The Interchange of Plays Between London and New York, 1910–1939: A Study in Relative Audience Response 9780231894708

Table of contents :
Preface
Contents
List of Tables
I. American Plays in London and English Plays in New York
II. The Influence of Script Differences
III. The Influence of Subjective Differences
IV. Varying Causes of Successes and Failures
Sources of Data
Footnotes
Bibliographies

Citation preview

The Interchange of Plays between London and New York, 1910-1939

The Interchange of Plays between London and New York, 1910-1939 A STUDY IN RELATIVE AUDIENCE RESPONSE ALICE KATHARINE BOYD

KING'S C R O W N PRESS Columbia Uniuertity. New York ¡948

C o p y r i g h t 1948 by MICE

KATHARINE

BOYD

Printed in the United States of A m e r i c a by E d w a r d s

Brothers, A n n A r b o r , M i c h .

KING S CROWN

PRESS

is a division of C o l u m b i a University Press o r g o n i z e d for the p u r p o s e of m a k i n g certain scholarly material a v a i l a b l e at m i n i m u m cost. T o w a r d that end, the publishers have a d o p t e d every r e a s o n a b l e e c o n o m y except such as w o u l d interfere with a legible format.

The work is presented

substantially as submitted by the author, without the usuol attention of C o l u m b i a University Press.

editorial

PREFACE The present study deals generally with the plays of the Anglo-American stage from 1910 through 1939 and more specifically with the failure of the great popular successes of one country when they are transported to the theaters of the other. It has been a popular generalization of the New York and London critics that British and American audiences do no like the same things in their drama, and that plays fail in transportation because of fundamental and stable differences in the scripts. The problem of my study deals with this generalization. It has been my purpose to investigate the alleged differences between British and American play scripts, and to determine whether or not the differences which appear may logically account for the failure of the exchanged Anglo -American plays. The three decades studied (1910 through 1939) are considered most significant for the investigation, since the greatest volume of transportation occurred during that period. By 1910 the long-run play was no longer the unusual, but rather the more common feature of the theatrical season. Both in London and in New York one hundred performances had become the accepted minimum of success. By 1939 an era of theatrical production was at an end, not only psychologically but even physically, for on September 9 of that year, upon the outbreak of World War n, London theaters were closed by order of the government. Plays transported during the thirty years preceding the war, then, are the logical ones in which to study success and failure of the Anglo-American drama. My investigation of the Anglo-American stage and its plays followed four distinct patterns, that is to say it has involved four separate procedures: 1) the collection and classification of statistical data, 2) the study of critical writings, reviews, and news-reports, 3) the analysis of the mechanics of play-scripts and reflection upon the emotional qualities and effects of these texts, and 4) speculation upon the possible influence of theater elements, other than the

vi

LONDON AND NEW YORK, 1910-1939

scripts, which might account for success-failure. I call this last procedure speculation, since the scripts alone are an element of production which continues to be accessible and are therefore legitimate objects of research. The preliminary study, the statistical research, was necessary for the compiling of lists, as complete as possible, of all British and American plays exchanged from 1910 through 1939. These lists of plays, together with information concerning production dates and runs, are listed in the Appendix. For source materials I relied upon the standard theatrical year books of the London and the New York stage, and upon the theatrical advertisements of The Times (London) and the New York Times. Only first-run, legitimate plays produced in the popular metropolitan theaters have been included, since it is in these plays that the preferences of the mass public audiences should be most evident. In classifying plays as failures and successes, I have used the accepted box-office definition of the terms, which designates as a failure any play which runs for less than 100 successive showings following its opening performance. A play which has run for an entire season, or for more than 300 consecutive performances, is considered in this study a great success. The term "failure," when used in the text of the following essay, refers to failure in transportation, since all of the plays discussed were successful in their original, native production. After the lists of plays were set up, each play was then classified according to its measure of success. Three tables showing plays of similar runs, failure or success with both audiences, and three tables showing plays of contrasting runs, failure versus success, were constructed. These tables appear in the Appendix. The final one, Table VI, showing plays of greatest contrast in runs, represents those plays which are the basis of our study of differences. They are the pieces which were the great "hits* of London and New York, but which upon transportation proved to be "flops* in their foreign productions. It would be impossible to list all the critics from whom I read during the second phase of the study. However, most of the important first-night reviewers (of the daily press) and many of the second-night critics (of the weeklies) are quoted directly in the text, and full credit is given in the footnotes and bibliography. It is unavoidable that there should be more New Yorkers than Londoners among the

PREFACE

vii

first-nighters, for the available New York daily newspapers far outnumber those from London. However, in compensation, I have included a great number of writers for the London periodicals. Through wide and systematic reading from the contemporary criticism of Britain and America, I have found explicit statement, and general tacit agreement, sufficient to formulate what I call in the essay the critics' "theory of differences." This theory proposes that American plays fail in London, and British plays fail in New York, for a general reason, that reason being that the play-scripts of the two nations are so different from one another that the produced plays have no chance to please the foreign audiences. In other words, the Briticisms of the London success (commonly described by New York critics as mild) insure its failure on Broadway, and the Americanisms (called "vulgarisms" by the London press throughout the thirty years) of the New York "hit" prohibit its success with the audiences of London's West End. It is this theory of a general cause of theatrical failure that my thesis challenges. My third procedure was to read the scripts of plays most significantly involved in the phenomenon of failure, to analyze them and to appraise their emotional effects. The plays so studied are the fifty-four American and British plays which were great popular successes in one country and immediate failures in the other. The analysis, involving the investigation of the mechanics of play-making, yielded negative results. I found few and relatively insignificant differences between British and American play-scripts in the objective tests of separate elements. In the subjective appraisal of emotional tones of the two dramas, a procedure highly reflective and speculative, I found differences both pervasive and profound. But, when I checked the differences which appeared in the failures in transportation, with those elements and emotional tones which appeared in successful British plays in New York and in the successful American plays in London, I found that they were the same. In other words, British plays which the American audiences liked were as full of Briticisms as were those which failed in New York, and vice versa. The reason for failure in transportation cannot, then, lie in the stable and fundamental differences between the scripts of the two dramas. The findings of the investigation just described are the basis for the thesis of my essay — that a generalized cause for failure in theatrical transportation, based upon

vili

LONDON AND NEW YORK, 1910-1939

differences between the play-scripts of the two nations, does not exist. But the formulation of the thesis that the critics' "theory of differences" does not account for failure of the AngloAmerican plays does not state my conclusion fully. It is my opinion that a play succeeds or fails in transportation, just as it fails or succeeds in other production, not for some general reason, but for many particular reasons. A produced play is a unique phenomenon. It does not fail because some other play has failed but because, in itself, it does not have the elements of popular success. Furthermore, these reasons for failure are so various that to formulize one of them into theory is theatrically unrealistic; to attempt to predict success or failure on the basis of one of them is absurd. Miscellaneous theatrical elements which contribute to the success or failure of plays may not be studied systematically. For obvious reasons they elude the researcher. However, some speculation is possible. As a final step in my study, I have explored three tenable reasons (of many possible ones) for the failure of the plays in this study. This procedure is, assuredly, of a highly speculative nature, but the conclusion to which it leads - - that plays fail for many particular reasons rather than one general one - - i s based upon wide research, intensive study of the plays, and continued reflection upon the phenomenon. The scope of the study is limited. I have dealt with a theatrical, not a socio-historical, phenomenon. For this reason, because I was concentrating upon stable and fundamental differences between British and American plays, I have not attempted to follow trends, to interpret tendencies or to judge ways in which the Anglo-American drama may or may not reflect the temper of its peoples or the mood of its times. My problem was to study what people like in the theater, and for this study I assume that audiences go in mass to see what they like, or at least what they think they will enjoy. Here, too, my study is limited. It is not my problem to judge whether or not the box-office success is the "good" play, or whether the function of the drama is to amuse the audience or to make money for the producer. These philosophical questions have been argued by critic and playwright, from Aristotle to Kaufman. Suffice it to say, the assumptions upon which this study is based are frankly: that the play does not exist to be "good" or "bad" without an audience; that, in metropolitan London and New York, the

PREFACE

ix

play of a full season's nan is the play which is most likely to have the most representative public audiences, in which case London-New York would be for all practical purposes synonymous with Anglo-American. Although the subject of the study may be described as narrow, there can be little doubt that the audience for such a study will in no sense be a specialized one. For even the most casual playgoer has some opinion about the differences between American and British plays, and there can be few of us who in the last thirty years have not seen at least one of the transported plays listed in the tables. Besides this general appeal, the essay and appendix should have definite educational value. For this study adds to the organized knowledge of world theater in presenting facts not heretofore accessible in this form; it breaks one of the current cliches of critical thinking by offering considered opinion on the subject; it emphasizes anew, by stressing the uniqueness of the produced play, such values as individuality, concreteness, freshness, values shared by all works of art; and it provides for the student of the theater a systematized approach to the "meanings" of the play, both mechanical and emotional. My debt to my sponsor, Mr. Milton Smith, professor, lecturer, and director of the Brander Matthews Theater of Columbia University, is great indeed. I must thank him not only for clarification of my problem and for guidance throughout the course of the study, but also for the stimulation his clear thinking about the theater and his teachings in it have given me. To Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature, Columbia University, and dramatic critic of The Nation, I wish to express my gratitude for his continued interest in the study and his enthusiasm for it; for the inspiration of his lectures, his writings, and his conversations on the drama; and for his meticulous criticism of the text of the essay. Mr. James Oscar Campbell, Professor of English, Columbia University, has given me generously of his time, his enthusiasm for the theater, and his advice throughout the progress of the study. Mr. Irwin Edman, Professor of Philosophy, Columbia; Mr. Erling Hunt, Professor of History, Teachers College; Miss Magdalene Kramer, Professor of Speech, Teachers College, have read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions. Many of my friends should share in these acknowledge-

X

LONDON AND NEW YORK,

1910-1939

ments, since their conversations have often clarified and focused my ideas on Anglo-American drama. I must thank, especially, Mr. Lucian Quitman Campbell, late dean of Hardin-Simmons University, for many years my teacher, colleague, and friend, who offered valuable criticism on the manuscript during the few weeks before his death. It was he who first showed me that love of the theater and a passion for scholarship were not incompatible. A. K. B.

CONTENTS I. AMERICAN PLAYS IN LONDON AND ENGLISH PLAYS IN NEW YORK IL THE INFLUENCE OF SCRIPT DIFFERENCES. . . Subject-Matter T h e a t e r Conventions Dynamics o r F o r m

1 11 11 15 20

III. THE INFLUENCE OF SUBJECTIVE D I F F E R ENCES B r i t i s h Moderation and A m e r i c a n Intensity . . . . B r i t i s h Clarity and A m e r i c a n Confusion Romantic Faith and Realistic Common Sense . . . The Cause of F a i l u r e ?

36 37 49 55 60

IV. VARYING CAUSES OF SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

67

Conclusion SOURCES OF DATA

80 84

FOOTNOTES

107

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

116

LIST OF TABLES

A. Plays cf the London and New York Stage (19101939) Exchanged With the Least Amount of BoxOffice Success

8

1. British and American Plays Produced With Great Success Both in London and New York, 1910-1939

85

2. British and American Plays Produced Without Success Both in London and in New York, 19101939

86

3. British and American Plays Produced With Moderate Success Both in London and in New York, 1910-1939

88

4. British and American Plays Exchanged With Varying Success in London and New York, 19101939

90

5. British and American Plays Exchanged Without Success in London and New York, 1910-1939. . . .

92

Chronological Record of the Anglo-American Theater, 1910-1939

97

I AMERICAN PLAYS IN LONDON AND ENGLISH PLAYS IN NEW YORK

The commercial theaters of New York and London exchanged more than five hundred plays during the thirty years which preceded World War II. This volume of theatrical traffic between Broadway and West End from 1910 through 1939 is one of the most interesting phenomena of the English-speaking stage. Anglo-American dramatic exchange is not in itself a novelty. Intercultural relations of this sort have continued through one hundred and fifty years of almost unbroken good will, following the production of William Dunlap's Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil (1797) in London's Covent Garden.1 During the nineteenth century, the London public became increasingly curious about American plays; and in New York, even after the emergence of native playwrights, English plays were, in general, more popular than the native pieces, and in recent years some English playwrights were more enthusiastically received by American audiences than they were in London. Today, it is customary to think of Somerset Maugham's transatlantic reputation as unusual. It should be remembered, however, that Maugham's fame in the Anglo-American theater was antedated one hundred years by the career of John Howard Payne, the first AngloAmerican playwright. But despite a continuous history of one hundred and fifty years, the Anglo-American stage assumed, only in recent decades, an important position in the modern theater, a development which gives to its plays significance in the English-speaking drama. The importance of Broadway-West End production during the twentieth century might well rest on sheer volume. More than five hundred plays were exchanged between 1910 and 1939 (inclusive), and during middle 1920's there were as many as twenty-five or thirty transportations each year. Nearly three hundred playwrights were concerned in the total transaction. Two authors enjoyed consistent success when transplanted: Sir James Barrie's

2

LONDON

AND

NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

plays were continuously popular on Broadway and Bayard Veiller's melodramas never failed in West End. Others met with mixed success: Maugham had six successes out of ten, Shaw four out of nine, Coward six out of ten, O'Neill two out of four. These authors were among the best known and most popular of British and American playwrights. But the majority of the three hundred Anglo-Americans of this period were one-play authors, that is to say, authors whose productive c a r e e r s were represented by one transportation each, and in most cases this one venture in transoceanic production was a failure. Volume alone, however, cannot explain precisely the significance of Anglo-American theatrical exchange, nor have the critic and public been interested chiefly in numbers. It is the relative response of the two audiences which has given real significance to the phenomenon. Now it is obvious that all British plays could not win popular approval in New York; not every American play could be a "hit" in London. The first questions which naturally suggest themselves to the reader a r e "How many transported plays were succesful?" and "What chance did the importation have of being a ' h i t ' ? " An answer to the f i r s t question lies in the statistics. The data on "runs" for the three decades covered by this study show that one-third of the total number of the transportations ran for more than one hundred performances - that being the "magic figure" accepted in London and New York as the minimum of success. Twenty-six plays, out of the total of five hundred twenty, were performed more than three hundred times consecutively; that is to say, twentysix transportations ran for more than an entire season and were considered "smash hits." Eight of these great successes were New York productions of British plays, and eighteen were American plays performed in London. 2 (It should be noted, in passing, that nine of the American plays were produced during the years of World War I when London was filled with American soldiers and interest in American plays would naturally run high.) In speculating on the second question, concerning the probability of success, one would infer that the imported play had a one-in-three chance of being popular with the foreign audiences, since only onethird of the five hundred plays ran for one hundred performances. The most tantalizing feature of the thirty-year dramatic traffic, however, and the one which most directly relates to

AMERICAN PLAYS AND ENGLISH

PLATS

3

this study, is to be found not in the successes but in the great number of failures. To repeat, two-thirds of all the transported plays ran for less than one hundred performances in their foreign productions and many of them (ninety out of five hundred twenty) failed in both the native and the foreign production. But the plays of most interest to the student of the Anglo-American stage are the plays which were "smash hits" in one city and "flops" in the other. For it is in the runs of these plays that the greatest difference of audience response is evident, and it is in these plays that one might expect to find the significant differences between the popular successes of one country and those of the other. Fifty-four plays of this study show such a contrast of runs. Twenty-eight British plays ran for more than three hundred performances in London and for less than one hundred in New York, and twenty-six American plays had similar histories first in New York and then in London. It is this group of plays, primarily, with which this essay deals, since a comparative study of modern British and American plays from the point of view of differing audience response is the chief problem. Almost as if by merely crossing the Atlantic fifty-four plays were turned overnight from great popular successes into box-office failures. What was the sea-change they had suffered? Why should a play which had been an acknowledged "hit" in one country fail to win popular support in the other? Was its lack of appeal due to some unfulfilled audience expectation? Was it so unlike popular native plays that it seemed too strange for its new audience, too unintelligible for their understanding, or too distasteful for their emotional acceptance ? These are questions which have troubled many people on both sides of the Atlantic. The producer's concern is obvious for his investments are at stake. The public, whose concern is more casual, continued throughout the period to baffle him by its reactions, neglecting one importation after having applauded a similar one the season before. The critic whose task it is to make articulate, perhaps to find meanings in, this panorama of success and failure focused attention on the foreign elements in the scripts of the new importations. Throughout the thirty years, especially during the last two decades, he repeatedly said in one way or another, "That sort of thing may be very well in New York but it won't do here," or "London audiences may like that but it won't go here." This theme seems to

4

LONDON

AND NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

have established itself in contemporary criticism. In other words, the critics almost without exception seem to say that British plays fail in New York because they differ from American plays, and vice versa. "No form of art is more essentially national than the drama." 3 Echoes of this generalization by Mr. Arthur Hobson Quinn, noted American theater historian, were heard in the daily p r e s s for two decades. This is not to say that the critics consciously accepted a theory of national differences, or that many of them explicitly developed the theme. But the concept must have been part of their generally accepted c r i teria for judgment, or of the prejudices and opinions out of which they wrote. Most reviewers, at one time or another, expressed agreement, or implied it. The idea was in the air. Whether by design or by accident the body of critical writings reflects it. The following reactions are, apparently, typical of the New York reviewers' attitude toward the great popular successes imported from the London stage: "passing over these vastly national differences..."; "we mean to raise no national issues...but..."; "one of those things in which hands, however willing, may not be clasped across the sea "; "a considerable success over there. Ordinarily that is a sufficient reason for New York to turn a cold shoulder upon it..."; "The very things which made...a success in London are likely to hurt its chances in Manhattan. It is almost as British as..."; "odd fodder for the sophisticates of New York..."; "its chief drawback is purely a matter of geography..."; "its leisurely gait may be all right for a London fog, but it is not fitted to the mad hurry of a clear day in Manhattan." 4 The London critics, too, were ready to predict failure for the imported American plays which in New York had enjoyed great popularity: "the best sort of harsh American satire, fizzling with wise-cracks...you are recommended to go to it quickly. For though it has had a deservedly enthusiastic press, we are not confident that it will have a long run. The British playgoer detests satire." "This I take it is a satire which in New York bites home because it is true. Here it is not true and fails to bite." "Mr. Swetland contributes one of the sketches...quieter and drier sort...which a r e to the English ear a relief." "If English audiences take this adapted Broadway success to their hearts I shall be delighted...and bewildered...I fear it just won't do...sentimental drivel, unworthy of this theater's fine traditions [produced at the Haymarket]." s

AMERICAN PLAYS AND ENGLISH PLAYS

5

A complete and colorful statement of contrasting audience response is to be found in Mr. John Mason Brown's essay "English and American Tastes," in which he presents what might be considered a summary of the position of the New York daily press: The North Atlantic has widened If she [the mother country] frowns on what we think is funny...we are just as apt to yawn over her old wives' tales.... They find us curious; we find them strange.... They will put up with talk...we demand action. They are loyal to age...we like youth and change...hoping for American dramas which r e veal us as the foolish savages which they secretly trust we are. We continue to hope for plays...something different from the stolidly arrogant.... They laugh at our sentimentality; we roar at theirs.... To our impatient spirits, most English dramas move more slowly than do the elevators in New York's Public Library.... They [differences] must find their way into any candid picture of the theater of this decade, since during that time they have emerged as one of its most pronounced and tantalizing features. [1939] 6 In London, reviewing one of the last American plays to be produced there before the closing of the theaters in September, 1939, Mr. Desmond MacCarthy wrote for the New Statesman (London) an incisive statement concerning the attitudes of American and English playgoers: (Of Mice and Men) ...about tough guys with warm hearts... confidence of its appeal to the conviction that at bottom plain human nature is sound and splendid is characteristic of America. This is the deepest difference between America and Europe. In Europe such a feeling is apt to be merely sentimental...a pretense which people leading sheltered lives nourish in themselves because it looks kind and comforting. But in America it is instinctively believed and common property A by effect of this faith in human nature is that it leaves the American playgoer free to revel in a surface cynicism of comment and laughter such as horrifies English audiences; for he cannot be frightened, man is all right. This is not the theme, but it enters into the spirit of the play.... 7 The fullest development of the theme of national differences is to be found in the writings of Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, dramatic critic for The Nation (New York):

6

LONDON AND

NEW YORK,

1910-1939

The intelligentsia understand one another fairly well, but the intelligentsia do not count for very much after all, and when the People are concerned it is a different story. Your Englishman thinks of us as being crude, and perhaps we are; but the forgotten man in London seems adorned with provincial naivete which would bring a blush of shame to Main Street...but years of experience with the kind of play which England really takes to its heart have driven me to the conclusion that over there your average citizen is unsophisticated to an amazing degree.... His wholesomeness knows no bounds.... Faced with the same play, your average American is vaguely uncomfortable. He may not be any more profound, and he may be no less taken in by current cliches, but he does feel something uncomfortably old-fashioned about your genuine British hit. It reminds him too keenly of class day at high school when he was a boy.... The American playwright rushes in where Englishmen if not angels are these days afraid to tread. He is prone to deal with passions rather than sentiments, and with aspirations rather than regrets. Whether he succeeds or fails, he is for strength, and he is determined to deal with contemporary life in its most vigorous, even its most spectacular, aspects. The English dramatist, on the other hand, seems to have lost his nerve. He generally aspires to nothing above sentiment, elegy, common sense, and a minor fidelity to minor happenings. His comedy is whimsical rather than either boisterous or intellectual, his drama underemphasized and almost apologetic. Nor are these differences, I think, merely differences of style, for they probably correspond to some fundamental differences of spirit. The American still has faith in life as a possibly passionate and exciting thing. He still believes that extraordinary events can, do, and ought to happen. He still feels instinctively that the true meaning of life is to be found in such events. But the Englishman no longer believes in passion and adventure. They make him feel self-conscious, and he is not quite up to them. Drama seems to him hardly possible at all, and when he does undertake to write it he turns to the few things in which he still believes - - the minor adventures of a politely restrained aristocracy or of a quite resignedly commonplace middle class. 8 This statement, together with the accompanying prediction of failure for Autumn Crocus (the play under review),

AMERICAN

PLAYS AND E N G L I S H

PIAYS

7

might have been the final answer to a troublesome critical problem. But, unfortunately, the box-office returns of the plays upon which these judgments were based did not support the argument. The typical British play, which according to Mr. Krutch's predictions should have failed instantly, did in fact run for two hundred ten performances, and the typical American play which the New York audiences should have received enthusiastically closed after a three weeks run of twenty-eight performances. Most playgoers will r e member Autumn Crocus. But the typical American play, Chrysalis, has long been forgotten except by those who are still puzzled over its failure. It may be that ¿uch experiences with the box-office fiasco (and Mr. Krut was not alone in his mistake for most of the daily p r e s s predicted failure for Autumn Crocus) caused the critic to reserve his judgment to some extent. At any rate, first-night New York critics did sometimes admit that they dared not damn a show because of its Briticisms: I once predicted that Bird In Hand was too slow and simple-hearted for American success, and look at the darn thing now [a New York run of 500 performances]... I am even more sure of the slowness and simplicity...but I know better than to show Many Waters to the door. 9 In 1939 the question was still an open one. There are, perhaps, quite valid reasons why it may never be answered conclusively, one reason being that the contribution of the production toward success or failure cannot be measured accurately by the historian. Since, however, the scripts of the plays involved do continue to be available, and since the assumption of the critic seems to be that the principal differences lie in the scripts, one aspect of the problem can be explored. It may be true, as the critics seem to assume, that differences between British and American play scripts a r e the cause of failure. If this is true, we should expect to find significant differences in the scripts of plays which were the greatest successes in one country but immediate failures in the other. For great contrast of audience response should, in this case, point to significant differences between the plays. It is characteristic of the plays upon whose scripts this study is based that their box-office histories in London and New York show the greatest possible contrast of audience response. The data of this contrast is to be seen in the following table:

TABLE A PLAYS OF THE LONDON AND NEW YORK STAGE (19101939) EXCHANGED WITH THE LEAST AMOUNT OF BOX-OFFICE SUCCESS* British Plays

Title of Play

Date of Date of New London New York London York Production Production Run Run

Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse, The Black Limelight Dear Octopus Dominant Sex, The Fanatics, The Fresh Fields General Post George and Margaret Ghost Train, The Good Companions, The Great Adventure, The Hay Fever Little Bit of Fluff, A Marigold Man From Toronto, The Middle Watch, The Night Must Fall On Approval Paddy, the Next-BestThing Richard of Bordeaux Sport of Kings, The Spring Meeting Sweet Aloes Ten Minute Alibi, The Tilly of Bloomsbury Wandering Jew, The While Parents Sleep Yellow Sands

1937 1937 1938 1935 1927 1933 1917 1937 1925 1931 1913 1925 1915 1927 1918 1929 1935 1927

1937 1936 1939 1935 1927 1936 1917 1937 1926 1931 1913 1925 1916 1930 1918 1929 1936 1926

492 464 376 437 312 484 332 799 655 331 673 337 1,214 649 486 387 435 469

80 64 53 16 16 80 72 86 61 68 58 49 17 13 23 29 64 96

1920 1932 1924 1938 1934 1933 1919 1920 1932 1926

1920 1934 1926 1938 1936 1933 1920 1921 1934 1927

867 472 319 311 476 878 414 391 826 610

54 38 23 98 24 89 79 69 16 25

* Anglo-American plays running for more than 300 performances in one city and less than 100 in the other.

