ill-repressed dissatisfaction that the author 
 saw his ideas appropriated by Sem HcncJli and men- 
 tioned in the Italian press as emanating from that 
 source. 
 
 Ricciardi is not so dogmatic in his assertions as 
 Scardaoni. He does not insist that the theatre of 
 color is the only possible theatre, and that in it lies 
 the sole hope of the drama's future. He recognizes 
 that there are types of play to which his ideas do 
 not apply. On the other hand, he is well satisfied, 
 and quite readily convinces the reader, that the pos- 
 sibilities of color as employed in dramatic repre- 
 sentations have been only scratched upon the sur- 
 face. We have too long been content to use color 
 merely as a decorative element, overlooking the 
 fact that, so to speak, it has a life of its own, a rich 
 treasury of emotive connotations, and may be em- 
 ployed as a distinctly psychological factor, with 
 gradations, combinations and climaxes all its own. 
 In a fairly long preliminary discussion he enters 
 into an abridged history of color-values, carefully 
 distinguishing previous attempts from his own. He 
 insists that his innovation possesses primary aesthetic 
 significance. "Even the color of the clothes de- 
 termines the psychology of the dramatic person. 
 . . . In the development of the drama the color 
 of the costumes follows the ascent of the emotions. 
 Every event takes place in a special atmosphere, 
 with its individual color. . . ." 
 
 Ricciardi believes that the proper sphere for the 
 application of this theory is in plays of a fantastic 
 character. There is no doubt that it may be ap- 
 plied, in modified form, to any play of worth. Only
 
 ITALY 131 
 
 one serious objection (and not at all an insurmount- 
 able one, as far as practical production is concerned) 
 may be suggested. Do colors affect all persons the 
 same way? And granted this, do colors affect all 
 persons in the same way at the same time? If not, 
 how can full use of the colors as a psychological 
 factor be made? It should be remembered that 
 Ricciardi is not concerned primarily with color as 
 decoration or as symbol, but as a vital factor such 
 as sound is in music. The innovator seems to feel 
 the validity of this objection, for toward the close 
 of his exposition he asserts that certain values of 
 color — he calls them moral — are widespread, such 
 as red and blue for happy moods, and white for 
 purity. Moreover, colors in motion, production of 
 contrasts, and so on, possess psychological effects of 
 their own, and doubtless the words of the piece 
 could suggest subtly the influences intended. Color, 
 then, is here not the equivalent of other sensations, 
 "but it modifies their tone and thus creates some- 
 thing sui generis." 
 
 Ricciardi seems to establish very firmly his posi- 
 tion as the genuine innovator in this regard. It is 
 of interest to note how constant is the deference of 
 both Scardaoni and Ricciardi (as well as more than 
 one other of the innovators in the United States, 
 Germany, and elsewhere) to Greek models and an- 
 cient procedure. Behind all the agitation lies clearly 
 a yearning for spiritual freedom. To Ricciardi as 
 to Scardaoni, there is something of the rite in the 
 drama; the former would even seek his ideal stage 
 upon the Mediterranean, thus returning to the 
 open air of the ancients. 
 
 In Benelli's most recent play we shall witness the
 
 132 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 effect of the war upon one of the chief ante-bellum 
 playwrights of Italy. This done, for a few pages 
 we shall revert to the recently deceased dean of 
 Italian letters, Giovanni \'erga, whose modest plays 
 yet constitute for some the hope of a national 
 renaissance in the drama. We shall then be ready 
 to appreciate the actual direction — or rather direc- 
 tions — taken by that drama since Verga's Cavallnia 
 Rusticatia^ now in the poetic play (whether in prose 
 or verse) of a Morselli or a Korzano, now in the 
 futuristic orgasms of Marinetti, and particularly in 
 the "grotesque" school which received its name from 
 a queer production by Chiarelli, and counts among 
 its followers a motley band over whicli the gifted 
 Pirandello easily assumes supremacy. 
 
 BENELLI'S NEW APOSTOLATE 
 
 /111 {IFiugs) was first produced at the Teatro 
 Manzoni, in Milan, on March I4 of this year, with 
 Alda Borelli in the chief feminine part of Marta and 
 Tullio Carminati in the mystical part of Luca. 
 As one of the consequences of the critical discussion 
 aroused by the production we have a long foreword 
 by the author, entitled "Words to be Read Before 
 the Drama and After," nor is he hesitant, in the 
 course of this polemical prologue, about asking his 
 reader to go over the play more than once, lest im- 
 portant detail escape him. If the evidence of the 
 play itself were not sufficient, surely the tone and 
 temper of these preliminary pages would show that 
 Benelli was in an apostolic mood. One may even 
 see in his abandonment of verse an added pledge of 
 his seriousness. Yet more than a little of the old 
 Benelli is there — the Benelli whose fondness for the
 
 ITALY 133 
 
 past prisons him even when he would be most 
 modern; whose psychology is fairly one-sided, and 
 never more so than in his newest production; who 
 is so centered upon the harsher aspects of the human 
 soul that he must be harsh even in his portrayal of 
 a Christ-like figure such as Luca in Wings. It is 
 easy to believe that the Italian, goaded by many 
 suggestions that he was falling into a rut in his 
 "theatre," deterniined to refute the innuendoes with 
 a play that should present a new phase of his art. 
 What is more likely is that Wings, his first play in 
 six years, represents the response of a sensitive soul 
 to the brutalities of a conflict in which he shared, 
 not unmindful of the brutality nor of the necessity. 
 For the rest, it is useful to recall that the remark- 
 able conversion of the heritic Papini is but a symp- 
 tom of what is occurring in contemporary Italy. 
 Wings may not be Benelli's return to "the" faith, 
 but it surely signals a powerful affirmation of faith 
 and even suggests — nothing less — the influence of 
 an Ibsen who, thirty-five years ago, wrote Brand. 
 The play, for all this eloquent defense, is not one 
 of Benelli's best. In fact, with the exception of a few 
 high moments in the fourth and last acts, it is rather 
 dull and static, and one may gather as fruitful a 
 notion of what it is all about from the somewhat 
 hectic foreword as from the sultry symbolistic drama 
 that follows. That the action is autobiographical 
 Benelli denies, although he is ready enough to ad- 
 mit that it mirrors his "unspeakable torment" 
 amidst the vertiginous life through which we are 
 passing. The point of view coincides with that of 
 his poem, LAltare; he is confident that life has a 
 mission, and seeks a goal which he calls "the har-
 
 134 THE DR.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 mony of individual, free forces," in which shall be 
 found paradise. Such a quest involves martyrdom, 
 and l^iugs is the drama of that self-immolation. 
 To the short-sighted folk who denied to flings any 
 essential dramatic character because its protagonist 
 does not emerge victorious, he replies that Luca's 
 defeat is the very element that renders .Hi a tragedy. 
 "Human impotence is the greatest truth that the 
 tragic poets of all times and all places have ex- 
 pressed. The greatest tragedy of all lies in the 
 Unattainable!" He composed this drama, then, 
 "in my own way, and not according to the conven- 
 tions of the theatre. I have never done otherwise." 
 (What! Never, signore?) "The word 'theatrical' I 
 consider silly. Give me the proper bridge, and I'll 
 lead on to the stage tor you any charm, any creature, 
 any event." 
 
 From this to righteous wrath against the com- 
 mercial stage is but another little bridge, and Sem 
 Benelli crosses it, crying somewhat vainly and with 
 unconscious humor, "The theatre is but a market- 
 place to-day!" (With his Jest in its seventeenth 
 edition and sixtieth thousand to date!) The truth 
 is that Benelli has discovered the difficulties that 
 beset iringSy and this his foreword shows clearly. 
 In his indignation against the French importations 
 to the Italian theatre he is more than a little jus- 
 tified; but why in all conscience should he, who has 
 helped so greatly to enamour the Italians of their 
 past, ridicule them for their fondness for Harlequin 
 and Puncinello? And why, after satirizing those 
 who wished to learn the meaning of his drama, does 
 he proceed forthwith to offer an elucidation? And
 
 ITALY 135 
 
 why, too, his acrimonious assault upon the reviewers, 
 against whom he seems to feel so well fortified? 
 
 Is it not a trifle possible that Benelli himself has 
 a feeling of failure? If he has not such a feeling, 
 then he has confused his prophetic fervor with 
 dramatic values, and in so doing has but followed the 
 example of more than one of the reviewers to whom 
 he is so ineffectively saucy. He has set himself 
 an ascetic ideal, broader than that embraced by 
 any one religion. Benelli, born of Jews, himself 
 tells us that his Luca, "who might also be a Cath- 
 olic," is tormented by a vaster mystery — to love 
 without sin, even at the cost of not loving at all. 
 "Rather be sterile than sinful." And to the objec- 
 tion that sin is unconquerable and perhaps even 
 necessary, since everybody sins, he replies, "It is 
 not necessary. Sin is the infamy of man, not the 
 infamy of God." Toward the end of the foreword, 
 speaking half for his protagonist and half for him- 
 self, Benelli concludes: 
 
 I cannot help being a martyr, for the good that I 
 glimpse is too great and will destroy my real good. . . . 
 Martyrdom is the flower of a fruit that has no season. 
 Martyrdom is the only consolation of my littleness. The 
 sole weapon that I have with which to demonstrate my 
 truth, for I have not offered only arguments — I have 
 offered my life. The greatest martyrdom is that which 
 the asserter of an idea imposes upon himself when he 
 proclaims, "I no longer belong to anybody." 
 
 Thus speaks not a dramatist but a preacher. 
 He may be noble, he may win our sympathies, even 
 our devotion, but if he has not written a good drama 
 he is not a good draxnatist. And judged by the
 
 136 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 standards of drama rather than of religious vision, 
 Benelli, in this play, suffers a fall from grace. IVitigs 
 is dull; it is repetitious; it does not begin to move 
 until the play is nearly over; it is preachy, all-too- 
 preachy, unredeemed by humor, by human plia- 
 bility, by psychological insight, by any sort of ac- 
 tion. At times it is wooden; at best it bursts into 
 occasional flights of fanatic eloquence, and for a 
 moment here and there a human trait emanates 
 from personages. Then woman may rail at man's 
 spiritual infidelity; then man may become a thrall 
 to visions that tear him from earthly bonds, only 
 to meet, between him and his longings, the eternal 
 wall of flesh. But what are such moments against 
 long stretches of ranting, of mystical maundering, 
 of arid conversation, or worse, debate? Benelli 
 denies that he is Luca, yet after one has read the 
 play — and, in due courtesy to the author's wishes, 
 read again the foreword— one feels that Luca, not 
 Benelli, must have written that preamble. 
 
 The play opens just after Luca has lost his wife 
 Anna, in whose death he finds it is impossible to 
 believe. To his skeptical physician-friend, Giovanni, 
 he confides the strange thoughts that have come to 
 overwhelm him, and unbosoms himself about his 
 domestic relations and his own sad life. His wife's 
 people — foreigners — do not think well of him be- 
 cause he is "an Italian first, and only then an artist." 
 His mother's career has been overcast by illicit 
 love. And in him burns the nostalgia of martyrdom. 
 "Evil is conquered only by good. . . . Renuncia- 
 tion, Giovanni! I have thought to die thus. I no 
 longer desire to live, to be. This suspense, this 
 everlasting farewell, this conquest of horror, recol-
 
 ITALY 137 
 
 lection, affection, everything, fill me with such 
 power that nothing remains but to conquer death." 
 Luca masters his grief and is soon known as the 
 chief of a small cult; he refuses to write for a news- 
 paper that asks his beliefs; he refuses to debate 
 with his opponents, although within a few minutes 
 of his refusal he is hotly engaged in an exposition 
 of his faith; he has entered into relations with 
 Marta, a woman whose flesh has led her to the spirit, 
 and to whose body Luca's soul has descended. She 
 feels her ascent as plainly as she feels his sense of 
 retrogression, and it torments her even as later 
 Luca's unbending self-righteousness is to torment 
 his mother. Yet there are times when she floods 
 him with a passion that overwhelms and convinces 
 even herself. At the end of the second act, he 
 cries to her: "Ah, Marta, Marta! If you were not 
 the truth, I should be betrayed by the very smile 
 of the universe, for I see only you upon earth!" 
 
 And she, in response: "I believe you! I believe 
 
 I" 
 you! 
 
 Yet neither here speaks sober belief, for to Luca, 
 the apostle, this woman is sin and hindrance; and to 
 Marta a self-sacrificing, redeemed soul, Luca is the 
 prey to a fleshless delusion. Soon another trial 
 assails Luca. His delicate little son, who has been 
 cared for at a religious institution, dies on the same 
 day that the father has been attacked in his school- 
 room by a mob that did not understand. The little 
 one's death seems to be the decisive element in com- 
 pleting Luca's separation from Marta; until now it 
 has been a spiritual division; henceforth it will be 
 corporeal as well. He leaves her, as he believes, 
 forever.
 
 138 THE DK.AMA OF TR.\XSITION 
 
 Marta follows him, however, to the house of his 
 mother, where for a month he has been acting 
 strangely. The two women meet, each in sorrow, 
 anguished that they have no hold upon the man of 
 their thoughts. Returning, as is his wont, at sun- 
 set from a day of contemplation on the heights, 
 Luca encounters them. In the one he beholds the 
 woman who for the while enslaved his senses; in 
 the other, the one who early became a slave to her 
 own, thus blighting his memory of her. 'I'he sight 
 of both hardens his soul; he curses the blind passion 
 that enmeshed him and them and the world. But 
 neither are they silent -they to whose love he has 
 been blind. "Silence, mother!" he cries. "I can 
 no longer listen to you. You're no longer mother to 
 me. You're a woman!" And she, in an outburst: 
 
 Yes, I am a woman. And what have you given to me 
 as your mother? You followed that father of yours who 
 sent me away! Now I can see you as you really are, 
 after almost thirty years! What have you given me as 
 your mother? As a woman I won love! Have I anything 
 to boast of as a mother? I became a mother by accident, 
 without desiring it; and my son flees me! But love did 
 not betray me! He who made me over is dead, but I 
 love him still! As between my love and you, it's you 
 who are the stranger! And if there is anyone here who 
 does not know what pardon means, it is you! And if 
 there is one here who does not know what love means, 
 it is you! . . . Leave my house. The nearer we are 
 to each other, the more strangers we. Let me alone! 
 
 For the first time a latent doubt finds voice in 
 Luca, and he says in characteristic fashion: "I 
 doubt! I doubt! . . . Martyrdom! In his hour 
 of despair, he who cannot sufficiently affirm his
 
 ITALY 139 
 
 truth can always through his self-sacrifice disturb 
 that humanity which does not understand him. 
 And now I desire martyrdom." Is it any wonder 
 that his mother calls him out of his mind and re- 
 minds him that his dream has led him to insult his 
 mother and despise the woman who brought him 
 her love? Now it is Marta's turn to appear. Bru- 
 tally Luca tells her that he no longer loves her. 
 
 Marta: Then tell me; tell me the truth. While I, 
 with my vast, all-embracing love, fashioned of light and 
 faith, of joy and veneration, was giving all of me to you, 
 serving you, rendering myself truly worthy of you as I 
 imagined you to be, were you then truly worthy of me, 
 as I was thus transformed? 
 
 LucA: Don't ask me! 
 
 Marta {with an outcry): Tell me! 
 
 LucA: No, no, no. I was merely smitten with your 
 beauty, your flesh, your softness, by voluptuousness. 
 . . . Every time that I had you, the more you bent 
 yourself to my desires, the more I felt degraded. I felt 
 forever upon the verge of sin, ignominy, stultification; 
 and I fell thousands of times. ... I fled you! If I 
 were to have continued living with you I'd have had either 
 to die infamously or curse you without cease. That is the 
 truth. 
 
 In her horror at this revelation Marta draws a 
 revolver from her bag and shoots him. At once she 
 is seized with remorse and his mother rushes to his 
 side. "You have done well," he gasps to Marta, 
 and to his mother, "I . . . I . . . the truth. 
 . . . . I . . . the light!" The gardener, hear- 
 ing the shot, runs upon the scene. Luca, fearing lest 
 Marta's crime become known, manages to declare 
 that he has shot himself, and his parting injunction 
 to the women is to love each other. "Dying, I
 
 140 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 learn for the first time the sweetness of that pardon 
 which at last opens for me the gates of my earth 
 . . . Paradise." 
 
 The play contains hints of poetry, but little of 
 the vital spark. In characterization it is especially 
 weak; Luca is hardly more than a mouthpiece, 
 while Marta and Luca's mother are convenient 
 foils and interlocutors. Giovanni and Professor 
 Torre are stifJ" variants of the "raisonneur," who 
 was once so familiar a figure in the French drama 
 that Benelli scorns. Quaranta is the most rigid of 
 stage types, serving but to draw out Luca by his 
 opposition and to perform a lightning-like conver- 
 sion from which he recoils with equal rapiditv. 
 One may question the necessity of having Anna's 
 parents appear in the first act, after which they are 
 almost forgotten. Anna herself is not seen, though 
 her presence fills the opening scene. In all serious- 
 ness, I believe that the one plausible character in 
 the play is the gardener, Pietro, who appears for a 
 few minutes in the closing act, but who, during those 
 fleeting moments, behaves himself like a human 
 being. For the few changes of mind that Luca ex- 
 periences we are hardly prepared; between act one 
 and act two he has already formed a cult and taken 
 a mistress, despite the ascetic exaltation and long- 
 ing for paradise in the beginning. All this is pos- 
 sible and natural, but must we take it on Benelli's 
 word in the case of a play centered about Luca's 
 Messianic figure? Let others judge the ideas and 
 idealism of the play. As drama it is quite unin- 
 spiring and without effect. To use Benelli's own 
 words, he has not discovered the right "bridge" 
 that leads to the opening of such material.
 
 ITALY 141 
 
 GIOVANNI VERGA 
 
 With the recent passing of Verga (184O-1922) Italy- 
 lost the dean of her letters — a powerful solitary fig- 
 ure whose stylistic austerity and personal aloofness 
 foredoomed him to the lonely eminence that was 
 his. He is intimately associated, in the history of 
 his country's letters, with the movement known in 
 the peninsula as "verism," and out of it as realism 
 and naturalism. Verism, of course, has its distin- 
 guishing characteristics, but it is part of the great 
 anti-romantic reaction and in Verga found such 
 vigorous, artistic expression — and withal so arrest- 
 ingly personal — that even to-day more than one of 
 the "you*^g" writers is not ashamed to acknowledge 
 the influence of the deceased master. Labels 
 mattered little to him. "Words, words, words," 
 he once declared. "Naturalism, psychologism ! 
 There's room for everything, and the work of art 
 may be born of any 'ism.' Let it be born — that is 
 the main thing!" He had as little liking for the 
 term "verist" as Ibsen for the appellation Ibsenite, 
 and was so aloof that when, in 1920, his country- 
 men honored him on his eightieth birthday, many 
 had to be informed all over again that his / Mal- 
 avoglia (1881) was one of the best novels of its age, 
 and that its author was one of the most solid glories 
 of latter-day Italian literature. That he was the 
 author of the intense Cavalleria Rusticana, out of 
 which was made the libretto of Mascagni's mel- 
 lifluous opera, was matter of more common knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 He was born in Catania, and began his career as 
 a writer of conventional novels redolent of the
 
 142 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 French feuilletons; his very first (unprinted) work 
 was an extensive novel inspired by George Wash- 
 ington and American Independence. Vet in a 
 deeper sense the work of \'erga is a psychological 
 unity, and close study of the early books shows the 
 young Verga to be father to the older. The novel 
 that caps his creations, / Malavoglia^ was intended 
 to be the first of a trilogy devoted to a study of 
 what he named "the vanquished" (i vinti), but 
 after the second of the series, Mastro-don Gesualdo 
 (1888), he appears to have abandoned the project. 
 
 In Verga's novels there seems to exist a certain 
 parallel to the labors of Thomas Hardy, whose 
 life, too, ran parallel to the great Italian's. In both 
 the same underlying pessimism, in both the same 
 masked pity. Signor I.inati has also suggested 
 Verga's affinity to Synge, for his deep insight into 
 the lives of the humble fisherfolk. By these tokens 
 we are in the presence of a figure whose influence 
 among the newer novelists will prove strong and 
 salutary. 
 
 Verga's atmosphere is naturally in good measure 
 that of his native scene, where life is lived amidst 
 a ferocious intensity of passions and a crushing 
 belief in fate. His so-called impersonality should 
 not mislead his readers, however. "It is not to 
 comply with a Flaubertian a-sthetics," writes Luigi 
 Russo in his recent book upon Verga, "that the 
 author of Cavaller'ta Riisticana tries not to intervene 
 in his tale; it is because his model, the Sicilian 
 peasant, is convinced that he himself does not inter- 
 vene in the conduct of his own life." 
 
 Verga's position as a dramatist is secondary, yet 
 Ruberti accords to the stage version of Cavalleria
 
 ITALY 143 
 
 Rusticana an importance to Italian dramaturgy 
 comparable to the significance of / Malavoglia to 
 the Itahan novel. "The entire theatrical produc- 
 tion of Giovanni Verga," he writes, "is contained 
 in a little volume of pocket size, about four hundred 
 pages long; yet there will come a day when we'll 
 go back to it to discover inside the sincerest and 
 most artistic representation of life that our theatre 
 produced toward the close of the nineteenth century." 
 
 Perhaps that praise is a tribute rather than a 
 criticism, yet the one-act Cavalleria Rusticana is a 
 gem of its kind. This should not be confused with 
 the libretto of the opera, which, though true to the 
 tale of the play, necessarily leaves out those very 
 qualities that" make of the original a miniature 
 masterpiece. The drama, first produced in Rome 
 in 1884, with Duse in the role of Santuzza, imme- 
 diately created a deep impression because of its 
 spontaneous presentation of Hfe in the raw. Here, 
 in the words of Renato Simoni, we have a "hundred 
 dramas in a single act." Nor is the statement 
 merely another sample of Latin rhetorical exaggera- 
 tion. In all of Verga's work for the stage the ele- 
 mental theme is love; he is most successful when 
 nearest to the primal substratum of passion. The 
 one excursion into what an anemic social class calls 
 love was made, I believe, in his Caccia alia Volpe 
 {The Fox-Hunt)^ which is itself a puny, anemic 
 performance. French subtleties of irridescent amour- 
 ettes were not for Verga's vigorous middle years. 
 For the rest, he seemed to prefer the succinct form, 
 so that later plays, such as In Portirneria^ Caccia 
 al Lupo^ La Lupa, are not full length. 
 
 It is in the presence of a simple play like Caval-
 
 144 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 leria Rusticana that one person, at least, feels the 
 inadequacy of the Dukes-Jameson aristocratic theory 
 of the cirama. These are simple folk, humble, 
 "vanquished" souls that struck their creator from 
 the first with a sense of their stark significance. In 
 Verga, like the eternal modern that he is, nothing 
 is settled; he is enigmatic, sphinx-like. And so, 
 too, his characters, out of whose very dumbness 
 rises the eloquence of human symbols. Rustic 
 Chivalry leaves one with a haunting sense of a fate 
 that overhangs us all; not a Greek fate, but a fate 
 that courses in our veins and laughs at our puny 
 institutions and our solemn ring of defenses at^ainst 
 the incursions of the originary beast. For a simple, 
 powerful miniature such as this, one could easily 
 spare the numerous "triumphs" of a later Nicco- 
 demi, the lucubrations of grotesque mummers whose 
 present virtue lies, not in accomplishment, but in a 
 search for new paths. 
 
 /;/ Porti)ieria {At the Porter's Lodge) is a pathetic 
 little play in which all the trouble is caused by love 
 misplaced. Now it is the sickly sister Malia who is 
 fond of Chiarini; but Chiarini loves the other sister, 
 who, in turn, places her affections elsewhere. .And 
 thus the chain of unhappiness is forged link by 
 link, fettering them all to misery. La Lupa {The 
 She-lVolj) is an unrelenting portrayal of a mother 
 who pursues the husband of her daughter. Of the 
 two dramatic sketches The IVolJ-Hunt and The 
 Fox-Hunty The Wolf -Hunt is easily the better; just 
 as in In Portineria the various links of tnie and 
 virtuous love combine to make a chain of unhappi- 
 ness, so here the links of illicit passion unite in a 
 chain of evil. It would seem that to Verga there
 
 ITALY 145 
 
 is something in the very nature of passion which 
 foredooms its victims to misfortune, whether that 
 passion burgeon in the heart of the pure or burn 
 in the bosom of the transgressor. The wolf of The 
 Wolf-Hunt is a man who has deserted one woman 
 to pay attentions to the wife of another man; when 
 trapped, however, his first concern is not to shield 
 or to save the wife, but to rescue his own hide. The 
 fox-hunt of the second sketch shows the comic 
 aspect of the same situation, but Verga is here on 
 unfamiliar or unattractive ground. 
 
 Verga found no followers; it is as a personality 
 rather than as a model that he is to-day a power 
 among the small band of artists. There is, in his 
 labors, a tonic elementalism that makes for the 
 illusive permanence of literary glory; his Cavalleria 
 Rusticana^ at least, will long be a focal point in the 
 story of the Italian drama. 
 
 ENRICO LUIGI MORSELLI 
 
 The short hfe of Morselli (i 882-1921) was as 
 checkered as it could be made by a youthful thirst 
 for adventure, a goading poverty, and an underly- 
 ing spiritual restlessness. Born at Pesaro, he was 
 early taken by his parents to Modena and soon 
 thence to Florence. Here he finished the courses 
 given at the elementary schools and advanced to 
 the university, where for two years he devoted him- 
 self to the study of medicine and letters, which, 
 judging solely from contemporary literature, seem 
 to have a powerful affinity for one another. He 
 took no degree, but his intercourse with such minds 
 as Papini and Prezzolini helped to sharpen his wits, 
 
 and later, when he needed a Httle friendly notice, 
 10
 
 146 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Papini beat the drum for him with those sharp, 
 staccato thumps for which he is noted — or was 
 noted, before the astounding conversion that is 
 signalized in his recent Storia di Crista. To Papini, 
 indeed, Morselli owes not a little for his cros-sing 
 of the Italian border and for exaltation as a writer 
 of modern tragedy that lifts him clearly above both 
 D'Annunzio and Sem Benelli. 
 
 "Morselli," wrote Papini of the tragedy Glauco 
 in one of the numbers of the short-lived La Vraie 
 Italie^ — a monthly published by him in French for 
 the dissemination of a broader knowledge of Italian 
 cultural life — "does not follow pedantically the 
 elaborated myths and the learned reconstructions 
 of the Hellenists. He is not a patient and boresomc 
 archaeologist like D'Annunzio; he cares very little 
 for erudite bric-a-brac, for local color, for the scenery 
 and supernumeraries that serve to conceal the im- 
 potency of the impotent. He penetrates to the 
 very core of the psychological action and into the 
 verv soul of his personages. . . . He transports 
 us into a magic world that is almost outside of time, 
 but in that mythical and prehistoric world we be- 
 hold men who suffer, love, who betray, who take 
 pleasure with the puissant frankness of elemental 
 humanity. He uses the myth so as to obtain a 
 superior lyric freedom that shall permit him to 
 depict life in its very essence. He thus stands 
 apart from all the makers of classic pastiches with 
 which our literature has been infested from the 
 sixteenth century down to D'Annunzio and Benelli." 
 
 It is easy to see that Papini was here quite as 
 much interested in damning his pet aversions as in 
 praising the most noted of his friend's productions.
 
 ITALY 147 
 
 The trumpet-blast, however, did reveal Morselli to 
 the outside world. 
 
 According to the evidence available, Morselli's 
 life at Florence was a strange admixture of ardent 
 study and wild debauch. In his twentieth year, in 
 company of his friend Valerio Ratti, he suddenly 
 launched upon a sea voyage, and before he returned 
 to Florence he had wandered from Capetown to 
 Buenos Aires, to Cornwall, to London, to Paris, 
 earning his living now by his pen, now by the most 
 cheeky imposture. Once back in Italy — "the most 
 penitent and happy of prodigal sons" — Morselli 
 founded a large commercial and industrial review 
 called Mercurio^ which ran for no less than five 
 years and died of — honesty. In order to marry he 
 was compelled to borrow 150 lire to proceed with 
 the ceremony; this was but the beginning of straits 
 that brought him often the pangs of hunger. His 
 mind reverted to writing, and the result was that 
 peculiar little book called Favole per i re d'oggi 
 {Failles for the Kings of Today). Here we encounter 
 just that combination of the ancient and the con- 
 temporary that strikes the reader of his tragedies; 
 there is, moreover, a certain cynical outlook upon 
 life, a philosophic scorn of man the individual that 
 so often companions a love of him in the abstract. 
 (Was it not Mephisto who, in W. S. Gilbert's little- 
 known adaptation of Faust called Gretchen inveighed 
 against the holy tribe. 
 
 Who pray for mankind in the aggregate 
 And damn them all in detail!) 
 
 The encouraging reception of the book resulted 
 in the composition of the one-act Acqua sul Fuoco
 
 148 THE DKAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 {IVater Upon Fire)y a charming little piece, compar- 
 able for its sentiment, its irony, and its tenderness 
 to Pirandello's Siciliau Limes. The play made very 
 little impression, and Morselli returned to Pesaro 
 convinced that he had not been cut out for a 
 dramatist. His next refuge was poetry, and he 
 set about the writing of Ojtone^ his first tragedy, 
 which is poetic not in the narrow sense of rhymes 
 and meters, but in the ampler one of outlook, at- 
 mosphere, implication. Originally produced in 1910, 
 it made the tour of Milan, Trieste, Modcna, and 
 Florence. The author, who was encountering plenty 
 of op[x)sition among his tellowncraftsmen, was ac- 
 cused of classicism, and perhaps to refute the 
 charge wrote the modern play Im Prigiofjf {The 
 Prison)^ which Tina di Lorenzo acted in Milan, 
 Turin, Florence, and South .America. Close upon 
 this followed // Domatore GastouCy an aniusing one- 
 act skit, in which an animal-tamer finds his haz- 
 ardous occupation quite pacific in comparison with 
 the taming of two determined young skirted animals 
 of a more closely related species. 
 
 Soon we discover Morselli in the "movies" as an 
 actor, and he readily advances to the position of 
 director. The war, however, cuts short his cinemat- 
 ographic ventures. His noted tragedy Glauco is 
 now beginning to take shape; he reads the first 
 draught to the composer Franchetti, who is so 
 struck with it that he immediately acquires the 
 rights to set it to music. A period of illness inter- 
 venes, and it is not until he is out of the sanatorium 
 that Morselli writes the final draught in twenty 
 days at Blevio. He leaves the sole copy in the com- 
 partment of a railroad car, and it is recovered only
 
 ITALY 149 
 
 after a campaign of telephone calls and telegrams. 
 From one manager to another it travels until at 
 last it is produced through the enterprise of Vir- 
 gilio Talli and acted in triumph by Annibale Be- 
 trone, proving to be the greatest success since 
 Benelli's La Cena delle Befe {The Supper of Jests). 
 The furore created by Glauco led, of course, .to the 
 republication of Morselli's other labors; he had al- 
 ready been working upon two tragedies, Dafne e 
 Cloe and Belfagor; now he considered a new modern 
 play as well, to be called Ulncontro. In 191 9 he 
 was awarded the government prize of 6,000 lire for 
 Glauco^ and his future seemed assured. Declining 
 health, however, led to his early death from tubercu- 
 losis of the lungs. 
 
 Morselli's fiction comprises the Favole per i re 
 d'oggi, Storie da ridere . . . e da piangere {Tales 
 for Laughter . . . and Tears), d.nd II trio Stefania. 
 The fables, as we have seen, are filled with cyni- 
 cism, irony, bantering mockery. Beneath the sneers 
 is a spirit of tolerance and a withdrawal that enables 
 the author to consider his fellow-men as if he were 
 a god endowed with a sense of laughter and of 
 human frailties. The tales for laughter and for 
 tears are not divided into those meant for pleasure 
 and those written to agitate the emotions. The 
 title, I imagine, signifies that each tale contains 
 both elements in a very human blend. As the 
 writer declares in that strange tale Italien, Liebe, 
 Blutl — a German novel left half completed through my 
 own good offices — "I was made that way: I would 
 laugh and laugh, yet at bottom I took everything 
 seriously, even as now, when I no longer laugh." 
 
 The man is, then, fundamentally ironic and
 
 150 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 symbolic in his outlook upon life. This does not 
 have to be read into his lines; it is there, in body 
 and in spirit, often in the very title. Even his 
 modern play, Lm Prigione^ is thus symbolic, stand- 
 ing for the mental torture and confinement of sus- 
 taining a family-lie, of "putting on a front." It is 
 written in the vein of Giacosa, but tinted through- 
 out with the dramatist's personal methods. As to 
 Orione and GlaucOy the first, written alwut ten years 
 earlier than the second, is not so good, because of 
 its difFuseness and because it carries less poetic 
 conviction. The symbolism is less effective, and 
 while the action is excellent in scenes, it is neither 
 so cumulative nor so climactic as in the later play. 
 Orione, the god, is less impressive than Glauco, the 
 seeker, and Merope is less colorful than Glauco's 
 sweetheart, Scylla. 
 
 Morselli's tragedies are both singularly free of 
 scenic trappings and rhetorical inflation. There is 
 a beautiful simplicity in his language which one 
 need not be an Italian to appreciate. He writes a 
 prose that is akin to poetry without being of that 
 vapory, delicjuescent variety considered by some 
 "poetic". He knows the secret of a broad, rhythmic 
 action in which the pictorial, the dramatic, and the 
 vocal blend into a meaningful harmony. Out of 
 two classic myths he creates two modern symbols. 
 Glaucus is a Sicilian, in love with Scylla, and hears 
 the sirens and tritons summon him to that wealth 
 and glory of which he dreams; to him glory is even 
 more than Scylla, and so great is her love that she 
 helps him rob her father, that the foundations of 
 his venture may be assured. Ofl^ fares Glaucus on 
 his eager quest, resisting temptation on the way,
 
 ITALY 151 
 
 returning successful only to find Scylla dead. Just 
 as Glaucus symbolizes, in its beautiful simplicity, 
 the great cost at which fame is purchased, so Orion 
 reveals in similar, though less effective fashion, the 
 littleness of man before the powers of nature and 
 of death. Orion, earth-born, and defying all earth's 
 creatures, after slaying the monster of the forest, 
 dies from the sting of a scorpion that he deems be- 
 neath his notice, Morselli, in these plays, has re- 
 newed eternal truths for us. That is perhaps the 
 essence of enduring art. 
 
 Some Italian critics have objected to the sym- 
 bolic interpretation of these two plays in particular. 
 Yet surely, even considering the tragedies in the 
 strictest manner that so exacting a philosopher as 
 Benedetto Croce would require, one is justified in 
 noting the symbols that the author has unmis- 
 takably put into them as part of his personality 
 rather than as a predetermined intention. And so 
 considered, Orione breathes a sense of man's help- 
 less position in the face of nature's immutable laws, 
 even as Glauco suggests man's tardy recognition 
 that glory is less than love. "Qualunque vita e 
 abietta si e fatta al solo scopo di vivere! . . . e qual- 
 unque vita e santa se un fine I'illumina! . . ." 
 exclaims Jacopo in La Prigione. "Any life is base 
 if it be concerned only with living, and any life is 
 holy if a purpose illumine it." We have Morselli's 
 own word for it that he aimed to create a little 
 beauty through his writings, and his interpretation 
 of the word "purpose" by no means signifies an ajt 
 marred by the obtrusion of moral preachment. 
 
 Morselli's position in the contemporary letters of 
 his country is not an inconsiderable one, and already
 
 152 THE DR.ANU OF TFLAaXSITION 
 
 secure. The triumphant reception of Glauco by a 
 national audience trained in the best traditions of 
 the poetic drama led more than one critic to behold 
 in the young playwTight the precursor of a new, 
 peculiarly modern, poetic tragedy. Amid the ruck 
 of fantastic productions that infested the "gro- 
 tesque" theatre, with its pieces labeled "visions," 
 "confessions", "parables" — anything, indeed, but 
 drama or comedy — Morselli developed an idiom and 
 an atmosphere all his own. His early death was a 
 genuine loss to the Italian stage, for with D'Annunzio's 
 heroics and Benclli's reversion to prose and apostolic 
 mysticism, Italy needs more than ever the unpreten- 
 tious beauty, the pure line, and the harmonious colors 
 that Morselli would have added to its store. When 
 a Glauco or a Sly can appear so close to one an- 
 other, why, after all, should artistic souls lie awake 
 nights worrying about the "nationalism" of the 
 Italian theatre? 
 
 GIOVACCHINO FORZANO 
 
 Something of this unpretentious beautv, this 
 color, this pure line, is in the play in verse that re- 
 cently raised Giovacchino Forzano from the ranks 
 of the opera librettists to the rarer precincts of the 
 poetic drama. 
 
 It was inevitable that *9/v, suggested by the In- 
 duction to Shakespeare's Taming of the S/irew, 
 should, after the triumph it won in its native Italy, 
 claim the attention of the London in which the 
 action of the piece is laid. This London, it is true, 
 is the capital of the seventeenth century's earlv 
 days, yet so successfully has the erstwhile Italian 
 librettist assimilated the mood and manner of his
 
 ITALY 153 
 
 subject that only yesterday London rose to the 
 first English performances of the play. It was as 
 much of a novelty there as in the Italy whence it 
 came, and it should prove no less appealing and 
 successful when Mr. Belasco produces it here. It 
 has the charm and poetry of a play by Barrie — 
 some of Christopher Sly's own old wine poured into 
 a new bottle. With this single play Forzano emerges 
 from the ranks of the mediocrities and justly lays 
 claim to such consideration as is granted to artists 
 of creative imagination. We have the word of so 
 practiced a playgoer as the dramatist Marco Praga 
 that Sly in performance was an unmixed delight. 
 Upon the printed page Sly is no less a delight un- 
 mixed. It has verve, body, glamor, a gift for robust 
 humor as for tender fancy; it can be stoutly coarse 
 without descending to ribaldry, softly amorous 
 without a too noticeable lapse into sentimentality. 
 To Italians it must have come as a doubly welcome 
 relief from heavy D'Annunzian vapors and Benellian 
 harshness that had not yet become apostolic, as 
 well as from the grotesqueries above which only 
 a Pirandello and a few others can raise their heads. 
 Forzano is no Rostand, and Sly is no Cyrano^ but 
 there are analogous external as well as internal 
 reasons for the success that greeted both. 
 
 In adding as subtitle of the play, "the Legend of 
 the Awakened Sleeper," Forzano consciously relates 
 his plot to the Oriental theme that made its way in 
 one form or another from the Arabian Nights into 
 Europe, early appearing in Italy and in such 
 Spanish pieces as Calderon's Life Is a Dream. 
 For the purposes of his drama he adds to the char- 
 acters presented in the Shakesperian Induction and
 
 154 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 changes certain relationships. Sly is not here a 
 tinker, but a vagabond tavern troubadour; the 
 Elizabethan jesting Lord becomes the Count of 
 Westmoreland, to whom Iu>r/ano gives a willful, 
 wayward mistress, Dolly. The cruel deceit is car- 
 ried out, as in the second scene of the Induction, 
 but with the added complications that a Dolly 
 (instead of Shakespeare's pace disguised as a woman) 
 may develop. And Sly's fate, as we shall see, is 
 followed to the end. 
 
 The Italian play is in three acts and four scenes. 
 The first act takes us to "The Hawk's Tavern," 
 where a drinking bout is in progress, set off by a 
 rout of chess-players, bag-pipers, wags, and a scold- 
 ing hostess. There is John Plake, dnmk to the gills, 
 boasting of the new part that he is to take in the 
 "tragedy written by my friend William Shake- 
 speare"; he is to be the first gravedigger, and knows 
 his part so well that he has even been able to dig 
 up some of the best bottles in the tavern cellar 
 without digging down into his pocket to pay the 
 score, rhe drunker he gets, the more he longs for 
 the rhyming tippler. Sly, his bosom pal and chorister 
 of the roisterers. A battle over his refusal to pay 
 is suddenly interrupted by the entrance of Dolly, 
 who, having grasped the situation, throws a purse 
 to the hostess and restores quiet. Dolly, bored by 
 the creaking courtliness of her routine life has 
 escaped in quest of adventure; the Count, however, 
 knows her haunts and is quick to trail her to The 
 Hawk. At first he would have her oflF at once, but 
 the entreaties of the guests and his own need for 
 diversion prevail upon him and he and his retinue
 
 ITALY 155 
 
 remain. Plake, moodier than ever, yearns for his 
 boon companion. Of a sudden Sly's voice is heard 
 from the outside; he is fleeing from Snare, who 
 would lock him up for unpaid debts. 
 
 Where is that drunkard 
 
 Of a Sly whom I must lock up in jail? 
 
 Prosaic, but fateful words these that Sly yet will 
 hear on a rueful day. Now, however, with nobility 
 for an audience, friends for a chorus, and comfort 
 flowing cheerily from generous bottles, he is moved 
 to song, and sings his lilting tale of the lovelorn 
 bear. With new gulps come new moods, until his 
 self-pitying philosophy rises from his cups: 
 
 But drink! drink! 
 
 When you're not drinking, 
 
 Sly, who are you? 
 
 Tell them, poor Sly — these folks that call you 
 
 Tippler, drunken sot! . . . 
 
 A tavern minstrel . . . juggler . . . 
 
 Itinerant hawker . . . you scribble verses 
 
 For births, deaths, and marriages . . . 
 
 You're a jack of all trades . . . 
 
 Yet remain a sad wretch! 
 
 A tatterdemalion! 
 
 Try to raise your eyes to a beautiful woman! . . . 
 
 She laughs with compassion! . . . 
 Your home, your kingdom. 
 Your paradise: the tavern! 
 
 I would give . . . my life (now I make you laugh) 
 Just to hear 
 
 The voice of a woman . . . or of a child 
 Say to me {Jie sobs)^ 
 "Good day to you. Sly." {He drinks and kisses the 
 
 beaker. He can hardly stand.)
 
 156 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 You! You save mc! Yes! When I have drunk 
 
 I am transf(jrmetl! 
 
 Ami I'm a king! 
 
 Nay! More than king! 
 
 More than a living creature! 
 
 This body of mine 
 
 Melts at the will of fancy! 
 
 And I become ... a silver cloud! 
 
 I ride astride the horned moon 
 
 And scour the heavens in quest of verses! 
 
 7his Cyranesque outpouring touches Dolly's heart 
 and suggests to the Count a pleasant manner of 
 winding up the evening. His plan quickly matures, 
 and even Sly's companions are drunk enough to see 
 the cream of the jest. All but Plake, who cannot 
 drink in mock salutation to His Highness-to-be, 
 Chris Sly. 
 
 The second act transports us to the Count's 
 gilded palace; his attcntlants and Dollv have been 
 well instructed in the parts they are to play when 
 Sly awakens from his drunken stupor. Sly, accord- 
 ing to their plot, has been in delirious sleep for ten 
 years, during which he has imagined himself to be 
 the vagabond versifier of his only too real career. 
 Dolly is his sad, but prayerful wife, who daily dur- 
 ing these years has besought heaven for his return 
 to reason. And this is the eventful day of that 
 return. Slowly the awakened toper is convinced — 
 or perhaps he is yet drunk enough to see truth in 
 the hoax — and the climax comes when he is told 
 that even now his wife is at the little church of the 
 castle, still praying and as yet not apprised of his 
 miraculous cure. From afar comes the echo-like 
 sound of her orisons, chorused by a murmur of
 
 ITALY 157 
 
 feminine voices that support her entreaties. Trum- 
 pets and bells announce the restoration of the sup- 
 posed nobleman's reason, and Sly heads the grand 
 procession into the great hall. This leads us to the 
 second scene — that of the hall, into which Sly is 
 received by a veritable chorus of the nobiHty and 
 its entourage. One thing is on Sly's mind: his wife; 
 here is the height of the farce, and here the height 
 of Sly's incredulity. No, this must be a dream — 
 as soon as he shall stretch forth his arms to embrace 
 her she will vanish as so often in the past. When 
 his fears find poetic voice — for is not Sly a tippling 
 troubadour? — Dolly is so affected by the genuine- 
 ness of his aspirations that she forgets the part she 
 has been taught and begins to feel a real response 
 to the feigned potentate who can make love so 
 much better than the Count. To Sly, who is afraid 
 that his "madness" will return if he dares to touch 
 her, she whispers encouragement: 
 
 Sly . . . Sly . . . fear not . . . Your madness 
 will not return. ... I am indeed your wife. . . . 
 {to calm him) and I love you, ... I love you. . . . 
 
 Again and again she must say the words, inciting 
 him to poetic delirium. Still he hesitates to touch 
 her, while she bids him, now feigning nothing, not 
 to fear. "Dare. . . . Sly . . . dare. . . ." 
 And Sly dares. He kisses her, when out of the 
 air comes the voice of the Count, simulating that 
 of Snare in the first act: 
 
 Where is that drunkard 
 
 Of a Sly whom I must lock up in jail? 
 
 The kiss is a signal for the sudden appearance of 
 the courtly train; the laughing outburst of the con-
 
 158 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 cealed nobles wakes Sly rudely from a dream in- 
 deed, but a dream that has had one incontestable 
 reality. He refuses to be separated from D<illv, 
 whom he holds in close embrace. 
 
 You have laughcil mc to scorn! You! You have 
 
 laughctl mc to scorn! 
 And you should be condemned 
 To remain lik-long 
 
 Thus . . . tight in my arms . . . 
 And under my kisses! . . . 
 
 Sly is thrust into the cellar, there to niminate upon 
 his fall. The Count bids him adieu with a derisive 
 couplet, while Dolly, leaning against the marble 
 balustrade, watches the attendants through tear- 
 hlled eyes as they drag the disillusioned poet off 
 into the gloom. 
 
 The closing act takes place in the cellar, where 
 Sly indulges in a long soliloquy. Murder wells up 
 in his heart, and then love. Dolly's kiss was true, 
 it was sincere. 
 
 In that moment ... I vow . . . that woman 
 That woman . . . (finally daritig to speak the words) 
 
 loved me! 
 She loved me! Yes, she loved me. . . . 
 I felt it! She loved me! .And now . . . now . . . 
 
 {as if mad xvith joy^ weeping and laughing) 
 Think, Sly, just think, 
 If this be true. 
 
 Something of the jest remains with you. . . . 
 The most precious part is yours I You're no longer 
 
 alone! 
 The gloom of your hell has been cleft! 
 There is a hope of sunlight even for you!
 
 ITALY 159 
 
 This is your victory! 
 
 Life is beautiful, Sly! Life is beautiful 
 
 Even for you! 
 
 Even for you ! 
 
 But how shall he taste the fruits of this vengeance, 
 this victory? He beholds visions of seeing Dolly 
 again, of freeing her. Then follows the realization 
 of the truth. At this very moment his Dolly may 
 be in the arms of another. The thought maddens 
 him. Go back to the tavern? No. The jest has 
 tricked him doubly; it has held out love and snatched 
 it away, it has raised him above his surroundings. 
 
 Now I have had a glimpse of paradise, and I, too, 
 Demand my share! Yes, I demand it! 
 
 By the bottle he has lived; by the bottle he shall 
 die. With a grim sense of humor he breaks a bottle 
 against the stone table and severs the veins of his 
 wrist, gasping that "upon the dead are placed the 
 emblems of their nobility." Now he will no longer 
 wake to new delusions; now he may wish all. As 
 he lies there dying Dolly comes stealing in to beg 
 his forgiveness for the part she played in the cruel 
 jest. At first she does not notice his condition. Did 
 he not feel that she would come to see him, she asks. 
 And soon she is holding a dead man in her arms. 
 
 It seems entirely probable that Forzano began 
 this piece as a libretto and soon saw that it was 
 too good to be drowned out by tones. In describ- 
 ing it one fails naturally into the jargon of Italian 
 opera. As one reads, one can easily pick out the 
 entrances, soli, duets, choruses, and all the other 
 earmarks of conventional opera. Dolly's prayer be-
 
 160 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 hind the scenes, accompanied by the feminine 
 voices, is as reminiscent of // Trovatore as is Sly's 
 pitying soliloquy of / Pagliacc't; Sly's song of the 
 lovesick, bear has numerous relatives in the operatic 
 repertory, although For/ano here has rendered it an 
 integral part of the action, and even a mirror of 
 Sly's own fate, as it is significantly parodied in the 
 second act. In the reading, at least, the last act 
 comes as a sort of anti-climax; the act consists 
 almost entirely of Sly's farewell to the world, with 
 the final appearance of Dolly in time to provide his 
 last vision of Paradise. Yet it links itself naturally 
 to all that has gone before, and is in sombre contrast 
 to the vinous gaycty of the opening scene and the 
 cruel bantering of the second. The verse is of 
 free, flowing, spontaneous character, never rigid or 
 academic. Poetry sufi^uses the whole from begin- 
 ning to end in company of romance that nms the 
 gamut of the moods. Shakespeare's tinker here 
 becomes the symbol of man's fearless but futile 
 rebellion against disillusionment. 
 
 FRANCESCO T. MARINETFI 
 
 Marinetti's futuristic extravagances, which pos- 
 sess the grand consistency of a philosophic system 
 invading every department of human activity, are 
 not a phenomenon apart in the intellectual hurly- 
 burly of contemporary existence. With varying 
 degree of intensity this impatient desire to dump 
 overboard the impedimenta of the past and start 
 anew, untrammeled by circumspection or tradition, 
 rises in Spain, in Germany, in France, under names 
 that resemble each other only in the "ism" that 
 wags like a frisky tail at the end. No amount of
 
 ITALY 161 
 
 insurgent impatience and extravagance should ob- 
 scure, however, the symptomatic significance of the 
 strivings; there is a soul of goodness in all things 
 evil, even in the laughing madness of the Dada- 
 ists. Besides, who shall pretend, from a glimpse 
 at the source, to predict the size of the rivers that 
 may flow from it miles down the mountain sides? 
 The Futurists reared a numerous and a noisy brood; 
 in art, in poetry, in the drama, their impulse has 
 been felt, not permanently perhaps, but perceptibly; 
 their theories are as false as any that seek to en-, 
 compass all creation in a dogma, their performances 
 add strangeness to that inherent falsity. It is not 
 the "nouveau frisson" that they seek; a thrill is 
 doubtless too long and must be heightened to a 
 culminating orgasm. And if it is difficult to speak 
 of these newer "isms" without lapsing into the 
 phraseology of the consultation room and of the 
 psychoanalyst, it is doubtless because some of the 
 proponents of the cults invite the attention of the 
 neurologist rather than the scrutiny of the critic. 
 All this has been said before of the advocates of 
 novelty; something in the most curious and restless 
 of us resists the suggestion of change. Let us note 
 down our thoughts, then, with becoming humility, 
 and extract, from the welter of newer activities 
 what seems most likely to prove of productive, 
 creative value. If the new turns out to be old, and 
 has been advanced only on the score of newness, 
 obviously this relegates it to the background; if it 
 lays undue emphasis upon the part of a whole, again 
 obviously that excess should be indicated as an ex- 
 cess rather than as a contribution. If, again, there 
 is something valid in the spirit of the performance, 
 u
 
 162 THF DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 despite its artistic shortcomings, the knowledge is 
 important; it may lack significance to art, but pos- 
 sesses value for an understanding of the artist's 
 impulse. Back of all this seeming fatuity lies a 
 desire to escape from the mere repetition of reality 
 in art; it is, in its own way, part of the protest 
 against narrow realism that is evidenced as much 
 in the work of the German Expressionists, let us 
 say, as in the stylists of the new scenery and what 
 Mr. Macgowan has called "the theatre of to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Marinetti, like his spectacular countryman D'An- 
 nunzio, has a gift for self-advertisement, and came 
 to the notice of the rest of the world through the 
 suppression of his novel Mafarka the Futurist h\ 
 the Italian Comstocks. That was alxnit fourteen 
 years ago, and his acquittal was speedily followed 
 (I'V-hruary 20, 1909) by a manifesto of Futurism in 
 the Paris Figaro. Since then, it would seem, the 
 Futurists have been as busy with the writing of 
 manifestoes as with the exemplification of their 
 theories; it is doubtful whether anything that has 
 come from them contains the germs of permanency 
 — to which, of course, they might reply that per- 
 manency is anti-futuristic — but there is no doubt 
 that the various manifestoes make interesting read- 
 ing;. They are a running commentary upon the 
 futility of contemporary existence, expressive of a 
 violent reaction against every stabilizing force in 
 civilization. Everyone is familiar with the Futurist 
 proposal to abolish Italy's past by selling her 
 museums and art collections and purchasing with 
 the proceeds the newest engines of warfare. Speed, 
 violence, mob action, are the new gods.
 
 ITALY 163 
 
 With special reference to the stage, the earliest 
 Futurist pronunciamento called for the Variety- 
 Theatre, a mad hodge-podge of acrobatics, prac- 
 tical jokes, blending of the performers with the 
 spectators, caricature, pantomime, and what not 
 under the sun else. Here, for example, are some of 
 the innovations called for by the manifesto: 
 
 "The Variety Theatre is to have no traditions, 
 dogmas, nor masters, and is to be nurtured upon 
 *speedy actuality.' 
 
 "It is to be absolutely practical, seeking to divert 
 the pubHc with comical effects, erotic excitation, 
 and imaginative surprises, which must be inces- 
 santly renewed by the combined efforts of authors, 
 actors, and stage hands. 
 
 "It must run the entire gamut of stupidity, im- 
 becility, absurdity, thrusting the intelligence in- 
 sensibly to the very brink of madness. 
 
 "The Variety Theatre is the only one to employ 
 the collaboration of the public, which does not 
 remain static, like a stupid spectator, but takes 
 boisterous part in the action, singing with the per- 
 formers, accompanying the orchestra, conversing in 
 improvised talk and bizarre dialogues with the 
 actors. The latter are to pick clownish quarrels 
 with the musicians. 
 
 "The Variety Theatre uses the smoke of cigars 
 and cigarettes to fuse the atmosphere of the audi- 
 torium with that of the stage. And since the public 
 thus collaborates with the ingenuity of the actor, 
 the action takes place simultaneously upon the 
 stage, in the boxes, and in the pit. 
 
 "Such a theatre is a school of sincerity, partic- 
 ularly instructive to the male, since it exalts his
 
 164 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 rapacious instincts and strips from woman all the 
 veils of romantic illusion that so long have swathed 
 her. At the same time it brings out woman's 'ad- 
 mirable animal traits,' thus re-establishing sex upon 
 a primitive basis. It pnn'ides, moreover, a schcx)! 
 of heroism, seeking to incite men to break all exist- 
 ing records tor athletic pursuits. It is a sch(K)l of 
 subtlety, of complications and cerebral synthesis, 
 for its clowns, sleight-of-hand men, lightning cal 
 culators, ami the rest of that tribe; here a single 
 dance, representing the discussion of diplomatists 
 over the Morocco and the Congo questions, may be 
 the equivalent of at least three years of study in 
 foreign politics. 
 
 "Love is here to be shown up for the natural 
 thing it is, stripped of the romantic languors, the 
 carnal obsessions, the mysteries, and anti-hygienic 
 idealisms that have led a parasitic existence upon it. 
 
 "Perspective, proportion, time, and space are an- 
 nihilated, together with the Solemn, the Sacred, 
 the Sublime of Art with a capital A." Psychology 
 is to be relegated to the academic past whence it 
 sprung, and in its stead is to be enthroned what 
 Marinetti christens 7?j/Vq/o///«, a word constructed in 
 antithesis to psychology and signifying, as the 
 opposite to mental order, physical abandon. 
 
 If these extracts from the manifesto seem extrava- 
 gant, what shall we say to the detailed advice given 
 by its framer to the operators of this Variety Theatre? 
 The singers are to be compelled to paint their bare 
 necks, their arms, and particularly to dye their 
 hair every seductive color; the performer is to be 
 interrupted and made to deliver a revolutionary 
 harangue; the seats are to be covered with glue in
 
 ITALY 165 
 
 certain parts of the auditorium, thus adding to the 
 amusement of the spectators by the discomfiture 
 of the unfortunate parties; the same seat is to be 
 sold to some ten persons, thus making sure of con- 
 fusion and argument; free tickets are to be given 
 to semi-lunatics, who will cause more trouble with 
 their obscene gestures, their pinching of women, 
 and other eccentricities; powders provocative of 
 itching and sneezing are to be scattered about. 
 
 "Prostitute systematically upon the stage all 
 classical art, representing, for example, during a 
 single evening, all the Greek, French, and Italian 
 tragedies condensed into a ludicrous potpourri. 
 Enliven the works of Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, 
 Bellini, and Chopin with the interpolation of Neapol- 
 itan songs. Represent side by side on the stage 
 Zacconi, Duse, Mayol, Sarah Bernhardt, and Fre- 
 goli. Perform a Beethoven symphony backwards, 
 beginning on the last note. Reduce all Shakespeare 
 to a single act. . . . Have Ernani given by actors 
 enclosed up to the neck in sacks. Grease the boards 
 of the stage so as to ensure diverting tumbles at 
 the most tragic moment of the action. 
 
 "Encourage in every way the genre of the Amer- 
 ican eccentrics, their effects of exalting grotesquerie, 
 of horrifying dynamism, their coarse sallies, their 
 enormous brutality, their trick vests, and their 
 pantaloons, deep as the holds of ships, from which 
 there will issue forth, with thousands of other things, 
 the great futuristic hilarity that will rejuvenate the 
 face of the world." 
 
 There is another, and perhaps more important 
 document of the Futurists concerning the modern 
 theatre, signed by Marinetti, Emilio Settimelli, and
 
 166 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Bruno Corra at Milan, January ii, 1915, and Feb- 
 ruary 18 of the same year. They call it, in direct 
 contradiction of facts easily verifiable, "our first 
 words upon the theatre." 
 
 This time the Variety Theatre is considered only 
 of precursory importance; the label has become 
 Synthetic Futurist Theatre, "atechnical, dynamic, 
 simultaneous, autonomous, alogical, and unreal." 
 The war, which to them was a species of intensified 
 Futurism, had strengthened their belief in the 
 theatre as a national influence. Ninety per cent of 
 the Italian people goes to the theatre, it proclaimed, 
 while only ten per cent reads books and reviews. 
 Wherefore — as if nothing else had ever been said 
 previously upon the matter — the necessity of a 
 Futuristic theatre. 
 
 That theatre must be synthetic, must pack into 
 a few minutes and into a few words and gestures 
 countless situations, feelings, ideas, sensations, facts, 
 and svmbols. Such innovators as Ibsen, Maeter- 
 linck, Andreiev, Claudel, and Shaw never aimed at 
 a true synthesis; at best they are but semi-futuristic, 
 and essentially static. "We are convinced that, 
 mechanically, through brevity, we can create an 
 absolutely new theatre, in perfect harmony with 
 our vertiginously speedy and laconic (sic) futurist 
 sensibility. Our acts must also be instants. . . . 
 W'ith such an essential and synthetic brevity our 
 theatre can sustain and even overcome the com- 
 petition of the Cinematograph." 
 
 That theatre must be anti-technical, opposing 
 every precept of the dramaturgic text-book with its 
 imposing array of playcraft. "We wish to destroy 
 Technique, which from the Greeks down to the
 
 ITALY 167 
 
 present day, instead of becoming more simple, has 
 waxed ever more dogmatic, more stupidly logical, 
 meticulous, pedantic, stifling." Away, then, with 
 a hundred pages where one will suffice, simply be- 
 cause the public wishes to be convinced of the 
 reality of a person; away with any distinction be- 
 tween theatricality and untheatricality; away with 
 villains and heroes, imitation of reality, with the 
 desire to explain the action through minute logic, 
 "when even in real life we can never grasp an event 
 in its entirety, with all its causes and consequences, 
 since reality vibrates about us" in a chaotic con- 
 fusion of inter-related fragments. "For example, 
 it is stupid to represent upon the stage a contest 
 between two persons, always in a clear, logical order, 
 while in our actual experience with life we find 
 almost exclusively fragments of dispute which our 
 activity as modern persons has brought to our 
 attention for a moment in the car, in a cafe, in a 
 station, and which have remained filmed {cinemat- 
 ografati) upon our souls as dynamic, fragmentary 
 symphonies of gestures, words, sounds, and lights." 
 That theatre must be dynamic and simultaneous. 
 "We believe that a thing is of value according as it 
 has been improvised (hours, minutes, seconds), and 
 not prepared for a long time (months, years, cen- 
 turies)." And the signers point out in italics that 
 the greater part of their plays have been written 
 in the theatre, virtually Improvised; they pooh-pooh 
 Shakespeare, fall asleep over Ibsen's lines. Abso- 
 lute dynamism is their program, through the com- 
 penetration of difi^erent times and places. Hence 
 their simultaneity,^ in which time and space are 
 abolished.
 
 168 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 That theatre must be autonomous, alogical, un- 
 real. It is born of (i) "our frantic passion for actual 
 life, velocitous, fragmentar)-, elegant, complicated, 
 cynical, muscular, fleeting, futuristic; and (2) our 
 ultra-modern cerebral conception of art, according 
 to which no logic, no tradition, no technique, no 
 opportunism may be imposed upon the genius of 
 the artist, who must be concerned solely with the 
 creation of synthetic expressions of cerebral energy 
 possessing the absolute value of novelty." 
 
 Together with this novelty of outlook and ex- 
 ecution comes a novelty of nomenclature. Con- 
 temporary Italy, I believe, has more different des- 
 ignations for its dramatic products than any other 
 nation of the Western world. Among these Mari- 
 nettian novelties are the battute in libatd, (free lines; 
 i. e., improvisatiorts by the actors); the simultaneitd, 
 (simultaneity, in which the action takes place in a 
 fourth-dimensional world wherein time and space 
 no longer exist); the compenetrazioue^ wherein the em- 
 phasis is placed upon the interpenctration of tem- 
 poral and spatial elements; the poemetto animato 
 (animated short poem); the sensazione sceneggiata 
 (the scenified sensation); the ilaritd, dialogata 
 (hilarious dialogue), and a similar array of "extra- 
 logical discussions," "deformations," ad libitum. 
 
 The plays produced upon this plan have actually 
 been given by various dramatic companies and 
 have been received enthusiastically (if we may credit 
 the manifesto) by the publics of many cities. 
 
 As to Marinetti's own plays, we are not here so 
 much concerned with his La Morriie Sanglante {The 
 Bleeding Mummy) or his // Re Baldoria (King 
 Hubbub, 1909), which is to me as fat and fatuous
 
 ITALY 169 
 
 as the fleshly potentate whose gory exploits it 
 chronicles. Nothing of dynamic synthesis about 
 this satire upon parliamentarism that takes place 
 in the realm of Block-heads at some undetermined 
 epoch in the Middle Ages. Nor, for that matter, 
 is there anything novel or arresting in the longest 
 of the synthetic plays that Marinetti issued in book 
 form in 1920 under the title of Elettricita, Sessuale. 
 (The titular play was produced in 1909 in a French 
 version.) Sexual Electricity is a play of facile sym- 
 bolism, the interpretation of which is reinforced by 
 the protagonist, who is named Marinetti, thus 
 further indicating his spokesmanship for the author. 
 Few dramas could be more conventional in tech- 
 nique; it even opens with an expository conversa- 
 tion between two servants! Its purpose is to glorify 
 the Futurist views as to marriage and sex in general, 
 and its satire is so obvious, so transparent, that it 
 amounts almost to direct harangue. Far more in- 
 teresting as experiemnts in the new forms are the 
 short pieces that make up the remainder of the 
 collection. Some of these are little more than 
 animated cartoons of moral or political import; they 
 employ the "flash-back" methods of the moving- 
 picture, the "insert" methods of both film and car- 
 toon. One of them uses the tripartite stage of the 
 medieval theatre in which heaven, earth, and hell 
 are simultaneously visible. Another, called a "drama 
 of objects," gives voices to inanimate articles of 
 furniture, while a companion drama, not even en- 
 dowing the chairs of the action with voices, actually 
 manages to create an atmosphere of anticipation by 
 the shifting shadows of the chairs waiting for the 
 guests to arrive. There are "plays" calling only for
 
 170 THE DRAMA Ul- I RAXSITION 
 
 the appearance of hands in various positions above 
 a stretched curtain and consisting of twenty direc- 
 tions for the various positions; there is neither con- 
 tinuity nor climax, the hands of each "scene" telling 
 their story by their attitude alone. For example, 
 direction number 3: "Two masculine hands (of 
 different persons) clasp one another finiilv;" num- 
 ber I4, "a feminine hand waves a handkerchief with 
 yearnful languor, crushed and grieving;" number 19, 
 "a masculine hand with the forefinger rigidlv point- 
 ing in a position of energetic command." Ihe feet 
 likewise have a play to themselves. One of the 
 most interesting of the pieces, which is two pages 
 long, consists solely of stage directions and the rev- 
 elation of an officer's room on a summer's night. 
 Here, literally, the picture tells the story. 
 
 As an illustration of the plays, I translate one of 
 the least esoteric, called On a Moonlit Ni^ht^ "alogical 
 compenetration." As the author explains in his 
 note, "The heavy-paunched man is not a svmbol, 
 but an anti-logical synthesis of many sensations: fear 
 of future reality, cold and solitude of the night, vision 
 of life twenty years after, and so on." 
 
 Scene: A Garden; a Bench. 
 
 He: What a beautiful night! Let's sit down here. . . . 
 
 She: How fragrant the air is! 
 
 He: We are all alone, we two, in this vast garden. 
 . . . Aren't you afraid? 
 
 She: No ... no ... I am so happy to be 
 here alone with you. 
 
 A Stout, Heavv-Paunched Gentleman (enters from 
 a side path, approaches the couple, sits down upon the bench 
 beside them. They do 7iot see hifn, however^ as if he were
 
 ITALY 171 
 
 invisible): Hum! Hum! {He stares at the maiden while 
 she speaks.) 
 
 She: Did you feel that breeze? 
 
 The Stout, Heavy-Paunched Gentleman: Hum! 
 Hum ! {He stares at the young man while the latter speaks.) 
 
 He: It isn't the breeze. 
 
 She: But isn't there really anybody in this garden? 
 
 He: Only the watchman yonder in his cottage. He's 
 asleep. Come here, closer. . . . Give me your lips. 
 So. 
 
 The Stout, Heavy-Paunched Gentleman: Hum! 
 Hum ! {Looks at his watch by the light of the moon, rises, 
 walks about pensively in front of the two as they kiss, and 
 then sits down again?) 
 
 She: What a beautiful night it is! 
 
 He: How fragrant the air is! 
 
 The Stout, Heavy-Paunched Gentleman: Hum! 
 Hum! 
 
 He: Why do you tremble? Did something frighten 
 you? 
 
 She: No. Kiss me again. 
 
 The Stout, Heavy-Paunched Gentleman {looks 
 again at his watch by the light of the moon, rises, walks be- 
 hind the bench, unseen, and lightly touches first her shoulder, 
 then his, and disappears slowly into the background?) 
 
 She: What a shudder! 
 
 He: It's getting somewhat cold. . . . 
 
 She: Late, too. 
 
 He: Let's go in. What do you say? 
 
 Has Marinetti added anything to the dramatic 
 art with these curious experiments? Hardly a tittle. 
 After all the Futuristic verbiage about conventional 
 technique, he returns to it in the titular piece, as 
 we have seen; there is nothing in the other plays
 
 172 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 that has not for decades formed the stock-in-trade 
 of stage mechanics. Visions of heavenly beatitudes, 
 of Gretchens meant to allure Fausts, of fantastic 
 dreams, are a commonplace of melodrama, which 
 often has annihilated time and space in precisely 
 Marinettian manner, though with different inten- 
 tions. And what is more C(;mmon, more ot the 
 past, than his arid allegory and symbolism? In 
 these miniature plays, if we may call them such, 
 Marinetti has achieved novelty of emphasis rather 
 than of matter or conception; he has taken the part 
 for the whole. 
 
 The chief importance, then, of the Futurist attack 
 upon the contemporary drama is that it has thrown 
 a lurid light upon the weaknesses of conventional 
 technique. Beneath all the nonsense and futility 
 of the Variety Theatre, beneath all the blatant 
 nomenclature of the Synthetic Play, lies a valid 
 striving away from the mere repetition of meaning- 
 less detail. Its strength — as aspiration, for the ac- 
 complishment is almost nil — is polemical, not crea- 
 tive; negative rather than positive. It is related to 
 the grinning infantilism of the Dada-ists by its laugh- 
 ing nihilism, and represents, as does the Dada-ist im- 
 pulse, the breaking-point in the reaction against an 
 over-ordered, over-logical, formal, all-too-formal uni- 
 verse. When all is said and done, the past is an in- 
 evitable component of present and future, and the 
 Futuristic movement, through its very excesses, 
 hastened its own descent into the very past that it 
 abjured.
 
 ITALY 173 
 
 THE "TEATRO GROTESCO": LUIGI 
 PIRANDELLO ET AL 
 
 It will be recalled that the Futurist movement in 
 the theatre, though it employed the stage in an 
 effort to further the war, was born before the out- 
 break of the great conflict. So, too, was the so- 
 called "grotesque" theatre, which, in its similar 
 reaction against conventionality, resorted to methods 
 less extreme, less offensive to the static bourgeoisie, 
 if at times almost as disconcerting. If to-day the 
 grotesque theatre is not a vital factor in Italian 
 drama, and more a symptom of artistic restlessness 
 than a promise of achievement, it is more important 
 potentially than the Futuristic drama. Pirandello, 
 only incidentally a "grotesquer," has alone done 
 things that seem more than ephemeral, and despite 
 all that may be urged against his plays, has brought 
 to the Italian drama that breath of novelty which 
 the Futurists, for all their manifestoes, could not 
 infuse. 
 
 One of its possible sources has been traced to 
 Bernard Shaw — chiefly on the strength, one imagines, 
 of the designations that he has adopted for various 
 of his plays, such as "a conversion in three acts," 
 "a debate in one sitting," "a sermon in crude mel- 
 odrama." So do the grotesquers avoid the simple 
 designation, in productions which, from the stand- 
 point of content rather than nomenclature, have 
 suggested comparison with the Grand Guignol. 
 Chiarelli's La Maschera e il Volto {The Mask and the 
 Face), which set the movement a-going, is called a 
 "grotesque," whence the descriptive adjective of 
 the school. Pirandello's Cosi a, se vi pare (It's So,
 
 174 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 If You Think It Is) is subtitled "a parable." L'Ucello 
 del Paradiso (The Bird of Paradise)^ by the young 
 and daring Enrico Cavacchioli, is denominated "a 
 confession" — ^just what sort we shall presently see. 
 And thus the style flourishes. 
 
