George Jean Nathan

“ We hear a great deal of the American drama’s failure to hold the mirror up to nature. This is nonsense, nothing more nor less. The trouble is not with the drama, but with the mirror! The American drama tries to reflect nature in one of the little mirrors women carry in their vanity-boxes. Some day it may learn—as the French drama has learned—that when there’s any reflecting of nature to be done, you’ve got to use a pier glass. ”

“ I wonder what the magazine er-um-um critics, as they choose to call themselves, will think of this play?
DIXON
Humph! Magazine critics? Why they’re all young fellows. Impudent, too! They think that just because they’re educated they know more about the game than we do—than I do—and I’ve had my [Pg 55] opinions quoted on as many as two hundred garbage cans in one week!
SUMMERS
Ah, dear me, gentlemen. In my time, a critic was a person with a taste for drama; to-day a critic is largely a person with a taste for quotation in the Shubert ads. ”

“ I suppose Fanny’s Second Play may be pretty good drama, but I never had any experience like the hero in the show and by George, I don’t believe it could have happened! Besides, my sister never acted that way and consequently I must put the whole thing down as rubbish. The author doesn’t understand human nature. No, sir, he doesn’t understand human nature!
HILL
The society atmosphere, too, is perfectly ridiculous. Why, I’ve been in the Astor as many as five times and I never saw any society people act that way. Our American playwrights are not gentlemen, that’s the rub. ”

“ The hero of a Broadway play may not be bald. This would seem, in the Broadway drama, to be the first rule of heroism and, with heroism, of intelligence and appeal. So, Julius Caesar, Bismarck, George Washington, Napoleon and Shakespeare would be low villains. ”

“ Every blow that has fallen, every door that has been shut between me and an honest livelihood, every time that clean hands have been drawn away from mine and respectable faces turned aside as I came near them, I’ve come to you for comfort and love and hope—and have found them. ”

“ It is a favourite challenge of the average Broadway playwright to the dramatic critic that if the latter knows so much about plays, why doesn’t he write one himself. The same question might be asked of the average Broadway playwright.
XXIV
The financial success of the Broadway play is conditioned on the proportion of theatergoers who believe that singeing keeps the hair from falling out and that the American Indians were accustomed to use the word “heap” before every adjective. The last season was the most successful Broadway has known in years. ”

“ To be effective, acting must interpret not so much the playwright’s work as the audience’s silent criticism of that work.
XLII
... It is to be remarked that the New Movement in the theater, about which we hear so much, what with its scenery, lighting, stage architecture and what not, seems to concern everything but drama.
XLIII
The moving pictures will never supplant the spoken drama, contend a thousand and one critics. Well, anyway, not so long as the drama is being spoken as it is to-day in the majority of our Broadway theaters. ”

“ Ebbsmith breaks from Charteris’ arm and throws herself into the arms of her husband. A smile spreads over the latter’s features as he realises the complete effectiveness of the cure he has practised upon his wife, of the stratagem by which he has won her away from Charteris forever, of the trickery by which he has shown Charteris up to her for the insincere philanderer he is, of the device of pretending to concur in her and Charteris’ plan to elope. He clasps her close to him and presses a kiss on her brow. ”

“ Men go to the theater to forget; women, to remember.
XLVII
Melodrama is that form of drama in which the characters are deliberately robbed of a sense of humor by the author. Problem drama, most often, that form in which the characters are deliberately robbed of a sense of humour by the audience.
XLVIII
How ashamed of themselves Galsworthy and Shaw, Molnar and Brieux, Hauptmann and Wedekind must feel when they read a book on dramatic technique by a member of the Drama League! ”

“ Rotten—An adjective used to describe anything good.
Author—A noun used to designate the person who, in response to the applause, comes out upon the stage after the second act in a conspicuously new Tuxedo and talks as if he had written a play.
Laugh—A noise uttered by the audience whenever the comedian, casting an eye upon the prima donna’s hinter-décolleté, ejaculates, “I’m glad to see your back again.”
Grate—Something that is used to warm up vaudeville sketches. ”

“ The British equivalents for the various specimens of Yankee vernacular were thus provided, so that the audience might comprehend the meaning of the words spoken by the characters in the play. By way of helping American audiences to a better understanding of the British vulgate, I append a reciprocating glossary:
Actor—A war-time patriot who shouts “God Save the King” as he hurries aboard the first steamer out of Southampton to accept an engagement in an American musical comedy adapted from the German. ”

