Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Introduction and Bibliography

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Representative Plays by American

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Introduction and Bibliography, by Montrose J. Moses
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Title: Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Introduction and Bibliography
Author: Montrose J. Moses
Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12038]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Representative Plays by American Dramatists Edited, with an Introduction to Each Play
By MONTROSE J. MOSES
1856-1911
Illustrated with Portraits, and Original Playbills
1921
To BRANDER MATTHEWS
Friend of the American Theatre To whom all Critics of the Theatre are beholden.

Table of Contents
Introduction.
Bibliographies.
Rip Van Winkle: A Legend of the Catskills. A Comparative Arrangement with the Kerr Version. By Charles Burke. 1850
Francesca da Rimini. By George Henry Boker. 1855
Love in '76. An Incident of the Revolution. By Oliver Bell Bunce. 1857
Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy. By Steele Mackaye. 1887
Shenandoah. By Bronson Howard. 1888
In Mizzoura. By Augustus Thomas. 1893
The Moth and the Flame. By Clyde Fitch. 1898
The New York Idea. By Langdon Mitchett. 1906
The Easiest Way. By Eugene Walter. 1909
The Return of Peter Grimm. By David Belasco. 1911
The Authors and Their Plays.

INTRODUCTION
The present volume of "Representative Plays by American Dramatists" includes many hitherto unpublished manuscripts. These are for the first time made available in authoritative form to the student of the American theatre. The Editor has tried consistently to adhere to his original basis of selection: to offer only those texts not generally in circulation and not used elsewhere in other anthologies. Exactions of copyright have sometimes compelled him to depart from this rule. He has been somewhat embarrassed, editorially, by the ungenerous haste with which a few others have followed closely in his path, even to the point of reproducing plays which were known to be scheduled for this collection. For that reason there have been omitted Mr. William Gillette's "Secret Service," available to readers in so many forms, and Mr. Percy Mackaye's "The Scarecrow." No anthology of the present historical scope, however, can disregard George Henry Boker's "Francesca da Rimini" or Bronson Howard's "Shenandoah." In the instance of Mr. Langdon Mitchell's "The New York Idea," it is possible to supersede all previous issues of this refreshing comedy by offering a text which, as to stage directions, has been completely revised by the author. Mr. Mitchell wishes to have this regarded as the correct version, and has himself prepared the "copy" of same. Because of the easy accessibility of Dion Boucicault's "The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana," it was thought best to omit this Irish-American playwright, whose jovial prolixity enriched the American stage of the '60's and '70's. His "London Assurance" is included in the present Editor's collection of "Representative British Dramas: Victorian and Modern."
Of more historical significance than Joseph Jefferson's final version of "Rip Van Winkle," are the two texts upon which Boucicault and Jefferson based their play. It has been possible to offer the reader a comparative arrangement of the John Kerr and Charles Burke dramatizations.
In the choice of Steele Mackaye's "Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy" a period is illustrated which might be described as transitional. Executors of the Augustin Daly estate are not ready to allow any of Daly's original plays or adaptations to be published. The consequence is "Paul Kauvar" must stand representative of the eighteen-eighty fervour of Lester Wallack, A.M. Palmer, and Daly, who were in the Mackaye tradition.
Oliver Bunce's "Love in '76" has been selected for the same reason that one might select Clyde Fitch's Revolutionary or Civil War pieces--because of its bloodless character; because it is one of the rare parlour comedies of the period.
Of the new pieces, Fitch's "The Moth and the Flame" has remained unpublished until now. It exemplifies many of his most sprightly observational qualities. "The Truth" and "The Girl with the Green Eyes" are more mature, but are no less Fitchean than this. Mr. David Belasco's "The Return of Peter Grimm" is as effective in the reading as it was on the stage under his triumphant management. Mr. Eugene Walter's "The Easiest Way," at the last moment, was released from publication in the Drama League Series of Plays; it still stands as America's most cruelly realistic treatment of certain city conditions. In the choice of Mr. Augustus Thomas's "In Mizzoura"--"The Witching Hour" having so often been used in dramatic collections--the Editor believes he has represented this playwright at a time when his dramas were most racy and native.
This third volume, therefore, brings examples of the present American stagecraft to date. Had his policy of selection not been exclusive, but rather inclusive of plays easily