Shenandoah | Page 2

attention to make the act
substantial and satisfactory. To tell the truth, I was quietly worrying a
bit over this part of the play, while you were expressing your anxiety
about the 2nd act--which never bothered me. There must be 2nd acts
and there must be last acts--audiences resign themselves to them; but
3rd acts--in 4 and 5 act plays--they insist on, and will have them good.
The only exception is where you astonish them with a good 2nd
act--then they'll take their siesta in the 3rd--and wake up for the 4th.
This psychological time-table shows how calculating the dramatist has
to be, how precise in his framework, how sparing of his number of
words. In another note, Howard says:
This would leave the acts squeezed "dry", about as follows:--Act I, 35
minutes; Act 2, 30; Act 3, 45; Act 4, 20--total, 130--2 hrs., 10 min.,

curtain up: entr'acts, 25 min. Total--2 hrs., 35 min.--8:20 to 10:55.
There are a thousand extraneous considerations bothering a play that
never enter into the evolution of any other form of art. After seeing
W.H. Crane, who played "Peter Stuyvesant" when it was given,
Howard writes Matthews of the wisdom shown by the actor in his
criticism of "points" to be changed and strengthened in the manuscript.
"A good actor," he declares, "whom I always regard as an original
creator in art--beginning at the point where the dramatist's pen
stops--approaches a subject from such a radically different direction
that we writers cannot study his impressions too carefully in revising
our work." Sometimes, conventions seized the humourous side of
Howard. From England, around 1883, he wrote, "Methinks there is
danger in the feeling expressed about 'local colouring.' English
managers would put the Garden of Eden in Devonshire, if you adapted
Paradise Lost for them--and insist on giving Adam an eye-glass and a
title."
Howard was above all an American; he was always emphasizing his
nationality; and this largely because the English managers changed
"Saratoga" to "Brighton," and "The Banker's Daughter" to "The Old
Love and the New." I doubt whether he relished William Archer's
inclusion of him in a volume of "English Dramatists of To-day," even
though that critic's excuse was that he "may be said to occupy a place
among English dramatists somewhat similar to that occupied by Mr.
Henry James among English novelists." Howard was quick to assert his
Americanism, and to his home town he wrote a letter from London, in
1884, disclaiming the accusation that he was hiding his local
inheritance behind a French technique and a protracted stay abroad on
business. He married an English woman--the sister of the late Sir
Charles Wyndham--and it was due to the latter that several of his plays
were transplanted and that Howard planned collaboration with Sir
Charles Young. But Howard was part of American life--born of the
middle West, and shouldering a gun during the Civil War to guard the
Canadian border near Detroit against a possible sympathetic uprising
for the Confederacy. Besides which--a fact which makes the title of
"Dean of the American Drama" a legitimate insignia,--when, in 1870,
he stood firm against the prejudices of A.M. Palmer and Lester Wallack,
shown toward "home industry," he was maintaining the right of the

American dramatist. He was always preaching the American spirit,
always analyzing American character, always watching and
encouraging American thought.
Howard was a scholar, with a sense of the fitness of things, as a
dramatist should have. Evidently, during the collaboration with
Professor Matthews on "Stuyvesant," discussion must have arisen as to
the form of English "New Amsterdamers," under Knickerbocker rule,
would use. For it called forth one of Howard's breezy but exact
comments, as follows:
A few more words about the "English" question: As I said, it seems to
me, academical correctness, among the higher characters, will give a
prim, old-fashioned tone: and you can look after this, as all my own
work has been in the opposite direction in art. I have given it no
thought in writing this piece, so far.
I would suggest the following special points to be on the alert for, even
in the best present-day use of English:--some words are absolutely
correct, now, yet based on events or movements in history since 1660.
An evident illustration is the word "boulevard" for a wide street or road;
so "avenue," in same sense, is New Yorkese and London
imitation--even imitated from us, I imagine, in Paris: this would give a
nineteenth century tone; while an "avenue lined with trees in a bowery"
would not. Don't understand that I am telling you things. I'm only
illustrating--to let you know what especial things in language I hope
you will keep your eye on. Of course Anneke couldn't be
"electrified"--but you may find many less evident blunders than that
would be.