 Silvio d'Aniico' flouts the Shavian source. "He 
 who knows what truly constitutes the secret of the 
 Shavian theatre," writes the discerning Italian, 
 "the essentially moralistic reasons behind his over- 
 turn of technique . . . will hardly succeed in 
 discovering any substantial identity between the 
 Christian spirit of the Irish writer and the . . . 
 apparent frigidity of the PirandcUian forms, the pre- 
 vailingly funereal, lugubrious, macabrous tones of 
 the young authors, who think of everything except 
 social preachment." This is, on the whole, quite so. 
 Yet in Pirandello especially, and from the very be- 
 ginning, there are social implications. What is 
 more, a rather close comparison of the Irishman and 
 the Italian would bring to light a certain underlying 
 Christianity in both. D'Amico is nearer to the true 
 state of affairs when he declares that the new dram- 
 atists can no longer believe in their own creatures — 
 a phenomenon surely not limited to the stage nor 
 to latter-day Italy. "Finding themselves compelled 
 to write in a time in which, according to the assur- 
 ances of the well-informed, all possible stage situa- 
 tions have been used . . . they try a new game. 
 They take the old situations and try to lend them 
 new flavor by forcing some of the elements (Chiarelli) 
 by decentralizing them (Cavacchioli, Antonelli), by 
 grouping them into a violent synthesis (Rosso di 
 San Secondo). ... In substance this is a mechan- 
 
 ' See his very interesting 7/ Teatro dei fanUxci, ValJechi Editore, Firenze. 
 (No date.)
 
 ITALY 175 
 
 ical game, which in the end confers upon the plays 
 the single trait truly common to this entire theatre 
 — a marionette-like concentration." The more to 
 impress this point the critic indicates that the very 
 name "Guignol" comes from the corruption of Chig- 
 nol — a Bolognese puppet transplanted to France. 
 Your "grotesque" play, moreover, though "humor- 
 istic," is not necessarily an hilarious affair; it may 
 hold as many thrills as any Grand Guignol "nerve- 
 wrecker," but the thrills — and possi-bly we have here 
 a true distinction between the two types — may be 
 cerebral as well as physical. That is, the interest 
 may be centered not alone upon events but upon 
 the confusion of thought, the bewilderment of atti- 
 tude induced by them. 
 
 As an example of the more obvious type of "gro- 
 tesque" play, I would give the original form of Fausto 
 Maria Martini's Ridi^ Pagliaccio, a one-act play 
 suggested by the clown of Leoncavallo's opera. 
 
 We are introduced to the waiting-room of a very 
 modern nerve specialist. Several patients are await- 
 ing their turn, and with that companionship which 
 the discussion and exchange of symptoms so often 
 develops in sufferers of more or less imaginary ail- 
 ments, they converse about their pet maladies, 
 much to the perturbation of Federico, Professor 
 Gambella's assistant. That worthy, who has picked 
 up a scrap here and there of neuropathological 
 knowledge, is certain that this verbal contagion of 
 nervous symptoms is bad for the patients; they 
 must tell their troubles to the doctor alone. Among 
 the patients is one who is sunk into a chair, as if 
 on the verge of complete collapse. Another, il 
 Cavaliere Strappa, begins a windy relation of his
 
 176 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 particular mania to a woman patient at his side. 
 He cannot resist the temptation to laugh at every- 
 thing; no matter what he beholds he is at once 
 seized with an uncontrollable impulse to shriek 
 with mirth; he beholds everything through grotesque 
 spectacles. He has come to Professor Gambella in 
 the hope that this torturing malady may be al- 
 leviated. 
 
 The patient who hitherto has listened in silence 
 approaches the couple; he begs their pardon; he has 
 been attracted by the nature of their discussion, 
 which, under the circumstances, he could not help 
 overhearing. Signor Srrappa's malady interests him 
 exceedingly; all the mcjre so, indeed, because it is 
 the very reverse of his own. He, j-KX)r fellow, has 
 lost his power of laughter; whatever he gazes upon 
 at once is transformed into a source of tears. 
 
 At last comes the turn for this gentleman's inter- 
 view with the psychiatrist. His name is Giovanni 
 Scheffi. The doctor, quite cocksure in his powers 
 of divination, puts him down for a man of leisure, 
 since hard-working folk cannot afford the luxury of 
 mental ailments. Scheffi offers no contradiction. 
 He submits to the tests necessary to discover his 
 nervous reactions and patiently awaits the doctor's 
 verdict. It is a serious case; fortunately he has 
 come in time; his chief remedy lies within himself, 
 in his own will-power. He must above all things, 
 avoid the suggestions of the disagreeable, the sad. 
 He must not permit lugubrious friends to cross his 
 threshold; he must seek amusement, and center all 
 his efforts upon extracting the humorous from his 
 daily surroundings. Oh, yes, let him be sure to see 
 the pair of clowns that go under the name of Flick
 
 ITALY 177 
 
 and Flock at the Eden — the third number of the 
 program. At this juncture Scheffi turns suddenly 
 pale, and the doctor fears he has had another 
 nervous attack, but the patient assures him that it 
 is nothing. Whereupon the doctor resumes his 
 eulogies of Flick and Flock as purveyors of curative 
 laughter — especially Flick. Yes, yes; take that 
 "number" in and the cure is effected. "To-morrow 
 you'll come back to me and say, 'Dear doctor, I 
 laughed all evening. . . .' And if you succeed in 
 laughing for an entire evening, the victory over 
 your nerves is won. You no longer need me; you 
 are cured. Why, last night the contagion of laughter 
 was so great that . . . the walls of the auditorium 
 simply shook. Flick's comical powers are so deep 
 and so persuasive that they extend beyond the limits 
 of the performance. When you leave the theatre 
 . . . you catch yourself laughing for no reason at 
 all. Just imagine, last night a certain recollection 
 of the performance came to my mind and the first 
 thing I knew I found myself sitting up in the bed 
 laughing away like a child. What had happened.'' 
 There was the shadow on the wall in the very form 
 of Flick's snout, grinning right at me! . . ." 
 
 The patient has become increasingly nervous; 
 the doctor again questions him: 
 
 Gambella: But you are ill. What's the matter? 
 Another nervous attack? 
 
 Scheffi {utterly dejected): Ah! This is too much! 
 Too much! 
 
 Gambella: But what's the trouble? 
 
 Scheffi: The trouble is that I shall never again be 
 able to look upon that fellow, Flick, who gave you such 
 
 12
 
 178 IHE DK.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 pleasure last night. Because that clown, clear professor — 
 1 am that clown, I myself. . . . 
 
 {Gambclla is stunned at the news. The two men look at 
 each other. The professor regains his composure.) 
 
 Gambella: You? You? I am thunderstruck. I must 
 admit that, as a man of science, this time I committed a 
 silly blunder. 
 
 ScHEFFi {weeping): Now you understand that I 
 
 couldn't have told you, because if I had, I would have 
 
 run the risk of not being taken seriously. 
 
 {There is a knock at the door. Federico entns.) 
 Federico: Professor! Professor! Madame Giabutti 
 
 has had one of her regular epileptic attacks. W ill you 
 
 see her now? 
 
 Gambella: Prepare some Valerian. 
 {Gambella follows Federico; Scheffi is left alone upon the 
 stage, still weeping.) 
 
 Scheffi {raising his face, which is bathed with tears): 
 This, then. . . . 
 
 {He strides with his accustomed bounding step toward the 
 large hall mirror at the rear, and greedily begins to evoke 
 his image there. It seems that he finds it difficult to rec- 
 ognize himself. He sits down, then suddenly Jumps up, 
 kicks the chair, which is overturned, and begins to execute 
 before the looking-glass the twists and turns that he has 
 regularly performed at his cafe. In the meantime il Cav- 
 aliere Strappa enters through the door at the left, and seeing 
 that the doctor is occupied with Madame Giabutti, he ex- 
 claims:) 
 
 Str.appa: I can't get to see him to-day. I'll return 
 to-morrow. {He crosses the room and surprises Scheffi in 
 his clown-like performance, and while Scheffi, with his 
 nose thrust against the surface of the mirror cries: "Flick, 
 Flick, I alone will be unable to look you in the face," Strappa 
 nods as if he understands, walks to the door at the right and 
 says to himself:)
 
 ITALY 179 
 
 Strappa: He's not a hypochondriac. That man's 
 crazy ! 
 
 Such is the end of the playlet, which I translate 
 from the printed version now before me; judging 
 from the reports of the critics, the stage version ends 
 with the clown's suicide. It is easily seen that for 
 the stage such a definite conclusion is more effective, 
 more "grotesque." Here indeed we have the Grand 
 Guignol formula adapted to the purpose of intel- 
 lectual as well as physical shudders. 
 
 La Maschera e il Volto^ by Luigi Chiarelli, was pre- 
 sented by him in 1915 as a "grotesque," whence, 
 as we saw, the name of the entire school. The 
 plot is that of a husband who has been outraged in 
 his marital rights. His view upon such matters is 
 rigid; indeed, quite comparable with the "point of 
 honor" that so long clamped its virtues upon the 
 Spanish stage. His duty, clearly, is to slay his faith- 
 less wife. What is he to do, however, if his courage 
 is not equal to his sense of duty.^ He conspires with 
 his own wife to have it appear that he has slain her! 
 She leaves for foreign parts and Paolo delivers him- 
 self up to the authorities, averring that he has 
 strangled his wife and thrown her into the lake. 
 He puts his case into the hands of his lawyer-friend 
 Luciano Spina, ignorant, of course, of the fact that 
 Spina is the seducer of his wife, Paolo is acquitted 
 and returns to his home. Lo, the body of a woman 
 is found in the lake; he must pretend to identify it 
 as his wife and go through the funeral rites. And 
 now appears a veiled woman, returning from her 
 concealment in London, to congratulate her husband 
 upon his acquittal. They arrange a clandestine
 
 180 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 meeting within a few paces of the corpse. The 
 next morning a series or contretemps brings Savina 
 face to face with Luciano instead of her husband, 
 but it appears that her passion for him has cooled, 
 so that Paolo may really feel forgiveness in his 
 heart. But unforeseen complications arise. If he 
 confesses the deceit practiced upon the law, he 
 renders himself liable to thirty months' imprison- 
 ment. "What.'' When they believed that I had 
 slain my wife, they let me free. Now that they dis- 
 cover I didn't kill her, they imprison me.''" Flight 
 is the sole resource, and off they fly, to the strains of 
 the funeral march being played for the other woman. 
 The corpse is a symbol of the erring wife's dead 
 self; the new Savina "is present smiling at her own 
 funeral, leaning on her husband's arm." 
 
 Even d'.Amico, who sees in this play the one valid 
 product of the whole movement, finds it rather con- 
 ventional in dialogue and not really "grotesque" in 
 substance. "It is only a happy ironic invention; 
 and ... a colorful satire upon the contempj- 
 rarv powerlessness to live, treated in large, certain 
 lines, which really revive the fine comic effects, the 
 savory scenic strokes and the caricaturesque de- 
 formations ... of the good old times, the pos- 
 sibilitv of which has been forgotten for years." 
 The play was a great success and went into the Italian 
 repertory. 
 
 * 
 
 Taking the grotesque movement in its widest 
 application, we find the figure of Luigi Pirandello 
 easily the most interesting, the most pregnant in 
 suggestion, the most successful in practice. Foreign 
 critics will insist upon his lack of modernity, native
 
 ITALY 181 
 
 critics will point out his essentially Sicilian make-up, 
 but the student who approaches him undefiled by 
 preconceptions finds in him a peculiarly sympathetic 
 personage, easily understandable upon the basis of 
 our common humanity. If Pirandello is a "gro- 
 tesquer," then the school is as old as his literary 
 career; if he is not — and these labels matter little — 
 he has added to the Italian repertory a unique 
 series of plays, of uneven worth, but of undoubted 
 originality and not without their own suggestive- 
 ness to the sensitive contemporary in quest of 
 deeper and wider spiritual realms. 
 
 Pirandello was born on June 28, 1867, at Gir- 
 genti, Sicily. After a thorough education in Italy 
 he went to the University of Bonn, where he was 
 graduated in philosophy and philology. His sub- 
 sequent career has been devoted to professorship, 
 but has permitted him enough leisure in which to 
 produce a veritable library of books, covering a wide 
 range and revealing a fine quality. From poetry 
 he progressed to the novel, to criticism, to the 
 theatre. His novel, // Fu Mattia Pascal (1904), 
 which has been translated into French and Ger- 
 man, is one of the most original Italian books of the 
 twentieth century, and was responsible for his step- 
 ping across the national frontier. It is written in a 
 witty, fluent, Boccaccesque style, in which the 
 author displays his characteristic capability of treat- 
 ing humorously situations of underlying seriousness. 
 If Chiarelli's La Maschera e il Volto demonstrates, 
 in d'Amico's words, the modern "powerlessness to 
 live," what shall we say of The Late Mattia Pascal, 
 who dies more than once in the course of the strange 
 narrative? In his fiction, Pirandello has been called
 
 182 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 a "gay pessimist" — a sobriquet that seems to match 
 his paradoxical style with a corresponding paradox; 
 his pessimism, however, is found not to be the 
 Anglo-Saxon type, for underneath it seems to flow 
 a current of faith. The man's writings are really 
 topsy-turvy, compounded of cynicism jostling against 
 sentimentality, Christian self-abnegation rubbing el- 
 bows with anarchic denial. He is an "intellectual." 
 (Jne suspects in him the man whose emotions and 
 intellect have never reached a state of stable equi- 
 librium; now one, now the other is uppermost, with 
 a resultant kaleidoscope of many-colored notions, 
 ideas, feelings, reactions. He has been credited with 
 having brought to the stage his own peculiar hu- 
 mor, upon which, by the way, he has written a 
 tightly packed volume. Like most of the Icailing 
 Italian men of letters, he writes too much. His 
 best, however, is so plainly expressive of a decidedly 
 arresting personality that it will remain as one of 
 the traits of contemporary Italian belles-lettres. 
 And though it is foolish to hazard prophecies, I am 
 quite sure that his countrymen will remember him 
 as much for his plays as for his fiction, though it 
 is held by a number that his plays are the lesser 
 aspect of his fecund talents. 
 
 Such an early play as Lumie di Sicilia {Siciliah 
 Limes) is the farthest remove from the later Piran- 
 dello. It is a sweet little one-act trifle in which a 
 rustic youth whose sacrifice has enabled his sweet- 
 heart to develop into a world-famous prima donna, 
 comes to meet her years after their childhood days. 
 The gulf between them yawns despairingly great; he 
 is the simple countryman still, she the spoiled beautv 
 of a hundred capitals. The great singer, educated
 
 ITALY 183 
 
 at the expense of her provincial lover, has achieved 
 her fame at the cost of her better self, while the 
 lover, outwardly a boor, is inwardly the artist he 
 had hoped she would become. At the end Sina dis- 
 tributes to her assembled guests the Sicilian limes 
 that her lover had brought for her; even so prodigal 
 has she been with her own transplanted gifts. Ten- 
 der sentimentality, then, but simple and affecting; 
 more's the pity that in a recent revision of the play 
 Pirandello saw fit to spoil it all by having Sina burst 
 into a momentary fit of remorse while the rustic 
 leaves her implacably. 
 
 It would be bootless to take up the entire Pir- 
 andellian output. Certain of the larger plays stand 
 out for novelty of presentation or ingenuity of con- 
 struction, and it is these one should know for a 
 proper appreciation of their author's relation to 
 the Italian drama. 
 
 We may, then, pass over with scant attention, 
 such productions as Pensaci, GiacominOy II Giuoco 
 delle Partly Ma non I una cosa seria, and even the 
 recent Come prima meglio di prima and Tutto per 
 Bene. The first. Just Think, GiacominOy is a queer 
 mingling of farce, comedy, and melodrama, illus- 
 trative of Pirandello's pitying attitude toward the 
 creatures of life who are plunged by circumstances 
 into ridiculous ventures. There is plenty of indig- 
 nation against conventional morality, but it comes 
 from a figure who is not so much a character as a 
 stilted principle in action. The fillip of the play 
 derives its force from the situation of an elderly 
 professor who, having married a very young girl 
 in order to wreak vengeance upon the government, 
 which will have to pay her his pension for many a
 
 184 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 year, acts as intermediary between her and her 
 lover. So, too. The Chess Game is a drama of situa- 
 tion in which the supposedly meek husband sends 
 his wife's lover to the duel brought about by the 
 wife's machinations, thus turning the tables. It's 
 Nothing Serious depicts the fortunes of an amorous 
 blade who weds a homely boarding-house girl in 
 self-protection, finally lulling in love with her as she 
 shows her true mettle and improves in looks as a 
 result of the care and air she never knew before. 
 (A sort of inversion of the theme treated by Sab- 
 atino Lopez in // Brutto e le Belle.) Like The Chess 
 Game, this is a comedy of intellectual rather than 
 external situation, yet quite devoid of more than 
 passing humor or characterization. One may not 
 question the human significance of the puppets, 
 but they lack dramatic existence. Pirandello, in- 
 tellectual that he is, finds greater interest in themes 
 than in persons; if his theatre is largely a play of 
 marionettes — as is, for that matter, the theatre of 
 the "grotesquers" — it is because philosophical pre- 
 occupation in all artistic forms tends to reduce 
 human beings to symbols of thought. It is the rare 
 artist who vivifies the symbol that is every human 
 being. 
 
 The better Pirandello is discoverable in such strik- 
 ing, ingenious tours de force as Cosl ^, se vi pare 
 {Ifs Soy If You Think It Is), his very recent Sei 
 person aggi in cere a d'autore {Six Characters In ^uest 
 of a Playwright), and the social drama Se non cosl 
 {If Not Thus), lately re-entitled La ragione degli 
 altri. 
 
 Se non cosl seems to show the influence of Bracco's 
 feministic plays and is interesting as tract, if nothing
 
 ITALY 185 
 
 else. But Pirandello is always seeking the novel 
 point of view. His treatment of the eternal tri- 
 angle, whatever else it may lack, does manage in 
 the numerous plays he has dedicated to it, to get 
 out of the beaten path. The play turns upon the 
 desire of Leonardo's wife to have a child, even if it 
 be the daughter of her husband by his mistress, 
 Elena. And in the end her plea for this species of 
 vicarious motherhood is granted by both the will- 
 ing husband and the reluctant Elena. Admitting 
 the plausibility of the wife's views, the play is really 
 strong and moving. There is little drama in the 
 text-book sense of the word, despite some striking 
 scenes in the second and third acts, for the "action" 
 consists chiefly in the working out of Livia's views 
 and the dialogue that arises from the exposition of 
 them. In an interesting, somewhat Shavian Letter 
 to the Female Protagonist of the Play, Pirandello 
 explains his purpose in the guise of a note, telling 
 the leading character what an unattractive part 
 she has, and how difficult it will be for her to find 
 a leading lady to essay the role. 
 
 It's Soy If You Think It Is is one of the pivotal 
 plays of the Pirandellian canon. At the center of 
 the author's method lies a philosophical conception 
 of man as a complex of many selves and of reality 
 as a tissue of countless illusions. Unity in thought 
 or action thus becomes but another illusion, and the 
 true reality is whatever we happen to think at the 
 moment, "It's so, if you think it is," and, as the 
 author might have added, "You are, if you think 
 you are." The plot, called a "parable," moves with 
 a swiftness necessary to such a conception; it be- 
 comes bewildering, and, indeed, if it is to delight an
 
 186 THE DR.^MA OF TRANSITION 
 
 audience, must not permit them to linger too long 
 over the palpahic absurdities of the intellectual 
 farce — for such it is. This is not, like the greatest 
 art, an unfolding of beautiful experience. It is an 
 anarchistic philosophical essay written in people in- 
 stead of words. But the inescapable truth is that 
 it has delighted cultured audiences who do not hes- 
 itate to choose between conlormity to formula and 
 actuality of impression. 
 
 ilic new secretary to the prefect of an Italian 
 town comes with his wife and his mother-in-law. 
 Queerly enough, his wile is kept isolated by him, 
 and his mother-in-law can go to see her daughter 
 only in the courtyard, never entering the home. 
 This arouses the curiosity of the Agazzi family, 
 whose head is the commissioner of the town and 
 whose wile and daughter are among the leading so- 
 ciety gossips of the place, .All the more so since the 
 mother-in-law, Signora Frola, lives in the same build- 
 ing as they. Ponza explains that the mother-in-law 
 is demented; that his wife is not really her daughter 
 (who died tour years ago), but another, whom she 
 has taken it into her head is her daughter Lina, his 
 first wife. She, on the other hand, tells a different 
 story, saying that her son-in-law so ruined the 
 health of her daughter by excessive love at their 
 marriae;e that she had to be placed in a sanitarium, 
 and that he became obsessed with the idea that 
 she had died, and that seeing her again, he imagined 
 it a new love affair, and a second ceremony was 
 gone through to humor him. At the same time 
 Signora Frola humored him in his ideas as to her 
 (Frola's) demented condition. Gossip asks which 
 of the two is the crazy one. Sides are taken. Lam-
 
 ITALY 187 
 
 berto Laudisi, brother-in-law of Councillor Agazzi, 
 is the raisonneur of the play, — a sort of philosoph- 
 ical gracioso type, who ridicules both sides and so 
 confuses them with added hypotheses that he makes 
 them fear that he'll get them all crazy before the 
 matter is cleared up. Finally it is suggested that if 
 Frola and her son-in-law are brought together in 
 Agazzi's, the truth must come out. In an excellent 
 scene-a-faire this is done (act two), but leaves more 
 doubt than ever! At last Laudisi, maliciously, no 
 doubt, hits upon the idea of asking the wife the 
 true state of affairs. (They have been in an earth- 
 quake and all documents of the town they came 
 from have been destroyed, while affidavits from 
 residents of that place are hazy and merely add con- 
 fusion and perplexity.) The wife comes and says 
 that she is both the daughter of Signora Frola and 
 the second wife of Ponza. Whereupon Laudisi 
 triumphantly bursts out laughing. 
 
 Signora Ponza: What? The truth; it's simply this: 
 that I am the daughter of Signora Frola, and also the 
 second wife of Signor Ponza; yes, and to myself, neither, 
 neither! 
 
 The Prefect: Ah, no, to yourself, madam, you must 
 be one or the other! 
 
 Signora Ponza: No, sir. To myself I am that which 
 I am believed to be! 
 
 Laudisi: Behold, gentlemen, how speaks Truth! Are 
 you satisfied? Ha, ha, ha! 
 
 In the second act there is an interesting, original, 
 and illuminative soliloquy of Laudisi's with his image 
 in the mirror: 
 
 "Well, my dear chap? Which is the madman of 
 us two? Oh, I know. I say You. And you say I.
 
 188 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 You, you! And again, I. . . . There, there; 
 face to face with each other we know each other 
 well! The trouble is that others don't see you as 1 
 do! And in that case, my dear boy, what becomes 
 of you? I say to myself that here, in front of you, 
 I see myselt and touch myself — you, as soon as 
 you're seen by others, what do you become? A 
 fantasm, dear chap, a fantasm! Well, do you see 
 these mad folk? \\'ithout paying any attention to 
 the fantasms they carry with themselves, in them- 
 selves, they run about, filled with curiosity, in chase 
 of others* fantasms! And they imagine it's a dif- 
 ferent matter. . . ." 
 
 A philosophical piece, then, in which the author 
 displays toward the reader the same malicious, 
 taunting attitude that Laudisi shows toward the 
 other spectators. As the author says, it is a parable; 
 plainly, then, he meant to inculcate the lesson that 
 truth is much a matter of seeming, and that there 
 may be more than one tnith — as many, in fact, as 
 there are persons and even circumstances. And 
 when at last we think we discover the truth fSig- 
 nora Ponza) she gives us a Delphic reply. Is there 
 truth? Is tnith a Delphic oracle? And what a 
 strange, silly sight we present chasing after it with 
 more of the inquisitive gossip in us than of the 
 serious searcher after any real good! And how for- 
 getful of our own similar position in our inquiries 
 after the strange aspect of others! Laudisi sums it 
 up in his talk to himself before the mirror. For 
 isn't the whole world a mirror, and aren't we con- 
 tinuously puzzled with our own reflections — whether 
 they occur in mirrors or in the hearts, souls, and 
 actions of others?
 
 ITALY 189 
 
 The end, as in so many of Pirandello's plays, is 
 somewhat weak. Need it be pointed out that the 
 piece is in Pirandello's characteristic, dualistic mood 
 of sober humor? 
 
 Later dramas like Tutto per Bene and Come prima 
 meglio di prima represent industry rather than 
 creative impulse; Pirandello must keep the theatres 
 supplied with fuel, and marks time with just such 
 superficial, conscienceless trash as this. The first 
 has all the earmarks of its pattern: "papers," du- 
 bious paternity, and that hoary band. The second 
 is not so much a play of deep passion as of hectic 
 speech, in which a woman, recovering from an at- 
 tempt at suicide, is taken back by her husband to 
 the household she deserted when her child was 
 three years old — that is, thirteen years previous. 
 Her true status is kept secret for the sake of that 
 daughter, who, coming upon the discovery that no 
 marriage certificate exists (again the "papers!") 
 thinks her father unlawfully in union with this 
 woman. A new baby comes to the mother, leading 
 to the revelation of the truth. Note Pirandello's 
 need of dealing with personages compelled to appear 
 in a double social role; his fondness for multiple 
 personality. In his worst and his best alike, the 
 man is primarily a spectator of human complica- 
 tions and follies, atracted more by the intellectual 
 problems inherent in them than by the passions 
 engendered. 
 
 Six Characters in ^uest of a Playwright redeems 
 him from such pot-boilers as these. Produced this 
 year at Rome with signal success, and shortly after- 
 ward acted in London with flattering outcome, it 
 is in the vein of Cost e, se vi pare. By a natural
 
 190 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 process of his restless, introspective, curious mind, 
 he turns upon himself with quasi-Shavian satire 
 against the playwright and with comic situations 
 arising from the strange rehearsal into which the 
 players of the piece are forced. Here is a drama- 
 tist's holiday, and a critic's as well. He pokes fun 
 at himself, converses with himself about the prob- 
 lems of the drama in general, and finally solves 
 the difficulty with a bullet shot that solves nothing 
 at all. The old plight of Pirandello — and how many 
 countless others! — the hastened, arbitrary ending, 
 so as to have done with it all anil ring down the 
 curtain. 
 
 Perhaps it is one's hope that seems to detect in 
 this plav a sign of Pirandello's coming abandonment 
 of the old-fashioned eternal triangle, to which he has 
 tried to give a new twist, yet which burdens his 
 production unduly. I would not be understood as 
 opposing the "triangle" here on moral grounds, nor 
 would I agree with Dr. Lander MacClintock in his 
 valuable The Contemporary lyrama oj Italy (page 258) 
 that the triangle "is a fashion, a literary convention, 
 and not a record of a social condition in Italy or any 
 other country." Our institution of marriage is 
 breaking up; the triangle, among other things, is a 
 symbol ot human chafing in social bonds; it always 
 existed, and whatever the form that eventually 
 supplants marriage as we know it, will always exist 
 as a token of man's (and woman's) rebellion against 
 enforced monogamy. (The important word here is, 
 not monogamy, but enforced.) To return to 
 Pirandello, I merely mean that he is too much pre- 
 occupied with it — a question of proportion, not a 
 concession to Mrs. Grundy. Certainly enough it
 
 ITALY 191 
 
 looks as if he had started out this time to write some- 
 thing quite as bad as the two dramas that went before 
 and was seized, in the middle of the task, with mis- 
 givings and with a spirit of harsh self-criticism. 
 Having entangled himself in a snarl of marital and 
 extra-marital difficulties, and finding himself hard 
 put to it to extricate not only characters but him- 
 self, he seems to have turned about face and aimed 
 the question at the audience. In other words, 
 though the teasing title is Six Characters in ^uest of 
 a Playwright^ the reality is a playwright in quest 
 of what to do with his six characters. And what has 
 he done but bring them upon the "boards" and let 
 them argue out their own case before the public? 
 It is as if the stage has become the teeming brain 
 of Professor Pirandello, and the audience, by some 
 strange psychic license, has been permitted to look 
 right into the throbbing mechanism of a dramatist's 
 mind at work. This sounds something like the 
 monodrama as written and produced by the queer 
 Russian Evreinov, and, to be sure, there is not a 
 little similarity between the manner in which the 
 Italian treats his problem and that in which Evrei- 
 nov has presented it in his one-act Theatre of the 
 Soul. But where Evreinov makes no break between 
 the representation of the soul's unconscious and 
 outer reality, Pirandello is compelled to differen- 
 tiate between his inchoate characters of the play 
 that is yet to be written and the flesh-and-blood 
 actors and stage director to whom they come in 
 their eagerness to be made into a drama. 
 
 The play, nominally, is continuous, but the dram- 
 atist manages to introduce two logical waits, during 
 one of which the curtain actually is lowered by a
 
 192 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 supposed error of the stage hands. Thus there is 
 preserved a strict unity of time, place, and action — 
 more rigid, indeed, than that called for by a much 
 misinterpreted Greek gentleman named Aristotle. 
 It must have amused Pirandello that he was able 
 literally to have unity in variety by lowering partial 
 "sets" upon the stage, thus achieving the effect of 
 a change of place without moving from the spot, as 
 it were. And this, perhaps, was the least of his 
 pleasures, for the structure of his play affords him 
 opportunity to play with the new lighting, to in- 
 dulge in the philosophical chatter that he so dearly 
 loves, and to disport himself with the paradoxes to 
 which his very conception perforce gives rise. 
 
 As the audience enters it discovers a stage with 
 curtain raised and no scene set. It is for all the 
 world as if one had come in just before a private 
 rehearsal and discovered the theatre in its work-day 
 clothes. And, indeed, a rehearsal is about to take 
 place — that ot a "play by Pirandello entitled // 
 Giuoco delle Parti. {The Chess Game, one of the 
 earlier dramas, essentially of situation, in which the 
 emphasis is shifted to psychological rather than ex- 
 ternal clashes, and in which the clever husband man- 
 ages to turn the tables upon his wife and her lover. 
 Though there is an evident desire to impart new 
 thrills to the old, old, eternal triangle, there is little 
 characterization, the humor is acrid, and at times 
 even grim, while the action is hardly compelling.) 
 The rehearsal begins and the director is soon argu- 
 ing with his actors about the merits of the play. 
 Of course it's ridiculous, he answers, "but what 
 can I do about it if no more good plays come to us 
 from France and we are reduced to staging plays bv
 
 ITALY 193 
 
 Pirandello — plays in which you can't understand a 
 thing, written purposely by the author so as to 
 make fun of me, of you, and of the public?" 
 
 No sooner have they resumed work than the 
 doorman comes upon the stage announcing to the 
 director the intrusion of a strange sextet who insist 
 upon seeing him. (It is to be noted that the stage 
 directions call for a certain halo of light to surround 
 the strangers, as a suggestion of their "fantastic 
 reality." As they advance to converse with the 
 actors the light disappears, yet they are to preserve 
 during the entire action a suggestion of their dream- 
 quality.) These six persons are the cast of the 
 drama that Pirandello did not write, l^hev have 
 come to the stage director with their tale of woe, 
 that he may write them up in a play and thus en- 
 dow them with that dramatic existence which they 
 crave. Of course they are received with quizzical 
 anger, which soon subsides into amused curiosit^■. 
 
 Their tale, as it is slowly extracted from them, is 
 strange enough. The father, upon the birth of his 
 first son, sent him off to be nursed in the country, 
 where he might grow up morally and physically 
 sound. A rival, at first unwitting, has appeared 
 upon the scene in the shape of his secretary; at last 
 things come to a pass where the husband, in all good 
 humor, sends his wife off to the other man, together 
 with whom she raises a family. The father, as men 
 will do, lives a rather careless life until one day he 
 comes upon his own stepdaughter in a brothel and 
 learns the horrible truth. The poor mother imagines 
 that she is earning her living at Madame Pace's as 
 a seamstress; in reality Madame Pace employs 
 the mother only as a blind to the real purposes for 
 
 13
 
 194 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 which she uses the stepdaughter. Here, then, are 
 two separate families held loosely together by the 
 sorrowful figure of the mother. There are other 
 complications that need not detain us; it is impor- 
 tant only to indicate the surly reticence of the 
 grown-up son, who has steadily objected to drag- 
 ging this domestic imbroglio on to the stage, and 
 the quiet youth whose suicide ends both their tale 
 and the play as presented by Pirandello. 
 
 The stage director is interested; so much so that 
 he would at once set about arranging the play, dis- 
 tributing the parts and rehearsing the salient scenes. 
 The actors are astonished at their director's resolu- 
 tion. "Is he really in earnest?" asks the leading 
 man. "This is sheer madness!" exclaims the jeune 
 premiere. And a third: "Are they going to have us 
 improvise a drama here, just as we stand?" . . . 
 "Like the actors of the Commedia dell' Arte!" 
 snarls the jeune premier. 
 
 Leading Lady: Dots he imagine I'm going to lend 
 myself to jokes of this sort! 
 
 Jeun'e Premiere: Me, neither! 
 
 A F'ouRTH Actor: I'd like to know who those people 
 are {referring to the six persons). 
 
 The Third Actor: Who do you think? Lunatics 
 and meddlers! 
 
 Jeune Premiere: And does he listen to what they say? 
 
 Jeune Premier: Vanity, that's what it is. The van- 
 ity of figuring as an author. 
 
 First Actor: Who ever heard the like! If the stage, 
 my dear people, is to sink as low as this . . . 
 
 A Fifth Actor: I find this extremely fijnny! 
 
 Third Actor: Bah! WTiat's the odds? Let's see 
 what comes of it!
 
 ITALY 195 
 
 As the actors leave the stage the curtain remains 
 up. The play is interrupted for about twenty min- 
 utes. There is something more than mere novelty 
 in thus leaving the curtain up. The director has 
 retired with the six persons, so that they may ar- 
 range some sort of scenario to follow in building up 
 the play. By allowing the stage to remain visible 
 during the interval, the audience is in a sense made 
 a participant in the wait of the actors. The time 
 during which the stage is left empty is precisely the 
 time that passes between what we may call the first 
 act and the second. 
 
 The attempt to enact in rehearsal the scenario 
 that has been tentatively agreed upon affords the 
 opportunity for such effects as have now grown 
 quite old in the service of rehearsal scenes. The 
 whole story has not yet come out, and as the trial 
 scenes are gone over, new details keep cropping up, 
 sounding Hke one thing as spoken by the persons 
 who have lived them, and like quite another as 
 enacted by the artists to whom the parts have been 
 entrusted. Whence arises cause for speculation upon 
 the true nature of reality, upon the function of fact 
 upon the stage as opposed to the higher reality of 
 art, and sundry other considerations that fail but 
 rarely to occupy the Pirandellian mind. Enthusiastic 
 over a culminating scene, the director cries "Cur- 
 tain!" to signify that the scene may stand exactly 
 as acted, with the climax at that particular point. 
 The machinist, mistaking the director's outcry, ac- 
 tually lowers the curtain, leaving the director and 
 the father before the footlights. They make their 
 way behind the scenes with the director loud in his 
 praises of the first act that they have just impro-
 
 196 Till. DRAMA Ol IKANSiriOV 
 
 vised and rehearsed. Now comes the rehearsal of 
 the second, in which the trials and outcome arc 
 much like what has preceded, except that the youth 
 of the tale takes it into his head to end his life, thus 
 terminating the drama. 
 
 What Pirandello has done, then, is to present his 
 drama without presenting it. He has shown us the 
 characters, told their tale through their ow n nu)uths, 
 and allowed them to argue the matter out before 
 his audience. He has, moreover, hatl rhem argue 
 the matter out with the very actors to whom their 
 parts would be entrusted. .And all the time, of 
 course, he has been discussing the matter with him- 
 self. In all conscience, then, this is, as the sub- 
 title has it, a "play yet to be written." Not a play, 
 thus, in the conventional sense, yet surely a spec- 
 tacle upon the stage, and one that affords intel- 
 lectual delight. It is in no way, however, a prac- 
 tical demonstration ol dramaturgy; the foundations 
 are psychological. "The drama dwells in us," says 
 the father when he Hrst comes upon the stage. 
 ".And we are impatient to perform it just as our 
 inner passion urges us." Fhe end suggests the half- 
 mocking close of the author's best piece, Cosi ^, se 
 vi pare. "He's tnily dead!" cry several of the 
 actors after the cli.mactic shot has been fired. "No!" 
 cry several others. "It's all a make-believe! Just 
 make-believe!" Whereupon the father utters a 
 piercing shriek: "Who said make-believe? Reality, 
 e^entlemen. Reality!" And at last the director: 
 "Make-believe! Reality! To the devil with the 
 whole bunch of you! The like of this never hap- 
 pened to me before! .And here's a whole dav gone 
 to waste!"
 
 ITALY 197 
 
 The self-critical implications of the play are quite 
 true to the Pirandellian method, as is the dialogue 
 and the speculation of the characters. So that when 
 the author brings himself and his players upon the 
 scene he is but faithful to his personal methods as 
 already shown in the best of his previous work. It 
 would then be short-sighted to attribute all of the 
 novelty in the newest play to such possible insti- 
 gators as Shaw's Fanny s First Play. That Shaw 
 has influenced Pirandello more or less superficiallv 
 there can be little doubt; yet as Marco Praga has 
 remarked, Pirandello may be an Italian Shaw, but 
 he is a very Italian one. So Italian, in fact, that few 
 of his plays, in all likelihood, will ever be received 
 outside of the peninsular boundaries, unless by that 
 small audience in every land which realizes the 
 really superficial traits separating one people from 
 another, and is willing to abandon the narrowly 
 national mood for that larger one connoted by valid 
 cosmopolitanism. 
 
 "Do you know what I think .^" asks the director 
 during one of the many trying moments of the re- 
 hearsal added to a rehearsal. "That you people" 
 (this to the unrealized personages) "are trying to 
 adopt the manner of a certain author for whom I 
 feel a particular detestation. ... In fact, I was 
 just rehearsing one of his pieces when you came 
 in. . . . And here's a fine exchange we've made. 
 From the frying-pan into the fire!" The change 
 from // Giuoco delle Parti to Sei personaggi in cerca 
 d'autore^ however, is surely no falling from the frying- 
 pan into the flames. The first is Pirandello almost 
 at his worst; the second, Pirandello pretty near his 
 best.
 
 198 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Plays continue to flow from his pen with aston- 
 ishing ease, perhaps because they are chiefly the 
 product of thought rather than experience, and aim 
 at elucidation rather than illumination of vital 
 passion. The newest, Enrico ll\ follows the mood 
 and manner of CosX ^, se m pare and Sei personaggi 
 in cerca d'aiitore. A Roman gentleman on his way 
 to a masked ball in the guise ol Henry I\' of olden 
 Germany, meets with an accident that makes him 
 really believe he is the ancient potentate; later re- 
 covering from his madness, he finds it to his ad- 
 vantage to continue simulating it; when, finally, 
 he confesses his deceit, the confusion is greater than 
 ever. The stock Pirandellian theme of multiple 
 personality, of illusion's predominance over reality, 
 with the same sudden, arbitrary way out of it by 
 means of a bullet. 
 
 Piramlello, easily one of the most interesting and 
 entertaining of latter-day dramatists, is not so easily 
 admitted into the ranks of the indispensable few. 
 If, following the rigid canons of Storm Jameson, we 
 must have plays with which to amuse the warrior 
 in his leisure, there they are. Like a lesser Shaw, 
 Pirandello ventilates issues, shifts personages over 
 the chess-board of his fancy, forms new combina- 
 tions with the colored glass of his dramaturgic 
 kaleidoscope. Far less of a dialectician than Shaw, 
 inferior to him in a grasp ot the modern world, in 
 wit and contemporaneity, he yet suggests the Irish- 
 man by his very dilution of these qualities. What has 
 he written? Are they plays at all? I leave such 
 questions to the pedagogues. Pirandello's best pro- 
 ductions are a welcome addition to the modern
 
 ITALY 199 
 
 stage; if no category exists for them, why, someone 
 will have to invent one for them, that is all. 
 
 The activities of the rest of the "grotesquers" are 
 more fervid than important. A few representative 
 examples will suffice. 
 
 Rosso di San Secondo first came to Italian notice 
 with his Marionette^ Che Passione! (literally, "Puppets, 
 What Passion!"), in three acts and a prelude, not 
 including the advice given by the author to the 
 actors in a page of the printed version. "The actors 
 must bear in mind," he writes, "that this is a play 
 of desperate pauses. The words pronounced in it 
 always conceal an exasperation which cannot be 
 communicated except in sapient silences. The ar- 
 bitrariness, moreover, that may appear in the play, 
 resulting from the torment in which the personages 
 are plunged, should not give way to comic effect, 
 but rather to a feeling of tragic 'humorism.' For, 
 suffering indeed profoundly human pangs, the three 
 protagonists of the drama are like marionettes, and 
 the wire that pulls them is passion. 
 
 "They are all human beings: human beings re- 
 duced to puppets. 
 
 "And therefore, deeply pitiful!" 
 
 The prelude is a quasi prose-poem, apostrophiz- 
 ing the "long Sunday afternoons, with the deserted 
 streets, the closed shops, and a desolate grey sky 
 over the grime of the city!" It is not part of the 
 action, but seeks to do for it, interpretatively, what 
 the advice to the actors would do histrionically. 
 The action itself takes place in Milan, on a Sunday 
 afternoon and evening. The "grotesquers," then.
 
 200 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 have not altogether aboHshed the unity of time; 
 since in this respect, through this play, Rosscj di 
 San Secondo is more Greek than the Greeks. Such 
 reversion to antiquity is one of the queer signs of 
 ultra-modernitv. The characters have no names; 
 they are such creatures as "The Woman in the 
 Blue Fox," "The Man in Grey," "The Gentleman 
 in Mourning," "The Singer," "He Who Should Not 
 Have Come," and others less distinguished but 
 hardly less vague. We are introduced to a telegraph 
 office, into which, even on a Sunday, come rushing 
 all the phases of life from birth to death, with the 
 mid-point of marriage. The "Man in Mourning" 
 strikes up an acquaintance with "The Woman in 
 the Blue Im)\;" each has an unhappy connubial 
 past and is drawn to the other by nascent hopes, 
 perhaps of a better future in common. The ".Man 
 in Grey" overhears and impulsively urges them 
 against such a course, "^'et the next act finds him 
 following close upon "The Man in Mourning," into 
 the house where the blue-fox lady stays. The men 
 quarrel over the woman, swayed this way and that 
 by passion, and at last, reconciled, plan a party 
 with the woman and her friend, "The Singer." 
 They adjourn to a hotel for their supper of recon- 
 ciliation, when who should appear at the crucial 
 moment but Mme. Blue Fox's husband, who wins 
 his spouse away from the disconcerted diners. 
 "The Man in Grey" takes poison; "The Singer" 
 mourns him, while "The Man in Mourning" turns 
 now to "The Singer" for consolation. The curtain 
 descends upon the general dissatisfaction of the actors 
 — and of the audience, too, if the printed page 
 counts for anything.
 
 ITALY 201 
 
 There is evident attempt to bring to the stage 
 new backgrounds, new personages. The total effect, 
 hov/ever, is one of hysteria. The directions for the 
 first act are that it be recited throughout in a low 
 voice punctuated by long pauses. Not linked sweet- 
 ness, but disjointed gruffness, long drawn out. 
 Even from this play it is discernible that the gro- 
 tesque theatre seeks to be largely a theatre of ideas, 
 even of abstraction, reflected in a distorting mirror. 
 Lawyers, business men, and the regular types are 
 yielding to psychiatrists and that ilk, in both fiction 
 and the drama — and discoverably in the United 
 States as well as in Italy. The ghost — nay, too often 
 the corporeal substance of Freud — stalks through 
 the pages of our native products. Glaspell, O'Neill, 
 and, in a humbler way, Miss Gerstenberg, bear 
 testimony for the stage of America; in Germany, 
 Wedekind; in Russia, Evreinov; in Italy, Cav- 
 acchioli — the names are juxtaposed without any im- 
 plications of artistic equality. We are in the psycho- 
 analytic age of letters and the stage yields its share 
 of the evidence. 
 
 Rosso di San Secondo's latest play, a recent one, 
 is called UOspite Desiderata {The Desired Guest) — 
 a "tragic event in three acts." Here, too, is advice 
 for the actors, which reads as follows: "The action 
 of the drama, though essentially human, is born of 
 a nightmare-state of the mind. Reality is, there- 
 fore, there transfigured into alarmed and varied 
 syntheses such as characterize horrible dreams. 
 The actors, therefore, both in voice and in gesture, 
 will convey throughout a suggestion of the som- 
 nambulistic and the anxious that shall transmit to 
 the spectator not only the essential trait of the per-
 
 202 THK DRAMA OF IRANSITION 
 
 sonage represented, but the atmosphere of painful 
 lyrism in which that personage moves." In con- 
 trast with the previous play, the persons are only 
 five in number. Melina uses her servant Adclgisa 
 as a sort of cat's-paw, attributing to the servant all 
 her own feelings and desires. The same methods 
 she employs with her husband, Paride Malviti, al- 
 most convincing him that it was he, and not she, 
 who desired as guest Stctano Hrosia. The guest 
 himself is somewhat in the dark, but he comes. 
 Why has he been invited? The question rises 
 stronqer than ever in the second act. Was it that 
 Melina wished variety? Because her husband 
 needed him? 
 
 In any case, Molina is a bare-faced, cunning siren, 
 who works her will upon poor Adelgisa until the 
 servant rebels, going so far as to offer herself to 
 Stefano rather than see him a slave to the volup- 
 tuous mistress. At a banquet (.Act Three) prepared 
 by Melina for Stefano, the latter pretends, at the 
 climax of the festivities, to hear his friend Malviti's 
 groans. He goes off to fetch the husband and sud- 
 denly turns about face in attitude, declaring that he 
 will accept Adelgisa's offer, and that Melina still 
 loves her husband. The angry Melina dashes for 
 Adelgisa, but the guest gives to the servant the 
 knife with which she may slay the mistress. .And 
 now Stefano cries to the husband that they are both 
 free o\ the servant and the mistress alike; he sum- 
 mons help to catch the murderess m flagrante delictu^ 
 as it were, and together with the maltreated husband 
 makes his escape. 
 
 Thus recounted, in staccato form, the play sounds 
 worse than it is, for the reader cannot deny it several 
 dramaturgic qualities of a fairly high order. Grant-
 
 ITALY 203 
 
 ing the special technique, the dialogue is at times 
 fine, as is the peculiar psychology and the suspense. 
 One does get a real feeling of Melina's wiles; her 
 words, their visible influence over the characters, 
 her cunning art of so shifting her wishes that they 
 appear the wishes of others — these are tokens of a 
 gift that seems, on the whole, somewhat misem- 
 ployed, or rather, tentatively groping. Grant the 
 sincerity of these new writers and it is easy to feel 
 a certain relief that they choose such queer channels 
 for their art rather than the deep ruts of older paths. 
 But sincerity is the one thing that some of their 
 critics refuse to attribute to them. Melina, in the 
 second act, recites her own defense — and, for that 
 matter, the defense of the woman whom she typifies: 
 "No, my friend. Don't wonder that I should be 
 able to play a part so well. Leave, I pray you, to 
 woman her rights to falsify . . . She has re- 
 course to it perforce; to make men understand cer- 
 tain details that, in any other manner, they would 
 not grasp; to lead them toward necessary resolu- 
 tions, which otherwise they would not reach, re- 
 strained as they are by a thousand scruples that we 
 women don't possess. . . ." 
 
 Worse, if possible, though not less interesting 
 from the student's standpoint, is Cavacchioli's 
 She Who Resembles You {^uella che f Assomiglia)^ 
 which, from beginning to end is, as a play, utterly 
 bad. A technique of spectres, puppets, and abstrac- 
 tion furnishes amusement of a sort not intended by 
 the young writer. Here, as in The Bird of Paradise^ 
 is an inept mingling of this world and the other, of 
 genre and device, constituting a distinctly retro- 
 gressive step. Because a man is of the scientific
 
 204 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 persuasion, he nuist go around, to reveal his en- 
 gineering procHvities, with small wheels where his 
 eyes are supposed to be. The professor of the play 
 — a chiromancer, by the wav — uses different lights 
 in his office, according to the supposed nature of the 
 visitor. One of those visitors must, of course, be a 
 woman with whom he develops a liaison. Her hus- 
 band, a new Knoch .Ardcn, returns from the war, 
 blind. The struggle is now between the two men 
 for the woman, who, when at last the choice is 
 definitely presented to her, repeats the talc of 
 Ibsen's Lad\ from the Sea and Shaw's Candida, by 
 choosing the husband. 
 
 Most outlines violate a play so sketched; this one 
 does the play more than justice, for it does not men- 
 tion the child's play of the engineer's puppets, used 
 much as Marinetti has used similar marionettes in 
 his Elettricitii Sessuale; it does not tell of the ghost 
 of Gabriella's husband, who alternates with his own 
 reality, nor of the mystical effects of organ tones 
 and like theatricalities. It conveys no notion of the 
 actual nightmare-effects achieved. The strange part 
 of it all is that these plays have been produced, and 
 by such actors as \'irgilio Talli. For a combination 
 of distraction, imagination gone astray, emptiness of 
 content, and futility of means, they are difficult to 
 match in any civilized nation. It is not a question 
 of a new technique that must companion a new idea. 
 These writers have no new ideas. Pirandello, em- 
 inent before them, retains his pre-eminency now. 
 He is bigger than the "grotesque" movement, which, 
 thus far, has but groped in the dark to a greater 
 darkness. As an aesthetic, as well as a national in- 
 stitution, the Italian theatre is in a bad way.
 
 SOUTH AMERICA
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 
 
 The drama in South America, whether in the 
 cluster of republics that speak Spanish or in vast 
 Portuguese-speaking Brazil, has undergone but spo- 
 radic development. Though in a number of the 
 countries it may be studied with interest in the work 
 of salient individuals, it yet fails to present that 
 ordered progress which produces the impression of 
 a national product. If, then, I choose the stage of 
 Buenos Aires and Montevideo for chief considera- 
 tion, it is because here, at least, may be followed 
 something like an evolution from mere imitation to 
 autonomous production, and because, moreover, 
 that stage presents a number of historic novelties. 
 The history of most drama reveals a religious 
 origin; the Yiddish stage, however, was born of the 
 restaurants of Rumania, with their song-loving 
 exiles; the Argentino-Uruguayan stage possesses the 
 unique distinction of having been cradled in a circus- 
 ring. Here, too, we come upon the romantic figure 
 of the gaucho, who has not yet disappeared from the 
 national literature, though he is as extinct in na- 
 tional life as is our own cowboy counterpart. And, 
 to prove that one touch of civilization makes the 
 whole theatrical world kin, the Argentine stage to- 
 day boasts as trivial comedies and revues as may be 
 matched in any capital of Europe or the United 
 States, with an organization of managers that is as 
 
 207
 
 208 THE DRAMA OF TRAXSITIOX 
 
 impervious to beauty as any Broadway potentate 
 of the proscenium. 
 
 The immediate outlook for the genuine develop- 
 ment of the theatre in Argentina is not regarded as 
 highly encouraging, despite a number of authors 
 capable of good work. The comment of those 
 critics whose lines arc worth reading is anything 
 but cheerful, and it is to be suspected — from such 
 as we are able to read in print— that the dramas to 
 which their profession takes them provide onlv too 
 valid a basis for their plaints. 
 
 Two chief causes have been brought forward to 
 explain the undoubted decline through which the 
 better play is passing in Buenos .Aires: first, the ex- 
 aggerated commercial character of the managers — 
 a cry that has become synonymous, it would seem, 
 with management the world over — and second, the 
 Society of Authors, where the chief topic of dis- 
 cussion is not drama, but money. 
 
 A sign of the times appears in the announcements 
 issued by stage managements and by the authors' 
 society itself: the amounts of money made on the 
 various plays are blazoned forth, and the authors 
 are listed, by their own society, in the order of their 
 financial success for the preceding season. All this, 
 and more, from the pen of Antonio V'iergol, who is 
 not an Argentine, but who is so well known in the 
 country and knows its stage so well, that his opinion 
 was requested and given — be it said in his honor — 
 with the utmost candor. 
 
 Viergol finds the Argentine stage suffering from 
 what he calls "metalization" — the greed for coin. 
 The artistic aspect has so far disappeared that the 
 business is really a form of industrial exploitation,
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 209 
 
 and the aims of the founders have been forgotten. 
 A veritable "manufacturers' trvist" is the result, 
 through which the supply of plays is controlled by 
 a would-be monopoly, as in any industrial circle. 
 Such a state of affairs works in two directions. By 
 its positive action it vitiates the public taste and the 
 authors who are willing to cater to it; negatively, it 
 keeps the genuine artists from producing the plays 
 which are foredoomed to inadequate presentation 
 and reception. Among these better dramatists are 
 men hke Iglesias Paz, Gonzalez Castillo, Martinez 
 Cuitino, Otto M. Clone, Garcia Velloso (author of 
 a history of his nation's letters), Perez Petit (a good 
 novelist), Roberto Payro (another). It is the opinion 
 of more than one competent judge that the times 
 are ready for change. The query is, how long will 
 it take for the change to become effective? 
 
 One question — and a fundamental one — that 
 Viergol did not touch upon in his reply, which was 
 in reality a personal letter to a friend rather than a 
 treatise, was years ago pointed out by the best 
 known Argentine theatrical critic, and, incidentally, 
 one of the most readable of the modern men of the 
 theatre. Juan Pablo Echagiie, critic for the Nacion^ 
 is in his writings a well-balanced nationalist, alert 
 to the sincerity of real artistry. 
 
 As far back as 1907 he indicated the root of the 
 evil that blighted so vast a percentage of native 
 dramaturgical effort. That effort was not genuinely 
 native. It did not observe directly from life, but 
 wrote with an eye upon other nations and other 
 men's books. It had no feeling for the sterner art 
 of the theatre — that art which eschews extended 
 exposition and the relation of events instead of 
 
 14
 
 210 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 presenting them synthetically. He had harsh words 
 for the contemporary productions, but his harsh- 
 ness was born of his love for the theatre, for his 
 nation and fellow men. If he spoke of "desolating 
 mediocrity" and the "disquieting superabundance" 
 of the plays, he was none the less eager to praise 
 the good, and his labors are indubitably one of the 
 factors that will aid in the restoration of the Ar- 
 gentine theatre. 
 
 To Jean Paul the Argentine stage, from the very 
 circumstances of its surroundings and its soil, should 
 be essentially a place of optimism and confidence 
 in the present and the future, "with a comforting 
 moral leaven." Just what is to emerge from the 
 contemjK)rary era of money and trade cannot be 
 predicted, but so perspicacious a thinker as Fran- 
 cisco Garcia Calderon, in commenting upon a col- 
 lection of Jean Paul's critical reviews, sees the rise 
 of a new comic impulse, which will be fed by the 
 types produced in a country where new fortunes 
 make a sort of new-world "bourgeois gcntilhomme"; 
 he sees, too, the possibility of a varied scene reveal- 
 ing the contact of the different races that are build- 
 ing up that new world, the drama of advancing 
 democratic ideals, and so on.* 
 
 But there is little to feed such hopes, in the present 
 product, at least. To have great poets. Whitman 
 told us, there must be great audiences, too. Ar- 
 gentine has the poets, the playwrights; but has it, 
 
 ' See Echagtle's Un Teatro en Formaci6n, Buenos Aires. Scflor Echagtle'* 
 views exhibit a somewhat excessive eagerness to turn the stage to didactic, and 
 even "moral," purposes. He does not seem to possess a deep sense of dynamic 
 aesthetics, and his otherwise admirable critiques suffer from an undercurrent of 
 moralistic suggestion. He is, in short, a transition-critic of a transition-drama. 
 A useful book to be read as a corrective to Echagtle is Alfredo A. Bianchi's Teatro 
 Nacional, Buenos Aires.
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 211 
 
 yet, the audiences, the managers, the national 
 auditorium? 
 
 THE "GAUCHO" 
 
 For a proper appreciation of the strange plays 
 that developed out of the circus-ring interludes, one 
 should have an outline knowledge, at least, of the 
 poetry of Argentina and Uruguay as represented 
 by those authors who helped to establish and carry 
 on the literary tradition of the gaucho type. The 
 gaucho himself, if not entirely a mystery, is much 
 of a puzzle from his very origin. Indeed, the word 
 itself is a philological problem. We have it on 
 high authority that it was neither known nor written 
 in Spain before it was brought over from the western 
 hemisphere. According to the noted Argentine 
 scholar, Paul Groussac, it is an Incaic term, signify- 
 ing orphan, abandoned, wandering, with a some- 
 what derogatory connotation, and was originally 
 guacho, the change occurring by the well-known 
 Hnguistic phenomenon of metathesis. It was this 
 form of the word, by the way, that Walter Scott 
 employed, being the first to give the term wide 
 currency in our tongue. And it was Carlyle, in his 
 essay upon the Paraguayan tyrant. Dr. Francia, 
 who presented an interpretation of the gaucho which 
 has won high praise from South Americans for its 
 perspicacity. According to another etymology, 
 gaucho comes from an Araucanian word for "com- 
 rade." The origin of the type itself, however, is 
 less troublesome; the gaucho is not an indigenous 
 product; he is, like his songs and his troubadours, 
 (called payadores or cantores) of partly Andalusian 
 parentage. From birth habituated to the vast
 
 212 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 extent of the pampas he acquires a hravery that is, 
 like his other attributes, the product of his environ- 
 ment acting upon mixed hereditary influences — often 
 the union of Spanish and Indian blood. That same 
 vast solitude is perhaps the cause of his pensive moods; 
 his poerrj' is the reflection of his heart. He is a 
 born singer. In the lines ol Hernandez' famous 
 gauc/io poem Martin Fietro: 
 
 Yo no soy cantor Ictrao 
 mas si mc pojigo a cantar 
 IK) tcngo cuando acabar 
 y me cnvezco cantando. 
 Las coplas mc van brotando 
 como agua de manantial. 
 
 (I am not a lettered singer, but once I begin to sing 
 I never can stop, and I grow old singing. The verses 
 gush from me like water from a spring.) His {'K)etry 
 is half his interpretation of nature as he knows it; 
 superstition is the other halt. Witches and medicine 
 men play an important part in his life, as do music 
 and love. He is generous to a fault, and indolent 
 as well. His independence, up<in provocation, be- 
 comes a romantic sort of outlawry; his love, like- 
 wise, may blossom into bloody flowers; even into 
 his poetry and minstrelsy he injects the element of 
 rivalry, and enjoys the spectacle of two contesting 
 bards determined to outwit each other at the game 
 of jesting and caustic improvisation. 
 
 In the opinion of a recent writer upon the at- 
 tractive theme, the gaucho was (for the type is fast 
 disappearing) above all a transplanted Andalusian. 
 In the early days of emigration to the New World, 
 Andalusia, because of its situation, furnished a ready 
 point of embarkation.
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 213 
 
 These transplanted Andalusians felt quite at home 
 on the sunny stretches of the Rio de la Plata. Them- 
 selves a fusion of Aryan and Semitic strains, they 
 reproduced their ancient life in their new surround- 
 ings, even carrying over peculiarities of the Anda- 
 lusian dialect. From ^Andalusia, too, they imported 
 their beloved guitar, as well as the sensual sadness 
 of their songs, and the pavador, their minstrel. 
 And just as the gaucho was largely a product of the 
 new surroundings, so is his disappearance due in 
 great measure to a change in the economic environ- 
 ment. With the development of civihzation came a 
 regularity that the free spirit of the pampas could 
 not brook; the gaucho withdrew into his own realm, 
 proud, defiant, even arrogant in his defeat. 
 
 From the fourth decade of the previous century, 
 down to the threshold of the twentieth, poetry in 
 the Argentine has occupied itself with the gaucho. 
 Notable exponents of the theme were J. M. Gutier- 
 rez, Bartolome Mitre, Hilario Ascasubi, Ricardo 
 Gutierrez, Estanislao del Campo (author of the 
 famous, humoristic Fausto)^ and Jose Hernandez, 
 poet of the still more famous Martin Fierro. Rafael 
 Obligado, whose death occurred on March 14, 1920, 
 also belongs in this list. In prose the gaucho is best 
 known through Sarmiento's Facundo and Eduardo 
 Gutierrez' novel Juan Moreira., which, by some, he 
 is supposed to have elaborated into one of those 
 circus pantomimes that led to the gaucho drama.^ 
 
 ' See, however, the Introduction to Three Plays of the Argentine, translated by 
 Jacob S. Fassett, Jr., with editorial material by Edward Hale Bierstadt, New 
 York, 1920. Bierstadt asserts that the dramatization was made by Podesta, and 
 cites as support Rodolfo Fausto Rodriauez' Contiibucidn al estudio del leatro 
 nacional. The whole matter is somewhat uncertain. ". . . Many of the plays 
 are dramatized versions of actual poems, which served almost as substitutes for 
 the novel in tne earlier days of Argentine literature. The result is that the orig- 
 inal poems and the later plays are sometimes hopelessly confused." Page xxxiv.)
 
 214 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITIOX 
 
 Traveling circuses became an institution in the 
 early days of the republic, and were gradually varied 
 by short, quasi-impromptu plays that could appeal 
 to the scant intellectual equipment of their rustic 
 patrons. "These plays," says Mr. Hierstadt, "were 
 for the most part frank melodramas which were all 
 written about the national figure, the gaucho. in 
 time the plays took form until there came to be a 
 definite repertory, and, after a certain point, w^^ 
 additions were made to this, so that we ha\e a 
 small group of plays repeated for years all over the 
 country, adored by the people, and, in due course, 
 scoffed at by those wise ones whose taste had been 
 benefitted by European excursions. And the plays 
 grew in body and interest until, from being merely an 
 act of the circus proper, they divorced themselves 
 from their jirogenitor entirely and demanded a place 
 of their own. The two great theatrical managers of 
 Buenos .Aires to-day^ they are actor-managers and 
 producers — are the brothers Podesta, who many 
 years ago began their career as members of a family 
 of acrobats in a traveling circus which included the 
 gaucho plays." 
 
 The native product, then, springs from the circus 
 ring, and is less than forty years old. Of course, 
 dramas had been written in .Argentina long before 
 the eventful July 2 of 1884, when the tale of the 
 gaucho Juan Moreira was enacted in pantomime as 
 the novelty of a circus performance; yet it is this 
 humble occurrence, together with the production, 
 in April, 1886, of a spoken version of the same re- 
 nowned tale, that founds the native drama of the 
 Argentine. What had gone before was imitation 
 and perpetuation of Spanish models. Here, how-
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 215 
 
 ever, we come face to face with the scenes, the types, 
 the temperaments of the land; rough, devoid of art, 
 defective in a hundred ways, if you will, but unmis- 
 takably of the soil and destined to bear ripe fruit 
 within two decades. 
 
 For a time the native stage is trod by an army of 
 gaucho heroes, all cut from the same pattern. There 
 are Martin Fierro, Juan Cuello, Julian Jimenez, 
 Juan Soldao — a sturdy band of outlaws in conflict 
 with a nascent civilization. Bold men these, but 
 not wholly bad, incarnating the rough honesty of a 
 pioneer epoch. But the type begins to undergo a 
 change, and the change is at last definitely impressed 
 upon the spectators by Martimano Leguizamon, 
 with his Calandria. This play, first given on May 
 21, 1896, marked the reaction against the exaggera- 
 tion of the gaucho drama, though it is a brother to 
 the long line of predecessors. Leguizamon's sig- 
 nificant contribution was, in the words of Roberto 
 F. Giusti,^ his conversion of the ^'rebellious, quarrel- 
 some gaucho into a good, industrious native; he 
 abandoned the routine of bloodshed and interpreted 
 the natural evolution that had taken place in the 
 fields. The national theatre, born of the truculent 
 melodrama, was shown to be improving within its 
 own mould." 
 
 During all this time the taste for music and dance 
 with the plays had not gone unsatisfied. As the 
 gaucho themes began to show signs of having yielded 
 all the variety of which they were capable, popular 
 taste veered to the national equivalent of Spanish 
 reviews, zarzuelas, and one-act musical farces. 
 Here, as in the previous orientations of the Argen- 
 
 ' See his important booif, Florencio Sanchez, Buenos Aires.
 
 216 THE DRAMA OF TIUNSITION 
 
 tine stage, the Podestii brothers were the path- 
 blazers, and when, on April 6, 1898, they established 
 themselves in the Teatro Apolo, they gave to a 
 drama that they had originated in the sawdust ring 
 its first permanent home. 
 
 This hybrid entertainment was of most varied 
 nature, presenting a host of types whose background 
 was usually the slums of the suburb. Not the plot 
 itself, but its ingreilients, was the important thing. 
 We learn that this stage was even used for moral 
 purposes, being converted by some authors into a 
 strange pulpit whence issued "between a tango and 
 a scene of seduction" the bitter philosophy that is 
 born of life in the slums, (iiusti relates this doc- 
 trinaire tendency to the influence acquired by 
 Gorki, who grew popular as one of the results of the 
 Russian revolution of 1905. 
 
 The point is worth passing notice, nor is it by any 
 means the sole instance o\ Slavic influence in Spanish- 
 American letters. 
 
 The Teatro Apolo encouraged native authorship 
 greatly; it was not yet a question of anything like 
 art, however. Subjects multiply, views and aims 
 whirl about in unconscionable confusion in the labors 
 of a new birth. .And surely enough, upon June 16, 
 1902, there is given the initial pcrforn.ance of Martin 
 Coronado's La piedra de escdtidalo^ which achieved 
 the startling record of more than a thousand per- 
 formances. With this play yet another phase of 
 the gaucho is signalized — that of the former nomad 
 now domesticated in the rural scene. 
 
 A split between the Podesta brothers soon re- 
 sulted in Jose retaining the Ajx)lo and Jeronimo 
 assuming charge of the Teatro de la Comedia. .At
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 217 
 
 the Comedia it was that the next important step 
 in the evolution of the Argentine theatre took place, 
 on the 13th of August, 1903. The play was M'hijo 
 el dotor {My Son the Doctor) ^ by Florencio Sanchez. 
 The date marks the definite entrance of modern 
 realism. It is only right to indicate, as Giusti and 
 others have done, that Sanchez was by no means 
 the sole innovator; a number of men whose names 
 are important in the history of Argentine and Uru- 
 guayan letters served as collaborators in the trans- 
 formation, among them Victor Perez Petit, Enrique 
 Garcia Velloso, David Pena, Roberto J. Payro, 
 Alberto Ghiraldo, Julio Sanchez Gardell, Vicente 
 Martinez Cuitino. The public was all this time 
 being prepared, and, to employ a useful figure, 
 Sanchez was the crest of the wave rather than the 
 wave itself. From the date of this historical pro- 
 duction through the following five years a stren- 
 uous activity is felt in the field of the drama. Sanchez 
 himself, who was destined to live but seven years 
 longer, wrote twenty pieces, a large proportion of 
 them worthy of preservation. If, since his death, 
 the stage has declined, there are several valid reasons. 
 Natural reaction may be one; a too indulgent atti- 
 tude from the critics, another; a third, the Society 
 of Authors, which seeks long and profitable "runs" 
 rather than lofty, artistic goals. Indeed, Senor 
 Giusti, whose work as a critic is characterized by a 
 certain aloofness of manner, and whose style is 
 straightforward, lacking the usual embellishments 
 of the Spanish-American temperament, openly de- 
 clares in his recent little book on Florencio Sanchez 
 that ' the x^rgentine theatre is commercialized, and 
 its war machinery is the Society of x^uthors; the
 
 218 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Uruguayan, for obvious reasons, is not yet com- 
 mercialized. Though these theatres were born to- 
 gether, already they are beginning to show each 
 other their teeth," 
 
 FLORENCIO SANCHEZ 
 
 By interesting coincidence in the literary history 
 of Uruguay, two of its noted men, toward the un- 
 suspected and premature end ot their lives, sought 
 the inspiration of Europe. Jose Enrique Rodo, him- 
 self one of the great apostles of travel as a stimulus 
 toward unceasing self-renewal, left for the Old 
 World during the war that was ushering in a new, 
 but what he considered the journey's beginning 
 proved the journey's end. Death overtook him in 
 Italy— a wretched figure many leagues from home, 
 fairly abandoned, stranded. To be sure the over- 
 sight was later atoned for, and when Rodo's remains 
 were returned to his native land they were received 
 with the honors shown to a president. 
 
 With Florencio Sanchez, perhaps the most vital 
 of latter-day Spanish-American dramatists, the case 
 was somewhat different. His goal had always been 
 not so much Europe as the boot-shaped peninsula 
 in particular. He knew Italian and the Italians, 
 whom he had portrayed in his plays; he had profited 
 by suggestions from the modern Italian dramatists; 
 he had felt that Italy would spell another step 
 toward fame. In Italy it was that he found, outside 
 of his native scene, the most sympathetic apprecia- 
 tion. Yet death, not glory, greeted him there, and 
 though all this happened some years before Rodo 
 followed him thither, only the other day were the 
 remains of Sanchez returned to the land of his birth,
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 219 
 
 where representatives from four nations received 
 them with the highest honors. It was in 1910 that 
 Sanchez died of tuberculosis; perhaps the recent 
 return of Rodo stirred up a cry for similar honors 
 to one who had brought similar distinction to 
 Uruguay. At any rate, the man who, living, found 
 it so difficult to procure governmental assistance for 
 his voyage across, found a host of prominent Uru- 
 guayans, Brazilians, Argentines, and Chileans await- 
 ing him on his delayed return. 
 