TABLE A (Continued) American Plays

Title of Play

Date of Date of New London New York London York Production Production Run Run

Adam and Eva Another Language Boomerang, The Bought and Paid For Boy Meets Girl Coquette East is West Fortune Hunter, The Little Accident Merton of the Movies On Borrowed Time Once In a Lifetime Porgy Road to Rome, The Room Service Seven Keys to Baldpate Seventh Heaven She Loves Me Not Showoff, The Strange Interlude Strictly Dishonorable Tea for Three Whispering Wires Women, The Yes, My Darling Daughter You Can't Take It With You

1925 1932 1916 1913 1936 1929 1920 1913 1929 1923 1938 1933 1929 1928 1937 1914 1927 1934 1924 1931 1931 1920 1927 1939

1919 1932 1915 1911 1935 1927 1918 1909 1928 1922 1938 1930 1927 1927 1937 1913 1922 1933 1924 1928 1929 1918 1922 1936

10 73 44 84 65 20 40 50 65 30 5 95 30 20 90 57 42 20 35 42 45 66 30 66

312 344 495 431 669 366 680 345 303 300 321 406 367 442 500 320 704 360 571 426 557 300 352 657

1937

1937

56

405

1937

1936

10

837

10

LONDON AND NEW YORK,

1910-1939

The questions posed by this study are these: Are the critics right in their assumptions of national differences and justified in their predictions of failure ? Do British and American play scripts show marked differences ? If so, what are those differences and do they cause the failure of transported plays in New York and in London?

II

THE INFLUENCE OF SCRIPT DIFFERENCES In view of the wide spread acceptance of the critics' "theory of differences," I made a study of the alleged reasons for failure when British plays are transported to New York and when American plays are transported to London. Two methods are possible in such a study; one is an objective analysis of the scripts, the other is a subjective appraisal of the quality, or qualities, which the plays exhibit. One deals with measurable elements of the dramatic texts which can be isolated and enumerated, the other with the emotional qualities of the plays and their effect on the reader. In the search for differences both methods have been used, since neither in itself would be adequate to the general problem. The present chapter deals with the differences which appeared in the quantitative analysis of script elements, and the relation of these differences to the failure of British plays in New York and of American plays in London. In the objective comparison of the scripts three separate .elements have been considered. They are subject-matter, theatrical conventions, and what are here called the dynamics of the drama, including the kind of hero, the plot, and the rhythm. Subject-Matter

Subject-matter may be analyzed from three points of view. First, the basic themes (sometimes called storyformulas, plot-situations or motifs) which the authors have used in building their plays may be determined and counted. Next, the references, in dialogue and in dramatic action, which clearly indicate some consciousness of national character may be listed. Finally, the emotions which emerge as the basic motivation for character development or of plot action may be considered. But whatever the category, it is the differences between typical British elements and typical American elements which are pertinent to the problem.

12

LONDON AND NEW YORK, 1910-1939

I The analysis of the scripts from the point of view of themes and story-formulas showed, first, that in general each British play and each American play was based not on a single theme but on a combination of themes. Although in occasional plays certain themes were emphasized so clearly that they emerged as main motifs, still there were always minor themes interwoven with or converging upon the major ones. The Dominant Sex, for example, is patently a play concerning the battle of the sexes. But it is also, and perhaps no less patently, a study of character disintegration and of the struggle of personal romantic love caught in the clash of opposing moral codes. 1 Perhaps this complexity, this interweaving of themes, is surprising. Yet more surprising is the diversity which these plays show. For the authors have used so many and so various themes that no particular motif stands out as typically British or as typically American. It is true that British plays are somewhat more frequently based on the familiar' theme of family life, and that American plays are somewhat more frequently concerned with the general theme of business or professional life. But in each group the number of scripts which fall into these categories is less than onehalf the total. In other words, although there are more British plays of family life and more American plays of business life, the disparity is not great, nor is the difference significant. The best examples of these contrasting themes are to be seen in the British plays Dear Octopus and George and Margaret, and in the American plays The Fortune Hunter and The Show-Off. Besides the two motifs just described, there are various classic themes used: "the revolt of youth" forms the basic theme for The Fanatics, in which the post-war British youth rebels against his father's class and their moral codes, as well as for Another Language, in which an artistic daughterin-law challenges the philistine, mother-dominated family of West Side New Yorkers; "the battle of the sexes" is the theme of Sherwood's The Road to Rome, as well as of the British satire The Dominant Sex. Sweet Aloes and Seventh Heaven are stories of "character regeneration," whereas Richard of Bordeaux and Strange Interlude are stories of "spiritual disintegration." The well-worn formula "loveversus-duty" is used in both British and American plays, such as Tilly of Bloomsbury and Coquette; the persistently

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13

popular "Cinderella" theme or the "from-rags-to-riches" formula is used, though with varying emphasis, in both Novello's Fresh Fields and in George Kaufman's Merton of the Movies.'A few plays are about criminal practices (The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse and Whispering Wires), and fewer still are based on historical incidents (Marigold and The Road to Rome). Lastly, there are two American plays of slum life, Porgy and Seventh Heaven. But no one of these themes exists in a sufficient number of plays to be called a distinct pattern of American or of British modern drama. British plays are varied rather than stereotyped; that is to say, they do not fall into conventionalized patterns but are written on many different and varied themes. But since a similar diversity is to be found in the American plays, it is evident that in this element of subject-matter the two groups of plays are not markedly different. II Quantitative analysis of the references to the socio-cultural heritage of each country brought to light some interesting contrasts. But the only way in which the British scripts, in their attention to national traditions, social customs, or racial character, differ from the American is in their apparent preoccupation with questions of class distinctions. The majority of British and American plays do not refer, even casually, to their diverging national traditions. Their characters do not speak often of the superiority of British or of American character, nor does the dialogue often r e flect hostility toward foreigners. 3 Both groups of authors seem to take for granted in their audiences an attitude of mild philistinism towards the arts. The people in British and American drama play some of the same games; they speak of books, but not too seriously; they refer to their common education occasionally and rather vaguely. The Americans are more often "joiners," for they mention their clubs more pointedly than do the British. The British make more ado of their habit of tea-drinking than do the Americans of any similar habit. Detailed discussion of references to tea-drinking, the joining of clubs, books, education, and games is included in the final section of this chapter. Other vivid, though isolated, references which seem to have chauvinistic intent are to be seen in the following quotations:

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LONDON AND NEW YORK, 1910-1939

"There's something terribly attractive about an English gentleman. I wish I'd been born one instead of a Duke"; "There you are - - now you can sit and rule the waves like we pretend Britannia does"; "following the Colonel from one end of the British Empire to the other"; "We're a r i s tocrats, that's what we are, and stand for dignity and sense, and England at the helm of the earth, where she ought to be"; "fair play and British sportsmanship"; "Poor Oliver was exceedingly gullible, just the kind of person those dreadful foreigners would take advantage of"; "We have a habit of raising our eyebrows at anyone who chooses to live outside of England"; "You'd bury him in Westminster Abbey because he's a philanthropist not because he's an artist. That's England all over." 4 "You mean marry the frayed-out end of a long line of ancestors ! No, I care a damn sight more about keeping my name in Bradstreet's than I do about getting it in the Blue Book"; "Say the passing of the Old South distresses you"; "Yankee Doodle. I learn it at the Christian Mission"; "Lincoln walked four miles for a book. Yes, but you ain't studying for President"; "she'd [teacher] give me high enough to pass anyhow if she wasn't a Bolshevist or something." s But with the exception of discussions of class distinctions, there seems to be no particular significance in these r e ferences to the national, social and cultural heritage. The transported American and British drama is in no sense chauvinistic in the true meaning of the term. Ill The modern plays of England and America, at least those which were exchanged with the least amount of success, are not based on the classic emotional drives of jealousy, r e venge, and ambition. Although these emotions enter into the motivation of some of the plays, notably Tea For Three in which the action is motivated primarily by the jealousy of the husband, Richard of Bordeaux and The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse, which are plays of revenge and ambition, yet no one of them predominates in either group. The complete analysis shows that the motivation of the plays comes most often from a desire for self-realization or self-expression, as in Sweet Aloes and You Can't Take It With You, or from the desire for personal domination, as in The Sport of Kings and The Show-Off. But since no patterns of emotional motivation appear in either group, it would seem that British and American plays do not differ in this respect.

SCRIPT

DIFFERENCES

15

The analysis of subject-matter shows that British plays, in general, do not differ markedly from American plays. Only in the discussion of class distinction is there to be found an objective difference which seems important to the problem. (This point is developed later in the chapter, together with other positive findings.) Theater

Convent

ions

If the popular drama of England or of America were tradition-ridden in the usual meaning of the term, this condition should manifest itself in a slavish use of accepted theater conventions. If, on the other hand, either drama tended to be experimental or revolutionary, in the popular sense, objective evidence of the trend should appear in these plays. Hence, the second analysis of the British and American plays with which this study deals involved an examination of type, setting, structure, stock character types, and devices for comedy, which in any age of dramatic production would be considered important conventions. I The great majority of the plays of the popular theater, both British and American, are comedies. No new type seems to have evolved in the drama represented here. There are farce comedies, sentimental comedies, domestic comedies, character comedies, and satires. But no single type predominates in either the British or the American group. II The conventional drawing room (or living room) is used more often than any other setting. Note, however, that the action is confined to drawing rooms in 53 percent of the British plays, but in only 23 percent of the American. Some British dramas, it is true, had as many as nine or ten other settings, and, just as in the American plays, these non-drawing room sets were extremely varied, thirty-eight different kinds of sets being used in the British and thirty-seven in the American plays/But, to repeat, 53 percent of the British plays used drawing rooms for all of their sets, and 90 percent of them included the drawing room for at least one scene. It is, then, in the predominance of the conventional setting that there appears a second objective element in which the British plays differ from the American.

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III Structurally, that is to say in the number and arrangement of the act divisions, these plays are similar, for they use, in general, the three-act structural formula. There are a few exceptions: Strange Interlude with nine acts; a few plays with from ten to nineteen scenes such as She Loves Me Not and The Women, The Good Companions and Richard of Bordeaux. But these multi-scene plays are exceptions to, not examples of, the rule. In one or two instances, unusual structural devices have been revived from the past, such practice being illustrated by the soliloquies in Strange Interlude and the flashback in Black Limelight. In general, however, there is no structural difference between the modern American and British plays. IV Stock character types appear with about equal frequency in both American and British drama. Furthermore, they are no more conventional in one group, nor less diverse in the other. There are pedants and duped fathers who might correspond to the dottores and pantalones of the comedia. There are Lord Dundrearies and Rip Van Winkles, types which grew up in the nineteenth-century theater. There are comic rubes, country louts and henpecked husbands. A few contemporary examples of these traditional types may serve to explicate the point. The negro quack divorcelawyer in Porgy is a modern variation of the pedant who makes a ridiculous show of his learning, and the comic clergy of Tilly of Bloomsbury and Marigold serve this comic purpose for their plays. Whether or not Charlie, the novelist in Strange Interlude, is an example of O'Neill's comic intent is debatable; he is, nevertheless, a pedant, and as such might be thought of as a new psychological development of the conventional type. Duped fathers appear most unmistakably in Coquette and Spring Meeting. Lord Dundreary is the prototype for the detective in The Ghost Train and for Lord Andrew in Adam and Eva, for these characters are empty-headed, vapid young Englishmen, after the manner of the mid-nineteenth-century comedy. Gramps, the principal character of On Borrowed Time, and Uncle Dick, the reprobate rationalist of Yellow Sands, are modern Rip Van Winkles, ne'er-do-well, lovable old men. The "rube" type is clearly illustrated in Jimmy of Bought and Paid For,

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

17

whose torrent of vulgar Americanisms is said to have delighted London first-nighters, and in Una, the clumsy colonial of Fresh Fields. The henpecked husband in George and Margaret is paralleled by Mr. Hallam in Another Language. The London and American audiences must have enjoyed similar appeals, for the same types recur in the drama of both countries. 1 But the type most often used is the scheming servant. Now it should be noted that domestic servants appear in the scripts of 50 percent of the British plays as well as in 50 percent of the American plays so that the presence of the servant, per se, could not be typical of either drama. There is, however, a slight difference in the number of intriguerservants, that is to say, of those servants who in one way or another help to manipulate the plot. This is the function of the maid in Adam and Eva, who first becomes a partner in the new family business, then convinces Adam that Eva is not really in love with Lord Andrew, thereby helping to effect the happy ending for the lovers. The same plot-function is served by the wicked butler who, in The Sport of Kings, discovers Amos Purdie's secret vice of betting on the horses and who then leads him into the folly of impersonating a bookmaker at the races. Both the American maid and the British butler are scheming servants. But the difference in the number of plays in which the servant performs a plot-function is slight, only 10 percent in favor of British. The distinction becomes even less significant when we realize that this domestic intriguer represents, in only three plays, the "institution" commonly understood by the term typical family servant. These three plays are While Parents Sleep, Spring Meeting, and Coquette. Nanny who works behind the scenes to protect her charges in While Parents Sleep, and James the butler who acts secretly as father confessor to Sir Richard's brow-beaten household in Spring Meeting, are the two typical British family servants. The only American equivalent of Nanny and James appears in Coquette. But here the negro mammy, despite the potential dramatic interest of her role, seems to be sketched in hastily and with a lack of enthusiasm which suggests either that the authors were aware of an impotence before their dramatic material and therefore neglected it, or that they tried but were unable to infuse new life into the old convention. Mammy, whatever her role in the life of the South, meaningless in this play. The truth is that neither frequency in

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the use of character types, nor their fidelity to theatrical convention constitutes a distinction between British and American plays. V Stage humor cannot be adequately analyzed in the script. It depends too much upon the resourcefulness, the personality, the inventiveness, and the timing of the actor to be a fruitful subject for literary criticism. We "catch* the joke from the actor and from the audience around us, but the social contagion which is the essence of stage humor is entirely absent, except in imagination, when we undertake to "see" the point in the study. Nevertheless, there are c e r tain objective tests, limited though they be, which may be applied to the humor of British and American plays. The firt>t and simplest of these involves a distinction between physical and verbal humor, that is to say, comedy which arises out of the physical situation in the dramatic action as opposed to comedy which arises out of some verbal contradiction in the dialogue. Upon examination, it appeared that even in the most lively farces verbal and physical humor exists in the same quantity, or occurs in approximately the same number of instances throughout the scripts. This was true of both British and American plays. But as has already been indicated, this measure does not take into account the natural inventiveness of the actor or the resourcefulness of the producer, so that it is an inadequate instrument for analyzing the comedy of these plays. The more richly humorous comedy of character and the more subtle evidences of the author's comic attitude are not to be understood by the objective method. In a further search for differences between British and American humor, the plays were studied for their use of classic comic devices, but with further negative results. For example, the number of plays using the traditionally comic method of disguise were counted, and it was found that this device appeared in approximately the same number of British and American plays.8 Both the physical disguise of "mask" and the psychological disguise of assumed personality are used in the two groups. The device of reversal of situation, in which, for example, the child lectures the parent, and the classic trick of the interference of two series of events are used in both the American and the British comedies.

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19

Physical disguises are the source of humor in The Sport of Kings, in which the hero impersonates a notorious bookmaker, Panama Pete, and his children go to the races in the costumes of the pantomime. Mr. De Pinna, in You Can't Take It With You, disguises himself as a discus thrower and becomes the model for Mrs. Sycamore who in turn is disguised as an artist. Psychological disguises are used in Adam and Eva, Boy Meets Girl, and Ghost Train. Adam assumes the role of father during Mr. King's absence and much of the humor of the play depends on this "mask," since he falls in love with his temporary daughter; Rodney is heir to an earldom, disguised as a Hollywood extra, in the movie satire; and the detective in the British mystery assumes the role of the empty-headed fop in order to catch the criminals.' Obvious examples of the reversal of situation are to be seen in Yes, My Darling Daughter and George and Margaret. In the American play, the daughter cross-examines the mother on the misconduct in her past, while in the British comedy the maid lectures the mistress on the suitability of her marriage to the son of the house. The device of "interference" is the method used when a character speaks in the meanings of one series of events and a second character speaks in the meanings of another. Such is the situation in Fresh Fields when Lady Lilian, author of a column of advice to the lovelorn, converses with Una, who has just "got herself in trouble" by breaking the hostess' valuable vase and by hiding it in her muff. The final scene of The Boomerang shows the doctor making love to the girl while he is examining the leg of a patient. The comedy of this situation depends on the interference of the medical vocabulary and the amorous pantomime.10 But these investigations have proved to be of little use. It is my opinion that any objective study of devices for humor is worthless especially when examination is confined to scripts. In this category the present analysis is most patently fruitless, for the method is, admittedly, inadequate to the subject matter. The analysis of the theatrical conventions used in these plays shows that British plays differ from the American plays only in one respect. The drawing-room setting is the favorite setting of the popular British drama but not of the American.

