The Autobiography of a Play

The Autobiography of a Play, by
Bronson Howard

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Title: The Autobiography of a Play Papers on Play-Making, II
Author: Bronson Howard
Commentator: Augustus Thomas
Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18769]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PAPERS ON PLAY-MAKING

II
The Autobiography of a Play
by
BRONSON HOWARD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
AUGUSTUS THOMAS
Printed for the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University
in the City of New York
MCMXIV

CONTENTS
Introduction by Augustus Thomas The Autobiography of a Play by
Bronson Howard Notes by B. M.

INTRODUCTION
The qualities that made Bronson Howard a dramatist, and then made
him the first American dramatist of his day, were his human sympathy,
his perception, his sense of proportion, and his construction. With his
perception, his proportion, and his construction, respectively, he could
have succeeded as a detective, as an artist, or as a general. It was his
human sympathy, his wish and his ability to put himself in the other
man's place, that made play-writing definitely attractive to him. As a
soldier he would have shown the courage of the dogged defender in the
trench or the calmly supervising general at headquarters, rather than the
mad bravery that carried the flag at the front of a forlorn hope. His gifts
were intellectual. His writing was more disciplined than inspired. If we

shall claim for him genius, it must be preferably the genius of infinite
pains.
He saw intimately and clearly. His proportion made him write with
discretion and a proper sense of cumulative emphasis, and his
construction enabled him so to combine his materials as to secure this
effect. He was intensely self-critical; and while almost without conceit
concerning his own work, he had an accuracy of detached estimation
that enabled him to stand by his own opinion with a proper inflexibility
when his judgment convinced him that the opinion was correct.
He worked slowly. At one time, in his active period, it was his custom
to go from New York, where he lived, to New Rochelle, where he had
formerly lived. There, upon the rear end of a suburban lot, he had a
plain board cabin not more than ten feet square. In it were a deal table,
a hard chair, and a small stove. He would go to this cabin in the
morning when the tide of suburban travel was setting the other way,
and spend his entire day there with his manuscript and his cigars. He
carried a small lunch from his home. He once told me he was satisfied
with his day's work if it provided him with ten good lines that would
not have to be abandoned. I did not take that statement to imply that
there were not in his experience the more profitable days that are in the
work of every writer--days when the subject seems to command the pen
and when the hand cannot keep pace with the vision. He was often too
saturated with his story, too much the prisoner of his people, for it to
have been otherwise; but his training had verified for him the truth that
easy writing is hard reading.
Then, too, while Bronson Howard arranged his characters for the eye
and built his story for the judgment, he wrote his speeches for the ear.
This attention to the cadence of a line was so essential to him that when
writing as he sometimes did for a magazine he studied the sound of his
phrase as if the print were to be read aloud. This same care for the
dialog would retard its production; and critical revision would enforce
still further delay.
William Gillette once said to an interviewer that "plays were not
written, but were rewritten." The experience of many play-wrights

would support that statement. In the case of Bronson Howard, the
autobiography of his 'Banker's Daughter' certainly does so. His most
profitable play, perhaps, and the one which also brought him the
greatest popular recognition, was 'Shenandoah'. That play was
produced by a manager, who, after its first performance, believed that it
would not succeed. A younger and more hopeful one saw in it its great
elements of popularity, and encouraged him to rewrite it.
Mr.