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A Critical Study Of Brander Matthews' Dramatic Theory

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A Critical Study Of Brander Matthews' Dramatic Theory

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Content A CRITICAL STUDY OF BRANDER MATTHEWS'
DRAMATIC THEORY
t>y
George Waldo Weyant
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communications)
January 1965
UNIVERSITY O F SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 0 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
under the direction of h.%$...Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H IL O S O P H Y
Dean
D ate....
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. THE PROBLEM.............................. 1
Introduction
Statement of the Problem
Limitations of the Study
A Review of the Source Materials
Preview of Remaining Chapters
II. THE MAN AND THE PERIOD............... 29
Brander Matthews, the Man
The Period
III. THE PLAY......... 72
IV. THE PLAYWRIGHT .......................... 93
V. THE PLAYER ........................ . 117
VI. THE PLAYHOUSE........... 136
VII. THE PLAYGOER.............................. 150
VIII. MATTHEWS AND HIS CRITICS.................. 168
IX. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS . ......... 180
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......... 189
ill
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
Introduction
Brander Matthews lived during a transitional period
when plays were moving from popular melodrama to a form
which attempted to represent both the tragedy and the
comedy of life as faithfully as any of the forms of the
past. To what extent Matthews, with his intimate knowledge
of the French, English, and American stage for more than
fifty years, was able to analyze this transition is some
thing that needs to be examined.
It had long been the fate of the drama to be written
about from only a literary point of view. Matthews, with
his practical experience as a playwright, and life-long
interest in the stage'as a stage, was one of the first
Americans to perceive that the drama is not mere language,
but an art form which arises from the nature and the capa
bilities of the theatre as well. He insisted on taking
into consideration the actor and the varying conditions
1
under which he worked; he never £orgo£ the changing preju
dices and intelligence levels and sizes of the audiences
for whom the actors performed.
Sanity, scholarship, and wit— these were the quali
ties that won for Brander Matthews the prominent place he
occupied in the theatre world some fifty years ago. And,
strangely enough, these are the very qualities for which
he was most criticized. Although old men are imagined as
tolerant of young men, they seldom are. But, judging from
his own restrained reactions to the attacks aimed at him
throughout his career, Matthews was an exception.
Few realized that Matthews was a pioneer in a
field little explored in this country at the time he began
to write. By the time of his death, no full biographies
had been written of him, and very few trustworthy estimates
of his work. This situation has continued unchanged for
thirty-five years. Perhaps this is so because only now
can we view with clear objectivity both the man and his
era.
Statement of the Problem
The main problem undertaken in this study has been
to discover precisely what dramatic principles dominated
| Brander Matthews' thinking and writings, and to determine
i
their importance in the American theatre. At the same
time, it was hoped to find possible answers to questions
concerning those concepts in the theatres of Europe and
America that Matthews inherited, the pragmatic values
of his theory, and the actual effects of his theory on
American playwrights, actors, directors, and designers.
Finally, an attempt has been made to estimate the signifi
cance of Matthews' contribution to the mainstream of
dramatic criticism.
Such problems are not easily resolved, however,
for at once the student is confronted with contradictions
both from the man and from his critics. While he himself
insist8 that the great plays of the world cannot be under
stood without a knowledge of the conditions of their first
performance, he readily admits that they are great and
enduring chiefly because of their literary qualities.
While he shows that sane of the leading characters of the
stage have been designed to suit particular performers,
he affirms that all such roles transcend the limitations
of any actor's personality. And, while he fixes his eye
upon the structure of drama rather than upon its content,
he frankly declares that great plays are great only
because of a worthy content.
There were those who regarded Matthews as the
favored hack of the genteel periodic press, who added to
his natural gift of having nothing to say the art of saying
It In meaningless platitudes. To these critics, Matthews
was a symbol of all that was impractical and impotent in
America— one who was unable to "keep up," an old-fashioned
outdated hanger-on, hopelessly out of step with contempo
raneous thought and action. But there were also those who
found in Matthews a modern of the moderns, inventive,
suggestive, illuminating— one who kept himself very care
fully informed of current developments.
Finally, what is even more puzzling to many is
Matthews' failure to recognize and discuss— let alone
praise— the works of Eugene O'Neill and other younger men
of the theatre, men like Philip Moeller and Robert Edmund
Jones. In his discussion of Punch and Judy, one might
expect Matthews, by the late nineteen twenties, to make
some mention of the movies. Matthews intentionally re
ferred to them by terms that were already obsolete and
pedantic. One might wonder: How flexible-minded was
this scholar, after all?
5...
Limitations of the Study
Many people think of Brander Matthews as a teacher,
the first professor of dramatic literature at any univer
sity in America. He was, apparently, a brilliant teacher;
a Fagin of future theatre men like Clayton Hamilton, Elmer
Rice, and William C. DeMille; a beloved instructor whose
students applauded his entrance into class each morning.
Other people think of Matthews as the writer of short
fiction, novels, and plays; for, indeed, creative writing
was his first and most lasting ambition. Still others
think of Matthews as the literary critic, the equal of his
friend William Dean Howells, for certainly his articles
and essays and books did dominate literary criticism for
fifty years. Finally, there are those who think of
Matthews as an organizer and reformer, the founder of the
Flayers Club, the one who first helped to protect young
playwrights by forming the Dramatists' Copyright League,
and the one who fought for the Reformed Spelling Act in
America.
In none of these ways is Brander Matthews to be
thought of here. Rather, this study has chosen to consider
him as a dramatic critic only, and has limited itself to
a consideration of how the theatre of the late nineteenth
century affected him and how he affected its transition
into the theatre of the early twentieth century. Accord
ingly, primary emphasis has been placed on primary sources.
All that Matthews thought and wrote about the theatre has
been tracked down and analyzed; what others were thinking
at the time is seen in lower-relief, a sounding board for
Matthews' own theories.
Thus only passing attention is given to Matthews
as a man of his time. What he has meant to American cul
ture is something we can dispute endlessly; what he has
meant to the American theatre is something that can be
tested and measured. And were it within the scope of this
paper to dwell on his personality, much more might be
said. His genius for friendship has seldom been equaled.
A choice spirit, a wit, an inspirer of brilliant talk,
he became a tradition in his own time.
A Review of the Source Materials
There are at least three ways of learning about the
theatrical life of a past period. One may read formal
history concerning it, but this, the most common and easy
way, is least interesting and least satisfactory. One may
read contemporary documents; and this, the usual way of
scholarship, is more excellent, but often full of unseen
difficulties and omissions. Or one may read all the works
i
of some writer who, having become saturated with the spirit|
of his epoch, gives it out in all that he says and writes,
appealing not alone to the mind, but to the emotion and
the imagination. Only this method really vitalizes the
past.
Brander Matthews was such a writer. And good
writing, like good acting, is remarkable for its individu
ality. It charms by its truth and the truth is always
original. Still, Edward Goodman's complaint that "Matthews'
volumes bear different titles but the children do not wear
very different clothes"*’ is well taken, for Matthews has
given us the offspring of his own dramatic thinking in one
book after another. But this defect, if it may so be
called, is caused by preceding excellence. His statement
of his theory, his explanation, his illustration— all are
so apt that we understand fully at the first. Yet there
always seems to be a new point from which he can show us
^Edward Goodman, review of Matthews' A Study of the
Drama, in Forum. May 13, 1910, p. 56.
an old truth. Above all, this study has endeavored to
trace a progression in his thought.
In 1924, just before he was to resign from Columbia
University, Matthews jotted down in some final lecture
notes: "1 began writing when I was fifteen . . . fifty-
2
seven years ago.1’ Since this study attempts to review
critically his work over a period of some fifty-four years,
from an early diary entry of 1871 to some final notes for
a speech he delivered at Columbia University in 1925,
it follows the itinerary of Matthews' own theatrical and
spiritual odyssey. The research was conducted in three
cities: New York, Paris, and London.
In New York, the Brander Matthews material at the
Special Collections Library of Columbia University is,
in the words of Henry W. Wells, Curator of the Brander
Matthews Dramatic Museum and himself a former student and
3
friend of Matthews, "very detailed.” Before his death,
Matthews turned over to Columbia his own library as well
as those models and miscellaneous theatre marginalia that
2
Quoted from Matthews' lecture notes, Special
Collections, Columbia University.
3
Quoted from a letter written to the investigator
from Dr. Wells, January 2, 1961.
formed the nucleus of the museum that bears his name.
Moved from one building to another through the years, his
library remains virtually intact, watched over carefully
by Miss Else Pinthus. All of Matthews' published works
ate included here and were made available by Librarian
Charles Luff.
The attitudes that Matthews had begun to develop in
early reviews and essays during the seventies and eighties
found their way into book form by the last decade of the
century. Studies of the Staged published in 1894, was
his first collection of essays pertaining to the theatre.
In The Historical Novel and Other Essays^ and Inquiries
and Opinions* * several of the essays also related to the
theatre.
In A Book About the Theatre.^ published in 1916,
A
Brander Matthews, Studies of the Stage (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1894).
5
Brander Matthews, The Historical Novel and Other
Essays (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901).
6
Brander Matthews, Inquiries and Opinions (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).
7
Brander Matthews, A Book About the Theatre (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916).
Matthews began to write about the theatre exclusively.
8
;In Principles of Playmaking (1917) and Playwrights on
9
Playmaking (1923) he wrote short essays that were origin-
!ally published in such American periodicals as Galaxy.
i
!Llpplncott's Magazine. Appleton's Journal. Scribner's
Monthly, and Harper's Monthly. Sometimes they appeared
in book form almost exactly as they had in the magazines;
sometimes, however, there was evidence of extensive revi
sion.
10
The Theatres of Paris. published when Matthews was
only twenty-eight years old, was his first sustained work
pertaining to the drama. But of more critical importance
was French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. ^ first
published in 1882, with revised editions containing new
12
chapters appearing in 1891 and 1901. Development of the
Q
Brander Matthews, Principles of Playmaking (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919).
9
Brander Matthews, Playwrights on Playmaking (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923).
10
Brander Matthews, Theatres of Paris (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1880).
11
Brander Matthews, French Dramatists of the Nine
teenth Century (London: Remington, 1882).
12
Revised editions published by Charles Scribner's
Sons, supra.
11
13
jDrama followed in 1903; although It appears to be an
objective survey of the history of the drama, it is
h
freighted with personal judgments. A Study of the Drama.
published in 1910, consider the influence of the actor,
the theatre, and the audience, but is written from the
point of view of the playwright's technique.
Two other Important critical works were Molifere. His
Life and Works (1910)^ and Shakespeare as a Playwright
16
(1913), both of which deal more with technique than with
biography. Other books, like Rip Van Winkle Goes to the
17 18 19
Plav. The Tocsin of Revolt. On Acting. American
^Brander Matthews, Development of the Drama (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903).
14
Brander Matthews, A Study of the Drama (New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910).
^Brander Matthews, Molibre. His Life and Works
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910).
16
Brander Matthews, Shakespeare as a Playwright
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913).
17
Brander Matthews, Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play
(New York: Charles Scribner^s Sons, 1926).
18
Brander Matthews, The Tocsin of Revolt (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922).
19
Brander Matthews, On Acting (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1914).
12 |
20
Character, Introductory essays to such books as Papers
21 22
on Acting and Papers on Playmaking. as well as
23
Matthews' autobiography, These Many Years. were all
valuable in enabling the investigator to arrive at a final
statement of Matthews' theories.
Besides these published reviews, articles, essays,
and books, there were the unpublished diaries, letters,
lecture notes, notes for speeches, student examination
questions, and various personal memos. All of these reveal
a certain consistency of viewpoint and point of attack.
Matthews' diaries begin in 1871 and continue with
almost daily entries until 1924. Unfortunately, they are
very impersonal and very sketchy; they record luncheon
appointments but never the topics of conversation at these
luncheons; they indicate the price of a new book, but never
hint at what Matthews thought of the book. A prophetic
20
Brander Matthews, American Character (New York:
Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, 1906).
21
Brander Matthews (ed.), Papers on Acting, with a
preface by Henry W. Wells (New York: Hill and Wang, 1958).
22
Brander Matthews (ed.), Papers on Playmaking. with
preface by Henry W. Wells (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957).
23
Brander Matthews, These Many Years (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917).
entry made in February, 1873, just before Matthews'
twenty-first birthday, records his ambition to write a
24
"history of dramatic literature."
Matthews' letters proved far more fruitful. Letter-
books include copies of letters written by Matthews to
others, as well as the dozens of letters written to
Matthews over a period of some forty-five years. It is
here that Samuel L. Clemens asked Matthews to "sit down,
some time or other when you have eight or nine months to
spare, and jot down a certain few literary particulars for
25
my help and elevation."
Of great value were Matthews' lecture notes. Still
carefully filed into neat brown envelopes labeled accord
ing to subjects ("American Dramatists," "Moliere," "Copy
right League," et cetera), they fill thirty drawers of the
monstrous wooden filing cabinet that had always been in
Matthews' study. Among these lecture notes one also finds
24
Quoted from an entry in Matthews' diary, February
20, 1873. Matthews later remarked (These Many Years, p.
438) that these diary entries were "stripped of allcolor
and movement, implacably impersonal, mere inert and faded
and truncated memorandums."
25
Quoted from a letter sent to Matthews by Samuel L.
Clemens from Kingsbridge, London, May 4, 1903.
copies of student examinations which give some indication
of what values Matthews felt his students should be gaining;
under his teaching; student answers, unfortunately, were
»
not found.
In the same cabinet, in separate envelopes marked
with the time and occasion, were notes for speeches that
Matthews delivered to various groups during the last
twenty-five years of his life. They often said more con
cisely, and sometimes more effectively, what Matthews had
written in his books. We come fairly close to the man,
1 think, when he confides one Monday afternoon in 1925
to a group of young writers who have invited him back to
Columbia to speak to them: "My advice is like bitter
medicine— asked for and not taken. All 1 can do is tell
you what 1 have found to be the best way for me, not for
„26
you."
All of this material, together with many notes in
the form of memoranda written to himself, all in Matthews'
own hand, provides the researcher with certain inferences
not to be drawn from Matthews' published works. For
26
Quoted from notes for a lecture Matthews delivered
at the Writers' Club, 301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia Univer
sity, October 19, 1925.
15
example, much light is thrown upon his career as a play
wright as one analyzes the many sets of notes for plays.
Many never got beyond the note stage, however, but certain
others, especially those to his sometlmes-collaborator,
George C. Jessop, are full of cogent ideas of construction
and characterization.
At Columbia, Dr. Wells was, from the beginning, a
source of inspiration as well as of information. Himself
a student and friend of Matthews, he was in a position to
provide a great amount of personal background on Matthews
and to direct me to books and to individuals still in New
York who had been friendly with Matthews.
First of these was Professor Herbert G. KleinfieId,
formerly of Temple University in Philadelphia. I had three
long talks with Dr. Kleinfield, who had been conducting
research at Columbia on Matthews' writings as they related
"to the intellectual activity of the day." We discussed
the relative importance of certain material we had both
analyzed. It became clear that Dr. Kleinfield saw Matthews
as "a representative of late nineteenth century culture."
When it was suggested that my particular interest was in
a study of Matthews' life-long interest in theatre, Dr.
Kleinfield stated that he thought Matthews "dodged original
27
criticism in favor of the craft of theatrical history."
Ernest Hunter Wright, former head of the English
Department at Columbia University, who had been both col
league and friend of Matthews, provided insight into
Matthews' teaching career. That which I was assured was
"all in a far-away world before you were born" seemed very
near indeed, so vivid was Dr. Wright's account. He recalled
conversations at Matthews' famous Sunday night salons, and
those more intimate ones over dinner on alternate Wednesdays
when Matthews would always order the same menu but different
topics of discussion. It was Dr. Wright who explained to
me why Matthews' good friendship with William Archer pre
vented him from making any further attacks on Ibsen so long
as the English critic was living.
John Mulholland was one of Matthews' most intimate
friends, and was one of the last to speak with Matthews
before his death in 1929. Mr. Mulholland, more than anyone
else, provided me with background on the very human side of
Matthews, the side one cannot always get from a writer's
books. "Remember," said Matthews to Mulholland one after-
27
Quoted from comments made by Professor Herbert L.
Kleinfield when interviewed at his office at Long Island
University, Brookville, Hew York, January 17, 1963.
noon, “the side-show of my museum is one of its most valu
able parts." 1 was permitted to use Mr. Mulholland's own
extensive library, one which contains one of the nation's
largest collection of books on magic, a field that Matthews
and Mulholland both loved.
Two other libraries in New York also proved to be
valuable places of research. First was the New York Public
Library, where George Freedley, Curator of the Theatre
Collection, talked with me on two different occasions about
Matthews and directed me to certain materials and individ
uals both in Paris and London. The special clippings file
at the Theatre Collection I found most helpful; it pro
vided me with contemporary theatre reviews and pictures
not available at Columbia.
At the Player8 Club Library, Pat Carroll and Louis
Rachau, the librarians, helped me to locate certain books
and articles relating to Matthews and his association with
the many famous men who frequented this club. It was at
the Players Club that 1 met George Middleton who, as a
fellow scholar and club-member, had known Matthews so well.
Now in his eighties, he was originally a student of
Matthews and recalled that in 1904, as Matthews hurried
into the crowded classroom, "there was always a burst of
18
28
applause.1 1 Mr. Middleton presented me with a copy of
his autobiography, These Things Are Mine, in which he
describes Matthews as "the midwife to the well-made
29
play!"
In Paris, I was able to locate certain materials
not available in the libraries of New York. Henri
Veinstein, curator and librarian in charge of special
theatre collections at the Blbllotheque Nationale, provided
me with countless volumes and letters pertaining to
Matthews' frequent visits to Paris, and was always willing
to discuss with me in his office at the Arsenal problems
related to the present research. Most of these works have
never been translated into English and were read in French.
Particularly valuable were those reviews written in Paris
of Matthews' Theatres of Paris, including the one Sarcey
30
wrote for the Feuilleton in 1882; articles by Gustave
28
Quoted from comments made by Mr. George Middleton
when interviewed at the Players' Club, New York City,
February 10, 1963.
29
George Middleton, These Thinks Are Mine (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1947), p. 35.
30
Francisque Sarcey, review of Matthews French
Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century, in Feuilleton du
Temps (Paris: January 23, 1882), p. 2.
...... 19 ......|
31
Devolaine and Pierre Valin in Revue dfArt Dramatique.
which provided insight into contemporary thought about
"la piece & th£se"; and Charles Nuitter's Le Nouvel Qplra
32
(1875) and Sarcey'8 Comldiens et Comediennes (mlmeo-
33
graphed, 1876-1880), both important sources for Matthews'
Theatres of Paris.
Also in Paris, the library of the late French play
wright Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) was opened to me by
his grandson, Roger Sardou, now working in motion picture
writing. Monsieur Sardou and I spent long hours together
at his home talking about his famous grandfather, whom
Matthews admired, and he placed such books as Hugues
3 4
Rebell's Victorien Sardou. Le Theatre et L'Epoque into
my hands. The entire library, just as Sardou left it,
also included valuable works on Augier, Dumas, Coquelin,
31 ,
Gustave Devolaine, "La Piece h thdse," Revue
d'Art Dramatlque. IX (Paris: March, 1888), pp. 275-280.
32
Charles Louis Etienne Nuitter, Le Nouvel Opera
(Paris: Hachette and Company, 1875).
33
Francisque Sarcey, Comediens et Comediennes,
in Feuilleton du Temps (Paris: 1876-1880) (mimeographed).
34 , *
Hugues Rebell, Victorien Sardou. Le Theatre et
L'Epoque (Paris: Felix Juven, n.d.).
20
Sarcey, and Antoine.
Matthews once wrote about Paris: “In the fullness,
strength, and originality of its dramatic literature,
France has for fifty years stood alone among the nations of
Europe; and it is in the number of theatres, in the excel
lence of its actors, and in the careful splendor of its
theatrical performances, Paris is the first among the
35
cities of the world." Because Matthews knew the theatres
of Paris so well, a visit to certain of its institutions
gave new insight into the kinds of performances Matthews
attended. I visited the Comldie Francaise at the invita
tion of its secretary, Claude Benedict, who provided me
with considerable information about this great institution;
at the Paris Opera House I conferred with its new director,
Monsieur Georges Auric, who permitted me to use certain
books at the opera's museum, where Matthews first got the
idea for the museum at Columbia University; and at the
Theatre Odeon, Jean-Louis Barrault provided me with some
old theatre bills and considerable information about the
Odeon during the nineteenth century.
Matthews, Theatres of Paris, p. 1.
In London, where Matthews had a host of good friends
I including Fleeming Jenkin and Frederick Locker-Lampson,
a number of libraries proved valuable places for research.
Most of my work was done at the British Museum, where I
found a number of volumes not available in New York. Among
these were Doris Arthur Jones' study of her father, The
36
Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones, and The Austin
37
Dobson Letter Book. compiled by Alban Dobson. A number
of books by and about Andrew Lang, another influence on
Matthews' work, were also found.
At the Victoria and Albert Museum, George Nash
allowed me to work with those special materials that com
prise the Entoven Collection. In addition, I found the
library's collection of theatre programs and contemporary
theatre clippings very helpful, especially the London re
views of the English productions of Matthews' plays, The
38 39
Gold Mine and On Probation. Mr. Nash was a constant
36
Doris Arthur Jones, The Life and Letters of Henry
Arthur Jones (London: Victor Gallancz, Ltd., 1930).
37
Alban Dobson (ed.), An Austin Dobson Letter Book
(London: W. H. Allen, 1935).
38
Produced at the Gaiety Theatre on July 21, 1890,
reviewed in The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.
August 9, 1890, p. 22.
39
Produced as Margery's Lovers at the Court Theatre,
22
guide and source of information.
At the British Drama League Library on Fitzroy
Square, the librarian, Hiss Garnum, provided me with the
collected correspondence of William Archer, which helped
to make clear to me the relationship between the English
critic and Matthews.
Miss Sybil Rosenfeld provided me with information
concerning Matthews' days at the Garrick Club; apparently
this was much like the Players' Club in New York.
Librarian Anne Frost helped me to locate certain records
dealing with the club's activities during the late nine
teenth century when Matthews frequented it.
Miss Diane Moore invited me to the tiny but valuable
library at the Society for theatre Research. Here I found
certain books on theatre life not located elsewhere, as
well as valuable articles by Arthur Sketchley in The Era
Almanac, which date from 1868.
Miss Hurst, longtime librarian at Longman's, Green
and Company, Matthews' English publisher, was a most
delightful help. She unlocked metal boxes of letters and
February 18, 1884, and reviewed in The Referee. February,
1884, p. 6.
23
publishing records, helped me to locate long-neglected
volumes, and over tea gave me much background of Matthews'
relationships with certain English men of letters.
Mr. Ian Kyle Fletcher, London book dealer and
theatre buff from whom I was able to buy an English edition
of Brander Matthews' books, allowed me to use certain books
in his unique shop, checked contemporary writings connected
with Matthews' visits to London, and showed me certain
photographs previously unknown to me. Mr. Fletcher also
directed me to several other book shops that had books
pertaining to London theatre during Matthews' era.
In each of these cities, thus, I relied heavily
upon secondary sources, some of which Matthews himself had
used as background for his own writings. Back in New
York, secondary sources were also used, but these were
almost exclusively books written about other subjects,
.40
with Matthews mentioned only incidentally. When in 1933
George C. D. Odell wrote, "There are as yet, no trust
worthy biographies and but few trustworthy critical esti
mates of Matthews," he was referring to a situation that
40
George C. D. Odell, "Brander Matthews," Dictionary
of American Biography (London: Oxford University Press.
1933), p. 416.
24
has gone unaltered in the intervening three decades.