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Dynamics

1910-1939

or Form

The strongest appeal which the play makes for the sympathies of the audience lies in the hero, the protagonist. Upon him the emotional energies and responses of the audience are focused, and through the plot of his story these emotions are organized and fully communicated. It seems logical, therefore, to suppose that differences between British and American heroes and between the plots which energize them would determine largely the differing responses of the two audiences. If differences should be found in these elements of the scripts, they should be important ones in accounting for the failure of British plays in New York and of American plays in London. I The most practicable method of analyzing these heroes would seem to be that of classification by type. Are American heroes the young business man type, or the middle-aged housewife type? Are British heroes playboys or prostitutes or common men? A classification of the plays from the point of view of type of hero showed that there are no patterns or types among these men and women who are the British and American dramatic protagonists. There are young wives, lonely widows, business men, bell-hops, mechanics, fishermen, etc. But no single kind of person appears often enough to be called an archetype. Individual heroes rather than group heroes predominate in the scripts of this study, a fact which suggests that both New York and London audiences liked plays in which their sympathies were focused persistently upon one concrete character. Such a unified appeal, we would suppose, evokes a unified and strong emotional response. The individual-as hero, then, would have the advantage over the group-ashero, since the appeal would be less diffuse; and by his very concreteness the individual would be stronger, emotionally, than the more abstract idea-as-hero. Such individual protagonists are Linda of Sweet Aloes, Purdie of The Sport of Kings, Nat of The Fortune Hunter, Mary of The Women, each of whom is the individual whose fate is the principal concern of reader or audience and who struggles through the crisis. By contrast, the Bliss family is a group hero in Hay Fever. Their troubles and our

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

21

interests lie in the fact that they as a unit have on their hands an assortment of guests to whom they cannot play host in the usual sense of the term. The struggle, if the action of the play can be properly so called, is that between family and guests. Grandpa Vanderhof and his brood are the group protagonist of You Can't Take It with You. But in Dear Octopus it is not the family group which is hero; it is the family "idea," that is to say, the conception of family as an English institution which is the dominant force, and therefore, the center of our interests. An example of the idea-ashero in American plays is the romantic story-formula of "boy meets, boy loses, boy gets girl" in the farce about the movies, Boy Meets Girl. Idea-as-hero is the protagonist of one American and two British plays; it is not a favorite device of the popular theater. 1 1 The hero may be further classified according to the nature of his struggle. He may become involved dramatically with another individual or with a group; he may struggle with his own inner nature or with some outside force, either social or spiritual. Many playwrights bring their heroes "up against" 12 a complicated array of opponents rather than a single one, although one opponent may stand out predominantly in the struggle. Two clear examples of this practice in playwriting can be seen in Strange Interlude and Yellow Sands. Nina may be regarded as the best example of this hero-versus-a-combination-of-antagonists. She struggles against a group of lovers (father, friend, husband, lover, son), against her own inner nature, against fate, or as she says "God the Mother" who turns in the end to "God the Father." A further example of the complex struggle in which the issues are more concretely defined appears in Yellow Sands. Joe is "up against" the injustice of economic inequality, and a group of his own relatives and friends who will not be convinced of the possible benefits of socialism. But he is also "up against" his own inability to carry his ideals to a practical fulfilment. However, in the majority of these plays the salient struggle is between the individual protagonist and the group antagonist. Such is the struggle in Adam and Eva, in which Adam, the hero, is "up against" Eva's family. She soon joins him

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as an accomplice, but as she never shares with him equally in the struggle, it remains throughout an example of individual-versus-group. But the same struggle-pattern predominates in the British plays as in the American. Considered objectively, then, the British hero does not differ from the American either in respect to his own nature or in his struggle pattern.

n The plot of any play is a rather complicated affair, but it must have, as Aristotle says, a beginning, a middle, and an end. In no one of these three parts did I find measurable differences between the British and the American scripts. In general, both British and American plays start in the chronological middle rather than at the chronological beginning of the story. This in medias res beginning is illustrated in The Show-Off, for the courtship of Amy and Aubrey Piper is well underway before we meet the hero of this story, and he has already begun to dominate the household.13Most of the opening scenes have a relatively smooth, or legato, attack. 1 * The hero enters, in most instances, soon after the raising of the curtain and following a moderate "build-up. "15 The issue is joined near the middle or at the end of the first act, that is to say, the hero comes to grips with his opponent and the theatrical excitement of the play begins during Act L16 The exposition is usually presented through one of the time-honored techniques: The prologue (in modern plays the favorite method is not the declamation but the dramatic scene, although one play, Night Must Fall, does open with a declamation-prologue, the judge's sentence upon the play's hero), the gossiping servants, the confidant, the visiting neighbors, the scene of retrospect or the soliloquy.17 The characters presented during the exposition are, in general, either involved in or are present throughout the denouement, thereby giving a sense of compactness to the end of the play. In all these technical features of the plot the British and American plays are alike in the "beginning." Perhaps the best way by which to indicate ways in which these plays are "well-made" in the legitimate, not the sat i r i c , sense of the term is to present all these objective

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

23

plot-elements as they appear in one single play. Since the story of Porgy is probably more widely known than that of any other play of this study, having enthusiastic audiences for each of its three forms — play, opera, and novel — it seems wise to use the American drama of Negro life in Charleston's "Catfish Row" for the illustrative purpose. Furthermore i n Porgy we have the benefit not only of the familiar story but also of a skillfully developed technical structure. Porgy starts at the chronological beginning of the story, not in medias res. Porgy is the exception therefore in the first aspect discussed in connection with the "beginning." We know this to be true because the real story of the play is Porgy's love for Bess, not Porgy's entire life as cripple of the slums, and the play opens with the first scene of his association with the prostitute. The attack of the opening scene is legato, showing the normal life of the Negro quarters, including a crap-game. The small amount of necessary exposition is given in the conversation of neighbors and crapshooters, and it includes the fact that Bess is Crown's woman, that she is a dope fiend, and that Sportin' Life would like to take her to New York to shine in one of his "houses." The entrance of Porgy in his goat-drawn cart follows soon after the rise of the curtain, without great build-up other than the change of tempo at his entrance. The issue is joined when Bess is left to seek protection from the police after Crown, drunk and crazy, cheats at dice, starts a brawl and kills one of the players. Bess enters Porgy's room and is not turned out, despite the fact that she is hated and suspected by the entire quarter, especially by the women. Incidentally, the neighbors who feature in the exposition of Scene 1 are present and take part in the denouement. The effectiveness of the "middle" of the play in its appeal to the audience depends to a large extent upon the use of the 'great scene," the reversal of fortune scene. In Porgy the scenes in which the hero meets some reversal of fortune, falling from happiness to despair or rising from uncertainty to triumph, are especially effective. The first of these "great scenes," as they are called by Mr. William Archer, 18 shows Porgy upon an empty stage. All the picnickers have

LONDON

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marched away in great jubilation to the outing of the "Sons and Daughers of Repent Ye Saith the Lord." Porgy is particularly happy because Bess has just told him that she is his woman now, and also because the women of the quarters have invited Bess to go with them on the picnic as a respectable member of the community. But Porgy's elation is shortlived. As the songs of the Negroes die away, the shadow of a circling buzzard settles over Catfish Row. Upon Porgy's door, it stops. Helpless cripple that he is, Porgy cannot drive it away, and he sits dejected, knowing with strange Negro intuition that calamity has come upon him. The second "great scene" is in the third act, and takes place offstage. Crown, the fugitive murderer and heretofore the bully of the quarters, returns to take Bess away from Porgy. He enters their room (offstage) in the middle of the night, is surprised and murdered by Porgy, so quickly and so silently that Bess who has been crooning to the motherless baby does not know what has happened until Porgy laughs. This is really the cripple's great moment of triumph. The third scene of reversal of fortune takes place in Act IV after Porgy's release from jail and Bess' departure for New York with Sportin' Life. Porgy enters the court-yard in.high spirits, his goat-cart loaded with gifts. These he has bought with the money paid him as coroner's witness fee. The Negroes are too stunned at first to tell him what has happened during his absence, and Porgy displays his gifts excitedly, climaxing the exhibition with a flourish of the red dress he has selected for Bess. Little by little, the fact that Bess has gone is made clear to Porgy. It is then he knows his moment of greatest despair. These three scenes of reversal of fortune are varied in technique, one happening behind the scenes in the darkness, another taking place in a silent courtyard and with the stage-effects of the circling buzzard's shadow, the last demanding a crowded stage and lots of action. The scenes a faire (those obligatory scenes which the audience has come to expect and ardently to desire) rank with the "great scenes" in determining the effectiveness of the play's progression. In Porgy, they are necessary for one or more reasons. The storm scene in Porgy is obligatory for

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

25

three reasons; because of its dramatic effectiveness, because the preceding scenes have led to it inevitably, and because the action itself demands it; the storm is the only cover under which C rown can return to the quarters from his hiding place on Kittiwah Island. The meeting of Crown and Bess after the picnic is a necessary scene for it shows a change of will in Bess, and makes the murder of Crown desirable and inevitable. The murder, itself, besides being theatrically effective, and demanded by the preceding action, is obligatory in that it illustrates the theme and shows the effect of love in Porgy himself. None of the techniques discussed in connection with Porgy has been neglected by the British and American authors of the other plays. The "great scenes" are presented sometimes through quick action, sometimes through logical argument, at one time through emotional hysteria, at another through quiet suggestion. But the methods are parallel in the two groups of plays and there are no typical methods emerging as patterns. There is a similar parallel in the use of the scenes a faire or obligatory scenes. Some of these are necessary as an illustration of the theme of the play, others show change of will in the hero. Some are demanded by the preceding action, others are important for their dramatic effectiveness. A few are demanded by history or legend. All of these motives are represented in both the British and the American plays. Furthermore, the nature of the scene, whether it be a love scene, a murder, an emotional outburst, an offstage action or a scene whose emotion or idea is supported visually by the use of concrete propertybusiness, gives no indication of difference. All appear in both British and American plays, and no one of them is characteristic of either group. 19 As for the denouement, the end, two methods prevail, the first being perfectly illustrated in the final scene of The Show-Off, in which the moment of greatest tension, the climax, is separated from the final curtain by a scene of commonplace trivialities, a sort of framework of relaxation. After Aubrey has established himself firmly in the house, the play closes with a situation similar to that of the opening of Act I, with its commonplaces of domesticity. Mrs.

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Fisher is bitterly grumbling over her knitting and her two daughters are punctuating her speeches with remarks on the new Delineator fashions. The curtain falls on a play that, even after the high tension of the principal struggle, has already placed itself in a framework of "art" rather than that of the complete "illusion" of life which it otherwise might have seemed to be. The opposing type of denouement, in which there is no such framework, but in which the closing situation is in fact the moment of highest tension, is found in the curtain scene of Black Limelight. The police turn on the lights suddenly and seize the murderer, two one-line speeches, Margaret faints, curtain. The British plays are about equally divided in their use of these two methods. But the same is true of the American; it is evident, then, that in this respect the findings continue to be negative. British plays do not differ from American plays in the mechanics of their plots. The appeal to the audience which is the function of plot seems to be the same in the popular theaters of both London and New York. This element, then, cannot account for the failure of these plays when they are transported. m Rhythm, like humor, c&n be fully apprehended only in the theater. It is not legitimately a subject for study, because the profound and important rhythms of a play are emotional tensions and relaxations which can be sensed only vaguely in the script and can be known only in the presence of the living actor. However, there is a superficial way in which the rhythm o of the play may be analyzed. The actual speed of action may be partially determined by the number of entrances and exits in a scene. The majority of the plays, both British and American, have from 100 to 140 entrances and exists indicated in the scripts. One British play has 221, and one American play has 254; these two fastest plays are The Middle Watch and Once in a Lifetime. Most of the British plays concentrate their movement in the second or third acts, notably While Parents Sleep (Act I, 13; Act II, 15; Act m, 28) and Sweet Aloes (Act I, 34; Act n, 30; Act m, 48). But most of

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

27

the American plays concentrate their speed of action in Act I or Act II, as for example, Seventh Heaven (Act I, 65; Act H, 20; Act in 20) and The Boomerang (Act I, 45; Act n, 59; Act m, 29). This, no doubt, gives to the American play the deceptive appearance of being faster than the British. 2 0 But so far as general speed of action is concerned, the British failures in New York do not differ markedly from the American failures in London. There are only three ways, and two of them obviously trivial, in which the British plays differ from the American plays. The British authors confine the action of their characters to drawing-room settings more often than do the American playwrights; the people in the British plays drink tea more often than the people in the American plays; and the importance of class distinctions enters persistently into the subject-matter of British drama but not of American. In comparison with the more dynamic elements of hero, plot, and theme, these differences are superficial and insubstantial so f a r as audience appeal is concerned. Nevertheless, they are the only objective differences appearing in sufficient quantity to be of real value in the study. The following discussion will deal primarily with these positive findings. Now that we have isolated the objective differences in the transported failures, cam we conclude that these differences are the cause of failure ? Are British plays unpopular in New York because they have drawing-room settings, scenes of tea-drinking or discussions of class distinctions? Do American plays fail in London because they lack these things ? The answer to these questions lies in the analysis of the successful transportations. A simple count of the settings for the successful transportations shows that the same percentage of drawing-rooms appear in them as in the settings of the failures. The action of the popular British plays is more than likely to be confined to drawing-rooms, and the action of the American plays which ran for more than one hundred performances in London may be almost anywhere. Inseparable from the drawing-room setting is the teascene which might be thought of as an excuse for the family ensemble scenes. The trivia of the tea-table are included as business in more than one-half of the British failures. In or.e-fourth of them, the tea-scene is part of the exposition, a fact which would seem to indicate that British plays tend to "get off to a slow start" because of time consumed in polite tea-table conversation. But upon closer examination,

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it appears that in only two plays of this study is thè tea-table exposition presented in the conventional manner. 21 In some cases, as in Hay Fever and Spring Meeting, the tea arrives only at the first act curtain; and although the characters have talked about or waited for tea throughout the first act, they actually get through the exposition and the inciting incident without the expected "business." So whatever justification there might be for saying that British plays are "tame," it does not seem to lie in the mechanics of the teatable exposition. There are other uses for the tea-scene besides that of providing business for the exposition. The climaxes of the second acts of Tilly of Bloomsbury, Fresh Fields and Dear Octopus take place at the tea-table. These scenes are used to emphasize character conflicts or to highlight comic dialogue, and are integrated into the action of the plays very skillfully. But the same things can be said of the tea-table situations in British plays which succeeded in New York. In Easy Virtue the inciting incident and the climax are both scenes of the tea-table. The same is true of The Shining Hour. The problem of The Admirable Crichton is posed during "high tea for the servants every Tuesday" when they are entertained by the master of the house. The most important character relationship of Heartbreak House is established in the teascene. The characters of Call It A Day fall in love over the tea cups and the family of The Distaff Side settle their most vicious quarrel at the tea-table. Further examples might be added without changing the pattern. But the significant point is that tea scenes are exploited more often and more frankly in the successful British plays than in the failures. The conclusion might be that the more British the tea scene the more successful the play. Although an awareness of class distinction seems to characterize the personages in most of the British plays of this study, only 45 percent of the failures deal directly with class problems or carry pertinent references to such interests in the dialogue. The majority of these, that is of the 45 percent, argue against the importance of class distinctions. They either ridicule old customs or, in their climaxes, break down the barriers of social stratification. In only four of the twenty-eight failures is the status quo of class distinctions accepted without question, or represented as victorious in the conclusion. 22 Among American plays there is only one, Coquette, in which one group of people are accepted as better than another

SCRIPT

DIFFERENCES

29

simply because of circumstance of birth, and the caste system of the Old South, as presented in this drama, would be absurd if it were not, in fact, so pathetic. Several plays emphasize economic distinctions between one group and another, but these discriminations are not treated seriously as the fundamental issues of the plays. Furthermore, the lines of demarkation are not fixed. The characters are considered important for what they are rather than for what they have. British plays, then, tend to lay more stress on the importance of class distinctions than do American plays. But is this the chief cause for the failure of British plays in New York? It does not seem so. Two of the greatest successes among British plays in New York are "class" plays. Bird In Hand and Journey's End, though excessively British, were very popular in America. Furthermore, they correspond to the two larger groups of failures: those which argue successfully against classes, and those whose actions are based upon class assumptions which are never questioned. Bird In Hand devotes almost its entire playing-time to discussions from every possible angle, of the benefits and dangers of class distinctions. The central character is the proud common man who "knows his place." He is as British as Jess Oakroyd (The Good Companions), another commoner, and equally "as grim, rugged and indomitable as the British nation."23 Journey s End, on the other hand, presents a group of young public-school Englishmen who never question their class assumptions even in the trenches. Viewed objectively, Captain Stanhope for all his charm is an unmitigated snob. He protects an upperclass coward merely because he was from the same school. His only intimate among his officer group is the schoolmaster-gardener. Sorrow and rage at the unnecessary death of Osborne, symbol of the hero's class life, blinds Stanhope to the solid merits and bravery of his next in command, a commoner. His treatment of the well-meaning Cockney at the moment of the attack is almost inhuman. Yet, in spite of this obvious snobbery, perhaps because of it (who knows?), Journey's End is one of the memorable plays of the modern British theater, always popular with American audiences. Captain Stanhope remains one of our most lovable dramatic heroes. There are other British plays, successful in New York, which deal with the assumptions of the British upper classes. Heartbreak House with its ironies, Loyalties with its futilities, Cynara with its cruelties are all part of the tradition.

30

LONDON AND NEW YORK,

1910-1939

Easy Virtue will not let the reader forget that English "country" life may be narrow but it is solid and "healthy." Escape will not let the reader forget that the lower classes are incapable of the subtleties of life. The Green Goddess takes for granted that the English ruling class cannot be beaten by cunning, and The Admirable Crichton suggests that the upper-class Englishman is too much an opportunist to stay beaten in any "reasonable" world. The attitude of the lower middle-class English school teacher in Autumn Crocus is interesting. The host at the Tyrolean Inn, even though in his own village he is a man of some wealth and distinction, is beneath the notice of the "Lady of the Spectacles" because he waits on the tables and his wife does the cooking. In other words, they are servants and, therefore, lower class. But the attitudes of the servants in Fanny's First Play and The Admirable Crichton are even more interesting. In both plays the butlers show their masters that they, the servants, are the better men. But in the Shaw play the servant is all common-sense, whereas in the Barrie play the servant is master only in the laud of satiric make-believe. Perhaps there is some significance in the fact that Shaw's butler is the brother of an earl and his master only a tradesman. So in each play the classes sift to their own "proper" level. All of these plays were popular in New York. It seems fairly certain that American audiences like the "class" plays of England, and are not particularly interested in plays which argue against the class system, Bird In Hand being the notable exception. The three objective differences just discussed represent contrasts of kind as well as differences of degree. As has been shown, references (in the dialogue or dramatic action) to class distinctions do not have the same meaning in American plays as similar references do in British plays. Likewise, the number of British plays containing these references to class distinctions is far greater than the number of American plays which contain such references. The are other categories, however, in which difference in number and difference in kind do not coincide. Americans have often been called "joiners." If we considered only the number of plays referring to clubs, and not the kind of references, that is to say, if we accept statistics without evaluo +

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SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

31

"joiners" and to differ in this respect f r o m the British. The percentages show a difference: 53 percent of the American plays and 10 percent of the British plays r e f e r to clubs of one sort or another. But in only three scripts of the American group do clubs, or does belonging to clubs, determine the motivation of character or contribute to the subject matter in more than a casual way. These plays are Coquette, in which the country club crowd acts as foil for Norma's lover; Porgy, in which the club picnic of the "Sons and Daughters of Repent Ye Saith the Lord" serves as the setting for a major crisis; and Adam and Eva, in which one of the principal characters is presented as a confirmed "joiner" of literary clubs. It is evident, therefore, that evaluation is as important to our problem as the percentages themselves; and that even in quantitative analysis complete objectivity is unconvincing, in that findings may be inconclusive if not reinforced by evaluation. There are other ways in which statistics alone would give a false conception of differences between British and American plays. Concerning references to games, it has been stated that the people of British and American drama play the same games. In this category there is a parallel in the number of plays concerned (60 percent and 65 percent). Furthermore the kinds of sports most often mentioned, in both groups, are horse-racing, golf, and football. So that the references to games show similarity both of number and of kind. But in the references to literature, there is a difference of kind though not of degree or number, that is to say, though the number of plays of both countries which contain references to books is about the same, the kinds of r e f e r ences a r e different. Statistics are deceptive, also, in the category of references to education. The numerical difference might be significant, 39 percent to 65 percent, and the schools referred to are undoubtedly different, but the degree to which ideals and practices of education become a part of the dramatic subject-matter, in either country, is of no importance. It is these categories, references to educational and literary awareness, which I shall now discuss. In the first case, that of references to education, we shall see that difference in kind does not confirm the difference in number; but in the second case, that of literary allusions, it is evident that the difference of kind takes on an importance which would have been missed if we considered only the similarity of numbers.

32

LONDON AND NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

About one-third of the American plays previously defined as failures in London, speak of college education for all, but only four universities a r e mentioned specifically. These are Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia, and the references appear in connection with a football game, inter-collegiate boat-races, the communist revolution, and commencement with "lots of fireworks. " 2 *In other plays which refer to education the characters usually speak of the belief that every one can, should, or must go to college, or they boast of their experience in the time-honored "university of hard knocks. " 2 5 English public school life, though not a particular school, is mentioned in two plays. In each of three plays one of the principal characters is from Oxford. 2 * The significant point, however, which should not be overlooked, is that college life as a subject-matter is used directly in only one American play of this study and indirectly in one other. Public school life plays no important part in any of the British plays. As a measurable element, therefore, educational ideals and practices appear insignificantly in the subject-matter of these plays (even though there is a difference in the number of references), and the appeal may be considered negligible in demonstrating differences between British and American plays. Nevertheless, education cannot be dismissed thus summarily. Its practices, to be sure, are neglected, but its effects may be apparent in the dramatic subject-matter of America and England. And the educational heritage of the two countries may be reflected, may be present in objectively countable form, in the number and kind of literary references which these plays contain. Among the transported failures, Shakespeare is the only author to whom reference is made in both British and American scripts. In the latter he is usually misquoted, or quoted correctly and to the point by the most unpopular character of the play.21' Robinson Crusoe is the only story mentioned in both groups of plays. Americans read the Literary Digest, Delineator, and Variety; British characters read Tatler, Spectator and Sketch. 29 Only Sketch has any popularity; it is mentioned in four plays. The classic masterpieces and periodical literature f a r e badly in the modern popular theater of both London and New York. However, though there may be only a slight difference between British and American plays in the number of literary references, there is a difference in kind. The Americans

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

33

mention their books rather vaguely as "any new books" or "in that kind of book," the " E l s i e " books or the Jack London books. 30 But, as in the use of allusions to Shakespeare, when they attempt direct references, they almost invariably m i s quote them. The satires on the movies are rich with these verbal abuses, 31 and even in the sophisticated The Women, the Countess cannot distinguish between D r . Jekyll and M r . Hyde. It is only in Strange Interlude that the characters deliver their literary references with precision and cogency. Even in this play, however, for O'Neill seems not to have escaped the general American attitude of Philistinism, literature is used negatively. It becomes a symbol of "dessication" in the professor devoted to the study of the classics, of impotence in old Charlie, or of self-deception in Nina whose "no more depths, please God" scene reminds us of Macbeth's "no more sights." 3 2 In fact, the literary references used in the American drama seem to leave with the reader an almost completely negative impression. British plays, on the other hand, are more varied and more exact in their quotations. The characters are fond of nursery rhymes and stories of childhood, such as Mother Hubbard, The Spider and the Fly, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland; and they integrate the references appropriately with their dramatic situations.33 They read "penny dreadfuls," but they also read East Lynne and the Brontes. 34 In the case of Beau Geste, they even name their popular race horses after popular fiction. 35 They compare their own problems to situations in literature and identify themselves with the people of the classics, as is the case when Manfred calls himself the "Cyrano of the suburbs." 3 6 They quote accurately and at appropriate moments f r o m Tennyson, Kipling and Wordsworth. 3 7 But the significant point about books as part of the subjectmatter for these plays is not that they furnish a small source for entertainment, but rather that they affect the character of the works very superficially. Only four American plays depend in any way on books or literary interest for their appeal.38 Only two British plays, besides the two " A l i c e " plays, make their points through a literary reference. 3 9 Nevertheless, there is a persistent residual impression that British plays are more dependent on literary interests for their effectiveness than American plays. Granted such an impression, even though we have seen that such a d i f f e r ence is not of great import, what is its relation to the

U4

LONDON AND NEW YORK, 1910-1939

failure of British plays in New York? Do British successes reflect literary interests which are different from the failures? Are British successes less dependent on such interests than the failures? The answer is no. The number of successful plays in which the writer must presuppose in his audience an interest in books and literature is amazing. The appeal to the audience's interests in literary traditions can be seen in several ways. The most obvious of these is in the trick of lifting a title for a play out of an appropriate, familiar quotation. "I have been faithful to thee, Cynaral in my fashion," "The wicked flourish as the green bay tree," "the fault, dear Brutus..." are examples of quotations which have been so used. The phrases underlined are the titles of British plays successful in New York. Other titles, such as There's Always Juliet and A Kiss For Cinderella, are intended to suggest parallels between the modern plays and familiar stories. Literary interests are reflected in characterization as well as in titles. Very often a principal character will be identified with or motivated by a particular book or author. The unacceptable daughter-in-law who reads Proust, the romantic child who loves Rossetti, and the lower-class inventor who reads and admires William Morris are examples of such characterizations. 40 Besides these, there is the butler on the desert island who carries a book of poems in his pocket;41 Blayds who is a poet and a scoundrel; the husband of Spring Cleaning who is a novelist. In Heartbreak House the philanderer is compared with Othello because he seduced maidens with wonderful tales of his adventures, and Captain Shotover, of the same play, is a kind of ancient mariner. The judge of the impromptu court of love claims his fee by quoting Shakespeare "Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty";42 and the soldiers going into battle repeat for comfort the dialogue of Alice in Wonderland. 43 To pursue the point further, there are some British plays, successful in New York, in which the most dramatically effective scene is a repetition of a classic situation. Juliet's balcony scene, even the exact speeches of Shakespeare's text, is the pattern for Act n of Autumn Crocus. To the Reverend Mr. Davidson, the prostitute becomes a "daughter of Zion" in Maugham's Rain, and the play owes much of its emotional power to the Hebraic imagery of the dialogue, made familiar to us in the Bible. The gentleman fugitive from justice plays the "chocolate soldier" in Scene 2 of

SCRIPT DIFFERENCES

35

Escape with some of the grace of Shaw's famous mercenary, and with equal success; in the final scene, in his meeting with the priest, the same escaped convict becomes a kind of Jean Valjean, without the candlesticks. Although Shaw's caricature of the contemporary dramatic critics does not fall within any one of these classifications, it must be assumed that the audiences who found delight in Fanny's First Flay had some knowledge of and interest in the current theater and aesthetic criticism of the day. Since literary interest is very definitely a part of the modern British drama which succeeded in New York, we can only conclude that American audiences like such plays. It does not follow that this characteristic would be an important one in explaining the failure of other British plays in America. Objectively, then, there are only three ways in which differences between British and American plays are found in quantity sufficient enough to be significant. In the British failures in New York, drawing-room settings predominate, tea-scenes are found more often than in American plays, and discussion of class-distinctions is an important part of the subject-matter. But, as has been pointed out, these objective differences are few in number and superfioial in import. And, as the discussion of each element has shown, these differences are characteristic of the successful plays in New York as well as of the failures. These few objective differences cannot, therefore, be the chief cause of failure. But if the cause of failure does not lie in quantitative differences, perhaps it is to be found in qualitative differences, that is to say, in contrasts which can be indicated only on the basis of a reader's conception of the general mood and tone of the plays. In such conceptions of differing qualities may lie the answer to the problem. Criticism in this vein is subjective rather than objective, it deals with emotional impressions rather than with separate elements, and its aims are synthetic rather than analytic. The appraisal of differing emotional tones in British and American plays will be the next problem of this essay.

