Shenandoah | Page 7

vile dramatic era of Charles II. Wycherley led the brutes, but Congreve came up and combatted with his brilliant comedies the vileness of the Restoration school, and Hallam says of him that he introduced decency to the stage that afterward drove his own comedies off it. A little after Congreve, the school, so to speak, for we have nothing but the school, was so stupid that it brought forth no great writers, and produced weak, sentimental plays. Then came Goldsmith, who wrote "She Stoops to Conquer" actually as a protest against the feeble sentimentality I have referred to. Richard Brinsley Sheridan was made possible by Goldsmith. We went on after that with a school of old comedies. When we speak of the "old comedies," I am not talking about Beaumont and Fletcher, nor Wycherley, nor Vanbrugh, nor even Congreve, but of the comedy of Goldsmith in the third quarter of the eighteenth century down to Bulwer Lytton's "Money" and Boucicault's "London Assurance," bringing us to about 1840. Then there swung a school of what we call the palmy days of old comedy, and in the '40's it dwindled to nothing, and England and America waited until the early '60's. Then came Tom Robertson with his so-called "tea-cup and saucer" school, which consisted of sententious dialogue, simple situations, conventional characterizations, and threads of plots, until Pinero and Jones put a stop to the Robertson fad.
This proves in my judgment that the school always starts by being shown what the popular taste is, and follows that, until some individual discovery that the popular taste is changed. The tendency of the school is always to become academic and fixed in its ideas--it is the individual who points to the necessary changes. Schools and these special individuals are interdependent.
As to the present comedies in America: in the first place, it is impossible as a rule to decide fully what are the tendencies of a school when one is living in the midst of its activities. There is no marked tendency now; and as far as I can see it is only the occasional man who discovers the tendency of the times. Pinero undoubtedly saw that the public was tired of the "tea-cup and saucer." Probably had he not thought so, he would have gone on in that school.
Undoubtedly more plays are written to order than are written on the mere impulse of authors, independently of popular demand. The "order" play simply represents the popular demand as understood by managers, and the meeting of that demand in each age produces the great mass of any nation's drama. So far from lowering the standard of dramatic writing, it is a necessary impulse in the development of any drama. It is only when the school goes on blindly without seeing a change in the popular taste that the occasional man I have spoken of comes on. When the work of the school is legitimately in line with the public taste, the merely eccentric dramatist is like _Lord Dundreary's_ bird with a single feather that goes in a corner and flocks all by itself. He may be a strong enough man to attract attention to his individuality, and his plays may be really great in themselves, but his work has little influence on the development of the art. In fact, there is no development of the art except in the line of popular taste. The specially great men mentioned have simply discovered the changes in the popular taste, and to a certain extent perhaps guided it.[A]
[Footnote A: Originally published in "The Sunday Magazine" (New York) for October 7, 1906.]

=BOSTON MUSEUM=
1841
FORTY-EIGHTH REGULAR SEASON
MR. R.M. FIELD, MANAGER
=SHENANDOAH=
COMMENCING MONDAY, NOV. 19, 1889.
* * * * *
Evenings at 7:45 and Wednesday and Saturday Afternoon at 2.
* * * * *
FIRST TIME ON ANY STAGE OF THIS NEW MILITARY COMEDY
=SHENANDOAH!=
Written Expressly for the Boston Museum by BRONSON HOWARD, ESQ.
Author of THE HENRIETTA, THE BANKER'S DAUGHTER, YOUNG MRS. WINTHROP, ONE OF OUR GIRLS, OLD LOVE LETTER, ETC.
WITH ENTIRELY NEW SCENERY BY LA MOSS, AND THE FOLLOWING CAST:
PEACE
COL. JOHN HAVERILL, Mr. THOS. L. COLEMAN LIEUT. KERCHIVAL WEST, Mr. JOHN B. MASON [Transcribers note: some unreadable text here] LIEUT. ROB'T ELLINGHAM, Mr. CHAS. J. BELL FRANK HAVERILL, Mr. EDGAR L. DAVENPORT EDW. THORNTON, a Southerner "by choice," Mr. WILLIS GRANGER MRS. HAVERILL Miss ANNIE M. CLARKE GERTRUDE ELLINGHAM, a Southern girl, Miss VIOLA ALLEN MADELINE WEST, a Northern girl, Miss HELEN DAYNE
WAR
MAJ. GEN. FRANCIS BUCKTHORN, Commander of the Nineteenth Army Corps Mr. C. LESLIE ALLEN BRIG. GEN. HAVERILL, { Officers } Mr. THOS. L. COLEMAN COL. KERCHIVAL WEST, { of } Mr. JOHN B. MASON CAPT. HEARTSEASE, { Sheridan's } Mr. HENRY M. PITT LIEUT. FRANK BEDLOE, { Cavalry } Mr. EDGAR L. DAVENPORT SERGEANT BARKET, Mr. GEO. W. WILSON COL. ROBERT ELLINGHAM, 10th Virginia C.S.A.,