A survey of indexes (Knower, Library of Congress Catalogue,
et cetera) indicates the one exception to this to be Jack
£. Bender's dissertation, "The Theatre of Brander Matthews, * ! '
41
written at the University of Michigan in 1954.
The ambiguity of Bender's title— "The Theatre of
Brander Matthews"— is but indicative of his failure to
come to grips with specifics throughout his entire study.
We cannot be sure from the title whether his approach here
is critical, historical, or analytical. Nowhere does he
clearly define his research method. And Bender fails to
distinguish clearly between the terms "theatre" and
"drama"; he usually prefers to use both interchangeably,
even in the same sentence.
But a more important criticism of this study is
that Bender fails to achieve his stated objective, "to
examine in a systematic fashion Matthews' aesthetic of the
theatre and the drama as well as his theory and practice
42
of dramatic criticism." He divides his study into three
41
Jack E. Bender, "The Theatre of Brander Matthews"
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, 1954).
42Ibid.. p. 3.
25
parts: Function, Form, and Criticism— forgetting his own
statement that "Form, in the opinion of Matthews, was . . .
43
inseparable from function." In the final section we
search in vain for a clear correlation between Matthews'
theories and his own critical writing.
Often Bender falls to making sweeping statements
that sometimes contradict one another. In his considera
tion of Matthews as a critic, for example, he says that
"No principle was held more firmly by Matthews than the
one that dramatic criticism must consider drama as an art
of the theatre," while at the same time he contradicts
himself by saying, "Matthews' interest in acting was never
..44
very great.
One can only suspect that such shortcomings as
these are due to Professor Bender's own research limita
tions. There was, apparently, no attempt to use the prim
ary source material at Columbia University. Thus, there
is no final evaluation of Matthews' contribution to the
American theatre, no perspective offered as to the relative
43
Ibid.. p. 6.
44
Ibid.. p. 80.
26
place Matthews might occupy in the main stream of dramatic
criticism.
Finally, it was Professor James H. Butler at the
University of Southern California who first led me to
undertake this study of Brander Matthews. It was he who
showed me both the need and the way, encouraging under the
guidance of Professor Bernard DuKore early pilot studies
on both Matthews and his era.
Preview of Remaining Chapters
The chapters which follow will explore those areas
of the theatre about which Brander Matthews thought and
wrote.
Chapter II ("The Man and the Period") is divided
into two parts. Part A reviews chronologically the outward
events of Matthews' life and attempts to suggest some of
the personal events that tied him to the theatre. Part B
reviews the main developments in the French, English, and
American theatres over a period of fifty years, roughly
from 1875 to 1925.
Chapter III ("The Play") seeks to discover and
analyze what Matthews had to say about that written manu
script that in a theatre becomes "a play." Such thorny
subjects as the drama as an art form, theatrical conven
tions, pantomime, the drama versus the novel, and the
poetic drama are discussed.
Chapter IV ("The Playwright") attempts to analyze
Matthews' theories of playwriting as they can be synthe
sized from his criticism of successful playwrights. The
basis of our discussion draws upon his evaluation of writ-
era like Shakespeare, Moliere, Ibsen, Scribe, Zola,
Pinero, and Bronson Howard.
Chapter V ("The Actor") defines what Matthews con
sidered the fundamental principles of the art of acting.
His appraisal of such actors as Coquelin, Henry Irving,
William Gillette, Edwin Booth, and many others is consid
ered .
Chapter VI ("The Playhouse") considers both the
physical theatre and its social and economic ramifications.
Subjects to be discussed here include the conditions of a
performance, the platform stage, scenery and lighting, the
work of men like Gordon Craig, Andre Antoine, and David
Belasco, the function of the theatrical producer, and
theatre syndicates.
Chapter VII ("The Playgoer") attempts to pinpoint
Matthews' views of the theatre-goer, both as an individual
28
and as part of a collective mind. His ideas on the economy
of attention and on the various kinds of audiences are to
be analyzed.
Chapter Vlll ("Matthews and His Critics") attempts
a review of what other critics had to say about Matthews'
theories during his own lifetime. Little has been written
about them since his death in 1929.
Chapter IX ("Summary and Conclusions") is divided
into two parts. The first section summarizes the main
points of Matthews' theory. The second section is devoted
to a presentation of the conclusions drawn for this study.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN AND THE PERIOD
Brander Matthews, the Man
In 1917 Clayton Hamilton wrote of Brander Matthews:
"He has become a sort of Boswell of our times. He has
known everybody worth knowing."*’ A year later Randolph
Bourne wrote in the Dial: "He seems to have known every
body and felt nothing. He Is a part of a literary era
2
that never grew up." In some ways, Matthews never did
quite "grow up." Certainly he never lost his child-like
wonder about life Itself or about the theatre. "He re
sembles a cat ... he had the utmost curiosity," Henry
Wells told me one afternoon as we sat surrounded by
Matthews' theatre models and memorabilia In the museum
that bears his name. "It was the theatre," Matthews once
Clayton Hamilton, reviewing These Many Years In
The Bookman. November, 1917, p. 357.
2
Randolph Bourne, The Dial. March 14, 1918, p. 325.
29
....................................................30 ']
O
wrote, "that had the power to excite me." And clearly
it was the theatre that gave both scope and substance to
his crowded seventy-seven years of living.
Apart from that strange, intangible gift which we
call genius, a writer's mind is in most things formed and
directed by his circumstances and his surroundings.
Influences from within, such as health and temperament, and
influences from without, such as social conditions and
impressions made in youth by certain books or personal
contacts— these determine the gift that is born in the
writer. One wonders whether Matthews, denied the divinity
of dramatic creativity, was ever really content with the
critic's lot of re-creativity. There is something a little
sad when Matthews writes late in life: "To write plays
and to keep on writing them, one after another, year after
year, this was my boyhood ambition; and to my constant
disappointment, this ambition has been incompletely grati
fied."4
James Brander Matthews was born on February 21,
1852, in New Orleans, but New York City, the home of so
3
Brander Matthews, These Many Years, p. 14.
4
Ibid.. p. 16.
■ "... 31
much American theatre, was his home from early youth.
He used to say that he was a typical Hew Yorker, since his
father was of New England ancestry and his mother, Virginia
Brander Matthews, was from the state after which she was
named. The family was wealthy and Matthews was carefully
reared for the profession of being a millionaire. It was
unfortunate that his father's fortune began to fade away
the very year Matthews came of age, and It had vanished
completely a decade before the father died in 1887.
Still, in 1867, when the Second Empire was at its
apogee, the Matthews family was able to spend a year in
Paris. Then just fifteen, Matthews laid the foundation
of that knowledge of the French language and of the French
stage which was to affect his later critical work. He had
seen Coquelin, whose career was steadily growing, and was
greatly taken by his engaging personality. Conscious of
his own deficiencies in French, it occurred to Matthews
that Coquelin might give him lessons. He looked up the
address and rang the bell at the door of the actor's modest
apartment. Matthews proffered his request but Coquelin
declined it courteously. Ten years later they struck up
a friendship that terminated only with the actor's death
32
5
in 1909.
In an interview published in 1896 in the New York
Dramatic Mirror. Matthews recalled:
The first play I clearly remember not to have seen
was a performance of The Tempest, by Charles Kean in
1857. My parents refused to take me to see it and
my regret has been life-long. The first performance
I really saw was Edwin Forrest's Macbeth at Niblo's
in 1863.6
Matthews graduated from Columbia College when he
was only nineteen and, in order to prepare himself as
fully as possible for the management of the property he
expected to control, he entered Columbia Law School in the
fall of 1871. During the next two years, while he was
supposed to be absorbing the law, he was "increasingly
devoted to the drama in all of its theatrical manifesta
tions."^ He took a French farce called Conferences chez
Beaubichon and Americanized it as best he could. Under
the title of Very Odd, it was produced for the first time—
and the last— on Friday, the thirteenth of October at the
8
Academy of Music in Indianapolis. A year later, he
5Ibid.. pp. 188-189.
6
Brander Matthews in an interview in the New York
Dramatic Mirror. June 27, 1896, p. 2.
^Matthews, These Many Years, p. 141.
8Ibid.. p. 148.
33
adapted another French one-acter, the Horace of Henri
Murgee. He dealt freely with its dialogue, localized the
action, and was disappointed "never to see it on the pro-
9
fessional stage."
These two adaptations were the natural result of
Matthews' intense ambition to become a playwright and of
his continued first-hand study of the French drama during
his frequent summer trips to Europe. By this time he was
also strongly convinced of the inestimable advantage for
the hovice of sitting at the feet of an older established
playwright in order to be initiated into the secrets of
the craft. From the beginning, it is clear that Matthews
believed that every art has to be learned, and that what
ever can be learned can be taught.
Attending a performance of The Black Crook in New
York in 1872, Matthews met a pretty dancer in the show,
Ada S. Smith, an English actress well known as Ada Harland.
On May 10, 1873, just before his commencement, they were
married, despite loud protests from Matthews' family.
9
Speaking of these plays in his autobiography,
which contains the only reference to them that could be
found, Matthews recalls that they were performed "for the
relief of the sufferers of the Chicago fire" (ibid., p.
48).
34 ;
During a honeymoon visit to Paris, Matthews endeavored,
with charming youthfulness, to enroll himself as a personal
disciple of an acknowledged master of the melodramatic
stage. He first tried Dennery, then Eugene Nub. From
neither did he receive any instruction to speak of; but
it is interesting to find him this early assuming that the
dramatist's art could be taught. It was Nus who told him
to attend all the plays he could, the same advice he was
later to pass on to his own students: "Si vous voulez
faire du theatre, il faut y aller souvent!"^
While in college Matthews had become a regular New
York "first-nighter," and it was no exaggeration when he
later declared, "I have seen almost everything that was
worth seeing in the theatres of New York in the half-
century that has elapsed between 1865 and 1915."^
Matthews had also been a long-time admirer of the
French critic, Sarcey; during the seventies he became a
regular reader of Sarcey's substantial articles that ap
peared every Sunday in the Temps. Matthews liked partic
ularly his "marvelous understanding of the underlying
10
Matthews, These Many Years, p. 345.
U Ibid.. p. 346.
12
principles of Che twin arts of acting and playwriting."
Earlier, Matthews had absorbed his first impressions of
the range and power of the drama from Schlegel. He later
wrote: "While it was Schlegel who had opened my eyes, it
was through the spectacles of Sarcey that X was later to
13
look at the stage."
At the Paris exposition of 1878 Matthews had been
greatly impressed by a special collection illustrative of
the history of the theatre in France. Three years later
he discovered that Charles Nuitter had organized the whole
collection in a wing of the new Opera; the more Matthews
studied the series of models, the more illuminating he
found them. Thirty years later he established his own
dramatic museum containing many models of American produc-
14
tions as well as European ones at Columbia University.
Matthews also visited London frequently during
these early years, but "the dingy town" never appealed to
12
Ibid.. p. 204.
13Ibid.. p. 212.
14
From an interview with Henry W. Wells at Columbia
University, February 15, 1962. Cf. Nuitter's Le Nouvel
Opera (Paris: Libraire Hachette and Company, 1875).
36
him as Paris did. In the seventies he looked upon London
as a "place to be passed through swiftly."1^ In the
eighties, however, his attitude changed as he came to have
more friends in London than he did in Paris. It was to
the writer Austin Dobson that he owed his introduction
to a wide circle of literary and theatrical men whose
friendship drew him to London on his summer voyaging.^
One of these men was Andrew Lang, whom Matthews
described as "the most versatile, the most fecund, and the
most learned man it was ever my good fortune to know inti
mately."^ Lang was a scholar who was able to combine the
pursuit of scholarship with the practice of daily and
weekly journalism. He was able to seize the essential
principles needed to formulate a valuable opinion. When
Lang learned that Matthews was contemplating a study of
Moliere, about whom he himself had already written several
articles, he gave to Matthews the books which he had col-
18
lected for his own use.
^Matthews, These Many Years, p. 258.
16Ibid.
17Ibid.. p. 263.
18
Ibid.. p. 262.
Elected to the Savile Club In 1885, Matthews met a
host of new friends, Including Professor Fleemlng Jenkln
whom Matthews later described as "one of the very few men
1 have met who knew anything about acting, the least under-
19
stood of all the arts." At the Savlle, Matthews also met
George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevenson, and such old
American friends as Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell
Lowell and William Dean Howells. In fact, It was none
other than Matthew Arnold who proposed him for membership
20
to still another club, the Athenaeum, in 1883.
It was the warm friendship of such men as these, no
doubt, that stimulated Matthews' own creativity and found
its first expression in critical articles and increasingly
original plays. In the fall of 1878 Matthews gave up his
adaptations from the French and wrote his first original
play, a comedy-drama called Margery's Lovers. Although he
had intended it for American production, offering it first
to Lester Wallack, then to Augustin Daly, and then to
A. M. Palmer, the play was first staged in London in 1884.
A year later Matthews met George H. Jessop; and together
............ ’...””... 38
i
they wrote A Gold Mine, which was finally produced in New
21
i York in 1889.
Throughout the nineties Matthews continued to write
’ ’ I
original plays, but they seemed to meet with little or no
success. Nevertheless, this was an important period in
Matthews' dramatic growth, a period of development needed
by any critic of the theatre. In 1898 he collaborated with
Bronson Howard for whom he had "the highest regard both as
22
a man and as a dramatist." Their effort, Peter
Stuyvesant, was, in Matthews' own words, "a blunder, since
we did not count on the predilections and prejudices of
23
the spectators." Augustus Thomas, commenting on the
non-success of this adventure, remarked, "The collaborators
24
had probably been too polite to each other." But the
association with Howard was a beneficial experience for
Matthews. He later wrote that Howard was "one of the few
who knew why he did what he did and who could always give
25
a good reason for what he had done." When Matthews came
21Ibid., p. 334.
22
Ibid.. p. 339.
23Ibid.. p. 340.
24
Ibid.. p. 341.
25
Ibid.. p. 342.
39
to analyze the working processes of both Moliere and
Shakespeare, he found himself constantly aided by what he
had picked up from his association with Bronson Howard.
Matthews' club memberships were not restricted to
London. He became one of the original members of the
Players' Club, which had been founded in 1888 by Edwin
Booth for actors, dramatists, and managers. Other original
members included Mark Twain, Augustin Daly, John Drew,
26
Lawrence Hutton, Joseph Jefferson, and A. M. Palmer.
Matthews attended the meetings of this group regularly,
besides attending the theatre as often as five or six times
a week.
During the eighties, Matthews wrote occasional
articles on a variety of literary subjects for such publi
cations as Galaxy. Appleton's Journal, the Atlantic.
Harper's. and the International Review. Later he was to
write regularly for the Nation, an association that con
tinued for twenty years. From 1875 to 1895 he was respon
sible for reviewing almost every book which dealt in any
way with the history of the theatre, including the biog
raphies and autobiographies of actors. He also wrote on
26 "~
Ibid.. p. 367.
topics as varied as book-bindings, playing-cards, fans,
and the various aspects of American literature in which
he always maintained a lively interest. Although Matthews
later denounced these contributions to the Nation as "not
Important," they express in embryonic form those ideas
that were to become the nucleus of his later dramatic
theory.
Matthews made his first decisive step in his career
as a serious dramatic critic in 1881, when he published
his French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Clearly
it was a pioneer work in modern dramatic criticism in the
English language. On Actors and Acting, published six
years earlier, dealt, as the title suggests, mainly with
acting and shows no perception that a new movement had
already begun. Matthews was later able to catch the spirit
of the French movement at its height and expounded it with
that keen intelligence of the theatre that was to manifest
itself repeatedly in a whole series of later volumes.
But another career was in the wings for Matthews.
In the spring of 1891, he was offered a job at Columbia
University as substitute for Professor of English Thomas
R. Price, who was taking a year's leave. Matthews was to
stay on at Columbia until 1924.
41
Allowed to choose the subjects of his first year's
three courses, Matthews selected American literature,
modern fiction, and English versification. In his second
year he taught a course dealing with the dramatists of the
nineteenth century. In 1900 he was asked to give a grad
uate course on the development of the drama from Aeschylus
to the Middle Ages. Ten of these lectures led to the
publication of Development of the Drama in 1903. A year
before, Matthews had been given the title, Professor of
Dramatic Literature, the first such professorship, he later
..27
recalled happily, "in any American university."
When strangers would address him as "Professor
Matthews," however, he would answer with a twinkle in his
28
eye: ''Not below One Hundred and Sixteenth Street!"
He knew that, even at Columbia among his many colleagues,
nobody ever spoke of him by any other name but "Brander."
He looked and dressed the part of the gentleman and scholar
although he never shaved. His reddish-brown beard stuck
out in all directions. Columbia graduates recall vividly
27Ibid.. p. 392.
28
Clayton Hamilton, "Brander." Scribner's Magazine.
LXXXVI, July, 1929, p. 82.
the nose glasses, silver-trimmed, perching precariously
at an angle, with a cigarette dangling from his lips in
imminent danger of setting his whiskers afire. He was
addicted to big black capes and a cane. No one who saw
29
him would ever forget him.
Arthur Hobson Quinn concludes his History of the
American Drama with the statement that our native drama
30
was "bom in the minds of a few college boys." Columbia
delighted Matthews, and soon became the center of his life.
Nobody ever enjoyed talking more than he, or enjoyed with
greater relish the sensation of having audiences, large
and small, hang rapturously on his words. His long resi
dences in Paris and London had provided him with a wealth
of anecdotes, and his lively interest in the professional
theatre seemed to develop an equally lively interest in
his students. Many of his former students contributed to
the professional stage as writers, actors, directors and
teachers. Among these were Elmer Rice (1917), Philip
Moeller (1904), Clayton Hamilton (1901), and William C.
29
Horace Coon, Columbia. Colossus on the Hudson
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1947), p. 171.
30
Arthur Hobson Quinn, History of the American
Drama (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1943),
p. 391.
43
DeMille (1900). With typical modesty, Matthews once
wrote: "However little beneficial my instruction may have
been to my students, it was highly profitable to me, for
in teaching them 1 soon discovered that I was perpetually
31
learning myself."
And Matthews continued to put in book form the
things he had expounded in the classroom. His lecture
notes paralleled closely the content of his chapters in a
32
Study of the Drama, published in 1910. For more than
twenty-five years Matthews had continued to question the
state of the drama, and now he was beginning more and more
to advance his campaign to raise the standard of the
American theatre.
For the well-made play had gone on virtually un
challenged until the war years, meeting with organized
resistance only during the twenties. In that decade,
Matthews drew farther and farther away from the contemporary
theatre and became increasingly concerned with a codifica
tion of a doctrine of the theatre. Attacks upon Matthews,
led by George Jean Nathan, began to appear shortly before
the First World War. Matthews became for some a symbol
^Htetthews, These Many Years, p. 395.
32
A comparison of these notes with corresponding
. 44 I
I
of remote gentility that had lost touch with modern trends
33
in the theatre.
Several years prior to her death in 1924, Matthews'
wife had been bedridden, and he chose to remain at her
side rather than attend the theatre without her, "His
hand, his tongue, and his pen were tied," Henry Wells has
34
said. After his wife's death in 1924 and his retirement
from Columbia that same year, Matthews again ventured out.
$
Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play is the happy result of
these later theatre-going days.
Ernest Hunter Wright recalls that during these
latter days Matthews and he used to dine once a week. The
menu was always the same, but the topics of conversation
always differed. Matthews was a brilliant talker to the
end. And it was John Mulholland who took Matthews to the
old Pennsylvania Roof in 1925 to see the wild marathon
dancing. Matthews remarked with typical good humor:
chapters in A Study of the Drama shows how much he relied
on his lectures for this book.
33
Jack E. Bender, "Brander Matthews: Critic of the
Theatre," Educational Theatre Journal. XII, October, 1960,
pp. 169-174.
34
From an interview with Henry W. Wells at Columbia
University, February 4, 1962.
45
"Remember, the side-show is one of the theatre's most
valuable parts." And it was John Mulholland who remarked
on the way to Brander Matthews' grave in 1929, "Gentlemen,
as Brander would have said, 'This would be a good day for
planning'.
Now there is the possibility that Matthews' life
contributed nothing of great significance to the theatrical
world of which he was, at least, a part. His own plays
failed to survive their own period. But perhaps in his
letters and articles and books one can find an indication
of his true significance, for they are as much a part of
his era as he was. How deeply he was personally affected
by that era and to what extent he, in turn, affected it,
is our immediate problem.
"It is well to be a gentleman and a scholar,"
Matthews once wrote, "but it is, after all, better to be a
36
man." Were it within the scope of this paper to dwell
on his personality, much more might be said on this point.
For Matthews was, first of all, a great man, intolerant of
affectation or pretense, and helpful to all who aimed at
35
From an interview with John Mulholland at Columbia
University, February 10, 1964.
36
Matthews, American Character (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell and Company, 1906), p. 33.
46
genuine artistic expression. His genius for friendship
has seldom been equalled; he was kind beyond words and
generous beyond the need. A choice spirit, a wit, an
inspirer of brilliant talk, no wonder he became a legend
in his own day.
The Period
"Literature is co-authored by events," writes John
Mason Brown, "taking its tone from the stress and character
37
of the time in which it is written." In order to gain a
better understanding of the thing that Brander Matthews
felt and wrote about the theatre, we need to consider the
several conditions that were a part of the theatre he
experienced on both sides of the Atlantic for a period of
more than fifty years— roughly, the last quarter of the
nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth.
It was a period marked by extraordinary changes in play-
writing, production, and theatre attendance.
First to be remembered must be the advent of the
"well-made play" and its development and seeming decline
John Mason Brown, "What's Right with the Theatre:
Excerpt from Dramatis Personnae," Saturday Review. XLVI,
June 8, 1963, p. 19.
47
in Europe and America; second, the gradual emergence of
some of our native playwrights treating American subjects
and American characters in local settings; third, the
a *
tendency of plays to deal more realistically with life,
presenting both its ugly and beautiful moments; fourth, the
increasing interest in theatre production, in stage design
and decoration, in lighting and staging; and fifth, the
playhouse becoming more and more a place of wide enter
tainment, appealing to wider and perhaps lower levels of
taste. All of these developments were a part of Matthews'
own era.
In 1916, William Dean Howells expressed a view
shared by many men of letters: "It may be we are witness
ing in these sad latter days the end of the oldest art in
the world . . . this may be the fatal hour of the written
38
drama." Others, more optimistic than Howells, seemed
to realize that the American theatre was actually on the
edge of a new renaissance of theatrical art— an art of the
whole theatre, not merely the writing of plays but their
production as well.
38
William Dean Howells, "Editor's Easy Chair,"
Harpers. June, 1916, p. 145.
48 !
For a world that seemed well-made, there was once
the well-made play. And when, after the Second World War,
this kind of play seemed dated, Matthews, who chose to
champion the well-made play, brought upon himself the label;
of old-fashioned, too. Yet, interestingly enough, in the
1960's, the young English playwright Robert Bolt has been
praised and honored for his A Man for All Seasons; this,
surely, is a well-made play, with its Common Man who serves
as a Greek chorus. O'Neill, too, is very much alive in
the sixties, being produced along with other sure craftsmen
like Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Lillian Heilman, and
Arthur Miller. And Edward Albee has written a well-made
play with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a re-rendering
of O'Neill's alcoholic world for a more world-weary
audience. We are beginning to be able to see Matthews now
in a more realistic perspective.
For the remarkable thing is, Matthews was able to
see life as his friend Matthew Arnold would have it in
Sophocles— steadily and whole. A final examination ques
tion that Matthews liked to ask his "Literature IV" stu
dents was: "What reasons can you give for the decline of
the drama in this century?" It is clear that Matthews
believed that the drama was in a decline, and that the new
49
was no better than the old. "Personally,*' he told an
audience in 1917, "I'm very skeptical about the great
American play. When we hope for It, we are asking for
39
something no other people ever had." Matthews believed
It was men like Bronson Howard and William Gillette and
Clyde Fitch who had begun to portray real life on the
stage, but he believed that Howard was bora too soon and
that Fitch had died too soon; from each, much was to be
hoped.