I l l

THE INFLUENCE OF SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES To say that British and American plays do not differ greatly in their subject-matter, conventions or form is not to answer completely the question of characteristic differences. For drama is more than a sum total of separate elements and its effect is more than an objective appraisal oi them. Drama is fundamentally emotional. And the plays of the modern theater must, in some way, suggest the emotional attitudes of their writers and of the audiences which find them satisfying. Certainly the theatergoer feels this to be true, even though he may not be able to define exhaustively an emotional attitude or to explain completely its presence in the play. Critics, notably Mr. Krutch and Mr. MacCarthy, have developed this theme of emotional differences in their interpretation of single plays. They have suggested also that some fundamental difference of spirit, or contrasting attitudes toward life held by the audiences, may be illustrated in the popular theaters of the two countries. It is my feeling that something of this sort must be true. For there can be no doubt that the emotional tones which pervade the American plays are not those which, in British plays, suggest the quality of that drama. Though it is not my purpose to relate the qualities of the plays to the emotional temper of the people, I do propose to indicate some of the aspects in which I have found these plays emotionally memorable, and in ways which are different. Reflection upon the intangible qualities of the British and American play-scripts has led me to a comprehensive answer to the question of differences. I feel that in the American plays the personal passions of the heroes and the moral attitudes of the stories are marked by a quality of intensity which, by comparison, gives to the British plays a quality of moderation, making them seem indifferent to or lacking in moral enthusiasm. British plays, on the other hand, seem to suggest a clarity, or a predisposition toward order. This quality of reasonableness highlights, by comparison, the

37

SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES

vagueness, the confusion or the inconsistency of American plays. Finally, there is about the American plays a feelingtone of optimistic faith, and about the British plays an atmosphere of common-sense scepticism which suggests that the latter are committed to an idealism of compromise, but that the former are filled with a faith in romantic idealism. Let me insist at once that these contrasting qualities, as I feel them to be present in the plays, are relative. I do not intend to imply that American plays are, absolutely or by any fixed standard, passionately intense but confused expressions of romantic idealism - - I intend to say only that, by comparison with the British plays, they seem to be. Nor are British plays only tame and well-ordered formulas of common-sense and compromise. It is when they are compared with American plays that they reflect something of that aspect. The discussion which follows is based upon an attempt to account for my impressions of emotional differences, which I have just described and which might be formulized as British moderation versus American intensity, British clarity versus American confusion, British common-sense scepticism versus American romantic faith. These formulas, in themselves, are really not arguable, they represent concepts which nobody could prove wrong. But I have tried to make the discussions of them reasonable, and suggestive rather than conclusive. I propose to indicate, comprehensively, the ways in which differences of quality are present, and the extent to which they pervade all elements of the scripts. We must discuss first the emotional qualities which characterize failures in transportation, and then consider the plays which were successful in both London and New York.

British

Hoceratton

ana American

Intensity

Moderation and intensity, as applied to the spirit of British and American life, have often been commented on. A statement of such a contrast would be a meaningless cliche if there were not specific aspects of the modern drama which seem to lend significance to it. I would suggest two of these aspects: they are, the emotional qualities exhibited by the heroes together with the emotional effect they produce on the reader, and the intimations of prevailing moral

38

LONDON AND NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

attitudes which seem to underlie the stories. Since heroes are more concretely definable than moral attitudes, we shall consider the heroes first. I According to tradition, we expect to find in the serious dramatic hero certain admirable qualities or character traits which, so we like to believe, ennoble man and give him emotional grandeur. We respond sympathetically to the actions of a hero who seems to display selfless courage, imagination, and a generosity which expends itself in humane and noble deeds for the benefit of those around him. Such qualities help to lift the hero above the level of meanness or mediocrity and to win for him the instinctive belief and sympathy of the audience. The British heroes of the serious plays under study possess these qualities. For example, King Richard in Richard of Bordeaux, who is the most elevated of the British protagonists, displays personal courage beyond that of any other character of the drama when he faces an angry mob of workmen to win their affection and their trust. Richard's imagination, when under the influence of his love for Anne, becomes heightened into social vision for his people; and he is generous as well as loyal to his friends and to his servants, possessing all these qualities despite an overpowering personal vanity. Richard's tragedy grows out of the perversion of these same noble qualities. For after the death of Anne and the murder of his friend, his energies are focused upon revenge. The imagination which dreamed of a better life for the people is turned into invention for murder and schemes for the exile of his enemies, one of whom he comments on ironically, "Even his revenges lack vision." The courage which won for Richard the affection and trust of the under-privileged is turned into fool-hardiness in the face of inevitable defeat at arms. Only his generosity remains. In the hour of his final solitary imprisonment, he sends his last servant-friend to a place of safety, with the kind wish that he is to comfort the little queen: Richard: Hush, Maudelyn, I don't want you to come. I want you to stay with the queen at Windsor, now that they have taken her other friends from her....

SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES

39

Maudelyn: How can you ask it of me, sir? Richard: Is this mutiny? Maudelyn: You know that I can do nothing for the queen I You think that I shall be safe at Windsor. That is why you want me to stay. And you will be all alone up there — all alone 11 can't bear it, sir. Richard: But you are wrong, Maudelyn, quite wrong. I want you to be with the Queen. She must be so lonely among all those strange faces. Think of it, Maudelyn. Poor little foreigner. But tomorrow you will go to see her and make her happy by telling her that I am coming soon. You can do that for me can't you? Maudelyn: Yes, sir. Richard: Goodbye, Maudelyn. I shall remember the shoes; and the night you came to light the candles, (pp. 80, 81.) But Richard is a king, and in drama we expect of kings that they show some evidence of inner nobility. What of the other serious heroes? The same praiseworthy qualities, courage, imagination, and generosity, are to be found in the sentimental heroine, Linda in Sweet Aloes. She shows moral courage in daring to meet Lord Farrington, the father of her lover and the grandfather of her unborn child. It is generosity, not cowardice, which prompts her to give her baby away to the childless house of its father, just as it is generosity which makes her over-tip the manicurist whose husband is out of work. In emotional scenes Linda tends to speak in fanciful language, which is the conventional speech for characters of vivid imagination. This tendency is particularly evident during the scene in which she describes the death of her father: ...some extra charm about the bay that day - - shimmering essence of blue and lazy smoke in the distance and little dancing boats with colored sails.... I looked out again - - everything just the same except that the boats had danced on a little further — but the whole thing was nothing but a shrieking reminder that Oliver wasn't there to share it. (p. 24.)

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LONDON AND NEW YORK,

1910-1939

The night of her love for Bob is recalled in a similar manner: Linda: ...and the night hung over them all big and blue and gentle... Tubbs: And the stars conveniently formed themselves into a row of asterisks I Linda: I suppose it does sound exactly like a penny novelette. (p. 29.) The regeneration of Linda's character is the result of a return to these same admirable qualities. Having courage to face her past, and the generosity to surrender to Dick's adopted mother her own emotional claims on the child, she finds that she has cured herself of neurosis and fear of life. The American heroes, on the other hand, are seldom distinguished by just these qualities. Indeed, they may be completely selfish, filled with an almost perverse energy, devoid of noble virtues. But they must be strong: they must possess to an extraordinary degree some personal emotional vitality. They must, in other words, be passionately alive with an intensity verging at times upon obsession. Such a vitality is especially characteristic of Nina in Strsinge Interlude. The salient qualities of her character are selfishness, desire for self-realization, and a passion to dominate, not courage and imagination and generosity. The emotional impact of Nina is terrifying, almost unbearable because of her overwhelming drive for possession. Even at her first entrance these qualities in Nina are plain enough. She is quite obviously "obsessed." And as the play progresses, it becomes clear that we shall see her character revealed, not developed. The clearest revelation of the emotional qualities of this highly complex but static character is to be seen at the end of Act VI. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful dramatic climax than the "three men scene," which without the aid of external action presents a clash of wills in which the dramatic concept of passion in extremity could hardly be equalled. And it is in Nina herself that these passions converge as in a vortex. For Nina has completely absorbed her husband, her lover, and her friend in her own voracious vitality:

SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES

41

Nina: Yes, you're here Charlie, always I and you Sam - and Ned I Sit down all of you I Make yourselves at home 1 You a r e my three men I This is your home with me.... (then in soliloquy) My three men! — I feel their desires converge in me I - - to form one complete beautiful male desire which I absorb.... and am whole - - they dissolve in me, their life is my life — Besides revealing Nina's emotional nature with its engulfing self-absorption, its grasping perverse energy, this speech contrasts with Linda's scenes in its lack of a surging speech cadence and in its neglect of fanciful diction. The speech of Nina's "public self" is halting, over intense, almost spasmodic. The conception expressed in the soliloquy is a powerful one, but the imagery seems l e s s suggestive of imagination than of passion, and the effect must certainly be that of t e r ror, not beauty. One other observation of contrast which may not be wholly irrelevant: Nina's speech has for its subject matter passion experienced, Linda's speeches a r e about emotions remembered, but remembered in relation to the impending tragedy of the present. Whether or not the distinction between the dramatic and the poetic from this point of view be legitimate, the fact remains that the total effect in the one case is that of violence, in the other case that of a search for control in tranquillity. Porgy, though less selfish and absorptive than Nina, is none the less intense. By means of his own emotional vitality he dominates not only the other characters, but also the terrible scenes of physical violence and disaster which s u r round him. This quality of concentrated vitality he exhibits throughout the hysterical keening of the saucer-burial episode and during the terrifying tropical storm. He can fill a darkened offstage scene by the sheer strength of his own self-assertion and with a throaty exulting laugh (murder of Crown). The emotional impact of Porgy is sweeping. It is perhaps this quality, no less than the tendency of the Negro to burst into song, which made the play a natural theme for the successful folk opera. For there is a potential lyricism in the character of Porgy himself, a sweeping passionate exultation which lifts him easily into the aria. He is, p e r haps, one of the great American heroes. He is certainly an emotional giant. No more direct contrast is imaginable than that between Porgy and Richard, or that between Nina and Linda. To me,

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LONDON AND NEW YORK,

1910-1939

they are the most characteristic of the serious American and British heroes. In their persons they seem to illustrate to an almost unbelievable degree the difference between the sweeping intensity of the American drama and the emotional moderation of the British drama. 1 The heroes of comedy show these qualities too. As we have called the serious American heroes emotional giants, so we might name the American comics robust clowns. Their defining trait, especially notable when contrasted with the comic qualities of heroes of British drama, seems to be a fierce exuberance. Of all the central comic figures in these plays, Aubrey Piper in The Show-Off and Amos Purdie, J. P. of The Sport of Kings may well symbolize the contrasting emotional tones of American and British comedy. The two characters are alike in one way. They are both filled with an excess of vanity which, it will be remembered, is a perfect theme for comedy. The man puffed up in his own conceit is ready-made for social deflation, and because of his exaggerated self-importance he is an ideal butt for any joke. But despite the similarity of theme in The Show-Off and The Sport of Kings, the temper of each hero is unique. Furthermore, the methods by which the anti-social Aubrey Piper is humanized are not the same as those by which Purdie's ego is reduced, through laughter, into a humanly acceptable perspective. Mr. Amos Purdie, J. P., is proved a fool in his bigotry; and his family who have secretly despised him as the selfrighteous Justice of the Peace, love him as the humbled victim of his own greed and folly. The fact that Mr. Purdie is about to be exposed as a fake bookmaker who has swindled the racing public in order to recoup his own gambling losses; that these losses were incurred by a greedy attempt to recompense himself for income tax payment; that the near-exposure takes place in front of his entire family and staff of servants who have been sternly forbidden even to look at the race track across the road -- the fact that Mr. Purdie is in such a position is ridiculous enough. He could be made the center of a bitter expose'. But the fact is, Mr. Purdie even in his self-righteousness is rather jolly. In the disguise of Panama Pete, the famous bookie, he is decidedly so. There is a mild zest here which even the turbulence of the chase is not fierce enough to disturb. Mr. Amos Purdie has a relish for adventure, but even in his most eventful moments he is not robustious.

SUBJECTIVE

DIFFERENCES

43

Mr. Aubrey Piper is never anything else. To begin with he is always loud. Even in moments of intimacy with his wife and in moments of sorrow after her father's death, he is noisy. There is nothing "hushed" about Aubrey Piper. Nor is there any "hushing" of the endless torrent of jargon which accompanies his back-slapping and his wild laughter. Purdie changes during the course of his play, but Aubrey Piper never changes. He stands pat on his swaggering bluff throughout a series of occurrences which might have sobered a more normal man. Blinded by his own vanity, deafened by his own uproariousness, he is impervious to the hostility of Amy's family, to his own arrest, to his father-in-law's death, to his own exposure as a liar and a braggart. In his moment of triumph, when he assumes first place in the family he has invaded, he continues to be noisily bland, insensitive to the bitterness and unwilling sympathy around him. There is much less activity in The Show-Off than in The Sport of Kings, but Aubrey's tone as compared with that of Purdie is certainly effusively vigorous. His fierce heartiness gives to the American play a quality of extreme energy which the British play never aims at or attains. The contrast between the British tone of moderation and the American tone of intensity may be seen further in the treatment of the ingenue in the comedies of this study. The British dramatic tradition is that this young girl must be pretty and pert, with emphasis on the prettiness. In the transported British comedies, especially in the name role of Tilly, Paddy, and Marigold, she is presented sympathetically and her charm is taken quite seriously. In other plays in which the ingenue is not the protagonist, she appears in variations of mild or diluted sweetness. There is the coaxing, almost cooing, Baby Furze of Spring Meeting, whose charm is the more enticing because it is contrasted with the self-conscious, middle-aged coquetry of Tiny and the helpless disintegrated ingenuousness of Miss Bijou. There are the rube-ingenues, such as the clumsy, but not too strenuous, Una Pidgeon of Fresh Fields, and the bumptious, "not out of the top drawer," self-righteous Bubbles of While Parents Sleep. Tilly, Marigold, and Paddy are heroines; Baby, Bubbles and Miss Bijou are foils; Tiny is an intriguer and Una is second woman to Lady Mary. But there is yet another function for the ingenue in the transported British drama. She is used as a disguise in The Man From Toronto, when, like the illustrious Miss Hardcastle before her, Mrs.

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Calthrope dons the maid's cap and wins the heart of the foreigner as the pretty Folly Perkins. As developed in each of these characters the ingenue is thoroughly agreeable, and is obviously intended to make an engaging though mildly comic appeal. But the fierce exuberance of the American comedies has made of the ingenue an entirely different character. It is not archness and youthful zest which give the young girls of these pieces their appeal. They play upon our sensibilities with a kind of fascinating perversity, and with the exception of East is West, in which Ming Toy is a Chinese curiosity piece as well as a charmer, these American comedies present heroines who might be called caricatures of the "sweet young thing." The best examples of this transformation are to be seen in Curly Flagg of She Loves Me Not and Isabelle from Yoakum, Mississippi of Strictly Dishonorable. By comparison with these sinister figures Tilly, Paddy and Marigold seem tame indeed. For the southern belle in the New York speak-easy and the night-club "hoofer" in the Princeton dormitory are appealing, not by virtue of their charm, but because of their fierce gaiety. They are out to get what they want, and their manner of getting it is a bold one, devastatingly direct and tenacious. The reader can hardly help admiring them for their endurance and their urgency, but he is doubtless left a little breathless by them. If we accept Curly and Isabelle as the "best example" of the American ingenues, a view which seems to me entirely justifiable since they exemplify the tendency toward fierceness so completely, and compare them with Tilly, Paddy and Marigold we see again the contrast between British moderation and American intensity. Highlighted by this comparison, the British ingenues become sweet to the point of tameness, and the American type becomes bold and devastating to the point of transcending its prototype altogether and of becoming not the ingenue but the soubrette. Play-goers may never agree completely about what they feel in the theater. Indeed audience agreement concerning emotional response is perhaps unnecessary, even irrelevent, to the enjoyment of the play. Yet I should think that most of us, as audiences, would admit to an awareness, sometimes vague, sometimes definite, that the reaction to a British play is not the same kind of emotional effect as that experienced in witnessing an American play. If I may risk oversimplification, I shall define our contrasting responses to the heroes

SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES

45

of these plays as one of "affection versus fascination." For the British dramatic figure is usually more lovable, the American more haunting than we realize at first glance. Examine the characters more closely, reflect upon our own reactions to them when they are juxtaposed in our memories, and the contrast becomes clear. I do not mean to imply that the American heroes lack dramatic interest because they are not so lovable as the British, or that our responses are negative, void of imagination identification. We do sympathize with Nina, Norma and Aubrey. For being dramatic heroes, they must win our interests. We must agree to follow their destinies, to "suspend our disbelief." But there is something not completely definable about our interest in these American heroes which suggests unwilling agreement, or compelled sympathy. We somehow feel uneasy that our sympathies should be so peremptorily demanded, and with such exhaustive compulsion. By contrast, the British heroes Richard, Linda and Purdie arouse in us a warm affection, an instinctive sympathy, which is not demanded too fiercely and is given easily. Among the many heroes which are included in this study, the two which seem to me the most memorable are Aubrey Piper and Porgy. It is these two protagonists who come to the memory most often and most vividly. In spite of the fact that I like many other heroes equally well, perhaps better (notably nam Carve in The Great Adventure, Danny in Night Must Fall or the Bliss family in Hay Fever) it is really they, Porgy and Aubrey, who are to me the unforgettable ones. It is my opinion that the dramatic heroes of the popular American drama are.memorable in a refreshingly unique and remarkable way, though it is certainly true that the number of interesting characters in a British play usually far exceeds the number of striking people in the American plays. All of the American heroes, in fact, seem to stand out from their backgrounds more vividly than the British protagonists. The Americans tower above their associates in such a way as to make of the other people minor characters in a very real sense of the term. But the British heroes tend to blend into their groups, their surroundings, and their pattern of life. The personal impact of the hero himself often fades into the general effect of a pattern of living, so that the way of life becomes more interesting than the personality which embodies it. And our absorption in the hero is never so strong as to destroy interest in the minor

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characters of the play. The Blisses in Hay Fever, for example, are never so compelling as personalities that we are more interested in them than in the social pattern of which they are a part. Literary and artistic bohemia absorbs our attention even more than the tantalizing actress and her provocative brood. But Grandpa Vanderhof in You Can't Take It With You is so impressive as a personality in his own right that his bohemian household fade into a place of minor importance. The quality of the old man's spirit imposes itself upon us, the audience, just as it does upon the play and the other characters in it. Hay Fever is not a unique instance of a British play in which the hero blends into his background. We cannot ignore the distinct impressions and vivid appeals which the minor characters make in The Great Adventure and in Spring Meeting. In the former play, the Cockney wife, the American art connoisseur, the officious, well-connected priest, are almost as interesting, dramatically, as Carve himself; and Arnold Bennett's precision in character drawing can be felt in the confused widow of the valet no less than in the more truly complicated hero. In Spring Meeting Sir Richard, the hero, is no more vivid as a dramatic figure than are Tiny, Miss Bijou, or the butler, James; and throughout the story, it is the pattern of living, the horse-breeding, horse-racing, gambling milieu, which interests us almost as much as the dramatic hero himself. There can be no doubt, I think, that there is a consistency of appeal among the dramatis personae of the British plays which makes the characterization of minor figures in American plays seem by contrast unbelievably slipshod and careless. Remembering the tradition of good character actors in England, we might even imagine that most of these central roles are simply character parts raised and heightened above the general level of competency. Towering individualism seems not to be the ideal. Such a contrast in the emotional effect produced by British and American heroes seems to me to account, in part, for the general impression of intensity in American plays and of moderation in the British.

n Even more intangible than qualities in the heroes are the intimations of underlying moral attitudes which we can sense strongly in the stories, but which we find difficult to describe. And yet it is impossible, I think, to read a large

SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES

47

number of American and British plays and not arrive at the conviction that differences of this nature do exist, and that they are in some way related to the fundamental differences of spirit which we have just discussed. I cannot escape the feeling that there is, in the American plays, a stronger passion for morality and a corresponding indignation against crime and evil than in British plays. Nor can I deny the impression that the latter either lack such indignation, substituting for it tolerance or indifference, or that they express moral enthusiasm without excess and keep righteous anger within reasonable bounds. In the light of such a comparison, American plays seem always to be taking sides, emotionally, for or against something; whereas the popular British drama seems to cling to the storyteller's detachment, to observe, to enjoy, but not to abandon itself to condemnation or defense. The crime of murder and the sins of sex may be assumed to arouse, most universally, a feeling of indignation in any society. Since there are may examples of murcler to be found in these scripts we may consider them as symbolical of differing moral attitudes, and we might note ways in which the murders are committed, as well as the nature of our interest in them. Let us examine first Porgy's murder of Crown, a fair example of acts of violence in these American plays. This is certainly a crime of passion, but it is approached by Porgy himself as though it were a sacrifice to virtue (Bess's virtue), and our interest is absorbed not in the deed but in Porgy's emotions before and after it. Actually, we are not witnesses to the murder, for it happens offstage. And yet, theatrically, the general effect is magnificent. Now, compare this crime with Colin's murder of Sevilla in The Ten Minute Alibi. In this play the crime of passion in sacrifice to virtue is not intended to have the same effect as it has in Porgy. Colin is saving Betty from seduction, it is true, but our interest is not engaged in the same way. In the British play there is a shift of emphasis away from the development of the fundamental emotional implications of the situation to a manipulation of physical details. Here, the murder instead of happening offstage is presented before the audience twice, once in the dream and once in actuality. But the purpose is not to prolong the emotional tension or to intensify our sense of justice at the murder of the seducer. The intention is rather to give us an opportunity to observe and

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enjoy the inevitable "slips* which must occur when Colin tries to turn his dream into action. The very fact that the murder is enacted twice before the audience suggests indifference to the crime itself, whereas in Porgy's case the placing of the act behind the scenes suggests that this is a deed of emotional intensity too great to be seen on stage. But even more important than the staging is the contrasting emotional tension and the feeling of expectancy which surround the scene. 2 The difference in attitude toward adultery and illicit love is another study in contrasts. One of these American plays contains a vicious satire on adultery and divorce. Several American characters are haunted by memories of their past sins, and one heroine commits suicide to escape them; in other plays sexual immorality does not take place as expected, or if it does it is immediately legalized in marriage (even Curly Flagg forces her lover to commit himself to marriage in She Loves Me Not). The total impression seems to be that of'a passionate insistence on sexual morality underlying American plays; the attitude is so strong that it might be called puritanic. 3 Similar situations in British plays are treated as matters of sentiment or of snobbery. Linda in Sweet Aloes, for example, is troubled by a desire to see her child rather than by a sense of guilt. ¿1 fact, English adulterers are seldom haunted; and they are all forgiven. The wife chooses to forgive the husband; the wayward child is forgiven by the mother who says it is "better to lose a principle than to lose a daughter."4 If the sinner involved is not a major character, he or (usually) she is treated with a callousness which, upon reflection, seems almost brutal. The servant girls who "get into trouble" are offered aid, but the offer is usually made with a complete indifference toward the girls' own feelings and desires. 5 Mistresses are lower-class women, such as Toby in The Fanatics, "Fluff" in A Little Bit of Fluff. The one vicious character is Lady Cattering, in While Parents Sleep. She is not taken very seriously, however, for she does not exactly "belong"; and although she has married into the nobility, the "pukka" family seem to expect of her no better conduct than she exhibits. Her designs on the son of the house are foiled by the servant. It is my impression that the British plays of this study are much less seriously concerned with sex than are the American plays, in spite of several scenes of salacious

SUBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES

49

sensationalism. 6 "Sexy" may be the correct term to apply to American plays, but as a descriptive word it should be qualified to include open protest against sexual immorality or implicit disapproval of it. The English attitude is definitely more casual, and much of the British protest against sex seems either limp or indulgent. Despite the fact that in one instance the angry public assaults the house of the sexmurderer in Black Limelight, I feel that moral indignation is not stressed in the British plays. It is true that in The Fanatics there is verbose protest against the social complacency which allows evil to exist, but this is a play which, so it seems to me, substitutes rhetoric for moral passion. The Dominant Sex makes an oblique statement about "free love," but the play is so clearly unique in its tone that it can scarcely be called typical, and the interest lies in the development of an unusual character rather than in the problem itself. If American plays are vigorously alive and British plays cautiously tame, and such a distinction has been made by critics and public, it must be the contrast of emotional attitudes which accounts for the difference. It would be futile to look for an excessive amount of physical action in American plays in order to explain the prevailing vitality of American drama. As I have already suggested, for example, both The Show-Off and Strange Interlude are comparatively static so far as external action is concerned. Nor would it be possible to explain our impressions of the British drama by saying that it substitutes "motive for movement." Such is certainly not the case in the majority of these popular plays. Physical movement is just as characteristic of the popular British drama as it is of the American. The contrast lies not in the amount of external action (I am tempted to say agitation) but in the quality of dramatic tension. That such a difference in quality exists can be explained only in terms of the moral passion underlying the stories and the emotional qualities of the heroes. For it is in this contrast that the intensity and moderation of American and British drama can be most insistently felt, and most clearly r e vealed. British

Clarity

and American

Confusion

In reviewing Bird in Hand, that "excessively British" play which according to the critics should have failed in New York but which ran for 500 performances, Mr. Krutch of

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The Nation says: "(Drinkwater is] ...laboriously reasonable, impeccably right thinking... [but] such sweet reasonableness is not the kind of sweetness to be so long drawn out. "7 The phrase "long drawn out" refers in part, no doubt, to tne extended debate which begins in the barrister's bedroom and ends after two acts of dramatic argument. Of course, the term "reasonable" has often been used to describe British plays. But it is intended, or so I believe, to refer not only to extended discussion found in a few plays, but also to a tone or quality which characterizes the plays as a whole. British plays are bathed in an atmosphere of rationality which is not so pervasive in the modern American drama. There are several ways in which these plays exhibit a quality of rationality, contributing to the general feeling that British plays are ordered, a feeling strong enough to make American plays by contrast appear confused or i r rational. Three of these are 1) the articulate clarity with which the characters themselves describe the motivation, 2) the obvious use by the author of clearly defined devices for emphasis, such as repeated situations, balanced character relationships and foils which are unmistakable, and 3) the consistency of point of view which is maintained throughout the entire play. By contrast, American authors seem to ignore or to discard consistency and articulateness, and to be uncertain in their development of devices for clarity. I The insistence in British plays on conscious clarity of motivation on the part of the characters themselves suggests the underlying temper of reasonableness in all British plays. Examples of such insistence may be found in both the serious plays and the comedies, and the British characters which illustrate it contrast so directly with people in certain American plays that the differences between clarity and confusion in the two dramas stand out in bold relief. One such contrasting pair are the young lovers in Spring Meeting and East Is West, for their problems are almost identical and their solutions are almost antithetical. In each play the lover must face a parent who is adamant in his opinion that classes cannot mix. Sir Richard is certain that his daughter cannot marry his stud-groom, and Mr. Benson is equally certain that his son cannot marry the girl from Chinatown. Neither Michael, the English groom, nor Billy

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51

Benson seems able to make a satisfactory answer at the moment. Michael stands by inarticulate while his sweetheart spiritedly defends their love, and Billy Benson wishes vaguely for some desert island where he and Ming Toy may find happiness together. But later Michael sees his problem clearly and is articulate about it. By confessing to Joan that she must always stand up to Sir Richard because he will never be able to "give him the lip," he cures himself. When Sir Richard enters Michael is able to say with direct and simple courage, "You must let me keep Joan, Sir Richard. She's all I care about." But in Billy Benson's case there is no such freeing of the tongue nor any upsurge of courage. He can only sentimentalize, so it takes a deus ex machina ending to give him what he could not take for himself. Ming Toy is discovered to be a proper bride, for according to the testimony of her foster father, she is the daughter of a famous American scholar who had been murdered in China years ago, and not really a Chinese sing-song girl. In the presentation of problems of more serious consequence we find, similarly, British clarity and articulateness of motivation contrasting with American obscurity. In Sweet Aloes and Strange Interlude for example the emotions of the heroines are considered psychoanalytically, that is to say, both Linda and Nina try to solve their problems through a study of their own emotional histories. But the British heroine, Linda, gives us the impression that the relief she seeks may be had through simple and definitive measures. She is never in doubt as to the kind of emotional medicine she needs. Her only indecision is whether or not she will take it. Nina on the other hand seems never to know clearly what remedy she is seeking. She is indecisive not only about taking the medicine, but also about which medicine to take. She is constantly grouping through vague areas of emotional, physical, and metaphysical speculations for some clear space where there shall be "no more depths." But she never seems to know, as Linda knows, that she has only to face her past with candor and common-sense to lay it. O'Neill never gains the clarity through the elaborate apparatus of the asides which Mallory has attained through the simple, patent device of the raisonneur. Tubbs, who is Linda's confidant, helps her clarify her mind in all her troubles. But Nina has no confidant, and the soliloquies may be said to obscure her motives, not to clarify them. The resulting effect seems to be one of static though violent confusion,

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contrasting with the neat clarity of the British motivation. It is interesting to observe that the only person in Sweet Aloes who is unaware of the nature of Linda's problem is the American husband, who, lacking the intricate precision of the English cast, seems helpless as well as confused, though undeniably well-intentioned.8

n Sometimes this insistence upon clarity is so explicit that it becomes almost mechanical. Here, the intention of the British authors is to make certain, it seems, that the audience shall not miss important meanings in the stories themselves. In the first place, the British plays contain almost exact repetitions of their own situations. For example: in The Sport of Kings the meeting of the household and staff in Act I is repeated in Act HI; in The Ten Minute Alibi the turning back of the clock is repeated in Act II; in Fresh Fields-ihe love scene between Lady Lilian and Tom in Act II is repeated in Act IE; in Hay Fever the love scene of Judith and Richard is repeated later in the same act with David and Myra as the principals. This recurring repetition suggests a British delight in lucidity obtained through emphasis, which American audiences might have found unnecessary. In the second place, British authors give more attention to the high-lighting of character relationships than do American playwrights. The attachment of Olivia for Danny in Night Must Fall accents and is accented by Mrs. Bramwell's devotion for Danny. The relationship between doctor and lawyer is a means for making more significant the relation between lawyer and doctor in The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse. In Sweet Aloes the guilty love of Linda and Robert is made more poignant by the illicit love of Rosie, the maid, and her sweetheart of the village. The relation of John and Gwen (The Fanatics) in which she accepts his rhetoric of free love as a principle to live by, is accented by a similar acceptance by Rosie, the maid, who overhears their talks and gets herself into trouble because of their "big ideas." But whether the method be that of parallel or of contrast, the intention must be to clarify the meanings of the stories, and such an intention suggests a predisposition toward rationality. Finally, British dramatists insist on clarity through the use of foils which are unmistakable and even well-defined.

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Such foils are to be seen in Lady Mary and Lady Lilian of Fresh Fields, the latter absorbed in helpless romanticism, the former filled with resourceful practicality; in Toby and Frankie, the two sweethearts in The Fanatics, one cold and aloof, the other an easy love; in Margaret and Gwen, of the same play, the woman who has known sex-freedom and the girl who wishes to; in Dora and Belle of Dear Octopus, the one growing old gracefully, the other keeping young with strained vivacity and the help of an expensive beautician. In the American plays the foils are not so easily distinguishable. Is Jimmy, the philistine poor man, in Bought and Paid For, a foil for the rich connoisseur? Is Betty Lee a foil for Norma in Coquette? She is certainly an unsuccessful flirt but her emotional qualities are too poorly defined to be placed in any category quickly. Is Gashwiler the foil for the movie people in Merton of the Movies ? We are not quite sure. Hannibal and his brother, the disciplined soldier and the libertine, in The Road to Rome; Diane and Nana, the good and the bad sister, in Seventh Heaven; the four students in She Loves Me Not, the romantic, the comic, the socialist thinker, the football idol — these are the clearest examples of the definitive foil in American plays.

m Consistency versus inconsistency in maintaining a point of view is to be seen in one of its most amusing aspects in the contrast between Hay Fever and You Can't Take It With You. The Blisses and the Vanderhofs are living in their own private worlds of mild, eccentric lunacy and both families are busy being happy after a reasonable fashion of their own. Into these worlds of insane logic come visitors, to whose normal expectations the private worlds seem absurd, even slightly wicked. So far the British and American plays are not greatly different in point of view, though quite unlike in situation and characters. But it is in the development of the situation, that is in the contact of real with unreal, that the two plays differ. In the British play the normal guests escape the house of lunacy with the unshakable belief that the Blisses are not only mad, but are (what is worse) bad-mannered. The Blisses on the other hand pursue their own ways in complete confidence, and think their guests extremely rude to have taken what to the outsider would be the normal course of action following the strained relations of the evening before. The mad never

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understand the normal, the normal never understand the mad. Each group is, within its own system of logic, completely reasonable to itself. The Vanderhofs, on the other hand, are party to no such conclusion. An attempt is made in the American play to r e concile the madness of the Vanderhofs with the normal goodAmericanism of their guests, the Kirbys. Whereas the Blisses never recognized the necessity of justifying their actions to their English guests, in the American play both the Vanderhofs and the Kirbys try to convert the other group to their own brand of logic, and each group at one time or another doubts its own course of action as the reasonable one. At the end of the play we are not quite sure whether the mad have converted the normal (or vice versa); or whether the normal Mr. Kirby has decided to take a short holiday from his own world of logic, that is to say, to take time out from Wall Street to have some practice on the saxophone. Thus the two plays, by juxtaposing the incongruities of real and unreal, make their comedy. One develops the essential contradiction to its logical conclusion, the other evades the issue. The total effect of Hay Fever, it seems to me, is one of comic logic to which we can reasonably assent. But our reaction to You Can't Take It With You is a constant uncertainty between hilarity at its exuberance and suspicion at its inconsistency. Hay Fever, though its comic resources are more restricted and less inclusive than are those of the circus-like American comedy, does manage to produce sanity out of its lunacy, and rationality out of its chaos of trivialities. The two plays seem to me equally charming, and there is a certain flavor about each that is satisfying. But the peculiar charm of the American play derives in large measure from the temper of happy looseness, whereas the temper of happy tightness makes the British play engaging. These cases may seem extreme. But even in more simple and less abnormal situations the American plays tend to be inconsistent. By taking away the necessity of choice, or by failing to recognize such a necessity, they oftentimes avoid the issue. That is what has happened in Whispering Wires when, and in contrast with The Ten Minute Alibi, the author seems to ignore the fact that a choice must be made. The issue of whether or not a girl can love a murderer is completely by-stepped. When the issue (in Seventh Heaven and The Great Adventure) is whether a husband's love can be killed by unfaithfulness, the American hero's choice is

SUBJECTIVE

DIFFERENCES

55

taken away. By making Chico return from the war blind, the author prevents him from seeing Diane in his rival's arms, and the situation, therefore, presents no crisis for him. But Janet in The Great Adventure sees the issue and makes her choice.'To protect another woman's reputation, her husband has made a sacrifice which she herself could not persuade him to make. But she concludes that her husband really loves her, not the other woman, so she can make her adjustment to the crisis. Chico, also, might have seen that it was despair at his supposed death, not infidelity, which drove Diane to resign herself and accept the captain's offer. He, too, could have made the adjustment. But the author took the the inconsistent way out, and by taking away Chico's choice gave to the American romance a poignant but none the less inconsistent conclusion. This should have been the moment for Chico to prove his philosophy of "strength through belief, " not the moment to ignore the issue and the central motivation entirely in favor of pictorial and sentimental effects. Clarity and confusion, then, seem to be pervading qualities of the British and the American drama. But the temper of rationality which is suggested by British plays depends no more on logical argument within the situations than upon clarity of motivation, exactness of mechanical emphasis or consistency of point of view. If American plays, on the other hand, seem careless or confused, it must be that their authors and their audiences are unconcerned with neat lucidity. Perhaps their plays reflect a temper of heedless irrationality. Romantic

Faith

and Realistic

Common Sense

If the living philosophies of America and Britain are to be understood through their transported drama, one might easily believe that America is a land of the fairy-tale come true and than Britain is a land of compromised idealism. The faith a people lives by must to some extent creep into the popular, and therefore the least propagandized, drama; and the study of these plays leads to an inescapable impression that such a faith has revealed itself therein. That the common assumption of playwright and audience in America is the faith that miracles can, ought to, and do happen, that this assumption differs from a faith in everyday common sense which seems to be taken for granted in the English plays - - these are interpretations which might well epitom-

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ize the emotional differences which we have been discussing. So strong is this impression of difference in "faith" that one is tempted to set up possible dramatic creeds which, and it is not too difficult to imagine, the playwrights of these two countries have unconsciously professed. Such creeds may be summed up in the simple formulas "I believe" and "I understand." For the American plays seem to say: "I believe in the possibility of miracles, both spiritual and material, especially in the regenerative power of romantic love, and in the worth and ultimate realization of the wellintentioned common-man. I believe that human nature is good, and that right (and luck) will triumph." But the British plays, on the other hand, seem to be unwilling to make such a romantic presupposition about life. They are more likely to say: "I understand, and enjoy understanding, life in all its varied and fascinating aspects; but I prize common sense above idealism, and I find that principles must be flexible and that romantic idealism must be tested by everyday reality to make any understanding of life, or any satisfaction in it, possible." I Two kinds of miracles occur in the American plays, the first and perhaps the most important of which is the miracle of romantic love. The regeneration of Porgy, from hopeless cripple to "complete" man of power, has been previously mentioned. The change of Diane from the cringing child of the slums to the fearless, dynamic woman, a change brought about through love of Chico, is another instance of the miracle. These characters are figures of romance, but the m i r acle of love can happen in satire and in farce too. Hannibal, the conqueror at the gates of Rome, finds that love of woman purifies his ambition and changes his destiny. In Strictly Dishonorable the man-about-town, bent on the seduction of the too-willing country girl, finds that true love has turned him into a moralizer and a prospective husband. There is no such redemption in the majority of British plays. The typical British love story, Tilly of Bloomsbury, is not concerned with character redemption but simply illustrates the cliche "Kind h e a r t s a r e more than coronets." The character change in The Great Adventure is not one of romantic redemption, for it is based on desire for compan-

SUBJECTIVE

DIFFERENCES

57

ionship and a satisfaction with creature comforts rather than spiritual revival. The lovers of On Approval find that familiarity breeds contempt; in Hay Fever romantic love is considered only as an excuse for scenes of theatricalized wooing and renunciation. One can scarcely escape the f e e l ing that the Britisher keeps his tongue in cheek when seeing these plays. The romantic assumptions of life are certainly sabotaged here. II The second miracle in which Americans apparently b e lieve we may call the triumph of social idealism or moral principle. Faith in such a miracle is expressed in Adam and Eva and Bought and Paid For. An acceptance of the social value of useful work transforms the idle household in the first play. In the second, the wife who stood f i r m for her principles won her husband to an acceptance of her views. But social idealism and moral principle are tested against reality in the British plays Yellow Sands and Dear Octopus, and the result in each case is a compromise. The young s o cialist finds that his big dreams shrink when he is confronted with the chance for practical solution. He compromises his share-the-wealth ideals when he is left a small fortune, for he realizes that if he tries to help all the unemployed, he can in reality help none of them very much. The mother in Dear Octopus comes to the conclusion that it is better to lose a principle than to lose a daughter. In this play the English family is the "dear octopus" which, like all English institutions, is "adaptable - - it stretches, it bends, but it never breaks." The implication seems to be that compromise is flexible, and that it is, therefore, the only acceptable ideal by which one can realistically and comfortably live. III What has become of the nation of shop-keepers, of bank clerks and small squires? Where is the middle class of burghers who made England great? In other words, what has become of the British public, and where is the common man? These are certainly questions which trouble the mind when one is reading the plays which Britain sent to New York during the first third of the twentieth century. We are inclined to wonder whether there may not be a great gulf

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fixed between the playwright and the backbone of the public who must comprise the popular audience of a metropolis. The bitter judgments passed on the British public in The Great Adventure and Black Limelight, in which people in the mass are represented as sensation-ridden, spiritually impoverished and violent without reason, certainly do nothing to help solve the problem. We are ready to believe that the British sense of humor, which seems to give them pleasure in laughing at themselves, might have explained the success of The Great Adventure with the philistine public, they who buried the valet in the Abbey thinking to honor the artist. But the mob who roar outside the sex-murderer's house in Black Limelight can be interpreted only as an expression of the playwright s despairing disgust with the mass public. Even the treatment of individual common men in these British plays suggests a feeling of contempt or despair concurred in by author and audience. The high-handed treatment of servants has been discussed before and need not be repeated here. Besides, the clue to the pervasive despair concerning the common man can best be understood if we consider the authors' attitude toward representatives of the lower middle class not in service. These are, most clearly, Colin the struggling barrister, Dick the struggling inventor who wishes to return to the farm, Jess Oakroyd the mechanic who leaves his home to travel with a provincial theatrical company, and Joe the fisherman would-be socialist. 9 Colin has no quality which would identify him with any class; we are interested in him only as a clever murderer. Dick engages our sympathy, but the play in which he appears is so unlike the other British plays in tone that he cannot be called representative. There remain the mechanic and the fisherman. Each of them, in his way, is unfulfilled. Oakroyd is tolerated, even taken in, at times, by the "good companions" of theatrical small-timers. But when the main chance comes it is the public-school man who takes it; the company disbands, and the mechanic, who has no place in the new adventures of the principal actors, must go home to an empty house and a cold hearth. He is, in fact, unwanted except by his daughter in Canada who out of a sense of duty asks him to share her home. He is a heart-warming old man. But the hope that he found a place in the new world with good companions, where he could "belong," must be supplied by the reader; such optimism is not implicit in the writing. The rebellion of Joe,

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the idealist, is completely undermined, first by the unexpected legacy, and second by the realistic arithmetic of his reprobate uncle. His big dreams of helping the unemployed suddenly explode, and the only plan left him is a kind of mild philanthropy. As a common man, Joe could do nothing to better his own lot, as a small property holder he could do nothing for his fellows. This is certainly a situation ready-made for despair. Contempt of or despair concerning the lower middle class as we feel them in these few plays may well exasperate us. But the ultimate question which grows out of the reflection upon the transported drama, I think, must be "Where, England, are your common men? Where are your shop-keepers, your beef-eaters, your clerks, your tommies, your John Bulls? Where among your dramatic heroes, are the spine of your nation?" Are we to believe that the upper middle-class, fashionable dabblers in the arts and the professions, who are often the sons of country gentlemen retired at forty, are the ideal of the nation's manhood? Or, on the other hand, is England's, common man a pathological murderer, a selfconscious freak, a social climber, an enterprising servant, or simply a lost entity in the raucous and vicious public mob? Somewhere between the two extremes the resilient, essentially humane Anglo-Saxon has been lost. But the little man of America has not been forgotten, nor have his playwrights discarded their faith in his instinctive goodness and his irrepressible power to rise. There is spiritual grandeur in Grandpa Vanderhof and a spiritual courage in Gramps, of On Borrowed Time, which is inspiring. The armchair philosopher who can successfully challenge the accepted creed of materialism, and the resourceful little man who can defy Death in an effort to save his grandchild from a life of social regimentation are both products of faith. Furthermore, their deeds justify such an affirmative romanticism. Each, in his way, is a conqueror, not because he is a great man, but because as a completely undistinguished one he has within him the seeds of greatness. There is a thriving affirmation in Merton, Susan, Aubrey Piper, and Curley Flagg, in the "fortune hunter" and the producer of "Godspeed" which is invigorating.10 One feels, somehow, in these plays that opportunity awaits these little men and women; nor can one doubt that their strength will be sufficient to the occasion. Aubrey and his fellows are certain to seize their moments; should the moments not

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present themselves, these American heroes are sure to c r e ate them. It is true, of course, that in the American plays luck is usually on the side of the little man. But - - and here is a significant aspect of this affirmative faith — he deserves that luck, and we are pleased that it is so. Because of the romantic assumptions which underlie these plays,the common man fulfills our expectations and his accomplishments are thereby satisfying. Common-sense might tell us that good intentions, luck and resourcefulness are not enough in today's world. But in the American plays common-sense is suspended, and faith in humanity rules. In the realization of such a romantic faith, it is, perhaps, unnecessary that plays be ordered and consistent so long as they are intense and optimistic. In like manner, when common sense reality is the ideal, as we have suggested it to be present in British drama, plays tend to become more rational and more moderate. So that all the qualities which seem to be characteristic of the two dramas may be said to grow out of, and to justify, the dramatic creeds: "I believe" and "I understand." The Cause of

Failure?

