failure in climaxes which it would seem easy to have made successful, the reader must not blame the playwright. Instead, let him turn to his program and find out the name of the manager or the star who is responsible for the production, and then curse that man with all the strength that is in him; for the dull passages are probable evidences of the star's or the manager's interference' and of the quality of their dramatic taste. There are those who will deny this interference and declare that many plays are not subjected to it. If this is true, I should like the playwright whose play has "gone on" as it was written to please hold up his hand. For even that great Jove of the drama whom we call Shakespeare, as he sits in his favorite chair in Mr. Bang's "House-boat on the Styx," is said every now and then to sink his head in his hands and groan, as some modern manager runs the blue pencil through his most cherished lines and best-tried situations. I do not deny that there are some few. managers who are better able to judge of a play than the usual playwright, but I have heard it stated by one who was in a position to know that out of some two-score of America's managers whom he had known, three alone could lay claim to the possession of artistic discernment or taste of the order one would call good. I myself do not pretend to any such extensive acquaintance among the chosen people, but I have always considered that there was not enough of the virtue of artistic taste in the theatrical Sodom and Gomorrah to save it from destruction. What the manager wants is a pecuniary success, and he cares very little how that success is obtained.

If a nasty sex-problem play will fill his theatre and his pocket, he has ever afterward a respect and affection for problem plays. He usually wants his next production to be a composite, dra

matic photograph of the various claque situations in the successful plays of the past season.

The playwright usually first decides, or rather his plot decides for him, whether his play is to be one of situation or one of character. This division of the drama is necessary from the standpoint of the playwright. The first division is one in which the interest in the situation dominates that for any actor or character. "Heartsease," the play in which Mr. Henry Miller made his success this season, was essentially a play of situation. This situation, it will be remembered, occurred in the third act, and in the interest it excited quite overshadowed every other interest in the play. The play of character reverses this, and it is the interest in the character which rises superior to the interest in any situation or climax. illustration of this. membered that, even when hopelessly undone by his enemies, the usurping King rises in sympathetic interest, clear and free, above even so powerful a situation as the last act of the play contains. Artistically, the character play is the higher form and nearly all of the great dramas are of this kind.

Macbeth is an It will be re

In order to describe how our play. wright actually, writes a play, we will, for convenience sake, first tell about the character or star play, and then we can in a few words relate the difference which exists in the construction of the situation play and this. We are supposing that our playwright is something less than a genius and is desirous of making both fame and money by his plays, and so in his work he will perhaps remember that such and such a star has at some previous time expressed himself as wishing to appear as some character or in some particular characterization. He will then conceive a plot and decide upon

the time and the place of its action. This plot must be easily divisible into the number of acts he wishes the finished drama to be. He then creates a character which he thinks will suit the star and weaves the plot about it. When he has done this, he has the outline of what is technically called a "scenario." His next step is to amplify this, adding the various characters and dividing the sketch into acts. With this rough result to guide him he now, if it is possible, goes to the star, and tells him his idea and discusses the plot and the central character with him, and if the star decides to take the play, he listens to his objections and suggestions and praise of this or that situation or scene. When he has learned about all of these suggestions, preferences, objections, he makes his second writing of the scenario. This is more ample and complete than the first and would be intelligible to the ordinary person. Again the star goes over it with him and changes what he has written, and suggests possible and impossible ideas, and the playwright is often obliged to fight his petty momentary enthusiasms for some foolish change until the star comes back to an acceptance of the idea of the play as it must largely be, and then for a time the work of amplifying goes on more rapidly. The final writing of the scenario (which may be the third or the tenth, according to the objections of the star and the manner of work employed by the playwright), this final writing, will probably have. dialogue in spots, where it is necessary; also the scenario will give as fully as may be necessary the quality or atmosphere of the completed drama, and it will give the reasons and the motives which influence the playwright in his arrangement of the acts; the purpose of each scene will be fully explained, together with the reasons for the various

exits and entrances of the characters at various times. If our playwright be a canny man (and what playwright is not?) he will in his scenario so explain the strength and opportunities of the part which the star will play, that his enthusiasm will be sufficiently fired to keep him faithful to that idea until he has embarked on the preliminaries of the production. When the last copy of the scenario is complete, the playwright turns its descriptions into rough dialogue, and rewrites this result until it is polished and fair copy to read. All this time the star has been changing his mind and absorbing many new and always more foolish ideas, and he has been growing less and less in the respectful consideration of the playwright; but as I have not space for a fiftythousand-word description of his mental antics, and as everyone of that number would be necessary to describe them, my reader must be content with the statement that in his attitude toward the play which is being written for him, he is like an old hen bothering her chickens. Of course, the playwright, as the chick, is very much pulled 'about and very dissatisfied with his exist

ence.