Some twenty years before Matthews had told an inter
viewer from the New York Dramatic Mirror;
We are in an epoch where the seeds of the future
are being sown by unwitting hands. Mr. Thomas,
Mr. Gillette, Mr. Harrigan, and Bronson Howard have
all sown good seeds. When the great American
dramatist comes along, the man of unquestioned
genius, he will evolve new forms from the material
they have left him.^O
It took forty years for that 'taan of unquestioned genius"
to come along— Eugene O'Neill; and, ironically, Matthews
was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to acknowledge his
stature.
- —
From notes for a lecture delivered to the Society
of Free Arts, Washington, D.C., November 22, 1917.
40
Brander Matthews, interviewed in the New York
Dramatic Mirror. June 27, 1896, p. 2.
50
For the seeds of the well-made play had been sown
In France almost a century before. Between 1820 and 1850,
without benefit of theatre riots or daring manifestoes,
Eugene Scribe had gone about accomplishing a play-frame
so perfectly constructed that any sort of sentimental tale
could be tacked onto it and made plausible. "His was the
supreme triumph of mechanics over dramatic content," a
41
critic has declared. While he knew very little of human
motivation, he made hundreds of plays that pleased untold
numbers of audiences. With no time for genius or poetry
or incisive characterization, Scribe developed a formula
for theatrical effectiveness and gave his audiences what
they wanted.
Scribe died in 1861, the same year that Victorien
Sardou made his first important stage success. Thus the
tradition of the piece-bien-faite was carried on without
interruption. Sardou, as Matthews often pointed out, in
order to learn more perfectly the art of playwriting,
would attend the first act of a Scribe play and then go
»
home and write the other acts himself. Sardou always kept
41
Sheldon Cheney, Three Thousand Years of Drama.
Acting, and Stagecraft (New York: Longmans, Green and
Company, 1952), p. 430.
51
an eye on national thought and was careful to choose
topical subjects. He developed a kind of realism that may
best be called "journalistic," for there is a certain lack
of depth. We must agree with Shaw that Sardou's plays
were all "Sar-doo-dle-dee-dum"— not much sincerity or deep
42
feeling here.
Thus one of the two most important movements which
characterized French drama in the nineteenth century may
be considered the major influence of such writers as
Scribe and Sardou, who brought technical proficiency to
the drama; the other was the school of Augier and Dumas,
fils, who, adapting the machinery of their predecessors,
' added a consideration of psychological problems as a
43
function of the drama. When in The Development of the
Drama Matthews states: "It was only in France that the
drama was able to hold its own," he is referring to the
well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou and the "piece a
x 44
these" of Augier and Dumas, fils. This mid-century
42
Ibid., p. 432.
43
Martin Felheim, The Theatre of Augustin Daly
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 187.
44
Matthews, Development of the Drama, p. 308.
52
j
return to dramatic conventions was a reaction against the
romantic excesses of Hugo and Dumas, pere. Above all,
these French dramatists of the late-nineteenth century were
i
men of the theatre, familiar with both the human and
45
mechanical problems of the stage.
Martin Felheim has written that the "French drama
of the nineteenth century was the drama of the western
46
world.1' William Dean Howells, reviewing the theatrical
season of 1869 in the Atlantic Monthly, complained that
all the musical pieces were French and all the plays were
English so that "there was nothing American on the American;
47
stage." Our native dramatists availed themselves not
only of the French models but also of the London versions
of French plays. As late as 1897, Edward Morton was still
hopefully predicting in The Theatre that "the scramble for
48
French plays will soon be over."
It was the style, the theatricality, the dramaturgy,
and the skill of construction that made these plays easy
45
Felheim, oj>. cit., p. 189.
46
Ibid.. p. 187.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
to translate. The dramatic skeleton of the play came
through intact. And the ease with which a French play
could be pirated demonstrates the inadequacy of existing
copyright laws— an important reason why French plays were
49
exploited during this period. Finally, it should be
remembered that American audiences in the nineteenth cen
tury were prejudiced in favor of things European. A vast
public liked anything French because it was supposed to be
civilized. Augustin Daly, for example, purposely sought
50
audiences which were culturally and socially elite.
First nights at Daly's theatre were events of importance
to New York's "Four Hundred," and Matthews was a part of
this world.
Not until 1912 could Matthews write in Munsey's
about the "disappearance of the French plays." When new
laws required that the French plays had to be paid for,
managers were less anxious to produce them. And by this
time, thanks to writers like Bronson Howard and Clyde
Fitch, American audiences had begun to expect to see the
life that they knew in America. The authors encouraged
54
the audience to look £or this just as the audiences were,
in Matthews' phrase, "now encouraging the authors to pro
vide it." There was no longer any need to draw on the
French drama, since the native supply was sufficient to
„ 51
meet the demand.
And in the late nineteenth century, the demand was
increasing for broader entertainment. After the over
whelming success of The Black Crook at Niblo's Gardens in
1866, reviews of this kind were to become more and more
popular. Panoramic in their method and scope, these
reviews were taken from the music hall successes and from
the popular burlesques of the day. Although Matthews con
demned these "variety" shows as "purely sensational amuse
ments for the unthinking," he admitted their importance
as "a nursery for the actual theatre," one in which actors
52
and playwrights had an opportunity to gain experience.
William Winter, who as dramatic critic of the New
York Tribune from 1865 to 1909, "dominated theatrical
criticism and public opinion of the theatre for the last
51
Matthews, "Why Are French Plays No Longer Popular
in America?" Munsey's. December, 1912, p. 467.
52Ibid.
half of the nineteenth century/1 wrote that "It was un
fortunate that the custom of viewing the Stage as an
'amusement' ever prevailed; for the Stage is an institution
53
higher and finer than any amusement," To Winter, the
theatre was an institution which he approached with grave
and lofty standards, and he asserted that it was "intrin-
54
sically as powerful for good as the Church is." This
thesis would seem to be the basic premise of all of his
writing.
In Winter's critical doctrine, the actor was the
focal point; and, as such, he needed material for the dis
play of his personality. Drama was limited to the care
fully edited works of Shakespeare, a few works of the
classicists, and a selected group of melodramas. The
theatre of Winter was a theatre of manners and morals in
which the actor delightfully instructed the audience.^
It was into this world that Matthews entered in the
seventies.
53
William Winter, Wallet of Time (New York: Moffat,
Yard and Company, 1913), p. 4.
54
Ibid., p. 634.
55Ibid., p. 432.
56
At such a time it was possible for Miss Percy
Haswell, starring at the head of her own company at the
Lyceum Theatre in Baltimore, to advertise for and expect
to find a play that
1. Is clean and wholesome throughout.
2. Is largely a comedy, with a serious emotional
climax.
3. Must leave a pleasant impression after the
last act.
4. Offers opportunity for picturesque settings
and pretty costumes.
5. Has no real villain, or, if so, a very mild
type of villain.
6. Contains primarily a strong love interest as
the soul of the play.
7. Has a climax of vital interest to the actual
theme of the play.
8. Has a hero whose actions are generally sane
and sensible.
9. Is based upon a fundamental proposition of
sufficient originality to arouse comment and create
talk.
10. And, above all other things, a play with
crisp and entertaining dialogue that can actually
be acted upon the stage.56
Was it any wonder that Matthews was ever fond of citing
a cartoon that depicted a theatre critic ordering another
cup of coffee, saying: "Make it extra strong. I've got
to see an American comedy tonight!"^
56
From a Press Bulletin from Will A. Page, advertis
ing manager for Miss Percy Harwell, for a play to be pro
duced at Chase'b Lyceum Theatre, Baltimore, Maryland.
57
Matthews, Studies of the Stage, p. 47.
But Glenn Hughes does not exaggerate when he de
clares that the development of the American theatre between
58
1870 and 1900 was "extraordinary." It was an era for
great personalities in the legitimate field, especially
for actors, playwrights, and producer-manager; it was an
era of vaudeville, the burlesque show, and the circus.
It was an era of road shows and big cities capable of sup
porting many theatres. It was an era of Steele MacKaye
and the Frohmans, of David Belasco and stars like Edwin
Booth and Charlotte Cushman, Joseph Jefferson and Minnie
Madden Fiske, James O'Neill and William Gillette, Lillian
Russell and Otis Skinner, Julia Marlowe and Maude Adams.
And visiting European actors like Salvini and Sarah
Bernhardt, Sir Henry Irving and Lucille Langtry, Coquelin,
Ellen Terry, and Kendalls were just a few of the outstand
ing players that came into prominence during Matthews'
59
early theatre days.
In 1870 the most talented playwright in America was
Dion Boucicault, who was also an actor and producer. His
58
Glenn Hughes, Story of the Theatre: A Short
History of Theatrical Art from Its Beginnings to the Pres
ent Day (New York: Samuel French, 1928), p. 280.
59Ibid.
58
playwriting in America began in 1855 and continued until
his death in 1890. That Boucicault was a master of theatri
cal effectiveness cannot be disputed, but one is inclined
to agree that "only occasionally and accidentally" were
his works related to the development of our native dramatic
60
literature. In 1920 the most talented playwright in
America was Eugene O'Neill. Between the two} the drama
everywhere in Europe and America was rapidly passing from
an amusement into an art, although there were those who
felt that the process had somehow been reversed.
George Henry Lewes, for example, reported in 1880
that the drama was rapidly passing from an art into an
amusement, just as of old it had passed from a religious
ceremony into an art form. He felt that the stage was no
longer the amusement of the cultured few, but the amusement
of the uncultured and miscultured masses, providing lower
and larger appetites with food. The critical pit filled
with playgoers who were accustomed to fine acting and who
had trained judgments had disappeared. In its place was
"a mass of amusement-seekers, with only a small nucleus
60
Ibid.. p. 282.
61
cognizant of what constitutes good art.1 1 Matthews
echoed this attitude when several years later he wrote:
We have set up before us every season a varied
bill of fare, to tempt the appetites of all sorts
and conditions of playgoers, whether they have
sturdy stomachs for the solid meat of exotic problem
plays or whether their palate is more easily titillated
by the whipped-syllabub of poetic fancy.62
"The drama and the theatre seem to be Siamese twins,"
wrote Matthews, "and when one of them is ailing, the other
63
is likely soon to be affected." Matthews regretted the
breaking-up of the long-established resident companies,
such as that managed by his good friend Augustin Daly.
In view of his many French and German adaptations, one can
understand why Daly acquired a reputation for managing an
exclusively "foreign" theatre. But, in fact, his concern
for creating an American drama was very strong. In a
letter to the New York Herald in 1874, Daly condemned the
journalists for the "absence" of an American drama, claim
ing that their harsh criticisms had "pulled up by the
61
George Henry Lewes, On Actors and the Art of
Acting (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1880), p. 182.
62
Matthews, "The Theatrical Situation," North Ameri
can Review. December, 1921, p. 840.
63
Ibid., p. 841.
60 :
64
roots" the "young shoots" of our native playwrights.
Daly produced many American plays and invited American
writer8 to compose pieces for his company. Matthews
states in These Many Years that Daly was anxious to devtelop'
American drama, and in this "he stood in complete opposi-
65
tion to Lester Wallack."
For twenty years Daly was the director of America's
foremost theatre, the Fifth Avenue Theatre. Again and
again he demonstrated his devotion to the theatre by con
stantly considering both its possibilities and its needs.
He established as a principle a varied repertoire including
Shakespeare, old English comedies, adaptations, and the
best of contemporary English and American drama. He was
an aggressive producer who saw himself in the main stream
of what Matthews would call the "American theatrical
tradition." Even William Winter, who followed Daly's
career step by step, felt that Daly "made the theatre
important" by keeping it "worthy of the sympathy of the
66
most refined taste and best intellect of his time."
64
Felheim, oj>. cit., p. 190.
65
Matthews, These Many Years, p. 328.
66
Hughes, 0£. cit.. p. 232.
By 1907, John Corbin, writing in the Atlantic
Monthly, was able to describe the "Dawn of the American
Drama" as already arrived, while lamenting that the theatre
syndicate managers had constantly "refused to back any
new author or any new movement until its commercial worth
. .6 7
had been demonstrated." Still, Bronson Howard's plays,
full of broad and wholesome human sympathy; William
Gillette's Secret Service, which raised the melodrama of
situation to perhaps its highest plane; and Clyde Fitch's
plays, full of spontaneity and intelligence, all continued
to be produced.
If the drama was actually'dawning," it was due in
large measure to the independent managers. For neither
Howard, Gillette, nor Fitch ever produced a work of sus
tained art. The value of the newer playwrights was not
to be found in their craftsmanship nor in their popularity.
It was to be found in the nature of their themes and in the
sincerity with which they handled these themes. Increas
ingly, tragedy became as essential as comedy; but, as
Glenn Hughes has written, it was in the superior crafts
manship of men like Howard that "the dream of a signifi-
67
William Lyon Phelps, Twentieth Century Theatre
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), p. 74.
62
cant American drama" lay.vv Thus the American theatre in
the £irst decade of the twentieth century may be described
as active and popular but lacking in real artistic distinc
tion. There were gifted actors and skillful producers,
but most of their effort was wasted on plays of only
mediocre worth.
The second decade of this century was a paradoxical
one in the American theatre. While theatrical commercial
ism was at its high point, anti-commercial forces were
more and more at work. In the smaller houses for the first
time there was the attempt for a more intimate relationship
between audience and players, the presentation of new and
vital plays, and a more complete freedom from the restric
tive influence of commercial profit. The Chicago Little
Theatre, founded in 1912 by Maurice Browne, gave several
successful productions of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw.
The Toy Theatre in Boston served as a laboratory for modern
theatrical art between 1912 and 1916. The Arts and Crafts
Theatre arose under the direction of Sam Hume, who was a
disciple of Gordon Craig. The Cleveland Playhouse became
active in 1916, and Gilmore Brown's Pasadena Playhouse
68
Hughes, oj>. cit., p. 354.
gave its first performance in 1917. All of this activity
Constance MacKaye, in The Little Theatre Movement in the
United States, saw as among the "newest, freest, most
potentially democratic forces in the art of American
i.69
stage."
But gradually the commercial theatres lost most of
their hold outside New York City, where Matthews attended
the theatre regularly. The vast touring-company system
dwindled as a result of the high costs of rail transporta
tion and the increasing competition from the motion picture
70
industry. The audience that remained was more cosmopoli-
. *
tan and more demanding, and managers began to find it
expedient to try new styles of production which would have
been altogether inappropriate in 1890, in 1900, or even
in 1910. Men like Winthrop Ames and Arthur Hopkins were
eager to associate themselves with those that saw the stage
as an art, not exclusively as a business. Granville
Barker was invited to stage plays in New York; in 1915 he
worked with Robert Edmund Jones to create a memorable
69
William Lyon Phelps, Twentieth Century Theatre
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), p. 74.
70
John Gassner, A Treasury of the Theatre. Ill
(New York: Simon and Shuster, 1951), p. 773.
64
example of Che "new art" of scenic design for his produc
tion of Anatol France's The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife.
In New York several groups emerged, two of which
were fired with enthusiasm for the modern theatre art from
Europe and enmity against the "old-fashioned" plays that
by this time were being blasted by George Jean Nathan from
the pages of The Smart Set. The Washington Square Players
was founded by the Welsh-born patent lawyer, Lawrence
Langner, who was soon joined by one of Matthews' students,
Philip Moeller, and others, including Lee Simonson.
Endeavoring to produce plays generally ignored by the
commercial managers, they staged European and American
one-act and full-length plays, and introduced Ibsen's
Ghosts and Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession to Americans.^
In February, 1915, Moeller told an interviewer:
We've got to assert the rights of the human soul.
The American theatre has no place for the subtler
nuances of the drama. The whole system is wrong.
The acting is mechanical, the production lifeless,
and the scenery . . . positively mid-Victorian.
The trouble is the whole system is commercial.
The American theatre is aware of nothing but the
dollar J*
71
Lawrence Langner, The Magic Curtain (New York:
Dutton and Company, 1950), p. 34.
72
Quoted in Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), p. 306.
65
Moeller's attitude appeared to be shared by the
Provincetown Players. After staging plays at their Wharf
Theatre for three summeis on Cape Cod, they took over an
abandoned stable on MacDougal Street and made this unat-
73
tractive building their "temple of art" from 1918 to 1929.
Presenting unique examples of European modernism as well
as plays by new American writers, this group made theatri
cal history by producing the early pieces and longer
dramatic experiments of Eugene O'Neill. 1 believe that it
was in O'Neill that America found its first major modern
playwright, and it is significant that Matthews wrote of
him in only the most casual way.
For O'Neill was determined to write plays about
what he chose, and to make managers and the public accept
them. The Gelbs have written in their remarkably study of
O'Neill that "long before anyone else recognized the fact
that the vogue of Clyde Fitch and Augustus Thomas was
74
doomed, O'Neill saw through their hollowness and glib."
O'Neill wanted the stage to come to grips with deeper
realities and it was he who declared, "I needed no
73
Gassner, oj>. cit.. p. 775.
74
Gelb, o£. cit.. p. 272.
professor to tell me that Ibsen, as dramatist, knew whereof
75
he spoke." O'Neill was particularly offended by Baker's
methods at Harvard when Augustus Thomas, then "the dean of
American playwrights and the personification of all that
was successful— and hackneyed— on the Broadway stage,"
76
took over the class as guest lecturer.
As William Lyon Phelps lias written, when we consider
late nineteenth and early twentieth century European drama,
it is easy to trace well-defined movements and single out
important playwrights, each of whom deserves attention for
his original and significant contribution to the theatre.
But a brief review of the American theatre before O'NSill,
such as is attempted here, cannot be written around a rul
ing concept. For, as John Gassner points out, we did not
change the nature of tragedy, we did not modify the ap
proach of comedy, we did not invent some form of social,
historical, or biographical drama.77 Before O'Neill, we
did not develop important modifications of realism, natural
ism, or theatricalism that may be called peculiarly
75Ibid.. p. 112.
76
Ibid.. p. 240.
77Gassner, op. cit.. p. 271.
67
American. Rather, there would seem to be an eclectic
quality about the American theatre during these years of
experimentation that lasted until Matthews' death in 1929.
Meanwhile, well before 1900 there had been experi
ments in form as well as in stagecraft throughout Europe.
Andr£ Antoine had formed his The&tre Libre in order to
propagate new playwrights, and he did much to reform theatre
structure. Jacques Copeau, who operated his Vieux
Colombier from 1914 to 1922, revolted against the well-made
play and the over-decoration of scene design. Stanislavsky
learned ensemble acting from the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
and perfected it. Meyerhold, a promoter of the "th&dtre
theatrical," changed slowly from constimetivism to symbol
ism. Max Reinhardt learned to use painter, musician,
skilled mechanic, lighting expert, and to inspire them
beyond the limits of their own former theatrical ambitions.,
Especially, Adolph Appia transformed setting from a means
of illusion to a means of expression, and Edward Gordon
Craig believed above all else that the setting must express
78
the inner spirit of the play. But of Gordon Craig,
Vide Edward Gordon Craig, The Theatre Advancing
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1919).
68
Matthews wrote:
He poses as a prophet but is unable to deliver
any intelligible message such as we have a right
to expect from a prophet ... we wonder just what
this new movement is. If the theatre is advancing,
why is it not able to give us the countersign?
It may be able to see its way, but where is it
going? What is its goal? By what road does it
expect to get there? We ask ourselves what are the
dogmas of his new doctrine??9
Despite his lack of "doctrine," Craig exerted an enormous
influence on the early twentieth-century theatre, more
perhaps by his designs than by his books.
In England the history of the drama at this time
had been in large measure the history of the well-made
play. And this history can be traced almost wholly in the
careers of two men whom Matthews knew intimately— Henry
Arthur Jones and Arthur Wing Pinero. Each added his own
variation and special colors to the Scribe-Sardou formula.
Jones insisted that the drama be more than popular amuse
ment, yet his plays lacked completely the social signifi-
80
cance of Shaw or Ibsen. Pinero, as deft as Jones in his
technique, added a certain depth of character and an
Matthews, "Gordon Craig as the Nurse of the New
Movement in the Theatre," New York Times. January 18, 1920,
p. 1.
®®Cheney, o£. cit.. p. 434.
69
intensity of feeling. Pinero once wrote:
Theatrical talent consists in the power of
making your characters not only tell a story by
means of dialogue, but tell it in such a skill
fully devised form and order as shall . . . give
us the greatest possible amount of theatrical
effect, the production of which is the one great
function of the theatre.81
. Meanwhile, William Archer, another of Matthews'
personal friends in England, had written in The Theatre:
If the drama is dying at all, it is dying of
technique . . . the attempts to break through the
established forms, though interesting and in some
measure praiseworthy, have been timid, inconclusive,
and for the most part unskillful. The technique
of the new art is all the more difficult to learn
because it is not all down in a set of hard and
fast rules which he who runs may read, but must
be spelt out, so to speak, by each artist for him
self. Whoever sets about rejuvenating the drama
will have to learn by long consideration and patient
experiment how life can be mimetically reproduced
with the least amount of falsehood, distortion,
and prose, yet so as to seize, impress, in a word,
to interest a more or less motley crowd of spec
tators. 82
To this end, Archer felt that there should not be negation
of technique, but a new technique; one built on the line
of less structural elaboration, greater pliancy; a drama of
"scenes instead of acts," a drama that "will at first sfeem
81Ibid.. p. 435.
82
William Archer, "The Dying Drama," The Theatre,
n.d., p. 6.
70
83
formless, purposeless, flaccid.“
It would seem that It was this newer kind of
“drama" that Matthews had difficulty In accepting. The
newer playwrights of the twenties escaped his mention, as
did the new generation of actors that were needed to seize
and Interpret the new subtleties of character study. As
Sheldon Cheney suggests, the newer playwright
. . . entered the clinic of life, he dissected,
he analyzed people down to the last bitter detail
of motive, of feeling, of thought. . * . He was
driven to create a shock and horror to hold his
audience; he found hidden perversion to hold sick
spectators.84
As the times changed, Matthews seems to have become
more rigid. He knew that it is the culture of a country
that creates its theatre. As Cole and Chinoy state: “The
decay of a universal system of values deprived the theatre
of its homogeneous audience and of its accepted conven-
85
tions for mirroring shared human experience." “The ways
of thinking of any age determine the theory and practice
83
Ibid.
84
Cheney, oj>. cit.. p. 489.
85
Toby Cole and Helen Drich Chinoy, Directing the
Play (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1953),
p. 19.
71
86
of its theatre,1' Professor Lawson has echoed. It was
perhaps not so much that for Matthews twentieth-century
civilization had become more vicious. It was a difference
in symbols; the symbols in the newer drama had disinte
grated the view of a whole man. Playwrights began to
write for a world that had long since lost its optimism,
and Matthews was, to the end, an incurable optimist.
86
Lawson, oj>. cit.. p. 24.
CHAPTER III
THE PLAY
In 1894 Matthews wrote: "Dramatic literature must
prove Itself as drama first, before It need be discussed
as literature."* And twenty years later, this was the
theme of A Book About the Theatre: in the intervening
years, he returned to the theme in almost all of his
2
books, articles and essays. It was a unifying theme that
gave shape and substance to all of his theories. It was
his insistence upon it that first called attention to the
drama as a distinct art form, with laws all its own.
Matthews believed himself to be a follower of both
Aristotle and Lessing, who "never thought of the drama as
a work of pure literature, but always as something intended.
to be performed by actors, in a theatre, before an
3
audience." Thus, Matthews broke with contemporary
*Matthews, Studies of the Stage, unnumbered page
^Matthews, A Book About the Theatre, p. v.