 It should not be inferred from this, however, 
 that Sanchez was a neglected genius, for his labors, 
 once they were definitely launched, met with gen- 
 erous and continued response. The roots of the 
 romantic career led by this gifted dramatist lie else- 
 where than in the indifference of a public and the 
 critics* lack of discernment; they sink deep into the 
 personality of the man himself. Sanchez was essen- 
 tially a wandering, bohemian spirit, a slave to his 
 instincts, writing chiefly under the compulsion of 
 need; he was generous, yet like so many generous 
 persons, withdrawn; he became, after his early ex- 
 periences in internecine warfare, radical and unre- 
 strained; he was successful, appreciated, and, de- 
 spite what more than one apologetic spokesman 
 has written, was prevented only by his personal in- 
 adaptability from enjoying a long life of increasing 
 success and fame. This is not said by way of re- 
 proach, nor written from a lofty moral eminence; 
 Sanchez was the most tolerant of mortals, harsh 
 though some of the theses of his later plays may be, 
 and we may well display his own human spirit in 
 considering him. Out of his personal frailty he 
 built some plays of enduring note — dramas that will
 
 220 THK DRAMA OV IKANSI IIOX 
 
 live in the history oi the Continent as part of its 
 intellectual development, fhev will not for a while 
 provide texts for professors of literature to annotate 
 and to comment upon; they spurted like huge 
 sparks from the furnace of life and not infrequently 
 display the defects, as well as the virtues, of spon- 
 taneity and improvisation. Hut they are so human 
 in implication, so intimately hound up with the 
 history ot Sanchez, of his day and his milieu, that 
 to study any one of these elements is, by connota- 
 tion, to study the others. 
 
 The outstanding figure of Spanish-American drama 
 was born on January 17, 1875, '" Montevideo. He 
 was the first in a brood of children that was to 
 number eleven. He received a common school ed- 
 ucation, which was later added to by a course in a 
 /iceo, and it was not long before he was scribbling 
 away during moments stolen from his position as 
 clerk in the Junta .Acbiiinistrativa. As early as his 
 fifteenth year he felt the thrill of beholding his 
 work in print, and it is significant that his first 
 efforts were in the direction of miniature social satire, 
 under the English pseudonym. Jack the Ripper. 
 He was of the wandering fraternity, and it was 
 always far more easy to find him among the news- 
 paper offices or amidst the popular tumult than at 
 home. Withal, he was a good-natured sort, and if 
 his schooling was limited, he made up for this in 
 part by a quick mind and a ready observation. 
 From the start, in his literary beginnings he exhibited 
 a preference for the dialogue method of composition, 
 as if feeling in him the eventual call to the stage. 
 His short experience as assistant in the office of 
 police statistics and measurements was valuable.
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 221 
 
 A letter written to a friend when Sanchez was in 
 his eighteenth year shows the future dramatist, 
 however, to be an outspoken liberal of anti-clerical 
 beliefs, and anything but a model law-abiding 
 citizen. But this marked element in the man's 
 nature did not burst forth until the Revolution of 
 1896. His part in the actual fighting has not yet 
 been made clear, but it is believed that he was in 
 the thick of some of the fighting; there is even a 
 story that during the battle of Cerros Blancos, 
 which lasted through May 15 and 16, he was so 
 overwhelmed by the horrible sight of national 
 fratricide that he began to shout protest at the top 
 of his lungs. This marks the definite turning-point 
 in the formation of the man's mentahty, and is at 
 the same time a symbol of his attitude toward that 
 greater battle which he called life. 
 
 Sanchez' reaction to these experiences revealed 
 itself in a period of bohemian anarchism. Often he 
 took the trip between the sister cities of Monte- 
 video and Buenos Aires, now in quest of work, now 
 intent upon eluding the pursuing police. Since 
 these ardent spirits cannot separate politics from 
 literature, the International Centre of Sociological 
 Studies, which he joined, gave theatrical performances 
 in Spanish and ItaHan; Sanchez acted in some of 
 these, and recited for the assembly his social crit- 
 icisms in the form of dialogues. Here he probably 
 received his definite impulse toward dramatic author- 
 ship, presenting a small piece called Ladrones 
 {Robbers). 
 
 The year 1898 found him back in Buenos Aires, 
 on a new periodical, but not for long; he simply 
 could not submit himself to routine or regularity.
 
 222 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 That he was cognizant of his own shortcomings is 
 shown by his letter of resignation, in which he de- 
 clares his inability to change his reprehensible ways. 
 As so often happens, the man who had such a trench- 
 ant pen for the evils of society could not check 
 his personal extravagances; perhaps, indeed, his 
 lifelong criticism of society, mankind, and life itself 
 was a projection of his conscience into the field of 
 art. He who had once been so fervent a nationalist 
 was now writing articles turning a cold shoulder 
 upon the gaiicho tradition and looking resolutely 
 toward the future. This, again, is one of the ele- 
 ments that is to make of his drama a distinct con- 
 tribution to the progress of the stage. In 1901 we 
 discover him established in Montevideo and trying 
 to infuse life into a daily devoted to the interests 
 of the working-class and called Trahajo (Labor). 
 The founder, however, could not be got to liv^e up 
 to the noble name of his organ, and as a result his 
 friends quarreled with Sanchez, who flew off again 
 to Argentina. He engages in one venture after 
 another, now at the head o\ a newspaper, now won- 
 dering where his next meal is to come from. He 
 summons energy enough to think of a maid and 
 marriage, and the new ideal instills new life into him. 
 He keeps his journalistic employers uneasy, lest he 
 print something that shall bring the law down upon 
 their offices; he writes a play that is but the con- 
 tinuation of his social criticism, and does not trouble 
 to disguise the persons against whom his attack is 
 launched, but the piece is prohibited in time, through 
 the efforts of the chief figure satirized. Not without 
 a battle, however, in which Sanchez is seized by 
 the police, only to be freed through the muscular
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 223 
 
 intervention of spectators who resented the over- 
 officious brutality of the gendarmerie. 
 
 The ambition for success on the stage now throbbed 
 powerfully in Sanchez' veins. His fourth composi- 
 tion, Canillita^ actually provided a new word for 
 the Argentines, who, since the first production of 
 the little piece in Buenos Aires, have given that 
 name to the news-vendors. But before this piece 
 had reached the Argentine capital, the central event 
 in Sanchez' life had taken place: My Son the Doc- 
 tor was produced, as we have seen, in 1903, and 
 established its author at once. Inspiration there 
 may have been; accumulated experience and ob- 
 servation were present in appreciable quantity. 
 But the driving force in the writing of the play was 
 the author's need of money with which to get mar- 
 ried. Four years previous he had met Catalina 
 Rabentos and, romantically enough, had vowed 
 that they should wed when he became famous. If 
 the girl's family did not look with kindly eye upon 
 the match none could blame them, nor was the news 
 that reached her of the sort to inspire continued 
 confidence. Toward the end of 1902 Florencio was 
 given to understand that he must get famous in a 
 hurry, or else the match was off. His widow — still 
 hving — has told of how he was thus brought to the 
 verge of suicide. Instead, he wrote the play that 
 brought him renown and a wife. Its first name was 
 The Two Consciences^ which states more plainly than 
 the final title the struggle between the ideas of 
 father and son. 
 
 Various tales of this period have gained currency, 
 differing in details of greater or less importance, 
 but alike emphasizing the poverty-stricken condition
 
 224 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 oi the author. The very doorkeeper of the theatre 
 where the play was being rehearsed refused him 
 admission because he looked so much like a tramp; 
 an advance was given him so that he might pur- 
 chase a suit of presentable clothes; he might, at the 
 time, have been under the influence of drink, too, 
 for he was no stranger to the cup that inebriates and 
 by no means always cheers. 
 
 From this point the career of Sanchez merges 
 with the history of the Argentine theatre. Giusti, 
 who made his acquaintance at the time when the 
 author of M'hijo el dotor was emerging into fame, 
 describes him as being tall, thin, with stooping 
 shoulders, and with a certain gentle face that re- 
 vealed traces of an Indian element; his lower lip 
 fell toward a large jaw, imparting an air of a good- 
 natured rustic. There was iw)thing about the man 
 to proclaim his gifts. When interested in the topic 
 of his conversation he would swing his ungainly 
 arms about and laugh with a laughter that ended 
 upon a note of melancholy. He was one for those 
 who knew him to lov'e, and he snowed the need of 
 their affection. Though he found much to pf)ke fun 
 at and deride in human nature, he was fond of the 
 individual. Indeed, in him, as in many a pro- 
 claimer against the evils of society, there was a 
 strange need of individual kindness and a deep love 
 for his fellow man. His anarchism has been called 
 lyrical, and rightly. He was the friend of all the 
 poor folk with whom his plays are peopled; he was 
 very fond of children, though he never had any of 
 his own; he liked animals, particularly birds; there 
 was always much of the child and the bird of passage 
 in him, and in his own home he was knov.n as the
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 225 
 
 "Santito" — the little saint. Legends to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding, his friends were numerous. 
 He met with the envy and jealousy that all success 
 inspires, as well as with the academic opposition of 
 critics who, not able to institute facile comparisons 
 with ^schylus and his compeers down to the latest 
 innovation of the French dramatists, dismissed his 
 work as lacking literary qualities. The m-orality of 
 his plays was attacked. He was accused of pla- 
 giarism. But he was, on the other hand, wined and 
 dined, flattered by the critics, followed by the 
 public. 
 
 He began to yearn for wider horizons, and after 
 long knocking at the governmental door succeeded 
 in being named an official commissioner for the 
 republic. His nominal duty was to make a report 
 upon the advisability of his nation's taking part in 
 the Artistic Exposition at Rome (1909). He was 
 given a royal send-off" and his parting words were 
 full of a new aspiration. A winter's trip through 
 France and Italy, and a final settlement in Milan, 
 soon led to straits in the latter city. His money was 
 fast disappearing; his health was following it. This 
 he must have foreseen, for his plays reveal preoccu- 
 pations with illness. Even upon his deathbed he 
 held to his anti-clerical views, though he was ready 
 to welcome the priest as a human friend. On No- 
 vember 7, 1 910, he died and was buried in the 
 Musocco Cemetery of ♦"he city, whence only lately 
 his remains were transported to his native land. 
 
 Those of Sanchez' critics who declaim against 
 the unliterary character of his plays are partly right. 
 
 16
 
 226 THE DRAMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 Siinchez was no closet spirit; he wrote, moreover, in 
 haste, almost improvising. His early poverty had 
 forced him to steal even the paper upon which he 
 composed his pieces: he would go to the telegraph 
 offices, pretend absorption in the writing of a tel- 
 egram, and manage to make off with a block of 
 sheets. So accustomed did he become to writing 
 plays upon the back of these telegraph blanks that 
 in later lile, when comparative affluence was his, 
 he would purchase blocks of them at the (jffice, as 
 he found it impossible to comfxise upon the expen- 
 sive paper presented to him by admirers. 
 
 And to most of his plays there is a certain steno- 
 graphic rapidity of progress that actually suggests 
 the concise phraseology of telegraphic despatches. 
 Even the longest of them are short, alwavs contain- 
 ing a first act notable for the swiftness of the expo- 
 sition. He dashed the plays off at fairly lightning 
 speed, rarely revised or even re-read his work, did 
 not always even spell correctly, paid little attention 
 (as might be supposed) to the niceties of composi- 
 tion, and was a failure when he attempted stylistic 
 flights. Into some of his best plays creeps an occa- 
 sional speech that sinacks of Kchegarayan rhetoric 
 whose death decree was signed by the "generation 
 of 1898" across the ocean. But in recompense for 
 these defects his dramas present us life in action; 
 if he did not create character, he was a natural 
 master in the depiction of types and the presenta- 
 tion of backgrounds. 
 
 His plays have been generally grouped as (i) por- 
 traying life in the country, (2) life in the city, es- 
 pecially among the lower middle class, and (3) pre- 
 senting problems. He is a realist first of all, and
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 227 
 
 draws chiefly upon persons and scenes that he knows 
 intimately. Always he is preoccupied with prob- 
 lems that life has suggested. Now (My Son the 
 Doctor) it is the conflict between new ideals and 
 old; now {La Gringo) the conflict between the native 
 who must yield up his holdings to the more indus- 
 trious business-like foreigner; again, as in Barranca 
 Abajo^ or En Familiar the portrayal of a family 
 falling away to moral ruin because of the reverses 
 that overtake them. Himself a sick man, he has the 
 courage to write a harsh play like The Rights of 
 Healthy in which the thesis is a Nietzschean disre- 
 gard of the weak. 
 
 Much of this was the application of foreign sug- 
 gestion to the native drama, but such a statement 
 should not be interpreted as implying anything hke 
 direct imitation. Sanchez had lived and seen too 
 much to need such aid. On the other hand, intensely 
 fond of the stage, he could not help being influenced 
 by the 1904 season in Buenos Aires of the Itahan 
 actor, Ermete Zacconi, and the plays thus revealed. 
 There are external resemblances in some of his 
 plays to those of Bracco, but in theme only. Of 
 course the critics had to talk of Ibsen, as if Ibsen 
 were not part of the prevailing atmosphere. At this 
 time, it will be recalled, Gorki had been brought 
 forward by the Russian revolution of 1905. 
 
 That there is a Grand Guignol element in San- 
 chez is shown by Antoine's comment after witness- 
 ing a performance of M'hijo el dotor'. "It's a piece 
 that seemis to have been written for my theatre, 
 with an admirable sincerity of intention and sim- 
 phcity of means. I almost feel like giving it in a 
 translation at Paris."
 
 228 THE DRAMA Oh TRANSITION 
 
 Yet, even allowing for these varied influences, 
 Sanchez is Sanchez. His own life had brought him 
 face to face with the drink evil that he studies in 
 Los Mtiertos; his own experience with and against 
 the police had brought him into contact with the 
 low types he portrays so well in pieces like Moneda 
 Falsa; his personal health could have suggested the 
 entire pessimistic facture of his plays, though it has 
 been noted that whenever he looks toward the com- 
 ing day he is optimistic. Such, for example, is the 
 end of Lm Gririga, where the son of a foreigner mar- 
 ries the daughter of the conquered native and pre- 
 pares to build the new civilization of the future. 
 This is the optimism of the lyrical anarchist at 
 battle with the present; it is the optimism of a con- 
 sumptive Sanchez, too — a "spes pthisica" — finding 
 vent in his work. It is the optimism ot the man who, 
 facing a lonely death in Italy, could speak of his 
 future labors with the accents of youthful hope. 
 
 Sanchez, in brief, was in a good sense of the term 
 a man of the theatre. Faults his plays reveal 
 a-plenty: in My Son the Doctor^ for example, the 
 son, who supposedly incarnates the new ideas, i. 
 far below the father who exemplifies the old, and rhc 
 woman in the case is an impossible creature. The 
 play, because of its historical importance, has been 
 much overpraised by Spanish-American critics as a 
 work of art. 
 
 It has been estimated that the actual time con- 
 sumed in the writing of the author's entire output 
 was thirty-five to forty days. Sanchez died at the 
 beginning of his career. His plays, though they are 
 not "literature," read well, even compellingly. 
 Time, said the admirable Brazilian critic, Verissimo,
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 229 
 
 does not respect works in which it has not been 
 made a collaborator. Yet it might be answered, on 
 the other hand, that the life put into a work lives 
 in it. And though Sanchez did not make Time a 
 collaborator, he had a faithful ally in Life. His 
 plays mirror a certain progress not only in the Ar- 
 gentine drama, but in life itself in the neighboring 
 nations. Belonging thus to history and to national 
 development, they may safely hope to find a per- 
 manent place in the history of literature. 
 
 It is inevitable that, in the criticism of such works 
 as these, the moralistic note should creep in. Of 
 this, the best example with reference to Sanchez, is, 
 I believe, the one hundred and thirty odd pages of 
 homiletic futility perpetrated by Carlos Roxlo in 
 his Historia Critica de la Liter atura Uruguay a} It 
 is not worth dwelling upon. The drama has a more 
 beautiful purpose than serving as a text for ethical 
 exhortation. What is worth dwelling upon, how- 
 ever, is the other danger of mistaking the drama- 
 tist's views for dramatic accomplishment — of tak- 
 ing the drama as a text for a more liberal-minded 
 exhortation, but exhortation none the less, which 
 betrays the commentator into paths of philosophical 
 polemics. " Sanchez' theatrical works," writes 
 Roxlo, "whether in the ideas they treat or in their 
 depiction of manners, seem to me a mob theatre, 
 hardly lofty in character and often coarse without 
 need; but it is not the coarseness of a Shakespeare, 
 
 ' Uruguay, one of the smallest of nations, has in this huge seven-volume opus 
 one of the longest of literary chronicles, running into the thousands of pages. 
 Seflor Roxlo is nothing if not erudite, and is capable of introducing a summary 
 of all Greek tragedy as a prelude to the discussion of the innocent Sanchez! This 
 is a morbid example of the pompousness of the lesser Spanish and Spanish-American 
 critics; it reveals the self-proclamative bombast of an eminently righteous soul. 
 The chapters on Sdnchez (Vol. VI, pages 297 to 433) are valuable solely for the 
 liberal extracts from Sanchez' plays, which the author uses as texts for his windy 
 sermons.
 
 230 mK DRAMA OI- TRANSITION 
 
 which is betimes great, rather the coarseness that 
 takes me back to the circus in which, with their 
 bilingual gringos, the Podesta brothers got their 
 start." Well it is for such as Roxlo that centuries 
 of commentators intervened between him and Shake- 
 speare, Otherwise, should we not have him declaim- 
 ing upon the low life of the English bard and tcilintj 
 him that life's philosophies are not formulated in 
 ale-houses, even as he says of the author of M'hijo 
 el dotor? 
 
 Because ot the importance of this play, let us 
 pause for a moment upon it, as upon a few of its 
 fellows. Sanchez' dramatic personality will he the 
 clearer for it. 
 
 My Son t/!f Doctor, as we have seen, is repre- 
 sentative of the eternal strutj^le between the old 
 and the new; it furnishes the turning point of the 
 Argentine theatre even as Hasenclever's Dtv Sohi, 
 with its similar ideology, provides a rallyinij-point 
 for the young German Kxpressionists. Julio is 
 here the rebellious youth; Marlcpiita his fond, for- 
 giving mother; Olegario, the stern, tyrannical father. 
 Jesusa, loved by Eloy, upon whom Julio has drawn 
 a forged check covered by Olegario, is attracted to 
 Julio antl loves him, when she discovers his atten- 
 tions to Sarah. The situation is all the harder since, 
 as might be expected, she is on the way to mother- 
 hood with Julio's child beneath her heart. The 
 youthful doctor tries to justify his position with a 
 iomewhat preachy speech on his doctrine of moral 
 non-responsibility. Olegario threatens to kill his 
 son if he does not marry the seduced woman. Julio 
 is even induced, by his mother, to wed the girl, and 
 begins to behold in her a nobility not before ap-
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 231 
 
 parent; Jesusa, however, fears that he will go back 
 to Sarah after all. The end is somewhat indecisive, 
 though Julio and Jesusa lead Olegario to believe 
 that they will marry. 
 
 There can be no doubting the notable purpose of 
 the drama; but the ideas suffer through insufficient 
 and not wholly convincing characterization. Just 
 as the old ideas are more firmly established than 
 the new, so here the older personages seem more 
 real than the young, erratic doctor. Julio himself 
 does not show a real understanding of the free no- 
 tions he professes. At best he is a transitory figure 
 who has ghm^psed a new truth, but has sullied it 
 with mistaking freedom for irresponsibility. This, 
 however, may be just what the author desired to 
 impress. The first act has been called one of the 
 great moments of Argentine drama; the other two, 
 however, are far inferior. The play as a whole is 
 important rather historically than as an example of 
 successful artistic creation. It has been elevated to 
 the position of a dramaturgic idol; Spanish-American 
 critics will, as a group, recede from this untenable 
 position to something more closely approximating 
 an aesthetic view. 
 
 La Gringa^ of the following year (1904) is a mirror 
 of the transition from indigenous to cosmopolitan 
 outlook. Its action is characteristically swift — 
 dramaturgic stenography, in fact — and up to the 
 very close presents a fine theme, well-handled. The 
 most convincing character is the old Cantalicio, as 
 if in Sanchez there were a secret sympathy with, 
 and a better understanding of, the older regime, 
 just as, despite his Nietzschean Los Derechos de la 
 Saludy he was himself a sick man and kind to the
 
 232 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 weak, and oppressed. In La Gringa no sides are 
 taken; the foreign "intruder" and the native are 
 seen, eventually, to merge quite as naturally as the 
 past with the present. A similar sense of situation, 
 a similar human insight and pathos inform Bar- 
 ranca Abajo (1905), in which the hardness of char- 
 acter in Zoilo and his rebellious daughter and his 
 sister, mirrors the rigidity of the theme, which 
 recalls Giacosa's Come le Jogiie. What this play 
 does for family degeneration in the country, En 
 Familia (1905) does for a like disintegration in the 
 city. Again we have father versus son, with 
 the son at the same time winner (morally) and 
 loser. As usual, Sanchez is more concerned with 
 dramatic situation than with psychology, yet he 
 can make skillful use of situation to throw light 
 upon character. He studies not so much the ruin 
 of a family as the results of that ruin; not the 
 process hut the consequences. 
 
 Los Mucrtos (1905), Sanchez' fourth play for that 
 year, is more than simply another picture of a 
 family's dissolution through the father's vice of 
 drink. Here is a milieu where man's beastliness is 
 enthroned by the tenets of social law and religious 
 custom. The background against which Lisandro 
 stumbles on his way to ruin is drawn with the 
 effective, broad strokes that we come to expect of 
 Sanchez. But what seems to have escaped his 
 critics is that in Amelia we have one of the rare 
 women rebels in Spanish-American drama. True, 
 when she exchanges Lisandro for Julian, she but 
 exchanges masters, but the quest for happiness, so 
 long thwarted in her, at least finds vent in one mad 
 dash for such freedom as she comprehends. She
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 233 
 
 has a worthy, if more understanding, companion in 
 the play Liberia^ by the Cuban dramatist Jose 
 Antonio Ramos. 
 
 Nuestros Hijos (1908) is important for its plainly 
 autobiographical content; it is yet another of the 
 plays in which youth and age wage their unending 
 battle. As so often with Sanchez, and most other 
 playwrights engaged upon problems, the ideas are 
 more important than the personages supposed to 
 represent them, though here the motivation is con- 
 scientious, even if but sketchy. The economy of 
 words is telegraphic. In contrast to M'hijo el 
 dotor^ here it is age and experience which see farther 
 and more resolutely than youth and its facile con- 
 ventions. The author achieves his satire of the 
 shallow, charitable soul at the cost of exaggeration, 
 yet a hot sincerity born of the writer's actual ex- 
 perience manages to fuse these touches of Ibsen, 
 Bracco, Giacosa, and lesser social dramatists into 
 something like a personal entity. In general out- 
 look the piece companions Benavente's Los Mal- 
 hechores del Bien, while in the figure of Mecha it 
 presents another of the rare rebellious women. 
 
 Mecha, seduced and deserted by Enrique, scorns 
 him, though she would marry him to save her family 
 anguish. Her father is a queer, liberal-social spirit, 
 seemingly daft upon the subject of illegitimate 
 children. Her mother and sisters "do charity" with 
 the automatism of most superficial dabblers en- 
 gaged in that work. On the very day inaugurating 
 the campaign in behalf of abandoned children she 
 reveals her condition to her father. Alfredo, her 
 brother, fights a duel with Enrique, but neither is 
 hurt. Mecha, now the target of her aunt's moral
 
 234 lllL DRAMA UK IRANSniON 
 
 arrows, is almost convinced to go to a convent. 
 Her father, however, stiffens her fibre. She no 
 longer loves Enrique, and when his mother comes 
 with his offer to marry her after all, her father 
 refuses in her name, afterward receiving her appro- 
 bation. Mecha has now her brother's insistence to 
 conquer, and this she does, refusing of her own free 
 will to wed Enrique. The son threatens to have the 
 marriage consummated by force and (as the father 
 has foreseen) to have their obdurate parent shut 
 up as insane. At the height of the argument the 
 father lets slip a word about his wife's infidelity; he- 
 has letters as proof. Alfredo is too overwhelmed to 
 reconstruct his life, but father, daughter, and un- 
 born child go forward to a new day, a new life built 
 upon their own truths. 
 
 It is the last of Sanchez' important plays, Los 
 Derechos de la Salud {The Rights of Health)^ 1908, 
 that has long been the topic of excited comment, 
 Ir provides excellent fare for such critics as Roxlo, 
 treating, as it does, so revolutionary a theme as the 
 right of health to love, even if the weak must suffer. 
 It helps to reveal the difference between such 
 critics as Echagiie and Bianchi. Where the former 
 finds only gloom, unreality, and false psychologv, 
 the latter (erring, in my opinion, toward the oppo- 
 site extreme) discovers a play which, if it had been 
 produced originally in French, would have estab- 
 lished its author's reputation instead of proving, as 
 it did, a failure in Buenos Aires. The truth, as so 
 often, lies in the middle. Los Derrchos de la Salud 
 is a compelling, cruel play in which the hardness of 
 the thesis appears in a certain hardness of the char- 
 acters who exemplify it. It contains more than a
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 235 
 
 touch of melodrama and more than one artificial 
 situation. Nor is it so convincing as some of the 
 other dramas in which Sanchez treats of principles 
 and problems. But its cruelty is part of the inherent 
 cruelty of nature, and, as in so much of what Sanchez 
 has written, there is a singular appeal born of pas- 
 sionate intensity that vivifies the crudeness. 
 
 It was natural that the very title of the play, as 
 well as the projected piece Derecho a la tristeza {The 
 Right to Sadness) should bring to the mind of critics 
 the play by Roberto Bracco called // diritto di 
 vivere {The Right to Live). It is recalled, too, in 
 this connection, that Sanchez, like Bracco, received 
 his initiation into adult life by way of the police 
 court. But Giusti is right in checking the com- 
 parison right there. "He lacks Bracco's grace, his 
 sparkling, ingenious dialogue; he lacked (nor is this 
 to be deplored) the subtlety that so often converts 
 the great Italian dramatist into an extravagant 
 casuist. . . . By that same token Sanchez is 
 more genuine. Wherefore every one of his works 
 is a valuable document of a psychology and a soci- 
 ology that are eminently true to our life. Because 
 of them, if we consider their human content and 
 their rich originality, Sanchez is superior to many 
 celebrated foreigners, mediocrities who conceal be- 
 neath a gracious, refined art their feeble conception 
 and their superficial observation."^ 
 
 The play itself is characteristically brief: some 
 less than sixty pages of ordinary print. Luisa is a 
 consumptive, the wife of Roberto; he is slowly fall- 
 ing in love with his sister-in-law, Renata. Luisa, 
 with the perspicaciousness of illness, suspects her 
 
 I Florencio Sdnchez, page 96.
 
 236 THL DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 sister; Renata, learning of this, decides to leave the 
 home — in which she serves as Roberto's amanu- 
 ensis, — but Roberto is beside himself at the news. 
 The wife, piqued at this practical demonstration of 
 affection for the woman who loved him before 
 she herself did, tries to reach a revolver locked in 
 Roberto's drawer. Her death, in any event inev- 
 itable, is hastened bv the domestic imbroglio. 
 Roberto, who is a writer, and who pities his wife 
 deeply, defends the right of health to the happiness 
 that illness cannot provide for it. The end is fore- 
 seen; Luisa will die; Renata and Roberto will marry. 
 
 There is something in Sanchez that, to an Amer- 
 ican of the North, suggests a fleeting comparison with 
 Eugene O'Neill. Like Sanchez, O'Neill has brought 
 to a stage infested with unrealities a breath of the 
 everlasting that informs all reality. To speak in 
 text-book terminology, part of O'N^eill's work rep- 
 resents, upon our stage, the belated arrival of 
 F.uropean realism. But Sanchez stopped writing 
 four years before the war began; O'Neill began writ- 
 ing in the year of the war and lived through those 
 horrible years. He has learned, and quickly, what 
 Sanchez would have learned with equal rapidity: 
 that narrow realism is not enough. Wherefore he 
 abandons his early melodrama for a more plastic 
 medium, thus bridging, within the space of a 
 few years, several distinct epochs in the evolution 
 of dramatic form. In O'Neill, as in Sanchez, there 
 is a certain stenographic quality born of a multi- 
 farious, restless life; in the North American, as in 
 the American of the South, there is the same suc- 
 cinctness, the same sketchy psychology, the same
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 237 
 
 raciness of dialogue and nearness to the soil, the 
 same lack of "literary" graces — as if "literature" 
 and "style," rather than extraneous ingredients that 
 may be mixed into a work, were not organic com- 
 ponents of the creative entity! In each, action is 
 more important than lengthy speech; O'Neill, the 
 equal of Sanchez in reproduction of ambient, is his 
 superior in dramatic projection of character. Our 
 own writer is one of the hopes of the native drama; 
 Sanchez is, thus far, the chief dramatic glory of his 
 continent. That glory, as we have seen, rests upon 
 his personality, his importance to his epoch, as 
 much as upon the plays produced by this errant, 
 human, striving child of the early twentieth cen- 
 tury. Yet one would gladly surrender many a 
 work by such "famous" playwrights as Bernstein, 
 the later Brieux, the later Echegaray, and a number 
 of the European mediocrities, for the crude life that 
 pulses in the dramatic output of Florencio Sanchez. 
 Passionate sincerity is not enough to create a work 
 of art; it is always to be preferred, however, to that 
 passionless excellence of the artificer who has noth- 
 ing to give because he garnered nothing. Others 
 to come will go farther than Sanchez, but they will 
 be the stronger for his having labored. 
 
 JOSE ANTONIO IL^MOS 
 
 If I now take up the work of a semi-obscure 
 Cuban who has spent much of his life in the dip- 
 lomatic service of his country, who has contributed 
 too much of his strength to political turmoil, and 
 has had to rob the very time in which his dramas 
 have been written, it is as much to pay tribute to 
 the man as to his work, and to give some notion of
 
 238 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 the difficulties under which dramatic authorship es- 
 pecially labors in the various countries of Spanish 
 America. It is doubtful whether the drama exists 
 today in Colombia, Cuba, or, for that matter, 
 Brazil. There are theatres, of course; there is a 
 social audience; but there is not that highly or- 
 ganized, concentrated body of playgoers that is at 
 once inspiration and goal. The younger play- 
 wrights are too ready to let second or third best fill 
 the place of their highest efforts; log-rolling and 
 facile interchange of meaningless praise is the rule 
 rather than the exception; ideas are not digested, 
 they are seized upon as so much grist for the the- 
 atrical mill. The result is that thesis-pieces abound; 
 they are an easy substitute for the oratory, the 
 rhetoric, the exhibitionism that come too easy to 
 the Latin youth. On the f)ther hand, the social 
 problems presented by the shifting scene are many, 
 and the dramatist — a human being after all, eager 
 to lift his nation to a place of eminence — attacks 
 these through the play as through the speech or the 
 press. It is next to impossible to produce great 
 literature under such circumstances; merely to fol- 
 low the literary career represents a physical, a moral 
 triumph. Yet the artist must write, and if players 
 are not found for his work, he is not discouraged; 
 he prints it, usually at his own expense. So doing, 
 and in the absence of the actors, he runs the risk 
 of producing "literary" drama, "not for the stage"; 
 but there are other dangers that he may steer clear 
 of, notably that same stage and those same actors. 
 The theatre is a social institution; the drama, an 
 individual. 
 
 "You resign yourself to publishinor this work,"
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 239 
 
 wrote Benavente to Senor Ramos, with reference to 
 the Cuban's play Liberia^ "certain that you will 
 find neither managers nor actors who dare to pre- 
 sent it. You know that not all that is of the theatre 
 is art, and vice-versa. You know that the public 
 assembled in a theatre flaunts a morality that may 
 be taken off like a garment and again put on. . . . 
 If I were a manager, I would produce your work; 
 and if I were a theatre-goer I'd be more interested 
 to witness it than some play like Maitre des Forges^ 
 Fedora^ or Madame Sans-Gene. But you may take 
 my word for it that, for my part, I lose nothing by 
 reading it and perhaps gain by avoiding a produc- 
 tion given by a bad company. ^ 
 
 "Your play is a work of art and it is something 
 more. Something more, what though the partisans 
 of art for art's sake may think different. ... I 
 must confess that as regards free love I have my 
 own opinions; there is no need of expounding them 
 here. We all are free to love when and wherever 
 love summons us. But what I don't believe is that 
 we should be free not to accept the consequences, 
 the duties, that such liberty imposes. 
 
 "The most interesting part of your work seems to 
 me the situation of the heroine after her first lapse, 
 when everybody denies her the right to a new love 
 and would prefer to have her consume her life in 
 dolorous expiatory penance. 
 
 "But, you know it as well as I; if you wish to be 
 a popular author, don't look for plays in life; thumb 
 over the theatrical archives and be one of the reg- 
 ular gang. 
 
 ' This view is interesting, as coming from a higlily successful playwright. It 
 is almost a restatement of the quotation from Charles Lamb in the opening chapter 
 of this book, and provides an argument for the opponents of the Castelvetro 
 doctrine that a play is not a play until it has seen actual performance.
 
 240 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 "If you wish to be . . . yourself. Ah! Then 
 compromise a bit, for in Art one must be an oppor- 
 tunist, as in politics, as in all things. . . . Deceiv- 
 ing is not the same as treason." 
 
 The letter, especially toward the end, throws 
 light upon one source of Benavente's own short- 
 comings in the drama. But it reveals him here as a 
 ready friend of promising youth. With similar 
 sympathy he has studied the stage in Argentina. 
 
 Ramos' Liberia is denominated by the author a 
 scenic novel in four acts. It is not the swirling stage 
 kaleidoscope that Benavente's similarly named 
 pieces are, resembling rather the Galdosian applica- 
 tion of the novel technique to the stage. Mercedes 
 is to become the mother of a child by Luis, who is 
 leaving for a career, with the promise to return and 
 claim her. Elvira, her elder sister, has a talk with 
 Luis, threatens to tell Don Justo, her father, but is 
 prevented. Mercedes' perturbation is taken by the 
 parents for girlish hysteria, and she is not permitted 
 to accompany her sweetheart to the wharf. Three 
 years go by. Mercedes' lover has not returned and 
 she has been in disgrace and in seclusion with her 
 child. But she has learned rebellion, and far from 
 giving herself up to repentant resignation, she for- 
 gets her unworthy lover and exercises her right to 
 find happiness in another, Arturo. Her father dis- 
 covers this; there is a scene in which his old ideas 
 and her new ones are contrasted; he demands that 
 she change her place for a more secluded one on the 
 floor below; she refuses, and prefers to be cast into 
 the streets. Arturo, overhearing her declaration of 
 love for him, climbs back to the balcony to her. 
 Six years after his disappearance, Luis, semi-con-
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 241 
 
 trite, returns to see his child. Mercedes' mother is 
 eager for "rehabihtation"; so are the others, but 
 Mercedes has found a fiercely loved freedom through 
 all her suffering. She really cares for Arturo, though 
 she sees that he, too, is an egotist. Four more years 
 go by in the scenic novel. Mercedes has had a 
 varied experience among different men of her choos- 
 ing. Again she is visited by Luis, who is married 
 and has a child. She plays cruelly with him, forcing 
 from him a confession of man's sexual egotism, re- 
 fusing to flee with him, inciting him to ardor, and 
 finally consenting to remain with him for the night 
 in "sexual friendship." This, it seems, is the lesson 
 of sexual freedom that she has learned and taught 
 him. 
 
 The writing is clear, swift, natural; the characters 
 really live, if at times they do too plainly voice the 
 author's pros and contras; the drama has grown out 
 of an inner attitude. And something of the hazi- 
 ness of the attitude contrives to wrap the personages 
 in a similar haze. The evolution of Mercedes from 
 the "clinging vine" type to a master of men shows 
 a gap at the one place in which we are most inter- 
 ested; the period between Luis' desertion and the 
 advent of her rebellious spirit. Luis' conversion at 
 the end is suspiciously sudden. Some might ask 
 whether Mercedes could or would justify herself in 
 taking Luis away from his family. Persons who 
 think their way to freedom are not wont to exercise 
 it in such a fashion, especially after years have 
 matured their beliefs. Yet there is a basis of depth 
 in Mercedes' character. The spirit of Ibsen and of 
 the Italian Bracco strive somewhat murkily in this 
 
 16
 
 242 THK DKAMA OK IRANSITIOX 
 
 lone Cuban woman. And Ramos, her creator, is 
 just as lonely in Cuba as is she. 
 
 Peculiarly enough, he is not quite so successful 
 in his patriotic plays, perhaps because of a political 
 eagerness to impose rather than elucidate and vivify 
 an attitude. Only the evident sincerity oi El IJoml/re 
 Fiierte {The Strong Man, 191 5,) saves it from the 
 fate of melodrama. As it is, the same patriotic 
 symbolism that pervades Tembladera^ likewise a 
 drama in three acts, obscures the effect, though 
 never descending to the ineptitude of the one-act 
 piece, The Traitor^ which is as bad as our own 
 Mackaye's Sam Average and for precisely the same 
 reasons. El Homlrre Fiierte seeks to represent the 
 triumph of spirit over brute force, with Flena 
 (standing, perhaps for Cuba) as the pawn. Ramos 
 understands readily enough the cratt of the stage, 
 yet the play as a whole is of gradually declining 
 interest and presents a thesis worked out in ar- 
 bitrary fashion. Temhladera is better; it may be 
 enjoyed without reference to the patriotic sym- 
 bolism, and merges his favorite themes, — woman, 
 Cuba, progress, justice, humanity — into a highly 
 readable, actable work. 
 
 None better than Ramos appreciates his short- 
 comings and the external as well as inner reasons for 
 them. In his interesting foreword to Tembladera^ he 
 argues for a Cuban literature and a Cuban crit- 
 icism — for a national personality. He advances the 
 arresting idea that, far from having gone through 
 its period of Romanticism, Cuba, like the rest of 
 Latin America, has yet to experience it; this time, 
 not as the mere echo of a European outburst, but
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 243 
 
 as a manifestation of national and continental 
 selfhood. 
 
 BRAZIL: CLAUDIO DE SOUZA 
 
 The history of the Brazilian theatre, despite 
 Sylvio Romero's effort to divide it into no less than 
 eight distinct "periods," is hardly of great conse- 
 quence.^ Many plays can no doubt be assembled; 
 I question whether some of them even belong to 
 Brazilian literature, as, for example, those of the 
 famous Jew (O Judeu, his contemporaries called 
 him) Antonio Jose da Silva, who was Brazilian only 
 by birth, and died in early manhood at the hands 
 of the Portuguese Inquisitors. Our only interest 
 in the Brazilian theatre is to discover what its prac- 
 titioners are doing to-day; this we may glimpse in 
 the work of the most popular of the dramatists, 
 Claudio de Souza, author not only of some highly 
 successful stage pieces, but of works upon pathol- 
 ogy and social hygiene. 
 
 The most popular of his pieces is the three-act 
 Flores de Sombra^ which reached the rare number of 
 three hundred performances — a figure that is quite 
 as commercially respectable in New York as in 
 Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. It dates back to 1916. 
 
 It is easy to see the reason for the popularity, 
 though such critical wisdom after the fact should 
 not deceive us into excessive confidence. In the 
 first place, it upholds the good old times, as repre- 
 sented in the mother of the jeune premier. It pre- 
 
 ' In Senhor H. Marino's Thealro Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1904), to which 
 Romero contributes a short introduction, the student will find precious little 
 about the drama of Brazil. He can well dispense with it until something more 
 substantial appears. Romero, as students of Brazilian literature are aware from 
 his thick tomes upon the national letters, dearly loved to catalogue by periods, 
 aind changed around from one set of periods to another.
 
 244 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 sents, as companion of this prodigal son, a French- 
 ified dandy with a vagabond's philosophy of the 
 world, a winning way with the ladies, and, in the 
 end, a heart far softer than the rapier edge of his 
 tongue. There is much playing with frilled sug- 
 gestiveness. The sweetheart of country days is, 
 for the nonce, vanquished by an adventuress from 
 the city. The son, forgetting his better self, is about 
 to talk marriage to her when his sharp-tongued, 
 modernist chum wins her away from him. Treach- 
 ery? Betrayal of friendship? So we imagine, until 
 in the end he confesses that he had no intention of 
 marrying the lady. He merely wished to save his 
 friend, who is true to his mother, to the country 
 sweetheart, and to the past after all. P'or he marries 
 the modest flower of his childhood days and all is 
 well. Even the servants, as per prescribed formula, 
 make up their parallel differences, and Bless You, 
 My Children, is the word for all. 
 
 Among the latest of his plays is /I Jan^addy bear- 
 ing the symbolic title of the raft, or the mutual 
 support of two stray logs dashed together by the 
 rush of the torrent. Coelho Netto, himself one of 
 the more prominent of latter-day Brazilian drama- 
 tists, has praised it with all the weight that derives 
 from membership in the national academy of letters. 
 Claudio de Souza, he has written, is to-day, "incon- 
 testibly, our chief playwright. . . . His pieces 
 run along smoothly, naturally, without the slightest 
 effort, which proves his technical knowledge; in 
 them, moreover, all the personages are of our own 
 ambient, the milieu is ours, the speech. 
 Claudio de Souza creates a worthy theatre because
 
 SOUTH AMERICA 245 
 
 he makes it Brazilian, not alone in the plots but in 
 the roles; in the scene as well as the sentiment." 
 
 Which, with all due deference to Coelho Netto's 
 remarkable powers as an opulent writer of tales, 
 is but a quarter true. The dramatist's Brazilianism 
 we will not question; his plots, however, are no more 
 of Brazil than of New York. Sanchez, for example, 
 wishing to contrast the notions of the old genera- 
 tion and the new, writes a genuine play in M'hijo 
 el dotor, propelled, despite its faults, by the inner 
 sincerity that engendered it. It is far different with 
 Claudio de Souza's Flores de Sombra. His people 
 are mere stage figures; they come on and off at the 
 wire-pulling of the author; they say what he wishes 
 them to, and when; they are the arbitrary puppets 
 of his purpose. They do things that hundreds of 
 similar puppets perform on the stage of a score of 
 nations; they are the lines of the author's text. 
 
 Similarly, when another critic praises the psy- 
 chology of the leading pair in A Jangada^ he in- 
 dulges in the amenities of social compliments — a 
 weakness long inherent in the Portuguese on both 
 sides of the Atlantic. The truth is that Claudio de 
 Souza has themes, but not dramatic imagination. 
 In A Jangada^ certainly, he gets nearer to the core 
 of his theme, but he is unable or unwilling to aban- 
 don the easy aid of "comic relief," cheap punning, 
 very obvious scenes cifaire^ and such ancient devices. 
 In La Petite et le Grand (I know only the transla- 
 tion into French) he is capable of a war dialogue 
 on the theme of Belgium and Germany that is 
 every bit as bad as Harold Brighouse's Maid of 
 France.
 
 240 IHK DRAMA Ul< TRANSn 1U\ 
 
 In the conventional sense, Claudio de Souza is a 
 good enough manufacturer of phiys; he has intu- 
 itions of life's beauties; undoubtcilly he feels the stir 
 of social purpose. But he does not lift the Brazilian 
 stage to the level of dramatic artistry, and only in 
 isolated instances, thus far, does he seem to grasp 
 that hitjher conception. His critics have, wittingly 
 or unwittingly, jiraiscd his purpose rather than his 
 accomplishment.
 
 FRANCE
 
 FRANCE 
 
 A NOTE ON ROMAIN ROLLAND, PLAY- 
 WRIGHT 
 
 The danger common to all movements for bring- 
 ing art to the masses is that the artist, in his attempt 
 to "elevate" his audience, will descend to the level 
 of the common denominator of that audience. He 
 will, in a word, become less the artist as he succeeds 
 in a conscious generalization of his power. It is one 
 thing to bring art to the masses and another to 
 write for the masses an art designed particularly for 
 their tastes. Economic sympathies aside, the masses, 
 as such, are inimical to art — more inimical, per- 
 haps, than the static bourgeoisie. Leisure confers 
 opportunity to cultivate taste; excessive labor at 
 minimum wages robs the worker of that oppor- 
 tunity. The proletariat, as proletariat, is artistically 
 inarticulate, and even its leaders, its Marxes, Engels, 
 Kautskys, come from the despised bourgeoisie. 
 This is not to say that its ranks do not contain 
 gifted spirits, intellectual aristocrats, if you will, 
 just as the ranks of the economic aristocrats teem 
 with companies of intellectual laggards and ma- 
 ligners. But it is an error, and a serious one, to 
 mistake sympathy with the plight of the down- 
 trodden for the justification of lowering one's ar- 
 tistic standards by an inch in an effort to "bring 
 art" to those downtrodden. It is significant that 
 the more enlightened of the workers' leaders are as 
 
 249
 
 250 THE DRAMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 vociferous in their objection to literary propaganda 
 as is any upholder of the strictest artistic indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 This, then, is not to say that the proletariat, as a 
 subject of art, possesses no tragic beauty; it is not 
 to say that their condition of economic servitude 
 adds to their numerous burdens an arbitrary ex- 
 clusion from the realms of the beautiful. Hut it is, 
 however, meant as a protest against some of the 
 implications contained in such theories as Rolland's 
 theatre of the people. 
 
 "The summons was two-fold," writes Zweig, in 
 his panegyric of Rolland, discussing the vicissitudes 
 of Rolland's popular theatre, "to the writers and 
 to the people, that they should constitute a new 
 unity, should form a people's theatre. Since the 
 forces of the people are eternal and unalterable, art 
 must accommodate itself to the people, not the 
 people to art."' 
 
 Here, in so many words, is precisely the notion 
 that vitiates so much of Rolland's theatre and that 
 1 have been trying in the opening paragraphs to 
 oppose. It is not a question of Rolland's idealism 
 or the undoubted nobility of the man. As an in- 
 tellectual force, however one may regard his views, 
 he is one of the outstanding personalities of our 
 time. "Valueless also, in Rolland's view," con- 
 tinues Zweig's interpretation,^ "are the attempts 
 made from time to time by the Comedie Fran^aise 
 
 ' Romain Rolland, the Man and His Work. By Stefan ZwHg. Translatfd 
 from the original manuscript by Eden and Cedar Haul, Ne^^ %'ork, 1921. This 
 boolc contains an excellent biblioRraphy, including translations into various tongues. 
 As a work of biography it is high-flown, poetic, eminently readable; it convertt 
 Rolland, however, into a hero of predestined glory, an epic intellectual, a moral 
 king who can do no wrong. It is the work of a disciple, a eulogist, rather than 
 of a critic. Page 90 ct seq. 
 
 * Mr. Barrett H. Clark has translated, in addition to Rolland's plays. Th* 
 Fourteenth of July and Danton, the same author's Theatre of the People, New Vork.
 
 FRANCE 251 
 
 to present to the workers the plays of such court 
 poets as Corneille and Racine. The people do not 
 want caviare, but wholesome fare. For the nourish- 
 ment of their indestructible idealism they need an 
 art of their own, a theatre of their own, and above 
 all, works adapted to their sensibilities. When they 
 come to the theatre, they must not be made to feel 
 that they are tolerated guests in a world of unfa- 
 miliar ideas. In the art that is presented to them 
 they must be able to recognize the mainspring of 
 their own energies." 
 
 Again, a dangerous and debasing view, over- 
 idealizing the "people" and what is more, cramping 
 the artist at the outset. The very member of the 
 masses whom, unconsciously, Rolland was striving 
 for, had already reached a sterner and purer concep- 
 tion of the dramatic art. Rightly was Rolland fired 
 by Goethe's literary internationalism, but in using 
 the German's words as a clarion-call to the forma- 
 tion of a popular art, he but exchanged the restric- 
 tions of nation for those of semi-articulate ignorance. 
 The way to art does not lie in that direction. If the 
 masses are to be "saved," truckling to their aesthetic 
 insufficiency will not do it; and the first to inform 
 Mr. Rolland of this vital fact would be the artis- 
 tically emancipated worker himself. He does not 
 want to be "saved." He comes, sooner or later, to 
 the realization that art is fundamentally human, 
 with its roots in the common life that is our heritage 
 as creatures of the earth, but with its flowers in 
 personality. He who writes plays "for the masses" 
 but repeats, on a larger scale, the error of the mere 
 technicians with their wise gabble about the "psy- 
 chology of the crowd." Of course there is a psy-
 
 252 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 chology of large assemblages — the mere contagion 
 of numbers; so, too, is there a psychology of the 
 masses. But do artists write for numbers? Do not 
 the individuals of those very numbers, once they 
 have come to an appreciation of art, refute the whole 
 "mass-art" idea in their very search tor the world's 
 salient minds and works? To-day, yesterday, to- 
 morrow — art is in essence of the intellectual aris- 
 tocracy; it may be colored, inspired by mass prob- 
 lems, mass aspirations; in such a sense, art of the 
 masses may exist and does. But art /or the masses, 
 art consciously directed by mass problems, is a 
 simple self-negation. Art may pass through many 
 mediums, but it begins and ends, as we have already 
 said, in the individual. 
 
 •And this is true, even of Rolland's theatrical art. 
 That same longing for vast canvases, that led him 
 to project his works not in books but in series, 
 reaches out to the vastness of the people and the 
 vastness of the stage that he has projected for them. 
 His internationality is the philosophic aspect of this 
 craving. Nor are his plays always the evil fulfill- 
 ment of his theories. .A large simplicity they attain; 
 Rolland, too, in his own way, tclt the need of get- 
 ting the audience to join the actors, of bridging the 
 gap that yawns between stage and auditorium. 
 Thus, in his note to the final scene of Le 14 Juillet 
 he writes that the public is to join in the singing 
 and the dancing of the celebration. He calls for 
 the public to "mingle not only its thought but its 
 voice with the action; the People itself becoming 
 an actor in the People's fete." He would have as 
 music the famous Ninth Symphony chorus of 
 Beethoven, or something similarly inspired by rev-
 
 FRANCE 253 
 
 olutionary spirit; he underlines his desire to have 
 choruses distributed in every part of the theatre, or 
 even miniature orchestras, framing the public and 
 "compelling it by sheer moral force to sing with 
 them. If this public is composed, even in part, of 
 members of the common people and of young folk 
 who feel personally the passions of the Revolution, 
 I can answer for their taking up the strains." 
 
 Thus, Rolland's plays may have failed in their 
 primary purpose, which was in theory antagonistic 
 to the life of art, but they are not without their 
 suggestiveness to the creative dramatist, nor can it 
 be said that they are totally without effect in actual 
 production, as recent performances of Danton in 
 Germany have shown. The latest of his plays, the 
 acrid war satire Liluli, contains, among other things, 
 the novel possibility of enacting a play not against 
 a curtained background, but against the selfsame 
 humanity that is the spiritual background as well. 
 
 Curiously enough, his two great dramatic in- 
 spirers were Shakespeare and Renan; yet his own 
 theatrical work displays neither the universality of 
 the one nor the beautiful doubt of the other. In the 
 world of the modern drama Rolland is important 
 historically, as an experimenter. He has created 
 Httle dramatic beauty, not merely because his theory 
 precluded it, but because of that deeper something 
 in him which made of him a notable power for world 
 peace and could in the first suggest to him that 
 theory. Rolland the man is far greater than Rolland 
 the dramatist. 
 
 A young contemporary of his, much less heard of, 
 has been more successful with similar aims; more 
 genuinely the dramatic artist than Rolland, he is
 
 254 IHI DRAMA Ol- I KANSITION 
 
 perhaps even tarther distant from the masses for 
 whom avowedly he wrote. 
 
 GEORGES DUHAMEL 
 
 The name of Georges Diihamel became known in 
 the United States during the recent conflict, after 
 our entrance into it, tor several hooks of vital ex- 
 periences and human vision. Yet long before this, 
 the noted physician had initiated his literary career 
 with many verses and three dramas which, if not 
 of the highest worth, yet pxxsscss uncommon merit. 
 Strangely enough, all three of the plays were in 
 English years previous to the translation of Du- 
 hamcl's war books, but attracted no more attention 
 then than they have since.' They are, like the dramas 
 of Kolland, the result of a theorv of art for the 
 masses, yet, like more than one such attempt, go 
 over the heads of their theoretical audience. 
 
 "The old art values," wrote Sasha Best, intro- 
 ducing Duhamel and his aims to this country, 
 "have made way for new ideals in which intuition 
 and sensibility are the most important factors. 
 Detail and analysis are no longer sought after, and 
 the harmony to be found in masses is now the poet's 
 inspiration. Only what is general, universal, is of 
 value. The cult ot the individual has ceded its 
 place to one that embraces humanity in its entirety. 
 The individual counts only inasmuch as through 
 him the largely human is to be reached." 
 
 This generalization, then, was one of the chief 
 traits of that group of young writers to whom the 
 Duhamel of ante-war days belonged. And, ah, the 
 
 'See Poet Lore, summer number. t9l4 fwhich contains The Light); autumn 
 number. 1914 (containing In the Shadow of the Statues), and vacation number. 
 1Q15 (for The Combat). The translations, with introductory material, are by 
 Sasha Best.
 
 FRANCE 255 
 
 vagaries of theory! With a similar universahty of 
 program, a similar refutation of analysis, behold 
 the divergent destiny of the German Expressionists! 
 The abstractness presupposed in such generalization 
 has its reflection in Duhamel's dramaturgy. He has 
 created strong environments rather than strong 
 characters; at times the background seems to dom- 
 inate his personages. The men and women do not 
 speak the language of everyday life; their dialogue 
 tends to lose verbal character and dissolve into 
 mood. As Best says, "Duhamel aspires to reform 
 the modern theatre by adding a lyric idealistic 
 element to the realistic. Over realistic scenes of 
 his plays hovers an atmosphere of strange unreality, 
 in which his characters move and act. A large and 
 beautiful symbolism prevails." 
 
 Perhaps the best expression of Duhamel's purpose 
 may be gleaned from his own writings. In his 
 Propos Critiques (quoted by his translator) he gives 
 to the world his own ars poetica^ which applies as 
 well to his plays as to his poems: 
 
 The moment has come when man directly must be 
 addressed. Honor and love to the poet who strives to 
 be man first and then the po'et; honor and love to the 
 poet who, filled with his mission, zealously seeks the one 
 word, the one song that will reach all men of all races. 
 The greatest worth in the poet's art lies in his greatest 
 generality. And let it, above all, be a living art! . . . 
 It permits of no rules and regulations, and will come 
 under the head of no system. We are in the center of a 
 movement which is at one and the same time a reaction 
 and a continuation. ... It behooves a new art, how- 
 ever, to choose among the realities of life those that 
 preserve the individual in all his native grandeur. The 
 eyes of the poet of to-day stray less toward the clouds,
 
 256 THK DRAMA Ol- I KANSITIOV 
 
 hut he seeks with his eyes those of his fcllow-mcn. He 
 no longer dwells in towers, Init desires to step out and 
 give affectionate greeting to his fellow-creatures. 
 
 All of which is written in a style that is not in- 
 frequently employed by the persons of Duhamel's 
 dramas. The context, however, is misleading, and, 
 as we have hinted, the notetl Parisian's plays arc 
 no more for the masses necessarily than the verses 
 of Whitman. The very lyricism of the ilialogiie, the 
 broadness of the symbolism, the originality of plot, 
 the refinement of passion, the cult of generality — 
 render the plays inaccessible to the more or less 
 theoretical masses for which Duhamel and his group 
 wrote their works. 
 
 The first play to be considered here was produced 
 at the Theatre de L'Odcon in 1912, under the direc- 
 tion of the famous Antoine, founder of the Theatre 
 Libre. Blanche .Albane (in private life Mrs. Du- 
 hamel), the protegee of Sarah Bernhardt, played the 
 leading role, as she has done for her husband's two 
 other jilays. 
 
 In The Light Duhamel's main characteristics are 
 strongly evident. It is here a case not of those who 
 have eyes yet see not, but rather of those who, not 
 having sight, yet see. Bernard, who has always 
 been blind, is entlowed with a perspicacity that 
 penetrates much further into his environment than 
 the faithful attendants who minister to his needs. 
 Far from being anxious to recover his sight, he dis- 
 courages his father in any attempts which will lead 
 to such an end. It is true he yields to the latter's 
 insistence, but only out of love to a parent who has 
 gone from doctor to doctor in a vain search to bring 
 back the light to his son's eyes.
 
 FRANCE 257 
 
 Among the persons who make up Bernard's 
 world is a young girl named Blanche, who loves 
 him with a simple, yet deep passion that seeks its 
 happiness in self-effacement and service to the 
 afflicted one. Blanche is not like the other girls; 
 she does not care to go out among the fields and the 
 flowers. She sits embroidering for her Bernard, and 
 through her very love seems to attain the power of 
 looking upon the world even as does the blind man. 
 Her own eyesight, in fact, is failing her, yet she 
 does not heed it. 
 
 Bernard, once all hope for his own sight is gone, 
 looks to Blanche for that light which he had desired 
 too late. She shall be his eyes. Through her he 
 shall learn to see the world as do all the others, and 
 thus they shall find happiness. But a strange 
 change comes over Blanche — perhaps a forecast of 
 her own coming blindness. "My words are childish," 
 she says to her sweetheart. "Take them, however, 
 as coming from reflection. Nature has imposed her- 
 self on us by every means in her power and has put 
 into our heads something terrible, something over- 
 whelming: and that is the light of our eyes. Ah, 
 well, it is but a perpetual mirage, a perpetual play, 
 that hinders our soul from a communing with itself. 
 I am sure of that; it has come to me since I have 
 known you." 
 
 Bernard is frightened at the queer talk of the 
 girl. From the warmth upon his cheek he knows 
 that the sun is shining. He draws aside the curtains 
 and points to the scene outside. He urges her to 
 tell him all that she sees. Upon every word of hers 
 he hangs as if it were an inestimable treasure. He 
 enlarges upon her slightest expression; he drinks in 
 
 17
 
 258 THK DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 every description avidly and thirsts tor more, still 
 more. The bewildered girl, seeking in vain for more 
 vivid terms in which to convey to the sightless one 
 the ^lories ot the sunset, is suddenly stricken blind. 
 She falls against Bernard in a swoon, while he, realiz- 
 ing that something terrible must have happiencd, 
 cries for aid. 
 
 Blanche's case, however, is not hopeless. With 
 diligent care her sight may be restored in a very 
 short while. Together, Blanche and Bernard go 
 walking, she with her eyes bandaged, utterly de- 
 pendent upon Bernard for guidance. The latter, 
 accustomed to almost everv nook of the country 
 becau.se of his frequent walks ami his tine sense of 
 locality, leads his charge with full confidence. He 
 brings her to a statue which, when she still had her 
 sight, she had passed often without really appreciat- 
 ing its beauty. He takes her hand and passes it 
 over the form of the sculpture and teaches her to 
 see the various limbs with her hands, so to speak, 
 to crasp the proportion of the whole, the position, 
 the ij;cneral effect. It is he, the blind, who must see 
 for her, the erstwhile seeing. 
 
 \ thunderstorm is brewing. The lovers, engrossed 
 in their sightless pleasure, at first do not hear it. 
 But Blanche becomes timid, and in trying to dis- 
 cover the way back both are confused. Bernard 
 tries to distract Blanche's mind from the terrors of 
 the storm, but in vain. Slowly, unnoticed by her 
 companion, she lifts her hand to her bandage, draw- 
 ing it off from her eyes. For one moment she be- 
 holds the landscape, sees how they have erred in 
 their attempt to regain the right road, and then —
 
 FRANCE 259 
 
 an intense flash of lightning which destroys Blanche's 
 sight forever. 
 
 Together, the blind leading the blind, they fare 
 forth into the storm. A searching party is sent out 
 for them. Meanwhile they are approaching the 
 edge of a cliff in the vicinity. Bernard knows the 
 danger, and only at the last moment, when he feels 
 that together they are to fall over the height in 
 their confusion, does he make an avowal of love 
 that is more like a prayer than a confession. He 
 draws the entranced girl to him and kisses her. As 
 he does so the lovers, not without a symbolistic 
 significance, turn away from the direction of the 
 cliff's edge. 
 
 Blanche: All roads now are good for us. 
 
 Bernard: No, no. I don't want to make any more 
 mistakes. {They go to the left.) 
 
 Blanche: Yes, that is the way we must go. 
 
 Bernard: I think it is there. . . . 
 
 Blanche: Slowly, let us go slowly. I am very happy. 
 I am sure now that we shall arrive. 
 
 One of the commendable things about the play is 
 the illusion of blindness which the author conveys 
 through the very words which Bernard utters. 
 His speech, its similes and expressions, are those of 
 one whose sight is all within. To Bernard himself 
 words become what scenes are to the seeing. "There 
 are words," he says, in one of the most beautiful 
 passages, "that have been of such good service, they 
 have passed so many lips that they possess a per- 
 sonal warmth, and properties that are not merely 
 borrowed. When you put a shell to your ear you 
 hear a noise like that of a cascade or a tempest, and
 
 260 THK DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 people say that because the shell has lived so long 
 in the sea it has retained its roar. It is like that with 
 words. They grow polished and hard with time 
 and they take on the quality ol the things they ex- 
 press. 1 know nothing about the light, yet when 
 you pronounce with your beautiful, flexible voice 
 such words as light, transparence, or sun, there 
 suddenly are born in me all manner of violent 
 images that cause me to tremble as though shaken 
 by thunder." 
 
 The second of Duhamel's plays to be considered 
 was presented in the winter of 191^^ on the same 
 stage as the previous drama. The title is slightly 
 symbolistic, as is the play. But In the Shadow of 
 the Statues contains less of the symbolistic than 
 The Lights and much less than The Combat. If the 
 dialogue is less suH^used with the idealistic incense 
 in which Duhamcl seeks to envelop the speech of 
 his creatures, it is because the play does not demand 
 such a techni(|ue as his two f)thcrs. The psycholoi^v 
 of the leading figure, Robert, has clearly been 
 affected by Ibsen's self-asserting men and women. 
 
 Robert Hailly has grown up in an environment 
 which has robbed him of every atom of indiviti- 
 uality. He is the son of the great writer Hailly, ami 
 to the memory of the latter, to its perpetual glorifi- 
 cation, he has been unwillingly dedicated. It is 
 almost as it he himself is nobody — merely the son 
 of the great Bailly. Upon the eve of a great event, 
 — the dedication of a monument to his famous father, 
 Robert rebels against the systematized adulation of 
 his father that is robbing him of himself. He views 
 with impatience the intellectual lackeys that flock 
 in the neighborhood, anxious to shine in the reflected 
 glory of a great man.
 
 FRANCE 261 
 
 Worst of all, he must deliever a speech at the un- 
 veiling of the monument, a eulogy to Bailly. This 
 his finer senses simply cannot permit. He has read 
 the works of his father, he does not agree with the 
 opinions there expressed, he opposes them, in fact. 
 And the writer of these opinions he must glorify on 
 the morrow! In a scene with his sweetheart, Alice, 
 he tells her that his heart is not in the words he 
 must deliver. They look out on the garden. Here 
 at last Robert seems to find repose from the swarm 
 of busybodies that fill every room of the home, 
 rehearsing the activities of the great day. After a 
 time Alice points to a table in the garden. "Is it 
 true that it was on that table that your father 
 wrote his beautiful book, you know. The Power of 
 Love?" At this sudden recalling of the paternal 
 fame the garden loses all charms for Robert. He 
 wishes to be off, anywhere at all, so it be removed 
 from the Bailly environment! 
 
 Throughout that morning a certain Hilaire has 
 been trying to get into personal touch with Robert. 
 Only in the afternoon does this patient emissary 
 break through the barbed-wire of ceremony and 
 penetrate into an interview with the son of the 
 famous Bailly. He whispers a few words to Robert, 
 then a few more. A packet of letters is passed into 
 Robert's hands, and then comes a terrible discovery. 
 Robert is not the son of the great Emanuel Bailly! 
 This is so clearly proved that not a shadow of doubt 
 remains. 
 
 Robert locks himself in his room until the storm 
 within him subsides. His mother, who has guessed 
 the cause of his perturbation, takes the matter 
 quite philosophically and awaits developments.
 
 262 THE DRAMA Ol- TRANSITION 
 
 Later, when Rjjbert sees Alice, his indignation 
 bursts out anew: 
 
 I have bt'L-n thrust into a coKi and chnging darkness. 
 . . . I am still too oppressed by the news that a poor 
 devil has brought me without knowing the price of what 
 he was bringing. .All those people were there around me 
 to watch my profile and the movements of my face. 
 When I smiled they all said, "There is the smile of fc.man- 
 uel Bailly!" And when I was calm they all thought, 
 "It is the same gravity!" And when I showed anger, 
 they looked at each other and murmured, "It is aston- 
 ishing. He resembles him also in his violence and his 
 force." ... A marionette, the prey ot all the pho- 
 tographers and the newspapers! {/Approaches the statue 
 of E. Bailly.) You can see for yourself that I do not 
 resemble this man: the bone formation is entirely differ- 
 ent, and the rest they have transformed by means of 
 discourses and examples. I had to cut my beard like 
 his, and my moustache, and I had to draw back my hair 
 as he used to draw back his. . . . 
 
 .Alice, true to Robert, is ready to fly with him 
 whither he will go. He will take a poor, unknown 
 name, he will write his own thoughts, not those of 
 another. He shall be something more than a lit- 
 erary shadow. "Oh, Alice! since you love me, tell 
 me that I am not merely a shadow, and that I have 
 perhaps my genius — a genius of my own. 
 
 But it is not to be. The fetters of a lifetime, even 
 though woven of a lie, have been bound round the 
 victim too long thus to be shaken off in a day. 
 There is a strong scene between Robert and his 
 mother, in which she by her masterly tongue, 
 overcomes her son just as he is on the threshold of 
 his soul's liberty. He goes back into the shadow of
 
 FRANCE 263 
 
 his father's statues, a subdued man — the son of a 
 father who is not his father, the eulogist of a writer 
 with whom he disagrees. The environment has en- 
 gulfed its prey. 
 
 The Light contained no humor. It was a sombre 
 drama of the inner person, even as is this. The 
 real action was an invisible struggle. In the Shadow 
 of the Statues contains several passages that reveal 
 Duhamel as a clever hand in the humors of both 
 low comedy and satire. The love element, as in the 
 two other plays, is distinctly secondary. 
 
 It is in The Combat^ produced in the winter of 
 1 9 13 at the Theatre des Arts, that we have perhaps 
 the best of these three plays. The dialogue is the 
 author's most lyric-idealistic effort; the background 
 is portrayed with a vividness that shines through 
 the speech and the actions of every person; there 
 is a unity of mood which is atmosphere itself. 
 
 There is a land that is ravaged by the regular 
 overflow of the sea. It is owned by one family, of 
 which three generations are living. There is the old 
 grandfather, ninety years of age. Then comes 
 Vincent, an invalid of sixty, to whom the most 
 interesting things in the world are his rheumatic 
 pains. Gerard, the son of Vincent, is a young man 
 of twenty-three. The family is wealthy; it is char- 
 itable, too, yet the misery of the land knows no 
 bounds. Everywhere land that might be rich with 
 the bounties of earth lies under a devastating flood. 
 The very atmosphere of the country is permeated 
 with a dampness that penetrates the marrow of all. 
 
 Hubert, the family physician, is one who sees 
 beneath symptoms and complaints. He knows the 
 real curse of the land; he has been in the wretched
 
 264 THE DRAMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 huts of the laborers, he has seen the baneful crfects 
 of the inundation. He suggests to Vincent that a 
 fight should be made against the ravages of rlic 
 deluge. Vincent is rich, why not elo it? 
 
 Hubert has a sister, Anne Marie, who loves young 
 Gerard. The same cause that the doctor pleads 
 with the father Anne Marie pleads with the son. 
 She seeks to inspire Gerard with a determination 
 to conquer the mighty forces of the water. Hut he, 
 with the foreboding of illness, is loath to undertake 
 a task the end of which he may never li.ve to sec. 
 
 I have attempted nothing, and I'm already beaten. 
 
 I was beaten before I was born. 
 
 Vou want me to be mcjre than a man, — 
 
 .A hero, perhaps, a hero! 
 
 Hut I have reHected — if I were to rise 
 
 Anil but raise my hand to give an order, 
 
 I know that a sudden sharp pain in my breast 
 
 Woukl remind me that I had done too much. 
 
 And that those marked for the sacrifice 
 
 Had better never try at all. 
 
 Gerard's premonition is only too true. A little 
 while later he is seized with an attack of coughing 
 and he must be carried to his room. "Vou see," he 
 gasps to Anne Marie, "you see it only too well." 
 Gerard has a cousin of some thirty years, named 
 Michel. The latter is an architect, and is at present 
 at work upon a mausoleum desired of him by 
 Gerard's father. As Gerard slowly recovers from 
 his attack, the words of Anne Marie begin to bear 
 fruit within him. He would take Michel away 
 from the mediocre occupation of mausoleum build- 
 ing and set him to work upon a dike — a powerful 
 wall that shall thrust back the waters of the sea
 
 FRANCE 265 
 
 and reconquer the land for the people. Michel is 
 the incarnation of health and self-confidence; through 
 him Gerard hopes to accomplish the great task of 
 redemption. 
 
 The architect calculates that it will take three 
 years to do the work. But more than money will 
 be needed — the enthusiasm and courage of the 
 whole people. The fortune is there, the people 
 must be aroused from their passive acceptance of 
 the sea's mastery. 
 
 When Anne Marie comes to inquire about Gerard's 
 health he greets her with a new passion: 
 
 My health is not of the least importance; 
 
 It would seem that I am cured — 
 
 What I am now going to tell you 
 
 Is larger than my person. {Takes her to the table.) 
 
 Look there! See the picture of the country. 
 
 Look well: my hands hold down the paper; 
 
 Thus will I with these my hands, 
 
 Mastering the earth and all the men 
 
 That are immersed in their labors, 
 
 Force all to obey me hereafter 
 
 Like one who creates — his thumbs in the clay! 
 
 Look again ! All the designs of this map, — 
 
 Are they not in truth rocks and sand 
 
 And green fields with their waving trees 
 
 From which I will drive the water 
 
 Because I have so willed it? 
 
 The country is aroused. The dike is started and, 
 after weary labors, nears the point of completion. 
 There is not a moment to be lost, for the floods are 
 rising and may soon render the entire work a use- 
 less heap of stones. Efforts are redoubled; every 
 person is enlisted in the final attack. Every person
 
 266 THE DKAMA OV TRANSITION 
 
 — except Gerard, who, in the excitement of the 
 finishing touches, is left alone. A woman passing 
 by labors under the heavy burden assigned to her. 
 Gerard, wishing to play some part in the glorious 
 task, if only an insignificant one, attempts to assist 
 the womaji, when he is stricken with a hemorrhage 
 and dies. The woman has gone on, and he falls 
 behind a pile of stones, unseen to the triumphant 
 procession that soon comes marching toward the 
 corpse. The crowd acclaims Michel, who holds 
 Anne Marie's hands. Gerard, the real force behind 
 the project, is forgot.ten in the tumult. He has 
 died in the moment ot victory, a victim to the 
 power which he had conquered. 
 