While the situation play is sometimes written for a star and the playwright has the same troubles to contend with that he had in the character drama, it is more probable that any situation play which he may write will be for a stock company. In this case he has to deal with the manager, and his objections are not so difficult to contend with as those of the star, for he is more diffuse and has a less number of possible ideas. In writing the play of situation, success largely depends upon the one great moment, and the playwright sacrifices everything that he must to make it grow and grow until it is as tremendous a climax as his mind can

conceive or his art construct. He builds toward this situation with all the care of a bricklayer; with all the repressed ardor of a poster artist. As far as the actual writing of this kind of a play is concerned, it differs from the character play only in that it substitutes the situation in the place of the character. The scenarios and the rewritings are identical.

III.

Usually the first step which the star takes toward the actual production of the play is to talk with his scenic artist about its requirements, and to explain to him his ideas of the treatment which he thinks that the various sets of scenery should receive, and to hear the modification of these ideas from the artist. It must be understood that I am now speaking of a play which is to be an entirely new production. Of course, plays are sometimes "faked on." This ambiguous and slangy term means that the scenery has been used in other plays, and that it is slightly altered and supplemented to suit the needs of a new production. When the scenic artist and the star have come to some sort of an understanding, the artist, in accordance with the star's final decision, makes a model of the various sets of scenes that are to be built. These models represent the scenery as it will appear when complete and upon the stage. They are as carefully painted and made as the real scenery will be, and give, as I have said (though of course in miniature), the same effect as the finished stage-picture; they are in the shape of a box that has no top and only three sides. Like the playwright the artist has opinions and prejudices and he is accustomed to work in a certain conventional way, and this the star will particularly object to, as he is anxious to have his production as fine and as original as possible, while the artist

seems to labor under a constitutional dislike to put things on the stage at all as they really are. His ideality is largely of the tinsel and glitter

sort.

If the play is to be a costume one, the costumer begins work, at the same time as the scene-painter, upon the costumes which may be needed in the production. If he is one of the great costumers, his designs are done in water-colors and are almost works of art. On each design is noted the authority for the costume, which authority is derived from some famous statue or painting or description.

It may be that special mechanical devices will also be required. These are made either by an expert in this line or by the stage carpenter, or by a machinist, according to their character, and the mechanism of all such special devices is generally important enough to be protected by patent. The Race Track Scene in "The County Fair" is a device of this sort. Again, the stage-carpenter will procure most astonishing results and at little or no expense. Often he will originate a splendid series of "effects" which will be of material assistance to the success of a play. But these special devices are not always so successful. An instance of this kind occurred to Tomasso Salvini. Some of us who remember his production of "Samson" in New York will recall the destruction of the temple, which occurred, as I remember it, at the end of the play. This play was staged by Salvini's son, Alexander, and outside of scenery and costumes, it owed much of its effectiveness to the young man's ideas and the stagecarpenter's able execution of them. Young Salvini was very desirous of showing his father just what he could do as a stage-manager, and so he determined to make the production a notable one in every respect. He was particularly lavish in the expen

diture of his ingenuity in the scene where the blind Samson pulls down the temple. To get the necessary

noise for this climax, he had a number of narrow wooden troughs made and ran them from just out of sight of the audience to the very top of the theatre. Into these at proper intervals were fitted bars of iron. Α twelve-pound cannon-ball was then secured at the top of each, in readiness to be released at a given signal. Young Salvini, in order to prevent any possible accident had a heavy wire netting suspended to protect his father. On the night of the production the young man stood in the wings, and at the critical moment when the temple fell he gave the signal for the cannon-balls to be released, and with a bang and a crash they started down the troughs plunging with a fearful noise from bar to bar. The noise was something terrific, and young Salvini saw that his father was really frightened, for it continued after the curtain fell. So he stepped quickly to his side and led him as one might a child, from the stage to his dressing-room. It was sometime before the elder man recovered his self-possession and when he did he said reproachfully to his son: "Alessandro, did you want to kill your father by fright?" and he gave orders that the cannon-balls should be omitted from the scene in future.