3
Matthews, Development of the Drama, p. 282.
72
73
American scholars, like his colleague at Columbia Univer
sity, Joel Spingarn, who had asserted that Aristotle
"can't help thinking of plays in connection with their
A
theatrical representation." Drama must be considered in
the light of its function, thought Matthews, and this func
tion was its immediate effect upon an audience.
"To most critics," Matthews complained in Inquiries
and Opinions, "literary merit is something external, some
thing added to the play, something adjusted to the struc
ture."^ In his reaction to the criticism of his day, and
in his effort to take the drama off the bookshelf and put
it on the stage, Matthews stressed two things: (1) that
the closet-drama was an "unspeakable possibility," and
(2) that the play and the novel were two radically differ
ent literary forms.^
The closet-drama Matthews viewed as the offspring
of "the unwillingness or the inability of certain poets to
acquire the craft of the theatre"— that special craft which
^Joel E. Spingarn, "Dramatic Criticism and the
Theatre." Creative Criticism (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1917), p. 56.
5
Matthews, "The Literary Merit of Our Latter-Day
Drama," Inquiries and Opinions, p. 213.
6
Matthews, Studies of the Drama, p. 251.
74
distinguishes the dramatist from all other writers.^
Rather, it is the poem in dialogue, conceived with no
thought of the physical stage, that should be read. The
poem, not the play, was created for the reader in the
library, without any regard for the special demands of
spectators in a theatre. When the poetic plays of a
Tennyson or a Browning failed in the theatre, it was
because they were not originally, by intent and skill,
intended for the theatre.
Thus it was to be expected that Matthews saw the
Elizabethan drama, which he called "the chief glory of
English literature," as an outgrowth of the native folk-
8
play, unliterary and often unwritten. To know that the
folk-theatre was important, that there were various stages
in its development, that it had a power to please its
audiences, was, to Matthews, to grasp the vital fact that
the drama was still something alive, something to be ob
served at its best on the stage. To do this was an effort
to gain an understanding of the "fundamental principles of
a
the dramaturgic art."
7Ibid.
8
Matthews, "The Importance of Folk-Theatre," in
Aspects of Fiction, p. 128.
9lbid.. p. 129.
75
Matthews warned in his introduction to a collection
of contemporary plays in 1915:
As plays, whether native or foreign, are composed
specifically for performance on the stage, they
therefore display their full power and render up
their full meaning only when they are acted, and
it is better to see them in the theatre whenever
this is possible.10
Perhaps realizing that this was scant encouragement to
the prospective reader of the volume he was introducing,
Matthews ventured, "We shall have to recover the lost art
of reading plays as easily and effectively as we read
novels.This, he thought, could best be achieved by
training ourselves to interpret the stage directions of
the dramatist and to visualize the actual performance of
which the reader is deprived.
When a professor of English literature at Yale
declared that "the playhouse has no monopoly of the
dramatic form," Matthews was quick to point out that this
statement "reveals a misunderstanding of the essential
12
principles of the drama." The drama is not for the
^John Alexander Pierce, Masterpieces of Modern
Drama, with an introduction by Brander Matthews (New York:
Doubleday, Page and Company, 1915), p. xviii.
U Ibid.
Grander Matthews, "The Legitimacy of the Closet
Drama." North American Review. February 1908, p. 213.
library but for the theatre, Matthews reiterated, and
"the poet of our time has no right now to despise the
13
stage." Earlier Matthews had called the closet-drama
14
"a contradiction in terms," an "arrant absurdity." Only
when a play possesses certain added merits, which he did
not easily specify, does it rise into literature, and take
its proper position in the study as well as on the stage.
In other words, theatrical art may be sufficient unto
itself without the aid of literature. The "practical"
playwright, as Matthews called him, was willing to be
judged by the double test, but that of the stage first of
all, and that of the study afterward, recognizing that the
library was the "tribunal of the last resort.
Matthews seized every opportunity to underline this
difference between the drama and other forms of literature,
particularly the novel. Reviewing Professor Vaughan's
book, Types of Tragic Drama in 1908, Matthews declared
bitterly,
13 ‘
Ibid.. p. 223.
14
Matthews, "On the Publication of Plays," North
American Review. February, 1908, p. 213.
Ibid.. p. 425.
It is characteristic that Professor Vaughan
displays his inability to grasp the essentially
dramatic when he classes together Browning, who
never took the trouble to master the secrets of
playwriting, and Ibsen, who is the most skillful
and conscientious of practical playwrights.16
Apparently, then, the secrets of playwriting can be
learned, but this is for our next chapter; here we note
that what Matthews calls "essentially dramatic" is the
dictum that a play must be played on a stage before an
audience. "Here," Matthews concludes his attack, "is the
reason why this book is hopelessly unsatisfactory to all
1:
who are seeking to understand the drama as it really is."
And how _is it? For one thing, it is least dramatic
when it most closely resembles the novel, as it did in the
days of Peele and Greene. And the chief reason why the
perspective of the play is different from that of the
novel, according to Matthews, is that the playmaker has to
attract his audience in a mass. He must always appeal to
the eye as well as the ear, never forgetting that the
drama, while "in one aspect a department of literature, in
Matthews. "Undramatic Criticism." Forum. November.
1908, p. 497.
17Ibid.. p. 500.
another is a branch of show business." The playwright
must work easily within the strictest bonds, turning to
account these restrictions and "finding his profit in
19
them."
The dramatist, therefore, was less a man of letters
than he was a man of the theatre. So fused with his text
should be the scenery, the pictorial element, that the
text will not really be the play at all. Matthews saw
Eugene Scribe as a "wizard of the theatre," a "technician
of marvelous dexterity," even though his plays might be
lacking in the qualities of great literature. He could
admire even the country that produced a Scribe, for he
declared that France was "a country where the true princi
ples of the playmaker's art are most thoroughly under-
20
stood." He also noted that France was the country with
21
"the most vigorous dramatic literature."
Matthews, "The Modern Novel and the Modern Play,"
in Inquiries and Opinions, p. 197.
l9Ibid.. p. 198.
20
Matthews, With My Friends. Tales Told in Partner
ship (London: Longman's, Green and Company, 1891), p. 17.
21Ibid.. p. 27.
79
What, then, was the play, if it was not necessarily !
a form of literature? It was in pantomime that Matthews
deemed the best proof that "a play can exist arid achieve
its purpose satisfactorily without the use of words, the |
i
22
most obvious element of literature." Even the motion
picture Matthews termed an "ingenious narrative in action"
because it was equally convincing evidence of "the adequacy
23
of pantomime to tell a dramatic story." In his Studies
of the Stage. Matthews wrote in 1894, "Drama is the noblest
24
form of literature, because it is the most direct." And
what could reach an audience more directly than pantomime?
"The drama has now no room for anything but the action and
the characters," he wrote in Study of the Drama sane six-
, . 25
teen years later.
Matthews is, then, quite clearly for a complete
divorcement between literature and the drama, placing
action-without-words as the root of the drama. Before we
explore this concept further, we might ask, is it so certain
22
Matthews, A Study of the Drama. p. 3.
23
Ibid.
24
Matthews, Studies of the Stage, p. 36.
25
Matthews, A Study of the Drama. p. 265,
80
that no one can realize all the dramatic possibilities of a
play without having seen it acted? Could not some students!
in the library possess keener intelligence, subtler sym
pathies, and more vivid imagination than the great majority!
of professional actors? Would not such readers, in their
minds' eyes, be able to picture interpretations far more
vivid and satisfying than any that could be realized upon
the muted mimic stage? Of course, if Charles Lamb had had
his way, the dramatic masterpieces of the world would have
been banished from the stage and relegated to the library
shelves. And in the case of an inferior work, expert
actors of superior imagination might be capable of getting
more out of the text than the author himself ever dreamed
of putting into it.
But this does not go very far toward the establish
ment of a general rule, and Matthews was always after
rules, in art as in life. "The essence of the drama"
seemed to him to be the reciprocal action— and reaction—
between the player and the spectator, as the player speaks
the lines given to him by the dramatist, and as the player
fills in the pauses which the dramatist not only foresaw
as he made the play, but whose effect upon the audience
he also anticipated. In Studies of the Stage, Matthews
81-
make 8 it cledr that the success of all successful plays
is a result of their possessing "theatrical effectiveness,"
26
which he terms "the first requisite of a good play."
If this places an increased burden on the playwright
then the chief difference between the playwright and the
novelist is one of discipline. "The difference between
the play and the novel is at bottom the difference between
a precise and rigid form and a form of almost unlimited
27
range and flexibility," Matthews wrote. Declaring that
the play has a form "as unbending as the sonnet," he said
a play may have three, four, or five acts, but there must
be "a single scene to each act," and the characters must
28
be "sharply contrasted." But these were specifics that
facilitate the larger consideration—-a play is an action;
it tells a story.
In 1914, David Belasco summed up sharply much of
what Matthews had written. In the pages of Munsey1s.
Belasco wrote:
26
Ibid.. p. 2.
27
Matthews, Studies of the Stage, p. 3.
28
Ibid.. p. 5.
82
!
In these days of encroaching naturalism, we need
to use our knowledge that a drama means an action.
Many cultivated critics have no idea what consti
tutes a play. They extract literary or sociological
qualities, as if its very soul were not theatrical.29
i
I
Actually, this was the view expressed by Matthews in many
of his books, including his very first, Comedies for
Amateur Acting: "The desire for the drama, and for taking
30
part in it, is apparently innate in most of us."
By "action" Matthews meant the mimetic representa
tion that is essential in story-telling. He believed that
it was from this mimetic representation that the drama
evolved. He agreed with his friend Ernst Grosse that a
drama means "direct mimic and verbal representation by
31
several persons." As the Greek drama grew, so did the
modern, evolving out of "very simple mimetic interpolations
32
into the ritual of the medieval church."
Other elements of the drama are only added to this
29
David Belasco, "The Meaning of Theatre," Munsey1s.
June, 1914, p, 645.
30
Brander Matthews, Comedies for Amateur Acting
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1879), pp. 9-10.
31
Ernst Grosse, The Beginnings of Art (New York:
D. Appleton and Company, 1897), p. 266.
32
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 15.
essential of action. And, although his early dictum that
"the skeleton of a good play is always a pantomime" was
later qualified by the statement that "there are plays the
plot of which cannot be conveyed to the audience except
33
by natural speech," he clearly felt that action was the
essential theatrical appeal which must be present. The
sensuous appeals of the actual production only help in the
projection of the essential action. Action alone could
attract and hold the attention of an audience. In his
Study of the Drama, he stated that "a drama is a story in
34
dialogue shown in action before an audience." Matthews
improved upon this statement frequently, but its essence
was always the same.
It was Ferdinand Brunetiere who had declared most
clearly that the action is "the distinctive element of the
35
drama," said Matthews. Brunetiere, in his Le Loi du
Orame, stated that the drama reveals the human will in
action, and that the central character knows what he wants
33
Brander Matthews, "The Principles of Pantomime,"
in A Book About the Theatre, p. 189.
34
Matthews. A Study of the Drama. p. 92.
35Ibid., p. 93.
84
36
and strives for it with the utmost determination.
Matthews found Bruneti^re both penetrating and illuminat
ing; he used his work as a key to many an obscurity, and
found in it a tool with which to forge his own doctrine.
By 1890, William Archer and others were asking:
Is drama the telling of a story after a certain
established method which has been found by long
experience to answer the mental requirements of an
average audience? Or is it the mere scenic presenta
tion of passages from real life? Should the drama
look primarily to action, letting character take
its chance? Or primarily to character, letting
action look after itself?37
The former theory, of course, had been dominant for
many years; the latter was now supplanting it. The newer
school seemed to argue that through subtle art the mechan
ical element of intrigue could be diminished without losing
any of its theatrical effectiveness. Matthews chose to
reconcile both points of view as best he could. "The
conjunction of character and action," he wrote, "is a
38 ,
chemical union." Increasingly, it appears, Matthews
36
Ibid., p. 94.
37
William Archer, "The Old Criticism and the New,"
New York Dramatic Mirror. September 13, 1890, p. 6.
38
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 162.
85
theatre was becoming a theatre of character.
And he was able to adapt. In an essay called (>rhe
Importance of the Folk Theatre," he wrote: "In the serious
drama it is what the characters are that is important,
rather than what they do, and the action is devised to
39
reveal these characters completely." This may appear to
be contradiction; but it certainly is prophecy. In 1960,
John Howard Lawson writes: "Every moment in a play is
characterization, and drama can have no other purpose or
40
function." Thus, while waiting for Lefty or later Godot,
the audience discovers character.
But what Matthews discovered was that certain funda
mental principles are the same throughout the ages; that
they can be discovered in the plays of Sophocles as well as
in the plays of Shakespeare. Matthews examined the struc
tural framework which the great playwrights gave to their
plays; only incidentally did he consider the psychology,
the philosophy, and the poetry which other critics chose
to admire.
In his essay "On Certain Parallelisms Between
_
Matthews, "The Importance of Folk-Theatre," p. 128.
40
Lawson, oj>. cit., p. 220.
86 |
Ancient and Modern Drama," Matthews wrote:
The vital principles of any art are always the
same, and they subsist through the ages essentially
unchanged; however they seem to be modified super
ficially by the varying fashions of succeeding
generations. Of no art are they found to be so
absolutely fixed as they are in the drama.41
At the age of twenty-three, in one of his first published
articles, Matthews declared, "The matter may change, but
<•42
the manner will be substantially the same.,r^ And, seven
years before his death, he recalled a young man who "did
not suspect that the drama was an ancient and honorable
art, that its principles were permanent, and that its
present could not be understood without an understanding
of its past."^
Early in his career as dramatic critic, Matthews
interviewed the great Sarcey one summer in the French
critic's library. Some of the ideas which Sarcey implanted
in him, which were to blossom in Matthews' own books later
were, as he recalled:
41
Matthews, "On Certain Parallels Between Ancient
and Modern Dramas," in Aspects of Fiction, p. 83.
42
J. Brander Matthews, "The Decline of the Drama,"
Galaxy. April, 1875, p. 225.
43
Brander Matthews, "A Study of the Temporary,"
New York Times. March 19, 1922, p. 2.
The drama, like every other art, is based upon
an implied agreement between the public and the
artist . . . and in no other art are these conventions j
[italics mine] more necessary and more obvious than
in the art of the stage. The dramatist has to . . .
select, to condense, to intensify beyond all nature,
and the spectator has to make allowances for the
needful absence of the fourth wall of the roan in
which the scene passes, for the directness of the
speech, for the omission of non-essentials which
in real life cumber man's every movement. ...
Certain of these conventions are permanent, im
mutable, inevitable, being the essence of the con
tract . . . certain others are accidental, temporary,
different in various countries in various ages.44
Sarcey told Matthews that he planned on writing a book on
the drama, to be called A History of Theatrical Conventions;
The book was never written, but Matthews read and preserved
sane seven hundred of Sarcey's weekly essays as they ap
peared in Temps, apparently feeling: "it is a pretty good
truth that will not bear more than one repetition."^
But Matthews made a sharp distinction between
"conventions" and "traditions." A convention, such as
Shakespeare's use of the soliloquy, he described somewhat
impudently as "a denial which we permit for our own
46
profit." A tradition in the theatre was simply "an
44
Matthews, Studies of the Stage, p. 135.
45Ibid.. p. 137.
46
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 133.
88
47
accepted way of doing things.1 1 The playwright who wrote ;
for Athens wrote for a static stage, for actors who wore
conventional masks, for a definite and fixed condition of
presentation. Increasingly in the modern theatre, Matthews
felt that the possibilities of production could produce an
effect more potent than the text of the drama. Imagination
begins to succeed the tricks of reality.
Thus Matthews, in his essay on Lope de Vega, sees
the classical code of rules for playwrights as chiefly
negative, laying stress upon the "strict observance of the
48
three unities." He sees in Lope's rules but the codifi- <
cation of his own instinctive practice. Lope believed
that the stage was "intended" primarily for story-telling, ;
for presenting an action in a way that would "excite the
49
constant interest of curiosity."
And in his praise of Lope, Matthews showed, I think,;
that his view of a code of rules was not so short-sighted '
as some of his critics would have it. His statement that
47
Ibid.. p. 141.
48
Lope de Vega, "The New Art of Writing Plays," in
Papers on Playmaking I. with an introduction by Brander
Matthews, p. 6.
49
Ibid.. p. 11.
8 9 !
|
"the classical code was made up largely of restrictions
I
upon the poet's freedom" must be seen alongside his admira-j
tion for Lope and other "rule-breakers." Matthews clearly
|
understood that it is the role of the true theatre artist
to create a form as distinct as the age itself.
Today the modern theatre continues to be an adven
ture in the search for such freedom. To T. S. Eliot, it
is freedom to return to the grace of God; to Sean O'Casey,
it is freedom for the many to insure the freedom of the
few; for Sartre, it is freedom to live without God and
stand responsible for one's own actions; for Strindberg,
it is freedom of the imagination to .explore the impossible;;
>
for Shaw, it is freedom from outworn conventions; for
Brecht, it is freedom to place blame; Bbr Ionesco, it is
freedom from over-burdened symbols of l|gic. As Allan
Lewis points out, our theatre is characterized by a diver-
50
sity of form and a multiplicity of action. Matthews
knew that a good play is a union of form and content, just
, * 1 . '
as H. D. P. Kitto has more recently observed: "In a first-
rate piece of work, structure and style are identical with ;
Allan Lewis, The Contemporary Theatre, with a
foreword by John Gassner (New York: Brown Publishers,
Inc., 1962), p. 7.
90
51
meaning. "
In conclusion, it is clear that Matthews believed
that a play is written, primarily, not to be read, but to
be acted. As such, a play is understood fully only when
it is seen in a theatre, interpreted by actors, for the
benefit of an audience.
A play is an art form whose laws, like those of all
the other arts, are unchanging through succeeding genera
tions. It is their application that has varied from cen
tury to century and from country to country.
A play has conventions which act like working
agreements between the playwright and the public. Some of
52
these conventions are essential, others are temporary.
The "classical" code of principles are actually a
working code for a certain time and place. The one indis
pensable "unity" is that of action, which Matthews sees
as the mainspring of a play. "Binding upon all artists,"
he sees action which, in its ideal form, takes place in
one act, "without any interruptions or subdivisions what-
_
Quoted in Lewis, ibid.. p. 5.
52
Matthews, Playwrights on Plavmaking (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), p. ii.
91 !
53
soever."
The successful playwright, therefore, has always
written his plays expecting them to be performed, by actors,
in a theatre, and before an audience. He has been condi
tioned by the players, the playhouse, and the playgoers
of his own time and place.
Thus, several other principles follow from this
reality. The audience has only a limited time and a limited
understanding, so the story must move swiftly and must be
made perfectly clear by the artifice of exposition. The
audience must hear and see all that is necessary to under
stand the story. In fact, we might conclude with Dr.
Johnson that "The drama's laws the drama's patrons give."^
For, though this chapter is but a doorway to that edifice
which Matthews so carefully and continuously built, it
should be indicated here that this seems to be his guiding
53
Matthews, A Book About the Theatre, p. 59.
Matthews, however, does admit that ^the play in three acts
we are bound to recognize at once as possessing the ideal
form, since it enables the dramatist to set apart the three
divisions which Aristotle declared to be essential to a
we11-constructed tragedy— the beginning, the middle, and
the end" (Ibid., p. 59).
^Matthews, "On Pleasing the Taste of the Public,"
in Aspects of Fiction, p. 59.
principle.
The more Matthews studied the stage, the more
clearly he saw that the beginnings of every form of drama
were very unpretentious, that literature is attained only
in a final stage of development. A play lives, he felt,
by its immediate theatrical effectiveness, even if it
manages to survive solely on its literary merits.
These principles Matthews implied in all of his
articles, essays, and books. In itself, this theory of the
theatre, derived chiefly from Aristotle, Lessing, and—
especially— from Sarcey, is more important than any spe
cific application to a particular play. Matthews seemed
to take it for granted that this form of art, like those -
of society and conduct, has rather rigidly fixed rules that
can be learned by the novice. He also implies that to
revolt against them is to risk artistic chaos.^
This is the view of Tocsin of Revolt, cf, Ludwig
Lewisohn's review in the Nation. November 22, 1922, p. 554.
CHAPTER IV
THE PLAYWRIGHT
It is not surprising that Matthews, who considered
a play as intended primarily for the playhouse, should
write most about those writers who were practical men of
the theatre. "Writing for the Stage," Matthews told his
students at Columbia, "is something very peculiar, and he
1
who does not understand it had better leave it alone."
What linked Scribe and Sardou, Lope and Shakespeare,
Moliere and Ibsen, and Bronson Howard and Eugene O'Neill
was that each, in Matthews' opinion, was a master crafts
man. Matthews appears to be at the very opposite pole from
Shakespeare whom Matthews found to be "abundant in his
allusions to the art of acting and reticent in his allu-
2
sions to the art of playmaking." Matthews never tired of
_
Quoted from the lecture notes of Brander Matthews,
Special Collections, Columbia University Library, New York
City.
2
Matthews, introduction to "The New Art of Writing
Plays," by Lope de Vega, in Papers on Playmaking. p. 3.
93
praising those writers who, he felt, best exemplified the
best of playwriting.
He studied the art of the dramatist from both sides
of the proscenium. "1 have considered the art of the
dramatist with a fuller understanding of its technique than
is possible to those who know the stage only from the far
3
side of the footlights," he wrote in 1894. And indeed he
had: as playwright, friend, scholar, and playgoer,
Matthews had steadily built his theory of how a good playf
is written. He was hardly in agreement with his friend
William Archer who, largely as a result of his conversa
tions with Ibsen, decided to begin his treatise on play-
writing with the simple but emphatic statement, "There are
4
no rules for writing a play."
, Just as surely as Matthews felt that a "play must
be the work of a craftsman,"'’ he also believed that "only
6
in France was the art of the playwright held in honor."
Thus, while he declared that "one of the chief characteris-
3
Matthews, Studies of the Stage, unnumbered page.
4
Clayton Hamilton, So You Want to Write a Play.
p. 77.
^Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 175.
6
Pierce, oj>. cit.. p. xiv.
95
tics of the true dramatist is that he sees at once when a
form is outworn,"^ Matthews was forever returning to the
"well-made play1 1 of Scribe, Sardou, and Dumas, fils. From
his youth, of course, Matthews had been influenced by this
school; it was from the classics, he claimed, that they
inherited "a sense of form, a desire for unity of tone,
for harmony of color, for logic in structure and for
8
lucidity of style."
Matthews was always anxious, therefore, to recount
the early experiences of Sardou who, certainly, belonged
to that select group that pleased the audiences of their
own time; and was, to be sure, a disciple of the great
Eugfene Scribe. Matthews recalled how Sardou, in advance
of any new production by his master, would go without food
and save up for the price of a seat in the gallery. The
first night of the play he would lean forward in his seat
and listen carefully to every word of the first act. Then
he would leave the theatre, go home to his garret, and for
the next three or four weeks write out a detailed scenario
7
Matthews, Studies of the Stage, p. 31.
8
Matthews, "The Modernity of Mdli^re," in The Tocsin
of Revolt, p. 226.
................... 96.]
i
for Che remainder of Che drama. He would Chen recurn Co
Che CheaCre and sCudy Che technical differences beCween his
9
own developmenC and chac of Scribe himself.
i
Such examples as these, apparently, Macchews thought
could be of benefit Co Che American dramatist. For, very
early Matthews undertook Che education of Che young native
playwright; his every article and book seems to be
addressed Co Che initiate. Near Che end of his career,
he was able Co recall with understandable pride:
Today, in Che first year of Che third decade of
this twentieth century, our playwrights know their
trade. They are expert workmen. They know how to
build a plot, how to people it with human beings,
how to arouse the attention of the audience, to
retain it, to satisfy it.