 If Duhamel has created any real characters,' 
 such was not perhaps his intention. But despite 
 the playwright's theory of generalization, Gerard, 
 Robert (of the previous play), and Bernard of T/i^ 
 Light are individuals possessing marked vitality; 
 they are more than abstractions. None of Du- 
 hamel 's women, however, stands out. In The Com- 
 bat Duhamel has given a vivid portrayal of the 
 working folk. If, in some details, he is not above 
 such conventional devices as stage storms and 
 letters that cast a shadow of melodrama over the 
 scene, he has created a little dramatic beauty that 
 even to-day, after so many changes in the fashions 
 of the theatre, deserves the attention of the few 
 that do not wear their ideas in conformity to the 
 whims of our dramaturgic modistes. 
 
 ' Of his latest play, L'CEuvre des Alhtiles. Henry Bordeaux, in La Vie au Thidtre, 
 demi^re serie, 1919-1921, speaks very highly, commending its satirical verve, itj 
 humor, and noting a too deliberate presentation of character.
 
 GERMANY
 
 GERMANY 
 
 EXPRESSIONIST THEORY 
 
 German "Expressionism," in its simplest phase, 
 is a reaction in poetry, prose, painting, and drama 
 against the Naturalism of the Nineties. While it 
 came into prominence during the war, which incited 
 some of its most characteristic efforts, it thus dates 
 back to the earliest dissatisfaction with the exagger- 
 ated attention to reality that was the hall-mark of 
 the naturalistic school. It has been qualified as a 
 new Storm and Stress period^— or, to be more exact, 
 as part of such a turmoil in the arts — and the well- 
 known literary Jew-baiter, Bartels, adduces it as 
 fresh proof of his theory that a new Sturm und 
 Drang appears every thirty years, which is to say 
 during every generation. Naturalism would thus 
 reach its apex in 1890, with the present artistic 
 unrest coming to maturity circa 1920. The same 
 theorist would see in Symbolism the first stage of 
 Expressionism, but the truth is that the new "ism" 
 does not represent a clear-cut, unified reaction or 
 progression; it is not, in the pure sense of the word, 
 a movement, composed as it is of protestants who 
 have in common only the ardor of their protest.^ 
 Close attention to the theory and the practice of 
 the Expressionists renders even a definite distinc- 
 tion between them and their supposed enemies, the 
 
 ' Die deutsche Dichtung der Cegenwart, von Adolf Bartels. Die Jiingsten, Leip- 
 zig, 1921, page 208. 
 
 ' The first clearly recognizable "Expressionist" play appeared four years 
 before the outbreak of the great conflict. It was the pious, ecstatic Reinhard 
 Sorge's Der Betller, prototype of Unruh's GesMecht and Kornfeld's Die Verfilhrung. 
 
 269
 
 270 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Impressionists, rather difficult, and when Hartcls 
 points to the SymboHsts as representing the initial 
 stage of the Expressionist reaction, he but empha- 
 sizes that difficulty.' The name itself means very 
 little; it tells as little of the aims of its adherents as 
 do such flapping pennons of progress as Futurism, 
 Creationism, and the rest. What, for that matter, 
 do Classicism and Romanticism really say of them- 
 selves, unaided by page after page of exegesis? It 
 is high time for a radical reform of all literary 
 terminology. 
 
 One undoubted efl^ect of the war in Germany has 
 been to stimulate theatrical production to an un- 
 wonted degree. "Seldom," says Mantrcd Schneider,' 
 "have so many pieces been written as in our day." 
 And just as the Italian I'uturists, under the lead ot 
 Marinetti, attempted to capture the theatre and 
 turn it into the chief vehicle of their jieculiar prop- 
 aganda, so have the Expressionists in Germany, in 
 their desire to reach the heart of the people, invaded 
 the province of the drama with avowed apostolic 
 aims. Art, as one of their slogans proclaims, must 
 become the common possession ot the people. 
 
 Yet it was through the other arts that Expres- 
 sionism made its way to the stage. Much of its 
 theoretical background had already been elaborated 
 in painting, which, reacting against that same pho- 
 tographic realism which prevailed in naturalistic 
 drama, sought a certain neo-primitivism by a return 
 to ancient Egyptian art, to the Grecian vases, to 
 the simple, mystic Gothic forms. Unessential de- 
 tail was abandoned in favor of stylization; in the 
 
 ' Battels indicates, as one of the Expressionist precursor* in poetry, the founder 
 of German Impressionism, Arno Holz. 
 
 • Der Expressionismiu im Drama. Stuttgart. 1920.
 
 GERMANY 271 
 
 words of one of their chief theoreticians, Konrad 
 Lange, "The illusion of reality is not a condition of 
 the artistic." "One must so transform an object," 
 says another, ". . . as if it never had any 
 relation to any other object." The tendency was 
 toward the passional immediacy of music, which, in 
 Schneider's words, alone of the arts can be "purely 
 expressionistic." But was it not Verlaine, heralding 
 the Symbolists, who wrote "de la musique avant 
 toute chose?" Expressionism is a child of many 
 ancestors; one may not say for a certainty whether 
 it will grow to adulthood; but, like the infant fondly 
 watched over by its doting parents, it reveals in its 
 restless features now the traces of this relative, now 
 of that. It belongs to them all. 
 
 Its evolution in Germany has been traced from 
 Kleist, Grillparzer, and Hebbel (somebody, only the 
 other day, was calling "Genoveva" an elder sister 
 of the Expressionists) through to Wilbrandt and 
 Wildenbruch. And why not the youthful Goethe 
 with his "Expressionistic" drama around Gotz von 
 Berlichingen? And Faust^ with its world-wide 
 ideology, its panoramic scenery, its symbolism.^ 
 And Schiller, with his universal idealism? 
 
 The Naturalistic movement, founded upon sci- 
 entific materialism, had its world-program in a sort 
 of generalized socialism. Bound up as it was with 
 surrounding reality, it sought detail in both matter 
 and mind, leading thus to excess of scenic minutiae 
 and of psychological probing. Man was the creature 
 of his milieu. The inevitable idealistic reaction was 
 twofold; on the one hand the Neo-Romantics, headed 
 by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, on the other, the Neo-j 
 Classicists, as represented by Paul Ernst. A need]
 
 \ 
 
 272 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 began to be felt for a more ample sweep, more solid 
 matter, a more plastic medium for the idea. Ex- 
 pressionism thus appeared as the opponent of both 
 Naturalism and Neo-Romanticism. 
 
 Art, in the words of Edschmid, chief of the Ex- 
 pressionist manifesto writers, must become |x)sitive, 
 active — must rise from the inspection of detail to 
 rhe all-informing Spirit. Spirit must dictate, shap- 
 ing matter and not remaining dependent upon it. 
 Art shall ascend to vision upon the wings of universal 
 feeling. The work of art must germinate from the 
 idea. Detail gives way to the universal, the typical. 
 Both the dramatist and his creatures must bear the 
 impress of a IVeltatischaumig^ a philosophy of the 
 world. Ihe accidental gives way to the essential — 
 an essential that acquires firmer outlines, ampler 
 sweep, tenser form. Thinirs and persons are to be 
 released from their manifold interrelationships and 
 speak out of themselves alone. Arch enemy of such 
 a program is psychology, with its attention to things 
 and persons in their interwoven affinity to one 
 another. With man liberated from all limitations 
 he becomes once again capable of deep, immediate 
 Icclings. (A neo-primitive, as it were.) 
 
 The Expressif)nist dramatist frees man from his 
 milieu; he writes no mere plays of marriage, no 
 tragedies that arise from the clash of convention 
 against the urge of freedom; he presents no "pup- 
 pets that hang from the wires of psychological views 
 and play, laugh, and suff"er amid the laws, the atti- 
 tudes, the errors and vices of this man-made so- 
 ciety,"' (It is amusing to recall that Marinctti, 
 
 ' Manfred Schneider. Der Expressionismiu im Drama, paces 16. 17. fThe 
 ajthor summarizes Edschmid's mainifesto.) 
 
 Kasimir Edschmid. Uehtr den ExprtssionismtLS in dtr Lileralur *nd die ntme 
 D:tklung. Berlin, 1919
 
 GERMANY 273 
 
 proceeding from a similar antagonism to psychology 
 and the man-made world, has given us, in his play, 
 Elettricittd, Sessuale^ a play in which two of the per- 
 sonages are puppets who serve the author's exhi- 
 bitionistic needs and provide an admirable illustra- 
 tion of that very psychology which supposedly is 
 being flouted.) Such a drama calls for a new tech- 
 nique of acting and production, and Paul Kornfeld 
 has thus presented his actors' intuition as a sub- 
 stitute for the histrionic realism that was part of the 
 naturalistic method upon the stage. "Let the 
 actor take no particular pains in producing the im- 
 pression that the thought and the word that he is 
 to express came to him only at the moment when 
 he speaks them; if he is supposed to die upon the 
 stage, he has no need of visiting a hospital to learn 
 how; nor to go to a tavern to study how people act 
 when they're drunk. . . ." In short, he is to be 
 no mere imitator; he is not to deny the theatricality 
 of his calling. . . . "The melody of a great ges- 
 ture says more than what used to be called Natural- 
 ness ever could." 
 
 So much for theory. If, in certain details it is 
 difficult to distinguish sharply between Impres- 
 sionism and Expressionism, what shall we say when 
 Schneider, in his succinct but sound pamphlet, finds 
 it hard to draw the line between Expressionism and 
 that very Naturalism against which it revolted? 
 The truth is that hate and love connote each other, 
 and as in life, so in letters, we retain something (now 
 a little, now much) of what we reject. Schneider, 
 too, traces the earliest origins of the new attitude 
 back to the Storm and Stress of the late eighteenth 
 century. In the young Goethe and the young 
 
 18
 
 274 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Schiller he discovers a similar "fanatical underscor- 
 ing of the idea, a heightening of the expression, al- 
 though almost everywhere in the limits of a bril- 
 liantly observant Naturalism. The later Biichner 
 and Grabbe withdrew further from Nature and 
 they are looked upon by many as the fathers of the 
 Expressionistic drama." Wedckind, in certain as- 
 pects, particularly his free technique and his night- 
 marish atmosphere, joins the long list of precursors, 
 as does Maeterlinck with his drcnm fantasies and 
 Strindberg with his mystic visions. Indeed, back 
 of the Storm and Stress of the eighteenth century 
 lie the Greeks, the perennial precursors in whom 
 each age, each movement finds something to sup- 
 port the most contradictory assumptions. To the 
 Expressionists, the Greeks appealed with their 
 svmbolic, typical personages, their unnaturalistic 
 technique, their vast simplicity of style. .And, as 
 Schneider puts it, the young revoltcs of Germany 
 "looked immediately back to them, over the heads 
 of the German classics who had also been influenced 
 by the Greeks." He discerns no effect of /Kschylus, 
 most primitive of them all, upon the new genera- 
 tion. The road to Sophocles is clearer. "Is it not 
 significant that already Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in 
 his efforts to defeat bare Naturalism, came to deal 
 with Sophoclean matter, CEdipus and Electra.'' In 
 most recent times Hasenclever, one of the better- 
 known expressionist dramatists, has harked back 
 to Sophocles with his Antigoyie." In Franz Werfel's 
 Troerinnen the same critic sees the influence of 
 Euripides. But it should be remembered that when 
 the new German dramatists go back to Greece, to 
 history or to the Bible, it is to produce tlrama of
 
 GERMANY 275 
 
 to-day, in which the ancient plot acquires a peculiarly 
 contemporary application. 
 
 With reference to Expressionistic production, 
 Schneider points out that Hofmannsthal sought, for 
 his Sophoclean plays, a regisseur who should empha- 
 size the vast, simple line and blend detail into a grand 
 unity. "The movement demanding a strict sim- 
 plicity in the scenic investiture of dramatic works 
 dates back, in Germany, to Ludwig Tieck and 
 Immermann." The work must speak for itself; 
 color, light, and form are the means for presenting 
 its vast simplicity, replacing the cluttered stage 
 that so often weighs down the piece itself. 
 
 "It is not very long since this movement has come 
 to the fore. But one may well maintain that the 
 Expressionistic stage direction preceded the Expres- 
 sionistic drama. . . . One may even say that the 
 stage was waiting for the Expressionistic drama. "^ 
 
 We may, then, before approaching some of the 
 dramatists themselves, attempt a summary of the 
 none too lucid principles that guide the Expres- 
 sionists in the drama. 
 
 Expressionism is as yet more an aim than an 
 achievement. It is a reaction against Naturalism, 
 international in character and spiritual in implica- 
 tion. For all its avowed opposition to Impres- 
 sionism, it seems fundamentally but a deeper aspect 
 of the same intense subjectivity predicated by the 
 Impressionists. It is complementary rather than 
 antagonistic to Impressionism, and has been termed 
 
 ' Manfred Schneider. Der Expressionismus im Drama, page 20. This does 
 not seem to agree with Mr. Lewisohn's statement (see his review of Macgowan's 
 The Theatre of Tomorrow, Nation, February 8, 1922) that "Hence in Germany the 
 new art of the theater has always followed the development of dramatic literature 
 and has rarely attempted to influence or lead it." Our own new drama, however, 
 has long been preceded by the scenic artists, and now O'Neill, with his quasi- 
 expressionistic The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape seems to have answered 
 the call.
 
 276 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 the male element in art, m distinction to Impres- 
 sionism, the female element. One might emphasize 
 the difference between them by saying that Im- 
 pressionism presents the world in terms of per- 
 sonality, while Expressionism presents personality in 
 terms of the world. The Expressionists are not only 
 Neo-Romantic, they are Neo-Primitive, Neo-Classic, 
 as well. Were one not afraid of too many terms, one 
 might call them esoteric eclectics; eclectic they 
 certainly are, and if anyone can discover the mean- 
 ing of half their labors (those of Oskar Kokoschka, 
 for example) he is indeed blessed with second sight. 
 They seek to create a fourth-dimensional technique, 
 in which time and space dissolve into the velocity 
 of thought. ArtiHce is replaced by intuition, even 
 in the acting; ideas, not theses, prevail; feeling, not 
 psychology, is dominant. The materials are to be 
 employed as a composer employs his notes: merging 
 them into the unity of an immediate apjx^al. The 
 whole, with its preference for symbolic types rather 
 than characterized indiyiduals, is to be infused with, 
 or suffused in, an atmo!f[->hcre of exaltation. And 
 characteristically enough, that same Schopenhauer 
 in whom Reniy tie Gourmont and the Symbolists 
 found some of their "subjective idealism," has been 
 referred to as one of the philosophic sources of the 
 Expressionists. 
 
 The Expressionist critics, who do not differ among 
 themselves quite so radically as do the dramatists, 
 yet reveal interesting divergences. Bernhard Diebold, 
 in perhaps the best single book dedicated to these 
 lyric dramatists,' notes with so many others the 
 yielding of Ibsen and Hebbel to Strindberg and 
 
 I Aniirckit im Drama. Bernhard Diebold. Frankfurt am Main. 1921
 
 GERMANY 277 
 
 Wedekind as models; he distinguishes between the 
 various men, agreeing that they cannot be grouped 
 under any all-inclusive label. More important still 
 for the Expressionist drama, he distinguishes be- 
 tween Seek (soul) and Geist (intellect), indicating 
 the intensive, instinctive character of the first and 
 the extensive, formative character of the second. 
 The danger of the new drama is, that in its ardent 
 battle against materialism, its almost mystic yearn- 
 ing to merge into universality, it may sacrifice Geist 
 to Seek until artistic communication becomes too 
 difficult. "The soul as soul alone, without intel- 
 lectual form or corporeal frame, is impossible in 
 drama." 
 
 As a result of the intenser preoccupation with 
 self, the new type of play develops particular forms, 
 which, while they may often be referred to models 
 in the past (especially Faust^ which has left such a 
 numerous progeny), possess .a decidedly contempo- 
 rary significance. This has aptly been termed Ego- 
 drama, and has, almost through necessity, developed 
 into what might be called Alter-ego-drama. No 
 longer does man struggle against a Greek Fate, 
 against other men, but he is at war with his other 
 selves. In himself he is a microcosm, the very sceae 
 of all his conflicts. Hence the frequency of dream- 
 representations, the many shiftings of scene, the 
 rapid revue-technique, the telegraphic text. Much 
 of this passion for a^new spirituality, indeed, sug- 
 gests a modernization of the mystery, the auto 
 sacramental, the morality; at times it sinks to a sort 
 of psychoanalytic allegory. Self often is com- 
 panioned by counter-self (as in Hasenclever's Der 
 Sohn), or by a multitude of changing selves (as in
 
 278 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Werfel's Spiegclmensch). Ancient theological queries 
 acquire new poignancy, and one feels that a New 
 Evangel is being preached — one no less strict upon 
 the individual conscience for all its frequent free- 
 dom from orthodox obligations to a personal God. 
 The drama, in short, becomes autobiographical, 
 as did the novel before it. Hence these kaleidoscopic 
 soul-adventures; hence, it Dicbold's pertinent sug- 
 gestion be accepted, the prevalence of historical 
 plays, which provide the frame for personal views 
 after the auth(jr has used up his own happenings. 
 And hence, too, the temptation to use the stage for 
 its own sake, until Diebold, who is fond of punning 
 (was it not he who spoke of the Nirvariitas nirvan- 
 itatumy with reference to the deliquescent univer- 
 sality of the lyric dramatists?) may say that the 
 motlern miracle becomes a spectacle. 
 
 Approaching the plays, we need hardly be surprised 
 to tind that the various devotees of the new drama 
 differ in their application of the theories and in the 
 results they obtain. As an introduction to the out- 
 and-out Expressionists I should like to consider 
 somewhat more than cursorily, one of Hauptmann's 
 recent dramas, Der ff'eisse I/eiland, not only be- 
 cause it has been called a "fairly Expressionistic 
 work," and the conception and presentation of the 
 character of Montezunta termed "thoroughly Ex- 
 pressionistic," but because, in trying to reveal the 
 errors of such a view, we may arrive at a clearer 
 understanding of the Expressionists in action. 
 Hauptmann, of course, is no static figure; his outer 
 growth has paralleled an inner; he is of too wide a 
 girth to be contained in our convenient "isms"; the
 
 GERMANY 279 
 
 hasty dragooning of him into the Expressionistic 
 camp attests something eternally young in his own 
 being no less than the impatience of critics to see 
 things whole if not steadily. He is no Expressionist, 
 though he has undergone some of the influences that 
 have shaped the confused reaction. 
 
 HAUPTMANN'S DER WEISSE HEILAND 
 
 The White Redeemer takes us back to the Mexico 
 of Montezuma and Cortez, at the time when the 
 two civilizations met in inevitable clash and the 
 worshipers of the sun god went down before the 
 cross of the conquistadores. Hauptmann calls it a 
 "dramatic fantasy"; he has, in the Horatian phrase, 
 changed sky but not spirit; it may well be that the 
 fate of Montezuma, which one German critic strik- 
 ingly termed Montezuma's Passion, is not devoid of 
 a certain application to the man of the twentieth 
 century. We have here an epic tragedy of faith. 
 Its eleven scenes — there are no acts — are as many 
 stages of the protagonist's ascending path to mar- 
 tyrdom. From first to last it is his lot in which we 
 are interested and over which the poet seems most 
 to have brooded. The play, which possesses no 
 "love interest," is written in trochaic tetrameter, so 
 that, naturally enough, as one reads on, the throb 
 of "Hiawatha" begins to hum outside one's ear; 
 but the emphasis is not upon the poetry, nor are the 
 lines often laden with compelling image, deep in- 
 sight, magic of music. Rather has the author 
 seemed to concentrate upon the color and contrast 
 of background, the scenes of culminating antag- 
 onism, the effects of grouping and a certain pageant- 
 like flow of cumulative episodes. He paints in his
 
 280 THE DR.AMA OF TR.AXSITION 
 
 background with broad sweeps of the brush; his 
 personages stand out clearly enough, but more as 
 huge shadows than as creatures that grow before 
 our eyes. Montezuma alone is bodied forth in the 
 round, breathes, lives, and dies within our sight. 
 Were it not that the unyielding belief in the advent 
 of the white redeemer is the groundwork of his 
 tragic faith, the dramatic fantasy might well have 
 been named Mofitezuma. Hauptmann, however, has 
 not built up one of the pseudo-historical personage- 
 plays that have of late come into a new vogue. The 
 White Redeemer is only incidentally and unavoidably 
 historical in facture. It is, fundamentally, human 
 and universal. 
 
 The play opens upon a scene in a small apartment 
 of the Temple of Quctzalcoatl at Tcnochtitlan. 
 Montezuma listens to his Priest recount the prophecy 
 according to which a white saviour shall come to 
 retleem the son of the Sun and his loyal subjects. 
 Three thousand summers have followeil u|"H)n as 
 many winters' snows; the time for the hilrtllmcnt of 
 the prophecy is near. Montezuma is filled with the 
 fervor of belief. All signs point to the great and holy 
 moment. News has come of strange arrivals, who 
 seem to answer the details of the forecast. These 
 creatures who have risen from out of the deep, 
 upon fiery animals — dragons, surely — who bear them 
 upon their backs, — these white men that carry 
 thunder and lightning in their hands — are these 
 not the emissaries of the white saviour? Monte- 
 zuma's belief is not shared by his advisers; young 
 Cacamazin warns him from the first not to trust 
 the demons that the ocean has spewed forth, and 
 the Emperor's own son, Guatemotzin, adds his pro-
 
 GERMANY 281 
 
 test. Montezuma is deaf to all entreaty; these 
 newcomers are not enemies. They are the promised 
 redeemers. 
 
 The second scene reveals the full character of 
 Montezuma's unshakeable faith. He has an an- 
 swer ready for every adverse interpretation. Be- 
 sides, are not his loyal subjects rejoicing in the 
 advent of the white comers.^ Is there not the 
 universal cry, "On to Cholula! On to Cholula!" 
 Let there be no more argumentation, then. "I am 
 Master!" 
 
 If there is discord among the Aztecs, neither is 
 all harmony in the Spanish camp, into which we 
 are first afforded a glimpse in the third scene. The 
 hot-headed Pedro de Alvarado finds his fellow- 
 fighters not half impetuous enough; tender-hearted 
 Las Casas rebels against the slaughter of children, 
 women, and the aged; Gomara thinks chiefly of the 
 salvation being brought to the heathen by the word 
 of Him who died on the cross. With unconscious 
 irony, he asks his companions what the shedding of 
 human blood matters beside the prospect of plant- 
 ing the holy symbol in this land of dark horrors. 
 Alvarado, in the heat of argument, has drawn his 
 sword against one of his own (the situation par- 
 allels one in the previous episodes among the Aztecs) 
 when Cortez appears from his tent, calling to his 
 men to distinguish between friend and foe. Cortez 
 is no Montezuma; he has a clear conception of his 
 purpose and the method of fulfillment. He has 
 promised Carlos V to reduce the Aztec emperor to 
 vassalage and vows to attack his aim with the direct- 
 ness and the fearlessness of the soldier. Even as 
 Montezuma has imposed his will upon the differences
 
 282 THE DRAMA OF TRAXSmON 
 
 rife amongst his counsellors, so does Cortez impose 
 his. There is arrant hypocrisy in his reception of 
 Montezuma's ambassadors of friendship; no sooner 
 are their backs turned than he gives orders to 
 advance upon Tenochtitlan. 
 
 The reports of the Aztec heralds, however, con- 
 vince Montezuma more than ever that he has be- 
 held the true vision of fulfillment, and when Cortez 
 arrives to pay his military visit, he is received by 
 the Emperor as the white saviour himself. From the 
 first, Montezuma is religiously humble; from the 
 first, Cortez is arrogantly wily. The land has be- 
 wildered the Spaniards' sense; it is a dream of par- 
 adise; its wealth of gold stuns them. To such a soul 
 as Las Casas, the picture appears in different colors; 
 to him, the greatest wonder of all is the ruler of the 
 empire. "Never, not even in Europe, have I beheld 
 such a man as this. He seems truly a stranger to 
 this earth, and most lonely." But Montezuma is 
 not really lonely; for him, the end of this world and 
 the beginning of a greater has come; Cortez is the 
 white redeemer; when, he asks the conquistador, 
 will the sun-chariot appear that is to sweep us into 
 the heavens.? The astute Spaniard, with his mind 
 upon gold and conquest, homes his lips with a pious 
 reply. 
 
 The perplexity of the doubting Aztecs is added 
 to by the similarity between their own cult's syrn- 
 bols and those of the Spaniards; there are analogues 
 to the cross, to the Madonna and the Child. Qual- 
 popoca and his kind, however, refuse to be convinced 
 by such argument. "If the great Huitlipochtli 
 sends us such redeemers," he cnes, "then I prefer 
 his Hell to his kingdom of Heaven." The Spaniards
 
 GERMANY 283 
 
 are no less surprised to find the semblance of Chris- 
 tian symbols in the temple of a heathen war-god. 
 Cortez' arrogance grows with Montezuma's faith, 
 but there comes a climactic moment when the dawn 
 of the Emperor's disillusionment breaks. The con- 
 queror, less and less disposed to conceal his true 
 colors, finally shatters the image of godhead that he 
 had reared in Montezuma's heart. 
 
 .Nie hat so wie du ein Mann 
 seine Gottheit selbst zertreten ! 
 
 exclaims the undeceived ruler, too late, as he is 
 ignominiously fettered by command of the mortal 
 in whom he had beheld the white saviour. 
 
 From this point on the attitude of the populace 
 changes; a holy dance of theirs is by the rashness of 
 Alvarado (temporarily in charge, because Cortez has 
 been forced to leave in order to quell disturbances 
 on the coast) converted into a massacre. The one 
 hope of bringing the wild Aztecs to their senses is to 
 get Montezuma to appear before them in his im- 
 perial robes and quell the outburst by his august 
 presence. Montezuma, however, has sunk into a 
 brooding, apparently indifferent silence. The guards 
 suspect him of harboring suicidal thoughts; in fact, 
 Montezuma goes upon what we now call a "hunger 
 strike," refusing to eat and drink. He tries the pa- 
 tience of his captors sorely, and Cortez harbors a 
 final means. If he must, he will have Montezuma 
 forcibly attired in his regal splendor and shoved out 
 in sight of his subjects. This the conquistador is 
 compelled to do. The Emperor is thrust into his 
 jewels and his cloak, and dragged forth. To little 
 avail, however, for Montezuma, instead of main-
 
 284 THE DRAMA 01' TRANSITION 
 
 taining silence, addresses the multitude, who aim 
 their missiles not at the treacherous Spaniards, but 
 at their own ruler. Perhaps he has asked them, in 
 their own tongue, to do him the mercy of slaying 
 him. He is brought dying before Cortez, and during 
 a flicker of consciousness before his last breath 
 rejects Gomara's anxious plea for conversion to the 
 faith of his betrayers, rending his tetters in a final 
 access of frenzied strength. 
 
 Such, in an outline that robs the piece of all its 
 vitalizing elements, is the story of The IThite Re- 
 deemer. Montezuma is not only an Aztec king — he 
 is any man of any epoch who follows blindly a com- 
 pelling vision and wakes too late to the harsh reality 
 behind it. He is the trusting soul; were he born a 
 Spapiard he would have been such a one as the tender 
 Las Casas, who had sensed the concealed truth that 
 duty may walk hand in hand with mercy. He is 
 the symbol of yielding good that is so readily van- 
 quished by gold-dazzled self-seeking. May not 
 Hauptmann even have had the artistic aim of pre- 
 senting Montezuma as the one genuine Christ-like 
 figure in the drama ? That this may be something more 
 than mere speculation is suggested by the author's 
 evident sympathy for his protagonist. Montezuma 
 is a lesser Christ crucified by men callinc; themselves, 
 and sincerely believing themselves, Christians. He 
 is the strangely soft product of a cannabalistic cult, 
 as opposed to the leader Cortez, harsh son of a re- 
 ligion of meekness. Lift the symbol into higher 
 regions still, above nations and cults and ages, and 
 you have the unending pageant of human dis- 
 illusionment. Montezuma the martyr becomes Man
 
 GERMANY 285 
 
 the seeker-martyr. By such signs as these, even 
 allowing for the personal bias and coloring that is 
 inherent in all suggestive interpretation, Haupt- 
 mann was looking not only backward when he wrote 
 The White Redeemer^ but was regarding the present 
 and perhaps doubting the future. He has thus not 
 strayed so far from his characteristic plays as one 
 might at first blush be tempted to think; his human 
 interests are strong with the suggestion of contem- 
 poraneity. It is not at all impossible, though the 
 idea may sound far-fetched, that Hauptmann wrote 
 with a haunting thought of the late war; those who 
 are fond of extracting such symbolization will find, 
 if they seek diligently enough, material for their 
 pursuit. However, such investigation may best be 
 left to those who are so minded. 
 
 The irony of the piece plays almost constantly 
 over the action; it appears at once in Montezuma's 
 inextinguishable faith and follows the Emperor to 
 the bitter moment when he is forcibly clothed in his 
 regal robes, into which one of the mocking soldiers 
 blows his nose. There are moments of intense 
 pathos, as for example the final interview between 
 the ruler and his brave son, in which both vow 
 themselves to a defiant death. Effective scenes of 
 debate, of dissension in council, alternate with the 
 tumult of color, tempests of sound, and anguished 
 silences in which Montezuma comes to realize his 
 unwitting betrayal of his people. 
 
 Yet the movement is not, on the whole, essen- 
 tially "dramatic." Montezuma is a psychological, 
 rather than a dramaturgic, creation. His thoughts, 
 not his deeds, are presented. It is through his spoken 
 emotions that he wins the reader's and the spec-
 
 286 THE DRAMA (3F TRANSITION 
 
 tator's sympathy, rather than through acts that 
 translate those emotions. (All this, not so much to 
 imply inferiority as to note a distinction in style.) 
 Certain figures Hauptmann has touched off with a 
 happy stroke, while others, and notably Marina — 
 Cortez' paramour — are merely suggested and not 
 made clear. 
 
 Now, how is this an Expressionistic work? Be- 
 cause of its numerous scenes? Scenic discontinuity 
 alone cannot make Expressionism in the restricted 
 sense of the new German experimenters, else Shake- 
 speare would be the central Expressionist of them 
 all. Besides, Hauptmann does not here plav with 
 time and space. iVlontezuma? But he is a compel- 
 ling psychological creation in just the sense that the 
 Expressionists repudiate! The background? But 
 Hauptmann uses it for its colorful suggestion, in- 
 dependent of the purely symbolic practice of the 
 Expressionists, who aim at the generalized cmotion- 
 alization of the inanimate object. The {x>etry? 
 But it is all-too-monotonous in its regularity, and 
 too crystal clear for "Expressionism." Too mature, 
 shall we say? Too human? Too coherent? Too 
 intermediate? All these things, and more, from the 
 point ot v'iew of the new revokes. Hauptmann, one 
 fears, must be left in the seclusion of his own pre- 
 eminence. 
 
 WALTER HASENCLEVER 
 
 Perhaps the most widely known of the pure Ex- 
 pressionists in the drama is the young half-Jew,' 
 Walter Hasenclever, born on July 8, 1890, at 
 
 ' See, on this score. Adolf Bartels, Die deulsche Dichtunf der Cegenwart, page 
 229. In all that Bartels has written the Jew is one of the arch-villains of German 
 literature, together with the Protestant and other pet animosities
 
 GERMANY 287 
 
 •■• 
 Aachen. He has studied at Oxford University, 
 England, where he wrote his first book. "The cost 
 of" printing it," he has written, "I won at poker." 
 In 1909 he proceeded to Lausanne, thence to Leip- 
 zig. He has traveled in Italy. He served during 
 the war as an interpreter, purchaser, and kitchen- 
 boy. He has won success as a poet, and his works 
 for the stage include Der Sohn^ which was completed 
 in 1914, Antigone^ Die Menschen^ Die Entscheidung^ 
 Der Retter (a dramatic poem), and Je7iseits. 
 
 As the writers of the new drama differ within the 
 sphere of their common revolt, so do the plays of 
 Hasenclever differ among themselves. At times 
 they baffle ready comprehension — particularly Die 
 Menschen, which, suggestively enough, begins and 
 ends in a graveyard, and, among other things, makes 
 an excursion into a madhouse where the inmates 
 crawl about in lycanthropic abandon. At others, 
 as, for example, Der Sohn, the play is quite coherent, 
 and for all its strangeness would produce undoubted 
 effect upon a contemporary audience of a certain 
 sensitivity to experimental novelty. Whatever the 
 worth that may ultimately be assigned to the move- 
 ment, it has already earned, then, the right to be 
 examined, and the investigation is productive 
 enough of pleasure, surprise, bepuzzlement, and oc- 
 casional frowns. 
 
 Take, for beginning, the five-act piece, Der Sohn. 
 The Son was begun in 1913, and published in the 
 opening year of the great conflict. It has, inciden- 
 tally, sold like a popular novel into the thousands, 
 and the reason for its popularity is implicit in the 
 very title. The play, like the movement that it 
 represents, is a revolt of the sons against the fathers,
 
 t 
 
 288 THE DRAMA OF TR.A.NSITIO\ ' • 
 
 of the new against the old. The son stands for 
 everything that is everhisting change, the father for 
 all that is philosophically and self-protectively con- 
 servative. Between these, despite all that links 
 them to each other, is a species of eternal warfare, 
 now underground and muffled, now overt and im- 
 placable. The victory is always to the new, which 
 in its turn becomes the old of a newer generation, 
 and thus onward ad infinitum. An old, old theme, 
 this struggle of the emerging new, nor has Hasen- 
 clever brought anything thematically novel to its 
 unfolding; the novelty, then, lies in the treatment; 
 from our point of view, plot is distinctly secondary, 
 as perhaps it was with the author. Expressionism is, 
 from its very title, new more in manner than in 
 content, though a thorough change in the one im- 
 plies a change in the other. 
 
 The Son fails in his examinations and, after a 
 talk with his Instructor, is brought by his thoughts 
 to the brink of suicide; a sudden reaction is wrought 
 by a vision, and he decides to live. Now that life 
 possesses a new sweetness, he looks with different 
 eyes upon the Governess who serves as guardian 
 over him during his father's absence. He demands 
 that his father be sent for; he wishes to have it out 
 with his parent once and for all. 
 
 Act Two: a lov^e episode between him and the 
 Governess is interrupted by the arrival of the Father, 
 whereupon ensues a bitter — and highly effective — de- 
 bate between the two men, ending with the Father's 
 decision to lock the boy in his room. The Father, a 
 physician, considers his son temporarily deranged 
 by a fever, so strange does this rebellious talk come 
 from a child hitherto amenable to every paternal
 
 -^ GERMANY 289 
 
 wish. But revolt, as well as love, laughs at lock- 
 smiths, and the same friend who has visited the Son 
 in the previous act appears now to the strains of the 
 chorus in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and wafts 
 the Son forth through an open window to lead the 
 revolt of the world's suppressed sons. 
 
 Act Three: A society of youth has assembled in 
 annual meeting and is to be addressed by Cher- 
 ubim, a sublimated stump-orator eager for effect 
 rather than for sense. Just as his triumphant speech 
 is about to be delivered, enter the Friend, who 
 challenges Cherubim and all he stands for. Re- 
 bellious youth, it seems, has differences in its own 
 ranks; it has been whispered somewhere, I believe, 
 that there are fathers "younger" than their own 
 sons. The upshot of the Friend's arrival is that 
 instead of Cherubim winning a rhetorical triumph 
 with his merely epicurean oration, the Son, under 
 the hypnotic influence of the Friend, delivers a rev- . 
 olutionary appeal; the society for the propagation of 
 joy is won in a campaign against the fathers. "Death 
 to the dead!" becomes the slogan — a phrase deeper 
 than the mere paradox that at first appears. The 
 Son's triumph has saved his own life, for behind the 
 scenes the Friend has stood ready to shoot him if 
 he should fail to capture the sentiments of the 
 society. 
 
 Act Four: The Son surrenders to a sentimental 
 interlude with Adrienne, a daughter of joy. He is 
 na'ive; she would be his teacher; for the nonce his 
 violent speech has escaped from his memory. "What 
 is eight hours old has already become historical to 
 me." But the Friend, who plays, from the begin- 
 ning, Mephistopheles to the Son's Faust, arrives 
 
 19
 
 290 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 with the news that he himself has informed the 
 Son's father of the escaped child's whereabouts. 
 The Father has sent the police to apprehend the 
 young rebel. And now, according to the mysterious 
 Friend, comes the supreme test. Will the Son, 
 leader of the world's revolting sons, slay his own 
 father if that tyrant really has sent the police upon 
 his trail? The promise is exacted and made; and 
 surely enough in come the police, to whom, without 
 a struggle, the Son surrenders. The I'Vicnd, his 
 mission now fulfilled, yearns for death, the vision 
 of which blends with that of the returning Adrienne. 
 "She will bring me annihilation in a drop of cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 Act Five: The Father and the Police-chief, who 
 is also a father, discuss the case of the Son. The 
 first is the obdurate Roman parent, kindly in his 
 own way, but firm in his interpretation of filial 
 duty and paternal authority; not so the other, who 
 counsels leniency. Led back to his father, the Son 
 determined if necessary to slay a tyrant who refuses 
 him liberty, assumes the attitude of judge rather 
 than defendant; again the old debate is resumed, 
 with increasing fury and at the very moment, it 
 seems, when the Son is ready to shoot, the Father is 
 stricken with apoplexy. A short epilogue is spoken 
 (in rhymed verse) by the Son, who proclaims a 
 mission in which sacrifice fructifies deeds: 
 
 Denn dem Lebendigen mich zu vcrbiinden, 
 Hab' ich die Macht des Todes nicht gescheut. 
 Jetzt hochste Kraft in Menschen zu verkiinden, 
 Zur hochsten Freiheit, ist mein Herz erneut! 
 
 On this note of the defiance of death in the spreading 
 of a libertarian gospel, the play comes to an end~.
 
 GERMANY 291 
 
 Governess and Son walk hand in hand off the stage, 
 leaving the corpse alone in the middle of the room. 
 As to the technical aspects of the play, there is 
 much to be said. Note at the very start the return 
 to the five-act form. Note, too, that there is the 
 occasional use of rhymed verse. As we have already 
 learned, the soliloquy is self-conscious; indeed, there 
 is a repeated use of stage figures of speech that seems 
 to attest an added wish of the author to impress the 
 theatrical atmosphere. Thus, at the opening of the 
 play, when the Son wishes to be left alone, his in- 
 structor asks him: "What are you going to do 
 now,^" Whereupon the Son replies: 
 
 Probably indulge in a soliloquy. I must have a talk 
 with myself. You know formerly this method was de- 
 spised. But I've never found it blameworthy to kneel 
 down before my own pathos, for I know how poignantly 
 real are my joy and my sorrow. Ever since my earliest 
 childhood I have learned to love the solitude around me, 
 until it spoke to me in tones. Even to-day I can go into 
 the garden and stand before a few trees, directing a 
 symphony and playing the tenor of my own opera. . . . 
 Don't you know that feeling.'' 
 
 The Instructor, a workaday soul like ourselves, is 
 embarrassed for reply; here is something not in his 
 books, so all he can say is, "We live on an upper 
 floor." W'e have, in this paragraph of the Son, a 
 hint of what is, as we have said, coming to be called 
 the presentational method. The Son not only em- 
 phasizes the fact that he is an actor, but fairly states 
 the dramatist's apology or justification for the use 
 of soliloquy; he turns commentator, critic, theorist, 
 and, what is more, is practically addressing the
 
 292 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 audience, though well within his role. The mood is 
 the "exalted" one so sought by the Expressionists. 
 Examine the third scene oi the second act; the 
 Son has been locked up and despairs in a brief 
 soliloquy. Suddenly his friend appears outside the 
 window, announcing that he has circumvented all 
 precautions. The Son is overwhelmed with joy. 
 
 Son: It's you! You love me! Good God! God! 
 Friend {ha// of him showing through the window): 
 Have I come at the right hour? 
 
 Son: Can anyone yet befriend me, as forsaken as 
 I am? 
 
 Friend: Have you forgotten that Beethoven lives? 
 You no longer recall that we sang in the Chorus of the 
 Ninth Symphony? Would you not embrace all man- 
 kind? Up, my youth, it is daybreak! . . . Let us 
 wander amidst the echoes of joy as once, after the con- 
 cert hall was closed, we wandered together into the nighr. 
 
 As they escape through the window, the spec- 
 tator beholds the lights of the distant city. Over 
 the wind come faintly wafting the strains of the 
 finale of the Ninth Symphony, tenor solo and male 
 chorus: 
 
 Froh wie seine Sonnen fliegen 
 Durch des Himmels priicht'gen Plan, 
 Laufet, Briider, eure Bahn, 
 Freudig wie ein Held zum Siegcn. 
 
 And "joyous as a hero to victory" the Son leaves on 
 his high purpose. 
 
 At the end of the third act the programme of the 
 Ninth Symphony chorus yields to the war-cry of the 
 Marseillaise. The Prince himself, won over bv the
 
 GERMANY 293 
 
 Son's eloquence, leaps upon a table and starts to 
 sing: 
 
 Aux armes, citoyens! 
 
 Formez vos bataillons! 
 
 Marchons! Marchons! 
 
 We have found, thus far, a medley of the realistic 
 drama (the hot debate between father and son), 
 the verse play, the opera. Once more, at the end 
 of the fourth act, when death seems to beckon this 
 time to the Friend, since his mission in directing 
 the Son's actions is at an end, there is a self-con- 
 scious soliloquy, with a critical remark seeking to 
 explain and justify. "Soliloquies before death are 
 frequent," he tells himself. It is the somewhat 
 hazy figure of this Friend that imparts to the play 
 the character of a quasi-mystical drama. The 
 "raisonneur" is not dead; he lives again in con- 
 temporary drama, now frankly enough, as in Mol- 
 nar's The Devil^ now in such another avatar of 
 Mephistopheles as this selfsame Friend. The rem- 
 iniscence of Faust is not due solely to critical per- 
 spicacity; it is suggested by the dramatist himself, in 
 yet another passage of the play that indicates the 
 author's desire to impress upon us the essential 
 artificiality of his medium. The Son has just re- 
 cited a rhymed soliloquy of some seventy verses, 
 when the Friend mysteriously appears. 
 
 Friend: I heard that you had failed in your examina- 
 tions. Were you about to commit suicide? 
 Son: To be brief — yes. 
 Friend: Well, why didn't you? 
 Son: I decided to live. 
 Friend: You owe your life to a plagiarism of Faust.
 
 294 THE DRAiMA OF TR.'\NSI TION 
 
 Aren't you allowed to read Goethe yet? Does your 
 father at least let you go to theatre? 
 
 The latter-day Mephistopheles, however, tempts his 
 Faust, not with women, but with ideas. Before the 
 end of the play has been reached, it is not only the 
 fathers against whom the sons of the world are to 
 revolt, but the entire familv system. The char- 
 acters of the play are, as may easily be seen from 
 what has been written, types rather than indi- 
 viduals; the Friend, in addition, is a vague type, 
 tenuous, suggesting even an intellectual attribute of 
 the Son himself, and Irom such a point of view to be 
 considered as a complementary self, somewhat in 
 the manner of Leandro and Crispin in Bcnavente's 
 sparkling apologue, Los Intereses Creados. 
 
 The Expressionists, having disavowed psychology, 
 would logically have little use for character in the 
 realistic sense of the word. If Hasenclcver's people 
 are schematic, symbolic personages, embodying the 
 various postulates of the author's inner debates, 
 this is not through dramaturgic deficiency; it is part 
 of his avowed manner. The same must be said of 
 his scenes, which may be coherent enough when his 
 purpose seems to demand it; usually, and more 
 notably in his later work, they arc capricious, shift- 
 ing like the imagery of thought rather than pro- 
 gressing in conformity with the unity of place en- 
 forced by the exigencies of the modern stage. 
 
 The Expressionist may repudiate the thesis play 
 and speak of the substitution of ideas for theses 
 (nor is the distinction new, for there is a genuine 
 difference between the problem play and the thesis 
 play, though the terms are often employed inter-
 
 GERMANY 295 
 
 changeably).^ Yet such a play as Der Sohn is a 
 thesis play, or very near it. Its intent is unmis- 
 takable; to be sure, we have a certain feeling that 
 the dramatist has tried to be fair; he has presented 
 good fathers (the police chief) as well as frivolous 
 sons; the name of the play, however, and its course, 
 plainly reveal the author's sympathies. To attempt 
 an appraisal of its values would be premature, as 
 it would be in the case of the other plays to which 
 we shall presently come, because the medium is 
 new and one must allow for mental habits. Several 
 readings seem to indicate that the play would 
 easily interest a trained audience; it has high mo- 
 ments, high purpose, and its author is plainly an 
 intellectual force. 
 
 Antigone, which followed Der Sohn, owes only its 
 material and its personages to Sophocles. In the 
 hands of Hasenclever the plot acquires a pacifistic 
 passion; Antigone blames herself for having dwelt 
 in passive pleasure while the war just ended raged 
 in its path. 
 
 Ich klage mich an, die niedrichste Magd von alien, 
 dass ich lebte und wusste: Wir toten uns; 
 dass keine Stimme von Gottes Himmel 
 mich erweckte als Retterin. 
 Ich klage mich an, dass in meine Kissen 
 nicht die Wunden eiterten hinein, 
 dass ich schwebte auf bliihenden Girlanden, 
 solange ein Mensch noch hungrig war. 
 Ich klage mich an — ich habe Gutes genossen, 
 doch nichts Gutes getan, sonst waren Meschen 
 nicht feind. 
 
 ' The thesis play, for example elucidates a foregone conclusion; the problem 
 play presents, rather than solves, an issue.
 
 296 THE DRAMA OF TRAXSn ION 
 
 The chorus of the poor (and Greek-like choruses, 
 much transformed, are common in Expressionist 
 drama) proclaims the new day: 
 
 "Friede alien Noten, 
 Friede allem Leid. 
 Schon auf Morgcnroten 
 griisst die ncuc Zcit. 
 
 Antigone is the leader of her people, even in her 
 chains. Schneider complains that it is too the- 
 atrical, that its language, especially that of King 
 Kreon, is too rhetorical, and that the inartistic 
 parallel between the king and Wilhclm II injures 
 the artistry. Yet he finds in the play, which he 
 considers superior to Der Sohiy a wealth of deep 
 passion, a great longing for justice and human 
 solidarity. 
 
 From now on Hasenclever's plays grow misty, 
 like an ill-focussed slide upon a murky screen. Take, 
 as instance. Die Menschen (191 8), another five-act 
 play, but almost distinct enough from Der So/in 
 to have come from another hand. Dialogue has 
 been reduced to a semi-comprchcnsible minimum; 
 what is more, there is no logic to the act-divisions, 
 and such coherency as binds them must be deduced, 
 although a scene here and there adheres to some 
 cogent principle. The technique is fairly Mari- 
 nettian in its Futurism; time and space are the play- 
 wright's toys and even severed heads may speak. 
 The whole flickers past the vision like a badly 
 edited film, and the words click like the telegrapher's 
 key. Der So/in is as a set of kindergarten blocks 
 compared to the Expressionistic filming of Die 
 Mensche7i. As to the plot, I offer, in all humility.
 
 GERMANY 297 
 
 such a narrative as two puzzled readings have 
 yielded up from the mad succession ot scenes. 
 Alexander, rising from his grave, meets a murderer 
 who cries aloud his crime, at the same time passing 
 to him a sack with the head of the murdered person. 
 The murderer descends into the grave and Alex- 
 ander throws earth upon him, leaving then upon a 
 series of adventures; he comes upon a couple of 
 lovers, the lass crying that she has betrayed her 
 swain; he enters a cafe in which a murder is being 
 discussed; through deception and robbery he stalks, 
 in high places and low, perhaps in quest of himself, 
 for at the end of the first act he asks, "Who am I?" 
 There are episodes with prostitutes, gloomy prog- 
 nostications by a fortune-teller, made to the youth 
 and lass of the first act, and surely enough we next 
 find them in the doctor's office, he suff"ering from the 
 unmentionable disease and she big with child, yet 
 winsome enough to attract the physician. Now 
 comes Alexander to save the maid from suicide and 
 the youth as well, for the next scene shows them all 
 in an opera box. "Where are we?" asks the maid. 
 "Resurrection," answers Alexander. 
 
 The following acts bring like adventure of like 
 significance. "Who are you?" asks the father of a 
 little girl whose mother Alexander has befriended. 
 "I am looking for myself," is the reply. "Mensch!" 
 (i. e., human being) is the father's monosyllabic 
 exclamation. Then comes a hospital, with an al- 
 most unmentionably cynical episode of a child's 
 birth; in a later scene the cynical doctor is himself 
 done away with for his money; there is a court trial 
 in which Alexander is found guilty of the murder 
 committed, persumably, by the man who replaced
 
 298 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 him in the grave. In vain he offers evidence, re- 
 pentance; "All are murderers!" he cries out, and is 
 thereupon sent to the madhouse. He returns at 
 length to the grave, the man he left there comes out, 
 Alexander gives him back the sack, empty, and 
 descends into the tomb as the murderer, stretching 
 out his arms, cries, "I love!" Gruesome, path- 
 ological, grotesque. But art? One recalls a useful 
 distinction, insisted upon somewhere by Wilson 
 Follet: art is not merely self-expression, but self- 
 communication. Hasenclever doubtless expresses 
 something or other in Die Menschoi; he is imbued, 
 as are his fellows, with a sense of our common guilt, 
 our need of merging that guilt in an all-embracing 
 love; as to what he communicates needs further 
 thought. Plays such as these, it seems, demand 
 discussion in terms of Freud; indeed, an .American 
 analyst, Dr. Brill, in his latest book, suggests a 
 comparison between the autoeroticism of the infant 
 life and the contemporary artists whose composi- 
 tions are understood only by themselves. The nor- 
 mal child as it grows older learns the proper trans- 
 ference of its affections to an outside object; cor- 
 responding art likewise communicates the author's 
 emotions in degree. Mere expression stops upon 
 the threshold of the shut-in, the self-preoccupied per- 
 sonality. Of course such comparisons properly con- 
 cern only the genesis of a work of art; they cannot 
 replace the final a:;sthetic criteria. And it is just this 
 aesthetic sense that Hasenclever so amuses and 
 puzzles in Die Menschen> 
 
 Der Retter was written previous to Die MeJischen^ 
 
 ' The psychoanalysts no doubt could tell us pretty things about the constant 
 use of severed heads by these writers. We might caU it the John-the- Baptist 
 complex!
 
 GERMANY 299 
 
 in 1 91 5, and not unnaturally deals with the prob- 
 lem of those days. The King, his Minister, the 
 Field Marshal, and the Poet are the chief figures, 
 with a vision of Saint Paul lending a mystic touch 
 and a grand apotheosis in which the Queen appears. 
 The Poet is a man of peace and would work his 
 way with the King, who feels for him, but national 
 necessity forces the monarch to place all power into 
 the hands of the Marshal, who demands and re- 
 ceives the life of the Poet. Essentially the play, 
 which Hasenclever calls a dramatic poem, is social, 
 pacifist, poetically Christian. It is written with a 
 high intensity that at times attains to eloquence; 
 music, light, and scenic effect play parts analogous 
 to those in Der Sohn and in the new play, Jenseits\ 
 as in a moment we shall see. The author is very 
 evidently fond of the debate as a dramatic tool, 
 and no doubt this answers a need felt by him as a 
 critic of society. Again it is worth while caUing 
 attention to thesis implications of both theme and 
 treatment. 
 
 Jenseits (1920) is less easy to understand than 
 Der SohUy but not quite so baffling as Die Me7ischen. 
 In any event it is a play in simple language that 
 almost eludes understanding. Hasenclever is not 
 an abstruse writer; his style is usually clear in ex- 
 pression; it is the combination of events and the 
 sequence of images that alternately attract and re- 
 pel the critic. The technique here is largely that of 
 the presentational method; for recent psychology in 
 the drama it substitutes a new psychic suggestiveness; 
 at times the dialogue (or the monologue) is naivete 
 of a medieval order. There are but two persons in 
 the play, Raul and Jeane. In the other plays we
 
 300 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 have considered there are stage directions; here they 
 are reduced, as are the personages, to a minimum. 
 The place of action is "the house," and the various 
 scenes take place in different parts of the house, 
 now at the window, now in a room, again near a 
 telephone or on a bed. Perhaps Jeanc is the eternal 
 woman, true to her first husband and to her child 
 rather than to Raul, the eternal man, slaying love 
 through very excess, that he may be free of its 
 fetters. 
 
 The "plot" of Beyond is perhaps implied by such 
 an interpretation. The dramatist's means are char- 
 acteristic. The very opening, for example, shows 
 Jeane at the window, talking to herself: 
 
 This is my house. This is my window. This is the 
 sky. The sun is shining. I know that I am alive. I am 
 happy. I am beloved. {She takes a couple of roses.) 
 Summer is coming. Yesterday was Sunday. When 
 Sirius rises, it is night. Night, when I kiss. Night, when 
 I love. I am born. I am with thee. No garment hides 
 me, no veil. I stand naked before thee. Only a few 
 hours. Time is eternal. Come soon. Come again. I 
 love thee. {She opens the tcindow.) This is my house. 
 This is my window. These are flowers in my hand. If 
 they could feel as I feel! My friend! My beloved! My 
 husband. 
 
 Her husband, however, is killed in an accident, 
 and instead, there comes his friend, Raul, Thus 
 begins the course of their love, which Jeane is soon 
 to repudiate as an act of madness and grief on her 
 part. The coils, however, tighten around them both, 
 and this way and that they are torn in the conflict 
 of their emotions. The presence of the husband 
 returns to hover over them and add to their con-
 
 GERMANY 301 
 
 fusion. A child forecasts its coming, and serves to 
 divide rather than unite them. Raul goes mad. 
 "Let the world crash to ruin! I preach annihilation 
 in my name. . . . Free! I am my own judge. 
 The world belongs to me. Love is death!" Yet 
 again he appeals to Jeane, who literally tells him to 
 take everything but "spare my child!" Her greater 
 allegiance, however, is to the child, and when Raul 
 sees this, he stabs her even as he is kissing her. 
 Whereupon, according to the stage directions, "in- 
 visible hands bear off the house. The walls noise- 
 lessly collapse, the various objects sink into the 
 depths, the chandelier sways on high. The window 
 in the background disappears." Raul's head is 
 bathed in a light that seems to issue from his own 
 forehead. "I see the light. I see into Life. I see 
 into the kingdom of all things transitory. For the 
 last time I have been a human being. I am illumined. 
 I am ready." Curtain. 
 
 It is interesting to note a strange blending of the 
 ancient with the futuristic technique in the course of 
 these short five acts. We have heard Jeane solil- 
 oquize, we have heard her ask in melodramatic ac- 
 cents that her child be spared; so, too, there is (as 
 in other plays of Hasenclever) the old device of 
 transmitting information across the footlights. On 
 the other hand, to companion such effects as speak- 
 ing heads^ (and did not a certain Will Shakespeare 
 employ them in Macbeth?) there is the material 
 representation of psychic effects that Marinetti has 
 tried to build into independent plays made up of 
 inanimate objects. So here, in the first scene of the 
 
 ' Compare the scene in Wedekind's FrUhlings Erwachtn, in which the boy 
 comes out of his grave, with his own head under his arm, for a taJk with his old 
 schoolmate. Bartels has called Der Sohn an example of immature Wedekindism.
 
 302 THE DRAMA OF I RANSITION 
 
 fourth act, "the moon fills the room with spots. 
 The various pieces of furniture assume faces. Be- 
 hind the wall appear the silhouettes of beckoning 
 arms and legs." 
 
 Hasenclever is not an isolated phenomenon; he 
 is a popular member of a groping group that is more 
 positive in its reaction against previous methods 
 than in its advance toward anything like definite 
 accomplishment. He is not, in these plays, national; 
 the milieu is everywhere in general, the core of his 
 feelings is broadly human and universal. Neither 
 is he, it may be added, erotic, though persons with 
 a penchant for psychoanalyzing literature may de- 
 tect the symptoms of certain "complexes". Indeed, 
 Der So/in would by these students be referred to the 
 QEdipus cycle of literary manifestations.' In com- 
 pany of most dramatists who write with a purpose, 
 he lacks humor. Yet even as the Italian Futurists, 
 for all their overemphasis upon subordinate details, 
 are not to be dismissed without a fair examination, 
 so the wildest of Hasenclever's creations may yield 
 — together with the other new German dramatists 
 — a tithe of permanent gain, a new flexibilitv, a new 
 suggestive power, to the dramatist and the theatre 
 that live on, above the welter of "isms" and "ologies" 
 in the upper regions of art. 
 
 GEORG KAISER 
 
 That the Expressionists form a loosely allied 
 group rather than a concerted reaction or a cen- 
 tralized movement, is further emphasized by con- 
 sideration of some of the more striking members 
 
 ' I am sure that some German student will soon write an essay upon The CEdipus 
 Situation in the New Drama. There is abundant material I
 
 GERMANY 303 
 
 of the nucleus. And there are groups within the 
 group, as witness the Aktion and the Sturm. 
 
 Kaiser has been called a number of names at 
 home and abroad. Financial difficulties (so readily 
 solved in his plays, thick with millionaires, banks 
 and floating notes) brought him a couple of years 
 ago into notoriety, and it was even suggested by 
 part of the German press that he needed seclusion 
 in a sanitarium rather than punishment behind the 
 bars. Later, when his Von Morgens bis Mitternachts 
 was put into English, The Morning Post of London 
 made the discovery that Kaiser was a "Bolshevik 
 dramatist," — a judgment and a phrase that means 
 nothing, either to art in general or with special ref- 
 erence to Kaiser's plays. The man may be, as Kerr 
 of the Berliner Tageblatt has said, half-Expressionist 
 and half-bluffer, but he has written some things that, 
 if as a whole they reveal the influence of Ibsen, 
 Wedekind (his Rektor Kleist is another edition of 
 Frilhlings Erwachen), and Sternheim, in turn will 
 influence the younger generation. 
 
 Even Kaiser's "bluffs," if such they really are — 
 for example Europa^ a "play and dance" in five 
 acts, or Der Gerettete Alkibiades {Alcibiades De- 
 livered) — contain undoubted moments of beauty; 
 and if no single play can be pointed to as an im- 
 maculate accomplishment, there is in the sum of his 
 work a suggestion of a novel nuance in the con- 
 temporary drama. There may be a question as to 
 whether that nuance is rather pictorial than essen- 
 tially dramatic; as to whether Kaiser has any 
 definite knowledge of what he is striving after, or, 
 as I am incHned to think, he is roving about half 
 lost, like so many of his fellows. In any event, he
 
 304 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 is not the mystifier that Kokoschka phiinly seems to 
 be; if he is not always clear, one feels that he ac- 
 tually is expressing something and in his own way. 
 Call him what you will, discover the origins of his 
 work — and a varied, wavering line his labors trace 
 — in whatever impulse you please, the man has 
 intuitions of beauty in the drama. He is intense in 
 spots, rather than complete; he is a playwright of 
 fascinating fragments; in continuing and elaborating 
 the "speed-technique" of Wedekind he has sac- 
 rificed the continuity to which we have long been 
 accustomed. But not merely for the sake of cover- 
 ing more ground or in an impatient desire for an 
 art of outbursts. Kaiser, in his more thorouqh-going 
 pieces, seeks something of the expression al power of 
 music. If not every word be grasped, not every idea 
 linked to the remaining phrases in a chain of logic, 
 little harm is done. These scenes, these people 
 upon the stage before us are visions, emotions made 
 visible. It is the succession of emotions, the surge 
 of feeling, that counts. 
 
 Among the new dramatists Kaiser is relativcU' 
 old. He was born on November 25, 1878, at Mad^e- 
 burg, and followed early in the footsteps of his 
 father as a merchant. Business took him for three 
 years to Buenos Aires, and on his return he married. 
 His plays already number at least a score. The 
 Expressionists, even those that belong to the out- 
 and-out ranks, are none too consistent in their pro- 
 duction; clarity and obscurity sit side by side in 
 the same play, let alone the list of their writings. 
 So that in the case of the half-Expressionist Kaiser 
 we are not surprised to find pieces ranging from the 
 transparent action of Das Frauenopfer (which may.
 
 GERMANY 305 
 
 with close approximation to its actual contents, be 
 translated into the banal title A Womaris Sacrifice) 
 to the murkiness of From Morn to Midnight and yet 
 again to the alternate light and shade of Europa. 
 Nor do these varying manners follow any chrono- 
 logical order. Das Frauenopjer^ for example, be- 
 longs to 191 8, being preceded (1917) by Die Koralle, 
 an interesting bit of pure Expressionism (if there be 
 any such thing) and followed by Gas of the same 
 year and Holle Weg Erde of the next. A zig-zag 
 spirit, then, both in the line traced by his entire 
 output and in the rhythm of the separate pieces. 
 
 Die Judische Witijoe (191 1, The Jewish Widow) is 
 a Biblical play on the Judith theme; Die Burger 
 von Calais (191 4) is likewise historical, going back 
 to the tale of the six victims demanded by Edward 
 III., for England; Das Frauenopfer is part history 
 and part fiction, recounting the story of Madame 
 La Valette, who, saving her husband after he has 
 been condemned to death following the downfall of 
 Napoleon, saves him once again — and by the same 
 subterfuge of putting on masculine apparel — when 
 the soldiery comes in pursuit of him. The play has 
 more than the significance of an altered historical 
 tale; it seeks, not too successfully, to contrast the 
 sacrificing spirit of womankind with the narrow, 
 jealous heart of man. La Valette, for example, 
 learning that his wife, having taken his place in the 
 cell when he walked out in feminine garb, dallied 
 under compulsion with the guards so as to give him 
 more time in which to make good his escape, bursts 
 into possessive fury. But the plot is too strained 
 for reality; it is too obvious for symbolism; it falls 
 between two stools into a species of grotesquerie.
 
 306 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Two years before, in Komtantin SiroUl^ known also 
 as Der Zeutaur, Kaiser had written a play which 
 blended reality and fantasy in even less separable 
 fashion. The first half of the play is in what for 
 him we may call the realistic fashion. We divine 
 that Strobel, engaged to Judith, has been straying 
 with a common house-servant. And we divine also, 
 though less clearly, that in this seemingly ignoble 
 act was the germ of something that was meant to 
 be noble. But the relation between end and begin- 
 ning is not clear. 
 
 Between these plays and the others, however 
 much one may discern in the first type signs of 
 Kaiser's more Expressionistic moods, there is a 
 fairly distinct line of cleavage. Yet little is gained 
 by such distinction. Either Kaiser is comprehen- 
 sible or he is not; either he affects the spectator or 
 not. It is easy enough to show just where and 
 wherein he is of this dramaturgic persuasion or 
 other, and all that is required for such a purpose is 
 a decent library of dramatic criticism, a pair of 
 good eyes and the infinite — if none too fruitful — 
 patience of the pedant. More to the present pur- 
 pose is Kaiser's quest for beauty. For once and 
 again he seems to gain it through a plastic use of 
 the human figure (in the individual and in the 
 mass) to express fundamental spiritual reactions. 
 Let us examine first the piece that introduced him 
 to the English-speaking public, Fon Morgetis bis 
 Mitternachts^ both in London and in New York. 
 
 From Morn to Midriight has little plot; plot is so 
 secondary to the Expressionists that they are quite 
 as willing to remake ancient plays as to borrow 
 more modern tales, much less devise fables of their
 
 GERMANY 307 
 
 own. Not the plot but the immediately com- 
 municated thrill of emotion is the thing. Here we 
 have a married bank clerk, who is fascinated by a 
 woman whom he believes accessible, and for whom 
 he steals sixty thousand from his institution, only 
 to find that she is not for sale. He has made the 
 leap and now he must plunge on to the bitter end. 
 Before he does so he visits his home — a bourgeois 
 domestic interior — and upsets it by his sudden leav- 
 ing, before eating his noonday meal. The break 
 with routine kills his mother, but he receives her 
 death with a cold, Kaiserian remark: "Daran stirbt 
 sie, weil einer einmal vor dem Mittagessen weggeht" 
 ("For once in his life a man goes out before his meal 
 — and that kills her"). 
 
 The excitement that the woman from Italy has 
 denied him the fugitive will seek elsewhere — at the 
 howling enthusiasm of a six-day cycle race, which 
 he showers with prodigal prizes; at a high-class res- 
 taurant, at a Salvation Army hall, where confession 
 and repentance may ease his soul of the day's many 
 burdens. But the crowning irony comes when he 
 casts his money to the winds betore the audience of 
 penitents. Instead of spurning it, they make a dash 
 for the precious paper. And the girl who has led 
 him to the sinner's bench betrays him to the police 
 for the sake of the reward offered for his apprehen- 
 sion. Suicide is his one recourse, and shortly after 
 the shot, all the electric globes explode in a vast 
 crash; the fugitive from justice, the seeker after 
 emotional intoxication, staggers with outspread arms 
 to the cross upon the curtain. "His groan rasps 
 like an Ecce; his gasp moans like a Homo," runs the 
 rather futile symbolism of the stage direction. The
 
 308 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 prosaic officer closes the play with the curt remark 
 that "Es ist ein Kurtzschluss in der Leitung," — in 
 briefer words still, "a short circuit." 
 
 And so the play, too, with its flash of light and 
 the surrounding darkness, is artistically a short 
 circuit. The closing scene in the Salvation Army 
 Hall is a play in little — excepting, as we easily may, 
 the childish Ecce Homo episode of the very end, 
 which, for that matter, need not be heard in per- 
 formance. The separate confessions of the pen- 
 itents, leading up to the clerk's own public repent- 
 ance; his scattering of the money and the consequent 
 scramble, are conceived in a search for a rhythmic 
 plasticity that serves the author's revelation of 
 human nature. It is the culminating scene of the 
 play and the most expertly managed. It is com- 
 pact; it does not, like the opening scenes, wander; 
 it produces an emotional effect independent, not of 
 the words, but of their individual meanings. This 
 is the "exaltation" after which the Expressionists 
 strive and to which occasionally they attain. A 
 play that could do this in its entirety would deserve 
 the word "great," regardless of the "ism" that 
 hatched it. 
 
 Largely on the strength of an acquaintance with 
 this play, some of our native reviewers have some- 
 what carelessly spoken of O'Neill's "Expressionism" 
 in The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape. But 
 affinity is not identity, and if O'Neill were in 
 search of "models" for his free structure he need 
 hardly have gone abroad while Broadway or its 
 vicinity harbored the "formless" plays of Gorki, 
 Molnar and their kin. There is never a moment, 
 for that matter, when O'Neill's artistic aim is in
 
 « GERMANY 309 
 
 doubt; he makes no cult of personal mysteriousness; 
 more than Kaiser he seems to know the reason for 
 his various changes of form. He is, like the German, 
 a fallible playwright, but one feels that he will elude 
 the snares that his critics have set for him, with their 
 overpraise and their eagerness to show that we, too, 
 on this side of the ocean have new "isms" and "ists." 
 
 Did these critics of O'Neill know Die Koralle^ 
 surely they would have suspected some connection 
 between the theme of The Hairy Ape and one of the 
 episodes in the German piece. The coincidence of 
 facial resemblance seems to have occupied Kaiser's 
 thoughts at the time he wrote the play, for in Das 
 Frauenopfer^ which preceded it by a year, the re- 
 semblance between husband and wife played no 
 little part in her deception of his captors. Sim- 
 ilarly in Die Koralle the resemblance between a 
 philanthropic millionaire and his secretary provides 
 the pivot upon which turns the impossible plot — 
 in which we are asked, for example, to believe that 
 not even the man's children can distinguish him 
 from his physical alter ego. The son in whom he 
 centres his hopes runs off — as a stoker. The daughter 
 likewise rebels. His secretary has lived a peaceful 
 youth that the millionaire would enjoy if only in 
 retrospect. Thereupon the moneyed potentate slays 
 his counterpart and pretends, for the sake of that 
 vicarious, retrospective enjoyment, to be the man 
 whom he has slain. From this decisipn not even 
 his children — at last ready to reveal his true identity 
 — can move him. 
 
 Of course, if you are one of the initiate, you will 
 know that the secretary is, in the first place, another 
 aspect of the millionaire. In slaying the secretary,
 
 310 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 then assuming his identity, the millionaire merely 
 returns to that other aspect of himself. But this, 
 as a drama, is a metaphysical rebus. 
 
 The play ej<ists for its detail; it is not an artistic 
 entity. Kaiser is fond betimes of preaching through 
 tJie mouths of his characters. So, in the second act, 
 there are interesting arguments on board the mil- 
 lionaire's yacht, which has set out in chase after 
 the Albatross^ upon which the son has sailed as 
 stoker. They overtake the son, who has learned 
 humanity at the mouths of the furnaces. He has 
 the nostalgia of the boilers; a man turned hairy ape, 
 as it were, out of understanding and sympathy with 
 the men below decks, rather than a hairy ape frus- 
 trated in a blind, boastful groping after place in 
 the scheme of society. "On the deck," he cries, 
 "the passengers stroll in their gay clothes, chat and 
 are merry. A few metres below is hell. There 
 human beings burn with quivering flesh in hot 
 shafts before holes that belch hre. So that we can 
 have a swift, jolly voyage. . . . Fever seethes 
 under the soft soles of your white shoes. Every- 
 thing in half-darkness! — Rip up this wall of lumber 
 — such a thin wall, but what a gruesome partition 
 it spells! — And look down — all of you — live through 
 it, so that the words will stick in your throat when 
 you try to be uppish to any of the fellows from down 
 there!" As in Hasenclever's Der Sohn^ so here there 
 is a scene in which the son threatens the father with 
 a revolver. There are interesting, but hardly beauti- 
 ful, moments. 
 
 More successful, from the standpoint of the play- 
 wright's aim, is Holle IVeg Erde, which, it may be 
 mentioned in passing, seems in its printed form to
 
 GERMANY 311 
 
 prefigure what may be called the Expressionist 
 typography. Time and space are telescoped as far 
 as possible. Lead is not rubber, as the compositor 
 will tell you, and there are limits to such compres- 
 sion. The piece is printed "solid;" every scene 
 forms an unbroken paragraph; stage-directions are 
 done in italics, while the only device that separates 
 the speaker from what is spoken is the printing of 
 the character's name in capitals. The spiritual 
 theme is that of human solidarity is good and evil 
 — an ancient one, in all conscience, since there, but 
 for the grace of God, goes any one of us. "Not the 
 Murderer, But the Murdered Is Guilty," runs the 
 title of a novel by the brilliant young Expressionist, 
 Franz Werfel; so here, not the robber but the robbed 
 seems to be guilty. The resume of a plot, always an 
 unsatisfactory substitute for the original, is triply 
 so with reference to these pieces. As they aim at 
 evoking an emotional flux, so must they be dis- 
 cussed in terms of those emotions. 
 