Some of the more simple mechanical devices that are in use in every theatre and that figure in part, at least, in every production, produce the effects of thunder, lightning, the whistling of the wind, the spray that the waves are supposed to cast up, the clatter of a horse's hoofs and the rattle of artillery, etc. These are produced in various ways, most of which are very simple indeed. The thunder is gotten by the use of a great bass-drum or by shaking a suspended

sheet of thin iron which produces an excellent imitation of thunder.

The whistling of the wind is simulated by two pieces of canvas being rubbed together in a mechanical device, and the degree of speed with which the handle of this instrument is turned produces the shrillest blast or the gentlest sighing murmur. one ever saw rain on the stage, and so in stage-storms a high wind suggests that it is raining out-of-doors or else the young or old lady shivers and tells the audience: "That it is a bad rain-storm for poor father to be out in."

The management of the lights produces all the effects of sunlight and moonlight. Lightning on the stage is magnesia powder which is shot over a light by which it is ignited, and then it yields, for a second, a perfectly white light. The effect of waves is produced by a painted canvas which is agitated by submerged stage-hands. The effect of spray is gotten by one of these occasionally throwing a bucketful of salt into the air. The clatter of horses' hoofs is made by real shoes which are attached to handles and pounded on a board or stone surface. It is in a sense like a primitive musical instrument, and some little practice is required to use it properly. The noise of artillery is made by shaking chains.

required to

It is now time to consider the more important, the more subtle, the more artistic parts of a play, and to give by my description and explanation of these a fuller idea of how to see a play. We shall, therefore, in the next number, first, consider what "business" (using the word in the stage-sense) is, and what an important part it plays in the success of a play, and after this we shall speak of the influence of the actor on the play and of the audience on the actor.

LA

AST month we noted the development of that school of English poets known as writers of society verse or vers de société,-a school that was ushered in by William M. Praed and that found its supplement and complement in Austin Dobson. Collaterally with the evolution of this school in England there has grown up in America a similar band of writers, whose mode of expression is characterized by equal grace, charm and airiness and who bear the same relation to American literature that the PraedDobson school does to British literature. The pioneer of this American growth was Oliver Wendell Holmes. The humor, lightness and daintiness of his style as shown in such poems as "The Dilemma," "My Aunt," "Dorothy Q.," and many of his earlier productions, gained him hosts of admirers and imitators. John G. Saxe, George Arnold, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, each turned out more or less verse of the same character. Of these three, Mr. Aldrich stands as the peer,-his "In an Atelier," his lines on "An Intaglio Head of Minerva," and, to a large extent, "A Set of Turquoise" (so inexplicably disowned by its author) best evidencing his right to so exalted a rank.

During the last quarter of a century the lists of society verse-makers have been increased by such names as Samuel Minturn Peck, Walter Learned, Frank Dempster Sherman, George Baker, Jr., and Guy Wet

more Carryl. The last-named is the youngest representative of the school and as yet a fledgling, but his work so far bears the unmistakable stamp of cleverness, and we may reasonably expect greater things of him. It is much to be regretted, however, that his field is so restricted, as his lines rarely, if ever, appear outside of the columns of the Metropolitan journal on which he is regularly employed, and whose cast-iron rules prohibit reproduction by the press. Of this fin-de-siècle coterie, Mr. Baker and Mr. Peck divide honors between them about equally; but while the former possesses all the crispness, crystallinity and satirical strength of the Dobson school, Mr. Peck goes one degree beyond him and combines with these qualities a richness, warmth and liquidness of style that make his work appeal to a much larger circle of readers.

While Samuel Minturn Peck is a Southerner by birth,-having been born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in November, 1854-he curiously enough has no Southern blood in his veins, as both his parents were Northerners, his father coming from New York, while his mother was a native of Connecticut. The Pecks are one of the oldest families in America, the original stock having immigrated to this country from England in 1638, and settled in New England. Early in this century Mr. Peck's fatherE. Wolsey Peck-removed to Alabama, where he became one of the most brilliant lawyers in that state,