"I have never been able to see why a well-constructed
play should not be recognized as a model," Matthews de
clared in the introduction to his volume, Chief British
Dramatists.^ It is very clear to see, however, that the
plays that Matthews selected for this volume represented
9
Recounted by Clayton Hamilton, op^cit.. p. 219.
10
Brander Matthews, "The American Drama, Today and
Yesterday," New York Times. January 23, 1921, p. 3.
**Brander Matthews, Chief British Dramatists (New
York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1924), p. v.
skillful craftsmanship; certainly in this respect they
were superior to what Arthur Hobson Quinn referred to as
"a formless mistreatment of history such as Mr. Shaw's
Saint Joan or a sordid impression of the nether world like
12
Mr. Rice's Adding Machine." The plays included in this
volume clearly belong to the species known as the "well-
made play."
Nor was Matthews deterred by Thomas H. Dickinson,
who wrote in 1915: "The art of the theatre has changed
radically in the last fifty years, and the rules and tech-
13
niques of the new drama are yet to be written." Matthews
was content to go on expounding the rules of the "old"
drama, firmly believing that they were timeless and,
therefore, still applicable. Although the "conditions of
the performance may change, and the desires of different
audiences may alter," Matthews held firm to his concept
that "the dramatist has ever to conform to the same
14
code." This being the case, he felt that much was to be
12
Arthur Hobson Quinn, writing in The New York Sun.
November 29, 1924, p. 6.
13
Thomas H. Dickinson, The Case of the American
Drama (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1915), p. 44.
14
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 302.
98 ’ !
: gained from studying the works of different playwrights
in different periods.
In 1872, Matthews declared flatly, "Sardou now
reigns!" ^ Seeing Sardou as "the undoubted successor of
Scribe," Matthews found Victorien Sardou 'taore satirical,
personal, and vindictive than Scribe, less dry and philo-
sophically inclined than Dumas," a playwright who always
had 'Vnysterious traps and hidden means of preparing a sur-
16
prise for his audience." Denouncing Scribe as "not
democratic, positive, and practical enough for the new
generation," Matthews praised Sardou as a man who knew how
to meet that first requisite of a good playwright— dramatic
effectiveness. "We are now dramatically Sardouvian, the
admirers and dramatic slaves of Sardou, the lion of his
17
day. Sardou is now the man."
And Sardou was still the man, apparently, six years
later when his play, Diplomacy, opened at Wallack's Theatre
in New York. "All that a foreigner asks of M. Sardou,"
wrote Matthews in his review of the play, .
^Brander Matthews, "Sardou," in The Athenaeum. No.
2357, December 28, 1872, p. 15.
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid., p. 16.
. 99
... is a well-made play. But . . . however good
his dramatic framework may be, M. Sardou is never
content to rely on its merits. He seeks always
to set it off by an appeal to the temper of the
time and an attempt at reflecting it.1'^
This ability to meet the mood of audiences on both sides
of the Atlantic, no matter how strongly it delighted
Matthews, did not, on the other hand, blind him completely
to the fact that "little of M. Sardou*s lively and light
19
wit is allowed to leak through into English." Admitting
that "this is not high art," Matthews still praised it
20
because "it is effective."
But by 1910, Matthews was able to evaluate the work
of a Moliere with a greater detachment and a greater per
spective, demanding even more than the "well-made play."
In his biography of the great actor-dramatist, which is
at once a mixture of anecdote, characterization, and
criticism, he more clearly demonstrates the inseparable,
inextricable union of a play with the physical stage.
Matthews finds Moliere's greatness as a dramatist the
result of his first-hand knowledge of stage secrets through
life-long experience as actor and manager. While throwing
*-®Brander Matthews, in The Library Table. April 13,
1878, p. 214.
19 20
Ibid. Ibid.
100
light on Moliere'8 methods of workmanship, he also throws
light on the fundamentals of playwriting in general. He
always interprets the comedies as plays meant to be acted
and conditioned by the stage of their time; but, surpris
ingly, does not always point out how much of his comic
effect Moliere obtained from the adroit use of conventional
tricks of dialogue, or "jeux de scene."
Writing of Moliere again sane years later, Matthews
declared that "Moliere possesses the two indispensable
qualities of a classic: his masterpieces have a large
21
measure of permanence and a large measure of universality."
Matthews praised the "modernness" of Moliere's work, find
ing that his comedies "are modern both in their form and
22 *
in their content." He considered Moliere's satire of the
whims of his own period as having its lesson for us in
another century and in another country. What was momentary
was only on the surface, for beneath it "we can discover a
veracity as abiding as human folly is perennial. The
23
fashion has altered but the stuff is the same."
21
Matthews, "The Modernity of Moliere," p. 220.
22Ibid.. p. 224.
23
Ibid.
101 j
i
But it was the simultaneous development of the drama'
in England and in Spain, notably in the work of Lope de
Vega and William Shakespeare, that most clearly provided a
"confirmation of Brunetiere's theory that the foundation of
our pleasure in the playhouse is the assertion of the human
24
will." Matthews saw Lope and Shakespeare alike in that
they wrote all their plays for the popular theatre, compos
ing their pieces "with a view to their performance, caring
not for the praise that might come from their publica-
..25
tion."
Matthews viewed Lope as a pioneer, one who paved
the way for succeeding Spanish dramatists. To Matthews,
Lope abounded in imagination, and himself set the pattern
for Calder6n and all the rest. It was Lope who worked out
the formula for the Spanish comedia. a play of intrigue,
..26
"peopled with hot-blooded heroes. And it was Lope who,
as critic, rightly devoted most of his attention to com
ments on technique.
24
Matthews, introduction to "The New Art of Writing
Plays," p. 2.
25
Ibid., p. 3.
26
Ibid.. p. 2.
Matthews' interest in Lope's "Arte Nuevo" was two
fold: first, the elementary lessons in playmaking which
Lope proffered to apprentices in the art; and second, the
great playwright's admission that he has continuously suc
ceeded in pleasing the public, even by occasionally violat-
27
ing his own rules in order to do so.
On the other hand, Matthews saw Shakespeare as
caring "little for invention, borrowing his plots from
28
anywhere and everywhere." When Matthews came out with
his book on the Bard in 1914, much, of course, had been
written about Shakespeare as a dramatist, but comparatively
little about him as a man experienced in acting and expert
in stagecraft. Matthews was quick to point out that in
the sixteenth century there was no dramatic literature,
because the drama was not thought of as literature.
Shakespeare seems to have been indifferent to the future
fate of his plays; once they had been successfully done on
the stage, they had served the purpose for which they had
been written. Matthews believed, moreover, that these
plays were written for a London crowd of a very miscel-
27
Ibid., p. 8.
28
Ibid.. p. 2.
103
laneous nature, of great vigor, but of rather rude tastes.
But the great merit of Matthews' book is, certainly,
that he chose to treat Shakespeare more exclusively as a
playwright. From his knowledge of stage history, he recon
structed, hypothetically, the intimate relationship between
Shakespeare's work and the actors and the stage for which
it was intended. This method he adopted from his book on
Moliere; it was somewhat less successful here, perhaps,
because Shakespeare's stagecraft was, after all, a thing
of particulars. And not infrequently Matthews made a
29
quick change from the theatre to the library,
Again, Matthews was not only breaking new ground;
he was also working familiar ground far more thoroughly
than it had been worked before. Others had shown how
Shakespeare borrowed and transformed his materials. Others
had traced his development in language, meter, and charac
terization. But no one, apparently, had shown so satis
factorily how Shakespeare met the conditions of his own
theatre and his own audience. Singularly valuable was his
chapter on the audience, for example, which pinpointed its
29
Cf. George Roy Elliot, "The Study of Stagecraft:
A Climax," in The Dial. January 16, 1914, pp. 62-64.
tastes and prejudices. The thesis of this book was the
same as one would expect from Matthews' other works on the
theatre— i.e., that a study of Shakespeare's stagecraft
will have a corrective effect upon errant Shakespearean
criticism. Such a truth the "Shakespearean stage movement"
30
early in this century also attempted to demonstrate.
"Shakespeare was the greatest of dramatic poets,
and Moliere was the greatest of comic dramatists," Matthews
wrote in 1907, adding, "and both of them were good work-
men." It was not surprising, then, that Matthews was
quick to admire the "worlonanlike" quality of Ibsen, but
32
was less ready to approve of Ibsen's subjects. As in
the case of Moliere and Shakespeare, Matthews was one of
the first to call attention to Ibsen as a craftsman.
"Very little attention is paid to Ibsen's dramatic crafts
manship, to his command of structural beauty, to his sur
passing skill in the difficult art of the play-maker," he
Cf. George Fullmer Reynolds, "Shakespeare as
Playwright," Drama. February, 1914, pp. 72-83.
31
Matthews, "An Apology for Technic," in Inquiries
and Opinions, p. 57.
32
Interview with Henry W. Wells, Columbia Univer
sity, who said: "Matthews' friendship with William Archer
prevented him from attacking the moral quality of Ibsen's
plays more vigorously."
105
complained. "Yet Shakespeare and Ibsen are professional
playwrights, each making plays adjusted exactly to the
33
conditions of the theatre of his own time." Some pages
later he echoed the point:
There has been little recognition of Ibsen's
solid workmanship, of his sure knowledge of all
the secrets of the stage, of his marvelous dex-^
terity of exposition, construction, and climax.
Matthews was quick to follow his friend William
Archer's view that Ibsen owed much to the French "well-
made" play school, particularly to Eugene Scribe. Matthews
found Ibsen's method, however, "less simple than Scribe's;
it is not only more difficult, it may be dangerous; but
when it is managed successfully, it lends to the drama a
swift directness delightful to all who relish a mastery
35
of form." Archer admitted that "he did get a good deal
of his stagecraft from Scribe," but he concluded that
Ibsen "outgrew his teacher, even in technical skill, and
his later plays, from Ghosts onward, show the influence
36
of Scribe mainly in the careful avoidance of his methods."
^Matthews, "Ibsen the Playwright," in Inquiries and
Opinions. p. 57.
^Ibid.. p. 232. 35Ibid.. p. 250.
36
William Archer, "Ibsen's Apprenticeship,"
Fortnightly Review. January, 1904, p. 25.
106
As James Hurteker pointed out, Ibsen was the "bedt
37
hated" artist of the nineteenth century. The reason was
simple: he was, himself, the arch-hater of his own age.
His dramas were condemned as being fit for the library,
not for the stage; and even Huneker had to admit that Ibsen
38
was "eagerly read, but seldom played." Matthews certain
ly must have popularized Ibsen production in this country,
simply because he wrote about Ibsen, like all the other
dramatists who attracted his pen, as a man of the theatre
whose plays were intended for the playhouse. The truth
was that Ibsen could no longer be denied by the critics
or the public, even though there were those who continued
to blast Ibsen's plays as works that should be "prohibited
and prevented, for they are bad in morals, bad in taste,
39
and bad in style." Matthews realized that Ibsen utilized
all available techniques, perfecting each in turn, and
summed up the varying dramatic currents in a half-century
of work. As Allan Lewis has written, "Ibsen took the form
37
James Huneker, "Henrik Ibsen," Scribner1s.
September, 1906, p. 8.
38 Ibid.
39
«WW," "The Decadent Drama," New York Sun, n.d.
[1905], n.p.
107
and gave it content, transposing a mechanical device into
..40
a work of art."
For no playwright did Matthews have greater words
of praise than the American dramatist, Bronson Howard.
The two men were great friends and the qualities that
Matthews championed in his criticism, Howard demonstrated
in his successful plays of American life. At the time of
Howard's death in 1907, Matthews declared: "Bronson
Howard never strove to put literature in his plays, but
they succeeded again and again in capturing the reality
41
of life which is the essence of literature."
A study of Matthews' comments on Howard shows that
there were at least seven reasons why he thought Howard
to be a model playwright. Matthews admired Howard because
he wrote about American subjects and American people; his
characters were sharply drawn and showed their creator's
broad understanding of human nature; his dialogue, though
not literary, was sharp and functional; he always consid
ered the attitude of his audience; he never lost sight of
40
Allan Lewis, The Contemporary Theatre, p. 35.
41
Brander Matthews et al., Bronson Howard: In
Memoriam (New York: The Marion Press, 1910), p. 62.
4
108
the dramatist's duty to "uplift" humanity; Howard was,
personally, a model of Integrity, honesty, and decency;
and, finally and perhaps most Importantly, his plays were
42
"neatly and tightly constructed."
Matthews, as Howard's collaborator on the unsuccess
ful play, Peter Stuyvesant. was in a good position to know
how the dramatist functioned. From selected correspondence
at the time of their collaboration, it is obvious that
Howard had no delusions about the "work" side of playwrit-
ing. Matthews recalled that "Howard was one of the few
who knew why he did what he did and who could always give
a good reason for what he had done. It is impossible for
me to overestimate the profit 1 derived from being taken
43
into his workshop." Summarizing his opinion of Howard's
craftsmanship, Matthews wrote:
It was not in their content only that Howard's
comedies revealed the country of their birth. In
their form, they were in complete accord with the
standard of the end of the nineteenth century, when
the conditions of performance were identical through
out the world. But it was Howard who, first of all
American playwrights, attained the compact simplicity
and the straitforward directness which this new
cosmopolitan formula demands. He has worked out
for himself the principles of the little understood
42
Ibid.
43
Matthews, These Many Years, p. 213.
art of dramaturgy. ... He knew that the art of the
theatre, like any other art, can live only by the
conventions which allow it to depart from the mere
facts of life.44
Remembering Matthews' cardinal principle that all
great plays are intended to be played "before an audience,"
Howard was keenly aware of the people for whom he was
45
writing. In his Autobiography of a Play. Howard tells
how Lillian's Last Love went through several revisions in
order to prepare it for London audiences, where it opened
under a new title, The Banker's Daughter. In the main,
the alterations were made with the differences between
English and American morality in mind.
Evidence that Matthews was able to adjust his own
thinking is found in a statement he wrote in Principles of
Playmaking some ten years after Howard's death:
Today we expect to find in our drama a less
arbitrarily arranged story, a theme of more vital
interest, handled with a more obvious veracity.
These qualities we do not find in Bronson Howard's
plays, clever as they were and as amusing as they
were. We cannot help confessing that they seem to
us compounded according to an outworn formula.
Their merits, indeniable as they are, strike us
4 4
Matthews, In Memoriam. p. 65.
45Ibid., p. 148.
110
now as ingeniously theatrical rather than truly
drama tic.
Despite this statement, Matthews did believe that had
Howard been born some forty years later, he would have
dealt more sincerely with life and would have employed the
newer method of dramaturgy; but this Matthews fails to
define. "Those^who knew Bronson Howard," he wrote, "can
testify that he had it in him to write plays of a finer
substance and of solider truth than he was permitted to
47
write in the changing epoch when he was as work."
Also of significance, on the other hand, because it
shows how consistent Matthews' thinking was, was his ob
servation:
There is no overt novelty in the theory advanced
by Bronson Howard. The same theory was held by
Sarcey, who declared that all the principles of
playmaking might be deduced from the fact that a
piece is always intended for performance before
an audience.48
It was this principle, then, that Matthews saw as the
prime link between Scribe and Sardou, Moliere and
^^Moses and Brown, The American Theatre. As Seen by
Its Critics. 1752-1934 (New York: W. W. Norton and Com-
pany, 1934), p. 149.
47Ibid.. p. 150.
^Matthews, "Notes on Bronson Howard," in Papers on
Playmaking. p. 82.
Shakespeare, Lope and Ibsen, and, finally, Bronson Howard.
To conclude, it is obvious that Matthews saw each
successful dramatist as one who was primarily a craftsman,
able to solve the problem of "how to tell a dramatic story
convincingly and effectively" upon the stage of his own
49
day. This was done most easily, he felt, when one found
the right formula: "In the choice of the proper framework
for his conception, the author's task is made measurably
50
lighter if he can find a fit pattern ready to his hand."
And, even though technique was, in Matthews' phrase, 'faost
successful when its existence is least suspected," tech*
nique was something that "could be had for the asking.
. . . Any man can acquire it if he will but pay the price—
51
the needful study and experiment."
But we well might ask, how much can be taught?
As J. B. Priestley has pointed out,
The creation of an elaborate mystique of play
construction and theatrical technique is generally
—
Matthews, "The Literary Merit of Our Latter-Day
Drama," Inquiries and Opinions, p. 223.
50
Matthews, "On the Advantage of Having a Pattern,"
Papers on Playmaking. p. 82.
"^Matthews, "An Apology for Technic," p. 52.
112
associated not with the great Imaginative dramatists,
but with second rate men making the most of their
inside knowledge and experience.^
Does this describe Matthews, or does he contribute some
thing to the American theatre that is practical? Can we
agree with him that "Aristotle's advice to aspiring play
wrights is as valid today as it was twenty centuries
ago"?53
But one principle, at least, was clearly felt:
a playwright must consider his audience. In 1916 William
Gillette wrote: "A playwright's work is to evolve the
basic idea, plot, or theme, which, skillfully displayed,
54
will attract the sympathies of the audience." And in
1962 John Howard Lawson writes: "The audience is the
ultimate necessity which gives the playwright's work
..55
scope." Both of these critics echo Matthews principle
that "Great dramatists have always been popular in their
52
J. B. Priestley, The Art of the Dramatist (London:
William Heinemann, Ltd., 1957), p. 83.
53
Matthews, "What is a Well-Made Play?" Rip Van
Winkle Goes to the Play, p. 65.
54
William Gillette, in an introduction to "How to
Write a Play," in Papers on Playmaking. p. 80.
55
Lawson, oj>. cit.. p. 220.
113
56
own day." They were popular because they wrote with
their audience In mind.
In his Insistence upon technique, Matthews became
Increasingly impassioned. Shortly before his death, he
wrote: "The Young playwrights will look again to seek the
aid of tradition; they will toil to master the secrets of
57
technic." In most of his writing Matthews holds himself
in check; only occasionally does he seem as sure as some
of his contemporaries that the new generation is mad. Here
the weak point in his armor seems to have been revealed.
For how else can one explain Matthews' complete
ambivalence to Eugene O'Neill? Surely Matthews had to
recognize that O'Neill was a popular dramatist, but was
his indifference to him due to the fact that O'Neill was,
in Clayton Hamilton's phrase, "an exception to all rules''?^
O'Neill seemed to believe that the "best thing you can do
is to leave college," and, although he remained aloof from
those influences that seemed "detrimental to the develop-
56
Matthews, "The Modernity of Moliere," p. 223.
57
Matthews, Tocsin of Revolt, p. 20.
58
Clayton Hamilton, Conversations on Contemporary
Drama (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924), p. 198.
114 !
!
meat of the American drama," his most original plays show ■
the.influence of the *‘ well-made play" and structural
, 1 59
study.
And, as Priestley points out, a play like Look Back
in Anger is anything but a good play, on the level of
theatrical construction, contrivance, or structure. He
reports:
But you could hear young people in the back rows
roaring their approval of lines not remarkable for
either wit or wisdom, but important to these play
goers because they expressed in such speeches, in
a lively fashion, their own feelings of frustration
and rebellion.60
Is the "well-made" play really so outdated?
Ormerod Greenwood has written: "It is no longer
any use to discuss playwriting as something which stands
. . 6 1
still, so that permanent laws can be enacted about it."
But certainly all art exists within certain boundaries, and
each art has its own. Some are physical, some personal,
some social. "Call the role in drama," wrote Matthews,
"and you will see each dramatist has in turn avoided
59Ibid., p. 211.
60
Priestley, oj>. cit., p. 19.
61
Ormerod Greenwood, The Playwright (London: Sir
Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1950), p. v.
115
starvation by finding the common denominator of the
62
Broadway of his own time and of his own country." Thus
Matthews avers that the dramatist must please the public,
always giving an ear to their sentiments and passions.
But does this mean that the dramatist can never be
the public's prophet or leader? Must he remain content to
restate the eternal commonplaces of life, never seeking to
be in advance of his age? 1 don't think so. Matthews
recognized, 1 think, that the conflict between youth and
age, tradition and novelty, is eternally necessary to the
vitality and progress of the theatre. "The youth of today
who is today sounding the tocsin of revolt," Matthews
wrote late in life, "tomorrow will be defending tradition
63
against the attacks of a new generation." The future,
Matthews believed, must be built solidly upon the past.
"Nothing is more hopelessly futile than the attempt to
start fresh," he wrote.^ Progress can be made not by
discarding what has already been discovered, but only by
62
Matthews, "America and the Juvenile Highbrows,"
New York Times. January 29, 1922, p. 8.
63
Matthews, Tocsin of Revolt, p. 12*
116
knowing all these things, and by using them to full
advantage." In playmaking an author must know the last
word before he puts down the first. "From the rigid
limitations of time and space," said Matthews, "there Is
no room on the stage for unexpected development . . . for
In a drama, deliberate scientific construction Is abso-
65
lutely essential." A drama, then, Is worthy of success
when "It Is well and truly made by an honest craftsman who
Is also a gifted artist.
Matthews, With My Friends. Tales Told in Partner
ship (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1891), p. 20.
66
Matthews, "What is a Well-Made Play?" p. 65.
CHAPTER V
THE PLAYER
"The fundamental principles of the art of acting,"
Matthews wrote in his first introductory essay for the
book, Papers on Acting, "are less widely appreciated than
those of any other of the arts."^ Even among the profes
sional actors whom he knew, Matthews found few who could
declare clearly the "laws of the art of acting." For,
just as there were discoverable laws in play-making,
Matthews believed, there were also certain fixed laws in
play-acting. And beneath these various "laws" was his
ever-present opinion that the actor and the playwright
work together to create a proper dramatic experience for
the spectator.
Matthews declared:
The dramatic poets— Sophocles, Shakespeare, and
Moliere— have always been willing to take thought
of the players by whom their plays were to be repre
sented. Consciously to some extent, and unconsciously
Grander Matthews, Introduction to H. C. Fleeming's
essay, "Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth and as Queen
Katharine," in Papers on Acting (New York: Hill and Wang,
1958), p. 71.
117
118
more often, they shaped the stories they were telling
to the circumstances of the actual performance on
the contemporary stage.2
That the playwright "sees his opportunity" and "finds his
profit" In the special accomplishments of the players Is
yet another favorite theme of Matthews. The playwright
and the players must work In unison, he believed, because
3
"they always must depend on each other."
Therefore, of the three influences that most affect
the playwright— the actor, the theatre, and the audience—
the most Immediate, in Matthews' opinion, was the actor
". . . with whom the playwright has ever to work in cordial
sympathy, and without whose assistance his play cannot be
4
represented as he conceived it." And, as necessary as
the actor is, Matthews never forgot the seeming superiority
of the dramatist. "The actor," he wrote,
... is but the interpreter of what the author has
created. The unthinking spectator will always fail
to give a thought to the unseen dramatist, and they
will always confuse the actor with the character he
is impersonating.5
^Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 26.
3Ibid.. p. 28.
4
Ibid.. p. 27.
3Brander Matthews, "The Art of Acting," Rip Van
Winkle Goes to the Play and Other Essays on Plays and
Players (New York: Charles Scribner * s Sons, 1926), p. 208.
119
The last point, of course, needs to be treated separately,
as it shall be, but clearly Matthews felt himself, by way
of his long experience with the stage, to be above the
"ordinary playgoer" who "never suspects the subtleties of
6
the histrionic art."