 "Wer is nicht schuldig?" asks the protagonist, 
 Spazierer, in the second part of the play. "Who is 
 not guilty?" And it is this theme that receives 
 quasi-symphonic treatment toward the end of the 
 piece. Spazierer, in need of funds with which to 
 save an anguishing soul, is enraged to find how 
 easily that same money is spent upon such luxuries 
 as jewels for women; he visits his fury upon the 
 jeweler, serves his term, discovers that prison is 
 really a punishment of society by the ill-understood 
 criminals, and comes forth to convert the very 
 society that was responsible for his incarceration. 
 There is a fine effect of antiphony in the prison 
 yard when, with Spazierer as a sort of spiritual
 
 312 THE DRAiMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 chorus director, the two large divisions of the pris- 
 oners on one side and the distant crowd on the 
 other cry out their confession, which is at the same 
 time purification. "We are guilty," chant the pris- 
 oners, while, from afar comes the answer of the 
 crowd, "We are innocent!" "We are innocent!" 
 echo the prisoners, while the crowd responds, "Wc 
 are guilty!" And soon guilt and innocence blend 
 into one vast human chorus wherein they are al- 
 most indistinguishable. It is at such moments as 
 this that Kaiser suggests the potentialities of the 
 new method. The themes are not so new as is the 
 attitude, which determines the new form. What 
 is thematically new about GaSy with its millionaire's 
 son who renounces his fortune (the son in Die 
 Koralle) and ventures forth to combat the machinery 
 of capitalism? And what is new about the skeptical 
 attitude of the very masses whom he seeks to benefit 
 and who prove themselves as yet unready for re- 
 demption? And just how "Bolshevik" is a play 
 with such a theme and such an outcome? 
 
 Kaiser's relative importance, then, lies in his de- 
 velopment of the "speed-technique," in his "ex- 
 altation," his blending of pictorial plasticity and 
 choral emotion — as if sculpture were made to live 
 and communicate feeling. In Europa he does this 
 through an efl^ective scene in which Europa's suitors 
 seek to win her in competitive dance against the 
 disguised Zeus. The play, as a whole, is a satire 
 against the aestheticism of Stefan George and his 
 followers, much as— mutatis mutandis— Gilbert's 
 Patience satirizes Wilde. And Kaiser's "fleshly" 
 moral is that Europa is weary of her perfect, terpsi- 
 chorean suitors and would enjoy some healthy
 
 GERMANY 313 
 
 animality. More body, less soul, is her desire. 
 And that is a large part of Kaiser's own doctrine. 
 In Der Gerettete Alkibiades he achieves the same 
 effect more than once — in the scene with the crowd 
 of fisherwomen, and again when Phryne tries with- 
 out success to enamour Socrates; later, too, in the 
 trial scene, where Socrates appears to answer the 
 charges against Alcibiades, who has fled. Once 
 again Socrates saves the hero whose gratitude is 
 strangely mingled with resentment. 
 
 In all these plays there inheres a decided reassort- 
 ing of dramatic values. If Kaiser is a "bluff," then 
 one wishes for a "bluffer" like him with more talent 
 for maintaining the dramatic level — a difficult feat, 
 it may be added, since a continued maintenance of 
 "exaltation" wears out the very emotions which are 
 meant to be stirred. With all his faults, mystifica- 
 tions, grotesquerie, and restlessness Kaiser may be 
 one of the precursors of a new orientation in the 
 drama. This need not, except to the fanatic in art, 
 mean abandonment of the past; rather it is an en- 
 richment of the future. Why is it impossible, side 
 by side with the drama of character, plot, and con- 
 tinuity, to harbor the drama of type fragment and 
 immediate emotion? It is not. All that is required 
 is the dramatist of genius and the audience of re- 
 sponsive talent. A large order, that, but it can be 
 filled. 
 
 OSKAR KOKOSCHKA 
 
 The theory of the German Expressionists eluci- 
 dates, ostensibly, a desire on the part of the new 
 dramatists to get closer to the hearts of their audi- 
 ences — to present emotion as directly as may be,
 
 314 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 without the baffling intervention of craft, homily, 
 or convention. Yet their practise, with scant ex- 
 ception, has been quite the opposite. They have 
 enfolded themselves in thick esoteric veils and, so 
 clad, lead themselves and the spectators a merry 
 dance that leaves one at the end about where one 
 was at the beginning. To be just, some of this 
 difficulty is due to an excess of earnestness; to con- 
 tinue to be just, some of it is seemingly nothing 
 more than an attempt to amaze the uninitiated, to 
 confound the bourgeoisie. It is precisely as such an 
 example of shell-shock "artistry" that one should 
 approach the so-called "Kxpressionist" dramas of 
 Oskar Kokoschka. If his paintings are at all com- 
 parable to his stage-pieces, they must be, to say the 
 least, interesting psychological documents though 
 hardly chefs-d'oeuvre. 
 
 Kokoschka was born in 1886, in Austria. The 
 four dramas for which he has become notorious are 
 Morder, Hojfnimg der Frauen (1907), Dcr Breyinende 
 Dornbusch (191 1), Hiob (191 7), and Orpheus imd 
 Euridyke (191 8). If any definite idea is to be 
 picked out of these swirling sands, I must confess 
 ignorance of the process. VVhen the Italian young- 
 sters wish to become "grotesque" they often get 
 silly, but rarely turn incomprehensible. Things are 
 done, persons come and go; they may be followed, 
 if only with amused disapproval. Kokoschka is 
 comprehensible only in tiny oases, and then the 
 aesthetic reward is almost nil. One may easily 
 imagine, in not so many years to come, a laborious 
 critic coming upon the finely printed volume of 
 Kokoschka's Vier Dramen^ shaking his head sadly 
 and exclaiming: "How cheap must paper and labor
 
 GERMANY 315 
 
 have been in those gladsome days! The plays mean 
 next to nothing, but what excellent typography, 
 what ample margins, what pride of craftsmanship! 
 The plays may not be easy to understand, but 
 heaven be praised that they are at least easy to 
 read, and physical comfort compensates for the in- 
 tellectual dismay." 
 
 Criticism implies an open mind, and it is unfair 
 to oneself, let alone the creative artist, to be swift 
 with condemnation or ridicule. The Expressionist 
 Movement, like others that went before, has com- 
 mitted its follies, but it has at least brought the 
 suggestion of a modified technique based upon a 
 modified attitude toward the world and life. So 
 doing, it has exaggerated with the ardor of the new 
 convert, but it would be folly to condemn it out of 
 impatience or a desire not to be bothered. "Expres- 
 sionism" is, in short, a symptom of a changing 
 world and is as likely as not to produce the genius 
 who will transcend its circumscribed tenets. That 
 is what geniuses are for. But such a spirit of toler- 
 ance, and such an eagerness to understand the mul- 
 tiform strivings of the artist to express himself, 
 need not deter us from sweeping aside altogether, 
 on occasion, the merely wilful mystifier of a school 
 or sect. Such a playwright is Kokoschka, and his 
 plays are to be read accordingly. For here is an 
 Expressionist who expresses nothing. 
 
 Take, for beginning. Murderers^ the Hope of 
 Womankind — a name to conjure with. The action 
 occurs in antiquity before a tower bathed in the 
 glare of torches. The characters are nameless, as 
 in most of the "Expressionist" plays — The Man, 
 The Woman, Warriors, and Maidens. The play-
 
 316 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Wright seems to have attempted a depiction of the 
 savagery that flows beneath our civilized love- 
 making. His verse is free; his scenic grouping sug- 
 gestive of canvas effects, with a certain oscillation 
 of feeling between the warriors led by The Man 
 and the maidens led by The Woman. One might 
 venture to describe the short piece — it is in a single 
 act — as a species of esoteric sadism. But even then, 
 it needs the exegesis of a psychoanalyst. As creative 
 art, it "says" next to nothing. 
 
 The Burning Bushy likewise in one act, is a little 
 less obscure. In the manner of the new playwrights 
 it makes prominent use of shadows, "spotlight" 
 effects, symbolic lights (white while The Man 
 speaks and red for The Woman's answers), trans- 
 formation scenes and choruses. Its theme, similar 
 to that of the preceding play, is voiced in the chorus 
 of the second scene: 
 
 Wer himmlischer Liebe Schlilsscl hat, 
 Dem nie erstirbt die Stund. 
 Wie siiss wird's ihm erst sein. 
 Ird'sche Liebe ist nur cin' Pein, 
 Ein Rosendorn am Pfad 
 Zum Gartentor von Golgotha. 
 Seele, bleib noch nicht da. . . . 
 
 A mystic theme, then, of love reconciliation in the 
 beyond, presented in mystifying fashion. 
 
 Hiob is a step in advance, if only because its anti- 
 feminism becomes fairly clear in a clumsy rehash of 
 Job's woeful tale. Its motto is "Fein fur Bein " 
 and is elaborated in six lines of sterile satire: 
 
 Als Adam schlief auf griinem Rasen, 
 Erbarmte Gott, die Sonn' im Mittag stand 
 Und dem vor Langerweil schon um Schlafen sei.
 
 GERMANY 317 
 
 Weint Adam, in der Nacht von einem Rippenstoss 
 
 erwacht: "Ei" 
 Und da mit Eva sich begattet fand: 
 "Mein Gott, hatt'er mir nar mein Bein mit Ruh gelassen." 
 
 Kokoschka's Adam would rather surrender his Eva 
 and have his rib back, and it is Hkewise with Job 
 and his wife, Anima, who brings him to an unhappy 
 end. "And Anima," as the closing hnes of the play- 
 inform us, "who placed upon Job's shoulder the 
 burdensome cross — is Eva." The play does not 
 limit itself to human beings; there are parrots, dogs, 
 heads poking up through apertures in a canvas that 
 is painted with the bodies of men clad in mourning. 
 "How love has turned my head," groans Job, "since 
 in this empty house the gentle voice of a woman 
 called me unto her." If Kokoschka intended to 
 suggest, in his action, the turning of Job's head, he 
 has at least met with outward success — and com- 
 municated that turning to the reader as well. 
 "Essig gab und Wein dafur woUte," says Anima in 
 one place. And that is what the author has done 
 with us: given us vinegar and asked wine for it. 
 This is a mere toying with theatrical mechanism, a 
 rather faded novelty that irritates, because it serves 
 no significant purpose. So, too, the Italians have 
 played with marionettes upon the stage, with alter- 
 nating lights (though not yet with severed heads) 
 and have run into the same alleys of fatuity. It is 
 not at present easy to explain the Expressionist 
 predilection for severed heads — a fondness derived, 
 perhaps, from Wedekind's Friihlin^s Erwachen. 
 
 As for Kokoschka's Orpheus and Eurydice^ no 
 purpose would be served by expatiating upon it. 
 If stage directions made a play, perhaps this impo-
 
 318 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 sition in three acts and an epilogue would achieve 
 comprehensibility. As it is, some things pass under- 
 standing; others do not reach its threshold. This 
 play barely steps across. Kokoschka's "advanced" 
 strivings, if they are sincere, have moved in a circle 
 that brings him back somewhere behind the point 
 from which he set out. He is not to be thought of 
 in the same connection as Hasenclever, who is a 
 serious, if sometimes indistinct, artist; or Fritz von 
 Unruh, in whose work an ethical aim inheres; or 
 Georg Kaiser. Kaiser is no genius, nor, for that 
 matter, has the "Expressionist" group thus far pro- 
 duced any personage approaching Hauptmann's 
 stature. But Kaiser does "express" something in a 
 personal, recognizable medium. Kokoschka reduces 
 the theory to absurdity. Somewhere, I believe, 
 there was report that one of his plays had caused a 
 riot. Perhaps this is not quite the sort of participa- 
 tion aimed at by the "Expressionists" in their 
 fusion of audience with stage, but in the case of 
 Kokoschka it is the one kind that may be under- 
 stood at this distance. The most appropriate simile 
 one may suggest for his plays is that flickering 
 phantasmagoria which parades under one's lashes 
 just before the sufferer sinks into a fevered slumber. 
 
 OTHER DRAMATISTS 
 
 STERNHEIM. KORNFELD. VON UNRUH. WERFEL. 
 GOERING. TOLLER 
 
 The fairly detailed consideration of Hasenclever, 
 Kaiser, and Kokoschka has given, I hope, a notion 
 of the newer dramatists' practice, both near the 
 heights and toward the depths. The first two, how-
 
 GERMANY 319 
 
 ever, are no more necessarily the best of the dram- 
 atists than Kokoschka is necessarily the worst. 
 Carl Sternheim, for example, would make quite as 
 interesting a subject as Georg Kaiser; both stand 
 out from their confreres for a certain aloofness from 
 their material, for a certain restlessness that is re- 
 flected in their numerous and varied plays. Stern- 
 heim, in Diebold's phraseology, is the ironic "grand- 
 seigneur" whose skepticism destroys the will to the 
 ideal; he is prtcicux; he employs, chiefly, anti- 
 lyrical puppets whose significance is made clear not 
 so much from what they say as from what occurs 
 in the tale itself. He is chiefly Geist, with little 
 Seek — the cynical anti-Philistine. Paul Kornfeld, 
 on the other hand, derives from the Storm and 
 Stress, and is as soulful (in Diebold's sense) as 
 Sternheim is intellectual. His Die Verftlhrung has 
 been called, indeed, "an inexhaustible, ever-repeated 
 eruption of a volcano of suffering." His personage, 
 Bitterlich, has become one of the salient types of 
 the new drama: he is the love-seeker who, unable 
 to recognize love when it comes to him, is damned. 
 For love must bring sacrifice, not pride. Himmel 
 und H'dlle shows the reverse of the coin; instead of 
 a proud, blasphemous Bitterlich, a humble, dutiful 
 Jacob, spokesman of mankind. 
 
 Fritz von Unruh, who, in Offiziere and Louis 
 Ferdinand^ Prinz von Preussen, wrote two plays of 
 high merit, though they are not definitely in the 
 Expressionist category, rose to new renown through 
 the unfinished trilogy that comprises, thus far, 
 Ein Geschlccht and Platz. The motto of his Louis 
 Ferdinand affords an insight into his ideology: 
 "Wie ueber Sterne das Gesetz, erhebt sich ueber
 
 320 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Menschen das Pflicht, gross und crnst." "As law 
 above the stars, so reigns Duty above mankind, 
 vast and solemn." It is the direction of that duty 
 and its ancient conflict with desire which engross 
 the impassioned mind of von Unruh. 
 
 Such is the conflict in Offizicre^ Naturalistic in 
 facture, though with forecasts of the writer's later 
 Expressionism. Such is the conflict of Louis Ferdi- 
 nand. Such, with a change of direction, is the con- 
 flict of the trilogy. That Duty exists is, to von 
 Unruh, a cosmic axiom; it must shift from the 
 service of Might to that of Right. Ein Geschlecht 
 raises the figure of the sufl^cring mother (the Mater 
 Dolorosa theme of the Expressionists) to that of a 
 powerful, eternal symbol — Mother Earth herself, 
 forever bearing that her offspring may forever re- 
 turn to her bosom. This is not only protest against 
 the madness of warfare but an image of life's own 
 cruelty. 
 
 The most considerable production of Franz VVerfel 
 in the drama — for he is an able poet and novelist 
 as well — is, thus far, the panoramic, phantasmagoric 
 Spiegelmojschy denominated by its author a Magic 
 Trilogy. Spiegelmensch himself (i. e., mirror-man) 
 is one of the numerous alter-egos of Expressionist 
 drama, one of the many children of Goethe's Mephis- 
 topheles. He is the counter-protagonist of what 
 may well be called a twentieth-century morality, 
 only that this morality is replete with high moments, 
 though more efi^ective in episodes than as a whole. 
 An alter-ego-drama, then, redeemed from unorig- 
 inality by its poetry, its strange conceptions, its 
 instinctive artistry, its eff"ective portrayal of our 
 many conflicting, deceptive selves forever in a new
 
 GERMANY 321 
 
 disguise assumed by Spiegelmensch. Its renun- 
 ciatory moral would seem to be a sort of Nirvanitas 
 nirvanitatum; one feels uneasy amidst the hectic 
 self-dissolution of these young spirits. 
 
 One must nevertheless recognize that far from 
 shirking the discipline of an ordered life, not a few 
 of the Expressionists are Puritanically severe in 
 their very Un-Puritanism. Our own Mr. Arthur 
 Davison Ficke, in his Mr. Faust^^ has written some 
 lines that might serve to characterize the new 
 strivings of such of the Expressionists as Werfel; 
 they are all the more significant in that the Devil, 
 in Ficke's play, tempts Faust, not with woman or 
 wealth, but with that selfsame paradise of spiritual 
 peace which Werfel's Thamal has sought through 
 all the trickeries of his alter-ego Spiegelmensch: 
 
 . I will create, — 
 I and the souls that after me shall come — 
 By passion of desire a pillar of flame 
 Above the wastes of life. If no God be, 
 I will from my deep soul create a God 
 Into the universe to fight for me. 
 
 How the false gods arrive with the hocus-pocus of 
 their "religions" receives dramatic commentary not 
 only in Spiegelmensch, but in Werfel's newest piece, 
 Bocksgesang. Only one wonders, contrasting the 
 mirror-like clearness of the first with the hazy 
 action of the second, whether Werfel has not been 
 indulging in a little bit of dramaturgic hocus-pocus 
 himself. 
 
 Questioning of God, Fate and man is not confined 
 to the modern morality type; it occurs even in the 
 
 'Cincinnati 1922. 
 21
 
 322 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 so-called revolutionary Exfiressionist plays, of which 
 Reinhard Goering's Seeschlacht is a noteworthy pro- 
 totype. I do not think that the charge of being a 
 mere propaganda play may justly be brought against 
 Seeschlacht any more than against Toller's Masse- 
 Mensch. There is no conspicuous distortion of 
 events or character to a foreordained end. Goering's 
 tragedy is in a single long act, more lyrical than 
 dramatic, yet undoubtedly effective, depicting the 
 nascent revolt that brews in the armored turret of 
 a battleship. But does it take much discernment 
 to see that this is no mere battleship, for all the in- 
 spiration of the piece in a war-time mutiny? "I 
 know," says the Fifth Sailor, the guiding inspira- 
 tion of the piece. "What we are doing is madness 
 and crime . . . for there are things between 
 one human being and another which it is a more 
 sacred duty to fulfil than any other battle." 
 
 Again a conflict of duties between man as State 
 and man as Mankind. It is a similar conflict, with 
 the distinctions more finely marked and more clearly 
 presented, that is dramatized in Ernst Toller's 
 notable piece Masse-Mcnsch. The very title em- 
 phasizes the important theme of the play, for Masse 
 stands for man in the mass, while Moisch is man 
 the individual, the human being, the freely de- 
 veloped personality. A revolutionary play, indeed, 
 but directed against the very revolutionists them- 
 selves. And written in that same prison wherein 
 Toller composed his latest drama. Die Maschinen- 
 sturmer. Toller was Minister of Justice in the 
 Communistic government that lived for a short 
 while in Bavaria, and is now — at the age of twenty- 
 six— serving a twenty-year sentence. His first play,
 
 GERMANY 323 
 
 Die Wandlung^ is an ego-drama, turning upon the 
 experiences of the sculptor-hero, Friedrich, who en- 
 lists as an escape from ennui; at the end of the hair- 
 raising spectacle, with its pandemonium of the liv- 
 ing and the dead, the sculptor smashes the statue 
 upon which he has been working, — a statue ded- 
 icated to the glory of his nation. Symbolism could 
 be no plainer. Masse-Mensch^ however, is of far 
 better stuff. It is no mere propaganda of the 
 proletariat against the patrician. Indeed, in his 
 foreword to the second edition^ he states expressly 
 that he does not believe in a proletarian art except 
 in so far as that art merges into the universally 
 human. And what is the purport of the play itself 
 but to free the mass from the raw, brutal force of 
 its own numbers and point the way to individual 
 creativeness.^ Moloch is Moloch, whether it be the 
 conservative State that slays or the revolutionary 
 Mass. Murder is murder; war is war. The Christ- 
 like woman protagonist, Sonja Irene L. (the only 
 person in the play who is named) goes to her death 
 at the hands of those for whom she has lived, be- 
 cause her message is sounded too soon. She is not 
 understood by the very men and women who have 
 called upon her leadership and rejected its far 
 vision. 
 
 There is art in this proclamation, as there is hu- 
 manity. Toller makes highly effective use of the 
 dream-technique (three of the seven scenes are 
 presented as visions); he employs with skill choric 
 effects and plastic, sculptural groupings of crowds. 
 There is color, rhythm of motion, antiphony. There 
 
 ' Potsdam, 1922. "Es gibt eine oroletarische Kunst nur insofern, als fiir den 
 Gestaltenden die Mannigfaltigkeiten proletarischen Seelenlebens Wege zur For- 
 mung des Ewig-Menschlichen sind."
 
 324 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 is an emotional surge that companions the progress 
 of feeling in his character symbols. This is not 
 allegory that evades expression; it is expression 
 highly concentrated into symbolic figures who do 
 not lose their human significance. In coherency, 
 plasticity, management of the speed-technique, the 
 play betters Kaiser's I^on Morgens bis Mitteryuichts. 
 It is one of the outstanding products of the new 
 dramaturgy. 
 
 Die Maschinenstiirmer relates, ostensibly, a tale of 
 wretchedness among the English weavers in 1815, 
 when machinery began to displace hand labor at 
 the looms. Here, too, is a leader slain; here, too, 
 machinery wrecked. And here, too, the new order 
 brings misery, as did the old. By these tokens Toller 
 means not only England and not only 181 5. Yet, 
 though he dedicate his plays {Masse-Menschy for 
 example) to the Proletariat, and write with con- 
 scious contemporaneity, he has done some work 
 that will in all likelihood outlast the ferment of 
 to-day. 
 
 To these names, to these plays, a goodly number 
 might be added, for the dramatic fervor runs high 
 in contemporary Germany. Out of the welter rises 
 the one great contribution of the new dramatists: 
 a new soul, a new intellect for a new world. 
 
 It is not necessary to "judge" the Expressionists 
 at this date; they may disappear with the course of 
 time, leaving only whatever vital elements of their 
 theory prove available to the purposes of the ones 
 that follow. That they have brought a fiouveau 
 frisson to the drama is undeniable; thus far they 
 seem to have affected the paraphernalia of the
 
 GERMANY 325 
 
 stage rather than the inner life of the drama. They 
 are, then, experimenters. In so far as they are 
 frankly propagandistic, they must share the obloquy 
 of all such special pleaders in the arts, however 
 much one may sympathize with their noble out- 
 look. Claiming recognition as social forces, they 
 often defeat even this purpose with a highly individ- 
 ualized practice; their avowed universality becomes 
 the property of a small, initiated clique; ostensibly di- 
 recting their efforts toward international mankind, 
 they frequently display a disconcerting esoterism, far 
 more difficult of access than any ivory tower. These 
 artists, like all others, whatever their professions, 
 do not exist for the mass; the masses exist for them. 
 Yet, despite these tendencies toward a dehumaniza- 
 tion of the stage, toward geometric stylization of 
 life, they have achieved moments of beauty that 
 may, in the hands of the not impossible genius, be 
 lengthened into hours. They have brought a color- 
 ful sweep, a massive plasticity, a musicality of 
 method that address a need of the soul; they have 
 assembled the elements of a new art, if not the 
 finished product.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 
 
 A HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL SURVEY 
 
 One of the chief effects of the war upon the lesser 
 peoples has been the rekindling of the Jewish na- 
 tional spirit. This phenomenon is always closely 
 related to the Yiddish language, which, in the 
 course of its precarious existence has on numerous 
 occasions been given premature burial by the learned 
 and the pessimistic, only to rise, like the Phoenix, 
 new-born from its own ashes. The war has helped, 
 moreover, to shift modern Israel's literary center of 
 gravity from Warsaw of the old world to New York, 
 the metropolis of the new. 
 
 Pessimism with regard to the Yiddish tongue 
 naturally extends itself to the institutions using that 
 tongue, so that prophecies of imminent dissolution 
 of the Yiddish theatre have been rife during the 
 past twenty-five years. Yet, though such pes- 
 simism is well-founded, the Jewish theatre persists 
 in flouting the prophets, and where some see the 
 embers of a dying fire, others, even to-day, behold 
 the first rays of a new dawn. 
 
 However that may be, there are distinct signs 
 that the Yiddish spirit, craving self-expression and 
 foreseeing to-morrow's possibilities, will in this 
 country adopt the national language when neces- 
 sary, even as have the Irish dramatists, whose first 
 efforts were written in Gaelic. Long ago the Jewish 
 publications found it necessary and profitable to 
 
 329
 
 330 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 issue English supplements; more recently poets like 
 Rosenfeld and Yehoash have written in their adopted 
 tongue as well as in their vernacular. To-day trans- 
 lations of Yiddish plays are being presented in 
 English, not only to Gentiles, but also to Amer- 
 icanized Jews. The step from translation to original 
 productions in English is a short one. There is 
 thus a conservation of energy in art as well as in 
 science; though the great languages, like the great 
 nations, absorb the smaller, yet the spirit of the 
 latter persists through the transformation. 
 
 Yiddish, variously termed Jewish, Jargon, and 
 Judeo-German, is closely related to High German, 
 and in its dialectic variations, which are not few, 
 follows the High German dialects of the Middle 
 Rhine, with Frankfort for its centre.' The infusion 
 of Hebrew words, outside the purely ritualistic 
 terms, probably occurred during the sixteenth cen- 
 tury; at this time also, Slavic elements were added, 
 due to the intercourse between the Jews in Bohemia, 
 Poland, and Lithuania with those they had left 
 behind in Germany. Thus, despite the mixed 
 character of the Yiddish vocabulary, which is further 
 altered by the language of the immediate environ- 
 ment, its speech remains fundamentally a German 
 dialect. 
 
 Curiously enough, as shall soon be noted in con- 
 nection with the earliest Yiddish plays, the Yiddish 
 tongue received strongest opposition from the Jews 
 
 ' During the hysterical period of accusations that added Krim humor to the 
 late war, an Englishman made the staiUing discosrery that though the letters of 
 Yiddish are Hebrew characters, the lanjjuapc is fundamentally German in struc- 
 ture. This he proceeded to publish as ii the Hebrew characters were a specie* ol 
 camouflage! One wonders whether he ever discovered the vast Teutonic element 
 in English.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 331 
 
 themselves/ even as among the French Canadians 
 to-day the use of French is by some considered to be 
 a prejudicial influence, while among the "West 
 Britons" Irish is considered too primitive. 
 
 It is but one of the many ironies in the history of 
 the Hebrews that a race whose tragedy has occupied 
 the world-stage for more than a half century of 
 centuries should have established its national theatre 
 only within the past fifty years; yet since the year 
 1876, which witnessed the founding of the Yiddish 
 stage, Jewish drama has passed through several 
 distinct phases. That one of the oldest of peoples 
 should possess the youngest of stages is not so par- 
 adoxical as at first appears. Religious opposition to 
 the theatre is not an attitude confined to the pious 
 Jew, nor are conditions which favor the stage apt 
 to arise among a people whose fate it has been to 
 wander over the length and breadth of the earth. 
 In the arena of the ages this nomad nation has been 
 too intensely occupied in living its drama to have 
 had the opportunity to simulate it in the theatre. 
 
 The early Hebrews founded no stage. Some in- 
 vestigators have discovered in certain well-known 
 parts of the Bible examples of incipient dramatic 
 form, such as the Song of Songs and the Book of 
 Job, but later critics have dismissed the evidence. 
 It is the festival of Purim (Feast of Esther) that is 
 of practically sole importance in connection with 
 the origin of Jewish drama. 
 
 The Talmud makes mention^ of representations, 
 
 ' The Yiddish poet Yehoash tells of an amusing episode in Palestine, where 
 a band of Jewish students, in their fervent advocacy of Hebrew as a national 
 tongue, refused to listen to a lecture and a play in Yiddish. And this only yes- 
 terday. 
 
 > Megillah, 7, 11; Sanhedrin, 7, H. See M. Finds, Bistoire de la Littirature 
 Judeo-AUemande, page 494.
 
 332 THE DRAMA OF TR^^NSITION 
 
 not of a very high order, it is true, held at Purim. 
 These were more or less imbued with the dramatic 
 spirit and contained the germs that were to develop 
 into pieces comparable to the mysteries whence the 
 modern European theatre evolved. It became cus- 
 tomary for Haman, who stood as symbol of the 
 foes of Israel, to be burned in effigy "on a small 
 pyre, over which the participants jumped a number 
 of times in gleeful rejoicing over the downfall of 
 their worst enemies." Spontaneous merrymaking 
 would naturally arise under such circumstances and 
 the better jests would be transmitted from year to 
 year until the ceremony took on a more ordered 
 form. This phase, approaching the dramatic in its 
 ^ formal dialogue, was reached in fifth-century Italy. 
 But such approaches to dramatic representations 
 were sporadic. 
 
 The first real Jewish contribution to the drama is 
 a dramatization of the story of Esther, which dates 
 from the ninth or the tenth centiiry; four hundred 
 
 ^ years later we find records of Jews participating in 
 similar productions having for their subject the 
 story of Haman's punishment. Here the chief 
 element of fun was the dressing of men in women's 
 garb (an act forbidden by the Bible) and general 
 hilarity. Were it not for the greater freedom per- 
 mitted from the earliest times on this holiday, 
 religious prejudice would have perhaps forever 
 stifled the chance for the development of a Jewish 
 stage. 
 
 These same Purim plays {Picrim-spiele) furnish 
 the subject for the earliest Yiddish pieces, the high 
 mark in the popularity of which was reached in the 
 
 Y eighteenth century. The first printed text, entitled
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 333 
 
 Ahasuerus play and anonymous, was published at 
 Frankfort in 1708; before 171 1 another Purim-spiel 
 appeared, in the form of the German farcical clown- 
 dialogues, based upon the story of the sale of Jo- 
 seph, and written by Bermann of Limburg. This 
 was perhaps the first Yiddish "hit," for when it 
 was produced two years later, at Frankfort, with its 
 scenic accessories, costumes, and stage effects, so 
 great was the excitement among the denizens of the 
 ghetto that two soldiers were detailed to manage 
 the crowd. The play was acted by Jewish students 
 from Prague and Hamburg, and practically the 
 same company later produced the play at Metz. 
 The low comedy part devolved upon a character 
 named Pickelherring, — not a creation of the author, 
 but rather a stock merry-andrew in earlier and con- 
 temporary pieces.^ 
 
 To the foregoing plays may be added The Sacri- 
 fice of Isaac and David and Goliath. These pieces, 
 of small literary value, indicate German influence. 
 Many of the details are coarse, resembling the 
 comedies and burlesques then in vogue among the 
 Gentiles. Like those of the earlier continental 
 mysteries, their subjects are taken from the Bible, 
 and the comic element introduces a secular note. 
 The acting of them, too, was in mediaeval fashion, 
 as may be gathered from texts, where the characters, 
 upon entering, first address the audience. The 
 actors of the first Jewish pieces were student am- 
 ateurs. As may be expected, the success of the 
 Biblical plays bred a host of imitations, some of the 
 latter rivaling the originals in popularity. Most 
 
 'The popular mind names its merry andrews often after dishes. Pickelherring 
 is the Dutch analoeue for Jean Potage in France, Hans Wurst in Germany, Jack 
 Pudding in England, and Signer Maccaroni in Italy.
 
 334 THE DRAMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 liked of all, perhaps, is the tale of Joseph, which, in 
 Eliakum Zunser's modern dramatic version repre- 
 sents the best Yiddish work on the subject.' 
 
 While these early pieces possess a certain interest 
 as Jewish dramatic products, they did little or noth- 
 ing toward founding a national theatre.- 
 
 I 
 
 In the early nineteenth century, long before the 
 definite establishment of the Yiddish stage, there 
 had arisen a Jewish literature in dramatic form 
 which, aside from purely dramatic considerations, 
 presents a worthy and authentic picture of the 
 time from the standpoint of Jewish social and po- 
 litical life. The plays thus written were not intended 
 for presentation, but were the offspring of that 
 movement for reform and enlightenment known in 
 Jewish history as the Ilaskala. Originating with the 
 , German philosopher, Mendelssohn, prototype of Les- 
 < sing's Nathan der IVeise^ the Haskala propaganiia, 
 among other things, directed its forces against 
 Judeo-German, upon which it foisted the appellation 
 jargon. It sought also to promote the study of the 
 Bible in a rational spirit and to combat the fanat- 
 icism of the Khassid sect. 
 
 For the jargon the Haskalites would substitute 
 German, although under the rule of Alexander II 
 in Russia the Russian tongue loomed large as a 
 possible linguistic substitute. The onslaught against 
 
 ' See Leo Wiener: A History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century, 
 
 page 231 seq. 
 
 • Those who read Yiddish will find a \vealth of valuable material in B. Gorins 
 Die Geschichte von Yiddishen Theater, 2 vols.. New York, 1918. He refers to a 
 number of Jewish playwrights in Spain, Portugal. Italy, but since they used the 
 language of these respective countries and dealt with contemporary themes they 
 do not properly belong in a history of the Jewish drama. Another work worth 
 consulting is M. Seiffert: Die CeschichU von Yiddishen Theater, in Drei Zeit-Perioden, 
 New York, 1897.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 335 
 
 the humble language of the people, however, was 
 of no avail, and Yiddish came out victorious through 
 an epoch of intense hatred and factional strife. As 
 late as 1862 a petition was presented by Jews to 
 the Russian government, asking for the prohibition 
 of publications in Yiddish, with the exception of 
 religious works. And, as another irony in the his- 
 tory of the race, a Russian refusal taught the Jews 
 toleration toward themselves. 
 
 The Khassid sect — that other target of the Has- 
 kalites' aim — lived in enthusiastic, whole-souled 
 worship. They obeyed not only the spirit which 
 giveth life, but also the letter that killeth. The 
 Khassidim were fanatics who expressed their ex- 
 treme ideas even in their manner of dress and per- 
 sonal grooming. Their queer caps and long coats 
 with the inevitable girdle, their locks of hair coming 
 down over the temples, their sacred beards, have 
 long formed a stock topic for satire in Yiddish 
 literature. The Khassidim believed their favorite 
 rabbis to be quite as omnipotent as the Lord him- 
 self; such a rabbi, for instance, could send children 
 to barren wives, forecast the future, save hopeless 
 invalids, and what not else. Much of this fraud- 
 ulent practice was forced upon the rabbi by the 
 sheer ignorance and superstition of an uncultured, 
 barely civilized community, which demanded mir- 
 acles, and the demand was met with the facility and 
 ambiguity of the oracle at Delphi. 
 
 It is this Khassid element that furnishes the 
 humorous content of the dramatic literature in- 
 spired by the Haskala and the social-political con- 
 ditions of the Jews at the time which we are con- 
 sidering. Thus in Gottlober's The Marriage Veil
 
 336 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 (1838), Yossele is a hero impregnated with the new 
 thought of his day, and loves Freudele. But the 
 course of their love is too true to the proverb, and 
 far from marrying each other they are to meet, on 
 the same day, a most dreadful fate. Yossele is to 
 wed a one-eyed Yiddish Kafis/ia, while Freudele is 
 to be united for life to a fool. Yossele, however, 
 knows the people with whom he is dealing, and 
 realizes that he can play upon their superstitions; 
 which he does so well that when the marriages take 
 place it is he who is united to Freudele under the 
 marriage veil, while with justice more poetic than 
 probable the one-eyed Gorgon is married to the 
 dolt. 
 
 Fools, it may be noticed in passing, have acquireil 
 a popularity upon the Yiddish stage quite parallel 
 to their vogue in Elizabethan drama. 
 
 One of the best Yiddish comedies, Ludwig Lev- 
 insohn's The IVomens Knots (i. e., kerchief knots, 
 where money is hoarded), directs its humor sim- 
 ilarly against the Khassidim. Through an inventive 
 lie told by one of the sect to his wife, the news is 
 spread all over town that monogamic restrictions 
 among the Jews are to be abolished. This is to be 
 done so as to enable the Jews to raise enough money, 
 by the multiple dowries coming with several wives, 
 to pay off the town's taxes. Rather than face such 
 a calamity the moral wives get together every coin 
 that they have stored away in old stockings and 
 knotted kerchiefs and bring the tax-paying fund of 
 virtue to the assembly of Khassidim, which promptly 
 proceeds to spend it on a junket. 
 
 The type of the termagant has acquired a con- 
 stant, if not creditable popularity upon the Yiddish
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 337 
 
 stage. In the comedy, Serkele, by Solomon Ettinger 
 (not published until 1861, some six years after the 
 author's death), we find the prototype of a long line 
 of Jewish Xantippes whose collected oaths and im- 
 precations represent a most formidable arsenal of 
 depreciatory volubiHty. Here again we find a sim- 
 ilarity in the Elizabethan audience and the Jewish. 
 Go no further than King Lear's curses upon his 
 daughters and you will find a wealth of condemna- 
 tion comparable in vehemence to the Yiddish, with 
 a rich resonance that falls (independent of its con- 
 tent) with pleasing familiarity upon Jewish ears. 
 Domestic quarrels particularly, and the choice oaths 
 they engender, have from the beginning been one 
 of the mainstays of the Yiddish stage, and it is as 
 well to remember that these oaths, if literally trans- 
 lated, convey to the Gentile reader a distinctly 
 wrong impression as regards both the morality and 
 the wholesomeness of common Jewish life. 
 
 Ettinger was thoroughly conversant with German 
 literature, a knowledge of which reveals itself in all 
 he has written; Serkele is constructed upon the 
 model of Lessing's dramas. The sordid machina- 
 tions of the virago, Serkele, to deprive her niece of 
 costly jewels and to marry off her silly daughter to 
 advantage, lead us through a melodramatic plot, 
 with Serkele exposed as thief, liar, and diabolical 
 plotter in general. The play, however, ends hap- 
 pily, through a train of events which contributes to 
 our pleasure by taxing our credulity. "As in all 
 the early productions of Judeo-German literature," 
 says Wiener, in his account of the play, "there are 
 in that drama two distinct classes of characters: the 
 ideal persons . . . and the real men and women 
 
 22
 
 338 THE DRAMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 who are taken out of actual lite. On the side of the 
 first is all virtue, while among the (Jthers are to be 
 found the worst forms of vice." For the rest the 
 characters are well depicted, and the scenes have 
 value as contemporary documents. 
 
 In Aksenfeld's The First Jeuis/i Recruit in Russia 
 (a drama in eight scenes, and, like his other works, 
 a study in manners) we find one of the most im- 
 portant of this period's plays. We know from con- 
 temporary evidence that Aksenfcld wrote his pieces 
 in the second decade of the nineteenth century, but 
 not until forty years later were they published, and 
 then in part only. The author had been a personal 
 witness to the terror among the Jews when the ukase 
 of 1827 was promulgated by Nicholas I, requiring 
 each Jewish community to contribute its share of 
 recruits to the imperial army. These terror-stricken 
 figures move through the drajna, while their leaders, 
 with the hope that springs eternal, see in the com- 
 munal calamity an opportunity for the Jews so to 
 distinguish themselves in battle as to win from the 
 monarch concessions for their oppressed race. It is 
 finally decided that since someone must be sent to 
 the army, it may as well be Nakhman, who is the 
 terror of the town because of his propensity for 
 practical jokes. The better to accomplish this, 
 Nakhman is induced to volunteer himself through 
 his love for Frume, the beautiful daughter of the 
 tax-collector, as he has been told that his bravery 
 will be the condition of her acceptance. As luck 
 will have it, Frume really loves Nakhman, and when 
 she hears of the practical joke that has been played 
 upon the practical joker, she suffers all the pangs of 
 torture, but hides her woes, finally dying from her
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 339 
 
 unuttered sorrow. Nakhman's mother, discovering 
 the deception practiced upon her simple-minded son, 
 comes to the home of her son's lover only to stumble 
 upon Frume's corpse. In a touching scene, where 
 Nakhman's mother addresses the dead body, the 
 play closes. 
 
 The theme of recruiting is naturally as popular in 
 Yiddish literature as it was unpopular in Jewish 
 life, and early appeared in J. B. Levinsohn's essay 
 Die Hefker Welt (The Topsy-Turvy World, 1828, 
 circulated in mss. form), which has been called by 
 Pines the first original production of this epoch. 
 This work, in some respects a Jewish Utopia^ con- 
 tains, among other things, complaints against com- 
 munal grafters and recruiting abuses whereby the 
 sons of the rich escaped service. These find a most 
 powerful echo some thirty years later in the most 
 important play of the period preceding the founding 
 of the Yiddish stage — Abramovitsch's The Meat 
 Tax. Here the reformatory spirit of the times reaches 
 its highest dramatic and most significant social ex- 
 pression, not by drawing only from the religious life 
 of the day, but also from the political. 
 
 It was Abramovitsch who brought to the Yiddish 
 language and style a beauty, a capacity for expres- 
 sion which finally efi^ected its triumph as a literary 
 medium. From the beginning he had felt a call to 
 serve God through serving man. "It appears," he 
 says in his reminiscences, "that from very birth I 
 was destined to play the role of writer for my people 
 — a poor and wretched people. And in order that 
 I might know this life in its entirety, early in life 
 God said to me, 'Go, my little bird, fly about the 
 world and be the unhappiest of the unhappy — the
 
 340 THE DRAMA OF rRANSITION 
 
 most Jewish of Jews.' " Abramovitsch differs from 
 the preceding writers in emphasizing the necessity 
 for proper material conditions before spiritual ex- 
 pansion is possible. In conformity with such an 
 economic tenet he turned his attention to communal 
 improvement, and his Meat Tax is a powerful ex- 
 ample of Yiddish social drama — powerful not only 
 intrinsically, but in its immediate effect upon the 
 conditions and the persons against whom it was 
 written. 
 
 The play is founded upon the meat and candle 
 tax, then one of the greatest hardships of the Jewish 
 community, for both articles are much in demand. 
 The tax was farmed out to the ka/ia/^ the body which 
 ostensibly represented the Jewish community, and 
 was supposed to go to the support of certain com- 
 munal institutions. Altogether too much of it, how- 
 ever, found its way into the kahal pockets. 
 
 In the figure of Spodek, the ring-leader of the 
 kahal grafters, Abramovitsch has created a Yiddish 
 minor Tartuffe. Outwartlly Spodek is a man of 
 holiest thought and deed, but he knows the value 
 of a cringing manner and a pious lamentation. He 
 knows, too, that he profits most from his fellow-men 
 when he seems most humble, — that beneath his 
 mask as a social benefactor lurks the grin of the 
 communal parasite. 
 
 There is a striking episode. Act II, scene III, 
 where the members of the kahal are discussing the 
 details of a newly planned tax. Suddenly the news 
 is brought that the government has sent an auditor 
 to look over accounts. Spodek, inwardly over- 
 whelmed at the possibilities suggested by the un- 
 pleasant announcement, affects the religious whine
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 341 
 
 which precedes his greatest perfidies. "Alas," he 
 begins, with blasphemous piety, "how dire is our 
 exile! Here comes an auditor to examine our ac- 
 counts! It is because of our sins that we are in 
 exile. May God — praised by his name — have pity 
 on us. . . . With God's help," he adds, signifi- 
 cantly, "everything can be arranged. Do you under- 
 stand?" His companions understand. For Mam- 
 mon is the god whose help Spodek means to invoke, 
 and Russian officials, like Pooh Bah, are ever ready 
 to be "grossly insulted" by the healing bribe. 
 
 Wecker, the young hero of the play, is an up-to- 
 date fellow who has been in Spodek's employ and 
 knows that worthy's methods only too well. He 
 tries to arouse the people against their grafter- 
 "benefactors," only to be met on all sides by igno- 
 rance, indifference, cowardice, submission. There is 
 nothing left for him to do but abandon the fight, 
 placing his hope for the future in the beneficent 
 actions of the government. 
 
 Aksenfeld's First Jewish Recruit had expressed a 
 similar faith in the government's protective powers. 
 This trust is one of the characteristics of the Has- 
 kalite literature. At the time Abramovitsch wrote 
 The Meat Tax the anti-Jewish riots of 1881 were 
 still far off, yet the dramatist himself, in his noted 
 prose work Bie Kliatsche {The Bobbin) ^ foresaw the 
 miseries in store for his people. 
 
 We find, then, that the Jewish literature in dra- 
 matic form which was written in the era that pre- 
 ceded the founding of the Yiddish stage by Abra- 
 ham Goldfaden was characterized by a didactic 
 strain, drawing upon actual life and actual problems. 
 It was sporadic and reformatory in nature, and in
 
 342 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 the case of The Meat Tax actually became a power in 
 social conditions. So well did this play perform its 
 mission that the role of Spodek was recognized in 
 real life and the sanctimonious grafter's prototype 
 was forced into bankruptcy by an outraged popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Owing to the peculiar conditions with which Gold- 
 faden had to contend, Jewish drama soon took a 
 direction quite different from that so promisingly 
 indicated in these early plays. The sericnis element 
 of the drama resolved itself into almost a stereo- 
 typed repetition of Haskalite arguments against the 
 Khassidim, while the comic element, plus song and 
 dance, assumed first place. Goldfatlcn and his 
 followers wrote for a seeing and listening public, 
 not for a reading and thinking individual, under 
 circumstances which are best examined in connec- 
 tion with the life of the man who adapted them to 
 the crowning achievement of his career. 
 
 II 
 
 Even as the Yiddish stage furnishes one of the 
 most absorbing by-paths in the lore of the drama, 
 so is the figure of its founder, Abraham Goldfaden,' 
 one of the most picturesque in modern theatrical 
 history. Had he never written anything other 
 than poetry, he would be gratefully remembered by 
 his fellow-men for his two allegorical poems, which 
 glorify his religion and its Sabbath, and his numerous 
 lesser writings, all replete with a spirit of modern, 
 yet fundamental Judaism. His popular songs have 
 
 ' The name was originally Goldenfadim, and was changed by him to Golden- 
 faden and finally to Goldfaden.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 343 
 
 sung themselves into the hearts of his people, where, 
 too, he himself has found a place. 
 
 Abraham Goldfaden was born on July 12, 1840, 
 at Old Constantin, in the southern part of Russia, 
 government of Volhynia. His father being a staunch 
 adherent of the Haskala, the son grew up in an at- 
 mosphere of enhghtenment, and his early education, 
 besides Hebrew — in which he showed his poetic 
 powers at the age of ten — included Russian and 
 German, with Yiddish, of course, as the domestic 
 tongue. 
 
 At the government school Goldfaden became 
 friendly with his teacher, Gottlober, the well-known 
 poet and dramatic author. The latter, besides 
 writing Hebrew verse, set the lines to music himself, 
 and encouraged his pupil in similar pursuits. From 
 Gottlober, too, Goldfaden imbibed a love of the 
 drama, which is later evidenced by plays which 
 reveal the direct influence of the instructor. 
 
 Another important influence in firing the lad's 
 enthusiasm for dramatic representation was a play 
 performed in 1855 at the Rabbinical college, whither 
 he had been sent upon completing his grades with 
 distinction at the community school. This drama, 
 written by one Kamrasch, was given in honor of 
 Alexander II's coronation, and depicted the life of 
 a Jewish soldier and the environment of the Jewish 
 folk. The entire student body had been enthused 
 with the Thespian spirit as the result of other 
 Jewish teachers' successes at Berdichev, and the 
 event made a deep impression upon the fifteen-year- 
 old Talmudist, who soon became acquainted with 
 Ettinger's Serkele and stored it up, perhaps un- 
 consciously, with the host of other impressions that
 
 344 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 were later to show themselves in his work for the 
 stage. 
 
 At college Goldfaden was very popular. Daily 
 the students would gather in the arched hails and 
 sing in sonorous voices the Hebrew and Yiddish 
 songs of their talented colleague. In 1865 appeared 
 Goldfaden's first collection of Hebrew poems, and 
 in the following year, which witnessed also the com- 
 pletion of his studies at Zhitomir, was published his 
 initial group of Yiddish poems, under the title Dos 
 Yidele {The Jew). 
 
 The end of Goldfaden's studies was the beginning 
 of his trials. Soon disgusted with his position as 
 government teacher, which yielded the princely sum 
 of almost ten dollars per month, he abandoned the 
 profession for undertakings in various directions with 
 much more versatility than success. We discover 
 him now as cashier (by this time he is married), 
 now as proprietor of a large millinery establishment, 
 now plunged into bankruptcy, with only his bitter 
 experience as an asset. For a time his eyes turn 
 toward Munich, where the medical profession 
 beckons, but fortunately the world is spared a bad 
 doctor. Only one makeshift presents itself, and 
 Goldfaden enters journalism. His first venture (the 
 humorous journal Yisrolik, established in conjunc- 
 tion with Linetzki,' author of the widely read 
 Yiddish satiric classic The Polish Boy) is throttled 
 by the Russian government after six months, and 
 he moves from Lemburg to Czernowitch, where, in 
 1876, he issues the Bukovjiner Israelttischer Volks- 
 blatt. Matters go from bad to worse, and Goldfaden 
 seems at the end of his resources, yet this is the very 
 
 K»/^f\*h'"i?u'^^- ,,"'* ^''r '* ^* ^^^ '"°''« effective since it proceed* from a mem- 
 ber of the Khassidic sect that is pilloried.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 345 
 
 year which is to bring him distinction. He receives 
 a letter from one of his Roumanian subscribers, Mr. 
 Librescu, urging him to come to Yassy, where 
 dwells the largest Jewish population in the country, 
 and where a journalistic venture may bear more 
 fruit. The drowning journalist grasps at the finan- 
 cial straw and goes to Yassy. 
 
 Before we follow him thither, let us take a ghmpse 
 at the two plays which he had already written under 
 the inspiration of Gottlober and Ettinger. 
 
 The Two Neighbors and Aunt Sosie were published 
 in 1872, and are both in comic, even farcical, vein. 
 The first is just a dialogue between two friends 
 whose little ones are playing on the floor. In honied 
 phrases the women express their intimate regard 
 for one another, and with maternal fondness look 
 forward to the time when they shall dance at their 
 children's wedding. But the harmonious ecstasies 
 of the parents are by no means mirrored in the 
 children, who, while their parents have been marry- 
 ing them off, have started a quarrel. One of the 
 tots is hurt, whereupon a sudden change comes over 
 the mothers. Each upholds the blamelessness of 
 her offspring; kisses, weddings, dances — all are for- 
 gotten. Compliments yield to curses, and a char- 
 acteristic scene of abuse ensues. The Two Neighbors 
 is thoroughly enjoyable satiric farce, with a genuine 
 insight into human nature. 
 
 Aunt Sosie, despite its evident indebtedness to 
 Ettinger's Serkeie, contains some of Goldfaden's 
 best work, and has been called his masterpiece. It 
 is based upon the Jewish life that its author knew, 
 and is in plot more complicated than Goldfaden's 
 later stage pieces. Sosie's husband is a hen-pecked
 
 346 THE DR.^MA OF TRANSITION 
 
 spouse, who nevertheless succeeds, by enlisting 
 deceit in the service of his timidity, in marrying off 
 his ill-treated niece to Sosie's own brother. Sosie, 
 who turns all her efforts to marrying off her sister, 
 finds out just in time that the Lithuanian Jew uj->on 
 whom she had looked as an excellent match, has 
 already been married. The timid husband is thus 
 a far better matchmaker than his termagacious 
 mate. 
 
 Goldfaden did not come to Roumania unknown; 
 his songs were sung in all the coffee houses and had 
 been popularized by the balladists who constituted, 
 outside of the synagogue precentors, the Jewish 
 population's sole musical diversion. The taste of 
 this public was little refined; from the religious 
 preachers it absorbed, through the synagogue, the 
 serious thoughts which were part of its daily life. 
 Here, too, the Jews indulged their love of music, 
 and a precentor who could sing well was always 
 sure, as he is to-day, of a large audience. For the 
 comic relief in the drama of their daily existence 
 there were the badkhens, or wedding-jesters — parlor 
 entertainers whose powers of improvisation some- 
 times reached artistic significance.' The lieder- 
 singers in the restaurants pursued similar methods. 
 
 These singers, however, were not merely vocalists. 
 Their work comprised not only songs, but called 
 also for a certain amount of acting ability, since the 
 songs were sung in costume, accompanied by ap- 
 propriate facial expressions and gestures. It was 
 moreover a common practice for a singer, if the 
 song called for more than one part, to have the 
 
 ' The last of these picturesque improv-ising minstrels was the beloved Eliakum 
 Zunser (1836-1913). His collected work, in three volumes, exhibits three distinct 
 strains: (1) the homiletic, (2) the satiric. (3) the nationalistic. He is at his best 
 as a spcntaineous, simple wedding-jester.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 347 
 
 assistance of a second person. We have here the 
 practical beginnings of genuine drama. Indeed, it 
 was while listening to such a singer performing one 
 of his own songs that the idea came to Goldfaden to 
 write out the action of the song in the form of a 
 prose play. 
 
 Goldfaden's journalistic prospects were quite as 
 gloomy in Roumania as they had been elsewhere. 
 He must have money. It so happened that when 
 he arrived at Yassy, Gradner, a singer of great 
 versatihty, was giving a concert there. Goldfaden 
 saw here an opportunity to sell a few songs, for he 
 knew that Gradner made a specialty of singing some 
 of his old ones. The playwright has left us a hu- 
 morous account of how, when he broached the 
 matter to the lieder-singer, he was met with the 
 reply that his only pay for the poems would be in 
 the popularity which Gradner's singing would bring 
 to the author. All of which, though it soothed the 
 soul, could not still the stomach. But this meeting 
 was fraught with far greater consequences. 
 
 Gradner was not the common type of lieder- 
 singer; he succeeded in raising the standard of his 
 popular art. He was not content to be a mere 
 badkhen for the pleasure of wedding gatherings, nor 
 did the narrow sphere of the coffee houses appeal 
 to him. He sought out the large centers, and as 
 soon as he arrived, would hire a prominent location, 
 put up a platform, have seats arranged and num- 
 bered, and spread notices that he sang the songs 
 of the most popular folk-poets. 
 
 Among the latter, of course, Goldfaden figured. 
 In Gradner, Goldfaden was quick to recognize a 
 baritone voice of undeveloped beauty and a mimick-
 
 348 THE DR.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 ing talent capable of high attainments. Through 
 Gradner, Goldfaden learned what the public for 
 which he would have to write really wanted, and 
 that whatever attempts he might make must be 
 based upon the lieder-singers. He knew also that 
 from certain quarters he must expect very little aid 
 or sympathy. The more intelligent class of Jews 
 was of cultured taste, preferring the Gentile theatre 
 with its literary offerings and trained personnel. 
 As it had opposed the spread of the Yiddish tongue, 
 so would it opjxise the founding of a Yiddish stage, 
 and later fight that institution in both Russia and 
 America. Goldfaden must build from the bottom. 
 Accordingly, fired by his new idea, he sat down, 
 wrote a few songs, and set to work immediately pre- 
 paring them for performance with Gradner, and the 
 latter's assistant, Goldstein. 
 
 This first piece was built around songs. No set 
 dialogue was written down, but more or less in the 
 fashion of the commedia delVarte the writer got his 
 two chief actors together, gave them hints as to 
 interpretation, and suggested an outline of what- 
 ever action the piece contained. While the songs 
 were being learned the dialogue would be worked 
 out, and if the actors forgot the exact words the 
 audience would be none the wiser for their impro- 
 visations. The first play was thus a mere hodge- 
 podge of songs, quarrels, amorous complications, 
 curses, and plenty of horse-play. There was the 
 inevitable Khassid, the dressing of men in female 
 garb, and the now traditional imprecations. 
 
 By comparison with the two plays which Gold- 
 faden published in 1872, we can easily see that in 
 this first stage play, written in 1876 and produced
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 349 
 
 at Yassy, the author wrote consciously down to his 
 audience. This was an absolute necessity under 
 the circumstances, if any sort of stage at all was to 
 be established. Goldfaden soon went with his men 
 to Batishani. The Russo-Turkish war was now in 
 the air and Roumania was laying hands on every 
 available Jew to press him into service. Terror 
 reigned in the ghetto, which was full of Jews who 
 had escaped from Russia in order to avoid military 
 slavery. With difficulty the founder of the Yiddish 
 stage himself eluded the hands of the khapers (catch- 
 ers). Productions naturally were not to be thought 
 of, but as Goldfaden lay in hiding he had plenty of 
 time to consider his plans, and it is not strange that 
 his second attempt should take the form of a play 
 dealing with Jewish recruits. 
 
 Goldfaden 's piece, however, is not, like Aksen- 
 feld's on the same theme, a drama. The action of 
 The Recruits is very simple, and depends, as do all 
 of the writer's theatrical works, very largely upon 
 the songs interspersed. The Jewish recruits, in this 
 case, prove so manifestly useless for the service 
 that they are released, but not until they have 
 furnished plenty of antics for the crowd. The fare- 
 well of Zadik, one of the Jewish students who is 
 seized by the khapers, is a parody on Joan of .Arc's 
 farewell at the end of the prologue in Schiller's 
 Jungfrau von Orleayis. Soldier farewells, moreover, 
 are very common in Jewish folk-songs. 
 
 Goldfaden's fortunes, or perhaps misfortunes, 
 brought him soon to Bucharest. Here, at the head- 
 quarters of the Russian staff Jews had gathered 
 from all points to make a living in wartime activ- 
 ities. Goldfaden, adding to his company, and tak-
 
 350 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 ing advantage of the community's humors, hastily 
 concocted some very light pabulum for the palates 
 of these wearied men of aftairs. The pieces are of 
 meagre plot and worth, and moreover have little 
 inner connection with Jewish lilc. They consist 
 mainly of couplets set to music by the author, plus 
 situations suggested for the most part by French 
 
 ^ originals which Goldfaden used as models. The 
 songs are still popular, though few who sing them 
 know their origin. 
 
 It was at Bucharest where Goldfaden remained 
 until the end of the Russo-Turkish war (1878) that 
 he formed the acquaintance of the talented actor, 
 Mogalesco, whom he persuaded to remain upon the 
 Jewish stage. Here, too, Gradner, because of pro- 
 fessional jealousy of Mogalesco, and not entirely 
 without proper personal reasons, left Goldfaden for 
 good. 
 
 \ From Bucharest Goldfaden went to Odessa, where, 
 at the Maryinski theatre, his company met with 
 immediate success. Other writers were attracted, 
 among them Katzenellcnbogen (perhaps the most 
 original of the number), Lerner, Lillienblum, and 
 Shaikewitsch. The dramas of this period, though 
 
 y not of great intrinsic merit, were better than the 
 products soon to flourish in America. Lerner's 
 adaptations of German pieces such as Uncle Moses 
 Mendelssohn and Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta^ partic- 
 ularly the latter, proved very popular. 
 
 The financial success of the theatre at Odessa, 
 however, prepared the way for the rapid downfall 
 of the Yiddish theatre in Russia. Actors and ac- 
 tresses became unduly impressed with the idea of 
 their own importance and began to demand salaries
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 351 
 
 commensurate with their conceited notions. Dissen- 
 sions arose and the original troupe divided in two, 
 Goldfaden taking the directorship of the first, while 
 Lerner took charge of the second. 
 
 Goldfaden now undertook a tour of the principal 
 cities of Russia, meeting with varying success. In 
 some places he was welcomed by the Jewish popula- 
 tion, while in others the troupe met with the opposi- 
 tion of the more cultured element, who looked upon 
 the project as a retrogressive influence. During this 
 time, in order to provide a wider repertory of some- 
 what more substantial appeal, Goldfaden wrote 
 Doctor Almosadoy Bar Kochha, and Shulamith. With 
 the last two pieces, says Seiffert, Goldfaden "made 
 himself immortal, and secured for the Yiddish stage 
 a long future. Even more than the historical sub- 
 ject, the sweet music, the genuinely Jewish melody, 
 achieved the greatest success. Later they were 
 translated into Polish and produced at the Polish 
 opera with the most gratifying effect. These two 
 pieces are the quintessence of the entire Jewish 
 repertory." 
 
 Meanwhile matters connected with the Yiddish 
 stage were going from bad to worse. As if internal 
 intrigues were not enough, it is averred by some 
 that Gentile actors, jealous of the Jewish successes, 
 whispered into the official ears that the Yiddish 
 stage was a hot-bed of revolution. The Russian . 
 minister wearied of reading all the evidence sub- ^ 
 mitted to him by the rival companies; on the 14th 
 of September, 1883, a decree was issued in which 
 the further continuance of the Yiddish stage was 
 forbidden. "Like a father in despair," Goldfaden 
 has written, "I rushed to St. Petersburg to beg mercy
 
 352 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 for the child of my spirit. It was all in vain." For 
 a short time the decree was evaded at Warsaw by 
 giving the Yiddish plays in a so-called "German" 
 theatre, but a second ukase put an end to this sub- 
 ' terfuge. The career of the Yiddish theatre in 
 Russia had thus lasted but five years. 
 
 The more mature pieces by Goldfaden forsake 
 French models for German, and draw their inspira- 
 tion from the Bible or from history. The songs 
 from some of these form part of every Jew's heritage. 
 As composer, Goldfaden is distinguished for a tender, 
 lyric melancholy which reaches straight to the heart 
 of singer and hearer alike. Through these songs 
 he lives in the hearts of his people in a very vital 
 and enduring sense. 
 
 In his later European and American activities 
 Goldfaden added nothing substantial to his achieve- 
 ments. In him the man and his work were so in- 
 timately fused that a full appreciation of the one 
 is possible only through a knowledge of the other. 
 When, in 1908, he died in New York, he left behind 
 an intellectual legacy that will, after all is said and 
 done, consist of two or three stageworthy produc- 
 tions, numerous folk-songs, a fair variety of poems, 
 and the historical distinction of having laid the 
 foundations of a Yiddish drama that for too long 
 remained without any worthy superstructure. 
 
 Goldfaden had come among an ignorant public 
 whose tastes were of the most uncultured. He had 
 quickly discerned the elements in their amusements 
 which could be fused into a stage, and had set about 
 the work with astonishing energy. Himself without 
 experience as an actor, he developed his raw material
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 353 
 
 into an aggregation that scored success wherever it 
 appeared. Handicapped, until he came to Russia, 
 by the absence of women, he trained men for female 
 parts. And although his pieces are by no means 
 realistic plays, as a producer he sought realistic 
 effects. Thus the soldiers at the end of the second 
 act in The Recruits were real soldiers, hired for the 
 occasion, since our producer feared to entrust the 
 part to civilians. Wherever possible in such minor 
 roles, Goldfaden would seek out in private life the 
 very types for which the play called, and train them 
 for the production. As an example of this, Gorin 
 relates an anecdote of Goldfaden and a cobbler, 
 told to him by the playwright himself. In one of 
 the early plays a cobbler was needed to portray a 
 quarrel. The part was more than mere "suping," 
 and Goldfaden was short of actors. Setting out 
 about town, he found a poor fellow at his bench, 
 told him the plot then and there, rehearsed him, 
 put him on the stage, and made an actor of him. 
 To train synagogue singers into theatrical choruses 
 was of course an easy matter for a man who, in his 
 early productions, acted himself, built his own stage, 
 and painted the scenery! 
 
 Whatever there is of serious thought in Gold- 
 faden may be found in all the popular poets of his 
 day, and is usually part of the Haskahte prop- 
 aganda. Here Goldfaden strikes no new note. 
 The real contribution of his pieces lies in the gen- 
 uine folk-humor and the caricatures of Yiddish 
 types. Some of the latter have furnished new ex- 
 pressions to the Yiddish tongue, and a Kuni-Lemel^ 
 as a byword for an awkward, inconsequential sim- 
 pleton is just as well known to Jews as is, for in- 
 
 23
 
 354 THE DKAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 stance, among the English, Pooh-Bah as a type of 
 grasping politician. 
 
 The first to write for the Jewish stage, Goldfaden 
 impressed his form upon all his immediate suc- 
 cessors, thus founding a distinct school. The rhym- 
 ing couplets, the song and dance, the horse-play, 
 the jester-type (containing points of resemblance to 
 the Spanish gracioso as well as to the Elizabethan 
 clown) — may all be traced to those separate ele- 
 ments in the diversion of the Roumanian Jews which 
 Goldfaden found ready to hand for combination. 
 This pattern was to cling to the Yiddish stage with 
 a grip that long stifled all genuine progress towards 
 the legitimate drama. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Since 1908 the government of the Czar had not 
 been so strict in its attitude towards the Yiddish 
 theatre. The cfl^ects of the rescripts of 1883, ^'^^- 
 V ever, were to disperse the actors and to shift the 
 scene of the Yiddish drama to America, whither a 
 large host of Jews had emigrated to escape from 
 persecution. 
 
 The development of the Yiddish theatre in America 
 is practically synonymous with the development of 
 the Yiddish stage in New York. The larger Jewish 
 centres, like Chicago and Boston, now have com- 
 panies visit them for shorter or longer stays, but 
 the dominant influence is naturally that of the 
 metropolis which contains almost half the Jews in 
 the United States. 
 
 Boris Tomashefl^sky, to whose enterprise the foun- 
 dation of the Yiddish theatre in America is due, 
 had been one of the early Russian-Jewish immigrants
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 355 
 
 into this country. It was he who effected the 
 transference of a London Yiddish troupe to New 
 York, and presented it, amidst almost insuperable 
 difficulties, to an audience that filled the Fourth 
 Street Turner Hall. Due to the intrigues of the 
 Jewish opposition, however, the performance fell 
 flat and the company disbanded. 
 
 The history of the various theatrical ventures and 
 ensuing rivalries presents too many details to be 
 entered into at length. They may be epitomized, 
 however, in the competition between the com- 
 panies that finally occupied respectively the Bowery 
 Garden, renamed the Oriental Theatre, and the 
 National Theatre, renamed the Roumanian Opera 
 House. With the Oriental Company came Lateiner 
 as staff playwright. The Roumanian Opera House 
 Company arrived in 1886, their staff writer, Hur- 
 witz, following soon after. In general, the plays 
 given by the first troupe were better than those 
 offered by the second, while in the matter of acting 
 the case was reversed. Gradually, because of this 
 superiority in acting, the Roumanian Opera House 
 forced the Oriental Company into the background. 
 
 The rivalry between these two houses was not 
 slow in producing evil effects analogous to those 
 which had helped to disrupt the stage in Russia. 
 Hurwitz, especially, was quite unscrupulous in his 
 methods. The rivalry took on an amusing phase in 
 the fashion of singing couplets at one theatre an- 
 tagonistic to the fortunes of the other. These 
 couplets were obtruded into the plays without any 
 concern as to their inappropriateness to the action, 
 and found further extension in the campaign of 
 scurrilous handbills which was initiated. Actors
 
 356 THE DK.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 were enticed from one side to the other, and cases 
 are recorded where a player would app>ear in one 
 act at one theatre and in the following act at the 
 \ other playhouse! 
 
 ^ At this time the coming of Goldfaden might have 
 had salutary effects, but, due to the hostilities, he 
 was excluded altogether. He left New York in 
 disgust, and was soon replaced by Shaikewitsch, 
 who could write a play "while you wait." The latter 
 ^t^ ground out one production alter the other for the 
 Roumanian Opera House troupe. The various plays 
 written by the other dramatists of the time are loo 
 much alike in their general unworthiness to require 
 any special mention. 
 
 With the arrival of Jacob Gordin in the early 
 nineties came a breath of new life into the Yiddish 
 stage. The time was ripe for reaction. The plays 
 hitherto produceil were of a type that was fast 
 declining even from the Goldtailen pattern; there 
 was no attempt to be true to life. As frequently 
 happens, the pendulum, in the reaction, swung too 
 far in the opposite direction, and Gordin's welcome 
 introduction of realism often degenerated into a 
 riot of sensationalism and grotesqueric. On the 
 whole, however, he exercised upon the stage an in- 
 fluence decidedly beneficial, and initiated a new 
 epoch. His works repay special treatment, and will 
 therefore be reserved for the fourth section of this 
 introductory outline. 
 
 There soon came a rage for the classics, not with- 
 out its ultimate benefit to the public taste. The 
 actors, advertised as the equals of Booth, Salvini, 
 Irving, found in Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and 
 others an opportunity for indulging their histrionic
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 357 
 
 conceit. The most popular plays of this period, 
 judging from the financial returns, were Othello^ 
 Hamlet^ and Romeo and Juliet. Of two versions of 
 Hamlet, one is quite close; in the other, Hamlet is 
 transformed into a Rabbinical student, with an 
 uncle conspiring to have him sent to Siberia as a 
 nihilist. Of course the uncle himself meets that dire 
 fate, while Hamlet dies of a broken heart. The 
 classics prepared the way for the denationalization 
 of the stage, and its degeneration through box- 
 office standards. 
 
 Since the first days of the stage in New York 
 changes in theatres, in troupes, and in plays have 
 been many. Of the numerous actors, some have 
 become known outside their particular environment 
 and have won the approbation of American critics. 
 Most prominent is the veteran Jacob Adler. To 
 him belongs much of the credit for obtaining a hear- 
 ing for Gordin. A lover of realism himself, he rec- 
 ognized the merits of its Yiddish dramatic expo- 
 nent. Tomasheffsky, as actor, has been found 
 wanting in expressional power and miming capacity. 
 He represented formerly the best Yiddish type of 
 matinee idol, and was the actor and the type for 
 whom Lateiner wrote his hero roles. Bertha Kalish 
 is known favorably to the English stage, although 
 she confesses a marked preference for the Yiddish 
 audience. The Yiddish stage has undoubtedly pro- 
 duced, in its short career, some half-dozen artists 
 that would, if they acted in a tongue more widely 
 known, have achieved far greater distinction. 
 
 As for "Moishe" — Moses — that collective name by 
 which the less discriminating part of the Jewish 
 audience is known — he is a fellow at once difficult
 
 358 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 and easy to please. Give him and his female com- 
 panion something to laugh at or weep over (for 
 lachrymose tendencies form a noticeable weakness 
 in the Jewish audience, even among the men), and 
 he is content. But if you please him not, he is less 
 reserved in the expression of his dissatisfaction than 
 is his American neighbor. The Jew, Hcrtha Kalish 
 has said in an interview, "approaches the theatre 
 with a great love, particularly tor his favorite player. 
 He listens attentively. More than that, he is fig- 
 uratively on the stage in the very scene, a tense 
 spectator. If a line or situation doesn't ring true, 
 he shakes his head. If it gets him down where he 
 lives, he is silent or yells as the reaction takes 
 direction." 
 