The plays which we have been considering are those which were great popular successes when they were produced at home and failures when presented abroad. But what of the successful transportations ? The discussion will now include only the American plays which the British audiences liked and supported and the British plays which satisfied the Americans. I In the American successes in London (just as in the failures) the heroes seem to be towering individuals, not so likable as the British heroes, perhaps, but more unforgettable. Anna Christie, Joe Bonaparte, Dr. Ferguson, Tom Armstrong and Rita Cavalini, Mr. Simon, Pancho Lopez, even "Broadway" Jones impress the reader with their qualities of intensity, their ability to dominate their plays, and their tendency to haunt the reader with remarkable fascination. The British heroes are certainly more lovable, but at the same time less intense. Captain Stanhope, Larita, the Reverend Mr. Davidson, Tom Prior, Thomas Greenleaf, "The Lady of the Spectacles," even Mr. Dulcimer all tend

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to blend into their surroundings, their social group, or their patterns of life. The distinctively American heroes, characterized by qualities of intensity, are undeniably popular in London, just as the heroes of moderation, distinctively British in temper, are well liked in New York. So, the emotional reasons for failure still elude us. Even as the heroes of British drama are not given to uncontrollable violence, so the moral tone of the plays is not one of condemnation. At least such is the impression when these plays are compared with American plays whose tone of moral indignation seems to be definitely pronounced. Suggestions of moral indignation in the successful A m e r ican plays in London are particularly strong when the stories concern prostitutes. The very popular Romance as well as Eugene O ' N e i l l ' s first London production, Anna Christie, are both concerned with the love of a good man for a bad woman. But the emphasis is on the regenerative power of that love within the woman's life. The Easiest Way, it will be remembered, was a passionate condemnation of a woman who was too weak to value and safeguard such love when it came to her. Plays like Romance and Anna Christie immediately bring to mind a British play based on a similar situation. Rain by Somerset Maugham was a favorite in New York and, like the British plays which failed there, it withholds condemnation. In spite of the great fervor of the missionary and the great distress of Sadie Thompson the predominating tone of the play is tolerance, and the author's attitude must certainly have been the absorbed but objective detachment of the master story-teller. There is an interesting contrast, also, in the use of situations involving perversion. M r s . Phelps, in The Silver Cord, wishes, in the words of her scientist daughter-in-law, to devour her young, but she is prevented from doing so, and is condemned in strong tones of moral indignation. M r . Dulcimer, in The Green Bay T r e e , also wishes to "devour" his foster son. He succeeds. It does not matter that the fanatical real father of the boy has shot and killed him. The murderer goes to the insane asylum and M r . Dulcimer, from his death mask, continues to look down and to dominate the boy. The author seems to be saying, "This is the way such things a r e , " and not "This is an intolerable situation." We, for our part, tend to regard M r . Dulcimer with sickening wonder but we do not condemn him or his victim. From the point of view of tolerance amounting almost to indifference, the British play Outward Bound is significant.

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Here the passengers on a ship bound f o r the beyond are all sinners, either by omission or by commission. But when they arrive at their destination there is no talk of judgment, or of punishment. It is important, I think, to remember that the person they meet is "examiner" not "judge." This fact seems to symbolize the British attitude of detachment, an attitude which refuses to emotionalize, preferring to comment reasonably "let the punishment fit the crime." Viewed with this sense of reasonable tolerance, the suffering which overtakes characters in American drama would seem excessive, and no one in Men In White or Anna Christie, for example, would deserve his punishment. But the intensely "haunted" American characters were nonetheless popular in London just as British plays of tolerance were among the successful importations in New York.

n American confusion and British order seem as clearly revealed in the successes as in the failures. Furthermore these qualities can be sensed in the motivation, the devices f o r emphasis, and in the consistency of the point of view. Outstanding examples of the difference in motivation are to be seen in the successfully transported The Silver Cord and The Green Bay Tree. M r s . Phelps appears to be entirely unaware of the evil nature of her desires, but M r . Dulcimer is both aware of and articulate about his emotional perversion. A similar contrast is to be seen in Escape and Broadway. The British convict sums up the impulse of the priest to hide him from the law by saying "we cannot escape our better selves." But Dan, the New York policeman who allows the murderess to escape, makes no statement whatever. This gives to the reader of the American play an impression of vague romanticism rather than one of philosophic neatness such as characterizes the British. It seems doubtful then that failure in transportation results from this difference in character motivation. Nor is the difference of intention in the use of devices for emphasis confined to the failures. We might cite repeated situations, accented character relationships, and definitive foils in the successful British plays just as we observed them in the failures. The opening situation of The Green Bay Tree, the arranging of the flowers by the esthete in garden gloves and evening dress, is repeated in the final scene; high tea of Act I is repeated in Act IHofThe Shining

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Hour. Character relationships are accented in the various flirtations of Call It A Day and in the "second chances" allowed the various characters in Dear Brutus. Finally there are the well-defined foils of the successful British plays: the good and bad fathers of The Green Bay Tree, the wicked and generous brothers in The Shining Hour. The uncertainty of American foils can be seen in Men in White, in which the internes who might have been distinct contrasts for Dr. F e r guson are sketched in vaguely; and Barbara, the other woman, is not developed as a definite foil for the fiancee, Laura Hudson. Yet all of these plays enjoyed popularity in London as well as in New York. Confusion of point of view does not, apparently, make American plays unpopular in London. Many American successes are characterized by inconsistency, the simplest kind being that which is found in Broadway Jones. The fact is that Jones sets out to fight the chewing gum trust but he uses the advertising trust to do so, without recognizing the fact that he is "using the thief to catch the thief." Less obvious inconsistency is present in Street Scene and Golden Boy, for both avoid the issue of their themes "in a form of escapism. Rose refuses to face the futility of .nodern life by moving to new surroundings, and Joe Bonaparte, who has been presented as the martyr to the new order of material success, commits suicide. But this act of escape results not from the fact that he faces the issue but because he has accidentally killed his opponent in the ring. Contrasting directly with Street Scene and Golden Boy are two British plays, in which consistency of point of view is rigorously maintained. In Shaw's Saint Joan, the Maid like Bonaparte, was a martyr to a new order. But she died not by accident but because, human nature being what it is, we will accept no saints this side of heaven. In Journey's End, war like the slums of Street Scene makes existence unbearable and becomes a symbol of the futility of modern life. But Captain Stanhope and his men do not escape destruction, as Rose escapes poverty and filth. For these civilian soldiers, there are no lovers' meetings at journey's end; the logical conclusion to the inescapable futility is not hope, but nothingness. Thus, the difference between confusion and order is to be found in the successful as well as in the unsuccessful transportations.

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ni Finally there is the qualitative difference of faith. Did the London audience find the American belief in miracles distasteful, and was the common-sense compromise of the British drama offensive to Americans ? It does not seem possible that this contrast between affirmation and sceptical detachment would account for failure since this difference of spirit pervades the successful plays as well as the failures. Anna Christie and Romance are plays in which the American miracle succeeded in England. Each is an affirmation of faith in love's redemptive power. Even the sentimental comedy The Best People says that only true love can save the rich man's children from the corrupting influence of a wealthy but debauched society, and such power can be found in the simple love of a virtuous chorus girl or of a strongwilled chauffeur. Among the British plays which make memorable statements to contrast with this affirmative view are A Kiss For Cinderella and Easy Virtue. The prince of the slavey's dream turns out to be a policeman after all, not even the heir to an earldom. (Compare Boy Meets Girl) Furthermore all the true love of the honest man's heart cannot save Cinderella, whose life is snuffed out despite his ardor and the best of medical care. The malnutrition of the slums, everyday reality, has had its way. Larita in Noel Coward's play finds that virtue, even through love, is not easy, nor can one marry into it. Despite her longing for redemption, and unlike Anna Christie, she finds that love and good intentions cannot accomplish the romantic miracle. The Fool, among the successful American transportations, seems to be the best example of the actuality of the second miracle, the triumph of moral idealism. In this play there is a scene of faith-healing when the crippled child walks, an illustration of the success of impractical missionary ideals, and an example of the power of virtue in the struggle for business gain (the Minister, the idealistic "fool," effects a settlement between workers and management when all other means of conciliation had failed). Notable examples of compromise of principle among British plays are Dangerous Corner, White Cargo, and The Skin Game. In the first play, truth is represented as the corner around which one skids with danger, and furthermore it is better to "let sleeping dogs lie." The idealistic young Britisher in White Cargo is forced to ad'.lit that the realities of the tropics make decency impossible, and Squire Hillcrist in The Skin Game

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concludes that it is impossible to keep one's hands clean in an unclean game, or "What's gentility worth if it can't stand f i r e ? " American faith and British compromise - - clearly here is a contrast to be seen in these plays, but not a cause for failure. There are three typical common man heroes among the successful American plays in London which seem, to me, a justification of the American faith in common humanity. These are M r . Simon, Rose, and Tommy (of Counsellor-atLaw, Street Scene, and The F i r s t Y e a r ) . For M r . Simon, the miracle is work. Not all the misfortunes or cruelties in the world can beat down permanently the spirits of this resourceful lawyer. He is a self-made man, and we have reason to understand and to admire him for it. Rose, without being sentimentalized, is presented as the flower of the slums. There is an instinctive purity about Rose which cannot be sullied by the filth around her, and a strength which can s u r vive disaster. Tommy is a paragon of ineffectuality. He is the exact emotional antithesis of Aubrey Piper, but he wins just as Aubrey wins, through luck and bluff. But we cannot dismiss him easily; for undeniably, and even less grudgingly than in the case of Aubrey, we are glad he wins. Our emotions assent, though our reason may not. Cynara and Escape are British plays which suggest the underlying contempt for the common man public which we felt to be a quality of the British failures. The mob who fill the courtroom to fling insult upon the barrister whose shopgirl mistress has committed suicide, must be the same dull, violent, insensible lot as the picnickers who would turn the unlucky gentleman-convict over to the law, or the fanatical farmer and bell-ringer who chase him with pitchfork and staves. It is mob-violence and mob-stupidity which are expressed here, not the instinctive right-feeling which lies at the heart of every mob. Intensity, confusion, and romantic faith seem to be the qualities of the successfully transported American drama, just as moderation, order, and compromise seem characteristic of the British. In neither case does it seem likely that these differences of quality a r e the cause of failure. Differences in quality, then, can be immediately sensed, and are unbelievably profound. They are f a r more important than differences in the separate elements of the scripts which can be isolated and counted. Unlike the findings of the objective analysis which showed few and trivial differences,

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the results of our subjective criticism has given an impressive insight into the ways in which British plays differ from American plays. But in spite of the fact that we can now say "These are the differences between British and American plays," we cannot go the next step and say "These differences are the reason for failure in transportation." For the successful plays are permeated with the same qualities which we noted in the failures; in fact, it is my impression that in the successful plays the qualitative differences are more pronounced and more immediately discernible than in the failures. Be that as it may, the fact remains that I have found no great qualitative difference between the failures and the successes of either country; and I do not, therefore, judge the failure of British and American plays in transportation to be caused either by objective or subjective differences which are contained in the scripts.

IV

VARYING CAUSES OF SUCCESSES AND FAILURES The transported play is a unique phenomenon. It succeeds in one country and fails in another for specific and particular reasons, not because of some general reason which can be formulated into theory. By failing to account for theatrical failure, our study of scripts has not, however, led us into an impasse. The very fact that, by their complexity and variety, the scripts of transported British and American drama defy easy generalization leads us to suspect that though we have found no "cause of failure" there may nevertheless be many causes yet explorable. Fortunately, it is impossible to read widely in contemporary criticism and dramatic writings without the instinctive feeling that one is stumbling over clues which will lead to possible specific, not generalized, causes. So strong has been this conviction in one or two instances that I should like to append three speculations, or tentative explanations of the phenomenon, to the preceding negative conclusion. I The first of the clues came from a more or less random reading among the reviews of the successful transportations. Now, the reviews of the failures were primarily concerned with the scripts of the plays when the critics were describing national differences, and it was generally upon a consideration of differences in scripts that prediction of failure was based. The production (direction and decor) was commented on in passing, and sometimes a particular actor or group of actors was praised or damned. But the tenor of the criticism was, usually, "The play despite some good acting, will fail in New York because it is too British for American audiences," or "The acting of Mr. is the only thing that saved the evening, and the play is too American to last long here." It seems to have been the critical opinion that the germ of success or failure was inherent in the script of the play.

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Reviews of the successes followed the same pattern, the critics basing their remarks, apparently, upon the same assumption. But, it is significant, I think, to notice that in every review which I read of successful British plays in New York there were also indications, sometimes indirect to be sure, that each production was memorable because of some pleasing physical theatrical element. The opening night of The Circle was an important one for the theater, for it was in the Maugham comedy that John Drew returned to the stage. In Autumn Crocus a new matinee idol, Francis Lederer, was introduced to the American theater in a day when there was a dearth of such attractions; in The Shining Hour the entire British company were well known and popular in New York; in Many Waters, a popular comedian, Ernest T r u ex, returned from England to his home town audience. In The Green Bay Tree were to be seen the most remarkable production and staging of the season, as well as a very striking performance. 1 The same kind of observation might be made upon the reviews of American successes in London. The entire company of the Group Theater is said to have "acted to perfection" in Golden Boy, and the production of Broadway was described in London as "terrifyingly competent." Favorite actors and actresses such as Miss Marie Tempest in When Ladies Meet, Mr. Ernest Truex in The First Year, Mr. Horace Hodges in Lightnin', Mr. Raymond Massey and Mr; Noel Coward in The Second Man, must have contributed greatly to the success of their plays. And yet, despite the critical tributes sometimes grudgingly given these players, the reviewers' rage was poured out upon the "American crudities" of the scripts. Only one group of plays escaped the general abuse: Americanisms could be frankly tolerated when the audiences were to see their favorite Jewish comics in Abie's Irish Rose, Welcome Stranger or the Potash and Perlmutter plays. Having damned one group of plays because their scripts were intolerably American, the London critics would then proceed to praise another group, also on the basis of the scripts, ignoring the qualities which they shared with other American plays. Indeed, there were times, as in the case of the sudden appearance of Eugene O'Neill when he was hailed as a new Synge, at which some critics failed even to mention the fact that the new play was American, not the work of a Londoner. Such plays as Anna Christie, They Knew What They Wanted, and Golden Boy were simply too fine to be missed. Notice,

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however, that Miss Pauline Lord scored a personal triumph as Anna, that Miss Tallulah Bankhead found her happiest role in Amy, and that the ensemble acting of the Group in Odets' play was completely absorbing, even breathtaking.2 The combination of a praiseworthy script and a production which must have been completely satisfying seems to have been successful on both sides of the Atlantic; lacking a firstrate script, the skillful actor who was a favorite with the public could still attract the audiences. The Potash and Perlmutter series excepted, it was the script which counted with the critic. Only for the Jewish comedians would the Londoners willingly don "aesthetic blinkers" and abandon themselves to the fun, no matter how American. The New Yorkers held out for the script. One cannot deny the feeling that the critics, and in New York more often than in London, have underestimated the attraction of the actor and production for the audience, and the contribution of these theatrical elements toward the success or failure of the transportation. I would be a safe guess, I believe, to say that some of the plays on our basic list, the greatest failures in transportation, were unpopular, partly, because of some physical element of production. In more than one case, the principal actor of the transported play evidently failed to appeal to the foreign audience in the same way in which the actor of the native production had pleased the original audience. The New York performance of Miss Helen Hayes in Coquette, for instance, was a personal triumph, and was noted as such by M r . Brooks Atkinson when he said "one seldom encounters drama and acting so perfectly mated." But The Times (London), in which the reviews are unsigned, called the acting of Coquette indifferent, and the performance of Miss Helen Ford strangely disappointing."3 It is easy to imagine that without Miss Hayes the play might have been less sensationally successful in New York, and that with a comparable performance in London the play might have achieved there a run of at least one hundred performances, in which case the contrast of audience response would not have been so great as it is. Take another example. The failure of Seventh Heaven in London might have been less immediate had not the performance of Miss Helen Mencken as Diane failed to achieve there the effect which so captivated New York. Whereas in the original production Miss Mencken's acting was described as "luminous," in London it impressed the critic as "pallid pathos."*

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The same kind of reception awaited certain British actors in New York. The success of The Great Adventure in its British production, for The Times critic at least, was due to the incomparable acting of Miss Wish Wynne, a music hall "artiste," in the role of the Cockney wife; and the charm of Marigold was identical with the triumphant charm (and skill) of Miss Angela Baddely in the name role of that play. But in New York, although Miss Baddely's charms were noted by the critics they were not described as irresistable; and the actress who played the Cockney wife of Arnold Bennett's painter-turned-valet was not noticed at all. 5 The appeal of the actor must have contributed greatly to the effectiveness of these plays. Neither the American Miss Mencken nor the British Miss Baddely, both of whom played in the original as well as in the transported production, was so attractive to the foreign audiences as she had been in the native production. Coquette and The Great Adventure must have lost something by the substitution of the new actresses for the creators of the roles. It would be idle to speculate upon just when or how often the transportation of the actors with the script was the cause of failure. Nor could we hope to determine when an actress failed to "carry" the play in its foreign production as well as the creator of the role in the original performance. On the one hand, Miss Mary Ellis was to London, no doubt, as satisfying a Nina in Strange Interlude 6 as Miss Lynn Fontanne was to New York. But there were, on the other hand, plays whose productions demanded the original cast for their transportation. A London cast for Porgy, for example, is unimaginable. This play of Negro life in Catfish Row was received enthusiastically by the London press; the rhythm, color, emotional power were highly praised; and Mr. Darlington of the Daily Telegraph was so moved by the magnificant teamwork of the cast that he said of it "you hardly even trouble yourself to follow the difficult dialect; you are content to sit back and see life." But in 1936, from the perspective of seven years, Mr. Ivor Brown wrote that Porgy failed in London (1929) because "the Negro diction was so strange to English ears as to be well nigh unintelligible." 7 One can well imagine that this would be true. But the first night critics did not predict failure on this basis. Besides the importance of acting, a consideration long overlooked in judging audience response, there is another likely "production" cause of failure, and this is the unsatis-

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fying adaptation. A few plays which failed in transportation must have suffered from a change of locale, although critics continue to place major importance on the script itself. Another Language is a possible example. Take the Hallams out of New York's West Side, put them in Belsize Park and something must happen. Although the Herald (London) critic reported that "someone has done wonders in adapting it into an English setting," Mr. Darlington wrote: "These people do not ring true for England and are entirely wrong for Belsize Park. I know for I have lived there." 8 Perhaps others in the London audience failed to recognize a familiar and expected tone in the transplanted Hallams. But the Manhattan family did ring true for New Yorkers who lived in or knew something of Uptown West Side. The shift of The Ghost Train from its original Cornish setting to a Maine railway station must have had an unfortunate effect in its New York production, since the accents of the actors were not Yankee but West End;9 the point of the contrast between the Scotland Yard detective and the superstitious provincials must have been lost. Take a final example. Gramps of On Borrowed Time became, in the English adaptation, an old seaman. One remembers the tales of the supernatural which have come out of the midlands and coastal regions of England and wonders if the fable of death up the apple tree rang true for the English audience. One critic compares the magic wood of Barrie's Dear Brutus with this piece of fantasy, and finds the American play "one of fundamental silliness." Another critic, making the same comparison, adds that the principal trouble with the production of On Borrowed Time is that it is in the wrong theater. There should, in other words, be a more suitable place to see this product of an "insensitive and clod-hopping mind" than the Haymarket. Physical production, again, must have been as important to box-office success as national differences in the script. 1 0 The failure of The Good Companions might be mentioned, not because of a change from English to American setting but because the play's adaptation from a popular novel seems to have irritated the critics more than did the performance. Almost without exception, the New York critics used the comparison of novel and play as a point of departure for their reviews. If the reader looking for entertainment were to take the critic for guide, he would avoid the theater and go to the lending library instead. It seems hardly possible