Thus the idea behind Papers on Acting was to select
material not readily accessible to the average playgoer or
student of the American drama, and to accompany each selec
tion with an excellent critical commentary written by
someone whose opinions Matthews endorsed. We can assume
that he endorsed them because his own essays echo their
views. "To get a firm grasp of the principles of the art
of acting," Matthews wrote, "is at least as difficult as
it is to seize those of the art of painting."^ Thus
Matthews relied to a large extent on those who knew acting
best— the professional actors themselves.
Fleeming Jenkin, Matthews' good English friend and
fellow-critic, was an exception. In Jenkin, Matthews
found "a comprehensive understanding of the basic laws of
g
acting." Comparing him to Aristotle, Matthews declared
6Ibid.. p. 211.
7
Ibid.. p. 213.
8
Matthews, Papers on Acting, p. 71.
120
that Jenkin "had a severe training in scientific modes of
thought . . . and was able to pierce to the center ... an
..9
inquiry into the laws which govern artistic achievement."
We are not surprised to find, therefore, that much of what
Jenkin writes in Papers on Acting. Matthews echoes in his
own essays for that same book, as well as for his other
books that deal with acting. These include two full-scale
biographies of Shakespeare and Moliere.
"A close study of Shakespeare's text will enable us
to make more than one inference about the actors with
10
whom he associated," Matthews wrote in 1910. One such
"inference" sheds light on the so-called "disguise" element
in the Bard's plays. In our modern theatres, where the
parts of the heroines are played by actresses, there is an
obvious lack of credibility as soon as the girls try to
pass themselves off as boys. In Shakespeare's time, this
difficulty did not exist. Then, a boy impersonating a
girl could disguise himself as a boy without too great a
U
strain on the spectator.
9
Ibid.
10
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 30.
11
Ibid.. p. 31.
121
Matthews also thought an "inference*1 could be made
about the violence in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. He
saw the playwright complying with his company of actors
who would not have accepted his play if they had found it
"shorn of the bombast and the brutal extravagance which
. . . gave the performers occasion for over-acting, the
12
effect of which had been tested by long usage."
"If Shakespeare fitted his characters to the actors
who were to play them," Matthews wrote ten years later,
"then he was doing what Moliere was to do, and this com-
13
panionship is honorable." May not the actors of
Shakespeare's company have been more helpful than harmful?
In his biographies of Shakespeare and Moliere, Matthews
dwells on the point that "the two great dramatists of the
modern world actually depended upon the actors with whom
14
they worked."
Moliere, whom Matthews described as "the most
accomplished comic actor of his own day," would devise
12Ibid., p. 32.
13
Matthews, TDid Shakespeare Write Flays to Fit His
Actors?" in Playwrights on Playmaking. p. 117.
14Ibid.
^Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 33.
122
a leading character in each of his plays for his own
acting. To make certain of his playing these characters,
he gave his own physical characteristics— his cough, for
example— just as he gave lameness to other characters in
tended to be acted by his lame brother-in-law, Bejart.
For his own wife, the fascinating Armande Bejart, Moliere
wrote a series of brilliant parts, including the charming
. \ 16
Elmire in Tartuffe and the witty Cellmene in Misanthrope.
Moreover, Matthews believed that the influence of
the player upon the playwright was beneficial, insofar as
their desire for good parts has "tended to stiffen the
dramatic action.His favorite example of this was
Rostand's "fitting his theatrical fabric to the exact size
and shape of Coquelin's histrionic accomplishments" in
18
composing his Cyrano de Bergerac. "It is a fact,"
Matthews wrote, "that Cyrano is what it is solely because
..19
Coquelin was what he was. The part, of course, has been
played by other actors; it has been translated into many
different languages; it has met with delighted audiences
16 17
Ibid. Ibid., p. 34.
18 19
Ibid.. p. 36. Ibid.
123
who appreciate its pointed verse. However, the French
phrase which declares that the actor who first plays a
part "creates the character" would seem, in Matthews'
20
view, appropriate here.
Coquelin, whose "Art and the Actor" Matthews in
cluded in his volume on acting, dealt with a question that
always is sure to be discussed in any serious consideration
of the art of acting: Does the actor partake of the pas
sions of his part during the performance, or does he remain
unmoved himself, the more able to move others? Sometimes
called Diderot's "paradox," this question is answered by
Coquelin squarely when he writes: "I am convinced that
one can only be a great actor on condition of complete
self-mastery . . . and this is the reason that our trade
21
is an art." Answered in this way, it would seem that
the actor is able to express feelings which are not neces
sarily of his own past experience. The actor borrows from
the playwright, from stage traditions, from his own knowl
edge of human nature. "He sets himself a task," said
22
Coquelin. And this "work" side of acting Matthews was
20Ibid., p. 37. 22Ibid.. p. 27.
^Constant Coquelin, "Art and the Actor," Papers on
Acting, p. 26.
124 |
quick to champion.
Thus, according to Coquelin, the actor creates "even
when the character is one conceived and executed by one of
those rare masters who were themselves actors, Moliere and ’
23
Shakespeare." This is because there is always a consid
erable distance between the type imagined by the play
wright and the type that actually lives and breathes.
But "it is not enough to create a soul," says Coquelin,
24
"a body must be provided for, as well." This, then,
would seem to be the actor's function— to create a living
being who has his own particular way of moving and talking.
He creates a thoroughly Individual character.
Coquelin suggests further that there are "but few
masterpieces so perfect that the actor cannot find some
thing to add to them. The actor has but a sketch to work
25
from, so he borrows from his observation and reflection."
For, what is the real aim of the actor? It is the same,
says Coquelin, as that of all women:
... to please. ... to please by satisfying the
nobler or more delicate instincts of the public;
23Ibid., p. 20.
24Ibid.. p. 21.
25
Ibid., p. 25.
by charming them with a display of the ^beautiful;
by transporting them with the spectacle of grandeur;
by rousing healthy laughter or reflection through
the representation of the truth.2”
We well might ask, as Matthews often did: What is
"truth'1 in the theatre? The actor "tries to produce an
apparent truth," says Coquelin, "but let it be true only
27
in seeming." This we might call "theatrical illusion,"
which Coquelin himself defined as
... the pleasure in search of which people go to
the theatre . . . partly composed indeed of the
illusion that they are seeing a reality, but mingled
with a feeling of personal safety and a sincere
conviction that they are assisting only at an
illusion.28
Lucretius-like, the storm at sea is seen safely from the
Finally, we can almost hear Matthews agreeing with
his long-time friend Coquelin, when the actor declares
that the theatre is primarily a "peaceful and super-
civilized art," one that succeeds best "among races
especially amiable and social, like the Greeks and the
29
French." The actor, since he helps with this noble
work, is therefore unjustly looked down upon by both clergy
shore.
26 27
Ibid. Ibid.. p. 32.
28
Ibid.. p. 31.
29
Ibid., p. 26.
126
and layman. The real reason, as Coquelin sees it, for
this traditional disapproval, is "the fact that the renun
ciation of the actor of his own personality, in order to
assume the character of one, ten, or twenty other people,
30
is apparently a renunciation of his own dignity." Since
this "renunciation" is commanded by the playwright, is it
not he who should be blamed?
Talma's "Reflections on Acting" is reviewed in
31
Papers on Acting by Matthews' friend, Fleeming Jenkin.
Declaring that Talma "missed the very point which dis-
32
tinguished the actor from other artists," the English
critic grants that the actor must have "sensibility," but
says "the form which each artist naturally employs to ex
press his emotion determines whether he shall be an author,
33
painter, musician, or actor."
And Talma would seem to agree with Coquelin and all
the others that Matthews includes in his book, that the
30
Ibid., p. 37.
31
H. C. Fleeming Jenkin, "Review" to Talma's
article, "Reflections on Acting," in Papers on Acting,
pp. 59-63.
32Ibid., p. 60.
33
Ibid.
127
actor creates not in a period "when the exaltation is
extreme," but in a succeeding stage marked by a "calm and
critical mood, in which the true artist chooses, rejects,
and groups the partial effects obtained so as to produce
3 4
one great and consistent whole." Does the actor feel
what he is portraying? Talma, apparently, believed that
the emotion can be felt only once in its full intensity,
and that is the moment of creation during an early
rehearsal. During a performance, the feelings of an actor
"can be almost mechanically reawakened by the excellence
35
of his own art."
In similar vein, Matthews cites William Gillette's
36
essay, "The Illusion of the First Time in Acting." Here
the American actor clearly conveys at least two points:
(1) an actor must convey the illusion that what he is
doing is being done for the first time, and (2) an actor
is most successful when he can infuse his part with his
own personality. The first of these points was echoed by
34
Ibid.. p. 61.
35
Ibid.. p. 62.
36
William Gillette, "The Illusion of the First Time
in Acting," with an introduction by George Arliss, Papers
on Acting, pp. 116-135.
128
the great comedian Joseph Jefferson, who said: "The actor
must not only produce, but in order to make the greatest
artistic effect, he must reproduce each time as if he had
37
never produced before.1 1 To support Gillette's second
contention, it is a fact that nearly all of the great
actors have been men of marked individuality, and, as
Henry W. Wells has written, "they have rarely sought to
disguise their personalities in their several performances.'*
38
Might we deduce from this, then, that a great actor
plays his part not so much as he thinks it should be
played, but rather as he feels that he himself can best
play it?
If, in Gillette's opinion, the actor is to build
his characterizations on the dominant qualities.of his.
own personality, then this makes us take a new evaluation
of the actor's problems and his goals. Gillette's essay
is an excellent analysis of the problems that the actor
faces in playing realistic drama. When the emphasis in
drama was shifted from universal truth and poetic utter
ance to a slice of life presented within the proscenium
—
Quoted by Henry W. Wells, Papers on Acting, p. 277.
38
Ibid., p. 278.
129
arch, the actor shifted our attention from the broader
strokes of character to the illusion of reality created
by a myriad of realistic details. Matthews realized, that
if life on the stage was to "simulate life as it is lived,";
to use Gillette's words, rather than to transcend reality,
then the actor faced more than ever the necessity of making
each performance seem "like the first time."
But Gillette goes a step farther. The chief con
tributing factor to the thrill of reality, as he sees it,
is the personality of the actor. And George Arliss, in
his introduction to Gillette's essay, is right in declar
ing that such a performer merely plays himself. A really
strong personality, an Irving, for example, cannot be sup
pressed utterly, nor is such total suppression always
39
desirable.
Thus we may assume that Matthews was in accord with
the "laws" set down by his friends in Papers on Acting, and
that this book was just a part of his general plan to
educate both the American playwright and the American
public. He wrote that such papers "contain a body of.
39
"Half the fun and half the art of the actor,"
Arliss writes, "is to play such pieces artificially while
appearing to play them naturally" (ibid., p. 122).
130
doctrine about the art of acting which has permanent
4
value," and that much could be learned when "accomplished
craftsmen come forward to discuss the secrets of their
40
calling." In his own essays and articles for other
books Matthews echoes his friends.
His friend Bronson Howard had written:
The art of acting is the art of seeming to move,
speak, and appear on the stage as the character
moves, speaks, and appears in real life, under
the circumstances indicated in the play.^
Matthews was quick to see that "in the word 'seeming' lie
all the difficulties, the intricacies, the technicalities
42
of acting." Matthews correctly pointed out that the
actor has to adjust his representation of reality to the
large theatre in which he plays. "He has to change his
scale, to change the actual reality into the semblance of
reality," he wrote. "He can seem real only by not stick-
43
ing absolutely to the facts."
40
Matthews, introduction to "Actors and Acting," a
discussion by Coquelin, Irving, and Boucicault, in Papers
on Acting, p. 162.
41
Bronson Howard, "The Art of Acting," Century
Notebook. June, 1900, p. 22.
4^Matthews, "The Art of Acting," p. 212.
43Ibid.
131
Then how does this reality work when the person
ality of the actor is recognizable? Is this acting, or is
it merely self-exploiting? Do situations in a play
created by the dramatist become excuses for various
routines like those in the music hall? When a great per
sonality bursts upon us, what follows may be entertaining,
but is it a true dramatic experience? To such questions
as these Matthews seems evasive. 1 think he would agree,
however, with J. B. Priestley who suggested that such
"star" personalities are not exploiting themselves but are
"fulfilling themselves on the stage before an audience."^
The audience is seen as asking first to be enthralled and
even devastated by the player. And this is, perhaps, as
it should be in the "Gestaldt" of Matthews' theory of the
theatre, just as long as the player looks to the dramatist
for his inspiration, and doesn't "imagine himself self-
45
sufficient and the unique provider of dramatic experience*"
«
Matthews accepts the fact that the chief dramatists
have always composed their plays with the abilities of
certain players in mind, and brings the practice up to date.
_
Priestley, oj>. cit., p. 43.
132 ' |
The actor of today he describes as "the same kind of human |
being that he was yesterday and the day before yesterday,"
and suggests that what he wants most is "a good part."
This he defines as one "in which the actor has something
to do or somebody to personate." The actor of today
"demands action and character"— two requisites, after all,
46
of any good play.
But Matthews realized fully that often a part as
conceived by the playwright is changed from its original
concept merely because of the physical attributes of a
certain ass'igned actor. "The tools of his trade," he
wrote, "are the members of his own body. His hands and
his arms, his walk, and his gesture, the glance of his eye
and the tones of his voice— these are the implements of
47
his art." And clearly Matthews was devoted to a re
dedication of the training of these "implements"; he was
well aware that certain Europeans object to the lack of
discipline in our native actors, as Michel St. Denis was
48
to point out some thirty years later.
^Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 34.
47
Matthews, "The Art of Acting," p. 218.
48
Michel St. Denis, Theatre: The Rediscovery of
Style, with an introduction by L. Oliver (New York: Theatxs
Arts Books, 1960), passim.
Nor was Matthews blind to the double task of
judging a play through acting, and acting through a play.
"I have known only three men who were not actors who knew
anything about acting," Matthews told his students at
Columbia University, "and these three were Francisque
Sarcey, Fleeming Jenkin, and William Archer. But actors
all know. 1 have learned more from talks with Coquelin,
49
Booth, and Jefferson than from all the books." Matthews
realized that an actor cannot leave his work behind. He
must make his mark on the minds of others; he is recorded
in their works. Only from them can we reconstruct a great
actor and then use him as a gauge.
What Matthews tried to say most emphatically, 1
believe, but never quite did, is that every actor has
developed a recognizable set of symbols for the audience
of his own time. "What gives drama its true power,"
Robert Loper has recently written, "is that unique medium,
50 t
the living person." In the theatre, men's passions are
symbolized by the actor. On the platform stage, the acting
49 —
Quoted from Matthews' Lecture Notes, Special
Collections, Columbia University.
50
Robert Loper, "Drama: Communication Through
Action," Western Speech. Fall, 1957, p. 215.
134
was broad and expansive, in harmony with Shakespeare's
soaring verse. But Tennessee Williams' symbols are much
smaller, and they tend, 1 believe, to disintegrate the
view of the whole man. And the acting is smaller. The
difference lies in the symbols, and very seldom do we have
a drama that transcends escape or evasion.
Thus Matthews, toward the end of his career, was not
too optimistic about the future of acting. In one of his
last essays, he wrote:
If the theatres are beyond all dispute better
than they were a few years ago, and if the dramatic
literature of the present bids fair to be more
satisfactory in the future, the sole remaining
point of attack is the acting.51
Where are the Booths, the Kembles, the Garricks of our
time? Matthews wondered about this, and concluded sadly,
"With our syndicates and star-system, and our long runs,
52
the art of acting is doomed without hope of recovery."
Matthews saw the cause of this sad state to lie in
the practice of modern actors, "accustomed to the more
modern natural pieces," not to preserve "the artificial
tradition established long ago for the proper performance
51
Matthews, "The Art of Acting," p. 247.
135
of plays written to suit the very different conditions of
53
an earlier theatre." He felt that the best acting today
is adjusted for the stage of today, that the best actors
"are striving for veracity of characterization of a kind
54
almost impossible on the stage of yesterday." But he
realized, too, that this was inevitable: "Our actors are
now less rhetorical and more pictorial— as they must be on
55
the picture-frame stage of our modern theatre." Although
he might have had more discipline and greater versatility,
Matthews never claimed that the methods of today's actors
were necessarily artistically inferior.
53
Ibid., p. 250.
54
Ibid.
^5Ibid.. p. 256.
CHAPTER VI
THE PLAYHOUSE
"The drama is now, and always has been, dependent
upon the theatre," Matthews wrote in 1917.^ "It is only
2
in the playhouse that a play reveals its full force."
Matthews believed that, besides the limitations of the
human actor, there were also "a series of physical limits
that bound the art of both the playwright and the player."
He usually referred to these limitations as "the physical
conditions of the theatre." We shall see also that
Matthews was one of the first in this century to recommend
getting both the actor and the audience under one roof;
that is, a breakaway from the proscenium wall that tends
to remove the actor from the spectator.
1
Matthews, "The Organization of the Theatre,"
Playwrights on Plavmaking. p. 247.
2 Ibid.
3
Matthews, "The Art of Acting," Rip Van Winkle Goes
to the Play, p. 250.
136
137
In his analysis of the effect of the playhouse upon
the actor, Matthews complained that ‘Very few of those who
are studying the theatre have yet seized the full signifi
cance of the change in the relation of the actor to the
4
audience," With his typically broad view, Matthews saw
this relationship as a historical "withdrawal of the per
former from the platform almost surrounded by the specta
tors" to a "frame which sets him apart and keeps him
remote.
Quite rightly, therefore, Matthews saw that this
"alteration of the playhouse" had forced a corresponding
6
modification of the method of the player. The actor, he
believed, must always adjust himself to the theatre in
which he is performing. "The acting of the past," he
wrote, "is not exactly like the acting of the present,
because the circumstances of performance have been continu
ally changing, even if the principles of the art abide
unaltered."^ An actor's method must be 'Modified in ac-
8
cordance with the condition of the stage at the time."
4 5
Ibid. Ibid.
^Matthews, "The Influence of the Theatre," Rip Van
Winkle Goes to the Play, p. 17.
7 8
Ibid. Ibid.
138
Elsewhere Matthews observed: "However little the psy
chology of the tragic comedians has changed in the suc
ceeding centuries, there have been many modifications in
9
the shape and size of the theatre in which they perform."
In the same vein, Matthews felt that it was "absurd
to deny that the conditions of the building in which a
play is performed may modify the structure of the play
10 i
itself." The playwright, as well as the player, is !
affected by the theatre for which he works. By "theatre," j '
of course, Matthews did not always mean a building. He
knew that many plays had been performed under the simplest j
j
of conditions— in the open air, on a few planks, on a cart,
or even on the ground. If the play was produced in a
market place, say, Matthews pointed out that "the drama- i
tist will have to compete for his audience's attention" and!
"he will probably not be able to hold it for a great length
11
of time." For the play itself will be full of "action
and episode," and illusion is possible "only in so far as
the skill of the actors and the imagination of the audience
9
Matthews, Development of the Drama, p. 32.
10
Ibid.. p. 33.
^Greenwood, oj>. cit.. p. 31.
I can create it."
Thus he believed that it was impossible to appre-
■ ciate the art of a Sophocles or a Shakespeare, a Moliere
or Ibsen, without
i •
. , . a clear understanding of the chief circum
stances of an actual performance in the particular
theatre for which the dramatist prepared his play,
and to the size and shape of which, and the scenic
appliances of which, he had to adjust the construc
tion of his story.^
When Matthews came to write A Study of the Drama,
he was approaching the study of the theatre from a new
point of view. He wrote:
No one has undertaken to trace the slow
development of the art of scene painting, and no
one has ever made a collection of plans of theatres,
all drawn to the same scale, so that we could see
at a glance how immense was the theatre of Dionysus
at Athens and how small was .the tennis court wherein
Moliere acted.^
And so, Matthews took it upon himself to do just this, in
this and in all his other books that dealt with the devel- ;
1 !
opment of the theatre. And in another way, his collection j
I
of theatre models at Columbia University also reveals his
keen interest in the theatre building or area itself.
12
Ibid.
13
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 45.
14
Ibid., p. 48.
"We can shift the real responsibility for the
banishing of the soliloquy a little farther back," wrote
Matthews. "It does not lie on Ibsen's shoulders, but on
Edison's, since it was an inevitable consequence of the
15
incandescent bulb." Quite significantly, Matthews was one
of the first to trace the development of stage lighting.
With his practical knowledge of the theatre of his own
time, he knew that "the technical possibilities of any art
at any moment must more or less limit, not only how the
artist shall express what he has to say, but also what he
16
shall attempt to express." It is only after we have
analyzed these technical possibilities, he believed, that
we are really prepared to "appreciate what the artist has
actually accomplished."
Seen this way, the modern dramatist has the oppor
tunity to make a world-wide appeal, something not granted
to any of his predecessors. For "the world wide uniform
ity of theatrical conditions has brought with it a sub-
18
stantial identity of dramaturgic method." Matthews
believed that, in its framework, a French play is now
15 16
Ibid.. p. 64. Ibid.. p. 66.
Ibid., p. 67.
17
18
Ibid.
! 141
I closely akin to a German play, an Italian play to an
; American. He saw that it is within the picture-frame
stage that almost every dramatist of today is composing
i
!
his plays, and his methods are necessarily those of the j
picture-frame stage, just as the methods of the Elizabethan'
dramatists were those of the platform stage.
An earlier example was the Greek theatre, from
which Matthews drew many an analogy. In the huge Greek
open-air amphitheatres, words could be clearly heard with
out strain, due largely to the magnificent acoustical
properties of these theatres. The dramatist knew, said
Matthews, that "it was possible to rely a great deal on
19
words— the poetry would not be lost."
Matthews noted also that the Greek theatre utilized
a permanent "built set"— a palace front "of which the
dramatist had to make use." He believed that the Greeks
anticipated a modern effect with their "ekkeklema," which
"brought forth before the eyes of the enthralled spectators
20
something supposed to have taken place out of sight."
In the Elizabethan age, an entirely different set
—
Greenwood, op. cit., p. 32.
20
Matthews, "The Development of Scenic Devices,"
Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play, p. 164.
142
of conditions produced a different kind of play. The
pattern of the Elizabethan playhouse, with its surrounding
balconies resembling those of the inn, its pit, its
stage extending out into the pit, and the balcony behind
used by both actors and musicians, was in reality a
multiple stage. A play could present a large number of
scenes in rapid succession without waits or loss of con-
21
tinuity.
In the past three centuries this type of playhouse
has been greatly modified, Matthews wrote:
Hot one of Shakespeare's tragedies or comedies
can be acted on the modern stage without a thorough
readjustment to suit the later conditions of
representation. . . . This is one reason why all
the efforts of later poets to model themselves
upon Shakespeare have resulted in immediate
disaster.22
Elsewhere he wrote with less pessimism; perhaps he had the
work of William Poel and his movement in mind when he de
clared that Shakespeare "conceived his play as a story
told in action in a series of dialogues, many of which
23
were held on the neutral ground that might be anywhere."
21
Greenwood, o£. cit., p. 33.
22
Matthews, Development of the Drama, p. 226.
23
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 62.
Gradually Matthews came to realize that the "power
of suggestion is often greater than the power of actual
24
presentation." For, during the latter days of the nine-
!
teenth century, the works of the great Swiss artist, Adolphj
Appia, began to be publicized in England and America by
Gordon Craig. Appia declared that the "painting and light-
25
ing are two elements which exclude each other." He
believed that to give full value to the actor, whose body
must be the center of attention, plat scenery must be
replaced by a constructed setting, where three-dimensional
geometric forms will set off the human body. Both Appia
and Craig affected the playwright by precept and example,
and in one sense, Craig became the main theorist of the
modern stage.^
But Professor Towse was right in pointing out in
1920 that "Mr. Matthews obviously has no sympathy for the
27
vagaries of Gordon Craig." Reviewing Craig's The Theatre
24
Matthews, A Book About the Theatre, p. 21.