 The dramatic output from the beginning of 
 Tomasheffsky to the coming of Gordin is merely a 
 continuation, or even a dilution, of the Goldfaden 
 model. With the freedom of thought and worship 
 in America the necessity for Haskalitc agitation had 
 vanished, but nothing had been found to replace 
 this serious element of previous plays. The epoch, 
 dominated by Hurwitz and Lateiner, was one of 
 great activity but of no permanent accomplishment. 
 With all his talk of technique and his derogatory 
 reception of Gordin's progressive plays, Hurwitz 
 wrote nothing that will live. I.ateiner, less preten- 
 tious, but scarcely less productive, is in the same 
 class with his rival. The first, specializing on what 
 he called the "culture" play — well termed by a 
 Gentile critic the "sentimental representation of 
 inexact Jewish history" — is, if possible, the worse.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 359 
 
 IV 
 
 Gordin's original intention in coming to the 
 United States had been to start a communist colony. 
 Born in 1853, at Mirgorod, the same town that had 
 given birth to the great Gogol, Gordin grew up into 
 a lover of literature and the drama, becoming a 
 follower of Tolstoi. Unlike Goldfaden, who, de- 
 spite his reform beliefs, was opposed to assimilation, 
 Gordin cherished the hope that some way might 
 be found for reconciling the Jewish and the Christian 
 religions. The massacres of 1 88 1 , however, shattered 
 his syncretist aims. 
 
 Ten years later he turned to America. Here he 
 was quickly disillusioned about the "golden land," 
 and found himself face to face with the dishearten- 
 ing problem of making a living. Gordin had edited 
 a Russian paper and was well acquainted with the 
 literary and dramatic currents of his native land; 
 there he had become known as Ivan der Beissende 
 (Ivan the Incisive) for his biting style, so that it 
 was natural for him to take up the pen as a means 
 of support in the new world. 
 
 His first visit to a Yiddish theatre in New York 
 disgusted him, and he was impelled to write a play 
 that would not be a disgrace to the race. Whatever 
 the real value of his first effort — entitled Siberia — 
 he made an honest attempt, as he said, to fashion 
 each word a pure one and each thought a holy one. 
 The radical element of the ghetto received Gordin's 
 drama with loud acclaim; their preoccupations with 
 the sordid details of everyday life and their knowl- 
 edge of the best in world-literature rendered them 
 especially sensitive, not only to the need of change.
 
 360 THE DR.AMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 but to the appearance of its champion. Gurdin was 
 hailed as the apostle of realism. 
 
 The Jew is forced by the pressure of his experience 
 to be more or less an eclectic. Gordin's career as 
 playwright illustrates this fact with strong emphasis. 
 He has adapted or translated Shakespeare, Goethe, 
 Hebbel, Ibsen, Hugo, Lessing, Schiller, Hauptmann, 
 Gogol, Grillparzer, and Ostrovsky. In many cases 
 the adaptation is in the nature of a Yiddish ana- 
 logue suggested by the Gentile plot. Gordin knew 
 little of the intimate lives of the ghetto's people; he 
 was never really a part of them, so that his realistic 
 endeavors could scarcely look to the creation of a 
 genuinely vital Jewish play. What he did seek, and 
 in a measure attain, was the problem play, although 
 the Jewish element in the problem was too often 
 superficial. 
 
 Gordin was not truly a creative spirit; he could, 
 as an educated writer, galvanize plays into the 
 semblance of life, so to speak, and having received 
 his training from the Russian realists, he naturally 
 fell into the handling of the domestic problem, in 
 the style of Ostrovsky. He certainly succeeded in 
 making his atmospheres thoroughly Jewish, even if 
 the problems were not always essentially racial. 
 
 Gordin's best play is reckoned by many to be 
 his Go//, Mensch und Teifel (God, AfaN, ayid Devil) ^ 
 inspired by Faust. Here, at least, the German 
 classic is transformed into a Yiddish play with a 
 vital Jewish problem — a play that is, despite its 
 source, thoroughly original and deserving of a wide 
 acquaintance outside the ghetto. Instead of Faust, 
 we have the poor Yiddish scribe, Herschele; instead 
 of a Mephistopheles who tempts with the pleasures
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 361 
 
 of youthful passion, we have a Devil, who seeks to 
 purchase the scribe's soul with sordid dollars and 
 cents. Instead of a Gretchen who is seduced, we 
 have a wife who is abandoned in favor of a younger, 
 more attractive woman. These changes from the 
 German original operate also in an altered environ- 
 ment that raises the play above mere imitation. 
 Gordin was no Shakespeare, but for once, in this 
 play, he used another's plot to make his own play. 
 
 The Devil, however, is cheated out of Herschele's 
 soul at the very moment of his apparent triumph. 
 Despite the riches heaped upon him and the business 
 career which threatens to ruin the former scribe's 
 finer self, an accident in Herschele's factory, which 
 kills the son of a boyhood friend, awakens Herschele 
 to a sense of his debasement. With all the power 
 that gold has brought to him, with all the domina- 
 tion over his friends and fellow-men, it has taken 
 away something more precious — his joy in righteous 
 living. Believing himself beyond redemption, Her- 
 schele hangs himself. As the Evil One is forced to 
 confess, "Even the power of money is limited, for 
 though through it man may be deceived, perverted, 
 mutilated in soul, he cannot be ruined entirely." 
 The piece stands out with particular significance 
 in the repertory of a stage whose people have been 
 unjustly reputed to love money above all things, 
 and though it has certain defects, which we shall 
 touch upon when we come to Gordin's technique, 
 it is none the less one of the salient achievements in 
 Jewish drama. 
 
 Gordin's adaptation of King Lear is far less felic- 
 itous. As has been noted by more than one critic, 
 the piece has extent rather than depth; it is spoiled
 
 362 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITIOX 
 
 by the intrusion of the song-and-dance element. 
 Where the great Bard portrays the agonies of a soul, 
 the Jewish dramatist depicts merely the external 
 sufferings of a body; Gordin is physical where 
 Shakespeare is psychological; the one fashions 
 events, where the other creates character. 
 
 In the version of Hauptmann's Fuhrmann llen- 
 schel, which is known to the Yiddish stage as Die 
 Schevoah {The Oath)^ the playwright has taken many 
 liberties with the original. .At the point ot death, 
 but with the passions of life still active within him, 
 a peasant exacts from his wife an oath that she will 
 not marry again. The oath is soon forg(itten, the 
 widow marrying her steward, who proves faithless. 
 Only death can end the woman's misfortunes, and 
 when her child is drowned, the only link that con- 
 nected her with life is snapped; she burns the house 
 over her head. As an instance of the telling use 
 which Gordin makes of Jewish beliefs and customs, 
 we have the theatrical scene where, at the mother's 
 second marriage, her young boy blows out the 
 candles which are burning in commemoration of his 
 father's death anniversary. It is a Jewish super- 
 stition that while the anniversary light burns the 
 soul of the departed is present and can see all that 
 is taking place. To extinguish the lights before the 
 twenty-four hours of the anniversary have been 
 completed is an impious act; but here the simple 
 mind of the little boy, feeling that his dead father is 
 witnessing a wedding which violates a sacred prom- 
 ise, blows out the candles so that the departed soul 
 may not behold the wife's infidelity. 
 
 In the Jewish King Lear we have the self-sacrific- 
 ing father. In Mirele Efros (looked upon by many
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 363 
 
 as superior to God^ Man, and Devil) it is the mother 
 who has sacrificed herself to the upbringing of chil- 
 dren only to see them depart from the maternal 
 guidance. The father of the Jewish King Lear sinks 
 into insignificance beside Mirele the mother. Mirele 
 is perhaps the one instance in Gordin's career as 
 playwright where he built up a complete character. 
 Not that the same may be said of the play as a 
 whole, but here at least the leading character is 
 real, the events typically Jewish, the use of the re- 
 ligious atmosphere intensely effective. Mirele grows 
 with the action; she is not a role, but a living per- 
 sonage. 
 
 For the rest there is little comment to make upon 
 the stories of Gordin's. numerous productions. He 
 covers a wide range of problems, involving filial 
 duty, religious faith, racial weaknesses, mixed mar- 
 riages, and so on. He wanders from one theme to 
 another, not as an artist expressing, like Ibsen, for 
 example, his mental growth in his dramatic output, 
 but rather exploiting the ideas of others, or his own 
 preconceptions, in theatrical guise. 
 
 The great contribution of Gordin, then, to the 
 Yiddish stage is that in place of the falsities of life 
 and character that had flourished in the Lateiner- 
 Hurwitz regime he brought truth, character, art. 
 Starting out not far from the beaten path of Gold- 
 faden, he achieved a personality of his own, despite 
 the intrusion of the vaudeville element which had 
 to be endured for the sake of a pubHc. His plots 
 sought intimate relation with actual events, and if 
 they were more complex, they were more real. 
 Even if Gordin did not succeed in writing perfect 
 technical compositions, his intentions were so evi-
 
 364 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 dently sincere, and in such marked contrast to his 
 predecessors that intention alone ahnost equaled 
 achievement. 
 
 Gordin's dialogue is noted for its rugged power, 
 as are certain of his episodes for their individual 
 strength. Indeed, Gordin, in much the same way 
 as the Elizabethan Marlowe (guarding proper dis- 
 tances), has been looked upon primarily as a writer 
 of scenes rather than plays, and too often of roles 
 rather than characters. His most serious defect 
 lies in just this inability to create character. The 
 beginnings of his plays are usually the best part, 
 for here he poses his problem, arouses our interest, 
 and then — shirks the vital point in the problem. 
 He gives the primary dramatic impulse, but can 
 rarely carry it through to the end. 
 
 Thus in God, Ma)i, and Devily as Pinski,' with 
 the perspicacity of the serious creative artist, has 
 pointed out, the one great necessity in the play was 
 to show Herschele's first step in his debasement 
 through the power of gold. It is just this step in the 
 change which makes of a pious Jew a conscienceless 
 exploiter that the author shirks. In Mirele Efros 
 a similar omission mars what would easilv have been 
 a masterpiece of character portrayal. For here the 
 author has sustained our interest to the very last, 
 only to leave out the identical scene for which he 
 has been preparing us with a cumulative power 
 that renders the spectator almost breathless with 
 anticipation. Will the mother be reconciled to 
 those from whom she has been estranged? After 
 all who could hope to win her over have been sent, 
 will she be able to resist the pleadings of her grand- 
 
 ' In Dos Yiddtshe Drama, New York, 1909. This pamphlet U one of the best 
 pieces of dramatic criticism in Yiddish.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 365 
 
 child? This is the turning point in Mirele's Hfe; 
 it is the great scene of the play — if only it had been 
 written. But no, instead, we have it merely related 
 to us that the grandchild has carried off victory 
 where his elders failed. 
 
 That Gordin was alive to his shortcomings is 
 amply shown from his own words. 'T want to say 
 publicly," he wrote, as early as 1897, "that the 
 Yiddish theatre will never be in a position to undergo 
 normal development as long as the intellectual 
 Jews continue to disregard a problem so important 
 to the masses as the upbuilding of a literary, serious 
 stage. The Yiddish theatre, despite the hundreds 
 of thousands who form its audiences, cannot hope 
 for the arrival of a powerful, talented writer so long 
 as the majority of its authors will, like me, be men 
 who take to dramatic writing through accident, 
 who write pieces only because they are forced to 
 do so in order to make a living, and who, like me, 
 are isolated and see about them only ignorance, 
 jealousy, enmity, and rancor." 
 
 Gordin died in 1909. True to the eclectic spirit 
 in which he had at first sought to reconcile Judaism 
 and Christianity, and later ransacked the world's 
 library for material, true to his intensely theatrical 
 instinct, he made his last exit, not with a Jewish 
 word upon his tongue nor with his own thought, 
 but with the closing line of / PagUacci: "La com- 
 eddia e finita" — the comedy is over. To his final 
 words Gordin was a man of the theatre.^ 
 
 > This same story is told of so many men that, though, I record it, I choose to 
 take it with a grain of salt larger than the usual dose.
 
 366 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 His example attracted a number of followers. 
 Although the plays produced under this imperfect 
 realistic influence are not usually remarkable for 
 art in its deeper significance, the dramatists were 
 learning how to speak, as it were; they needed only 
 something to say. 
 
 Few of Gordin's disciples add anything to the 
 leader's accomplishments. Li bin, for example, has 
 been spoken of as the compromiser between the 
 literary drama and popular trash, but there is too 
 little of literature in the compromise. His real field 
 is the short story, in which, together with his con- 
 temporary, Kobrin, he discovered the new-world 
 tenement to its bepuzzled denizens. In a few plays 
 by Kobrin and Asch, in the dramas of Pinski and 
 Hirschbein, we find what is best in the Yiddish 
 drama of to-day — a drama that is practically di- 
 vorced from the stage that should have been its 
 home. There is here a triumph over the vulgar 
 and ubiquitous intrusion of the song-and-dance 
 element that helped to vitiate even serious plays 
 ever since Goldfaden started the fortunes of the 
 genre; indeed, the third phase of Jewish drama con- 
 sists in just this liberation from the trammels of 
 badly mixed moods, in the attempt to treat vital 
 Jewish themes, in attention to art rather than to 
 mere substance as such. At times the reaction, like 
 most early reactions, swings to extremes, as in some 
 of Hirschbein's idyllic, symbolic sketches, which are 
 quite unsuited to the stage. On the whole, how- 
 ever, we find in this period the best works that have 
 been written for the Yiddish theatre.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 367 
 
 The new impulse came, not from America, but 
 from Russia. Attracted at first by the naturahsm 
 of Gorki and later by the mystic symbolism of 
 Andreyev, the Jewish writers fashioned works dis- 
 tinctly racial, at times with a breath of the universal 
 about them. 
 
 We may, In a few words, dismiss both Isaac 
 Loeb Perez and Sholom Aleikhem as dramatists. 
 The debt of Yiddish literature to both is infinite; 
 Perez is regarded as the peer of the literature, a 
 master of many forms, and an aristocratic soul who 
 forsook a career in Russian letters, that he might 
 serve his own humble folk with an artistry which — 
 ironically enough — they will perhaps never fully 
 grasp; Sholom Aleikhem, the greatest of the Yiddish 
 folk humorists, is nearer to his people's hearts and 
 to their comprehension. But neither Perez nor 
 Sholom Aleikhem was a dramatist of power or 
 depth. The human touch was there, the pure in- 
 tention, but not the accomplishment; they are occa- 
 sionally produced, particularly Sholom Aleikhem, 
 but they have been without any abiding effect upon 
 the drama of their people. The latter's short pieces 
 are little more than sketches; in such a hodge-podge 
 as The Divorce he strikes the muddy bottom of 
 bathos; in Zeseit und Zerspreit^ a play in three acts, 
 he touches upon the dispersion of a Jewish family: 
 the children of Meyer Shalant come to a pretty bad 
 end, Volodia being arrested as a revolutionary, 
 Khayim going to Palestine as a laborer, Khanna pre- 
 ferring study to marriage, Matvey mingling in evil 
 company. Flora eloping. There is a resemblance to 
 Naidenov's The Children of Vaniushin. 
 
 For the better drama of more recent days, then,
 
 368 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 we must look to Leon Kobrin, Sholom Asch, David 
 Pinski, Perez Hirschbein, and to a few new pieces 
 that have been brought to the attention of Jewish 
 audiences in America through such pioneers as 
 Maurice Schwartz and such institutions as The 
 Jewish Art Theatre. 
 
 LEON KOBRIN 
 
 Kobrin was born some fifty years ago in Vitebsk, 
 White Russia. As early as his fifteenth year he had 
 begun to write sketches and tales in Russian. Emi- 
 grating to the United States in 1S92, he commenced 
 the following year to pen stories in Yiddish, based 
 upon the New World atmosphere, which he was 
 one of the earliest to bring into Yidilish letters. For, 
 during his first six years in this country, he engaged, 
 with as little patience as success, in shirtmaking, 
 breadbaking, weaving, antl newspaper-selling; all 
 this time his chief desire was to devote himself to 
 literature. 
 
 It was with his first book, Ymikel Boila and Other 
 Tales (1898), that he won recognition from critics 
 on both sides of the ocean. Professor Wiener, of 
 Harvard, who has since abandoned his Yiddish 
 studies, hailed the author as the Yiddish Gorki. 
 Successive productions in fiction {Ghetto Dramas^ 
 1904; a nine-hundred-page collection of tales, 1910; 
 the novels, The Immigrants, Mother and Daiightei\ 
 The Professional Bridegroom, The Tenement House, 
 The Rise of Orre) picture the multiform phases of 
 tenement life and ghetto adventure in the new land, 
 with their exotic milieu and their peculiar psychology. 
 
 As a pioneer in Yiddish literature in America,
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 369 
 
 Kobrin will always be remembered as the dis- 
 coverer of the tenement. He and Libin have been 
 called by their associates the twins of the tenement, 
 because of their preoccupation with the many 
 themes furnished by the East Side in the early days. 
 Kobrin has a deep sense of the environmental in- 
 fluences of the gloomy structures upon the dwellers, 
 so -that his numerous tales possess a historical in- 
 terest. For a whole generation, indeed, Kobrin 
 and Libin dominated Yiddish letters on this side of 
 the Atlantic. They both began with the sketch and 
 the short story, thence to the drama and finally 
 to the novel. In Kobrin may be studied the evolu- 
 tion of the immigrant psychology, from his home- 
 sickness for the "old country" to the direction of 
 that yearning upon himself, and by a natural proc- 
 ess, to the formation of a strong nationahstic 
 feeling. 
 
 The author's dramas number some two dozen, 
 and he is still active. Of these a surprising number 
 have been successful, although upon the stage he 
 seems too ready to strain the truth for a situation. 
 Without a doubt, however, Kobrin has had a whole- 
 some influence upon the Yiddish drama, having 
 followed the Gordin tradition of personal tenacity 
 and fought unceasingly for "playwright's rights" as 
 against managerial dictatorship. His first play, 
 Minna, was produced in 1899, having been written 
 in collaboration with Gordin. His second. The 
 East Side Ghetto, played in the same year, brought to 
 the attention of the public the varied gifts of Bertha 
 Kalish, who has since achieved a reputation among 
 English playgoers. It was on the occasion of the 
 production of Two Sisters y 1904, that Israel Zangwill 
 
 24
 
 370 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 wrote a very favorable report o\ the play in the 
 New York Herald, later meeting the author and 
 requesting him to translate into Yiddish The Chil- 
 dren of the Ghetto. When that work was done and 
 the play presented in Yiddish, Zangwill exclaimed 
 enthusiastically to the translator, "Now I rcali'/c 
 that I have translated you — not you me!" 
 
 "Three years ago," said Kohrin to an interviewer 
 in 1915, "I organized all the playwrights, about 
 twenty in number, into a society known as The 
 Jewish Playwrights' Association. Our common aim 
 was to make the dramatist independent — to m.ikc 
 it possible for him to express himself freely as he 
 feels, and not as the manager expects him to." 
 A further insight into the writer's intiepenilencc is 
 afforded by an interesting detail in the history of his 
 play, Children of Nature. (The play, by the way, is 
 founded upon his early tale, Yankcl Boila, and was 
 several years ago produced with great success in a 
 Russian version at the Moscow Art Theatre.) The 
 Yiddish original was accepted in 191 2 and rehearsals 
 were begun. The author had received seven hun- 
 dred dollars in advance royalties. At one of the 
 early rehearsals, however, the manager showed a 
 disposition to change the plot — a phenomenon not 
 unknown to the English "boards." Kobrin could 
 not see the point, despite the manager's most earnest 
 protestations. The latter, as a final resort, exclaimed 
 that unless the author conceded the issue he could 
 take his play back. Whereupon the playwright 
 took the play and returned the advance. Other 
 managers proving just as obdurate, Kobrin decided 
 to produce the play himself, and surely enough.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 371 
 
 when it was given at the Odeon Theatre on the East 
 Side, its immediate success justified the author's 
 confidence. 
 
 Children of Nature is the tale of a village boy who 
 falls in love with a Gentile lass. The two have 
 grown up together. Yankel's father dies, and ex- 
 tracts, upon his death-bed, a promise that his son 
 will not marry out of the faith; that instead of wed- 
 ding Natasha he will take a cousin, who happens 
 to be a silly child and an invalid to boot. Matters 
 are further complicated by the fact that Natasha 
 faces motherhood. Upon hearing of Yankel's 
 promise to his father, she is compelled to leave the 
 village. Her suffering proves too much for Yankel; 
 yet he is bound by a sacred oath and is, withal, of 
 an intensely superstitious mental cast. Marry the 
 idiot cousin he cannot. On the day of the wedding 
 he is found hanging, dead, in the home of the pros- 
 pective wife. 
 
 Such violent contrasts as suicides on wedding 
 days are dear to the hearts of lesser playwrights, 
 yet this should not obscure the intellectual honesty 
 of the drama. So evident was this at the very first 
 performance that the critics found Kobrin too fair, 
 so to speak. The Gentile characters of the play, 
 notes one, are more amiable, and draw more deeply 
 upon the sympathies of the audience, than do the 
 Jewish. A more serious fault has been indicated — 
 one that strikes at the roots of the protagonist's 
 character. Kobrin, in accentuating the supersti- 
 tious nature of Yankel, makes his hero weaker as a 
 dramatic force. Would so superstititious a fellow 
 have dared to continue to love out of the faith.''
 
 372 rm. DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Could he have risen, another critic has asked, to 
 the solution of suicide, if his beliefs in after-world 
 punishment were so strong? 
 
 In more than one other of his longer plays Kohrin 
 deals with a similar contrast; now it is between two 
 brothers, one of whom has abjured the faith {Back 
 to His People) y now between the real Jewess that is 
 Hadassah Polakoff, the singer of international 
 repute, and the "distinguished foreigner" that she 
 becomes in the hands of her press-agent and an 
 adorinc public {Israel's Hope). Such plots are often, 
 in their very essence, artificial, and betray their 
 fundamental falsity in the melodramatic jerkiness of 
 the action. They possess full significance only to 
 that portion of humanity which has lived through 
 the double life forced u|x>n the Jew; they fall short 
 of the hiirhest art because they strain a truth which 
 reality itself has strained in the first place. 
 
 Kobrin has translatcil Fuust and Hamlet for Jewish 
 readers; he has also made Yiddish versions of some 
 of the works of Kchegaray, a writer whose frequent 
 excursions into melodrama contain something that 
 should appeal to the less discriminating meml)ers of 
 the audience- which everywhere means most of it. 
 His other translations include the works of Tur- 
 geniev, de Maupassant, Hugo, Gorki.* Kobrin's 
 highest achievement is not of the stage; it is a short 
 idyll — this, of all rhinos, from a writer deeply sen- 
 sual and as capable of bare literary brutality as 
 
 ' It is Kobrin, I believe, who • outfkle 
 
 of Russia. He had noticed in a K tign«d 
 
 by a then unknown name. He .it '-.^infl 
 
 (Future) a New York publication tl m 
 
 the nearby English macaicines. It w -or 
 
 Wiener's attention. The latter, on t .r- 
 
 pose of collecting material for his b<> ■ th 
 century, brought back with him the tir^t three voluuieat U Ciocki • wodu, which 
 were later put into En&lish by Isabel llapBOod.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 373 
 
 any disciple of Zola! — called A Lithuanian Village. 
 It is one of the finest productions in the Yiddish 
 tongue. 
 
 SHOLOM ASCH 
 
 Asch is to-day one of the most widely read of the 
 Yiddish writers and at the same time one of the 
 most naturally gifted. His prose, at its best, is a 
 highly flexible medium, as ready to the purposes of 
 the sternest realism as to the softest idyllic effects. 
 He is not, in the rhetorical sense of the word, a 
 "stylist"; he is an artist by virtue of his spontaneous 
 response to the manifold beauties of his ever-chang- 
 ing scene. His very lapses emphasize the spon- 
 taneity of his expression without impairing its 
 efficacy. By these tokens he is not to be classified 
 with the conventional symbols of genre or outlook; 
 he is realist, romanticist, idealist, playwright, nov- 
 elist, conteur, — all in one. He has made of the 
 despised "jargon" of the Haskalite scorn an instru- 
 ment of beauty whose melodies are rivalled only by 
 such contemporaries as Pinski and Hirschbein. Much 
 of what he has written will perish with most of the 
 other works of man, but at his best he has given to 
 Yiddish literature some of its most enduring pages. 
 
 He is to-day in his forty-second year; his peregri- 
 nations have carried him to the four corners of the 
 earth; he is a restless mind in a restless body. As 
 early as his twenty-fourth year he achieved a rep- 
 utation with his first book. The Town^ a series of 
 vignettes of provincial Jewish life in Russia, and 
 followed up this success with a steady number of 
 short tales in which the multiform phases of his 
 people's life — sacred and secular — were depicted
 
 374 THE DRAMA OI- TRANSITION' 
 
 with a deep yet unobtrusively poetic insight. Uf 
 his novels, Af(fr/ and T/ie Road to Se/f, which form a 
 continuous whole, depict with a wealth of color ami 
 episode the wanderings of Jewish souls in search of 
 self-realization. 'I'hc background, mainly that of 
 the Russian revolution at 1905, shifts, as the author 
 himself has so often done, to various parts of the 
 t);lobe. Such places as the thirteenth chapter of 
 Part One of Mcri and the forty-first in I*art Two of 
 T/ie Road to Self exhibit the same linguistic irides- 
 cence that was early forecast in his shorter talcs. 
 Mottke the Vagabond and VncU Moses ^ both now 
 available in Knglish, witness the novelist's essential 
 traits: a relative carelessness as to the mere plot in 
 itself, while attention is concentrated ujx)n illu- 
 minating detail, upon character in action, pjctry of 
 scene and situation. 
 
 Since, as Lewes has told us in his biography of 
 Goethe, "the whole man thinks," these qualities of 
 Asch, more or less diluted, are to be found in his 
 dramas. Best known of his full-lenuth j^lays is 
 The God of Vengeayice^ of which more in a moment. 
 The shorter pieces present a motley crowd that 
 troops in fictitious existence across his stage: ilnink- 
 ards, fallen women, rabbis, pious provincial Jews, 
 sophisticated new-worldlings, defenders of the old, 
 pioneers ot the new. In these plays, as in the longer, 
 it may be said that Asch, generally speaking, is 
 either too intent upon symbolism for its own sake 
 or too easily drawn into the methods of melodrama. 
 On the one hand his idealism is apt to be translated 
 into material too tenuous for effective production; 
 on the other, his equally powerful sense of the real 
 finds expression in an insistence upon theatrical
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 375 
 
 externals. Yet such a one-act production as The 
 Sinner^ which deals with the refusal of a Jewish 
 grave to receive the corpse of a man who has married 
 out of the fold, is developed not only with impartial 
 outlook, but with a certain successful projection of 
 the uncanny situation. The effect of the play is 
 that of a blind power; one is conscious of strength 
 even where one is puzzled as to definite significance. 
 The religious may interpret it as orthodox, the ad- 
 vanced may see in it even a certain sympathy for 
 the mysterious figure of the woman who has been 
 the companion of his ungodly life; none can deny 
 it, however, a suggestion of an ineluctable fate. 
 I have hinted that such pieces as Night are too 
 tenuous for production, yet this should not di- 
 minish its worth as a bit of highly original and 
 effective impressionistic writing; the newer methods 
 of production, moreover, will do much to destroy 
 former talk about what is stageworthy and what is 
 not, and this daring interlude in which a prosti- 
 tute's face for a moment lights up with the pallid 
 holiness of the Madonna's image may appeal to 
 lovers of the drama that is imagination as well as 
 physical movement. 
 
 The God of Vengeance, upon which Asch's reputa- 
 tion as a dramatist may be said to rest, was first 
 produced outside of its local habitat by the famous 
 Reinhardt, at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, in 
 1910. The powerful play quickly made its way to 
 the chief stages of Europe. It has been played all 
 over Germany, Austria, Russia, Poland, Holland, 
 Norway, Sweden, and Italy; in the country last 
 named it produced a marked impression during the 
 entire season of 191 6.
 
 376 THE DRAMA OF TR.ANSITIO\ 
 
 Its plot, simply narrated, is that of a father who, 
 having accumulated a modest sum through the 
 brothel that he runs in his cellar, aspires to redeem 
 himself ami his wife in the eyes of God with his 
 daughter Rifkelc. The money that sinks its roots 
 in impurity shall flourish into a tree of sanctity. 
 Yekel presents a Holy Scroll to the synagogue; he 
 consorts with the holy men; he admonishes his wife 
 to keep a sharp eye uyKm their only child. Their 
 vigilance proves of no avail; Ritlccle, fascinated by 
 the life that her mother has led and that her father 
 fosters in others, is led astray through the offices 
 of one of the inmates. With his hope of redemption 
 thus shattered, Yckcl goes mad with rage and 
 thrusts his daughter down into the brothel with the 
 rest of the prostitutes. Not pleasant stufl^ this, nor 
 very close to the life that most of us know. Yet 
 there is a certain beauty here — a rugged beauty that 
 was born in no literary hot-house and much dimmed, 
 perhaps, by the repellent human beings who are its 
 carriers, — but beauty none the less. 
 
 It is interesting to consider Asch's T/:e God of 
 Vengeayue in connection with a play like Mrs. 
 Warrens Profession. To be sure, there is no tech- 
 nical resemblance between the two dramas; nor, 
 despite an external similarity in backgrounds, is 
 there any real identity of purpose. Asch's piece 
 glows with his characteristic poetic realism and re- 
 counts an individual drama not without symbolic 
 power. Yet the essentially moral earnestness of 
 both Shaw and Asch brings the circles of their 
 themes in a sense tangent to each other. And I use 
 the word moral in its broadest, not its narrowest, 
 sense.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 377 
 
 Mrs. Warren, for example, cherishes no delusions 
 about her dubious profession, — neither the senti- 
 mentality that has long swathed so much talk about 
 the prostitute nor the delusion of the conservative, 
 conventional horror before an institution for the 
 perpetuation of which — in its uglier phases — con- 
 servatism and conventionaHsm are much to blame. 
 If Yekel and his wife, in Asch's play, are not so 
 enlightened as Mrs. Warren upon the traffic off 
 which they live, they are in their own crude way 
 equally sincere in considering it a business quite as 
 legitimate as any other. With the same incon- 
 sistency that Hindel displays in imploring heaven 
 for aid in achieving her nefarious aims, after which 
 she promises to be a model wife and mother, Mrs. 
 Warren, at the end of Shaw's play, swears by heaven 
 that henceforth she will lead a life of evil. 
 
 In the case of Yekel and his wife, and in Mrs. 
 Warren's, another touch of inconsistency is added 
 by the agreement that theirs is not the best of pro- 
 fessions. Crofts, too, in the English play, discusses 
 the business with all the matter-of-factness of Asch's 
 pimp, Shloyme, yet considers himself a gentleman 
 none the less. 
 
 Rifkele, the seduced daughter, is no Vivie. Asch's 
 simple-minded Jewish girl is a victim, not a rebel. 
 Yet in either case the daughter is lost to the parents, 
 and the power of money cannot win back the child. 
 And just as Yekel, in his impotence, blasphemously 
 thrusts the Holy Scroll from his household, so does 
 Mrs. Warren, defeated in her attempt to regain her 
 daughter, cry, "From this time forth, so help me 
 heaven in my last hour, I'll do wrong, and nothing 
 but wrong. And I'll prosper on it." Perhaps, too,
 
 378 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 the retribution which in each case is visited upon 
 the parent arises from the fact that both Mrs. 
 Warren and Yekel have, in Vivie's accusatory, 
 Ibsen-like words, "lived one life and believed in 
 another." 
 
 The God of Vengeance^ despite conclusions too 
 easily drawn, is not a sex play; I mention this, not 
 because I believe any odium attaches to sex in 
 literature, but out of a desire to make a distinction 
 between values. When Asch wishes to deal with 
 sex he is not afraid to handle the subject with all 
 the poetry and power at his command. Such a play 
 as his JephthaKs Daughter treats the elemental urge 
 of sex with daring, beauty, and Dionysiac abandon, 
 while a golden symbolism wafts through the piece. 
 Again, in his novel Mottke the Vagabond^ he has 
 given us scenes from the underworld of Warsaw 
 that are hard to parallel for truth to detail. The 
 God of Vengeajice is no mere brothel-drama, but is 
 instinct with a connotation of genuine artistic 
 beauty and ethical verity. Nor is it a drama with 
 a moral purpose (employing the word now in its 
 narrow sense), as Mr. Sicncken interpreted it in 
 one of the few intelligent criticisms that greeted its 
 appearance in English.' 
 
 When he came to the United States some seven 
 years ago, he expressed, in an interview, a desire 
 to eliminate from the Jewish theatre the commer- 
 cial atmosphere that was its bane. "One way to 
 do this," he suggested, "is to introduce into the 
 representations of our modern life, and ultimately 
 
 • Mr. Mencken was the first, among English critics, to recognize Asch's gifts 
 as a novelist. His critique of this play as a moralistic tract may be traced to the 
 intensely religious atmosphere upon which much of the force of the issue depends. 
 Asch is an independent mind, least likely of all his confreres to preach morality 
 either upon the stage or upon the printed page. He is, as his symbolic pieces show, 
 eager to reveal beauty, but never to debase his medium.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 379 
 
 Into the life itself, our beautiful Hebrew traditions. 
 A great many of them are pagan — I confess — but 
 beautiful nevertheless, and contributory to a fine 
 culture." That phrase, "pagan — I confess — but 
 beautiful nevertheless," is an excellent commentary 
 upon this artist when he is at his best. None of 
 his plays, however, has had such an influence upon 
 the Jewish drama, which for the most part plods 
 along the road of mediocrity, quite impervious to 
 the labors of the better spirits. The plain truth is 
 that in the United States most cultured Jews seek 
 the Gentile drama, and the average audience for 
 the Yiddish product is — average. 
 
 DAVID PINSKI 
 
 Mr. Pinski stands well in the forefront of his 
 people's prose artists and dramatists. Hostile tac- 
 tics of the East Side press and the cliques that 
 control it long kept his name from achieving the 
 fame that was its due, yet there is in his work a 
 som.ething finer that limits his appeal to a small 
 circle — an aristocracy of attitude that is the full 
 flower rather than the inconsistent antithesis of his 
 democratic, universal aspirations. Something of 
 this there is in the writings of Perez, who was, with 
 his characteristic perspicacity, the first to discern 
 the natural gifts in the young man. 
 
 To the literature of the Jews Pinski is known, not 
 only as dramatist, but as the discoverer of the 
 Jewish proletariat in fiction. Yet, paradoxically 
 enough, the very people whom he so discovered has 
 yet really to discover him, and while third- and 
 fourth-rate dramas weigh down the boards of the
 
 380 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Yiddish theatre, it is left for Europe, and latterly, 
 non-Jewish America, to appreciate at their proper 
 value dramas which have, in some cases, been before 
 the Yiddish public for years. This is all the less 
 excusable on the part of Yiddish critics, in that 
 Pinski has been a resident of New York since 1899, 
 and has, with the exception of Isaac Shcftel^ written 
 his best works in that city. Yet in all the years he 
 has lived in New York he has not secured a regular 
 Yiddish publisher. It would seem, once more, that 
 a dramatic prophet is not without honor save in 
 his own land. This, however, should not give the 
 impression that Pinski is unknown to the Jewish 
 reader. Far from it. His stories are widely read by 
 an ever-increasing number, both for their intimate 
 and artistic pictures of working-class life in Europe 
 and their skillful, melodious use of the Yiddish 
 tongue, which we shall later see has been moulded 
 by the author into a thing of beauty that at its 
 best rivals the harmonious language of a Yeats, a 
 Maeterlinck, or a Lord Dunsany. His plays, too, 
 are known among the more discerning. But it has 
 been left, after all, for America really to discover 
 David Pinski. 
 
 Born on April 5, 1872, in the government of 
 Mohilev, Russia, of pious parents, he was early des- 
 tined for the career of rabbi. At the age of seven 
 he began the study of the Talmud, and in a few 
 years became widely known as a learned Talmudist. 
 At the age of ten he rebelled against the narrow in- 
 tensity of his training and first felt his inspiration to 
 become a writer. This ambition had its initial glow- 
 ing success the next year when, in his grandmother's 
 home, before an audience of some twenty persons
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 381 
 
 who had paid admission, there was given a piece 
 which he himself cannot at present recall except 
 that it brought much laughter and tears to the eyes 
 of the spectators — a recipe that still holds good for 
 success on the stages of more than one country. 
 This was his only attempt at drama until 1899, the 
 year of his one-act Yisurim {Agonies) and the three- 
 act Isaac Shejtel. 
 
 When he reached the age of thirteen his family 
 moved to Moscow, where his secular education be- 
 gan, but this was soon put a stop to by restrictions 
 against the Jews. The year 1892 finds him in Vi- 
 enna, this time preparing for the medical profession, 
 but the expulsion of his parents from Moscow brought 
 him back to Russia, where, in Warsaw — the Mecca 
 of Jewish literary talent — he took to writing the 
 stories that soon made him known. At first he 
 wrote in Hebrew and in Russian, but as early as his 
 seventeenth year he saw that if he was to help his 
 people, he must use their tongue, and he gave him- 
 self definitely over to Yiddish. In 1893 with the 
 story. The New Madman (known now as In a Mad- 
 house')^ he made his successful debut as author. Not 
 long after, together with Isaac Loeb Perez he 
 founded the so-called Holiday Pages, a publica- 
 tion which owed its name and its method of pub- 
 lication to a peculiar Russian law against regular 
 periodicals in Yiddish. To get around the censor, 
 the enterprising partners took advantage of the 
 fact that Jewish holidays came with comfortable 
 frequency. Perez was the guiding spirit of the 
 publication, while Pinski was its organizing power; 
 here again his modesty kept him from having his 
 name appear upon the editorial page, so that his
 
 382 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 association with Perez is little known. The year 
 1896 found Pinski in Berlin, where he made a study 
 of German literature and philosophy and established 
 friendships with the leading literary and dramatic 
 spirits of the country. Here, too, he conceived his 
 first important drama, Isaac Sheftel, under the 
 influence of the Naturalists. By this time his 
 name had begun to be known among the Jews of 
 New York, and he was offered a place upon the 
 editorial staff of a weekly there. He was prompted 
 to accept by the fact that New York had an es- 
 tablished Yiddish theatre, and that his play might 
 be produced. Judge of his surprise when he learned 
 upon arriving that the Yiddish managers would not 
 even consent to read his phiy, because — it was 
 written in three acts, and they demanded four. 
 From that day to this Pinski has gone his own way, 
 and it is significant that more than one of the plays 
 that soon followed was written in three acts, and 
 even one. 
 
 Once, in 1903, Pinski was even upon the verge of 
 giving up his literary career. He entered Columbia 
 College, prepared to receive the Ph.D. degree after 
 a year's study and to teach German literature and 
 drama. But his natural gifts proved too strong for 
 him. On May 20, 1904, when he was supposed to 
 go to the doctor's examination, he sat down and 
 instead put the finishing touches to The Zwie 
 Family — about which for many months there raged 
 a discussion that has not yet quite subsided. Only 
 two years later he was to write The Treasure. From 
 that day to this he has been steadily engaged upon 
 his literary work, singularly unmindful of all in- 
 fluences not directly concerned with the highest
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 383 
 
 that there is in him. "My work has become," he 
 said to me some years ago in his Bronx home, 
 "almost a personal rite. I have forgotten what the 
 voice of the critics sounds like. And as for my life 
 itself, it is, and has been, very uneventful. Its 
 greatest joy has always been my wife. Its greatest 
 sorrow, the loss of my seven-year-old son in the 
 recent epidemic of infantile paralysis." 
 
 Pinski's first significant play, written at the age 
 of twenty-seven, is a natural development from his 
 early tales. It is not, however, as might have been 
 feared, both from the age at which he wrote it and 
 the tales from which it evolved, spoiled by any 
 propagandistic aims; indeed, it is a psychological 
 study rather than a plea for a class. More, despite 
 its Jewish background and its poverty-stricken 
 milieu, its leading character, the factory- worker, 
 Isaac Sheftel, is a symbol who rises above class or 
 race into the universal. Sheftel's tragedy is the 
 tragedy of us all — the tragedy not only of the un- 
 fulfilled, but of the unfulfillable. This worker, 
 whose vision sees so much farther than his meagre 
 mental equipment can carry him, has invented one 
 or two simple machines, and has sold them for a 
 mere pittance to his employer. Suddenly he is 
 seized with a new idea that promises a masterpiece 
 of invention; he cannot sleep, he cannot eat; he 
 even takes off three days from the shop, despite 
 his dire poverty, so that he may finish the work. 
 His wife nags him for his selfishness; his neighbors 
 ridicule him; his employer sends to inform him that 
 if he does not return to work that very day, his place 
 will be filled by another. In stubborn silence 
 Sheftel works away at his contrivance, bafiled and
 
 384 THE DRAMA OF TILANSl TION 
 
 beaten. His inborn creative intelligence is balked 
 by his mental and technical limitations, and fairly 
 crazed by his wife's unceasing nagging and the 
 wretched surroundings of his cellar home, he smashes 
 the entire device and returns to work without 
 having eaten a bite. His shopmatcs receive him 
 with taunts, and soon begin to ply him with liquor 
 to revive his sunken spirits. In this condition he 
 answers his employer's recriminations by smashing 
 the machines which had been previously bought 
 from him. He rushes forth from the factory, evades 
 pursuit, and for the rest of the day wanders madly 
 through the woods. That night he returns to his 
 home, exhausted; the better part of him, his beloved 
 inventions, is already destroyed; no one under- 
 stands him; he cannot express his own visions. 
 Thus dejected, and half unwittingly, he commits 
 suicide by drinking rat poison. Even his death is 
 ignominious. 
 
 The playwright has been commended for his 
 handling of crowds upon the stage. Here, in his 
 first large effort, is afforded an excellent instance of 
 this particular skill. The second act, which shows 
 the interior of the factory, is admirable not only for 
 its group-technique; the whole life of the worker — 
 his ready humor, his inappreciation of his position, 
 his incapacity to understand the Sheftel type, is 
 drawn in rapid, vivqd strokes that forecast the 
 notable fourth act of The Treasure. 
 
 From the man Sheftel, Pinski, in The Zzvie Fami/vy^ 
 (1904), went to the race. Here are represented, 
 under one roof, three generations of the Zwie family 
 — not as in Milestones^ for instance, by means of 
 
 » In the English version this is called The Last Jew.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 385 
 
 acts with the years between them, but all simul- 
 taneously gathered in one home, and symbolic of 
 the three generations of present-day Jews. Old 
 Reb Maishe, the city preacher, is the type of re- 
 ligious idealist that is fast disappearing; his son 
 Yankel mouths the words of God, to be sure, but 
 his mind is upon the accumulation of money. Yan- 
 kel's sons, on the other hand, flame with an idealism 
 no less than that of their grandfather; but it is an 
 ideahsm that looks away from the old city preacher's 
 goal. The one is a Zionist, the other a Socialist, 
 the third believes in assimilation. And so, under 
 one roof, five worlds. Suddenly occurs a massacre, 
 and each world reacts in its own peculiar way to 
 the stress of the horrible day. The old grandfather, 
 intent upon saving the holy scroll of the synagogue 
 from desecration, wanders through the city in vain 
 to find defenders. His own family deserts him, each 
 going his own way. The leaders of the community, 
 more intent upon business than religion, likewise 
 turn a deaf ear to his entreaties. Baffled, old Zwie 
 makes his way, alone, to the synagogue, where he 
 is soon to die by a stone hurled through the window. 
 Too late comes aid from his grandsons; he is dead, 
 and the old order with him. But a new one shall 
 arise, and the torch-bearer will come from the third 
 generation. 
 
 Obviously such a play (erroneously interpreted 
 by a leading Russian-Jewish critic as a mere pogrom- 
 drama) can have its chief interest only for the race 
 whose trials it symbolizes. It represents perhaps the 
 author's most intense outpouring upon the question 
 of his people; the tragic figure of the protagonist is 
 a second Moses, as it were, whose following aban- 
 
 25
 
 386 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 dons him at the crucial moment. The intense 
 pessimism of the early scenes gives way, at the very 
 end, to a ray of hope. 
 
 Following closely upon this play, in the same year, 
 came the one-act Gluecksvergessefie, known in Eng- 
 lish as Forgotten Souls. Here, as in the majority of 
 Pinski's works, the Jewish background does not 
 tend in the slightest to smother the universal note 
 which must sound beneath all work that is truly 
 great. Rarely has the pathos o\ selt-sacrifice re- 
 ceived treatment at once so simple, so ironic, so 
 tenderly human. Fanny's self-effacement so that 
 her sister may be happy is a trait that makes her 
 kin with all who have suffered for another's joy. 
 The jubilant opening of the act and its steady pro- 
 gression to the passionate, pathetic close, is accom- 
 plished with a crescendo that is one of the author's 
 distinctive technical traits. It was already evident 
 in the second act of Isaac Sheftel; it forms one of the 
 chief charms of Pinski's highly original war piece. 
 Little Heroes^ one of the miniature masterpieces that 
 grew out of the savage conflict. 
 
 The year 1906 marks a distinct step forward in 
 the playwright's career. It is the year of The 
 Eternal Jew^ of The Treasure^ and of Jacob the 
 Blacksmith. From the crushing sense of life's 
 sterner realities he had by this time distilled a vision, 
 a sense of color and mov^ement which, added to the 
 intense power of his earlier style, soon resulted in a 
 series of plays which for sheer inner beautv, chastity 
 of art, and pregnancy of imagination, will long re- 
 main unsurpassed, even as they are now unap- 
 proached, in the history of Jewish drama. To- 
 gether with all this came a new rhythmic prose that
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 387 
 
 lends itself most naturally to the expression of 
 Jewish thought. Pinski has made of the long- 
 despised "jargon" a thing of flexible beauty, of 
 infinite tenderness or crushing power, a stream of 
 melody that only rarely is disturbed by an occa- 
 sional construction that is too German for the 
 idiom. Without the suggestion of preciosity, he 
 chooses even his vowels with a poet's ear, and his 
 later plays demand to be read aloud, if even to one's 
 self, for their fullest efi^ect. 
 
 The Eternal Jew^ besides being the first of a series 
 of plays founded upon the Messianic idea, is also 
 the first of a tetralogy, each act complete in itself, 
 based upon the fascinating subject that has inspired 
 so many writers before him. Here, for the first 
 time, appears the sense of the color and glamor of 
 history which is to come to full fruition five years 
 later in The Dumb Messiah. Here, too, makes its 
 initial appearance another characteristic, later to 
 receive greater exemplification in such a piece as 
 Mary Magdalene, or the beautiful series of one-act 
 plays, five in all, written around the wives of King 
 David, and thus constituting, as it were a Biblical 
 Anatol. Pinski, in drawing upon the Bible or upon 
 Talmudic legend for inspiration, uses his source 
 merely as a suggestion. He seizes upon his per- 
 sonages, studies them, penetrates their inner life, 
 and evolves the details of the action in strict con- 
 sistency with the character of the actors; his plays 
 not only fill out the mere suggestions of his source, 
 but interpret them as well. This is well shown in 
 The Eternal Jew, where the author has quoted his 
 source in the original Hebrew, translated it into
 
 388 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Yiddish, and embodied it in a dramatic form that 
 glorifies the dull iteration of the original. 
 
 Perhaps it is more than mere coincidence that 
 two of the leading plays produced by the Yiddish 
 theatre are on the subject of money. Gordin's 
 Gody Man, and Devil is a thesis-play, like many 
 others that Gordin wrote, differing from them, how- 
 ever, in the success which attended the author in 
 his remaking of Goethe's Faust into an original 
 drama of undeniable potency. But Gordin, a born 
 man of the theatre, lacked the refinements of higher 
 art. He did not possess the keen psychological in- 
 sight which is one of Pinski's chief gifts as dram- 
 atist; so that in many respects the difference be- 
 tween Gody Man, and Devil and The Treasure rep- 
 resents the great stride taken by Jewish drama in 
 the few years that separated the writing of the two 
 plays. The earlier one is the acme of Gordin's 
 theatrical talents; together with his Mirele Efros 
 it represents the high-water mark of the third dis- 
 tinct epoch in the evolution of the Yiddish drama. 
 An intense action, determining, rather than deter- 
 mined by, the characters; a ready flow of speech; a 
 certain brutal strength; an obvious thesis worked 
 out with suspense, crisis, and ultimate catastrophe. 
 
 In Pinski's The Treasure (produced in 1 910 at the 
 Deutsches Theater, Berlin, by Max Reinhardt) one 
 notices immediately the touch of a master hand. 
 No longer do the personages make the ready slaves 
 of the dramatist; they are the germ of the action, 
 which rises most naturally from their own natures. 
 Tille, despite the fact that her father is a grave- 
 digger, and that the cemetery is a daily reminder of 
 the vanity of earthly pomp and possession, yearns 
 for the power that beauty and wealth may wield.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 389 
 
 Not even the Ninth of Ab, one of the most solemn 
 days in the holy calendar, can take her mind from 
 the contemplation of handsome young men and 
 brilliant matches. And what if the handsome 
 young men don't look her way, and the brilliant 
 matches do not appear? Can she not imagine them? 
 Is she not, at least, queen of that realm ? And what 
 shall prevent her from imagining, for instance, 
 that she is Rothschild's bride? In the midst of 
 such a mood in comes her half-witted brother Yudke, 
 who has just buried his dog and has found in the 
 earth thus dug up a handful of shining gold pieces. 
 Seized by one of his numerous whims, he places them 
 all in Tille's hands. Following, as they do, fast 
 upon her golden visions, what more natural than 
 that she should seize upon her father's suggestion 
 that probably there is a treasure buried where 
 Yudke has interred his dog? She refuses to sur- 
 render the gold pieces to her parents, jumps merrily 
 out of the house, and, regardless of the sacred char- 
 acter of the day, runs off to the city to deck herself 
 out in the finest that the department stores can 
 provide. 
 
 She returns late that evening, in a carriage, if 
 you please, leaving behind her a trail of open- 
 mouthed citizens. For she has not bothered with 
 details; since, doubtless, an enormous treasure was 
 buried near Yudke's dog, and since he would surely 
 recall just where he had interred his pet, as soon as 
 the forgetfulness which always followed his epileptic 
 attacks would pass over, she has spread the report 
 that her folks had upon their hands a great fortune 
 in gold pieces, yielded out of the bowels of the 
 graveyard. 
 
 At once the entire community comes fawning at
 
 390 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 her heels. The leading matchmaker calls to arrange 
 a splendid union, the humble grave-digger begins to 
 receive more visitors in a single day than had ever 
 before graced his dwelling in his entire life. All 
 manner of complications begin to arise, prompted 
 by the jealousy and covetousness of his neighbors, 
 until it is impossible to manage the pretense any 
 longer. But now that the finding of the treasure is 
 denied, who will believe the denial? And when 
 Tille's poor father tells the tale exactly as it stands: 
 that his son found a few gold pieces where he buried 
 a dog, and that he cannot now recall where the 
 place was, the report spreads like wildfire, and the 
 excited community, believing that there is a fortune 
 where the dog lies buried, begins to ransack the 
 cemetery and dig it up from top to bottom in the 
 search for the gold. The whole town turns out; in the 
 anxious search, graves are desecrated. And when 
 finally Yudke remembers where he burietl his dog 
 (in the grave of a holy man!), it turns out that there 
 is no treasure at all, and the crowd disperses. It is 
 the dead of night, and the souls of the departed, 
 literally awakened by the search for the treasure, 
 discuss the eventful day in mystic epilogue to the 
 "bitter comedy." . . . "Money, money, money," 
 sound the mysterious voices of the shades. "And 
 yet it must lead to something. Surely there must 
 be a goal. . . . Only God knows that. . . . 
 And man must learn what it is. That will be his 
 greatest victory. Man's greatest victory." 
 
 Several OF THE Dead: Man's. . . . 
 Others: The living one's. . . . And we? (// 
 ghostly breathing of laughter and sighing.) 
 
 The First: Man's greatest victory. . . .
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 391 
 
 And the curtain descends upon the enigma.^ 
 
 It is no small tribute to the author that the play 
 rises most naturally into the mystic close. Money, 
 the dead seem to whisper to us, and the possessions 
 which it represents, have thus far mastered hu- 
 manity; but some day humanity will master it. 
 The meanness in man that pursuit of wealth has 
 called forth will then vanish in the proper appraisal 
 of that wealth as a means, not as an end; money 
 may be, until that day, at the root of all evil, but 
 the struggle after money is not a search for evil; the 
 evil is incident to the search. And man's greatest 
 victory will be the mastery of his possessions. 
 
 The opening act is an admirable example of ex- 
 pository art; the second and third acts, in the humor 
 and satire that spring spontaneously from the germ 
 of the action, reach a level rarely attained in Amer- 
 ican or continental drama. Professor Baker has 
 already signaled out the closing act as being re- 
 markable for its handling of the crowd in the cem- 
 etery. The entire play, so significant in its literal 
 action, rises to universality in the unobtrusive, yet 
 inescapable symbolism of its inner development. 
 Symbolism is almost as natural as speech to the 
 
 ' Since it was Ludwig Lewisohn's English version of The Treasure that brought 
 Pinski to the Gentile reader of this country, and thus elicited from Professor 
 G. P. Baker, of Harvard, a fulsome measure of praise that further established 
 the Yiddish dramatist in the favor of a discriminating few, I give here a short 
 article written by Baker for the Boston Evening Transcript of March 31, 1917, 
 to companion the discussion of Pinski written by me for the same issue. The 
 present section on Pinski is a revision of that discussion. Said Professor Baker: 
 
 "When The Treasure came from the publisher, the name of its author, David 
 Pinski, meant nothing to me. I opened the book, thinking wearily, 'One more 
 play to read,' but I read it with such growing enthusiasm that I have come back 
 to it again and again. The Treasure is a comedy — or is it a tragedy? In any case 
 it rests on intimate knowledge of life among the poor Jews in a Slavic city. The 
 observer is sympathetic, yet not limited in his judgments by their prejudices and 
 conventions. It is a play which oddly combines intense realism of details with 
 broad, imaginative sweep. Though there is an admitted general dramatic prin- 
 ciple that to mingle the realism of every day with the supernatural is dangerous 
 except in the hands of a master, so perfectly does Mr. Pinski use the two in The 
 Treasure that I more than suspect he is a master. 
 
 "When I look about in English literature for a parallel to this play, I think of
 
 392 THE DR.\MA OF TR^AXSITION 
 
 Jew, yet too often trammeled by an overinsistence 
 upon detail that ends by becoming too monotonously 
 obvious or, on the other hand, involved and even 
 far-fetched. Thus Sholom Asch's Jephthahs" Daugh- 
 ter falls into the first category, while more than 
 one piece by Perez Hirschbein inclines to the other 
 extreme. Pinski was saved from this in The Treasure 
 and other pieces by his thorough immersion in 
 the theme and his freedom from the trammels of 
 conventionalism. More than one will object that 
 there is a mite too much of talk in the play, as, 
 indeed in the drama built around the Zwie family; 
 the criticism applies more to the latter than to 
 The Treasure, however. In the Zwie play the 
 protagonist's exhortations are largely repetitions 
 and delay the action not merely in the conventional, 
 technical sense, but in the deeper and more legitimate 
 sense of emotional unfolding. 
 
 Jacob the Blacksmith is hardly worthy of the two 
 pieces that preceded it in the same year. It pos- 
 sesses too many of the qualities that insure rapid 
 success upon the Yiddish stage — a success which it 
 has had and still continues to enjoy. It looks like 
 a "pot-boiler" — revealing, no doubt, the hand that 
 
 Ben Jonson's Volpone. There is in both plays something of the same mocking 
 laughter, the same bitter recoEnition of the humor there may be in sordidneai 
 and horror. Both are largely and finely conceived. If Tht Treasure lacks the poetic 
 expression of Volpone, it has finer truth of characterization. 
 
 "This grim comedy of the effect upon a community of some money, found in 
 the Jewish Cemetery by the demented Yudke, is certainly one of the most remark- 
 able plays written in the past ten years. Successful on the Yiddish stage of New 
 York, produced by Reinhardt in his Deutsches Theater in Berhn, because he rec- 
 ognized its more than local significance, it has not been seen on our stage even a 
 year after its appearance in an admirable English translation. It is easy to see 
 why amateurs should hesitate to stage it, for it requires a large cast and very care- 
 ful producing. Its difficulties, however, are of the sort to stimulate a producer of 
 the best type to his utmost endeavor. Sympathetically and thoughtfully staged, 
 it would certainly produce a strong impression. Produced according to formula. 
 as are so many of our plays on the New York stage, it would be so twisted and 
 contorted as to lose most of its chief values. Is it not a great pity that our present 
 conditions do not even permit our public to judge for themselves a play as thought- 
 ful, as free from conventionality, yet as essentially dramatic and as individual 
 as The Treasure?" The play was later produced by the Theatre Guild.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 393 
 
 wrote it, but none the less reflecting little credit 
 upon the author. Its main theme, that of a way- 
 ward husband regenerated by the confidence of his 
 wife, is important to us mainly as indicating the 
 entrance of the dramatist into the field of the drama 
 based upon sex-problems. The characterization is 
 not clear, and despite the strong act in the black- 
 smith's shop, it is one of the least convincing of the 
 writer's published works. 
 
 With the poetic Gabri and the Women^ however, 
 written two years later, Pinski is more successful. 
 The drama is not particularly Jewish in tone (and 
 after all, even for Jewish dramatists, the essential 
 thing is to write first of all a good play) and may be 
 compared, in theme, with such a play as Candida or 
 The Lady from the Sea. Only here it is the man that 
 wavers between two women, going back to his wife 
 after having received from her his freedom of choice. 
 The piece is distinguished by the exquisite prose 
 that embellishes so much of Pinski's work; one 
 trembles to think what it would become in the 
 mouths of the ranters that constitute, in altogether 
 too great number, the Yiddish world of actors. 
 Here, again, especially in the second act, the del- 
 icate symbolism heightens the significance of the 
 action. The drama is further distinguished from 
 the European plays just mentioned in the fact that 
 The Little One, who has for a time won Gabri's 
 love away from his wife, in turn transfers her love 
 to one of Gabri's sons, even as he has transferred 
 his from his wife to her. With Banners of Victory^ 
 a one-act play of the same year, dealing with a 
 similar theme, is not among Pinski's happiest crea- 
 tions; it seems forced and not sufficiently char- 
 acterized.
 
 394 THE DRAMA OF TRANSI'IION 
 
 Two years later, 1910, came Mary Magdalene, the 
 name of which calls to mind, among the moderns, 
 Maeterlinck and Paul Heyse. Yet Pinski's concep- 
 tion of the historical figure has little in common 
 with either, and is in some respects perhaps superior 
 to both. Maeterlinck's play has plenty of the 
 poetical, of the spectacular; there is little or no 
 psychology; his Mary, moreover, is another Monna 
 Vanna, with time and circumstance altered; indeed, 
 it is perhaps the very element in Heyse's play which 
 placed Mary in a forced choice between her carnal 
 and her spiritual love that so attracted Maeterlinck 
 to the play from which he borrowed the two situa- 
 tions which afterwards occasioned the quarrel be- 
 tween him and Heyse, who was himself no small 
 borrower from early Italy and Provence. Such 
 choices were dear to Maeterlinck's heart, and had 
 already occurred in more than one of his plays. 
 Heyse's play, more involved than the Belgian's, is 
 more essentially dramatic. Neither attempts to 
 depict the process of Mary's conversion; it is taken 
 for granted and exploited for the chief situation, 
 which is in both plays the same — that of Mary's 
 choice between her lover and the Nazarene. And 
 in each case, of course, Mary prefers to let the 
 Nazarene die rather than save him at the cost of 
 violating his own teachings and the faith he has 
 inspired within her. 
 
 It is characteristic of Pinski's dramatic method 
 that in his treatment of the theme he has taken 
 Mary at the moment the conversion begins and has 
 chosen to make a searching analysis of her soul. 
 The play is at once a drama of sex, with all the 
 freedom of treatment that the subject connotes, and
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 395 
 
 a drama, so to speak, of Biblical reconstruction, thus 
 uniting two of the dramatist's manners. But, like 
 all of his historic or legendary plays, this one pos- 
 sesses a most human and contemporary applica- 
 tion. He conceives Mary as a woman who has 
 erected within her a Venus-religion, a faith in the 
 all-compelling power of her own beauty. Her 
 meeting with the Nazarene, reported by herself, 
 has caused her faith to waver, but before surrender- 
 ing she determines to make a desperate resistance, 
 to try her charms upon the holiest men — upon 
 Alexander, one of the leaders of the zealots and 
 hater of women; upon Amram, most pious of the 
 Jews, Having conquered them, she proceeds to a 
 second assault upon the Nazarene (again reported 
 upon the scene as having happened) and this time 
 her Venus-faith is shattered. The dramatist has 
 dissected the woman's soul; here is no spectacle, no 
 melodramatic choice between the two sharp horns of 
 a dilemma; the drama is an inner struggle. Neither 
 Maeterlinck nor Heyse has attempted so minute a 
 characterization. In neither of their plays is there 
 the humor by which Pinski has reheved the tense 
 poetry of his Mary's struggle. Pinski's Mary, 
 moreover, stands out in all the bolder relief for the 
 figure of the courtesan, Isabel, who pokes fun at 
 her companion to the last, and robs her of her jewels 
 in the final act of the three. The closing act, by 
 the way, is another splendid example of the play- 
 wright's crescendo eflfects; opening upon a scene in 
 which several suitors of Mary engage in a drunken 
 brawl, its gradual ascent to Mary's noble renuncia- 
 tion is accomplished with a skill that achieves all 
 the simplicity of the inevitable. For the rest the
 
 396 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 dramatist has lavished upon the play some of his 
 most poetic passages, which are the despair of the 
 translator. And in one respect, at least, there is 
 no doubt that he has surpassed both Heyse and 
 Maeterlinck; the fascination of his Mary is shown in 
 the very words she utters; in the uncanny cleverness 
 with which she outwits the arguments of the holy 
 Amram and baffles all but the Nazarene, whose silent 
 goodness at last conquers her loquacious sin. In the 
 moral of the play (to risk a word that connotes a 
 pulpit-thumping which is furthest from Pinski's 
 methods) as in the treatment of the subject, he differs 
 from both the German and the Belgian. The plays 
 of the latter emphasize Mary's conversion as a divine 
 effect of Jesus' influence. Pinski's play, while show- 
 ing this in all the soul-struggle of its consummation, 
 adds to it the note of toleration — "Judge not, that ye 
 be not judged" — which was the very element in 
 Jesus' human message that so stirred Niary back to 
 the life of a good woman. For the very men in the 
 Pinski drama who have most condemned Eleazer, 
 the leader of the zealots, for his slavery to Mary's 
 charms, are themselves ready victims to it. Mary 
 Magdalene belongs at the side of The Treasure and 
 The Zwie Family. 
 
 In the following year (191 1) came The Dumb 
 Messiah^ another in the historic series, which, in 
 the list of the playwright's chief works, must be 
 placed together with the three just mentioned. 
 The play, suggested by the expulsion of the Jews 
 from France in 1306 by Philip IV, and their return 
 nine years later under Louis X, is built upon an 
 original plot and placed in the mythical land of 
 Illyria. The leader of the Jews here has had his
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 397 
 
 tongue cut out for his utterances against the harsh 
 King Philip, and together with the whole Jewish 
 population is expelled from the country. The tongue- 
 less Menahem has beheld a vision in his prison cell, 
 and has felt that he has been called as the Messiah 
 of his people, to lead them back to Zion. His daugh- 
 ter, Rachel, shall be his tongue; and with her great 
 eloquence inspired by her faith in her father, she 
 so moves the suffering multitude that they com- 
 mence the long and weary journey to the Holy Land. 
 While they are on the way messengers overtake 
 them, telling them that the old king has died, and 
 that the new monarch, Louis, calls back the Jews. 
 Menahem and Rachel are overwhelmed; their 
 dream of Zion threatens to evaporate. Hillel, who 
 has fallen in love with Rachel, even attempts to 
 persuade her and her father back to Illyria, but 
 Menahem holds tenaciously to his fanatic Mes- 
 sianic belief and still controls his daughter, his other 
 self, his voice. The faith in his belief is strengthened 
 when Leah, the mad-woman, suddenly hails him as 
 the Messiah amid the awe-struck wonder of the 
 crowd. Rachel, who has begun to doubt, is thus 
 also reenforced in her faith. Suddenly, in the midst 
 of an impassioned speech in which Rachel is winning 
 the wavering Jews back to the Zionist dream, Leah 
 begins to call the beggar the Messiah, too, and even 
 Blanche, the prostitute. The charm is broken; the 
 people turn from wonder to derisive laughter; 
 Rachel loses belief in her father's mission, while he, 
 choking with rage in his powerlessness to speak, 
 rushes upon a rock and jumps into the sea. Leah, 
 in her crazy dance, shrieks "The Messiah! The 
 Messiah!"
 
 398 THE DRAMA OF 1 RANSITION 
 
 Here again Pinski has triumphed over the tech- 
 nical difficulties of the crowds which he is fond of 
 assembling; here again, athwart a background of 
 mediaeval persecution and a case of the rchgious 
 mania which it so often inspires, he has thrown a 
 drama that abounds in color, spectacle, striking 
 scenes, and penetrating touches. Menahem is a 
 religious Sheftel; he, too, has in his own fanatic 
 way, beheld a vision beyond his powers to com- 
 municate to those about him, and seeks his refuge 
 in death. 
 
 The Mountain Climbers (191 2) is the most purely 
 symbolic of the dramatist's work, much weakened 
 by the somewhat trivial personages and insignifi- 
 cant action which contrast too strongly with the 
 attempted grandeur ol the theme. The ascent of 
 his troupe, and their final arrival at the hotel at 
 the top, where the great inn-keeper receives them all 
 after their weary climb, is an obvious symbol of 
 life's progress — as obvious, for instance, as the 
 burning candle in Andreyev's Life of Man. With 
 the ascent of his characters, so ascends the drama- 
 tist's action, from the placid and promising opening 
 of the first act, through the varied tribulations of 
 the four couples depicted in the next two, and the 
 peaceful close, which, from the standpoint of pure 
 symbolism, is the most successful of the four. At 
 the very end of the play, the great inn-keeper, 
 whose visage is veiled by the eternal clouds of 
 the mountain-top, warms his hands at the fire 
 which has been made by the two poetic lovers 
 from the twigs of a tree on which they had 
 carved their initials in token of their great love. 
 The inn-keeper approaches the fire, after he has
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 399 
 
 closed the door of the hotel upon the last pair 
 of lovers, and, rubbing his hands over the flames, 
 exclaims, "At such a fire, I, too, may warm my- 
 self!" It is significant that Pinski looks upon life 
 as an ascent and upon love as its really vivifying 
 principle. To this year belongs also To Each Man 
 His Own Gody in which Menasseh Rivkin, a poverty- 
 stricken immigrant, overcomes the temptation to 
 deceit forced upon him by his needy dependents. 
 Losing an arm in a street-car accident that was 
 meant to produce but a profitable bruise, he refuses 
 to accept the damages that the company is only too 
 willing to pay. He regards the loss of his limb as 
 a punishment from God and his renunciation re- 
 deems him. Though there are good scenes in the 
 play, it does not rank with his best, any more than 
 does the play of the following year (1913), Better 
 Unborn. This is conceived in a spirit of intense 
 idealism, but the insistence upon harrowing detail 
 only serves to impress the contrast of the central 
 deed to the circumferential passion of nobility. 
 From the brutal murder of the little girl discovered 
 at the opening to the expiatory suicide of the mur- 
 derer at the close, the drama envelops the auditor 
 in an atmosphere of gloom. True, the play was 
 not written for the sake of the tense situations; 
 here, as always, Pinski is the psychologist, and what 
 most interests him is the struggle that begins in 
 the protagonist's mind after he has, in a moment 
 of bestial passion, committed so vile a deed and 
 then been convinced by his father that for his own 
 sake, as well as to erase the blot upon his family 
 and his race, he must pay for the girl's life with his 
 own. For persons with oversensitive nerves Better
 
 400 THE DRAMA OF TR.AXSITION 
 
 Unborn is better unseen and unread. There is a 
 Brutus-like nobility in the stern father, but the 
 regions are not lofty enough for tragedy; there is 
 something just as barbarous about expiatory suicide 
 as there is about sadistic child-murder. 
 
 We come to far better stuff in the series of five 
 one-act plays written around the wives of King 
 David; this, begun in 191;; with Bathsheba^ includes 
 Michaly Abigail, and In the 1 1 arc m^ all of 191 4, and 
 Abishag, 191 5. In his foreword to the translation of 
 The Treasure^ Ludwig Lewisohn ventured the opinion 
 that the prose of these exquisite plays is "as subtly 
 beautiful as Maeterlinck's or Yeats's; in passion 
 and reality the Jewish playwright surpasses both." 
 
 Although the plays were inspired by the Bible, 
 they are by no means ancient in action or outlook. 
 It is one of Pinski's distinguishing traits that what- 
 ever he turns his hand to — be it the proletarian 
 drama, the Messianic legend, or the theme of dom- 
 inant sex — he is, first of all, the modern psychol- 
 ogist, thoroughly alive to what might be called, 
 only in seeming paradox, the everlasting contem- 
 porary. The King David plays receive their sug- 
 gestion, and in places, their very text, from the 
 Holy Book, yet so deeply has the author penetrated 
 into his subject that his dramatic version often in- 
 terprets his source. He has not hesitated to intro- 
 duce illuminating interpolations nor to alter chrono- 
 logical sequence. And above all the figure of David 
 stands out, not as a mere reconstruction of sacred 
 history, but as a living creature, a vital personality 
 that becomes naturally a symbol of Man the Lover. 
 