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that the play could have survived such critical neglect, in spite of what must have been a very colorful and exciting staging. 11 New York saw The Good Companions, a story of a smalltime theatrical company touring the provinces of England, about five years after the production of Burlesque, the American show of vaudeville people on the road. Although comparison of the two plays is not made in the contemporary criticism, one is inclined to wonder if such a comparison did not occur to New York audiences when they saw the English play. This assumes, of course, that theatrical timeliness might be related to success and failure in transportation; such a possible explanation is one which I shall discuss more fully presently. Beyond these meager comments on acting and adaptation it is impossible to speculate or to generalize. Direction and decor are mentioned in a few scattered reviews, but on the basis of critical writings no adequate estimate of their effectiveness can be made. We can only suppose that all these elements of production were important in determining success. And we can only venture the opinion, after reading the reviews, that the good script together with the memorable performance was popular with both audiences, that failure might have sometimes resulted when the transportation failed to combine the two. II A second consideration which this study suggests as an element in the success or failure of transported drama is theatrical timeliness. The hint that some of the foreign plays might have been unpopular because they failed to follow a "trend" has not come directly from critical reviews nor from the study of the scripts. The speculation grows rather out of a continued interest in the chronological record of Anglo-American exchange for the thirty years, 1910-1939. For it is impossible to look, no matter how casually, at the chart of plays transported year by year without becoming aware of possible, though perhaps superficial, relationships. Of the many plays on our basic list which might be thought of as theatrically untimely, there are first of all the Hollywood satires. It is possible to imagine that all of the satires on the movies were great successes in New York because they followed a period of intense rivalry between the legitimate stage and Hollywood. When writers and actors and

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directors were being lured to the West Coast by fabulous salaries, such plays as Once In A Lifetime, She Loves Me Not, and Boy Meets Girl must have satisfied the legitimate theater audiences because they ridiculed the new and spectacular methods of the rival movie-makers. Now, it is perhaps significant that no American play using the talkies as subject matter was ever successful in London, although one of the popular Potash and Perlmutter plays did show the comedians in the roles of early silent-film producers. No doubt the theatrical situation in Britain, where rivalry between stage and cinema was not so fierce and actors could pursue both careers without interruption, accounted in some way for the fact that the Hollywood satire, when produced in London, did not attract audiences in the same way as it had in New York. Other American plays might have failed in London because they were outside the trend of their seasons. During the five years from 1929 to 1932 there were only five American plays produced successfully in London, and none of them ran for more than 150 performances. It was during this sequence of failures, twenty American "flops" in five years, that Strange Interlude was produced in London. Furthermore, the English popular audience had not seen a successful O'Neill play for nearly ten years. (In 1923 Anna Christie had just passed the 100-performance mark.) If failure begets failure, the producer of Strange Interlude could hardly have hoped for success. Yes, My Darling Daughter failed in London during a season when the vogue of American comedy had collapsed following the production of Three Men On A Horse. After the success of this farce in 1936, the English audience seemed to be interested only in the tragedies and serious drama which Broadway exported. Plays such as The First Legion, Judgment Day, Mourning Becomes Electra, Idiot s Delight, Of Mice and Men, and Golden Boy were popular with Londoners during 1937, 1938, and 1939. It was during this trend toward serious plays that Yes, My Darling Daughter, Room Service, You Can't Take It With You, On Borrowed Time, and The Women, all comedies, failed. Sensationalism might have been the "trend" of American plays in London when the harmless little comedy, The Boomerang, failed there. For the American successes of that period were Within the Law, Romance, Daddy Long Legs, Ready Money and Potash and Perlmutter, all of them plays with

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1910-1939

strong emotional, senLimental or melodramatic appeal. This was in 1916. Theatrical timeliness might have been a factor, also, in the box-office history of some English plays in New York. In 1916 the only British successes on Broadway were Getting Married by Shaw and B a r r i e ' s A Kiss For Cinderella, and it was during that year that A Little Bit of Fluff, a cynical farce comedy f r o m England, ran for only twenty-seven performances. In wartime London this noisy, sometimes salacious, bit of entertainment ran for one thousand fourteen performances, holding its own even with Chu Chin Chow throughout the years when soldiers on leave filled the theaters. But in America, where sons were being sent to die with and for Englishmen, it is not hard to imagine that the England of Shaw and B a r r i e would be more satisfying to New York audiences than the cynical excitements of A Little Bit of Fluff. The American production of The Middle Watch presents a somewhat similar case. This play came to New York in 1929 when Journey's End, Bird In Hand, and Berkeley Square were the English favorites of the season. Silk stockings pulled out of Seaman Ogg's hat and young ladies in men's pajamas could hardly be expected to vie with the comic triumph of the bedroom court of Bird In Hand where the magistrate was attired in night-shirt, night-cap and a pince-nez with long black ribbon. Besides, the principal romantic interest in The Middle Watch was centered in a British version of an American chorus-girl whom the American audiences must have found strange indeed after having seen Burlesque and Broadway. Spring Meeting and Sweet Aloes failed in New York during seasons when only Miss Helen Hayes and Miss Ethel Barrymore seemed able to c a r r y an English play. Sweet Aloes had to compete with the reputation of The Old Maid which it re sembled in certain ways,12 but it also had Miss Helen Hayes and Victoria Regina to compete with. The only English play to achieve success in New York during the year when the English family life of Spring Meeting failed, was Whiteoaks. Noel Coward had two successes in New York during 1925 when Hay Fever failed. They were Easy Virtue and The Vortex. No doubt the popularity of these bitter dramas, as well as the false tone of Miss Laura Hope Crews' performance in Hay Fever, helped to dim the attraction of the quizzical comedy. There seems to have been more public interest in the meaning of the title, which Mr. Coward himself would not comment on or take seriously, than in the play's performance itself. 13

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

75

Richard of Bordeaux preceded Maurice Evans' performance of Richard II in New York by four years. Would it have been possible that, if the Shakespearean play which attained such success both in New York and on the road had preceded the Daviot play, interest in the modern version might have been keener? There can be little doubt that London's repertory theaters, especially Old Vic, had kept King Richard more alive for the English audience than the printed Shakespeare had for the American. Furthermore, the London public saw their favorite, John Gielgud, in Richard of Bordeaux, and it had a king whose deposition was even then being rumored as desirable. New York saw Dennis King who (though according to the critics he was a fine figure of a man) hardly held the same position in the American theater that Dame Ellen Terry's nephew held in the theater of England.14 Timeliness in the historical, economic, or sociological sense lies without the scope of this study. Our thesis concerns a theatrical, not a cultural phenomenon. However, there are three plays which, even at a casual glance, seem to owe their success in one country and their failure in another to interest in the events or the conditions of the day. They are Yellow Sands, Dear Octopus, and The Women. The first of them, Yellow Sands, with its interest in benevolent capitalism and its comic treatment of the fallacy of socialism, appeared in London during a period of social unrest. But its production in New York just preceded the 1929 crash. Mr. Atkinson of the New York Times thought that its "native economics" would be without meaning for heedless Broadway playgoers. 15 Whether without meaning or without entertainment, the play failed to attract an audience. Dear Octopus, which ran in London immediately before the outbreak of war in 1939, was probably very comforting to Englishmen since it emphasized the flexibility of English institutions, a quality which would insure their survival against change and disaster. But this theme of "there will always be an England" may have comforted less the audience of America who were still clinging to their isolationism. Londoners who filled the theaters night after night to see Dear Octopus would likely find neither comfort nor entertainment in the play about female parasites of New York society life. In spite of a mixed press, The Women failed to attract the London public in 1939. Mr. Desmond MacCarthy saw in it "no faith in humanity." But he did find such a faith in Of Mice and Men, the only other American play in West

76

LONDON AND

NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

End that year. 16 This serious study of the little men of America ran throughout the summer of 1939 and was withdrawn only a few days before the closing of all theaters on September 9. The mood of the moment was evidently not right for Yellow Sands or Dear Octopus in New York, or for The Women in London. It may be that this quality of theatrical timeliness, together with the appeal of the production, determines the failure or the success of dramatic transportations to a greater degree than do any recognizable or stable "national" characteristics in the scripts. It may be that such is the case, but this kind of speculation does not lend itself to proof. As a conclusion it must remain a tentative one. Ill A third possible explanation of failure has to do with the nature of the scripts themselves. After reading approximately one hundred successful plays (these in addition to the failures analyzed), I have the feeling that the "typical patterns" appear in the successes rather than in the failures; that the diversity which I found to be characteristic of the failures does not exist to so great an extent in the successes. Now, I do not mean to imply that I am convinced that "differences" are the cause of success, that the British play which succeeds in New York does so merely because it is different from American plays. But I do feel that the strongest impressions of "differences" might have been derived from the "hits," which incidentally most playgoers remember, and those impressions are then applied casually and freely to the "flops" when typical differences are ascribed as the cause of failure. This leads to a further speculation: may it not be that British audiences enjoy those plays which, on the basis of the "hits" they have seen, seem to them distinctively American, and that other plays which are accepted easily and naturally in New York as American, but which break the pattern established in London, will likely fail? This is a possible explanation of the success or failure of the American "business" play in London. The popular "business" plays were peopled with "typical" American business men who were shown always at the office or in conference or at "the big deal." In other words, the activity of the enterprise was, to Londoners, the typical American subject.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

77

But plays, such as The Show-Off, Marco Millions, or Beggar on Horseback, which satirized the spiritual poverty of business, or which exposed the basic dishonesty of the irresponsible get-rich-quick formula, failed in London. New York enjoyed these satires as part of the American dramatic subject matter. But evidently they were not as acceptable to Londoners as were The First Year, It Fays to Advertise, or So This Is London 1, plays which specialized in luck, bluff, the big deal, and lots of activity. Whether or not it is true, as is often alleged, that American plays are concerned with action rather than character or idea, it seems probable that the British prefer to think so. For their response to one of the most characteristic of American subjects shows a decided preference for plays of activity rather than for plays of character or idea. Potash and Perlmutter, Ready Money, Broadway Jones, Get-RichQuick Wallingford (as well as The First Year and It Pays to Advertise), plays'in which business men almost invariably pull off the big deal with more bluff, luck, and well-intentioned ignorance than business acumen or genuine ability, were all popular in London. But Dulcy, Dodsworth, Adam and Eva, Bought and Paid For, The Fortune Hunter, You Can't Take It With You, The Butter and Egg Man, plays which emphasize character or idea, showing the business man in relation to his family or his society, failed in London. The fact that both types were popular in New York seems to indicate that Americans take a broad view of their own business drama, whereas Londoners prefer the narrower view represented by the first group of activity plays. It would almost be safe to say that Londoners prefer their own narrow idea of the American business man to the Americans' broader conception of themselves; that it is not the American play as it really is that Londoners want, but their idea of the American play. The same kind of speculation, that the failures resulted from breaking the dramatic pattern set by the successes, might be applicable in the discussion of the British plays of family life. For the kind of English family life which seems to have impressed itself upon the consciousness of American playgoers seems more apparent in the successes than in the failures. It is, no doubt, true that to many Americans the quiet routine of family life has become a characteristic of the English play, just as the bustling activities of business enterprise

78

LONDON

AND NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

may seem, to the Britisher, distinctively American. This impression of the English stage family may not have grown directly out of the New York showing of Bunty Pulls The Strings in 1911 (one remembers immediately the successful production of What Every Woman Knows in 1908), but the sensational popularity of Bunty and "buntyisms" 17 must have added flavor to the American conception of British dramatic subject matter. (The run of this play, incidentally, presents the f i r s t record I have found of a British drama playing for more than three hundred performances in New York.) Whatever the source of the impression, there can be no doubt as to its persistence, and such plays as George and Margaret, Tilly of Bloomsbury, Spring Meeting, and Dear Octopus certainly seem to justify it, in part. For these failures, in which the trivia of domesticity a r e a definite part of the subject matter, seem to illustrate a compactness, sometimes a gentleness, in every day life which many Americans have come to expect as natural to the British stage family. Furthermore, these plays seem to symbolize, in a way, the firm hold which the family might have on British society in general. But the failures in New York are not so apt an illustration of the point as many of the successful transportations. Domestic trivialities are more impressive in Call It A Day, Pim Passes By, or The Shining Hour than in the failures, and the relationship between parent and children, between brother and sister, is more explicitly stated in Call It A Day, Bird In Hand, The Distaff Side, Easy Virtue, The Truth About Blayds, or Dangerous Corner. Memories of childhood and family life are never so compellingly imaged as in Journey's End, Our Betters, and Dear Brutus, to say nothing of Peter Pan. In fact, no better illustrations of the strong hold of family ties, the gentle devotion of children to parent and to each other, or the strange power which memories of and sense of responsibility towards the family wields are to be found than in the successes. In a sense, the failures deviate from this pattern. George and Margaret shows the elder son marrying the maid, Spring Meeting shows the elder daughter marrying the stable-boy, Dear Octopus shows the son marrying his mother's companion. Each of these unsuitable marriages breaks the continuity of family life, which American playgoers insist upon cherishing in English plays. Furthermore, in Dear Octopus the toast to the family institution, that "dear octopus from whose tentacles we can never escape" takes on an air of self-conscious-

SUCCESSES

AND

FAILURES

79

ness when compared with the unspoken tributes in the successful plays, in which the characters take the "inescapable tentacles" easily for granted. In this sense, then, the assumed "tentacles" of family devotion and the comfortable routine of family life might be the American conception of modern British drama, just as the bustling routine of business activities may be part of the British conception of American dramatic subject matter. When British plays, such as The Breadwinner, present the desertion of the family by the respectable husband and father, thereby breaking the pattern of expected compactness, they fail. Perhaps Americans, even more than the English, wish to perpetuate this conception of the gentle tenacity of the British family with its comfortable domestic responsibilities and continuities. If such be the case, then, the British play which succeeds in New York will represent not British life, not even British stage life as it is conceived by the English to be, but rather that idea of life and drama which Americans like to suppose is typical of their cousins across the sea. What Americans want, in the last devious reaches of such a speculation, would be British plays which give them England as they would prefer to think of it, not England as it appears to the Englishman himself. The specific plays which broke the patterns, or denied the "myths," of the American business man and the British family, are not the only examples of the frustrated expectations of the foreign audience. There is, in Chapter n of this study, a presentation of the British failures in New York in which the stratifications of class are argued away; there is also, in Chapter II, the suggestion that since the characters of successful plays tend to take class distinctions for granted rather than to argue about them American audiences preferred British plays which are distinctively class plays. Such a suggestion seems to lead to the interpretation that it is the Americans, not the British, who wish to keep undisturbed, on the stage at least, the class status quo in England. They are obviously not interested in arguments against it, always excepting, of course, the long-run Bird In Hand. If such were the case, it would be the American myth that English family life is quiet and compact and that the English people are satisfied with the class system, just as it would be the English myth that the American business-world is a fairy-land where bluff, luck, and good intentions are both successful and admirable.

80

LONDON

AND

NEW YORK,

1910-1939

These and other speculations might well form the basis f o r further studies of the Anglo-American theater. The production of American plays by private theater societies in London, such as the Stage Society, or the use of British plays in the non-popular theaters of America, including repertory companies and the Little Theaters, might be interesting comparisons. A study might be made of the accuracy with which the imported plays interpret the culture of their peoples to the foreign audiences. Profitable use might be made of the writings of English authors on American subject matter, and v i c e - v e r s a , in which Maugham's Our Betters would be a case in point. Personalities, that is writers, actors, and producers, who have been successfully transplanted might be considered. An interesting study might even be made of the plays which failed in both London and New York. Other aspects of inter-cultural relations which the present thesis touches only indirectly, but which might be studied further are: the comparison between the imported long-run play and the imported best-selling fiction; the popularity of particular plays first with the theater public and then with the reading public; a comparison of the exchange of plays with that of other art f o r m s such as musicals, movies, radio, and painting, etc. Conclusion Timeliness, especially theatrical timeliness, as well as pi oduction conditions or adherence to the "myth" of the typical foreign play may have accounted, in part, for the success or failure of many of the transported plays. If any conclusion is possible on the basis of these tentative explanations, it seems to be this: unqualified generalization concerning failure and success in the exchange of plays is unrealistic and dangerous in that it tends to over-simplify the actual theatrical phenomenon out of all acceptable or reasonable terms. There is, probably, no "cause of failure" in transportation; there are, we propose, many causes, most of them unpredictable. The theory which claims that one cause predominates in any large number of plays is very likely a theory which seeks to promote an idea, but which ignores the complications and the vagaries of the facts. For each play is a unique phenomenon. The combination of elements and qualities in its script, together with its production peculiarities and accidental timeliness, make of each play

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

81

a very particular instance, a very special case. A play succeeds in one country and fails in another for very special reasons, not because of some general reason which can be formulated into theory. Such a conclusion is paradoxical, to say the least. It seems to be saying that the only possible generalization is that generalization is impossible. If such were the case the value of theater research, which in the nature of things seeks conclusions, might be a negative one. We might well say that since research is fruitless then let each man trust his own guesses, for every man's guess is as good as another's. But there seems to be something in the nature of man which drives him to generalize, to make sweeping statements and all-inclusive theories about his experiences; and when these sweeping claims about the nature of theatrical phenomena, such as appears in the criticism of the twentieth-century stage, become fixed into stereotypes it seems that investigation is in order. Speculation will no longer satisfy. This brings us back to the original problem. This study proposes that the reasons for failure of transported plays given by contemporary critics were inadequate. Fundamental and stable differences between British and American plays are not the cause of failure; for the British plays which were popular in New York contain the same elements and qualities as those which failed there. The same is true of the American failures and successes in London. Furthermore, it is much easier to feel the differences between a British play and an American play than it is to point out and describe them. This simply means that differences in quality are more impressive and more important than are the differences in elements which can be isolated and enumerated. But in spite of the fact that objective differences are few, even trivial, and subjective differences profound and pervasive, they do not account for failure. The compendium of critical speculations, from which has been abstracted the "theory of difference," seems to reveal that stereotyped accusation was as common among reviewers as was considered judgment. But whatever the method, whether the tone was one of impudence or of weighty seriousness, the assumption that differences in the scripts are the primary cause of failure seems to have been generally taken for granted. Such an assumption carries the implication of a national taste in things theatrical; it also infers that the critics knew what the national tastes of the audience were.

S2

LONDON

AND

NEW Y O R K ,

1910-1939

The fact that the critics were often wrong, as could be shown by comparing the predictions of failure with the boxoffice statistics, seems to deny the latter implication. The conclusions of this study would deny the former. The popular audiences of the modern theater are astonishingly receptive to a great diversity of plays both native and imported. They prefer comedies to serious drama; but then comedy is a loose and very inclusive term which covers a multitude of dramatic appeals. On the basis of the impressions derived from this study, I would venture the opinion that the popular modern audiences of London and New York are less stereotyped in their responses than are the professional reviewers, that the diversity of dramatic fare which the transported drama offers does not justify the cliches used by the critics to explain it. 18 But, opinion aside, it seems fairly certain that it is the thing, not the idea of the thing, which is important to the audience; that each play which seeks its approval must be considered as a unique phenomenon, not as an illustration of a theory or an an example of a national culture. Success or failure, we should remember, can be thought upon realistically only when the inquirer is willing to consider frankly the many special causes, not when he is satisfied with, or is promoting, a single general cause. A theory may be a convenient "tag" for reflection, but theories which ignore the fundamental conditions of the theater or the unpredictables of timeliness, are dangerous. They erect hazards not easily surmountable, and one brilliant exception to the generalization (Bird In Hand for instance) can render the impressiveness of the theory ridiculous. The very fact that plays continue to be produced and transported, despite the high percentage of failures, is a suggestion that authors and producers would agree with this conclusion. To the producer each new production must be a very special case, just as to the playwright each new script must be a unique work of a r t . Their faith in the potential appeal of each new transportation, their willingness to risk fortune and fame on the response of the new audience is, in fact, their tribute to the emotional flexibility of the English-speaking audience. The theater is, in essence, the province of playwright, producer and public. Success or failure in it must continue to be their concern, not the concern of critic or of r e s e a r c h er. The playwright by instinct, the producer by practice,

SUCCESSES

AND

FAILURES

83

are close to their audiences. To them, regardless of the theories of criticism or the abstractions of scholarship, the new transportation is a fresh, concrete appeal f o r public approval, which may repeat, who knows, the success of Bird In Hand.

SOURCES OF DATA

The following list of transported British and American plays was compiled by the author. Sources of data were The Times (London), the New York Times, and the standard theatrical year books of the London and New York stage: John Parker's Who's Who in the Theater, Burns Mantle's series of Best Plays, and the Stage Year Book, 1911-1928. In the tabulation showing the number of performances, there are a few plays marked by asterisks. This is an indication that the length of run was estimated, by me, from the opening date to the closing date of the engagement, allowing eight performances for each week. It was necessary to rely upon notices in the newspaper advertisements for this data because for one reason or another the information was not included in the year books. The data on London failures, with the exception of those marked by asterisks came from The Stage Year Book. All London successes, together with production statistics are listed in Who's Who in the Theater, Vol. IX. Data for American productions came from the Burns Mantle Best Plays, 1909-1939, or, as in a few cases described above, from the New York Times. Although the theatrical season in New York is generally thought of as running from June 15 to June 15, it seemed wise for convenience in tabulation to use the calendar rather than the theatrical year in classifying plays according to date of opening performance.

Table 1 British and American Plays Produced With Great Success Both In London and in New York, 1910-1939 Date of Plays British B a r r e t t s of Wimpole Street, The Bird in Hand Bunty Pulls the Strings F i r s t Mrs. F r a s e r , The Green Goddess, The Journey's End Victoria Regina White Cargo American Bat, The F a i r and Warmer It Pays to Advertise Just Married Nothing But the Truth Peg o' My Heart Potash and Perlmutter Three Wise Fools T r i a l of Mary Dugan, The Within the Law

London N.Y.

ingth of Rjin Lom moon N.Y.