25
Quoted in Greenwood, oj>. cit.. p. 35.
26Ibid.
27
J. Ranken Towse, "Brander Matthews on the Theatre,"
New York Evening Post. January 17, 1920, p. 8.
Advancing. Matthews wrote in part:
This book has no place, has no unity, it has
no construction, it does not present a coherent
and cogent statement. . . . We wonder just what
this New Movement is. . . .We ask ourselves what
are the dogmas of his new doctrine?28
Perhaps it never occurred to Matthews that there was no
"doctrine," no "dogma" as he was developing his own set
for the theatre. Yet he seems nearer the truth when he
' concludes,
It is not as an author but as an artist Mr.
Gordon Craig has exerted an influence upon the
theatre. Not by his books but by his designs 29
for scenery has he been able to make himself felt.
Professor Eaton put it more simply: "The new art
of the theatre is based primarily on the electric switch
30
board." The development of artificial light brought many
changes in the theatre— in the auditorium as well as on
the stage. Instead of a social gathering place where fine
ly dressed ladies and gentlemen came to see and be seen,
Brander Matthews, "Mr. Gordon Craig as 'The
Nurse1 of The New Movement in the Theatre." New York Times.
January 18, 1920, p. 1.
29
Ibid.. p. 28.
30
Walter Pritchard Eaton, "The Man of Letters
and the New Art of the Theatre," Century. December, 1913,
p. 284.
145
there was a darkened concentration on the stage. Theatres
could be larger, for in the stronger light an actor's
expression could be seen at a distance. Mood could be
easily created and easily changed. When only the stage
was lighted, every detail of the illusion became possible.
Even in outdoor scenes, one could be persuaded that he was
31
seeing the actual sun go down over the darkening Rhine.
In Paris, Charles Nuitter had pointed out to
Matthews "the essential difference between the modem
32
theatre . . . and all earlier theatres," All of the
earlier playhouses, he told Matthews, had to give their
performances by daylight, and Matthews was quick to see
that "there was no wholly satisfactory means of theatrical
illumination until the invention of the electric light
33
toward the end of the nineteenth century."
When we consider the extraordinary variety and
the subtle delicacy of the methods of applying the
electric light, we are inclined to doubt whether the
stage managers of a century ago, of three centuries
ago, of twenty centuries ago could have achieved
anything entitled to be called spectacle, as we now
use the word.34
31
Greenwood, op. cit.. p. 35.
■^Matthews, "The Development of Scenic Devices,"
p. 163.
33Ibid. 34Ibid.. p. 164.
| ~.'. .... '..' ......” ' 146
i
| Matthews was aware also of the modern movement to do away
I !
with footlights. "By the aid of the 'spot-lights' and of |
1baby-spots'," he wrote, "it is possible to provide an
illumination which does not come from one direction only,
! as the sunlight is. As a result, the stage looks less
.,35
stagy."
In fact, he thought that this was the one develop
ment of the electric light by which "the modern playhouse
differs from its predecessors of past ages— in the power
36
to illuminate every part of the stage." Still, he
believed that one should not lose sight of the deeper
significance to the drama of this mechanical advance:
There is no denying that the latter-day drama
is far less devoted to mechanical devices than its
predecessors were in the middle of the last century.
The dramatist is now more interested in what his
characters are, in what they feel and in what they
think, rather than in what they do.37
Similarly, Matthews believed that "it was not until |
the nineteenth century was well advanced" that "the
dramatic poets began to avail themselves of the advantages j
^Ibid.. p. 175.
36
Matthews, Development of the Drama, p. 337.
37
Matthews, "The Development of Scenic Devices,"
p. 176.
of 'discovering' one or more characters in sight as the
38
curtain rose." It was the absence of the curtain that
"forced Sophocles and Shakespeare to end their pieces by
withdrawing all the characters from the view of the spec-
.,39
tators."
Thus we perceive that Matthews had a very keen
interest in the shape and size of theatre buildings, as
well as curiosity about how their mechanical and electrical
improvements affected both the playwright and the player.
He wrote:
The more we consider the conditions of the Greek
theatre and of the Elizabethan theatre the more
clearly we perceive that they also had advantages
of their own not to be found in the theatre of
our time. . . . And it is the theatre of today,
and not the theatre of any yesterday, that both
the playwright and the performer have to deal.
Matthews saw that between 1870 and 1920--roughly
the period of his own theatre-going--the drama made a new
departure which was the result of two influences, working
simultaneously. One of these influences was internal— the
rapid advance of the so-called "realistic" movement. The
38
Matthews, Development of the Drama, p. 337.
39Ibid.
^Matthews, "The Art of Acting," p. 252.
other influence was more external--the gradual modifica
tion of the ground plan of the playhouse, a modification
which resulted in the picture-frame stage. This change in
the "conditions of performance" happened gradually and was,i
i
in Matthews' phrase, "brought about unintentionally and by
41
the logic of events." Still, he viewed it as the
. . . most momentous change in all the long history
of the drama, and we may doubt whether the remoter
results have even yet made themselves manifest.
It is perhaps the chief cause why the Old Comedies
have gone out of favor. They were composed for a
different theatre.42
Looking ahead to the theatre of the mid-twentieth
century, Matthews wrote:
It may well come to pass in the final quarter
of this twentieth century, when the conditions of
the theatre have been still further modified, in
ways we cannot foresee, that the best and most
representative of the plays popular in the first
quarter of this century will reveal themselves as
archaic in m e t h o d .43
He believed that if such a development should come to pass,
"some writer of 1970 may be moved to imagine into the
reasons why the problem-play of 1920 has been banished from
^^Matthews, "The 'Old Comedies'." Playwrights on
Playwriting. p. 243.
42Ibid.
4^Ibid.. p. 244.
H*t
the boards." In 1964, we seem to be approaching that
state of wonder.
And, looking back to the theatre of the late nine
teenth century, which he was more apt to do, Matthews
seriously questioned whether the modern theatre was,
actually, an improved artistic medium:
Those who have the pleasant privilege of advancing
years, and who can therefore look to earlier condi
tions, may not like the conditions that obtain now.
And there is no cause for wonder in the fact that
some of them think that the change is for the worst.
45
Matthews, "The Art of Acting," p. 252.
CHAPTER VII
THE PLAYGOER
Throughout all of his essays and books, Matthews
stresses the ultimate importance of the audience to the
total theatre experience. In his early work, A Book
About the Theatre, he quotes his friend William Archer,
who had written: "The theatre— the actual building, with
its dimensions, structure, and scenic appliances— is the
dramatist's sea, and the audience provides the weather."1'
Again, Matthews wrote: "Far more powerful than the influ
ence of the theatre or of the actor upon the drama is the
influence of the audience, an influence not on the form of
2
the play, but on its substance."
At this point, let us review Matthews' investiga
tion into the influence of the audience on both the play
wright and the player, and consider his theories on the
nature of audiences— their changing prejudices, intelli
gence, and psychology. Matthews wrote:
Hlatthews, A Book About the Theatre, p. 11.
^Matthews, "The Art of the Dramatist," Development
of the Drama, p. 33.
150
151
The first thing we discover when we compare the
opinions of the professional playwrights, is that
they agree in accepting the judgment of the audience
as decisive and final. As their plays were composed
for the delight of the spectators, they all feel
that they are bound to accept the verdict rendered
in the theatre.’
Again Matthews stressed the point that the most successful
dramatists were writing for the stage. They wanted to
arouse and retain the interest of their own contemporaries
in their own country. They gave very little thought to
posterity or to a foreign market.
But this does not necessarily interfere with the
ability of a playwright to "express himself." If he is
a born dramatist (and sometimes Matthews seems more cer
tain that great ones are born rather than made), then he
"... never thinks of trying to express himself except
in conformity to the conditions of dramatic art, with its
triple dependence upon the playhouse, the players, and the
4
playgoers." In the theatre, self-expression must take
thought of the public, of its likes and dislikes, of its
^any-headedness" and of the "variety of its tastes."^
Matthews, "Playwrights on Playmaking," Playwrights
on Playmaking. p. 7.
4 5
Ibid., p. 8. Ibid.
152 |
Yet Matthews was quick to recognize that there is
a serious fallacy in the phrase, "the taste of the public."
Such a statement assumes that there is only one public,
I
having a taste in common with each of its members. Matthews
said, "1 am inclined to think . . . that the number of
publics having widely divergent likes and dislikes is in
definite, not to say infinite."8 The public, in his opin
ion, was actually a gathering of warring factions, and
"sometimes these factions are representative of the degree
of development to which those who compose it have
attained."7
Thus, Matthews observed, there is one public which
can and does "welcome everything which is good in its
8
kind." But, "there are as many publics as there are
different kinds of good things," he wrote, "and few of us
are so limited in our likings as to belong to one public
9
only." Some of these various publics are very small, and
^Matthews, "On Pleasing, the Taste of the Public,"
Aspects of Fiction, p. 60.
7Ibid.. p. 62.
8Ibid., p. 72.
9
Ibid.
153
some are very large. Hamlet. Matthews thought, appeals
-to almost every type of playgoer, while Ibsen's Ghosts
10
' ’ pleases only a chosen few."
|
There is a public which wants to be amused, and
Matthews saw that perhaps "the larger portion of the publicj
wants sensation and excitement, and it does not want analy-i
sis and disquisition. But there is a public that does
11
want it." If the spectators are all coarse brutes, then
the drama will be coarse and brutal; if they are fun-loving
and free from sentimentality, then "it is possible for the
12
playwright to indulge in romantic comedy." Matthews saw
the drama as the most democratic of the arts, and any
attempt to organize it on an aristocratic basis— such as
13
Goethe tried in Weimar— "is doomed to failure."
"The influence of the spectator upon the playwright ,'V
Matthews wrote, "is like the pressure of the atmosphere
upon man: he may not ever think about it, but all his
14
organs are adjusted to it none the less." And one can
10 11
Ibid. Ibid.. p. 73.
^^Matthews, "The Art of the Dramatist," p. 33.
13 14
Ibid. Ibid.
| . 154
I
| see that Matthews believed that the spectators at large j
! ■ i
I are massed in a pyramid, one layer above the other, with
15
"the most intelligent at the apex." This concept Matthew?
i
used to explain and organize the diversity of public taste,
j which, he wrote, "has always existed— except perhaps in
the compact community of Athens."^
Thus, the elephant, the bear-baiting, and the
gladiators, each in turn, has pleased that part of the
public "which was wholly incapable of understanding ...
17
Mrs. Siddons, Shakespeare, and Terence." But each public
has had at least one admirable quality: it is perfectly
sincere.
It is not a humbug or a sham. It knows what
it likes and it is not ashamed of its prejudices.
It makes no pretense of regard for the more advanced
art it is unable to appreciate. It is frank and
outspoken. It makes no effort whatever to conceal
its opinion that Ibsen is t i r e s o m e .18
Clayton Hamilton, in a 1908 article entitled "Hits
and Misses Among Recent Plays," put it this way:
In a city so vast and varied as New York there
are many different publics which are willing to be
pleased in many different ways. The dramatist
with a new theme in his head may, before he sets
^■^Matthews, "On Pleasing the Taste of the Public,"
p. 73.
16Ibid.. p. 75. 17Ibid. 18Ibid.
155 I
[
about the task of building and writing his play,
determines imaginatively the degree of emotional
and intellectual equipment necessary to the sort
of audience best fitted to appreciate that theme.
For any good play can create its own public by
selecting the kind of auditors it needs. The prob
lem of the dramatist is, first, to choose the sort
of public he wants to please, and second, to direct
his appeal to the mental make-up of the audience
which he himself has chosen.19
Although Mr. Hamilton may oversimplify the problem (and
we might well ask just how much freedom the American
dramatist does have in choosing his "public," even in a
city like New York), he clearly reflects the thought of
his teacher, Brander Matthews.
For Matthews himself had written that the dramatist
does not appeal to the spectators as individuals; rather,
"he appeals to the audience as a whole, the audience hav
ing a collective soul which is not quite the same as the
20
sum total of their several souls." And, because the
dramatist must strive to arouse the emotions of the multi
tude, he cannot consider the special likings or the special
knowledge of any single man or of any minor group of men.
"The dramatist," Matthews believed, "must try to find the
19
Clayton Hamilton, "Hits and Misses Among Recent
Plays," Forum. November, 1908, p. 430.
20
Matthews, "The Art of the Dramatist," p. 35.
156
the greatest common denominator of the throng. .
21
A crowd . . . had a certain personality of its own."
It is evident that Matthews developed this theory
from some of the work of Gustav Le Bon, who had written
in 1910:
1 need not here recall that the collective mind
differs altogether from the individual mind. Its
manner of thought, its motives of action, even its
interests, are different. Of the characteristics
of the collective mind we need only remember its
entire incapacity for reasoning or being influenced
by reason, its simplicity, its emotionalism, and
its credulity. Ideas can rarely penetrate it,
unless they are translated into short formulas
that appeal to the imagination.22
Matthews' unique contribution, I believe, is that here he
took Le Bon's theories and applied them to the theatre,
just as he was to take the principle of the Economy of
Attention, which Herbert Spencer applied only to Rhetoric,
and showed that it was applicable to the other arts,
23
especially to the drama.
In the first of his books about the theatre,
21
Ibid.
22
Gustav Le Bon, "The Competent and the Crowd,"
Educational Review. June,- 1910, p. 4. For more of Le Bori's
theories, see also his The Crowd: A Study of the Popular
Mind (New York: Viking, 1960).
23
Matthews, Papers on Playmaking. p. iv.
Matthews is concerned with "the principle of sternly
24 I
economizing the attention of the audience," and it was
a subject that preoccupied him throughout his career. To
i
Matthews, the audience was always to be the chief consid- !
|
eration of both the playwright and the player. Matthews
was fond of quoting his friend Professor Walkley, who said,!
25
"The drama is immitigably a function of the crowd."
He also liked to refer to Bronson Howard, who had written,
"The dramatist appeals to a thousand hearts at the same
„26
moment; he has no choice in the matter; he must do this.
"The fact is," Matthews wrote, "the psychology of
the theatrical spectator is very much the same in all
climes and in all ages. For a man at the play, understand-;
27
ing is the condition precedent of enjoyment." And else
where :
The difficulty of the dramatist and his great
reward if he can overcome it, is that he cannot
limit his audience to a clique or cast or a sec
tion as even the novelist may. ... He must in
terest men and women young and old, rich and poor,2g
the absolutely ignorant and the highly cultivated.
^Matthews, A Book About the Theatre, p. 27.
25
Matthews, "Papers on Playmaking," p. 16.
26Ibid., p. 15.
27
Matthews, "On Certain Parallels Between Ancient
and Modern Drama," Aspects of Fiction, p. 91.
28
Matthews, "The Importance of Folk-Theatre,"
158
Specifically, what interests such an audience? "Action and
character," says Matthews, "are precisely the qualities
29
which the playgoer . . . demands."
In our own day, Robert Loper has achoed all of this j
when he states, "In drama, perhaps more than any other art
form, we are not passive viewers; we actively participate
30
in the creation of this symbolic action." Matthews was
aware of this "two-way" give-and-take between player and
playgoer, and was prompted to include William Gillette's
remark in his Papers on Playmaking:
Audiences are a most undependable and unusual
species of game. From time immemorial their tastes,
requirements, habits, appetites, sentiments, and
general characteristics have undergone constant
change and modification. . . . The successful trap
of today may be useless junk tomorrow.
*
As the years ran on, Matthews was more and more
inclined to agree with Clayton Hamilton that "the drama is
an art that derives its inspiration from the attitude of
the general and public mind, and you cannot give a drama
Aspects of Fiction, p. 118.
2*Ibid.
30
Robert Loper, "Drama: Communication Through
Action," p. 216.
31
William Gillette, "On the Illusion of the First
Time," Papers on Acting, p. 80.
of ideas to an audience devoid of them.1 1 Yet all forms
of the theatre remained associated in Matthews' thinking,
in that they were all spectacle; they all made their essen
tial appeal to the eye rather than to the ear. In a dis
cussion of Sardou, Matthews wrote: "The dramatic author of
our day has to fill the eyes as well as the ears of his
audience. ... In short, the show part of the play . . .
all of this is now of importance second only to the play
33
itself." And in an essay which he called "The Utility
of the Variety Show," Matthews declared: "The theatre, as
all the arts, had the primary purpose of amusement, but it
remained at the level of mere sensuous appeal, and it was
without value to the man who took his brains to the
theatre.
Such a man was rapidly disappearing, Matthews
thought, from the theatre-going public. Years before,
Richard Allen White had lamented:
The drama, as an intellectual diversion of the
mind from one channel of thought into another, has
32
Clayton Hamilton, writing in the Bookman, n.d.,
n.p.
33
Matthews, French Dramatists of the Nineteenth
Century, p. 182.
^Matthews, A Book About the Theatre, p. 244.
160
passed away. . . . The public, even the cultivated
public, seeks that kind of theatrical entertainment
at which it is not required to think. ... It seeks
only to be amused.35
And George Henry Lewes had stated:
The critical pit, filled with playgoers who were
familiar with fine acting and had trained judgments,
has disappeared. In its place is a mass of amuse
ment seekers . . . the uncultured and miscultured
masses [for whom the theatre has ever to] provide
larger and lower appetites with food.36
The same was true, to a large extent, in London.
Only in Paris did Matthews find a cultivated homogeneous
audience. When he was only twenty-four, he reported:
The bulk of the playgoing people in London do
not belong to the more highly educated classes.
Shopkeepers, stock brokers, clerks in offices, and
idlers from the country form the majority. These
people do not understand French, and prefer the
coarse burlesque of English manufactur and English
performance. In Paris, the theatre is part of the
business of society, and life is accommodated accord
ingly. I went the other night to see the company
at the Odeon and 1 was amazed to see so large and
brilliant an audience in any theatre on a hot night
in the middle of July.37
35
Richard Allen White, "The Age of Burlesque,"
Galaxy. 8:262, June, 1869.
36
George Henry Lewes, On Actors and the Art of
Acting, p. 182.
37
Brander Matthews, Report dated "London, July 15,
1876," in Nation. August 3, 1876, p. 73.
161
Many years later, however, the same Matthews told his
students at Columbia, "A drama to be popular should be
written for the gallery so as not to displease the par-
38
quet."
Yet if a theatre audience is a crowd, having the
same characteristics of any other crowd, it differs from
the others, Matthews believed, in that
... it has come together with the desire of recre
ation, of amusement, of pleasure. ... It is inclined
to resent instruction or edification, since it feels
that the theatre is not a fit place for either of
these useful things. This is one reason why the
chief dramatists have rarely attempted to preach or
to assume the attitude of the instructor. . . . It
has been the strength of the great dramatists that
they were not too far in advance of their time.39
In effect, Matthews suggests, the dramatist must
consciously strive to please the public, keeping sharply
in mind their passions and prejudices. But, can the play
wright never be the crowd's prophet or leader? Must he
always remain content to restate the eternal commonplaces
of life, never seeking to be original or in advance of his
age?
To such questions Matthews would answer an emphatic
38
Matthews, Lecture Notes, Columbia University.
39
Matthews, A Study of the Drama, p. 89.
162
"no." He realized that the playwright who is •'merely a
clever craftsman" has no higher aim than to please the
fancies of the moment. "The taste of the day," Matthews
40
warned, "is never the taste of after days." Rather, the
true dramatist is able to please his own generation by the
depiction of its own faults while still being able to "put
into his work the permanent qualities which make it pleas-
41
ing to the generations that come after him."
Two playwrights of Matthews' era would seem to
refute even this most infallible of his "laws": Henrik
Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill. What kind of crowd was it that
these two dramatists had in mind when they wrote their
plays? In the case of Ibsen, Matthews answered:
The audience Ibsen has had ever in view, the
audience he has always wished to move and arouse,
morally and intellectually, was such a group of
spectators as might gather in the tiny and isolated
village where he had spent his boyhood.42
This theory, Matthews believed, helps to explain
40
Matthews, "Old Plays and New Playgoers," Play
wrights on Playmaking. p. 40.
41
Ibid.. p. 43.
42
Matthews, "Ibsen as Playwright," Inquiries and
Opinions, p. 269.
163
. . . not a little that otherwise might remain
obscure. His own townsfolk supply the constituent
elements of the audience which he Is ever address
ing, consciously or unconsciously. It is their
limited horizon he wants to enlarge; and it is
their lethargy he is longing to shatter.43
O'Neill, longing to shatter those horizons much
closer to Matthews himself, once confessed that his aspira-
44
tions were "torpedoes." As such, they never received the
critical commendation of Brander Matthews. And no wonder.
"I needed no professor to tell me that Ibsen, as dramatist,
, 4 5
knew whereof he spoke," said 0 Neill. He wanted no ivy-
stamped niche in the theatre. He was convinced that he
could learn more out of college than in. Like Shaw and
O'Casey, he ultimately demonstrated that a college educa-
46
tion was not prerequisite to the writing of good plays.
O'Neill's early experience with the theatre through
his father, James O'Neill, more than any other influence,
made him revolt against it. "As a boy," he wrote, "I saw
so much of the old, ranting, artificial romantic stuff,
47
that I always had a sort of contempt for the theatre."
i
43Ibid.. p. 270.
LL . .
Quoted in Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), p. 321.
45Ibid.. p. 112, 46Ibid., p. 118.
47
Ibid.. p. 64.
164 :
The audiences of those days were, nonetheless, memorable
for their enthusiasm. They arrived at the theatre early
and stayed late. They thought nothing of entering a
48
theatre at seven and staying until close to midnight.
The managers felt that they knew what the public wanted,
49
and the plays had to conform to their ideas.
O'Neill, however, determined not only to write plays
about things he chose, himself, but also to make the man
agers and the public accept them. He wanted the stage to
come to grips with big things, and was understandably
offended when his teacher, George Pierce Baker, who was,
in effect, the Matthews of Harvard, allowed Augustus Thomas
to take over the class as a guest lecturer. O'Neill con
sidered Thomas the very personification of all that was
50
hackneyed— albeit successful— on the Broadway stage.
Baker, who, like Matthews, dared to teach "such an
unteachable subject as playwriting," was, if we are to
trust another of his students, John Mason Brown, "the least
..51
dogmatic of men." He did not have any Golden Rules of
Dramaturgy. He did not pretend to turn out playwrights in
48
Ibid., p. 34.
49
Ibid.. p. 272.
50
Ibid.. p. 270.
51
Ibid.. p. 269.
165
ten easy lessons. He was the first to admit that drama
tists are born, not made. But he did hope to shorten the
playwright's period of apprenticeship by giving him some
of the essentials of the craft of playmaking. "And after
his play had been read aloud by Professor Baker and criti
cized by his class," Heywood Broun, still another famous
graduate of "English 47" has written, "if a pupil still
wished to write plays, there was no question that he
52
belonged in the business."
And still O'Neill remains popular today, even though
Matthews was right, 1 think, in asserting that the taste
of one day is not that of the day after. In the time of
O'Neill's father, audience response was clearly a much
more tangible thing than it is in today's relatively polite
and intimate theatre, and managers would go to considerable
pains to measure it. Sometimes a manager would sit in aft
upper box and face the audience during initial performances
of a play to test the potency of the "shock waves" passing
from viewer to stage. The play would be doctored on the
v , * , 53
basis of these waves.
52
Ibid.. p. 273.
53
Ibid.
"The Caste of Che groundlings who stood in the yard
of the Globe theatre," Matthews wrote, "was far different
from that of a New York audience in the late nineteenth
54
century." It was the actor Harry Beckett who once told
Matthews that some of Touchstone's best lines in a Lester
Wallack revival of Shakespeare's As You Like It had to be
shorn in "deference to the increasing squeamishness of
American audiences. Matthews himself wrote that "the
point of view changes with every generation, and with every
change a character is likely to be seen from a different
i «56
angle."