 At first thought one is prompted, in seeking for 
 analogues in the modern drama, to call King David
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 401 
 
 and His PFives a Biblical Anatol. I am not at all 
 insensitive to Schnitzler's magic of mood and his 
 deep sense of man's passional transiency, and though 
 I make no pretense to establishing ultimate hier- 
 archies, I find in the succeeding scenes of the New 
 York Jew a pleasure equal to that afforded by the 
 Jew of Vienna. The significance of the Biblical 
 series is no less pregnant and human; it possesses 
 coherence and cumulative power; the plays (each 
 complete in itself) are more than links in a chain; 
 they are the rungs of a ladder, while Schnitzler's 
 episodes lack this rising continuity. Pinski's dramas 
 probe into the hidden recesses of a man's soul, 
 not — as do Schnitzler's episodes — into an interest- 
 ing corner of it. Where the Austrian dramatist 
 refines upon a type, the Yiddish writer reveals a sex. 
 Such a comparison, of course, is hardly fair; it is 
 merely a personal expression. One is foolish to seek 
 in Schnitzler something that he did not intend to 
 put there. As a study in a lover. King David and 
 His Wives excels in poetry and vision; it is inferior 
 to Anatol in wit and incisive dialogue. One thing, 
 however, I should like to emphasize: Pinski's series 
 is just as contemporary as Schnitzler's. The Yid- 
 dish dramatist's David is, in a sense, modern man 
 searchingly analyzed and revealed. And modern 
 woman .^ How rich is Pinski's series in feminine 
 portraits when his women are compared with 
 Schnitzler's cocottes and demi-mondaines. There is 
 Bathsheba with her withering scorn for Uriah's 
 obedience to his lustful monarch; there is the beauty 
 of Abigail's submission, the piquant quarrel of the 
 mistresses in In the Harem, the proud Michal, who 
 will not share her love even with God. Already in 
 
 26
 
 402 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 In the Harem we find David awakening to the realiza- 
 tion of oncoming age; in Ahishag the burden is 
 heavy upon him. The vohiptuousness of self- 
 abnegation is not often so potently displayed. Old 
 David, afraid to taste young Abishag's beauty 
 because to enjoy it would leave nothing more to 
 be desired, — old David living solely for the goad of 
 that eternally unfulfilled desire — such a figure and 
 such a conception is a successful incursion into 
 Schnitzler's very province. David is Anatol turned 
 poet; the Hebrew king is man, the creature of pas- 
 sion, a ruler even while he is ruled. Without any 
 intention of implying relative values, it may be 
 said that Anatol is a jester in the court of King 
 David. 
 
 Diplomacy (191 5) is a rather obvious satire upon 
 war-makers, while Little Heroes (1916), in its pres- 
 entation of childhood's innocent suffering during 
 the senseless savageries of its elders, achieves gen- 
 uine pathos in its grim humor. The Phono^aph 
 (191 8) is chiefly noticeable as a recent refurbishing 
 of a theme that preceded The Treasure and indeed 
 suggested it. Of the long plays, the best recent one 
 is Nina Mardens Loves (1915-16). The piece be- 
 longs with those in which the author is chiefly con- 
 cerned, with the psychf)Iogy of woman, and is a 
 natural outgrowth of the Biblical series of one-act 
 plays. It is, shall we say.? a sort of feminine Anatol. 
 It is written with an economy of means rather 
 unusual in Pinski, and follows the adventures of 
 Nina after her marriage. It is her fate to seek, by 
 her power and beauty, to draw out the best in men, 
 yet never to succeed. She is of the type that can 
 love more than one at a time; perhaps at the end
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 403 
 
 she is herself spoiled by the contagion of evil. On 
 the evening of her marriage she discusses love with 
 former suitors; in the second episode she attempts 
 to infuse a new soul into the actor Henderson, only 
 to discover at the end that her appeal to him has 
 been but a superficial one; in the third, Nina en- 
 counters a changed revolutionary agitator, and at 
 the end, the close of her career is foreshadowed by 
 a diplomatist's threat to destroy within her the 
 idea of youth. Nina is thus a spiritual sister of 
 Mary in Mary Magdalene^ of Tille in The Treasure. 
 Like Tille and Mary, so Nina lusts for power. 
 
 As Pinski's women lust for power, so his men 
 yearn for spiritual conquest. Isaac Sheftel's in- 
 tense will to be and to do crumbles upon the ruins 
 of his scant foundations. Reb Mayshe, of the 
 Zwie family, falls upon the threshold of a vision 
 never to be beheld by his eyes. The soul of the 
 obsessed Menahem Penini founders likewise upon 
 the rock of disillusionment. 
 
 Throughout most of what Pinski has written for 
 the stage there is a humanness, a passion, a vein of 
 satire and genuine humor, a freedom from prop- 
 agandistic tendencies (despite his own definite 
 opinions upon the questions that vex the world) 
 and a sincere dedication to the best that lies within 
 him. He is a realist who knows that life is more 
 than tears and mire; a poet who wanders in the 
 clouds without letting his feet long leave the solid 
 earth; a thinker free from the curse of pedantry. 
 A full man, a rare spirit, an artist soul.^ 
 
 »r/ie Treasure, Three Plays, and Ten Plays are issued in English at New York.
 
 404 THE DRAMA OF TR.ANSITION 
 
 PEREZ HIRSCHBEIN 
 
 Hirschbein has just passed his fortieth year. 
 Born the son of a poor miller in a small Russian 
 town, he became known at twenty-five as a writer 
 of drama in Hebrew, later in Yiddish. 
 
 He has been much influenced by the French 
 symbolists and mystics, as is attested by the dia- 
 logue of his plays and the beauty of his prose- 
 poems, though often the dialogue is too tenuous for 
 sustained action and the beauty proves largely 
 verbal. In many of his one-act plays particularly 
 he is a dramatist in a secondary sense only. 
 
 Take, as an instance of his early labors, the one- 
 act Solitary Worlds. During the short course of the 
 play there is little, if any, genuine dialogue. The 
 characters speak to us by speaking only to them- 
 selves. One curses his fate in a withering invective; 
 another has gone mad over Talmudical disputation; 
 a young child draws designs upon the floor and talks 
 about the music upstairs as if it were — as indeed it 
 is — in another world, and so on. Here is a cellar 
 full of people, yet each is a world unto himself. 
 Symbolic, of course, as so much of Hirschbein's 
 work is, yet at times too fragile, pictorial rather than 
 sustained by inner passion. There is something of 
 this symbolic pictorialism in most of the man's 
 short pieces, whether we examine his Grave Blos- 
 soms of 1906, or the cluster of miniatures written 
 during 191 5, — Raisins and Almonds^ On the Thresh- 
 old, Bebele, The Storm, When the Dew Falls. One 
 exception, surely, must be made: In the Dark, which 
 belongs to 1906. Here plot, poetry, and symbolism 
 are fused into a genuinely dramatic whole; the
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 405 
 
 tragedy of poverty and shattered illusions is de- 
 picted with a poignancy and power that entitle the 
 piece to a place among the best in its province. 
 
 Yet there is a certain beauty in even an idyll like 
 Bebele^ recounting the superstitious penance which 
 a mother takes upon herself for her daughter's 
 welfare. And charm there surely is in The Storm., 
 with its illustrative sub-title: Once Upon a Time 
 the Jews Revelled. 
 
 Hirschbein is strongly attracted, both in his 
 longer and his shorter pieces, to the type of the re- 
 bellious young girl. In In the Dark the moody 
 heroine plunges from the darkness of her daily life 
 to the deeper darkness of eternal sleep, impelled to 
 suicide by hopelessness. On the Threshold shows 
 Rosie superior to her environment, refusing to sac- 
 rifice her youth to the dictates of unsympathetic 
 tradition. So, too, in When the Dew Falls^ we meet 
 the everlasting contrast between that "crabbed age 
 and youth" which cannot live together. At the 
 falling of the dew old age seeks refuge while youth 
 begins its revels. Again, in the early Grave Blos- 
 soms^ the spirit of youth rebels against the sterile 
 rites of mourning; while Bella, the depressing, im- 
 aginative sister, sees horrors in the grave, Rivke, 
 the buoyant, gathers beautiful blossoms amid the 
 tombs. Man, with his own hands, buries worlds of 
 beauty; such is the burden of the song at the close. 
 Yet again. Sparks (1913), is symbolic of the undying 
 sparks of passion in the heart of youth that has 
 early been bereft of companionship through illness 
 or death. Everywhere, it would seem, Hirschbein 
 is preoccupied with youth; his old folks talk of it, 
 his young ones live in its rollicking insouciance.
 
 406 THE DRAMA OF TRANSiriUN 
 
 Yet only rarely is this youth a passionate, under- 
 standing, revolting call. The maidens are most 
 often village hoydens; their swains, kind-hearted 
 bumpkins. Unless it he an Itsik of The Haunted 
 Inn^ little daring enters the breasts of these tradi- 
 tion-bound sons of the soil. It is from the girls, 
 nearer the core of being, that hope of freedom comes. 
 Yet, too often, only hope. They burn with a mo- 
 mentary flame of rebellion, skip a few steps of the 
 treadmill, then resume the weary round. 
 
 Of the longer plays, 1 should like to consider 
 some half-do'/en; a complete edition published in 
 1916, in five v(»lumes, contains twenty-six pieces in 
 all — including the shorter ones — and is lor those 
 who love poetic beauty, haunting charm, humanity 
 in strange moods, delightful genre pictures, and a 
 certain fantastic glow. 
 
 Carrion was written in 190A. It deals with the 
 rivalry of Mendel and Herrel for the hand of Kosie, 
 a poor lass who sufl^ers maltreatment at the hands 
 of her mother. Rosie allows Berrel to buy her a 
 pair of much-needed shoes, thereby inflaming the 
 jealousy of Mendel. Me is goaded to propose to 
 her, and she refuses him, telling him that he smells 
 of the carcasses in which he deals. Overwhelmeil, 
 the simple youth goes to his father, and in wild 
 tears asks whv he has been made a carcass of; to 
 add to his woes, he gets news of his mother's illness, 
 and is bewildered between the two blows of mis- 
 fortune. The carrion-odor, the loss that it seems to 
 have brought him, his resentment against his father, 
 all conspire to madden him; at the end he is mad 
 indeed, having slain his father and appearing all 
 bloody from his own scratching, speaking incoherent 
 snatches.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 407 
 
 Rosie Is but another of the HIrschbeIn creatures 
 who lust for Hfe all the more because of the terrible 
 privations of their desolate cellar existence. But 
 the play is noteworthy chiefly for the portrayal of 
 Mendel's madness. Hirschbein either cannot, or 
 will not pay much attention to the upbuilding of an 
 inevitable plot, conditioned by the unfolding pas- 
 sion of the characters themselves. He always in- 
 terests, but often fails to convince. He is very 
 evidently a fine spirit, yet, as we have already 
 hinted, his conception of the drama widens it to 
 include much of the pictorial and the conversational 
 as ends in themselves, rather than as the environ- 
 ment of a dominant action. 
 
 Of texture less stout is The Earth (1907), which 
 is symbolic in a rather derogatory sense, replete 
 with poetic discussion and Maeterlinckian languors. 
 That the play is not essentially Jewish need bother 
 us little; more to the point, the little plot there is 
 suffers from a set of static symbols that should have 
 been dynamic personalities; there is no character 
 development. The play seeks to emphasize the 
 sanative quality of contact with the common mother 
 earth; it displays, even more, the unhealthy quality 
 of the dramatist's contact with French symbolism 
 at its most deliquescent. 
 
 The best of Hirschbein's longer plays are those 
 in which he himself establishes a restorative contact 
 with the earth that his early years have known, 
 with the simple folk among whom he was reared, 
 with the bumpkins and hoydens of peasant life as 
 he saw it and felt it. Here he is simple, yet vigorous; 
 the symbol arises, as always it should, from the bare 
 facts of human intercourse; the poetry is inherent
 
 408 THE DRAMA OF TKANSrfKJN 
 
 in the expanding souls rather than in the words 
 applied. Two or three of these folk comedies repay 
 more than passing attention. 
 
 A Forsaken Nook was written in 19 13. It is folk 
 drama of the most legitimate appeal, simple in at- 
 mosphere, technique, plot, and language, and in the 
 best sense of the word, wholesome. I'illcd with 
 deep sentiment, it never degenerates into senti- 
 mentality; this little corner of the world, far from 
 the hurly-burly of agitated modernity, is yet a 
 replica of the greater bustle without; it has its 
 own commercial rivalries, its own love tliflicultics, 
 its own philosophies, none the less profound for 
 being couched in the humble tongiic r)f humble 
 folk. A Farvorfoi llfikf/y from one stand|x)int, is 
 a miniature Jewish village Romeo and Jultety ending, 
 however, in joy rather than trageily, with a victory 
 for ebullient youth over the prejudices and obstinacy 
 of middle age. And appropriately enough, the recon- 
 ciliation is effected by old age, which has known 
 both the turbulence of youth ami the l><K)tlcss 
 animosities of the middle years. 
 
 Notte, the son of I'uilrus and the father of Tsirrel, 
 has fallen out with Khayim Hersh, the father of 
 Noah, because Khayim <m'ns the only wind-mill in 
 the remote spot and opposes Notte's wish to branch 
 out as a mill-owner himself. Notte is a grave- 
 digger; his daughter Tsirrel, he begins to think, 
 must be brought up in some other environment 
 than that of tombstones, and he himself would 
 welcome a change from a business that is sure enough 
 to find customers, but which has its unpleasant side. 
 Noah, recking little of parental disputes, is the young 
 and ambitious suitor of Tsirrel, who, like more than
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 409 
 
 one of Hirschbein's maiden characters in his nu- 
 merous plays, is of the rebellious type. She herself 
 may not fully understand her rebelliousness, she 
 does not reason the matter out, but rather follows 
 the dictates of her instincts, which lead her to return 
 the affection of Noah. Yet if the hostility between 
 their parents is not strong enough to keep them alto- 
 gether apart, it provides fuel for lovers' quarrels; 
 and since our village pair are both young and self- 
 willed, unmindful of spring days that speed all too 
 soon on the wings of memory, they waste precious 
 moments in recriminations that neither means. 
 There is another young man in the case, it appears, 
 Khatskel by name. Not that Tsirrel smiles upon his 
 suit, but Khatskel, taking for granted the father's 
 authority over the daughter, woos her through his 
 favors to the father rather than directly. 
 
 Khayim Hersh, getting wind of his son's court- 
 ship, is seized with anger. This is downright treach- 
 ery, right in the bosom of his family. Notte, it 
 seems, has taken definite steps toward the erection 
 of a rival mill; the site, the lumber, and the stones 
 have been procured; this news is not calculated to 
 sweeten Khayim's temper, and a family row is 
 provoked, in which not only Noah, but little Khayya, 
 show their aggressive mettle. At the height of the 
 domestic squabble who should enter but Krayne, 
 Notte's wife. Noah and Tsirrel have had words, 
 and Tsirrel has been taken ill; perhaps Khayim's 
 wife, Krayzel, can step over and banish the effects 
 of the evil eye that has looked upon the child. It 
 may be noticed here that the wives of the men are 
 by no means so prompt to yield to the animosity of 
 rivalry as are the men; it is only when the business
 
 410 THE DRAMA OF TRANSmON 
 
 virus enters the blood of such as these that they arc 
 infected with the dubious virtues of their husbands' 
 combativeness. Throughout the play the wives of 
 both contending parties cannot see why p>eacc is 
 not possible, though at moments they forget their 
 mission of peacemaking, inriuenccd more by their 
 men's demeanor than by their own desires. 
 
 Notte, fully as obstinate a fellow as Khayim — 
 just as much the stern father and the domineering 
 husband — traces his wife to the home of his enemy. 
 There is a glowering encounter between the men, 
 but Krayne saves the day by pulling her bellicose 
 husband out of the hostile household. 
 
 Khatskel's influence over Notte begins to appear 
 in all its scheming and cunning. He it is who has 
 advanced the money for the new mill's materials; 
 he enters the home of his Tsirrel with the confidence 
 of victory through paternal support; Tsirrel, how- 
 ever, will have none of him; this she makes clear to 
 Noah, as well as to her sympathetic mother. .-\ 
 visit from Khayim Hersh to discuss matters emls in 
 a break, and since Khatskel (having heard that the 
 bringing of the material will be opposed by machina- 
 tions of Noah) has hired some Gentile peasants to 
 be ready to earn their brandy by the strength of 
 their arms, surely enough a brawl occurs as soon as 
 the material heaves into sight. Noah, whose eye 
 has been seeking Khatskel everywhere, catches the 
 fellow and chases him into the home of his pros- 
 pective father-in-law. Stones crash through the 
 window of Notte's home and as the curtain comes 
 down upon the third act, the family feud has reached 
 its climax. 
 
 Throughout the preceding action we have noticed
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 411 
 
 that not only are the women of the contending 
 households inclined to a peaceful view of matters, 
 not only are the youthful lovers faithful to one an- 
 other despite their pretended coldness and their 
 boastful aloofness, but that Tudrus, Notte's father, 
 looks with little favor upon the squabble. He is an 
 old man, with a sense of life's true values; he has 
 known Khayim's own father — was, indeed, the man 
 who helped him get a start in life, and buried him 
 with his own hands. As the father of Notte the 
 grave-digger, who bequeathed to that worthy his 
 trade, Tudrus feels that Notte belongs at his old 
 established business; as one who has seen children 
 born and who has buried their parents, he knows 
 the moments that really count in the span between 
 the cradle and the grave. And if these middle-aged 
 fathers are intent upon letting their quarrel inter- 
 fere with the happiness of their children, why, he, 
 too, is a father, and will impose his will upon Notte. 
 He wishes, and will have, peace between the fam- 
 ilies. What has an out-of-the-way spot, a forsaken 
 nook like their hamlet, to do with two windmills 
 turned by rival hands? Why this unnecessary war- 
 fare? Away with such obstinacy! Let the schem- 
 ing Khatskel get his investment back and cease 
 bothering Tsirrel with his unwelcome affections; let 
 Noah and Tsirrel marry and run the new mill them- 
 selves — Noah has enough to pay back Khatskel for 
 the raw material. 
 
 The fathers make a show of resistance, but, like 
 so much resistance that has begun to crumble in- 
 wardly — like that stubborn opposition which is 
 itself often a sign of unspoken willingness to compro- 
 mise — the feud comes to a happy, sudden termina-
 
 412 THi-: DRAMA OK TKANSITION 
 
 tion. Tudrus' simple reasoning, added to the un- 
 spoken predisp<:)sition of the men, the tears of the 
 women, and the stout determination ot the children, 
 leads to the closing "Mazcl Tov!" — the congrat- 
 ulatory cries of gtxxl luck for the young couple. 
 
 There are other characters in the play than those 
 mentioned; particularly Dohhe, the cra/ed mother, 
 whose five children lie buried in Notte's grounds; 
 at first blush it would seem that she is a su|>erfluous 
 personage; she apjxrars but a few times, producing 
 upon spectator and f^rsonages alike an eerie effect. 
 Yet is she not a characteristic figure of such vil- 
 lages, and moreover calculated to trnj-iress the audi- 
 ence with the fleeting days of childhood and the 
 inherent folly and wrong of thwarting the legitimate 
 aspirations of the younger generation? Not that 
 Hirschbein uses this role or any other to impress a 
 preconception; nothing could be further from prob- 
 lem-drama or thesis-drama than .7 Farvorfen I'inkfl; 
 it is the tolk-play raised to a very high artistic de- 
 gree; the action is compact, the dialogue natural, 
 these are genuine, unvarnished folk, whether in 
 their hatreds or their affections. Here art conceals 
 itself, indeed, and a natural effect is achieved with 
 unaffected directness. 
 
 The Blacksmith's Daughters is, like J Forsaken 
 Nook, a genuine ith 11. What permanent feuds may 
 develop in a milieu such as this, where the inhab- 
 itants take with pious seriousness the injunction 
 that enemies must make up before the annual Day 
 of Atonement? What wild romances of the heart 
 may blaze up amongst youths who ask fathers for 
 their maidens' hands with all the deference that 
 they themselves, when they shall in turn become
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 413 
 
 fathers, will expect to receive from the children of 
 the next generation? The average maiden in these 
 forsaken nooks goes whither her father sends her; fa- 
 ther and daughter alike hearken to the advantageous 
 matches which the traveling book-vendor carries 
 around together with the sacred books he sells; and 
 the vendor, who hawks hearts as well as tomes, 
 finding every maiden beautiful and every wight 
 sturdy and able, is himself a sort of symbol as to 
 how marriage is looked upon. Not that there is no 
 love amongst these youths; not that marriages of 
 convenience arranged in haste do not in a surprising 
 number of instances lead to long years of happy 
 married life; not that there is an undue admixture of 
 mercenary motives. But these simple folk have 
 acquired no coat of sophistication; they speak their 
 true mind as often as not; the girl is hardly ashamed 
 of wooing her chosen youth, and she will fight 
 openly for her right to him; the obdurate father will 
 listen to reason, and if he has two daughters, pro- 
 vided the elder is married off first to a person of 
 worth, the important thing is to marry the second 
 off and free himself of a double burden — the duty to 
 marry off his child and the ease that comes with 
 knowing that he need no longer support her. 
 
 So, in the play we meet the two daughters of 
 Nakhmen Beer, the blacksmith. Leah Dobbe and 
 Zelda are twins; since, in the orthodox Jewish house- 
 hold the matter of precedence among daughters is 
 of no small importance, these two maidens are often 
 at odds as to which is really the elder. To be sure, 
 Zelda, if strict chronological order is to be observed, 
 was born first; but then, hasn't Leah grown up to 
 be a big, strong lass, and does not her very appear-
 
 414 rili: DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 ance proclaim her virtual seniority? ZcMa, self- 
 willed and high-spirited as she is, resents such a 
 usurpation of her rights; nor is the resentment based 
 upon merely abstract principles; there is a very 
 concrete reason in the person of her father's hired 
 blacksmith, Nisson Alter. Nisson is an active, in- 
 dustrious fellow, who has brought a i»reat deal of 
 trade to his employer, and when the latter praises 
 him with generous words, he plucks up the courage 
 to ask for Zelda's hand. But just at this point a 
 traveling blacksmith comes along asking for work. 
 As Nisson has only a moment before been complain- 
 ing that the establishment needs more hands, and 
 as the applicant l(M)ks like a worthy chap, he is en- 
 gaged. He will live with the rest of the household 
 and make the place his second home. 
 
 The coming of the new workman, Borukh Mavshc, 
 brings new dissension into the sisters' lives. The 
 mischievous self-willed Zelda, who at first "stole" 
 Nisson away from Leah, now has taken a fancy to 
 the new man. Still, she anil Leah are sisters; l>c- 
 neath their rivalry is the bl<K>d relationship, and 
 Zelda, for some purpose of her own, and to show 
 that she is not trying to steal Borukh away from 
 Leah, will even let her sister have some of the love- 
 powders that she has got from an old woman skilled 
 in such matters. These Leah takes, and determines 
 to put in Borukh's soup that night; carefully she 
 does so, and is about to serve it to the young lilack- 
 smith when Zelda manages to strike her" sister's 
 arm, and the precious bowl of love-laden soup goes 
 crashing to the floor. 
 
 Zelda is induced by her sister to stay over at a
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 415 
 
 relative's until the holidays, when the family will 
 journey over by wagon and take her back. In the 
 meantime — and perhaps without Leah's wishes — 
 Nisson seems to have turned his affections from one 
 sister to the other. He is happy with the one dear 
 charmer while the other is away, and now approaches 
 the father to ask for Leah's hand. The parent is 
 willing; after all, a marriage is a marriage, be it 
 Zelda or Leah. But once again Nisson's proposal 
 is upset, this time by Zelda's unexpected arrival 
 from her relative on the wagon of an itinerant book- 
 vendor. Homesickness — and a bit of lovesickness, 
 too — has brought her back thus early, bringing upon 
 the scene the picturesque vendor himself. 
 
 The hawker of hearts and books for a moment 
 sees good prospects of earning an honest ruble by 
 matching off the youths upon whom he comes. 
 Zelda, however, is of the type that matches off her- 
 self; perhaps her short absence has taught her that 
 Nisson is the man she really wants. At any rate, hke 
 the perverse imp she is, no sooner does she get an 
 inkling that Nisson desires Leah than she desires 
 Nisson with all the energy of her willfulness. Borukh 
 has a word to say in this, too. What does Nisson 
 mean by trying to take away Leah from him.'' If 
 the match is a settled one, very well; he will leave. 
 Fortunately here is the itinerant vendor, who will 
 take him off to some other spot, where he can hire 
 out his services anew. But where are his tools? 
 Who has hidden them ? (Zelda could answer if she 
 chose. Once she wished him to stay because she 
 thought she would like to have him for her own; 
 now let him stay so as to remove Leah from between
 
 416 THE DRAMA CJl- IRANSITION 
 
 her and Nisson.) Surely enough liorukh has his 
 way with Leah, and Nisson, who was fond of Zclda 
 in the first place, is fond of her in the last, too. 
 
 Here, as in ./ Forsaken Nooky there is a wise 
 grarulfarhcr, whose favorite Hebrew chant about 
 praising God at dawn for the light of the stars is 
 redolent of that deep appreciation of youth which 
 rises from so many of Hirschhein's dramas. Like 
 the play of the village Romeo and Juliety so this 
 rustic Comedy of Errors is simple, idyllic, pictorial, 
 though by no means static, and in more than one 
 point well sustains comparison with the plays 
 from the Irish company that made Lady CJregory's 
 name well known in this country. .And, if there 
 must be comparisons, the folk-pieces of Hirschbein 
 are to be found much nearer in spirit to the comeilies 
 of Lady Gregory, let us say, than to the sterner 
 realities of Syngc. Hut let us not hasten to compare. 
 It is in such pieces as these, free of the sometimes 
 baffling symbolism of such of his dranias as The 
 Earth and The Hauuted Inn that Hirschbein is 
 refreshingly himself. Here he is not only the play- 
 wright, but the |x>et as well^ — a writer of a cnarm 
 that is something more than the echo of words 
 and the melody of phrases; alH)ve all these quarrels 
 of lovers, these domestic altercations, these tea-pot 
 tempests that loom so large in the pastoral regions 
 where his muse has her favorite spot, rises an aroma 
 of enchanting powers — a volatile essence, indeed, 
 but as rare upon our stage as any other of the more 
 delicate qualities of art. 
 
 The same wholesome simplicity — both of the life 
 pictured and the means by which it is portrayed — 
 informs the comedy Green Fields (1916), in which a
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 417 
 
 wandering pious student innocently disturbs the 
 hearts of a pair of lasses who at last break down his 
 adolescent asceticism. Of course he can marry only 
 one, and before that one wins him definitely away 
 from the other, the parents of both are drawn into the 
 inevitable rural feud, which ends quite as suddenly 
 as it begins. There is a family resemblance to these 
 folk comedies of Hirschbein, as there is to his one- 
 act pieces; yet it is an engaging family, and one 
 that is met too infrequently upon any stage. 
 
 Of the more serious pieces, A Life for a Life (191 5) 
 contains good dramatic action, though it is, like so 
 many of the man's other pieces, deficient in char- 
 acterization and in the delineation of the minor 
 figures. Israel Neakh offers, for the privilege of 
 laying a synagogue cornerstone, to donate the 
 weight of the stone in gold. His wife. Pearl, is 
 thunderstruck when she hears of it, but her dumb- 
 foundedness increases when Israel's partner, Tevye, 
 bursts into her home and declares that it is his 
 money that will really build the edifice, and that he 
 will proclaim it to the world. Neakh, in truth, is 
 reduced to poverty; his daughter's marriage is thus 
 postponed indefinitely; his wife, having lost all de- 
 sire to live, regains her passion for existence as she 
 feels a new life burgeoning under her heart. Neakh 
 subsequently refuses his former partner's offer to 
 begin anew in the old union; he has taken his past 
 to heart; rapidly he fails, at last expiring in the 
 Rabbi's arms. His own life thus has paid for the 
 life of the child whom his prayers and charities (at 
 Tevye's expense) have called into being. Now Pearl 
 will live for her child, and the marriage of his 
 daughter is assured. 
 
 27
 
 418 rm-. DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 There is a certain |x)wcr in the treatment of the 
 Jewish theme; Israel Ncakh is a salient figure, strong 
 and implacable. 
 
 It was with The Haunted Inn that Hirschlnrin's 
 name really cleareil the barriers of the Yiddish 
 milieu and for a while attracted the attention of 
 Gentile critics. This was the play with which the 
 Jewish Art Theatre ot New York, umier the direc- 
 tion of Mr. Emannuel Reicher, inaugurated its career 
 in the autumn of 1919. By virtue of the striking 
 production and the acting of Mr. J. iicn-.Ami in 
 the role of Itsik, the lirama was s<K)n the talk, not 
 only of the Yiiliiish reviewers, but also of the critics 
 of the F^nglish press, who fors(K>k Broaiiway for 
 Madison .Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street and 
 long made the j>lay the subject of enthusiastic com- 
 ment. It is this play, indeed, that led to Mr. Hen- 
 Ami's rajMtl transfer to the Knglish-sjKaking stage; 
 all the more pity, then, that when it was given in an 
 English version it was badly garbled, the last act 
 omitted, and the entire emphasis of the play shitted 
 from that of a symbolic presentation of youth's raw, 
 shifting instincts ami parental harshness amid an 
 atmosjihere of superstitious obsession, to one of 
 aimlessly romantic maundering. 
 
 xAlthough I believe Ilirscnbein's folk-plays of 
 better stuff, there is gcxxl writing in The Haunted 
 Inn. So much of the drama is done with Mr. I lirsch- 
 bein's sensitivity to subdued tones that not a little 
 of its quality is sure to be missed by most spec- 
 tators untrained to alertness for subtle values; here 
 color tends to subside into nuance, and action is 
 refined into the suggestion of impulse and mood. 
 Thus, at first blush, the opening act seems a calm
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 419 
 
 procession of rustic types, yet every event and 
 mood of the play is introduced and forecast. The 
 arbitrary choice of Meta's husband by the fathers 
 on both sides; the previous understanding between 
 the girl and Itsik; the motif of the abandoned inn 
 and the unmentionable spirits supposedly inhabit- 
 ing it; the rebellion of the daughter as foreshadowed 
 by the closing scene, in which she waves her hand 
 to Itsik in the darkness; the entirely natural chatter 
 of the grandfather bent upon the barn and its calves, 
 in which are seen symbolized the home and the 
 girl's eagerness for escape into a life of her own — 
 in these we have the play in little, of which all that 
 follows is the logical unfolding. 
 
 One thing in particular deserves emphasis: 
 throughout the play the mysterious and super- 
 natural mood is upon us, even as upon the dwellers 
 in the hamlet of the action. Yet in no instance 
 does the playwright summon the aid of arbitrary 
 forces; nowhere does he introduce any element not 
 inherent in the very existence of his characters. 
 To them their superstitions are part of their every 
 thought and act, not, as with our more sophisticated 
 selves, an amusing and instructive detail of psy- 
 chological study. The spirits of the inn are real; 
 they may be offended, they may pursue their vic- 
 tims, they must be propitiated. Hirschbein here 
 achieves an effect of other- worldliness, of unreality, 
 without once employing any means other than those 
 of everyday reality. I have mentioned the spirits 
 of the inn. Take now the merchants of the colorful 
 wedding scene in the second act. Nothing more 
 natural than that a party of men should pause on 
 their way to join the festivities, providing not only
 
 420 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 music, but handsome gifts for the couple, and then 
 pass on. Yet to the relatives and guests assembled, 
 in whose minds the inn is closely linked to the dowry, 
 and in whom stirs the uneasiness of having disturbed 
 the evil ones in their nest, the strangers, because of 
 their very strangeness, may easily become ambas- 
 sadors of those spirits. Add to this the kidnapping 
 of the bride by her primitive lover, Itsik, and how 
 can they doubt any longer that malignant influences 
 are at work? 
 
 What does the abandoned inn symbolize? Paren- 
 tal restraint of young daughters, which often ends 
 by conquering the daughters themselves? As sug- 
 gested, for example, by Meta's desire to jump into 
 the flames whence Itsik saves her? Is Itsik the 
 symbol of crude unconventionality ? Hendet, the 
 obdurate father, becomes so obsessed with the fear 
 of the spirits that he flees from them and Hnallv 
 sets fire to all his possessions. He presents, indeed, 
 an interesting study in the progress of superstitious 
 fear, perhaps remorse. The play, however, is not 
 exclusively symbolistic; it has its moments of 
 realism and romantic ardor, and is, as a whole, dis- 
 tinguished for a subtly managed mood of mystery. 
 Of character portrayal there is characteristically 
 little; mood foreshadows mood, much as in other 
 plays events foreshadow events. Even to the Jew 
 the whole is somewhat exotic. 
 
 NEW WRITERS 
 
 Kobrin, Asch, Pinski, Hirschbein — they are all 
 very active yet, and anything like definite pro- 
 nouncements upon them would be premature. 
 Among the lesser lights, a number of men show
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 421 
 
 promise, one of them a recent arrival from Poland, 
 Fishel Bimko by name. Maurice Schwartz, to 
 whom the Yiddish stage owes some of its most 
 artistic ventures, introduced him here through the 
 play called Thieves. Bimko is on the sunny side of 
 forty and has, besides writing a long list of short 
 stories, been occupied in journalism for the leading 
 newspapers of the foreign Jewish centres. He has 
 to his credit two or three other dramas of a symbolic, 
 mystical cast — and how the Jewish mind is be- 
 trayed into these- alluring pitfalls! — but Thieves is 
 reality almost photographic. It has been given 
 some two hundred times in Warsaw and Vilna. 
 
 There is little in the play to suggest the symbolism 
 and mysticism of his other work; it is, in no derog- 
 atory sense of the word, sternly realistic material, 
 treating a subject that to many must be of the 
 most repulsive nature, yet so handling the matter 
 as to produce a certain dramatic beauty — the beauty 
 of the sun illuminating an infested marsh. 
 
 Here we have, in the first place, a half-dozen 
 underworld men each engaged in the same traffic, 
 yet requiring distinct characterization if they are 
 not to become a six-fold, boresome reflection of a 
 single type. Here we have a slum woman, raised 
 by preference of the gang leader to the relative 
 dignity of wifehood, such as their milieu knows it. 
 Yet even these lawless haunts feel the necessity for 
 some higher striving; though they may find ready 
 excuse for the trade they ply, though they may 
 consider themselves even removed from the neces- 
 sity of justification, there are those among them 
 who long for something better. It may be the 
 reawakening of religious fears instilled in childhood;
 
 422 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 it may be simply the natural desire to excel, to stand 
 out from one's fellow-men, be the claim to distinc- 
 tion ever so small. But the feeling is there, and 
 even among these Gorkian "cx-men" there is the 
 sense of caste. 
 
 Shloyme Shuver, who has married Gittel, grand- 
 daughter of the barber-woman, Keyle, is the leader 
 of the thieves. Ever since his marriage, however, 
 his hand seems to have lost its cunning, and his 
 heart has gone completely over to his wife. .As it 
 turns out later, he beholds in her, not only the 
 woman, but the vessel of redemption. It is the 
 child that she will give him who will come to wipe 
 out his past — to cleanse him of the evil which 
 blackens his soul. The rest of the gang are dis- 
 gusted with this change in their chief. Not only 
 can they not understand his altered ways, but they 
 poke fun at him for his chicken-hearted courtshij> 
 of his coquettish wife. He is so "touchy" about 
 her — so watchful, that none may approach her — as if 
 she were indeed a lady. The tragedy of Shloyme's 
 life begins with his realization that he cannot have 
 a child, and that the trouble does not lie with his 
 wife. He broods himself into utter uselessness as a 
 gang leader, and all the while his wife's affections 
 really belong to Mazik, as spry and handsome a 
 thief as ever carried a jimmy. The inevitable 
 happens; Mazik and Gittel have secret meetings, 
 and before long Gittel confides an interesting secret 
 to her grandma. The latter, at first uninformed as 
 to the whole truth, receives the news with all the 
 joy that it would bring to the orthodox Jewish 
 household; indeed, even old Keyle has a little re- 
 ligion in her for all her living in a thieves' den.
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 423 
 
 Has she not sent Gittel to the rabbi, even to witches, 
 for a remedy against the curse that has brought 
 Shloyme such agony? 
 
 Slowly the truth unfolds. Shloyme himself sus- 
 pects, and after the child is born he spends hours 
 gazing at its face, trying to make out whether it 
 resembles him or another. Because of his preoccu- 
 pation with the infant, — a preoccupation that is 
 steadily growing into an obsession — the gang's 
 plans go awry; his fellow-thieves tease and taunt 
 him with cutting references to the dubious paternity 
 of the child, and at last, from the lips of his own 
 wife, who has long since lost all love for him, comes 
 the confession that Mazik, not Shloyme, is the 
 father. Obsession now flames to insanity, and in a 
 wild fury, after gathering some clothes and setting 
 fire to them so as to burn down the house, Shloyme 
 strangles his faithless wife. 
 
 It is characteristic of the entire play that the 
 strangling scene does not take place in view of the 
 audience; nor is this because the Jewish spectator 
 shares any Greek aversion to the representation of 
 such events. Thieves is genuine drama, with little 
 affinity to its step-brother melodrama; its char- 
 acters are well distinguished from one another, and 
 though it would be presumption for one who does 
 not know the Varsovian underworld to comment 
 upon the author's truthful portrayals, it is enough 
 for the purposes of art to agree that he makes 
 us feel they are true. The play as a whole has 
 been called a Yiddish Na dnye (Gorki's Night 
 Lodging)^ and, to be sure, there is a certain resem- 
 blance. In both plays there is a motif of violent 
 love, in each there is a breath of aspiration to higher
 
 424 THE DRAMA OF TRANSniON 
 
 things, though this is conveyed more poetically, 
 more elusively, by Luka of Gorki's striking piece; 
 in each there is a well-differentiated group, though 
 here again the advantage is with Gorki, whose 
 drama is of deeper philosojihical import and of 
 broader application. Bimko's thief-psychology is an 
 incidental, however, rather than a salient, trait; it 
 is directed not so much upon the group, as in Gorki's 
 piece, as upon Shloyme and his strange, though by 
 no means unnatural, desire for redemption. ThieveSy 
 then, has stronger ideological resemblance to Sholom 
 Asch's The God of Fengeance. And it is, by the way, 
 this same Sholom Asch's picturesque novel Mottke 
 the Vagabond {Mottke Ganov)^ which, in its third 
 part, gives us an intimate insight into the very 
 Varsovian slums that provide the background for 
 Bimko's play. Yekel, in the Asch play, it will be 
 recalled, cherishes the same eagerness for redemp- 
 tion through his daughter, and even gives holy 
 gifts to the synagogue, paid for with money made 
 in the most nefarious of trades; yet despite his 
 attempt to bribe the Lord, his daughter falls a 
 victim to the very brothel her father runs. In each 
 play, then, is a theme of retribution that falls upon 
 the perpetrators of evil and sweeps even the inno- 
 cent in its path. In both is a strange yet character- 
 istic separation of secular and sacred, and an unsuc- 
 cessful attempt to reconcile them. Though once 
 more the advantage may lie with the other author, 
 Thieves may well be said to provide a worthy addi- 
 tion to the Yiddish repertory of "unpleasant" plays. 
 And, finally, before leaving a by-path of the drama 
 over which we have lingered only because it is so 
 unlikely to receive adequate attention among its
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 425 
 
 own people, let alone those outside the pale of 
 tongue and temperament, let us consider the bold 
 choice made by Mr. Schwartz for the opening of 
 the season of 1921-1922 in the Jewish Art Theatre. 
 
 An-ski's Der Dibbuk belongs to the dramatic lit- 
 erature that must be taken largely upon faith; it is 
 a world where Hamlet's father may return as a 
 ghost without being assailed upon scientific and 
 rational grounds; a world in which the dead may 
 converse with the living; indeed, an inter-world. 
 The Vilna edition of 1919, as a matter of fact, bears 
 the sub-title, Between Two Worlds^ thus revealing 
 this sense of a spiritual limbo. 
 
 Schwartz's venture was daring in more ways than 
 one; the piece is in reality a transcription of folk- 
 lore. It is necessary to recall, even for many Jews, 
 the peculiar background against which it is played, 
 — the intense Khassidic life where the most ardent 
 fancies somehow acquire a reality almost as real as 
 the very ground over which the engrossed Rabbis 
 wend their way from synagogue to home and back 
 again. The piece requires a sympathetic heroine 
 in whom the male voice of her departed lover speaks 
 his soul through her body. The full production 
 involves about a hundred persons, of whom twenty- 
 five take active parts. 
 
 The title of the play is a Hebrew word of kabbal- 
 istic derivation, signifying an evil spirit that enters 
 a person. 
 
 We are here in a world where the dividing line 
 between the now and the beyond is a tenuous one; 
 the "true world," in fact, is the hereafter, and it is 
 so named. Yet the dead form part of the present 
 existence almost as much as when their bodily
 
 426 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 forms strode through it; their graves are reguhirly 
 visited, and they are spoken to, communed with 
 upon the most intimate secrets, invited to the wed- 
 dings of their orphans, taken tender leave of when 
 their offspring depart for distant lands in quest of 
 a better fortune. These strangely living dead appear 
 in dreams and make their wishes known, recite 
 their grievances against the dwellers in the present, 
 and even answer summonses to rabbinical trials in 
 which the merits of the case are heard before a holy 
 tribunal. Almost literally, then, the Jews of this 
 Khassidic sect and milieu live "between two worlds," 
 communing too much with the lite everlasting to 
 remain wholly on this side of paradise. It is such a 
 world in which An-ski's peculiar play comes to pass, 
 and in a reading of the drama or in any discussion 
 concerning it, care should be taken not to dismiss 
 as palpably unreal, or unconvincing, episodes that 
 would hardly be questioned by the persons among 
 whom the events supposedly occur. 
 
 S. An-ski's correct name was Shloyme Zalmon 
 Rappoport; his recent death removed from Yiddish 
 letters a beloved figure who was very close to the 
 soil of the folk. In a sense he is said to have been 
 much closer than the greatest writer in the short 
 but intense history of Jewish literature, Isaac Loeb 
 Perez. Perez, intellectual that he was, was also 
 more the artist than An-ski; he could not be content 
 with mere transcription of folk-motives, though he 
 is thoroughly imbued with the folk-spirit. Where 
 Perez would elaborate without destroying, An-ski 
 would reproduce faithfully. Such a method, of 
 course, entails the risk of certain defects of stage- 
 craft, and we shall note that An-ski has not escaped
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 427 
 
 them. It responds, however, to a strong need of 
 the Jewish reader and audience, satisfying a pleasure 
 of recognition that forfeits with a certain ease most 
 claims to more refined artistic treatment. This is 
 not to say that An-ski's play lacks art; but surely, 
 either through temperament or set purpose, he has 
 in Der Dibbuk eschewed delineation and develop- 
 ment of character and concerned himself chiefly 
 with pictorial presentation. 
 
 This is not at all an unwise course to follow where 
 legend lies at the root of life. Moreover, so remark- 
 ably has the dramatist reproduced the throng of re- 
 ligious devotees that the drama as a whole is steeped 
 in the communal character. So well has this part 
 of An-ski's labor been performed that the play, 
 despite any dramaturgic shortcomings that may be 
 urged against it, has been hailed upon both sides of 
 the ocean as an epoch-making event in the Yiddish 
 drama, and even as the "first Jewish national play." 
 Perhaps, and perhaps not. An intimate view of a 
 certain phase of Yiddish life it doubtless affords. 
 But "national"? In what sense? Certainly not 
 that of national aspirations, with which it has 
 nothing whatsoever to do. And is the view of love 
 — that of a foreordained union with which mortals 
 vainly interfere — a typically Jewish one, a national 
 view? In such a sense, is not Hirschbein's Green 
 Fields just as "national" as Der Dibbuk? In the 
 politico-philosophical acceptation is not Pinski's 
 The Last Jew {Die Familie Zwie) just as "national"? 
 At any rate, questions of priority are meat for his- 
 torians' appetites; they have nothing to do with 
 art. It is easier to grant the epoch-making qualities 
 of An-ski's play, which let us summarize before 
 appraising.
 
 428 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 The auditorium is plunged into dense darkness, 
 out of which, as from a distance, floats a soft, mystic 
 chorus. In this the dramatist has perhaps sought 
 to concentrate the underlying thought of his play; 
 I translate it rather closely: 
 
 Wherefore, O wherefore 
 Is the soul 
 
 Fallen from highest estate 
 Into darkest depths? 
 Within itself the fall 
 Bears the ascension. 
 
 Then the curtain rises upon the play. 
 
 Hannon, a poor student of religious lore, is by 
 nature given to mysticism and the maddening in- 
 tricacies of kabbala, according to which every letter, 
 numeral, or word has its occult significance in the 
 unraveling of the divine mysteries. Homeless wan- 
 derer that he is, he has been taken in by the wealthy 
 Reb Sender, according to a charitable custom 
 whereby the better-favored Jews freely boarded the 
 humble students of the local House of Study. In 
 this prosperous home Hannon conceives a passionate 
 affection for the daughter, Leah — a typically pious, 
 obedient child of the race. It is common talk that 
 Sender seeks for his child the most advantageous 
 match he can find, and the tale of his quest and his 
 succession of refusals is told by the pious students 
 to one another between devotions. That nothing 
 comes of the attempt to match Leah off is a source 
 of exalted gratification to her lover, for Hannon 
 believes that it is his intense faith and his frequent 
 fastings that have intervened to keep her for his 
 own. Now comes the news that Sender has at last 
 betrothed his daughter to jNlenassah, son of the
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 429 
 
 wealthy Nahmen of the nearby town, Miropolia. 
 Hannon's pious deeds, then, despite his feehng that 
 a higher power has foreordained him as Leah's 
 mate, have proved of no avail. Suddenly, in the 
 synagogue where the news reaches him, he seems to 
 behold a new light, and falls to the floor in a sleep 
 of death. 
 
 A strange fellow, this, who has had the temerity, 
 not only to think queer thoughts, but to utter them 
 to his fellow-students, who gaze upon him almost as 
 if he spoke blasphemy. What else are they to im- 
 agine of a kabbalist who tells them that "it is un- 
 necessary to wage war against sin; one need but 
 refine it. Even as a goldsmith purifies gold in an 
 intense fire ... so should one purify sin of its 
 evil, that only the holy kernel remains." Hannon 
 speaks, indeed, as if he had seen a vision of the es- 
 sential unity of sin and virtue, for to him, "every- 
 thing that God has created holds within it a spark 
 of holiness." But three months later, when Leah is 
 to be married to Menassah, Hannon has been quite 
 forgotten; except by her, to whom his grave has ap- 
 peared in a dream, as well as his spirit. When, just 
 before the ceremony, the bride goes off^ to the cem- 
 etery to the grave of her mother, to invite her de- 
 parted parent to the wedding, she steals over to 
 Hannon's grave, too, and extends the same invita- 
 tion. It is here, presumably, that Hannon's spirit 
 merges with her own, for when she returns to her 
 home the great change has taken place in her soul. 
 Scarcely has the ceremony begun when Leah tears 
 ofi^ her bridal veil and refuses to go on with the 
 pact. Imploring the intercession of a legendary 
 pair of ever-faithful lovers whose tomb lies nearby.
 
 430 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 she exclaims, "Holy couple, shield me, rescue me!" 
 and falls to the ground; she is raised, when suddenly 
 she begins to cry, not in her voice, but in the voice 
 of Hannon: "Ah! You buried me! But 1 have 
 come back to my predestined one, and will never 
 leave her!" The company regard her as a mad- 
 woman, but the half-mysterious figure of the mes- 
 senger, who haunts the action from beginning to 
 end, declares amidst wild confusion that "a spirit 
 has entered the bride." 
 
 The possessed daughter is brought to the sage, 
 Rabbi Israel, upon whose powers Leah's father 
 depends to have the spirit exorcised. During an 
 imposing scene, in which the spirit speaks through 
 the mouth of the woman he has entered, the Rabbi 
 concentrates his most intense will upon driving out 
 the intruder, but in vain. The final resort is about 
 to be brought into play, — that of excommunication 
 — a drastic measure that requires the assent of the 
 town rabbi. Consent is given, and Rabbi Israel 
 (who is of Miropolia) sends to Brinitz (the town 
 whence Leah has been brought to him) for the bridal 
 party, as it is essential to marry off Leah the mo- 
 ment the dibbitk has been expelled. 
 
 It happens that the town rabbi has been visited 
 thrice by a dream in which Nissan, the departed 
 friend of Sender, has appeared demanding justice 
 for a deep injury done him by his friend. The rabbis 
 feel that the dream may have a bearing upon the 
 recalcitrance of the dibbiik^ and therefore decide to 
 submit the case to a beth din — the rabbinical trial — 
 before resorting to final measures in ridding Leah 
 of the spirit. Accordingly, the court-room is ar- 
 ranged, one part being divided from the rest by a
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 431 
 
 white sheet, behind which the spirit of the plaintiff, 
 Nissan, comes to present his case. Surely enough, 
 the complaint of the departed has a direct relation 
 to the peregrinations of the dibbuk. Years before, it 
 transpires, Nissan and Sender, upon marrying, had 
 made a pact: should their wives give birth at the 
 same time to infants of different sex, the children 
 should be betrothed. It so turned out in the case 
 of the children born, but the vicissitudes of life had 
 separated the friends, and only coincidence had 
 brought Hannon, son of Nissan, to the home of 
 Sender, father of Leah, as a poor, wandering student. 
 Sender, in tears, protests his ignorance of Hannon's 
 identity, and begs the indulgence of the departed 
 Nissan. 
 
 The verdict of the tribunal is as follows: Since 
 Sender is indirectly guilty of Hannon's death, he 
 must distribute half his fortune in charity and for 
 the rest of his life recite the commemorative prayer 
 of the dead (Kaddish) for both Nissan and Hannon. 
 There is no sign, however, that Nissan accepts this 
 expiation or that he forgives his friend. Now comes 
 the awe-inspiring scene in which the dibbuk is ex- 
 pelled; only after two vain appeals does the rabbi 
 have recourse to the excommunicatory ban, before 
 which, in the throes of agony, the spirit yields and 
 forthwith abandons Leah's body. With it, life 
 seems to depart, for Leah sinks to the floor in a 
 swoon. Now has come the moment to rush her 
 under the wedding canopy, but the bridal party has 
 been delayed upon the road (more of the spirit's 
 work?), and when it arrives Leah's soul has flown, 
 to merge with that of Hannon, "I have forsaken 
 your body," he whispers to her, "but I come to
 
 432 THE DRAMA OF TRAXSITIOX 
 
 your soul." Through the wall appears his image, 
 in white, and she goes to meet it. The mystic 
 chorus of the opening is repeated, and the curtain 
 falls. 
 
 As may be seen, even from the outline, two sep- 
 arate legends, that of the dibbiik and that of the 
 rabbinical trial between a dead man anii a living, 
 seem to have been combined by the process of 
 what earlier criticism called "contamination." An- 
 ski has fused them into a logical whole, though the 
 dream in which Nissan appears comes somewhat 
 abruptly into the action, with little preparation. 
 Relatively devoid of characterization as is the play, 
 lacking the personal contribution of the author, it 
 yet produces an undoubted effect of simple, yet 
 inescapable power. The opening act is notable for 
 its well-sustained mystical atmosphere — an atmos- 
 phere produced not by the extraneous aid of cheap 
 "spiritual" effects, but by the glints of student 
 humor, the strands of Khassidic lore and conversa- 
 tion woven into the fabric of the scene. So, too, the 
 second act— that of the interrupted wedding, in 
 which the haunting suggestion of Hannon's dead 
 grip upon the maiden is impressed with cumulative 
 power. Yet there is overemphasis upon the moody 
 motif. Compare this with the remarkable wedding 
 scene in Hirschbein's The Haunted bin, in which 
 an even stronger mood is produced with an artistry 
 that requires less emphasis for its effect. 
 
 The third act acquires its solemn character not 
 so much from the dramatist's skill as from the holy 
 associations of the scenes. The episode in which 
 the Rabbi first tries to expel the spirit of Hannon 
 from the body of Leah, and during which the unruly
 
 THE YIDDISH DRAMA 433 
 
 dibbuk speaks through her mouth, is one of the most 
 daring in contemporary drama. It is as if Jekyll 
 and Hyde were simultaneously present, in opposite 
 sexes, in the same person. And what shall we say 
 of the rabbinical trial, in which, through the mouth 
 of one of the living, the dead man in the shrouded 
 enclosure makes known his plaints.^ Der Dibbuk 
 is, first of all, a play of atmosphere; like so much 
 mysticism, it is founded upon the great, concrete 
 reality of sex in its most poetic evolution — that of 
 an eternal love which shatters the laws of both man 
 and God. Yet before endorsing this phase of it, we 
 must remember — and the Yiddish commentators 
 seem to have overlooked the fact — that Leah and 
 Hannon were not really predestined; they were be- 
 trothed before birth, it is true, but by their parents 
 and not by God, unless in their parents is beheld 
 the hand of the Lord. 
 
 Just how mystical is the play? Is there any- 
 thing in the action that may not possess its realistic 
 explanation ? I believe T)er Dibbuk should be sharply 
 distinguished from those plays in which the mys- 
 tical element is chiefly poetic suggestion, usually of 
 a watery sort. For cases similar to that of the 
 dibbuk under discussion are familiar to students of 
 abnormal psychology; moreover, the sight of the 
 legendary lovers' grave doubtless played its part 
 in Leah's obsession; yet again, Khassidim steeped 
 in their occult lore are apt to work themselves into 
 a state of self-deception that would lend the guise 
 of reality even to a rabbinical trial such as is here 
 depicted. Khassidic lore surely would seem to sup- 
 port this assertion. So that when Dr. H. Shid- 
 lovski terms An-ski in this play essentially a realist, 
 
 28
 
 434 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 he is not so far astray as hasty consideration might 
 make him appear. It is a subjective realism, indeed, 
 in which reality is not what lies without, but all of 
 that which the persons of the drama in their daily 
 life accept as real, regardless of its scientific demon- 
 strability. 
 
 Wiener, in 1899, questioned whether the ^'iddish 
 stage would last another ten years. That was 
 twenty-three years ago. Since that date have been 
 written the best dramas of the Jewish theatre. The 
 prophecy, however, was founded upon certain facts 
 of which Jewish writers themselves have not been 
 slow to take cognizance. Even though the melting- 
 pot should finally claim the Yiddish stage in this 
 country, the Yiddish spirit will continue to express 
 itself in the adopted tongue, as it has everywhere 
 done; and it will add a distinct note to the literature 
 of the United States, as have the labors of such 
 diverse spirits as Abraham Kahn in fiction, Louis 
 Untermeyer and a group of others in poetry, Ludwig 
 Lewisohn in criticism. To-day, it would seem, Yid- 
 dish literature is in the midst of a quasi-renaissance. 
 Its future depends upon those influences that will 
 force together or disintegrate the Jewish people. 
 After all, History has a habit of poking fun at 
 prophecies. What the future holds had best be 
 left to her.
 
 RUSSIA
 
 RUSSIA 
 
 EVREINOV AND THE MONODRAMA 
 
 The name of Nikolai Evreinov^ is associated in 
 English with the semi-scandal that attended the 
 introduction of his work to London. By some he 
 was received as a genius, by others as a mounte- 
 bank. His The Theatre of the Soul^ produced there 
 at the Little Theatre on March 8, 191 5, was later 
 forbidden performance at the Alhambra, what 
 though William Archer found the play extremely 
 original and striking and Mr. E. Spence called it 
 "a weird, clever piece." To make things merrier, 
 another damned it alliteratively as "poor, puerile, 
 and pretentious," yet one seeks in vain, in the 
 piece itself, reason for the antagonism it aroused. 
 
 Thus, Evreinov's theory and practise of the 
 "monodrama" enters our dramatic annals as a sort 
 of intellectual undesirable, an unwelcome immi- 
 grant. It is by no means the least interesting of the 
 contemporary revolts against realism, and shares 
 with all the other reactions a strange suggestion of 
 the primitive amid its belligerent modernity. And 
 the career of its originator parallels his theory in 
 exotic piquancy. 
 
 Nikolai Nikolaievitch Evreinov was born on Feb- 
 
 ■ In preparing this note upon the provoking Russian theorist and playwright, 
 I have used the following books and translations of Evreinov's pieces: (The name 
 of the author is variously transliterated into English as Evreinor, Evereinov, 
 and Yevreynoff.) 
 
 The Path of the Russian Stage, by Alexander Bakshy, Boston, 1918. 
 
 The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution, by Oliver M. Sayler, Boston, 1920. 
 
 The Theatre of the Soul, translated by C. St. John and Marie Potapenko. 
 
 A Merry Death and The Beautiful Despot, tianslated by C. E. Bechofer. 
 
 437
 
 438 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 ruary 13 (26), 1879. As a child he was fascinated 
 not only by the theatre, composing his first phiy 
 at the age of seven, but by music, becoming expert 
 on the flute. Like Benavente, he has followed the 
 circus, whence, perhaps, like the Spaniard, he de- 
 rived his later fondness for presenting mankind 
 upon the stage in the guise of puppets. It is some- 
 thing more than chance, indeed, that leads the ad- 
 vanced theatrical spirits, whether in Italy, Spain, 
 or Russia, to a new age ot the marionette. He has 
 acted, he has traveled far and near, fed early upon 
 the adventure tales of Mayne Reid, whom he 
 emulated by writing his first novel at the age of 
 thirteen. Educated for the law at the Imperial 
 Law School, Petrograd, he pursued his musical 
 studies under the master colorist, Rim.sky-Korsa- 
 koff; an atheist at fifteen, a Nietzschean at eighteen, 
 at twenty he is led to the gospels through the death 
 of a friend. 
 
 From now on his dramatic activity becomes dom- 
 inant, and in 1908 he is chosen as successor to 
 Meyerhold at the Kommisshar/hev.skaya theatre in 
 Moscow. The following year, together with this 
 actress' brother, he organizes the Gay Theatre for 
 Grown-up Children in Petrograd, producing there 
 The Merry Death. Thence to The Crooked Looking 
 Glass, which he directed from 1914 to 1917, when 
 he left for the Caucasus. 
 
 He has been teacher, composer, musician, and 
 even futurist painter; he has written opera bouffe, 
 operetta, and what Mr. Sayler calls a "lyric natural- 
 istic opera," and as if these interests were too nar- 
 row, he has added to Russian literature a History 
 of Corporal Punishment in Russia.
 
 RUSSIA 439 
 
 At the time of his introduction to London he was 
 connected with the Parody Theatre, Petrograd, and 
 had already written a number of the theoretical 
 works propounding his invention of the monodrama; 
 in 1 909 had appeared his Introduction to Monodrama^ 
 followed a year later by The Representation of Love^ 
 first of the plays to embody his new theory. In 
 191 2 came, on the stage of The Crooked Looking 
 Glass, the much-discussed Theatre of the Soul 
 (Sayler translates it The Greenroom of the Soul). 
 
 "The full and complete development of Evreinov's 
 theory of monodrama as well as his critical opinion 
 of all other forms of the theatre and their apologists 
 is contained in the three volumes of his greatest 
 work in dialectic, Teatr dlya Syebya {The Theatre 
 for One's Self)^ the first of which was published 
 . . ' . m 191 5, the second in 1916, and the third 
 after the Revolution in 1917. The first volume is 
 characterized by the author as theoretical, the sec- 
 ond as pragmatical, and the third as practical. For 
 its daring and confident advocacy of a new way 
 of thinking in the theatre, for the breadth of its 
 knowledge of the drama and the theatre in all 
 countries and all times, for its eager enthusiasm in 
 the theatre and for its whimsical imagination, it 
 is the most important contribution to the discussion 
 of the drama since Craig published On the Art of 
 the Theatre. No summary, no characterization can 
 do it justice."^ And Sayler adds that among the 
 [man's books awaiting type are volumes upon Rus- 
 sian scenic setting, on portrait painters, a novel, 
 an aesthetic treatise, and a third volume of his 
 collected plays. 
 
 ' Sayler, The Russian Theatre Under the Revolution, page 228.
 
 440 THE DRAMA OF TR.AXSITION 
 
 Among Evreinov's exploits at the Parody Theatre 
 was his production of Shaw's Candida^ accompanied 
 by the reading of the stage directions by a black 
 boy, as the Russian producer considers the direc- 
 tions the most brilliant part of the play. 
 
 At the same theatre he has presented the first 
 act of Gogol's well-known comedy, Rt"ji2or {The 
 Inspector-General) in several different styles, all in 
 the same evening. The act was thus staged suc- 
 cessively in the manner of the Moscow .Art Theatre, 
 after the methods of Craig, and so forth. "In this 
 satirical venture," writes Christopher St. John in 
 the introduction to the translation of The Theatre 
 _^ the Soul made by Marie Potapenko and himself, 
 " Evreinof was hitting at the cranks who w ant tg 
 retorm the theatre or make a llL^^^ lllifl^ Uln^h shall 
 be more artistic than the theatre. 1 Ic i:>u ii the posi - 
 tio n ot being a rebel ag ainst re bels, And is no mor e 
 in sympathy with the Av\ 1 heatre, Moscow, and 
 
 all s imilar enterprises, than wifh fhc onlmnrv'^-TTm. 
 
 mercial theatre 
 
 le essence of Evreinov's theory of the mon 
 odrama, in which ^akshy' beholds 'a development 
 of Meyerhold's playing upon the imagination of the 
 audience, is the psychological fusion of the spec- 
 tator with the actor, and of the stage with the rep- 
 resentation of the acting character. The play then 
 becomes, literally, a "drama of one"; the actor is 
 the spectator, and the scene is reality, not as it 
 appears to another, but as it seems in ever-changing 
 aspect to the actor-spectator himself. All the char- 
 acters other than the protagonist are not inde- 
 pendent individuals, as u pon the conventional stage, 
 
 ' The Path of the Russian Stage, pages 77-83.
 
 n 
 
 RUSSIA 441 
 
 but subjective entities, mental conceptions of such 
 personages entertained by the chief figure. In this 
 way Evreinov hopes to concentrate the attention 
 upon the central actor-spectator. The other type 
 of drama, which he does not, by the way, wholly dis- 
 miss, he calls "the drama alien to me" (i. e., objec- 
 tive, capable of being viewed from the outside by 
 a spectator who feels a spirit of observation rather 
 than of participation), in contradistinction to his 
 "my own drama" (i. e., subjective, impressionistic, 
 capable of being felt from the inside by a spectator 
 is the center of the action.) 
 In connection with this theory Evreinov seeks to 
 reduce the importance of the spoken word; the ears 
 give way to the eyes, or, as he has written, "we 
 hear more with the eyes than with the ears; and 
 this, in my opinion, is in the nature of the theatre/'^ 
 In his monodrama, "only one acting character is 
 possible; in the strict meaning of the word only one 
 subject of action is thinkable. Only with him do I 
 identify myself, only from his point of view do I 
 perceive the world surrounding him, the people 
 surrounding him. In this manner the latter must 
 present themselves through the prism of the soul 
 of the acting character himself; in other words, the 
 spectator of the monodrama perceives the other 
 participants in the dramas as they are reflected in 
 the subject of acting, and, consequently, their living 
 experience having no independent meaning on the 
 stage, they seem important only as much as in them 
 is projected the perceiving T of the subject of the 
 action. On this ground, we cannot in monodrama 
 
 ' "I wonder whether I'm not hearing with my eyes?" (Ich zweifle, ob ich nicht 
 mit den Augen hore), says King Agenor in Georg Kaiser's Europa, Act III, as he 
 considers Zeus's passionate dancing.
 
 442 THE DRAMA OF TR.ANSITION 
 
 recognize any importance in the other acting char- 
 acters in the strict sense of the word, and we must 
 in justice set them up as objects of action, under- 
 standing the word action in the sense of the percep- 
 tion of them and the relations of the acting char- 
 acter to them." 
 
 There is, in all this, not a little resemblance to 
 the dream mechanism as elucidated by the psycho- 
 logical school presided over by Freud, who is no 
 stranger to Evreinov. In our dreams, stripping 
 them for the moment of their condensations, their 
 ravelled symbolisms, their origins in recent impres- 
 sions and obscure references to a resurgent past, 
 we witness just such a monodrama as Evreinov has 
 developed. For it is our "F' that is at once the 
 sole spectator and the sole actor; the other per- 
 sonages of the dream are surely not themselves, but 
 our perceptions of them; their words are our own, 
 as are their actions; the scenery, which shifts far 
 more rapidly than ever it will upon the most highly 
 developed stage, changes in place and mood with 
 the altered tonality of thought. And, as if to com- 
 plete the analogy, the ear gives way to the eye. 
 
 We may now consider The Theatre of the Soul in 
 the light of the playwright's theories; of course all 
 the personages of the cast, with the exception of 
 the porter (and perhaps he, too!), represent a differ- 
 ent psychological aspect of the professor and of the 
 other persons as they appear to him. So that, in 
 the cast that follows we have some eight or nine 
 persons in one: 
 
 The Professor. 
 
 M I, The Rational Entity of the Soul. 
 
 M 2, The Emotional Entity.
 
 RUSSIA 443 
 
 M 3, The Subliminal Entity. 
 M I's Concept Of the Wife. 
 M 2's Concept Of the Wife. 
 M 3's Concept Of the Wife. 
 M 2's Concept Of the Dancer. 
 The Porter. 
 
 The action passes in the soul, in the period of half 
 a second. ( !) There is, of course, a prologue. And 
 what a prologue! 
 
 Picture the Professor appearing before a black- 
 board, in front of the curtain, chalk in hand. "Ladies 
 and Gentlemen," he begins, "when the unknown 
 author of The Theatre of the Soul^ the play that is 
 going to be presented to you this evening, came to 
 me some weeks ago with the manuscript, I confess 
 that the title of his work did not inspire me with 
 much confidence. 'Here,' I thought, *is another of 
 the many little sensational plays with which the 
 theatre is deluged.' I was all the more agreeably 
 surprised to gather from this first reading that 
 The Theatre of the Soul is a genuinely scientific work, 
 in every respect abreast with the latest develop- 
 ments in psychophysiology," 
 
 The Professor then invokes the names of Wundt, 
 Freud, Theophile Ribot, and goes into an obscure 
 discussion of Fichte's "entity of the soul." As he 
 speaks, he proceeds to draw a diagram upon the 
 blackboard, in which he represents the three en- 
 tities of himself, by the symbols M i, M 2, M 3. 
 The first stands for the rational entity, his reasoning 
 self; the second, for his emotional self; the third, for 
 his psychical self. And "these three M's, or 'selves,' " 
 constitute the great integral self. Whereupon he
 
 444 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 writes down: "M i plus M 2 plus M 3, equals M, 
 the entire personality." 
 
 The ancients, he explains, believed that the seat 
 of personality was placed in the liver. "Hut the 
 author of the work which is to be presented to you 
 holds, and with far better reason, I think, that the 
 human soul manifests itself in that part ot the 
 physical breast which a man instinctively strikes 
 when he wishes to emphasize his good hiith. Con- 
 sequently the scene of the human soul appears to 
 us like this." 
 
 Whereupon he draws a plan of a large human 
 heart, with physiological comments as his plan is 
 worked out. The system of nerves he compares to 
 a telephone, and surely enough on the stage that is 
 soon to be revealed to the audience, the professor's 
 plan is faithfully followed out, even to the telephone. 
 "Such is the scene in which the 'entity self plays 
 its part," he concludes. "But, ladies and gentle- 
 men, science does not confine itself to explaining 
 things. It also offers us consolation. For instance, 
 it is not enough to say: 'I've done a foolish thing.' 
 One ought to know which of the three entities is 
 responsible. If it is M 2, or the emotional self, no 
 great harm is done. If it is the psychical entity, the 
 matter need not be taken very seriously, either. 
 But if it be the rational self, it is time to be alarmed. 
 
 • • • 
 
 What shall those who object to Shaw's economics- 
 dissertation prefaces (which, after all, may be read 
 or not as the reader desires) — say to this inescapable 
 scientific prologue.'* The staging of the heart-scene, 
 too, is a matter involving new problems for the 
 modern theatre.
 
 RUSSIA 445 
 
 At the production of this play by Miss Edith 
 Craig's Pioneer Players there was used a "queer and 
 fascinating machinery of the simplest kind, by which 
 little was seen of the three entities beyond their 
 faces appearing at different levels out of intense 
 darkness. The heart was represented by a glowing 
 red space, which appeared to pulsate, owing to an 
 effect of light. The concepts of the women were 
 seen in the foreground, and were brilliantly lighted. 
 
 The play itself, outside of the bizarre conception 
 of a cast of characters that represents the multiple 
 aspects of a single personality, and outside of its 
 daring prologue, calls for few words. It depicts, in 
 characteristic fashion, the struggle going on within 
 the heart of the professor between his love for his 
 wife and the fascination exercised over him by the 
 dancer. There is a debate in which his three entities 
 take part, and in which the various conceptions of 
 the different entities appear. 
 
 The end of it all is that the professor, in his in- 
 tense dilemma (a dilemma which is all the more 
 easily conveyed to the audience because of the con- 
 fusion of symbols amidst which it occurs), shoots 
 himself. A loud, cannon-like report is heard, and a 
 great hole opens in the stage-diaphragm, from which 
 pour ribbons of blood. Darkness comes over all. 
 "M 3 trembles and stretches himself out wearily." 
 A porter carrying a lighted lantern enters, cries out 
 "Everyone's Town," and "M 3" puts on his hat, 
 takes his bag, and follows the porter, yawning,"^ 
 
 ' The reasons for the prohibition of the play at the Alhambra are a sort of 
 mystery. There is certainly nothing in the play that a normal person could call 
 immoral. Indeed there was no talk about the play's morality at the time of its 
 performance at the Little Theatre. One of the translators writes that "it was re- 
 ceived with indisputable enthusiasm by an audience fairly representative of the 
 best elements in that mysterious entity, 'the Public' . . ." He adds that there
 
 446 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 "Within the narrow limits of subjective ilkision- 
 ism," Bakshy has written, "it (Evreinov's theory of 
 the monodrama) doubtless presented an original 
 development. Th ere is, however^ his fat . il ffin tra- 
 diction concealed In" it, that whilst invoking the 
 spectator's power ofima gination) in \\\uiU ir j;; 
 
 'sub jective, it is conrpelled to hascit sflt mainly on 
 tKerealistic scenic effec ts, such a s arc produced by 
 
 -various lighting and musical devic e s, which j Hus- 
 trate the chan ging moods and standpoints of th e 
 
 ^ jrotagon jst;___jJli:i r.-irnes illusionism even furthe r 
 
 " jack than the chi rpin^r ^-rickers. croaki ng fro^^s. cu r- 
 
 tains blown bv th e wind, and other mechanic a 1 
 tricks of the Mosco w ^^t Theatre." There is an 
 even more fatal contradiction. For the monodra ma, 
 as ex hibited in T/ie Theatre of the Saul^ t;ir"Trom 
 creating the spiritual, subjec tive synthesis of stagg , 
 a ctor, and auditor^ produces from the start the ver y 
 opposite etiect. The spectator is transformed into 
 a^pupil before a blackboarcL so that the gap betwee n 
 stage and auditorium grows wider than ever; he "i s 
 asked to become an analyst. vvhc reup7 )n the .sy n - 
 t hetic subjectivism, even before the play has begu n, 
 is rendered impossible. . 
 
