Shenandoah | Page 7

leader of the public in his dramatic tastes. Sometimes in rare
instances he will influence the public so decidedly that he compels the
contemporary school of writers to follow him. This has been the case in
all periods. I need not mention Shakespeare, as everything said about
him is a matter of course.
Take the 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