We may safely conclude, then, that Matthews would
firmly agree with Professor Lawson's statement that "the
audience is the ultimate necessity which gives the play-
57
wright's work scope." Moreover, he believed that there
is a "great concerted influence of an audience that in-
58
spires the actor and lifts him far above himself."
Matthews, "Old Plays and New Playgoers," p. 46.
55 56
Ibid. Ibid.
57
John Howard Lawson, Theory and Technique of Play'
writing, p. 220.
58
William Gillette, "On the Illusion of the First
Time," p. 121.
167
Finally, Matthews held that a large share of even
the world's dramatic masterpieces (excluding, perhaps,
some of the works of Ibsen and O'Neill) is due to the
coincidence of its theme and its treatment with the desires
and prejudices of the contemporary audience for whose
pleasure is was originally planned. On the other hand, he
knew that a great play can survive only if this compliance
has not been wholly subservient; in other words, if the
play has retained the solidity of structure and the univer
sality of topic with which it can "win a welcome after the
59
author is dead and gone."
59
Matthews, "On Pleasing the Taste of the Public,"
p. 56.
CHAPTER VIII
MATTHEWS AND HIS CRITICS
Immediately upon their publication, Matthews'
theories of the theatre began to arouse critical contro
versy. While some critics felt that Matthews' articles
and books developed a theory that was both original and
important, others attacked both him and his ideas as being
completely devoid of fresh insight and lacking in critical
judgment.
Joel Elias Spingarn, a fellow-professor at Columbia
University, went after Matthews for his insistence that a
play was intended primarily for the stage, and not the
library. We recall from the discussion presented earlier
(cf. supra. Chapter III) that on this point Matthews placed
himself in the tradition of Aristotle, Caselvetro, and
Sarcey by declaring that "the literary quality is something
that1 may be added to the drama, but which is not essential
to its value as a play in the theatre itself."* But
Brander Matthews, "What a Good Play Really Is,"
Independent. 68:187, January 27, 1910.
168
Spingarn, who had complained that Aristotle could not
"help thinking of plays in connection with their theatrical
2
representation," declared that a play is "a creative work
of the imagination, and must be considered as such always,
3
and as such only." As Professor Flickinger has pointed
out, Spingarn maintained that the aesthetic value of a play
is independent of the theatre; he allies himself with those
who ignore the spectacle as an important factor in their
4
theatrical criticism. In dealing with the plays of past
ages, Matthews managed to avoid confining his attention to
literary criticism, a tendency which has been a particular
weakness of classic scholars.
Gordon Craig, whom, it will be recalled (cf. supra.
Chapter V) Matthews had referred to as a "nursemaid" of
the new theatre movement, had an equally hostile attitude
toward Matthews. In signed, unsigned, and falsely-signed
articles, Craig painted Matthews as one who was hampering
2
Joel Elias Spingarn, "Dramatic Criticism and the
Theatre," Creative Criticism (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1917), p. 56. For more of Spingarn's views, see
his Criticism in America: Its Function and Status (New
York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1924).
3
Spingarn, "Dramatic Criticism and the Theatre,"
p. 56.
^Roy C. Flickinger, The Greek Theatre and Its Drama
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936), pp. xl-xv.
170 |
the progress of the American drama. Reviewing one of
Matthews' articles in the American Review. Craig wrote:
He is said to be American, yet nearly every
thought he utters is the faint meaningless echo of
something said or written by some European. ...
America ought to have no room for such fellows. . . .
Isn't it tiresome to think that such things are
allowed to be let loose in such a wonderful country?
Is there no one else to be found in the whole of
America to fill that chair at Columbia University?5
Some sixteen years later, reviewing Matthews' book,
Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play. Craig concluded:
As early as 1869 he began writing about theatres,
yet as young as he was then, he was and is con
vinced that the methods of today are better than
those of yesterday. . . . Most of his "old-fashioned"
notions are right notions. ... He writes very
tolerantly of modern acting, for he keeps himself
most carefully informed on modern developments.6
One wonders if these later comments really represent a
reversal of Craig's antagonism? It would seem so, for he
ends his review by admitting that he is "unable to find
fault with this last little book by the genial American
'guide, philosopher, and friend' of the late William
Archer."
Allen Carrie, "Fiddle-De-Dee," or "Professor Brander
Matthews' [hie] Infallible Receipt for Making an Omelette
Without Eggs." The Mask. Vol. IV, No. 1 (1911), pp. 19-21.
g
Review of "Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play," The
Mask. Vol. XIII (1927), p. 84.
7 Ibid.
171
William Archer himself never missed a chance to
evaluate a new Matthews book. His criticism remains un
biased by his friendship with his American colleague; he is
never blind to the limitations of Matthews' views. In his
review of Matthews' Moliere. for example, he wrote:
Although this study of Moliere's development
becomes a valuable introduction to dramatic criti
cism, Mr. Matthews seems to confound internal
evidence with aesthetic conjecture, which is quite
a different matter. He does not point out how
much of Moliere's comic effect the playwright
obtained from the adroit use of conventional tricks
of dialogue, or "jeux de scene." . . . The book is
a mixture of anecdote, characterization, and crit
icism . . . and it is inferior in warmth and fresh
ness to that of ChatfieId-Taylor's.®
Three years later, Archer returned to his compara
tive criticism when he ranked Matthews' Shakespeare as
9
Playwright with A. C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy.
And Archer much preferred Matthews' new book on Shakespeare
to the earlier one on Moliere, for he declared:
There is not a single point of any importance
on which, in our judgment, Professor Matthews goes
notably astray. He may fairly well be said . . .
[to do] as great a service to dramaturgic criticism
8
William Archer, "Things in General," London Daily
News, n.d., n.p.
9
A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London:
Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1952),
172 |
I
as Professor Bradley does to philosophical criticism.
. . . And it is worth noting that not in a single
play does Professor Matthews acknowledge the exist
ence of the Baconian theory. His silence is more
significant than pages of argument.10
The American critical point of view, by a large
majority, it would seem, was favorable to Matthews' theo
ries. Still, some of those who disagreed with his ideas
were heard from most frequently. Their attacks began to
increase after the First World War; like Craig, they termed
Matthews' contribution a symbol of "all that is unpractical,
unoriginal, and impotent in America," agreeing further that
Matthews' few original ideas were "downright banal and
vicious."^ "We do not go to the pages of Brander
Matthews," echoed B. W. Wells in the Forum, "for the appro-
12
priate flash of revelation, the keen insight." And it
was the critic for the New Republic who said that "perhaps
Matthews has already said everything he has to say on the
13
true theatre."
10
William Archer, review of Molifere in the London
Daily News, n.d., n.p.
^Carrie, oj>. cit., p. 20.
12
B. W. Wells, "Contemporary American Essayists,"
Forum. June, 1897, p. 493.
13
"R.E.R.," in New Republic. March 3, 1917, n.p.
173 |
i
I
Others felt that Matthews was able to express ideas
that were somewhat "common" with very uncommon ability,
putting into clear and convincing shape that which had. been
felt before. G. H. Hammiell praised Matthews for "the
graceful style, the appreciation of truth and beauty, the
acuteness of the analysis, the fineness of wit, the certi-
14
tude of judgment, the ecumenic mastery of literatures."
The New York Times found Matthews' work to be "of great
originality and import." ^ Hamilton Wright Mabie thought
Matthews' work "inventive, audacious, witty, and entertain-
16
ing," while W. P. Trent declared simply, "There is not
today a critic in this country more suggestive or ilium-
17
inating than Brander Matthews."
Critics also disagreed over Matthews' ability to
"keep up" with the newer developments in the theatre. He
was continually accused of being old-fashioned, out of the
14
G. H. Hammiell, review of "Aspects of Fiction" in
Western Christian Advocate. February, 1903, n.p.
15
Anonymous review in the New York Times. October
24, 1903, n.p.
16
Hamilton Wright Mabie, in The Bookman. December
18, 1896, p. 355.
17ibid.
174
swim of contemporaneous thought and action. "Professor
Matthews' constant attitude, however unintentional," wrote
one critic In the New Republic, "is that of a man who looks
18
backward." According to this group of critics, Matthews
distrusted the future, already seeing tendencies developing
which shocked and puzzled him. At the same time, there
19
were those who found Matthews "a modern of the moderns.
Even the critic for the Mask, it will be recalled, said
that Matthews' "old-fashioned notions are right notions
. . . for he has kept himself most carefully informed on
20
modern developments."
Still, Matthews was attacked for being too rigid,
for forever marking out limits and saying: thus far and
no farther. Matthews seemed to take it for granted that
the forms of society, conduct, and art are all pretty
rigidly fixed. "He is extremely innocent," declared Ludwig
21
Lewisohn in 1922, of either change or creative revolt."
18
"R.E.R.," 0£. cit., n.p.
19
Wells, o£. cit., p. 493.
20
Review of Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play, p. 84.
21
Ludwig Lewisohn, in the Nation. November 22, 1922,
p. 554.
175
For it is true that Matthews would discuss scene painting
and decoration that was as recent as Belasco, but he balked
at Gordon Craig. While he spoke affectionately of the
Black Crook, he left the Russian ballet beyond the pale
of art.
And in many of the newer plays there would seem to
be certain elements which could not be confined by
Matthews' rules and regulations. The critic for the
Literary Review declared sharply: "Matthews' laws are such
half or three-quarter truths that insistence upon them is
mischievous, unless the exceptions are pointed out— which
22
he never does." St. John Ervine, the British critic,
felt that "perhaps Brander Matthews is too preoccupied
with the machinery of the drama while George Jean Nathan
23
is too little preoccupied with it."
Seldom praised by Nathan and other newer critics,
the phrase "well-made play," which Matthews did so much to
popularize, became almost a term of reproach. But Matthews
believed in it and shared Professor Quinn's amazement that
22
Anonymous, in Literary Review, March 22, 1924,
p. 609.
23
St. John Ervine, "Two American Critics," Sunday
Observer. October 21, 1923, n.p.
176 |
"a we11-constructed play should not be recognized as a
24
model." Near the end of his career, Matthews wrote with
deep personal pride, "Today in the first years of the third
decade of the twentieth century, our playwrights know their
^ „25
trade."
The wit at the Players Club who remarked that the
Columbia University group of theatre men were all
"brandered by the same Matthews" was paying a perhaps
, 26
unintended compliment to Matthews influence. It is
easy for the practical worker to forget the debt he owes
to the theorists, a term even today less honored on Broad
way than on Brattle Street.
Is Matthews saying, as William Archer declared he
27
was, that which "ought to be, not what is ? Or is he
too little the critic and too much the scholar? Benedict
Papot in The Drama complained that Matthews' readers "can-
24
Arthur Hobson Quinn, in the New York Sun. November
29, 1924, n.p.
25
Brander Matthews, "The American Drama— Today and
Yesterday," New York Times. January 23, 1921, p. 3.
26
Walter Prichard Eaton, "Playwrights and Professors','
Theatre Arts Magazine. January, 1920, p. 16.
27
William Archer, "Things in General," London Daily
News, n.d., n.p.
1 7 7 !
not help becoming aware of a certain aloofness, a supe-
28
riorlty as it were, to the subject." Suggesting that
the bookshelves devoted to the drama were "dominated by
Matthews1 volumes," Oliver Sayler complained that too many
men were "still under the hopelessly academic shadow of
29
Brander Matthews." The critic for the Boston Courier
felt that Matthews' books "continued to instruct less
30
fortunate fellow-beings at frequent intervals." George
Pierce Baker alone found Matthews "unhackneyed in his
judgments, in places illuminating, and throughout refresh-
31
ingly unacademic."
Similarly, some critics found Matthews too-American
while others found him too-French. George Jean Nathan, who
might not agree with William Dean Howell's estimation that
32
"there are no truer Americans than Brander Matthews,"
28
Benedict Papot, in The Drama. February, 1911, n.p.
29
Oliver Sayler, Our American Theatre (New York:
Brentano's, 1923), p. 127.
30
Anonymous, review in the Boston Courier. February
25, 1894, n.p.
31
George Pierce Baker, "The Dramatist and His Public*,1 '
Lamp. November, 1903, n.p.
9 0
William Dean Howells, "An Appreciation," New York
Times. Review of Books. October 23, 1917, Sec. 4, p. 1.
I
178 |
felt that Ibsen had suffered the American critical
scourge for twenty years because "he had not been born and
brought up in a town with a bust of Cotton Mather or
William Cullen Bryant in its public square," and had not
enjoyed "the same advantages as Professor Matthews in
33
buying liberty bonds at par." Meanwhile, H. C. Brunner
noted that 'taorally and ethically," Matthews' critical
code was "inspired by the impartial and truth-seeking
34
spirit of the purest French thought." Matthews was
accused of winning his spurs by "demonstrating that he
knew more about Paris than New York," perceiving early in
35
his career what New York wanted, and then supplying it.
But we must remember that all of Matthews' theories,
as he himself had admitted, were a synthesis of other
theories culled from several centuries. He openly acknowl
edged his debt to Sarcey and others. This point many of
his critics seem to have forgotten, just as some of the
George Jean Nathan, The Critic and the Drama
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922), p. 140.
34
H. C. Brunner, "Living Critics." Bookman (? 1896),
p. 40.
35
Nym Crinkle, "Brander Matthews and New York's
Smug Literary Set," New York Journal. October 4, 1896,
n.p.
/
179 j
"practical" men of the theatre tend to forget their debt
to the theorists of the theatre. As Walter Prichard Eaton
has written:
If the stage does not owe much to Professor
Matthews, and If the playwrights do not owe much
because of awakened critical speculation about
their art, then there Is no such thing as debt.
. . . When shall we realize that until theory does
enter Into our work, until Intellectual Interest
is awakened In the young, we can have no real crit
icism and no reasoned progress
36
Eaton,'Playwrights and Professors," p. 19.
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Before we are able to draw our own conclusions about
Matthews' theories and their importance, if any, to the
American theatre, it is necessary first to review the main
points as they have been developed herein.
Matthews believed that the drama is an art form that
cannot be considered as merely a subdivision of literature.
He held that, since a drama is intended primarily to be
performed by actors, in a theatre, and before an audience,
it differs from other art forms in that the audience
desires to behold a conflict or clash of character upon
character, Yet, like all other art forms, the drama has
laws that remain unchanging throughout the ages. It is
only their application that has changed from country to
country, and from century to century.
A play has certain conventions, or implied contracts
between its creator and the audience, without which it
could not exist. While some of these conventions are
180
181
essential and permanent, others are local and temporary.
At the heart of every play is an action that can be ex
pressed better in pantomime than in words. And, although
a play may sometimes survive by its literary qualities,
it lives by its immediate theatrical effectiveness.
The playwright, as he composes, must always keep
in mind the players, the playhouse, and, especially, the
playgoers of his own time and country. He knows how to
tell a story with dramatic effectiveness and how to people
it with human beings. He knows how to arouse the atten
tion of the audience for whom he is writing, and he knows
how to retain their attention. Working within strict
limitations of time and space, he is a craftsman who seeks
to improve upon the forms of the past which he has already
amply understood.
The player should look to the playwright for help
in creating the proper dramatic experience for the play
goer. He is disciplined and versatile, able to adapt
himself to varying playing styles and conditions. He
demands from the playwright action and character, the two
requisites of any good play. Finally, the player does not
seek to express his own personality, but strives for a
veracity of characterization possible only on the modern
stage.
Since it is only in the theatre that a play reveals
its full power, the playhouse sets sharp limitations upon
the art of both the playwright and the player, as well as
upon that of the scene designer and the lighting technician
Matthews believed that the gradual historical withdrawal of
the actor from the audience was not necessarily a healthy
change, and was clearly in favor of a ground plan that
would resemble the newest of our mid-twentieth-century
theatre plants. He was also one of the first Americans to
emphasize the importance of stage lighting.
The playgoer, who works as part of a larger unit,
the audience, exerts a more powerful influence upon the
playwright than either the player or the playhouse. The
judgment of an audience is decisive and final, but, since
there are many kinds of audiences, the shrewd playwright
must, before he begins his play, decide which audience he
intends to win. Matthews showed that the principle of the
Economy of Attention is applicable to the drama, whereas
Herbert Spencer had applied it only to Rhetoric. Matthews
analyzed Gustav LeBon's investigations into crowd psychol
ogy and was the first to apply his findings to theatrical
audiences. He showed also that the taste of one generation
is very unlike that of the one that follows.
Conclusions
In conclusion, we can say that Matthews' theories
have survived remarkably well; the principles which he
formulated have become so completely a part of contemporary
theatrical consciousness that they are likely to be
regarded as commonplace. It was Matthews' unique contri
bution to be the first American to offer a code as appli
cable to the plays of the twentieth century as it was to
the plays of the past.
Helping both to prove and to perpetuate these
principles, Matthews' own students have, in their turn,
become teachers and men of the theatre. One reason his
theories remain so practical is perhaps that he was a
practical man himself. Early in his career he realized
that the most helpful theory comes from either the artists
themselves or the critics who have lived in intimate
association with creative artists; and so he chose his own
friends accordingly.
In establishing the tenet that, since drama is
separate from literature, dramatic criticism must have
184
methods of Its own, Matthews set the standard for American
critics of the theatre. By applying his demanding stan
dards for a dramatic critic, we can estimate his own
ultimate contribution. He realized fully his ambition
to disseminate knowledge about the various dramatic arts
and to help raise the standard of appreciation in the
public at large,
I
i
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i
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' .......... '.... ............... ■ "....."200....1
I
j
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1
_______. "The Playwright and the Playgoers," Atlantic
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. "Sardou," The Athanaeum. No. 2357. December 28.
1872, p. 15.
. "Shakespeare and Moliere," North American
Review. 192:317-325, September 1910.
"Two Discussions of the English Drama," Forum.
39:519-522, April 1908.
. "Undramatic Criticism," Forum. 40:497-500,
November 1908.
. "What a Good Play Really Is," Independent.
68:184-187, January 27, 1910.
_______. •’ Why Are French Plays No Longer Popular in
America?" Munsey’s Magazine. 48:467-471, December
1912.
Papot, Benedict. "Review," The Drama. February 1911,
n.p.
Phelps, William Lyon. "A Cosmopolitan Circle," Forum.
38:377-380, January 1908.
Rascoe, Burton. "Three American Critics," Bookman. 56:
222-224, October 1922.
"R.E.R.." New Republic. March 3, 1917, n.p.
■ 201
"Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play." (Review). The Mask.
13:84, 1927.
Stoker, Bram. "Dramatic Criticism," North American
Review. 158:325*331, March 1894.
"Studies and Essays on Dramatic Art," Dial. 16:249,
April 16, 1894.
Trent, William P. "Brander Matthews as a Dramatic
Critic," International Monthly. 4:289*293, August
1901.
Wells, B. W. "Contemporary American Essayist," Forum.
June 1897, p. 443.
_______. "The Evolution of French Criticism," Sewanee
Review. 3:385*409, August 1895.
White, Richard Allen. "The Age of Burlesque," Galaxy.
8:262, June 1869.
Winter, William. "Shadows of the Stage: Ibsenites and
Ibsenism," Harper's Weekly. 54:24, May 21, 1910.
Newspaper Articles
Archer, William. "The Old Criticism and the New,"
New York Dramatic Mirror. September 13, 1890,
p. 6.
_______. "Things in General," London Daily News, n.d.,
n.p.
Crinkle, Nym. "Brander Matthews and New York's Smug
Literary Set," New York Journal. October 4, 1896,
n.p.
Ervine, St. John. "Two American Critics," Sunday
Observer, October 21, 1923, n.p.
" 202
Howells, William Dean. “An Appreciation,“ New York
Times. Review of Books. October 21, 1917, Section 4,
p. 1.
Matthews, Brander. “America and the Juvenile Highbrow,"
New York Times. Book Review and Magazine. January
29, 1922, p. 8.
_______. "The American Drama Today and Yesterday,"
New York Times. Review of Books. January 23, 1921,
p. 3.
. "Books About the Stage in New York," New York
Times. Book Review and Magazine. January 30, 19217
p. 4.
_______. "Concerning a Cosmopolitan Critic," New York
Times. Book Review and Magazine. July 10, 1921,
p. 9.
______. "A Dramatic Innovator," New York Times. Book
Review and Magazine. July 16, 1922, p. 8.
_______. "Edwin A. Abbey, American Artist," New York
Times. Book Review and Magazine. January 22, 1922,
p. 5.
_______. "Gordon Craig as the Nurse of the New Movement
in the Theatre," New York Times. January 18, 1920.
_______. ‘'Making and Breaking Rules of Drama," New York
Times. Review of Books. January 5, 1919, p. 1.
. "Mr. Gordon Craig as 'The Nurse of the New
Movement in the Theater'," New York Times. Review
of Books. January 18, 1920, p. 1.
_______. "The Nurse of the New Movement in the Theatre,"
New York Times. January 18, 1920.
_______. Report of an Interview, New York Dramatic
Mirror. June 27, 1896, p. 141.
_______. "A Study of the Temporary," New York Times.
Book Review and Magazine. March 19, 1922, p. 2.
Matthews, Brander. "The Theatrical Situation," North
American Review. 214:840-849, December 1921.
. "Theories of the Theater," New York Times.
Book Review and Magazine. February 26, 1922, p. 2.
Towse, J. Ranken. "Brander Matthews on the Theatre,"
New York Evening Post. January 17, 1920.
Unsigned Reviews
Anonymous Review, Boston Courier. February 25, 1894, n.p
Anonymous Review, "Production at the Gaiety Theatre on
July 21, 1890," The Illustrated Sporting and
Dramatic News. August 9, 1890, p. 22.
Anonymous Review, Literary Review. March 22, 1924,
p. 609.
Anonymous Review, New York Times. October 24, 1903, n.p.
Anonymous Review, "Production of Margery^ Lovers at the
Court Theatre, February, 1884." The Refere~eT
February 1884, p. 6.
Unpublished Materials
Bender, Jack E. "The Theatre of Brander Matthews."
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1954.
Clemens, Samuel L., Letter to Matthews, from Kingsbridge
London, May 4, 1903.
Kleinfield, Professor Herbert G., Long Island University
Brookville, New York, January 17, 1963.
I
: .... ~. .".~.' ..* ... 204
; i
Matthews, Brander, "Diary," February 20, 1873. j
|
_______. "Lectures on Literature," Columbia University
Lectures. New York: Columbia University Press,
1911.
_______. Lecture Notes, for Commencement Address, !
delivered at Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, June i
17, 1916.
_______, Lecture Notes to Society of Free Arts,
Washington, D.C., November 22, 1917.
_______. Lecture Notes, in Special Collections, Columbia
University Library, New York City.
_______. Notes quoted from Lecture Delivered at the
Writers' Club, Columbia University, October 19, 1925.
Middleton, George. Interview at Players' Club, New York
City, February 10, 1963.
McGaw, Charles J. "An Analysis of the Theatrical Criti
cism of William Winter." Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
1940.
Mulholland, Professor. Interview, Columbia University,
February 10, 1962.
Page, Will A. Press Bulletin for Play to be Produced
at Chase's Lyceum Theatre, Baltimore, Maryland.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Review in New York Sun, November
29, 1924, n.p.
Wells, Henry W. Letter Written to the investigator,
January 2, 1961.
_______. Interview, Columbia University, February 4,
1962.

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Creator Weyant, George Waldo (author)

Core Title A Critical Study Of Brander Matthews' Dramatic Theory

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communications

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,Theater

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Butler, James H. (committee chair), Hadley, Paul E. (committee member), Stahl, Herbert M. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-157911

Unique identifier UC11359266

Identifier 6507243.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-157911 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6507243.pdf

Dmrecord 157911

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Weyant, George Waldo

Type texts

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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