 Of far better stuff are The Merry Death (a har- 
 lequinade) and The Beautiful Despot^ which are said 
 to be the twin favorites of their author. 
 
 The personages of the philosophical harlequinade 
 are the conventional types of the Com media dell 
 
 was no suggestion whatever in the Press that the play was one which ought never 
 have been brought "on the loftily moral English stage." 
 
 The license for the Alhambra performance was granted, much to the fli^nii- 
 pointment of the theatre's manager, Mr. Chariot, who, for reasons still unkni".vM, 
 had conceived a sudden and unwarranted aversion to the play. And yet, '!• 
 the fact that untiring rehearsals had been gone through under the direct. 
 Miss Edith Craig, Mr. Chariot, on the very morning of the day on which th.- i • r 
 formance was to take place (the day was designated "Russia's Day"), summarily 
 and without explanation refused to have the play given on his stage.
 
 RUSSIA . 447 
 
 'Arte: Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot; there are, too, 
 a Doctor and Death. To be sure, there is nothing 
 new in the philosophy, any more than in the figures, 
 yet to both the writer imparts a certain new flavor, 
 a modern savor. 
 
 The curtain discovers Harlequin asleep. Pierrot, 
 chasing the flies from the sleeper's face, turns to 
 the audience and commences a prologue that is a 
 personal address to every individual in the audience: 
 
 S-h-h-h! Quiet! Take your seats quietly and try to 
 talk and turn in your seats less. Even if an ingenuous 
 friend has dragged you in and yourselves are too serious 
 to be interested in a harlequinade, it's quite superfluous 
 to hint of it to the public, which in the main has no 
 aff'air with your personal tastes. Besides, Harlequin's 
 asleep — you see him! S-h-h! I'll explain it all to you 
 afterwards. But don't wake him up, please! And when 
 Columbine comes on, don't applaud her like mad, just 
 in order to show that you know her, had a little intrigue 
 with her, and can appreciate certain talents. 
 
 Pierrot then explains that he doesn't fear any 
 intrigue between his wife Columbine and Harlequin; 
 yet his manner denotes the opposite. Harlequin, 
 moreover, is to die at midnight, and here it is al- 
 ready eight o'clock! Suddenly Pierrot thinks of a 
 great plan: he will push back the hands of the clock 
 two hours! "I always liked taking people in; but 
 when it's a matter of taking in Death and Harle- 
 quin at the same time, and as well, for the harm of 
 the first and the good of the second, I don't think 
 you can call this plan anything but a stroke of genius. 
 Well, to work! The performance begins!" 
 
 It quickly appears that Harlequin, with the foot- 
 steps of Death echoing in every beat of the clock.
 
 448 THE DRAMA OK TRANSITION 
 
 is determined to meet that lady in most merry 
 mood. "I am Harlequin," he cries, "and shall die 
 Harlequin!" True to his word he proceeds to make 
 merry with Pierrot's Columbine, even to argue with 
 her about the hereafter, and when Death enters, 
 pointing with menace to the clock, he pokes fun at 
 the grim figure. "Look round," he challenges 
 Death, "you are in the house oi Harlequin, where 
 one can laugh at all that's tragic, not even exclud- 
 ing your gestures." He invites her to perform the 
 traditional Dance of Death, which she does. A last 
 kiss to Columbine, a parting gibe at Pierrot's 
 cowardice, and Harlequin is dead. 
 
 Pierrot's epilogue is even more impudent than 
 his prologue: 
 
 I really don't know what I ought to bewail first: the 
 loss of Harlequin, the loss of Columbine, my own bitter 
 lot, or yours, dear audience, who have witnesseil the 
 performance of such an unserious author. And what 
 did he want to say in his piece? — I don't understand. 
 By the way, I'm silly, cowardly Pierrot, and it's not for 
 me to criticize the piece in which I played an unenviable 
 role. But your astonishment will increase still more 
 when you know what I've been told to say in conclusion 
 by the culprit of this — well, between ourselves — this 
 strange mockery of the public. S-h-h! Listen! "When 
 the genius Rabelais was dying, the monks collected round 
 his couch and tried in every way to induce him to do 
 penance for his sins. Rabelais, in reply, only smiled, and 
 when the moment of the end came he said mockinglv, 
 'Let down the curtain; the farce is over.' He said this 
 and died." Why the graceless author thought it neces- 
 sary to put other people's words into the mouth of one 
 of the actors, I don't know — I've not a free hand in the 
 matter; but being a respectable actor, I stand by him to
 
 RUSSIA 449 
 
 the last and so, obeying without dispute the will of the 
 author, I shout mockingly: "Let down the curtain; the 
 farce is over." {The curtains fall behind him.) 
 
 But the author reserves still another slap. For 
 the epilogue continues to speak, despite the fall of 
 the curtain: 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I forgot to tell you that neither 
 your applause nor your hissing of the piece is likely to 
 be taken seriously by the author, who preaches that 
 nothing in life is to be taken seriously. And I suggest 
 that if the truth is on his side, then you should hardly 
 take his play seriously, all the more as Harlequin has 
 probably risen from his deathbed already, and perhaps 
 is already tidying himself in anticipation of a call, be- 
 cause, say what you like, the actors can't be responsible 
 for the free-thinking of the author. {Exit.) 
 
 Now, this is no mere totir deforce in physiopsycho- 
 logical analysis, as is The Theatre of the Soul; this is 
 philosophic drama where the philosophy does not 
 obscure the drama. These puppets, like the puppets 
 of Benavente in The Bonds of Interest^ are no prim- 
 itive marionettes strutting across the stage of the 
 Commedia dell 'Arte; they are living modernists, 
 making for once out of the banal eternal triangle a 
 conception of life as a brave adventure not to be 
 taken too seriously, yet to be lived up to the hilt. 
 
 Jameson would have it even more. To her it is 
 "a technical masterpiece and a fine drama," and 
 "takes rank with the great Russian comedies. 
 Evreinov has written no other play which ap- 
 proaches its standard of excellence, and his latest 
 work shows a gradual failing of dramatic power."^ 
 
 ' Modern Drama in Europe, pages 263, 264. 
 29
 
 450 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 The sub-title of The Beautiful Despot is The last 
 act of a drama. If the author's rap at the critics in 
 the epilogue of the previous play reminds one of 
 Shaw's episode of the critics in Fanny's First Play\, 
 the leading figure in The Beautiful Despot is of a 
 piece with the lover of the good old days in that 
 satire. It is not so much a love of the past as a 
 scorn for the present, with its withering commer- 
 cialism (which Evreinov in one place calls "Amer- 
 icanism") that drives the master to become an exile 
 from civilization. He has retired into the year 1808, 
 surrounding himself with the books, the papers, 
 and the atmosphere of that age; thus he lives, as 
 he says, in an attempt "to lose my despair in beau- 
 tiful folly." 
 
 So, when a friend from the contemporary world 
 comes to visit the Master, the servants of the house- 
 hold and the others are told that they are to pre- 
 serve the illusion of 1808 before the Master's visit- 
 ing friend. The friend arrives, only to be bewildered 
 by an entire household that denies any knowledge 
 of such new matters as railroads, electric lights, and 
 so on. 
 
 There follows soon a most interesting, witty, and 
 well-sustained argument between the Master and 
 his friend, in which the past and the present have 
 their various claims for preference advanced. The 
 friend is almost seduced by the arguments for the 
 antique; he even asks to be allowed to sleep at the 
 Master's that night, even if, the next morning, he 
 intends to take the quickest horses of the Master 
 to ride back into the world and the present. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to give plays like these
 
 RUSSIA 451 
 
 their just deserts in a mere outline. In distinction 
 from the thesis-drama, they might be termed thesis- 
 farce. And much of the underlying thought in the 
 harlequinade and in this arraignment of the present 
 bears strong resemblance. "What's health?" asks 
 The Master in the midst of a maze of phrases. 
 "Isn't it money to be spent neither too stingily nor 
 too prodigally.''" . . . Again, "What! Hasn't 
 the senselessness of existence stared you in the face 
 yet?" . . . The dialogue, one should really say 
 the monologue, for all is subordinate to the epigram- 
 matic chatter of The Master, is the typical mockery 
 of the dramatist. "The hour will come," warns 
 that loquacious fellow, "when the demon of venge- 
 ance will awake in you, the terrible demon of 
 vengeance, and when you will want to seize the 
 globe like a stone from the street of the world and 
 throw it with all your force at the great Policeman." 
 A strain of aristocratic cynicism runs through the 
 play. It is hardly putting it too strong to say that 
 what with glib references to "the new Sakya-Muni" 
 and "the new Zarathustra" and all this ball-tossing 
 of Olympianism, skepticism and the rest, this piece 
 will be more read than acted. It possesses far less 
 stageworthy elements than The Merry Death, and 
 would seem to have been meant for a little theatre 
 and particularly sympathetic actors. 
 
 Evreinov's better work, it would seem, is done 
 outside of the monodrama, to "which type neither 
 the philosophic harlequinade nor the satire of the 
 beautiful despot belongs. The monodrama, at best, 
 may prove successful pyrotechnics. Its essential 
 unsuitability to drama of the higher category is
 
 452 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 that, though it aims at synthesis, it proceeds by 
 analysis. It originates from no center of passion 
 in the author; it is a product, and a cold one, of the 
 intellect. It does not, in its own creative life, ac- 
 complish that fusion which it demands of the 
 spectator. It reveals thought rather than emotion; 
 it is scenic dissection. 
 
 From the purely technical standpoint it proposes 
 little that is new. Marinctri, in his futuristic, 
 synthetic plays, has dispensed with dialogue even 
 more than Evreinov, and has, in like manner, so 
 subordinated the ear to the eye that some of his 
 pieces are meant only for the eye, producing their 
 effect either by the sudden revelation of a scene 
 that tells its own story, or by manipulation of the 
 light to create, by shadows, the illusions of moving 
 objects. Pirandello, as we have seen in the chapter 
 on Italy, has lately used the monodramatic idea in 
 conjunction with the regular type of play. And 
 Bakshy points out that some of the monodrama's 
 effects have for a long time been stock in trade of 
 the moving picture.' 
 
 Its chief interest to the student of the eternal 
 ebb and flux of art is that of the frank invasion of 
 the stage by the new psychology. Like all of the 
 theories that buzz in the wings of the contemporary 
 theatre it brings, at best, a healthy stir of unrest, 
 the contribution of a detail to the complex craft of 
 
 ' The Path of the Russian Stage, page 80. ". . . the audiences of which, for 
 example, are treated to the illusion of a moving motor car at a standstill, while 
 stationary houses appear to be flying swiftly into the distance. However." he adds, 
 "as far as ray own experience goes I have never, in such drcumatanrea. been 
 under the impression that it was I who was seated in the car and the hero of all the 
 extraordinary adventures which kinema cars are in the habit of undergoing." 
 
 An even better example of monodramatic sugeestion in the "movHes" is Buster 
 Keaton's "The Playhouse", in which by a photographic trick Keatoo is made 
 literally "the whole show", portraying every character on the sta«e.
 
 RUSSIA 453 
 
 the drama. And here is its least attractive feature: 
 this suggestion of a preoccupation with craft rather 
 than the passion that creates its own form, becom- 
 ing synonymous with it. The monodrama is too 
 commentatiously self-conscious; it is, after all, the 
 theatre of the soul, not the soul of the theatre.
 
 THE UNITED STATES
 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 EUGENE O'NEILL 
 
 Properly to appreciate the promise and the per- 
 formance of Eugene O'Neill as one of the youthful 
 experimenters in the theatre, one has but to have 
 gone through the thousands of pages that his con- 
 temporaries have written at home and abroad — 
 the monodramatic extravagances of Evreinov, the 
 lucubrations of the Italian "grotesquers," the mad 
 confusion of half of the German Expressionists. To 
 talk of "placing" O'Neill at this early date would 
 be the worst of academic fatuousness; his work is 
 plentiful, widely varying in quality, and his attitude, 
 perhaps, as his production, is, of choice, experimental 
 rather than settled. Seemingly he marks a new era 
 in the drama of the United States; what one may do 
 now is to examine, at the beginning of that career, 
 the qualities and the works of which it is com- 
 pounded, following it from the worst of melodrama to 
 the best of realism, and thence to a freedom of 
 structure that approaches Expressionism only in its ' 
 disruption of conventional form. For, thus far at 
 least, O'Neill has yielded to neither the formlessness 
 nor the incoherence of the more extreme Expres- 
 sionists; even when his contact with external reality 
 seems least firm, he yet maintains his grip upon the 
 roots of things. There are, in The Emperor Jones, 
 for instance, elements of the monodrama, yet 
 O'Neill never becomes metaphysically abstruse as 
 
 457
 
 458 THE DRAMA OF rRANSITION 
 
 Evreinov; his The Hairy Ape may suggest the later 
 Kaiser and the youthful Hasenclever, but it is not 
 of the self-willed, esoteric brood that is signalized 
 by the misty productions of Oskar Kokoschka and 
 his fellow-Germans. In this, the foreign critic, who 
 has his labels as have our own, may be inclined to 
 find a Yankee tendency to stick to facts and not fly 
 too easily off on the wings of fancy or the back of a 
 Pegasus who has broken the reins of the imagina- 
 tion and ranges wildly through stellar space. 1 
 rather find it in the man's own personality, in an 
 elemental vigor that sees even phantoms clearly. 
 For it is one of O'Neill's distinguishing traits that 
 he lends a peculiar vitality even to his worst scenes 
 — and there are bad ones even in his later pro- 
 ductions.' 
 
 To Mr. Kenneth Macgowan (see Vanity Fair for 
 April, 1922) I am indebted for a full list of O'Neill's 
 plays, written during the past nine years. Ar- 
 ranged chronologically, they are as follows: 
 
 1913: A JVifefor a Life — one act, destroyed. The li'eb 
 — one act, published 1914 with four succeeding plays. 
 Thirst — one act. 19 14: Recklessness — one act. f fram- 
 ings — one act. Fog — one act. BreaiJ and Butter — four 
 acts, destroyed. Servitude — three acts, destroyed. Bound 
 East for Cardiff — one act. Abortion — one act, destroyed. 
 191 5: A Knock at the Door — one-act comedy, destroyed. 
 The Sniper — one act, produced by Provincetown Players 
 (1917), destroyed. The Personal Equation — four acts, 
 destroyed. Belshazzar—^\h\\cz\ play in six scenes, de- 
 stroyed. 1 91 6: Before Breakfast— ont act. The Movie 
 Man — one-act comedy, destroyed. Now I Ask You — 
 
 'In the case of O'Neill I assume, of course, a knawledue of his latest piec«« 
 which are readily accessible in print, if not on the stage. All but the first of the 
 volumes {Thirst and Other One-Act Plays, Boston. 1914) are published in New 
 York. A special edition of The Emperor Jones is issued in Cincinnati
 
 THE UNITED STATES 459 
 
 three-act farce-comedy, destroyed. Atrocity — one-act pan- 
 tomime, destroyed. 19 17: He — one act. In the Zone — 
 one act. The Long Voyage Home — one act. The Moon oj 
 the Caribbees — one act. The G. A. N. — one-act farce- 
 comedy, destroyed. 191 8: Till We Meet — one act, de- 
 stroyed. The Rope — one act. Beyond the Horizon — three 
 acts, 6 scenes, produced 1920. The Dreamy Kid — one act. 
 Shell-Shock — one act, destroyed. Where the Cross Is 
 Made — one act. The Straw — three acts, five scenes, pro- 
 duced 1 92 1. 1 91 9: Honor Among the Bradley s — one act, 
 destroyed. Chris — three acts, six scenes, produced out 
 of town 1920, destroyed. The Trumpet — one-act comedy, 
 destroyed. Exorcism — one act, produced 1920, destroyed. 
 1920: Gold — four acts, produced 1921. Anna Christie — 
 four acts, produced 1921. The Emperor Jones — eight 
 scenes, produced 1920. Diff'rent — two acts, produced 
 1920. 1 92 1: The First Man — four acts. The Fountain — 
 prologue and nine scenes. The Hairy Ape — eight scenes. 
 
 In his very first published work appear, in the 
 rough, both the good qualities and the bad that are 
 to haunt his later plays. For the light they throw 
 upon the maturer artist, they repay something more 
 than cursory examination. Thirst and Other One- 
 Act Plays comprises Thirsty The JVeb, Warnings, 
 Fog, and Recklessness. 
 
 The Web is melodrama at its worst, with all the 
 outworn technique connoted by the name, but al- 
 ready there appears, in the sound of Rose's coughing 
 as she is led away by the officers, O'Neill's predilec- 
 tion for the potency of pure sound upon the stage.' 
 Time and again this fondness for aural effects is 
 evident; in the remaining plays of the volume, for 
 example, there is the whining of the wireless in 
 Warnings, the steamer whistles and the dripping 
 water of the icebergs in Fog; there are, in The Web
 
 460 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 itself, the falling raindrops. So, in the later Bound 
 East for Cardiff there is the whistle bhnving through 
 the fog at intervals of a minute and, in The Emperor 
 Jones, the haunting crescendo of the tom-tom, beat- 
 ing faster and faster with the wild palpitation of 
 terror. 
 
 Recklessness, like The IVeb, has all the earmarks of 
 melodrama: the spying maid, the lying mistress, 
 the treacherous chauffeur, the purloined letter prov- 
 ing the wife's guilt, the husband's cruel and sar- 
 donic revenge. Warnings, the tale of a deaf wireless 
 operator who fails to receive the message warning 
 of a derelict, and who commits suicide on learning 
 that the fault is his, requires two scenes tor its 
 setting; the first would not have been necessary in 
 the hands of a dramatist more skilled than was 
 O'Neill at the time; the second scene is better done 
 and is in the nature of a foretaste of the later work. 
 Fog is the tale of yet another wreck, brought about 
 by a collision with an iceberg. Best of the collec- 
 tion, easily, is Thirst, for the depiction of the raving, 
 wrecked trio afloat on a boundless ocean with a raft 
 for their world is accomplished with tnie psycho- 
 logical power, vivid scenic sense, and a flair for the 
 abnormal passages in the lives of men and women. 
 One thinks of this playlet as he reads the opening 
 act of Gold. 
 
 What the earth was to Antaeus, the sea is to 
 O'Neill in these early plays. He gathers strength 
 from each new contact. On land, in these same 
 products of his 'prentice days, he fairly wobbles 
 like a sailor on shore leave after months and months 
 on the deep. To be sure, the dialogue as often as 
 not is a string of cliches; the characterization is
 
 THE UNITED STATES 461 
 
 uncertain; but even thus early we have a welcome 
 infusion of the exotic element, a groping after the 
 inscrutable powers that rule over land and sea, a 
 vigorousness, a masculinity, whose muscles were 
 strong with a strength that lacked direction and 
 discipline. 
 
 "But the blind sky will not answer your appeals 
 or mine," says the Gentleman in Thirst. "Nor will 
 the cruel sea grow merciful for any prayer of ours." 
 Already, in the cannibalism of the negro, resurgent 
 through the ravages of thirst, there is prefigured 
 the regression, through fear, of the burly Emperor 
 Jones — a psychological retracing that, by the way, 
 was accomplished for the group in In the Zone, as 
 The Emperor Jones accomplishes it for the indi- 
 vidual. Already, in Fog, O'Neill, like the Dark 
 Man of his play, finds the people in the steerage 
 more interesting to talk to than the second-class 
 passengers; the suggestion of a mysterious grinding 
 power does not harmonize with the realism of the 
 scene, any more than does the philosophical argu- 
 ment between the poet and the business man, but 
 one may glimpse here the original suggestion of 
 The Hairy Ape. In The Web, O'Neill had spoken, 
 in a stage direction, of an "ironic life-force"; in Fog 
 there is talk of "poverty — the most prevalent of all 
 diseases." By which tokens he had levied tiny 
 tribute upon Shaw. 
 
 Intrinsically, these early pieces are of meager 
 worth; they are, however, necessary to a fuller under- 
 standing of the man, containing, as they do, the 
 suggestions of a number of his later plays. 
 
 The Moon of the Caribbees and Six Other Plays of 
 the Sea, though published five years later than the
 
 462 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 little volume we have just considered, contains 
 plays written between 191 7 and 1919. The melo- 
 dramatic element, though refined, is still there; by 
 now, however, O'Neill seems to have acquired a 
 genuinely philosophic grasp upon his material. 
 Before, he was outside his imaginary world, now he 
 has broken in. Before, he revealed no firm grasp 
 upon character; now he is able to create a little 
 human comedy of the sea, in which the same per- 
 sonages, clearly difi^erentiated, appear in the various 
 plays and are readily recognized for the distinct 
 men they are. The Moon of the Caribbees has color, 
 mood, suggestion, action; Bound East for Cardiff 
 has all these, and a simple pathos that is the voice 
 of a whole philosophy. "This sailor life ain't much 
 to cry about Icavin'," says a dying comrade to his 
 mate. "... Just one ship after another, hard 
 work, small pay and bum grub; and when we git into 
 port, just a drink endin* up in a fight, and all your 
 money gone, and then, ship away again. Never 
 meetin' no nice people; never gittin* outa sailor 
 town, hardly in any port; travellin' all over the 
 world and never seein' none of it; without no one 
 to care whether you're alive or dead. . . . There 
 ain't much in all that that'd make yuh sorry to 
 lose it, Drisc." No pretty language there; no ro- 
 manticizing of the heaving billows and a life on the 
 ocean wave; no stage rhetoric. This is the tongue 
 of reality, with the clear-sightedness of actual con- 
 tact. It is the language that The Hairy Ape is to 
 speak, in harsher tones, down in his hole at the bot- 
 tom of the ship which is the bottom of civilization 
 as well. Not so good is The Long Voyage Home^ 
 with its tale of Olson of the Glencairn shanghaied
 
 THE UNITED STATES 463 
 
 in a London dive just as he is on his way home to 
 a farm, after giving up sailoring for good. This 
 melodrama of types, with its seduction, poisoned 
 drink, robbery, and other familiar devices, is saved 
 only by a tinge of irony, and only for a while. Of 
 better stuff is In the Zone, with its war-scarred crew 
 in the mine zone suspecting the lovelorn Smitty 
 of harboring a treacherous bomb in the box that 
 treasures his harmless love letters. lie inclines to 
 melodrama, but is strengthened by its revelation 
 of man's search for power in the face of woman's 
 weakening love, while both Where the Cross Is Made 
 and The Rope are spoiled by the author's unwilling- 
 ness to forego the assistance of convention and co- 
 incidence. Else, why these foreclosed mortages, 
 these wills, this plentiful passing of information 
 across the footlights, these maundering soliloquies? 
 Yet there is vision in Where the Cross Is Made, as 
 the fulfilment of the theme in Gold has revealed. 
 And, for that matter, is not the theme of lie deeply 
 akin to the struggle between man and wife in the 
 selfsame Gold? 
 
 Beyond the Horizon, written in 191 8, is the first 
 of the author's longer plays to survive his destructive 
 wrath. Even here, where the domestic tragedy is 
 enacted upon the land, the roar of the sea is heard 
 in "the distance. Though the ever-present sea is 
 oftener than not the "ol' davil" that Chris Christo- 
 pherson is always calling it in Anna Christie, it yet 
 may heal, as it does Anna herself, so long shielded 
 from it by her obsessed parent. To Robert in 
 Beyond the Horizon, as to Anna of the later play, 
 the land proves a curse; but the sea that heals Anna 
 is kept by the irony of fate from Robert, whom it
 
 464 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 would have cured doubly, bj- taking him from Ruth, 
 who was not made for him, and by bringing him 
 the romance that his poetic nature craved. At the 
 end Robert speaks to his returned brother, Andrew, 
 with the clear vision ot the dying. He asks him to 
 take care of Ruth, whom Andrew and not Robert 
 should have married in the first place, and of the 
 land, which Andrew and not Robert should have 
 remained to till. "You've spent eight years running 
 away from yourself. Do you see what I mean? 
 You used to be a creator when you loved the farm. 
 You and life were in harmonious partnership. And 
 now — {He stops as if seeking vainly for words.) 
 My brain is muddled. But part of what I mean is 
 that your gambling with the thing you used to love 
 to create proves how far astray you've gotten from 
 the truth. So you'll be punished. You'll have to 
 suffer to win back — ". 
 
 The play was hailed, upon its initial performance, 
 as one of the master products of realism in the 
 United States; O'Neill, who must since have dis- 
 concerted the ready prophecies of our pigeon-hole 
 critics with his experiments in the new forms, was 
 looked upon as the founder of a truly realistic drama. 
 Yet from the standpoint of such a realism he has 
 carried over, into the play, some of the less worthy 
 devices of his early pieces. His dialogue is natural 
 enough, the writing is well-modulated, there are 
 high moments, and one feels something like an 
 implacable fate hovering over these toys of the land 
 and the sea. This is a domestic tragedy of might- 
 have-been, permeated with that "ironic life-force" 
 of which the 'prentice O'Neill had written. But to 
 overpraise the play and the author in one's enthu-
 
 THE UNITED STATES 465 
 
 siasm at our drama's final attainment of adulthood, 
 is to be false to both. "O'Neill's future," Mr. 
 Macgowan has written, "lies along the new way 
 and he must follow it."^ Nor is this mere partizan- 
 ship of the new for novelty's sake. Realism, in the 
 catalogue sense of the word, holds for O'Neill the 
 traps of melodrama, of the artistically purposeless 
 goings and comings of the dramatist's puppets. 
 This appears in so good a play as Beyond the Horizon^ 
 in which Andrew, each time that he comes on a 
 visit to the old farm, wishes to return at once to 
 his distant business, the reason for this impatience 
 being more the playwright's than the character's. 
 It appears in Anna Christie^ where her future lover, 
 though he has been five days adrift with his ship- 
 wrecked companions, rowing them to safety, must 
 begin to make love to her no sooner than he has 
 been picked out of the water. It appears later in 
 the play, in the inexcusable fourth act, wherein the 
 author kicks his dramatic and artistic structure to 
 bits by a sudden reversal of the situation. It ap- 
 pears, in a peculiar manner, in Different, by not 
 appearing at all, so to speak. For Different is by 
 implication a psychological contrast, yet the author 
 presents only the outer ends of that contrast, with 
 thirty years between the acts. The missing act, 
 the one he did not write, was precisely that in which 
 some hint of the process which changed the woman 
 from a prim Sunday-school mistress to a silly 
 flapper of fifty should have been presented. 
 
 ' Vanity Fair, April, 1922, page 16d; If I concur in Macgowan's opinion, 
 it is not through definite allegiance to the new way as against the old. The worthy 
 playwright transcends the limitations of any particular form, and the special form 
 of a play is determined by the material as it shapes itself in the author's imagina- 
 tion, and by nothing else. That form is part of the matter, — an aspect of it. 
 O'Neill's outlook upon the world is a peculiar blend of vivid insight and spiritual 
 groping; it violates itself in the moulds of ordinary realism, as I try to show. 
 30
 
 466 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Had O'Neill, for example, treated The Emperor 
 Jones (produced in 1920) in the fashion of conven- 
 tional realism — and there was, one may imagine, 
 that possibility — he would have fallen short of a 
 veritable triumph, not through the accidental use 
 of an inappropriate technique so much as through 
 failure to grasp the essence of his theme, which 
 demanded the form — which was the form itself — 
 that he employed. The Emperor, not to be slayed 
 except by a silver bullet, is killed by just such a 
 bullet moulded by his credulous vassals. So, too, 
 are we slain by the very belief of others in our 
 own deceptions. Here we have a masterly presenta- 
 tion of the degenerative process of fear. The Em- 
 peror, once he has fled the palace- -the first step in 
 his fear, despite all his bluster, which was a sign of 
 fear in the first place — wanders through the 
 forest in rapid regression to primitivity. The tom- 
 tom efl^ect is remarkable, and is the culmination of 
 O'Neill's natural response to such sensory stimuli. 
 This is no mere sound accessory, as it is in the early 
 plays, with their fog whistles, their rain drops, 
 their whining children, and the whirr of the wire- 
 less. The tom-tom is part and parcel of the psycho- 
 logical action; at first it is the call to war; then it 
 merges into the Emperor Jones's vision of the slaves 
 rolling to its beat; finally it becomes his own throb- 
 bing, feverish temples, and all the while it is our 
 heart beating more and more rapidly as we follow 
 his fate. 
 
 Is the play one long soliloquy, practically? But 
 fear talks much to itself. The visions that rise be- 
 fore his eyes.'' They are such as fear beholds, and 
 truer to genuine reality than would be a blank
 
 THE UNITED STATES 467 
 
 stage. It is the surge of the Emperor's speech that 
 makes these spectres live for us as they do for him. 
 This part of the play is really of a piece with the 
 monodrama, in that it achieves complete identifica- 
 tion of the auditor with the actor, and presents 
 surrounding reality not as it appears to those out- 
 side the action, but in subjective terms of the actor's 
 self. There are hints of the cinema in the gradual 
 unfolding of the past as the play progresses — a 
 series of "flash-backs," as it were; but this is no 
 mere imitation of a medium; it is inherent in the 
 character of the play; it is the play, and could not 
 have been presented otherwise. Here symbol and 
 psychology merge; analysts have found it a remark- 
 able study, fundamentally as true of the white man 
 as of the black; the Emperor Jones is, in addition, 
 or simultaneously, an unobtrusive symbol of man's 
 vain boast of power. 
 
 ^nna Christie, written in 1920, just before The 
 Emperor Jones, was produced a year later. For 
 three acts it presents another realistic study in the 
 "ironic life-force"; the fourth, as we have said al- 
 ready, is inexcusable, except upon the frankly com- 
 mercial desire to provide a happy ending at what- 
 ever cost to the artistic conscience. If Mr. O'Neill 
 really believes in that final act, the three preceding 
 ones, with their closely-woven narrative, their 
 pungent dialogue, their reality to the life they por- 
 tray, must be a lucky accident. And one refuses to 
 believe in such fortunate fortuities. Not from the 
 man who has written the relentless scenes of The First 
 Man, in which the creative soul that is the artist 
 may tread even upon the creative body that is 
 woman.
 
 468 THE DRAMA OF TRA\SITIO\ 
 
 And so, from melodrama and external realism, 
 through the novelty of The Emperor JoueSy we come 
 to the newest of O'Xeiirs productions, The Hair\ 
 Ape^ a "comedy of ancient and modern life." The 
 ancient life of the author's sub-title is that same 
 ancient life which sprang into being in the successive 
 downward steps of the Kmpcror Jones's terror, for 
 in theme and scene The II airy Jpe is contempo- 
 raneous with the transatlantic steamship on which 
 it takes place, at once realistic background and 
 symbolic, timeless token of caste and character. 
 "The beginnings of it," wrote Mr. VVoollcott in The 
 New York Titties on the day (.April i6, 1922) pre- 
 ceding its initial production at the Plymouth 
 Theatre, whither it hail moved from the Macdougal 
 Street home of the Prf)vincctown Players, "can be 
 traced back to the days ten or eleven years ai^r) when 
 O'Neill was an able seaman aboard one of tfie ships 
 of the American Line and came to know a certain 
 stoker on the same shij>— a huge Liverpool Irish- 
 man, who drank enormously, relished nothing in all 
 the world so much as a good kn(x:k-down-and-drag- 
 out fight, anil who hail a mighty pride in his own 
 strength, a pride that gloried in the heat and ex- 
 haustion of the stokehold which would drop the 
 weaklings and leave him roaring with mirth at the 
 sight of them carried out. He was just such a spec- 
 imen, therefore, as the Yank Smith on whose im- 
 mense shoulders the ominous, nightmare events of 
 The Hairy Ape press down like the crowding phan- 
 toms in some fantastic picture of Despair. 
 
 "In the mutual snobbery of the liner, O'Neill as 
 a seaman could hardly exchange confidences with 
 the stoker, but they got to know each other ashore
 
 THE UNITED STATES 469 
 
 in the greater democracy of Johnny the Priest's 
 saloon down in Fulton Street just around the corner 
 from West — the same saloon, probably, through 
 whose grimy windows the light filtered on the gaudy 
 hair and cheerless face of Anna Christie. There, 
 over his beer, O'Neill was free to contemplate the 
 immense complacency of the Irishman and his glow- 
 ing satisfaction with what most folks would have 
 regarded as an unenviable role in the world. The 
 memory of that satisfaction furnished a curious 
 background for the news which drifted up from the 
 waterfront some years later — the tidings that one 
 night, when the ship was plowing along in mid- 
 Atlantic, the big stoker had stolen up on deck and 
 jumped overboard. Why.'' What had happened to 
 shake that Gargantuan contentment? What had 
 broken in and so disturbed a vast satisfaction with 
 the world that the big fellow had been moved to 
 leave it? O'Neill never heard if any one knew, but 
 out of his own speculation there took shape at last 
 the play called The Hairy Ape'' 
 
 The Emperor Jones emphasized the individual's 
 regression through fear; The Hairy Ape shows that 
 same individual thwarted in his gropings after social 
 significance, returning in his inarticulate rage to his 
 savage ancestor of the forest. The "ironic life- 
 force" again, tinged with a distinctly social meaning 
 and attitude. As the Emperor, blustering in his 
 consciousness of power before the fear connoted in 
 his blustering begins to get the better of him, so 
 Yank the coal-heaver, bellowing his pride of posi- 
 tion in the infernal heat of the stokehole — a pride, 
 already from the first, instinct with the uncertainty 
 of all exaggerated pride, already betraying the in-
 
 470 THE DRAMA OV TRANSITION 
 
 evitable result when stokehole clashes with upper 
 deck in the vision of a curious daughter of the rich, 
 who would go a-slumming on the transatlantic and 
 get a glimpse of life below decks. 
 
 Listen to the bluster of the hairy ape, Yank: 
 
 Hell, sure! Dat's my favorite climate. 1 cat it up! 
 It's me makes it roar. It's me makes it move. Sure, 
 on'y for me everything stops. It all goes dead, get me! 
 De noise and smoke and all de engines movin* de woild, 
 dey stop. Dere ain't nothin' no more! Dat's what I'm 
 sayin'. Everything else ilat makes de woild move, somcp'n 
 makes it move. It can't move without somp'n else, see? 
 Den yuh get down to me. I'm at the bottom, get me? 
 Dere ain't nothin' foithcr. I'm de end. I'm de start! 
 I start somp'n and de woild moves. It — dat's me! De 
 new dat's moidern de old. I'm de ting in coal dat makes 
 it boin; I'm steam and oil for de engines; I'm tie ting in 
 noise dat makes you hear it; I'm smoke and express trains 
 and steamers and factory whistles; I'm lie ting in gold 
 dat makes it money! And I'm what makes iron into 
 steel! Steel, dat stands for ilc whole ting! And I'm steel 
 — steel — steel! I'm de muscle in steel, de punch behind 
 it! {/^s he says this he pounds with his fist against the steel 
 bunk. All the men, roused to a pitch of frenzied self-glorifi- 
 cation by his speech^ do likewise. There is a deafening 
 metallic roar through which Yank's voice can be heard 
 bellowing.) Slaves, hell! We run de whole woiks. We're 
 it, get me! All de rich guys dat tink dey're somep'n, dey 
 ain't nothin'! Dey don't belong. But us guys, we're 
 in de move, we're at de bottom, de whole ting is us, see? 
 We belong! 
 
 But "belong" is precisely what Yank does not, 
 and the eight scenes that comprise the play spell 
 his disillusionment, until he meets a grisly end in 
 the arms of a gorilla at the zoo. Ape has come back 
 to ape.
 
 THE UNITED STATES 471 
 
 It is The Hairy Ape and The Emperor Jones that 
 are the cause of the linking of O'Neill with the 
 German Expressionists. But, as we have seen, the 
 resemblance is by no means identity. He shares 
 their speed technique, but not the telescoping of 
 time and space that is practised by the extremists 
 of Germany, together with their Futurist brethren 
 in Italy. He shares with them, too, an inability 
 to create a perfect fusion of his elements, though 
 he has not so clearly broken away from the old 
 technique, which has a habit of making diconcert- 
 ing appearances even in his best work. Nor should 
 we forget, in all such comparisons as these, that the 
 term "Expressionism", applied to modern German 
 dramatists, is quite meaningless unless modified by 
 a knowledge of the playwright to whom it is applied.^ 
 
 This, then, is the sketch of a man who is but at 
 the beginning. And with him and Susan Glaspell, 
 it may be, begins the entrance of the United States 
 drama into the deeper currents of continental waters. 
 O'Neill flaunts no narrow, mistaken nationalism; he 
 apotheosizes no "ism"; he digs down into the subsoil 
 of common humanity. Already he has produced, in 
 the new forms, a pair of pieces challenging compar- 
 ison with the best that foreign youth has brought 
 forth in the same time, and that emerges victorious 
 out of the test. Every favor of circumstance is 
 with him — the press, the critics, the playhouses. 
 The rest is in him, and in his artistic duty not to 
 be content, as heretofore he has been, with second- 
 or third-best. 
 
 ' See section on Germany.
 
 472 THE DRAMA OF TRAXSITION 
 
 SUSAN GLASPELL 
 
 Between Susan Glaspell and Eugene O'Neill there 
 lies a fundamental artistic difference that may be 
 rooted in the difference of sex as well as of tempera- 
 ment. Allowing tor the tact that clear-cut contrasts 
 are more or less illusory, we may yet assert that 
 where O'Neill is at bottom the man of feeling, 
 Glaspell is the woman of thought. From this dis- 
 tinction may be derived a list of antitheses. With 
 O'Neill's overflow of feeling comes a straining toward 
 violence and melodrama; he reveals little humor; he 
 is fond of primitive persons, usually men bent upon 
 achieving their purpose at whatever cost; he is 
 voluble, as if his persons* thoughts were stniccling 
 to clarity through the mist of inchoate feelings. 
 GlaspcH's intensity of thought, on the other hand, 
 induces a straining toward wit, an eminently in- 
 tellectual process; her humor— leaving aside the 
 question of its body or successfulness— presupposes 
 persons of sophistication. As O'Neill inclines toward 
 the masterful man, so she leans toward the rebellious 
 woman. Where the author of The Hairy Ape spurts 
 out words like the gushing of a geyser, Glaspell is 
 reticent, laconic; O'Neill is expression, where Glas- 
 pell is repression. "Do you know, dearest", says 
 Ian in her Tickless Time^ "you are very sensitive in 
 the way you feel feeling? Sometimes I think that to 
 feel feeling is greater than to feel." 
 
 Now, Miss Glaspell is indeed very sensitive in the 
 way she feels feeling, and by that very token is she the 
 woman of thought, for the process implies an acute 
 consciousness of one's emotions, a standing outside 
 of them even as they are being experienced. And
 
 THE UNITED STATES 473 
 
 this is precisely what her most significant characters 
 are forever doing, until their very language acquires 
 a difference from ordinary expression that renders it 
 exotic and mirrors the exotic difference of the 
 characters. They speak of their "otherness", of the 
 "outness", or "apartness", as no character in 
 O'Neill has ever spoken. For language, too, is a 
 matter of sophistication, and though O'Neill's people 
 feel their "otherness", they do not feel the feeling, 
 to use lan's words; they have not achieved self- 
 consciousness. It is thus something more than 
 mere playing with words to affirm that where 
 O'Neill feels his thoughts, Glaspell thinks her feel- 
 ings. Contrast the descent of The Eynperor Jones 
 and his white brother The Hairy Ape with the 
 ascent of Madeline in Glaspell 's Inheritors or of the 
 overwrought Claire in The Verge and the seeming 
 trickery of words acquires validity. "Do you know 
 why you're so sure of yourself?" cries Claire to her 
 daughter, Elizabeth. "Because you can't feel. 
 Can't feel — the limitless — out there — a sea just over 
 the hill." Miss Glaspell's underscoring of the word 
 feel reveals the difference in thought which she packs 
 into that word. 
 
 But thought, too, has its misty zones, and more 
 than once Glaspell flutters into them. "We're 
 held by our relations to others — "says Fejevary in 
 Inheritors. So far, so good. Few plays fill one with 
 a realization of these necessary, yet numbing, ties, 
 as deeply as does Inheritors. Then the speaker adds, 
 " — by our obligations {vaguely) to the ultimate 
 thing." Now that "ultimate thing" is what troubles 
 one even in Miss Glaspell's best work, such as
 
 474 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 Bernice. The vaguely of her stage direction is some- 
 thing that bothers, not only Mr. Fejevary, but herself 
 and her women protagonists as well. Now and again 
 her women — whether in her lesser things or in her 
 chief labors — feel "big things", but with that same 
 vagueness which necessitates such words as "other- 
 ness", "apartness", and similar crepuscular forma- 
 tions. Not that the dramatist is wholly unjustified 
 either in word or procedure; she is dealing with 
 twilight persons, transitional souls, in the nobler 
 meaning of transition; Claire herself is perhaps as 
 puzzled as we; she is a Madeline of hiheritors 
 grown up into motherhood and complex self- 
 hood — a Madeline whose problems are no longer 
 exclusively social, but whose individual problem is 
 badly crushed beneath the weight of social pressure. 
 Such a grip has this twilight "apartness" upon Miss 
 Glaspell that she even hints abstractions in her 
 stage-directions. The l^erge^ for that matter, is one 
 long abstraction in three acts, not entirely un- 
 trammelled by a pervading symbolism. Glaspell, 
 then, as a serious dramatist — one of the few .Amer- 
 icans whose progress is worth watching with the 
 same eyes that follow notable European effort — is 
 largely the playwright of woman's selfhood. That 
 acute consciousness of self which begins with a mere 
 sense of sexual differentiation (exemplified in varied 
 fashion in Trifles^ Woman s Hotwr^ The Outside) 
 ranges through a heightening social sense {The 
 People^ Close the Book, hiheritors) to the highest 
 aspirations of the complete personality, the in- 
 dividual {Bernice, The Verge). I would not be 
 understood as implying that these plays exhibit 
 solely the phases to which they are here related;
 
 THE UNITED STATES 475 
 
 all of Miss Glaspell's labors are an admixture of these 
 phases, as is the life of the thinking and feeling 
 woman of to-day. And there is more than rebellious 
 womanhood in these dramas; there is consciousness 
 of valid self, or of a passion for freedom, of dynamic 
 personality; there is craving for life in its innermost 
 meaning. 
 
 Miss Glaspell's one-act plays run the gamut from 
 farce to drama. At times her more comic self is the 
 caricature of her more serious. Even allowing for 
 the influence of collaboration in Suppressed Desires 
 and Tickless Time, are not these laughable creatures 
 but replicas of her more sober protagonists reflected 
 in a distorting mirror? She can poke fun at amateur 
 Freudianism gone mad {Suppressed Desires) and then 
 create serious characters that are almost clinical 
 types for the psychoanalytical laboratory (Bernice, 
 The Verge). Even her farce reveals her predominantly 
 intellectual interests, as witness Tickless Time. 
 Everywhere her ideas, as opposed to her feelings, 
 will out. Thus The People is, in part, ostensibly a 
 satire upon the cranks that infest the offices of 
 radical publications, but the dramatist does not 
 seem sure of her footing. Shall it be straight satire, 
 burlesque, or what? As a result the humor becomes 
 too heavily freighted with the suggestion of serious- 
 ness, the characters merge into caricature, and the 
 spectator listens to the preachment of some beautiful 
 thoughts that live as words, as ideas, but surely not 
 as drama. So, too. Woman s Honor, containing some 
 acute criticism of the masculine mind, wavers be- 
 tween the farce and the serious play. 
 
 Out of the conversation in the sheriff''s house,
 
 476 THE DRAMA 01- TRANSITION 
 
 among the women who have assembled to save the 
 life of a young man by offering as sacrifice their 
 coveted honor, arises a protest against the lily-white 
 ideal of virtue in which men have so long stifled 
 woman's passional existence. They are sick of man's 
 "noble" feeling toward womanhood and recognize, 
 with feminine uncanniness, the source of that feeling 
 in the emotional satisfaction which it breeds in man. 
 "Did it ever strike you as funny," asks the Scornful 
 One, "that woman's honor is only about one thing, 
 and that man's honor is about everything but that 
 thing?" And later in the same piece, from the same 
 personage: "Why, woman's honor would have died 
 out long ago if it hadn't been for men's talk about 
 it." And the Shielded One: 
 
 Oh, I hope you women can work out some way to free 
 us from men's noble feelings about it! I speak for all the 
 women of my — {Hcsitalcs) umier-worUl, all those others 
 smothered under men's lofty sentiments toward them! 
 I wish I could paint for you the horrors of the shielded life. 
 {Says ''shielded'' as if it were ''shatnefur .) . . . Our 
 honor has been saved so many times. We are tired. 
 
 There are ideas enough in this little piece to float 
 more than one long social satire, yet as Miss Glaspell 
 has presented IVomans Honor it is, like The People^ 
 valuable for the detached ideas and for little else. 
 For realism it is patently impossible; for satire it is 
 too bald; for fantasy, too corporeal. The piece asks 
 for different treatment and should receive it; the 
 idea is too good to be wasted upon an indeterminate 
 parlor entertainment. 
 
 The same predominance of idea over character 
 and plausibility pervades Close the Book, in which the
 
 THE UNITED STATES 477 
 
 social status of Jhansi, the gypsy, provides the 
 pivot upon which turns a very pithy critique of 
 genealogical snobbery that proves a boomerang. 
 O'Neill's weakness, particularly in his one-act plays, 
 is the degeneration of feeling into a melodrama re- 
 deemed by gleams of originality in conception; 
 Glaspell's weakness in her short pieces is the lapsing 
 of intellectuality into brittle, discerning statement 
 with little relation to organic artistry. And as 
 O'Neill triumphs over these shortcomings in his 
 later and longer work, so too, does Miss Glaspell in 
 her longer subsequent pieces. "Life grows over 
 buried life", says Allie Mayo in The Outside. And 
 art grows over buried art. The real Glaspell is not 
 in these one-act plays, however often they may be 
 produced and read. It is in the oft-cited Trifles^ 
 with its tribute to woman's supposedly finer in- 
 tuitions as opposed to the supposedly coarser fibre 
 of man, — with its wise if overdone reticence — its 
 foreshadowing of the longer dramas. 
 
 O'Neill's women do not understand their men- 
 folk; recall the situation between Curtis and his 
 wife in The First Mariy between the wives and their 
 men in //f, in Go/d. Glaspell's men do not understand 
 their women. The Prisoner, in JVomans Honor^ 
 rather than be saved by the chorus of self-sacrificing 
 females, cries out, "0/;, hell. Til plead guilty T' 
 Craig, in Bernice, has neither the profound intuitions 
 that flow at the bottom of creative artistry (he is a 
 writer who utterly misses the tragic plot that is his 
 own married life), nor the appreciation of his wife 
 which would have prevented her virtual suicide. 
 Fejevary, in Inheritors, only half understands his
 
 478 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 niece, Madeline, while Professor Holden, who under- 
 stands her attitude, cannot after all comprehend her 
 radical action. As for The Verge, most of the men 
 are entirely at sea as to Claire, and none more so 
 than her eminently normal husband. 
 
 In Bernice, first of the full-length dramas. Miss 
 Glaspell seems to carry her reticence to a fault, yet I 
 believe her method is fully justified because it is a 
 spiritual mirror of Bcrnice's own life tragedy. To 
 add reticence to reticence, Hernicc does not even 
 appear, she is dead at the beginning, yet alive in 
 every gesture, every utterance, made by her mourners. 
 (Compare Glaspcll's method in Trifics.) Her 
 presence fills the intensity of a play that is as chary 
 of deeds as of words; here, too, the idea gives life to 
 the whole, but a genuine, dramatic life. The talk 
 is all of her, and out of the stray phrases a vivid 
 woman arises as if in the round before us. Miss 
 Glaspell's irony is all the more difficult to appreciate 
 in that she is as half-communicative as was Bernice 
 herself; but it is an irony that cuts sharply and deeply 
 into the quick of existence. A double irony, even as 
 it is a double reticence; for her women, not under- 
 stood of their men, but half understand themselves. 
 That is the price they pay for their ever-groping 
 superiority. 
 
 Inheritors, dealing with a social rather than an 
 individualistic theme, is clearer in facture, even as 
 Madeline is more direct in deed. Three generations 
 pass before our eyes: the visionary pioneer who has 
 been inspired by his Hungarian friend with an 
 educational ideal, the son of that Hungarian friend 
 who marries the pioneer's daughter and becomes the 
 president of the college founded by his father-in-law,
 
 THE UNITED STATES 479 
 
 the motherless niece of that president. Again 
 irony, for the vision of the pioneer degenerates into 
 the corrupted and corrupting opportunism of the 
 college president. But hope, too. For the brave 
 niece refuses to profit by her uncle's social influence; 
 she champions the cause of a handful of liberty- 
 loving foreigners at a time when free speech has been 
 forgotten in her own country, preferring the jail of 
 the body to the jail of ideas. A heroine of the 
 Glaspell tradition, then, who conquers her feelings 
 in the glorious battle of the Idea. 
 
 Out of this play rises not only the irony of the 
 succeeding generations, but that of life's inextricable 
 tangle itself. These are no conventional heroes, 
 heroines, and villains of a cause. The danger that 
 besets the dramatist now and again in her one-act 
 pieces is here conquered through a thorough im- 
 mersion in her theme. "If you sell your own soul," 
 explains Holden, the independently-minded professor 
 who, for the sake of his sick wife, must recede from 
 his noble stand, "it's to love you sell it". Whereupon 
 Madeline: "That's strange. It's love that — brings 
 life along, and then it's love — holds life back." This, 
 to me, is fully as important in the play as are Made- 
 line's social heroics or the shifting of values from 
 one generation to the other. And I may be pardoned 
 if I call attention to the punctuation of the sentence 
 just quoted from Madeline — to the dashes. That is 
 the way Miss Glaspell's women talk — with words 
 occasionally underscored and parted by dashes. 
 This is no idiosyncrasy of orthography, I imagine. 
 It is the intellectual groping of one who feels her 
 feelings. 
 
 It is in the final act of Inheritors that Madeline's
 
 480 THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION 
 
 mentally unbalanced father, Ira, at last breaks his 
 brooding silence and pours forth a flood of words that 
 for all their apparent rambling arc pregnant with far- 
 seeing sanity. Another irony, this. And it is in The 
 Verge that insanity becomes almost the only sanity 
 open to the shut-in personality of Claire. Her 
 speech in the opening act may stand as epigraph to 
 the play: 
 
 {fVith difficulty, drawing herself back from the fascination 
 of the precipice.) You think I can't smash anything? 
 You think life can't break up and go outside what it was? 
 Because you've gone dead in the form in which you found 
 yourself, you think that's all there is to the whole ad- 
 venture? And that is called sanity. .And made a virtue — 
 to lock one in. You never worked with things that grow! 
 Things that take a sporting chance — go mad — that 
 sanity mayn't lock them in— from life untouched— from 
 life — that waits. 
 
 Now this, as Dick soon tries to explain, is merely 
 "the excess of a particularly rich temperament", 
 and certainly the playwright has succeeded in pro- 
 jecting a sense of the bewilderment that Claire 
 works upon her husband, her daughter, and her 
 friends. Among these is included the one whom she 
 loves, who breaks through to her (to use her own 
 style of expression) too late. "No, I'm not mad," 
 cries Claire as the obsession grows upon her. "I'm 
 too — sane!" 
 
 It would be easy to select strange-sounding pas- 
 sages from the progress of Claire to the murder of 
 him she most loves, and to make easy mock of them. 
 Her "outness", "otherness", "aliveness", provide jut- 
 ting pegs upon which uncomprehending reviewers
 
 THE UNITED STATES 481 
 
 may hang the pearls of their journalistic wit. They 
 are, as we have seen, merely verbal images of the 
 woman's difference from her spiritual milieu. A more 
 valid criticism would be directed against the unre- 
 lieved tension of its straining toward something which 
 never becomes quite clear. That same criticism may 
 be leveled against Bernice^ as may the opposite 
 against the too symetrically patterned Inheritors. 
 Yet The Verge is the brave protest of an artist-soul 
 against the cramping patterns of existence. It is 
 filled with the cry that ends one of Amy Lowell's 
 best poems: "Christ! What are patterns for?" 
 "Alles Ewige die Erfiillung fiirchtet," declares some- 
 one in Franz Werfel's most recent drama, Bocks- 
 gesang. "All things eternal fear their fulfillment." 
 True, a paradox lurks in the phrase, but few words 
 could better describe the fear in which Claire lives 
 amidst the plants which she is trying to nurture into 
 new, inedited existences — the plants which are the 
 symbol of her own little world. And something of 
 of this same fear keeps Miss Glaspell at times half 
 mute — chokes her personages with the fulness of 
 unplumbed possibilities. 
 
 It is this refusal to be shut up into a shell, this 
 everlasting aspiration toward newer and different 
 life, that Miss Glaspell has significantly breathed 
 into her long plays. All in all, here is a dramatist 
 who oversteps mere national cataloguing. What 
 she has already done pledges her to even higher 
 things. 
 
 SI
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abramovitsch, 339, 340, 341 
 
 Adler, 357 
 
 ^schylus, 225, 274 
 
 Ainslie, 41 
 
 Aksenfeld, 338, 341, 349 
 
 Alas, Leopoldo (Clarfn), 75, 
 
 77, 78, 84 
 Albane, Blanche (Mrs. Du- 
 
 hamel), 256 
 Aleikhem, Sholom, 367 
 Altamira, Rafael, 78 
 Alvarez-Quintero, Seraffn y Joa- 
 
 qufn, 89, 121 
 d'Amico, Silvio, 174, 180, 181 
 Amiel, 95 
 
 Andreyev, 166, 367, 398 
 An-ski (S. Z. Rappoport), 425, 
 
 426, 427, 433 
 Antonelli, 174 
 Archer, W., 27, 28, 437 
 Aretino, Pietro, 33 
 Aristotle, 26, 32, 33, 36, 192 
 Ascisubi, Hilario, 213 
 Asch, S., 366, 368, 373-379, 
 
 392, 420, 424 
 Ayala, R. Perez de, 74, 81, 82, 
 
 84,85,86,92,96,97, 101, 118 
 Azorfn (Jose Martinez Ruiz), 95 
 
 B 
 
 Bach, 165 
 
 Bacon, 37 
 
 Baker, 391 
 
 Bakshy, 437, 440, 452 
 
 Balzac, 78, 79, 95 
 
 Banks, 61 
 
 Baroja, 28, 93, 94, 95, 96, 102, 
 
 108 
 Barrie, 23, 24, 25, 153 
 Bartels, 269, 270, 286, 301 
 Barzilai, 125 
 
 Bechofer, 437 
 
 Beethoven, 55, 165, 252 
 
 Belasco, 56, 57, 153 
 
 Bellini, 165 
 
 Ben-Ami, 418 
 
 Benavente, 13, 47, 74, 81, 87. 
 
 95, 96-121, 239, 240, 294, 
 
 438 449 
 Benelli, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132- 
 
 140, 146, 149, 152, 153 
 Bennet, 31 
 Bernhardt, 165, 256 
 Bernstein, 237 
 Best, 254, 255 
 Betrone, 149 
 Bianchi, 210 
 Bierstadt, 213, 214 
 Bimko, 421, 424 
 Blanco-Garcia, 67 
 Boileau, 27 
 Booth, 356 
 Bordeaux, 266 
 Borelli, 132 
 Borgese, 127 
 Bossu, 27 
 Boyd, 15 
 
 Bracco, 126, 184, 227, 241 
 Brieux, 72, 73, 237 
 Brighouse, 245 
 Brill, 298 
 Brink, 50 
 Brunetiere, 32 
 Buchner, 274 
 Bueno, 80, 84, 85, 86, 92, 95, 
 
 101, 105 
 
 C 
 
 Calder6n, 72, 87, 153, 210 
 
 Campbell, Mrs., 62 
 
 Campo (del), 213 
 
 Carlyle, 32, 33, 39, 40, 41, 211 
 
 Carminati, 132 
 
 Castelvetro, 36, 37, 39, 239 
 
 483
 
 484 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cayacchioli, 174. 201, 203 
 Cejador y Frauca, 94, 95 
 Cervantes, 83, 84 
 Chariot, 446 
 Chatrian, 78 
 
 Chiari'lli, 132, 173, 174, 179, 181 
 Chopin, 165 
 Cione, Otto M., 209 
 Clarln (see Alas, Leopold) 
 Claik, B. H., 89, 250 
 Claudel, 166 
 Coquelin, 37 
 Coriat, 49 
 Corneille, 251 
 Coronado, Martin, 216 
 Corra, 166 
 Costa, 94 
 
 Craig, 439, 440, 445, 446 
 Croce, 14. 2i, M. 34, 38, 41, 
 42,43, 151 
 
 D 
 
 D'Annunzio, 93, 95, 129, 146, 
 
 152, 153, 162 
 Dante, 42, 43, 69, 112 
 Darfo, 95 
 Darwin, 52 
 Dicenta, 73, 89, 92 
 Dickens, 78, 95 
 Diderot, 37 
 Diebold, 276, 278, 319 
 Drinkwater, 111 
 Duhamel, Georges, 254-266 
 Duhamel, Mrs. (see Albane, 
 
 Blanche) 
 Dukes, 9, 29, 30, 31, 32, 144 
 Dumas, 67 
 Dunsany. 380 
 Duse, 143, 165 
 
 Echagxie, J. P., 209, 210 (pseu- 
 donym, Jean Paul) 
 
 Echegarav, Jose, 13, 61-74, 87, 
 89, 93, 95, 96, 103, 107, 120, 
 237, 372 
 
 Echegaray, Miguel, 62 
 
 Edschmid, 272 
 
 Einstein, 52 
 
 Ellis, Havelock, 9 
 
 Engel, 249 
 
 Erckmann. 78 
 Ernst, 271 
 
 Ettin^er, 337, 343, 345 
 Euripides. 274 
 
 Evrcinov, 51, 128, 191, 201, 
 437-453, 457, 458 
 
 Fasset. Jr.. 94. 213 
 Faversliam, 62 
 Ficke, 321 
 
 Fitzmaurice-Kcllv, 72, 75. 78. 79 
 Ford. J. D. M.. 80 
 Forniuni. 125 
 
 Forzano. 127. 132. 152-160 
 Franchetti. 148 
 Fram ia. 211 
 Fregoii, 165 
 
 Freud. 49. 50, 51, 52, 201, 298, 
 442. 443 
 
 . 31, 47 
 CiiLla \illoso, E., 20y, 217 
 Gautiei, 95 
 Gfor^;*-. Stefan. 312 
 GerstenlxTg. 201 
 Ghiraldo, 217 
 Giarosa, 232 
 (iillxrt, 147. 312 
 Ciiusti. 215. 216. 217. 224 
 (ilasixll, 51, 201. 471. 472-481 
 (ioering, 322 
 Goldfadcn. 341, 342. 343, 344, 
 
 345. 346. 347. 348. 349. 350, 
 
 351. 352. 353, 354, 356, 358, 
 
 359. 363, 366 
 de Gourmont, Remy, 276 
 CKinzAIcz, Castillo, 209 
 Goethe. 32, 33, 39, 40. 41. 52, 
 
 257. 271, 273, 320, 356. 360, 
 
 374 
 Gogol, 48, 360, 440 
 Gonziles Blanco, Andr6s, 101. 
 
 106 
 Gordin, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 
 
 361, 362, 363, 364, 365. 366, 
 
 369. 388 
 Gorin, 334
 
 INDEX 
 
 485 
 
 Gorki, 216, 227, 308, 367, 372, 
 
 423, 424 
 Gottlober, 335, 343, 345 
 Grabbe, 274 
 Gradner, 347, 348, 350 
 Gregory, 416 
 Grillparzer, 271, 360 
 Groussac, 211 
 Guimera, 89 
 Gutierrez, Eduardo, 213 
 Gutierrez, J. M., 213 
 Gutierrez, Ricardo, 213 
 Gutzkow, 350 
 
 H 
 
 Hapgood, 372 
 
 Hardy, 142 
 
 Hasenclever, 111, 230, 274, 277, 
 
 286-302, 310, 318, 458 
 Hauptmann, 10, 47, HI, 278, 
 
 279-286, 318, 360, 362 
 Hebbel, 271, 276, 360 
 Hegel, 33 
 Heracleitus, 10 
 Herder, 33 
 Hernindez, 212, 213 
 Heyse, 394 
 Hirschbein, 366, 368, 373, 392, 
 
 404-420, 427, 432 
 Hofmannsthal, 30, 271, 274, 275 
 Holz, 270 
 Hugo, 67, 360, 372 
 Hurwitz, 355, 358, 363 
 
 I 
 
 Ibsen, 10, 27, 31, 67, 70, 71, 72, 
 84, 85, 88, 95, 114, 133, 141, 
 166, 167, 227, 241, 276, 303, 
 260 
 
 Immerman, 275 
 
 Iglesias Paz, 209 
 
 Irving, 356 
 
 Jameson, 9, 10, 23, 26, 29, 31, 
 32, 53, 73, 92, 114, 119, 121, 
 144, 198, 449 
 
 JelifFe, SO 
 
 Tones, 49 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 392 
 
 K 
 
 Kahn, A., 434 
 
 Kaiser, Georg, 111, 302-313, 
 
 318, 319, 324, 458 
 Kalish, Bertha, 357, 358, 369 
 Kamrasch, 343 
 Katzenellenbogen, 350 
 Kautsky, 249 
 
 Keaton, "Buster", 452 
 
 Kerr, 303 
 
 Kleist, 271 
 
 Kobrin, 366, 368-373, 420 
 
 Kokoschka, 276, 304, 313-318, 
 
 319, 458 
 Kornfeld, 269, 273, 319 
 
 Laharpe, 27 
 
 Lamb, 37, 239 
 
 Lange, 271 
 
 Lateiner, 355, 357, 358, 363 
 
 Lawrence, D. H., 50, 51 
 
 Leguizamon, 215 
 
 Lerner, 350 
 
 Lessing, 37, 334, 337, 360 
 
 Levinsohn, J. B., 339 
 
 Levinsohn, Ludwig, 336 
 
 Lewes, 374 
 
 Lewisohn, Ludwig, 23, 25, 26, 
 
 27, 37, 42, 55, 99, 275, 391, 
 
 400, 434 
 Libin, 366, 369 
 Librescu, 345 
 Lilienblum, 350 
 Linares Rivas, 89, 98 
 Linati, 142 
 Linetzki, 344 
 Lope de Rueda, 117 
 Lope de Vega, 61, 64, 88, 114 
 L6pez de Ayala, 63 
 Lopez, Sabatino, 126, 184 
 di Lorenzo, Tina, 148 
 Loving, 121 
 Lowell, Amy, 481 
 
 M 
 
 MacClintock, 190 
 
 Macgowan, Kennetii, 118, 162, 
 
 275, 458, 465 
 Mackaye, 243
 
 486 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Madariaga, Salvador, de, 48, 49 
 Maeterlinck, 25, 87, 166, 274, 
 
 380, 394, 400 
 Maeztu, 95 
 Marinetti, 127, 132, 160-172, 
 
 204, 270, 272, 301. 452 
 Marino, 243 
 Marmoptel, 27 
 Marquina, 89 
 
 Martinez Cuitino, 209, 217 
 Martinez Sierra, 102, 106 
 Martini, 175 
 Marx, 249 
 Mascagni, 141 
 Matthews, Brander, 37, 41 
 Maupassant, 372 
 Mayol, 165 
 
 Mencken, 29, 52, 94. 378 
 Mendelssohn, 334 
 -Meyerhold. 438, 440 
 Mirbeau. 87 
 Mistral. 61 
 Mitre, 213 
 Mogalesco, 350 
 Molnar. 21. 110, 308 
 Moli^re, 27, 37,99, 117 
 Mordcll, 49 
 Morelio, 125 
 Morley, S. G., 121 
 Morselli, 127, 132, 145-152 
 Muir, 42, 43, 44, 45 
 Musset, 95 
 
 N 
 Naidenov. 367 
 Nathan, G. J., 23, 25. 27, 39, 
 
 41,42 
 Netto, Coclho, 244. 245 
 Nietzsche, 23, 29, 31, 47. 52. 95 
 Nirdlinger, 61 
 Norwood. 32 
 
 O 
 Obligado, 213 
 O'Neil, Nance, 97 
 O'Neill, Eugene, 51, 100, 201, 
 
 236, 237, 275, 308, 309, 458- 
 
 471, 472, 477 
 Ortega y Gasset, 95 
 Ostrovsky, 360 
 
 PapinI, 127, 133, 145, 146 
 
 Parker, H. T., 110 
 
 Paul. Eden and Cedar. 250 
 
 "Paul, Jean" (see EchagOe), 210 
 
 Pavro. 2U9, 217 
 
 Pefia. 217 
 
 Pereda, 74. 76, 77, 80. 94 
 
 Perez. I. L.. 367. 379, 381, 382, 
 
 426 
 Perez-Galdfjs, 13, M, 73. 74-92. 
 
 93. 94. 96 
 Perez-Petit. 209. 217 
 Phelps. \V. L.. 25. 89 
 Phillips, Frances, 94 
 Pilo. 125 
 I'in^, 331 
 Pinski. 364. 366. 368. 373, 379- 
 
 403. 420. 427 
 Pirandello. 108. 126. 127. 132, 
 
 148. 153, 173-199. 204.452 
 Po<lest4. 213. 214. 216, 230 
 P(K-, 95 
 PojK-, 13. il 
 l*orrod6n. 103 
 Pota[H-nko. 437. 440 
 Praga. 153 
 Prcscott. 49 
 IVezzolini, 145 
 Puccini, Mario, 127 
 
 Quintero (see Alvarcz-Quintero) 
 
 Ralxntos. 225 
 
 Racine. 251 
 
 Ramos. J. A.. 237-243 
 
 Rap[¥)[iort (sec An-ski) 
 
 Ratti. 147 
 
 Reirher. Emmanuel. 418 
 
 Reid. Mavne. 438 
 
 Reinhardt. 375, 388, 392 
 
 Renan, 253 
 
 Ribot, 443 
 
 Ricciardi, 129, 130, 131 
 
 Rimsky-Korsakoff, 438 
 
 Rodo, Jos^ Enrique, 29, 218 
 
 Rodriguez, R. Fausto, 213 
 
 Rojas, Fernando de, 116 
 
 Rojas y Zorrilla, 64 
 
 Rolland. 249-254 
 
 Romero. Svlvio. 243 
 
 Rosen f eld. '330
 
 INDEX 
 
 487 
 
 Rosso di San Secondo, 174, 199, 
 
 200, 201 
 Rostand, 153 
 Roxlo, Carlos, 229, 230 
 Ruberti, 125 
 Russo, 142 
 
 S 
 
 Salvini, 356 
 
 Sinchez, Florencio, 215, 217, 
 
 218-237, 245 
 Sdnchez Gardel, 217 
 Santayana, 55 
 Sarcey, 37 
 Sarmiento, 213 
 Sayler, 437, 438, 439 
 Scaliger, 33 
 
 Scardaoni, 127, 129, 130, 131 
 Schiller, 271, 274, 349, 356, 360 
 Schneider, 270, 271, 272, 273, 
 
 274, 275, 296 
 Schnitzler, 401 
 Schopenhauer, 276 
 Schwartz, 368, 421, 425 
 Scott, 211 
 
 Seiffert, 334, 351, 352 
 Settimelli, 165 
 Shaikewitsch, 350, 356 
 Shakespeare, 35, 37, 52, 69, 82, 
 
 85, 95, 98, 99, 101, 111, 117, 
 
 152, 154, 160, 165, 167, 253, 
 
 301, 356, 362 
 Shaw, Bernard, 72, 73, 107, 108, 
 
 121, 166, 173, 197, 198, 376, 
 
 440, 444, 450, 461 
 Shay, Frank, 121 
 Sheridan, 70 
 Shestov, Leo, 29, 44 
 Shidlovski, 433 
 da Silva, J. A., 243 
 Simoni, 143 
 Sologub, 128 
 Sophocles, 35, 50, 51, 52, 274, 
 
 295 
 Sorge, 269 
 
 Souza, Claudio de, 243-246 
 Spence, E., 437 
 Spencer, 52, 95 
 Spingarn, Joel EHas, 28, 32, 
 
 34, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42 
 Sternheim, 303, 319 
 St. John, C, 437, 440 
 Strindbertj, 10, 31, 274, 276 
 
 Stuart, D. C, 63 
 Sudermann, 31 
 Synge, 142, 416 
 
 TalH, 149, 204 
 Tamayo y Baus, 63 
 Tieck, 275 
 
 Toller, Ernst, 322, 323, 324 
 Tolstoi, 72, 95, 359 
 Tomasheffsky, 354, 357, 358 
 Turgeniev, 372 
 Turrel, C. A., 89 
 
 U 
 Unamuno, 95 
 
 Underhill, J. G., 98, 100, 114 
 von Unruh, Fritz, 318, 319, 320 
 Untermeyer, L., 434 
 
 Valle-Incldn, 95 
 
 Verga, G., 93, 126, 132, 141-145 
 
 Verissimo, 228 
 
 Verlaine, 95, 271 
 
 Viel Castel, 63 
 
 Viergol, 208 
 
 W 
 Wagner, 165 
 Wedekind, 51, 111, 201, 274, 
 
 277, 301, 303, 304, 317 
 Wei f el, Franz, 274, 278, 311, 
 
 320, 321, 481 
 Whitman, 210, 256 
 Wiener, 334, 337, 368, 372, 434 
 Wilbrandt, 271 
 Wilde, 312 
 Wildenbruch, 271 
 Woollcott, 468 
 Wundt, 443 
 
 Yeats, 380, 400 
 Yehoash, 330, 331 
 
 Zacconi, 165, 227 
 Zamacois, 89 
 Zangwill, 369, 370 
 Zunser, Eliakum, 334, 346 
 Zweig, Stefan, 250
 
 Stewart Kidd Dramatic Antholnf^ei 
 
 European Theories o/t/xc Drama 
 
 By BARRETT H. CLARK 
 
 An Anthology of Dramatic Theory and Criticism from Ariuotle to the f^^e^mt day 
 in a series of selected texts, ivuh Cummentaries, Biographies and Bibliographies 
 
 A book of paramount importance. This monumental 
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 Hugo 
 
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