1930 1928 1911 1929 1923 1929 1935 1924

1931 1929 1911 1929 1921 1929 1935 1923

529 364 617 632 416 594 337 821

370 500 391 352 440 438 517 702

1922 1918 1924 1924 1918 1914 1914 1919 1928 1913

1920 1915 1914 1921 1916 191€ 1913 1918 1927 1912

327 497 598 421 578 710 665 305 311 427

867 377 399 400 332 603 441 316 437 541

(paie 15)

Table 2 British and American Plays Produced Without Success Both in London and in New York, 1910-1939

British Ariadne Art and Mrs. Bottle Autumn Fire Blindness of Virtue, The Blue Peter Camel's Back, The Courting Crooked Friday Dear Fool Driven Drums Begin Enchanted Cottage, The Explorer, The Faun, The Flowers of the Forest, The For Services Rendered Fugitive, The Gamblers All Granite Great Broxopp, The Green Waters Hawk Island Holmes of Baker Street Humpty Dumpty If Winter Comes Inferior Sex, The Lost Leader, The Madras House Mariners, The Masque of Venice, The Mid-channel Misalliance Mulberry Bush Murray Hill New Sin, The Off Chance, The Offense, The Old Country, The Old Ladies, The Old Man Murphy On the Rocks Panthea Payment Deferred Fenny Wise (page

86)

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1925 1929 1926 1912 1924 1924 1925 1925 1914 1914 1934 1922 1908 1913 1934 1932 1913 1915 1926 1923 1936 1931 1933 1917 1923 1913 1919 1910 1929 1928 1909 1910 1930 1928 1912 1917 1925 1916 1935 1932 1933 1913 1931 1917

1925 1930 1926 1912 1925 1924 1925 1925 1914 1914 1933 1923 1912 1911 1935 1933 1917 1917 1927 1921 1936 1929 1936 1918 1923 1910 1919 1921 1927 1926 1910 1917 1927 1927 1912 1918 1925 1917 1935 1931 1938 1914 1931 1919

Length of Run London N.Y. 53 45* 64 71 73 76 24 29 68 60 12* 64 48 23 14* 50* 27 93 62 37 40* 40* 15* 10 53 20 68 10 28* 15* 58 11 12* 72* 39 43 61 98 65* 14* 65* 15 85* 38

48 50 71 16 38 15 41 21 24 24 11 65 23 48 40 21 56 8 70 66 5 24 53 40 40 64 31 80 16 15 96 52 29 28 22 92 4 15 12 64 6 80 70 40

Table 2 (Continued) British and American Plays Produced Without Success Both in London and in New York, 1910-1939

Plays

British (continued) Place in the Sun Preserving Mr. Fanmure Prime Minister, The Rotters, The Scaramouche Suspense Tante This One Man Thunder in the Air Tobias and the Angel Too True to be Good Two Virtues, The Way Things Happen, The Will Shakespeare Windows Wings Over Europe Young Mr. Disraeli American Alison's House Ambush Appearances Barrier, The Betty at Bay Billy Clear All Wires Climax, The Cock o' the Roost, The Colonel Satan Daddledums Dark Angel, The Dark Tower, The Fall Guy, The Havoc, The Her Temporary Husband Hush Madame Sand Marco Millions Night Cap Our Little Wife Out of the Sea Price, The See Naples and Die Three Cornered Moon Three's a Crowd

Date of Performance London N.Y.

Length of Run Lonaon N.Y.

1913 1911 1918 1916 1927 1930 1914 1933 1928 1932 1932 1914 1924 1921 1922 1932 1934

1918 1912 1916 1922 1923 1930 1913 1930 1929 1937 1932 1915 1924 1923 1933 1928 1937

99 95» 66 87 64 58 89 12* 64 48* 25* 68 65 62 39 20 18*

44 32 72 16 61 7 79 39 16 22 57 64 24 80 48 90 6

1932 1923 1930 1912 1918 1912 1933 1910 1926 1931 1919 1925 1934 1926 1912 1923 1917 1920 1938 1922 1928 1928 1912 1932 1934 1923

1930 1921 1925 1910 1919 1909 1932 1909 1924 1931 1915 1925 1933 1925 1911 1922 1916 1917 1929 1921 1916 1927 1911 1929 1933 1919

15* 49 60* 81 53 16 12* 13 18 5* 80 15 10* 48 12* 39 18 36 28* 39 6* 11* 20* 5* 16* 31

41 98 23 24 16 64 93 13 24 17 18 63 57 95 72 92 39 64 92 96 41 16 77 62 76 12

(pate

87)

Table 3 British and American Plays Produced With Moderate Success Both in London and in New York, 1910-1939 Date of Performance London N.Y.

Plays British Berkeley Square Butterfly on the Wheel Circle, The Cynara Dangerous Corner Design for Living Disraeli Distaif Side, The Dover Road, The East of Suez Easy Virtue Escape Green Bay Tree, The Green Hat, The Or.impy h h Road, The HoDson's Choice Invisible Foe, The Joseph and His Brethren Kiss for Cinderella, A Libel Michael and Mary Mind-the-Paint Girl Mr. Pim Passes By Outcast, The Outsider, The Outward Bound Pair of Silk Stockings, A Fasserby, The Private Lives Quarantine Rat, The Saint Joan Shining Hour, The Single Man, The Smith Spring Cleaning Springtime for Henry There's Always Juliet Truth About Blyads, The Truth Game, The Vortex, The When We Are Married Whip, The Yellow Ticket, The (page

88)

1926 1926 1911 1912 1921 1921 1930 1931 1932 1932 1939 1933 1916 1911 1933 1934 1922 1921 1922 1922 1926 1925 1926 1927 1933 1933 1925 1925 1914 1913 1927 1928 1916 1915 1917 1918 1913 1913 1916 1916 1934 1935 1930 1929 1912 1912 1920 1921 1914 1914 1923 1924 1923 1924 1914 1914 1911 1911 1930 1931 1922 1924 1924 1925 1924 1923 1934 1934 1910 1911 1909 1910 1925 1923 1932 1931 1931 1932 1921 1922 1928 1930 1924 1925 1938 1939 1909 1912 1917 1914

Length of Run London N.Y. 181 119 181 248 151 203 128 102 269 209 132 243 163 128 151 237 246 129 154 156 265 159 126 246 126 107 227 122 163 101 102 283 244 213 108 168 262 104 118 120 162 224 175 112 234

229 191 175 210 206 135 280 153 252 100 147 173 166 231 181 144 135 112 121 152 159 232 136 140 168 104 144 223 124 256 151 126 211* 121 104 112 299* 199 108 111* 107 157 156 163 183

Table 3 (Continued) British and American Flays Produced With Moderate Success Both in London and in New York, 1910-1939

Flays

American Alias Jimmy Valentine Anna Christie At 9:45 Broadway Jones Broken Wing, The Cinderella Man, The Come Out of the Kitchen Counsellor-at-law Crime Dinner at Eight Easiest Way, The F i r s t Legion, The Gold Diggers, The Great Lover Greeks Had a Word for It, The Her F i r s t Affair In the Next Room Is Zat So? Kick In Let Us Be Gay Meet the Wife Misleading Lady Mourning Becomes Electra Never Say Die Officer 666 One Night in Rome P a r t n e r s Again Patsy, The Queen's Husband, The Ready Money Reunion in Vienna Second Man, The Silver Cord, The Stop Thief They Knew What They Wanted When Ladies Meet Whole Town's Talking, The

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1910 1923 1925 1914 1922 1919 1920 1934 1927 1933 1912 1937 1926 1920 1934 1930 1924 1926 1915 1930 1927 1916 1937 1913 1912 1920 1923 1928 1931 1912 1934 1928 1927 1925 1926 1933 1926

1910 1921 1919 1912 1920 1916 1916 1931 1927 1932 1909 1934 1919 1915 1930 1927 1923 1925 1914 1929 1923 1913 1931 1912 1912 1919 1922 1925 1928 1912 1931 1927 1926 1912 1924 1932 1923

Length of Run London N.Y. 149 103 126 159 120 257 111 126 163 218 115 102 180 239 193 162 203 234 128 136 118 239 106 216 110 104 161 135 138 232 196 109 192 151 108 108 118

(page

155 177 139 176 171 192 224 292 133 232 157 112 282 245 253 136 159 168 188 132 232 183 150 151 192 107 237* 204 125 128 264 178 112 149 192 172 173

89)

Table 4 British and American Plays Exchanged With Varying Success in London and New York, 1« 10-1939

Plays

British Abraham Lincoln And So to Bed Autumn Crocus Bill of Divorcement, A Bulldog Drummond Call It a Day Constant Nymph, The Dancers, The Dear Brutus Dracula Fanny's F i r s t Play F a r m e r ' s Wife, The French Without T e a r s Garden of Allah, The Interference Kismet Laburnum Grove L a s t of Mrs. Cheney, The Letter, The Love on the Dole Loyalties Man Who Stayed Home, The Many Waters Mary Rose Milestones On the Spot Our Betters Rain Secrets Silent House, The Skin Game, The This Year of Grace Whiteoaks Wind and the Rain, The Young Woodley

fpaie

90)

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1919 1919 1926 1927 1931 1932 1921 1921 1921 1921 1935 1936 1926 1926 1923 1925 1917 1918 1927 1927 1911 1912 1924 1924 1936 1937 1920 1911 1927 1927 1911 1' 1911 1933 1935 1925 1925 1927 1927 1935 1936 1922 1922 1914 1918 1928 1929 1920 1920 1911 1912 1930 1930 1923 1917 1925 1922 1922 1922 1927 1928 1920 1920 1928 1928 1936 1938 1933 1934 1928 1925

Length of Run London N.Y. 466 331 371 401 430 509 587 344 356 391 624 1329 1039 359 412 328 335 514 338 391 407 584 313 399 607 342 548 648 373 420 349 316 827 1001 429

193 189 210 173* 162 194 148 133 183 261 256 120 111 241 224 181 131 252 104 145* 220 109 110 127 215 167 112 150 168 277 176 157 112 119 260

Table 4 (Continued) British and American Plays Exchanged With Varying Success in London and New York, 1910-1959

Plays

American Abie's Irish Rose Baby Mine Bad Man, The Best People, The Bird of Paradise Broadway Burlesque Business Before Pleasure Cat and the Canary, The Daddies Daddy Long Legs Dancing Mothers First Year, The Fool, The Friendly Enemies Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford Idiot's Delight Inside the Lines Ladles Night Lightnin' Man Who Came Back, The Men in White On Trial Polly With a Past Pride and Prejudice Romance Royal Family, The Sign on the Door, The So This is London Street Scene Thirteenth Chair, The Three Men on a Horse Under Cover Welcome Stranger

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1927 1911 1923 1926 1919 1926 1928 1919 1922 1919 1916 1925 1926 1924 1919 1913 1938 1917 1933 1925 1920 1934 1915 1921 1936 1915 1934 1921 1923 1930 1917 1936 1917 1921

1922 1910 1920 1924 1912 1926 1927 1917 1922 1918 1914 1924 1920 1922 1918 1910 1936 1915 1920 1918 1916 1933 1914 1917 1935 1913 1927 1919 1922 1929 1916 1935 1914 1920

Length of Run Lonaon N.Y. 128 345 111 309 312 253 143 207 181 191 514 110 180 138 257 158 230 420 165 151 196 131 174 110 316 1046 174 307 279 147 246 237 192 232

2532 287 342 143 112 332 372 357 340* 340 264 312 760 400 440 424 300 103 360 1291 457 351 365 315 219 160 345 187 369* 601 328 835 349 309

( f t *

91)

Table 5 British and American Plays Exchanged Without Success In London and New York, 1910-1355

Plays

British After All Anatomist, The Angel in the House Anthony In Wonderland Apple Cart, The Aren't We All Art and Opportunity At the Barn Barton Mystery Basker, The Beauty and the Barge Bella Donna Billeted Brass Bottle, The Breadwinner, The Caesar's Wife Canaries Sometimes Sing Caroline Case of Lady Camber, The Clever Ones, The Constant Wife, The Conversation Piece Creaking Chair, The David Copperfield Diversion Eden End Eight Bells Eliza Comes to Stay Escape Me Never Even Song Faithful Heart, The Fake, The Fallen Angels Flashing Stream, The French Leave General John Regan Getting Married Happy Husband, A Hassan Havoc, The Heartbreak House Hindle Wakes I Have Been Here Before (paie

92)

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1931 1931 1915 1917 1929 1923 1912 1912 1916 1916 1904 1911 1917 1909 1931 1917 1929 1916 1915 1914 1927 1934 1924 1914 1928 1934 1933 1913 1933 1932 1921 1924 1925 1938 1920 1913 1908 1927 1923 1924 1921 1912 1937

1931 1932 1915 1917 1930 1923 1917 1914 1917 1916 1913 1912 1917 1910 1931 1919 1930 1916 1917 1915 1926 1934 1926 1914 1928 1935 1933 1914 1935 1933 1922 1924 1927 1939 1920 1913 1916 1928 1924 1924 1920 1912 1938

Length of Run Lonaon N . Ï . 262 127 130 114 285 110 115 131 165 112 219 253 236 244 158 241 144 141 191 91 70 177 235 130 301 162 190 132 230 213 194 211 158 201 238 275 70* 109 281 174 63 108 210

20 8 8 7 88 48 32 24 20 40 6 72 79 44 55 81 24 45 48 100 233 f>5 80 24 C2 24 17 13 96 15 31 88 J6 8 56 72 112 72 16 48 125 32 20

Table 5 (Continued) British and American Plays Exchanged Without Success in London and New York, 1910-155?

Plays

British (continued) Infinite Shoeblack, The Is Life Worth Living? It's You I Want John Ferguson Juno and the Paycock Lady Patricia Lady With the Lamp, The Lake, The Land of Promise, The Lass 0 ' Laughter Laughing Lady Lean Harvest Legend of Leonora Little Damosel, The Living Dangerously Love F r o m a Stranger Luck of the Navy, The Lullaby Man in Possession, The Man With a Load of Mischief March Hares Marie-Odile Marquise, The Mary Goes F i r s t Mixed Doubles Moon in the Yellow River, The Mr. and Mrs. Daventry Mr. Preedy and the Countess Mrs. Dane's Defense Mrs. Dot Murder in the Cathedral Murder on the Second Floor My Lady's Dress Nine Till Six Old English Other Men's Wives Parnell Party, The Pelican Petticoat Influence Perplexed Husband, The Please Help Emily Plough and the Stars, The

Date of Performance London H.Y; 1929 1933 1933 1920 1925 1911 1929 1933 1914 1922 1922 1931 1913 1909 1935 1936 1918 1925 1930 1925 1927 1915 1927 1913 1925 1934 1900 1909 1900 1908 1935 1929 1914 1930 1924 1928 1936 1932 1924 1930 1911 1916 1926

1930 1933 1935 1919 1926 1912 1931 1933 1913 1925 1923 1931 1914 1910 1935 1936 1919 1923 1930 1925 1921 1915 1927 1914 1927 1932 1910 1910 1928 1910 1936 1929 1914 1930 1924 1929 1935 1933 1925 1930 1912 1916 1927

Length of Run Lonaon TI.Y. 156 102 264 65 202 100 176 214 185 121 164 123 83 191 202 149 289 85* 282 261 109 30 192 152 162 128 117 237 209 272 180 146 176 117 60* 143 107 160 244 283 154 213 133 (page

80 12 15 177 74 32 12 55 76 28 96 31 136 49 9 31 32 144 98 16 60 119 80 32 15 40 4 24 16 72 38 45 57 25 183 23 99 45 65 98 80 40 32 93)

Table 5 (Continued) British and American Plays Exchanged Without Success In London and New York, 1910-155?

Plays

British (continued) Pomander Walk Potiphar's Wife Prude's Fall, The Prunella Pygmalion Quinney's Robert E. Lee Romantic Age, The Rutherford and Son Sacred and Profane Love Sacred Flame, The Saturday to Monday Saving Grace, The Scrape o' the Pen, The Scotch Mist Silent Witness, The Sleeping Clergyman, A Speckled Band, The St. Helena Story of the Rosary, The Strange Orchestra Symphony in Two Flats This Woman Business Time and the Conways To See Ourselves Voice from the Minaret Ware Case Wedding Bells Whiteheaded Boy, The Wise Tomorrow Within the Gates Witness for the Defense Wrecker, The Young Visitors Younger Generation, The Wanted — A Husband American Accent on Youth Ah I Wilderness Aloma Apron Strings Argle Case, The As Husbands Go

(page

94)

Date of Performance London N.Y.

Length of Run London N.Y.

1911 1927 1920 1904 1914 1915 1923 1920 1912 1919 1929 1904 1917 1912 1926 1930 1933 1910 1936 1913 1931 1929 1926 1937 1930 1919 1915 1920 1920 1937 1934 1911 1927 1920 1912 1917

1910 1928 1923 1913 1914 1915 1923 1922 1912 1920 1928 1917 1918 1912 1926 1931 1934 1910 1936 1914 1933 1930 1926 1938 1935 1922 1914 1919 1921 1937 1934 1911 1928 1920 1913 1916

45* 146 227 16» 118 286 108 124 136 107 209 100 166 161 117 207 230 169 128 192 135 153 187 225 155 245 209 86* 290 117 35* 150 165 105 135 109

143 16 72 104 72 48 15 31 63 88 24 16 96 76 16 80 40 32 63 48 1 47 47 32 23 13 47 168 60 3 101 64 40 16 60 56

1935 1936 1926 1931 1915 1938

1934 1933 1925 1930 1912 1931

35* 50* 138 72 28 18*

229 289 66 224 191 148

Table 5 (Continued) British and American Plays Exchanged Without Success in London and New York, 1910-155?

Plays

American (continued) Awful Truth, The Baby Eyclone, The Bachelor Husbands Barker, The Beggar on Horseback Biography Butter and Egg Man, The Captain Kidd, Jr. Charm School, The Cheating Cheaters Children of the Moon Cobra Cock Robin Craig's Wife Crimson Alibi, The Dishonored Lady Dodsworth Double Door Donovan Affair, The Dulcy Dummy, The Emperor Jones, The Enemy, The Excuse Mel Gentlemen P r e f e r Blondes Give and Take Good Gracious Annabellel Gorilla, The Her Husband's Wife Hottentot, The House of Glass Joker, The Judgment Day Kind Lady Knife, The Lawful Larceny Left Bank, The Little Miss Bluebeard Little Women Monster, The Nervous Wreck, The Nightie Night No More Ladies

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1926 1928 1924 1928 1925 1934 1927 1918 1920 1919 1926 1925 1933 1929 1919 1930 1938 1934 1927 1923 1915 1925 1932 1915 1928 1928 1923 1925 1916 1926 1926 1927 1927 1936 1918 1922 1932 1925 1919 1928 1924 1921 1934

1922 1927 1922 1927 1924 1932 1925 1916 1920 1916 1923 1924 1928 1925 1919 1930 1934 1933 1926 1921 1914 1920 1925 1911 1926 1923 1916 1925 1910 1920 1925 1925 1925 1935 1917 1922 1931 1923 1912 1922 1923 1919 1934

Length of Run London N.Y. 8 90» 32 25* 52 42* 31 17 156 67 8 70 32* 10* 125 50* 58* 60 63 30 30 43 30* 33 45* 54 15 134 121 68 53 155 116 10 151 46 13* 13 35 56* 93 73 15*

(page

144 184 135 172 160 267 243 178 88 286 117 239* 100 289 51 127 147 143 128 246 200 204 203 160 199 190 111 15 48 113 245 16 93 102 84 224 242 175 184 101 279 154 162

95)

Table 5 (Continued) British and American Plays Exchanged Without Success in London and New York, 1910-1939

Plays

American (continued) Of Mice and Men Pair of Sixes, A Paris Bound Persons Unknown Petticoat Fever Polly Preferred Poor Little Rich Girl Post Road, The Pursuit of Happiness, The Rebecca of Sunnybrooke Farm Ruined Lady, The Saturday's ChEdren Show Shop, The Silence Storm, The Success Story, The Sun-up Tarnish To the Ladies Too Many Cooks Torch Bearers, The Up in Mabel's Room Very Idea, The Vinegar Tree, The Wheel, The Whistling in the Dark Woman in Room 13, The Years of Discretion, The You and I

Date of Performance London N.Y. 1939 1920 1929 1929 1936 1924 1913 1937 1934 1912 1920 1934 1916 1925 1920 1934 1925 1925 1932 1932 1925 1921 1919 1932 1922 1933 1929 1913 1924

1937 1914 1927 1922 1935 1923 1913 1934 1933 1910 1920 1927 1914 1924 1919 1932 1923 1923 1922 1922 1922 1919 1917 1930 1921 1932 1919 1912 1923

Length of Run London N.Y. 99» 46 27* 110 16* 48 14 4* 57* 56 106 21* 63 45 30 65* 234 56 13* 18 55 37 225 35* 138 40* 14* 31 38*

207 207 234 5 137 288 160 212 252 216 33 107 156 199 282 121 72 248 128 223 135 229 15 229 40 143 175 190 176*

Note: The plays of Table 6 appear on pages 8 and 9 of the text, Chapter One. They are the scripts which form the basis for the study. Two were inaccessible, since they have not been published: Naughty Wife and By Pigeon Post. Mrs. Moonlight and The Ivory Door, also in the table originally, were eliminated because they were produced in the Charles Hopkins Theater (Punch and Judy) where their long runs were promoted philanthropicaHy rather than commercially.

(r*ge

96)

Chronological Record of the Anglo-American Theater, 1910-1939

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British Plays Brass Bottle, The Inferior Sex, The Little Damosel, The Mid-Channel Mr. and Mrs. Daventry Mr. Preedy and the Countess Mrs. Dot Pomander Walk Smith Speckled Band, A Bunty Pulls the Strings Disraeli Everywoman Faun, The Garden of Allah, The Kismet Passerby, The Single Man, The Witness for the Defense Bella Donna Blindness of Virtue Butterfly on the Wheel Explorer, The Fanny's First Play Hindle Wakes Lady Patricia Milestones Mind-the-Paint Girl New Sin, The Perplexed Husband, The Preserving Mr. Panmure Rutherford and Son Scrape o' the Pen Whip, The

§

SS

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0 p

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44 244 64 20 499 191 966 58 4

09 13 09 09

4

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24 231 72 272 143 45 112 168 32 169

09 08 11 09 10

391 617 280 128 144 95 48 23 241 359 184 3 2 8 124 163 104 108

11 16 12 13 20 11 11 10

64

150

11

72 2 5 3 16 71

11 12

191 119 23 48 256 624 32 108 32 100 215 607 136 126 22 39

11 08 11 12 11 12 12 12

80

154

11

32 95 63 136 76 161 163 112

11 12 12 09

S «

§

The 252 Man with a Load of Mischief 16 4 Offense, The Pelican, The 65 126 Rat, The Vortex, The 157 Young Woodley 260

65 24 53 73 24 29 132 128 337 121

25 24 25 25 26 25 25 22

514

25

261 61 244 283 224 429

25 25 24 24 24 28

1924 Bachelor Husbands Fool, The In the Next Room It Pays to Advertise Just Married Nervous Wreck, The Pollyana Polly Preferred Show-Off, The You and I

(page

92 22 350 22 237 22 369 22 12 19

23 24 23 23 22

101)

Chronological Record of the Anglo-American Theater, 1910-1939 (Continued)

British Plays

Autumn Fire 71 Constant Nymph, The 148 Constant Wife, The 233 80 Creaking Chairs 61 Ghost Train, The Juno and the Paycock 74 Man from Toronto, The 28 Masque of Venice, The 15 96 On Approval 16 Scotch Mist Sport of Kings, The 23 This Woman Business 47

S S

I Ig g S° S1 S fi

64 26 587 70 235 655 202

26 27 24 25 25

486 18 15 469 117 319

28 27 26 24

187 26 331 391 243 158 312 62 412 20 338 28 192 102 12 72

62 Diversion 72 Happy Husband 144 High Road, The Mrs. Dane's Defense 16 16 Potiphar's Wife 24 Sacred Flame, The 277 Silent House, The

101 109 237 209 146 209 420

102)

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