“ The critic who does not believe that such a thing as a repertory company is artistically possible knows that a dozen modern actors, assembled into one group, are insufficiently talented and skilled to interpret satisfactorily even one play.
XXXI
It is the custom in many New York theaters to ring a bell in the lobby so as to warn the persons congregated there that the curtain is about to go up on the next act and that it is time for them to go back into the theater. ”

“ Florenz Ziegfeld succeeds with his shows [Pg 41] because he addresses his chief appeal to the eye. Mr. George M. Cohan succeeds with his because he addresses his chief appeal to the ear. The impresarios of the Fourteenth Street burlesque shows succeed with theirs because they address their chief appeal to the nose.
XXXIV
The one big ambition of nine out of every ten American playwrights is, in the argot of the theater, to “get over the footlights.” The one big ambition of nine out of every ten audiences is exactly the same! ”

“ XVII
The proficient actor is one who can completely immerse his own personality in the rôle he is playing. The star actor is one who can completely immerse the rôle he is playing in his own personality. ”

“ Drama is an art wherein one observes the effects of the thematic action upon the protagonist’s heart. Burlesque is an art wherein one observes the effects of the thematic action upon the protagonist’s trousers-seat.
XXVII
“Trying it on the dog”—a phrase referring to the trying out of a play in the provinces before bringing it into the metropolis. In other words, testing the effect of the play upon an intelligent community to predetermine, by its lack of success there, its subsequent prosperity in New York. ”

“ That’s so: they don’t amount to anything until they come over here and inhale the free and fresh air of liberty. Then they become American citizens and they amount to a great deal. We build up the West and feed the world! ”

“ Something seemingly never remembered by dramatists when writing love scenes: the more a young woman really loves a man the less talkative, the more silent, she is in his presence.... Only women over thirty are chatty before the object of their affection. ”

“ The world may be divided thus: actors and dramatic critics. The only difference between them is that the former do their acting on a platform.
XIV
Shakespeare’s plays fall into two distinct groups: Those written by Shakespeare and those acted by Beerbohm Tree.
XV
Dramatic criticism: The theory that one is more interested in the devices with which a woman makes herself beautiful—cold creams, mascaro, false hair, eyebrow pencils, lip rouge, face powder, dental floss, whale-bone, curl papers, et cetera—than in the beautiful woman herself. ”

“ V The Syllogism of the Broadway Drama
1. Someone loves someone.
2. Someone interposes.
3. Someone is outwitted, someone marries someone, and someone gets two dollars.
VI
Such critics as contend that literature is one thing and drama another, are apparently of the notion that literature is something that consists mainly of long words and allusions to Châteaubriand, and drama something that consists mainly of monosyllables and allusions to William J. Burns.
VII
The test supreme of all acting is the coincidental presence upon the stage of a less competent actress who is twice as good-looking. ”

“ When the play was produced in America it was suggested to Shaw that he come to the United States, study the peculiarities of the local critics, and alter his epilogue so that the indelible attitudes toward everything dramatic of the native criticerei might be lampooned for American audiences. Shaw was too busy. Being possessed of an hour’s spare time and considerable presumption, the present writer essays the task in Shaw’s behalf. “Fanny’s Second Play” may be any anonymously written play. ”

“ Canio threatens to kill Nedda and Leoncavallo’s music. Beppo and one of the old gentlemen who [Pg 65] has forgotten his overcoat rush back. Beppo disarms Canio. Tonio hints that Nedda’s lover may appear that night in the play and some bizarre looking ladies in the third row hint a lot of other things. Left alone, Canio bewails his bitter fate, and the gentlemen whose wives won’t let them get out do the same. In wild grief, Canio finally gropes his way off. And such gentlemen as are left in the audience follow suit. ”

“ Artiste—A vaudeville actress who carries her own plush curtain.
[Pg 60]
Dresden-China Comedienne—Any vaudeville actress who is not a comedienne and who wears a poke bonnet fastened under the chin with pale blue ribbons.
Headliner—A performer of whom audiences in the legitimate theatres have wearied.
Society’s Pet—The designation of any young woman performer who has danced in a Broadway restaurant that was visited one evening by a slumming party from Fifth Avenue.
Mind-reader—A vaudeville performer who imagines the members of a vaudeville audience have minds to read. ”

“ Canio descends and boxes the ears of Tonio, who loves Nedda. Tonio, and two old gentlemen of decided snoring proclivities who have been sitting in the eighth row, wander off. A villager invites the players to drink. Twenty-seven gentlemen in the [Pg 64] audience accept the invitation. The villager hints that Tonio lingers to flirt with Nedda, and the ladies in the boxes also get busy with recent scandal. Canio takes it as a joke, twenty-one of the twenty-seven gentlemen taking it with water. Canio says he loves his wife. ”

“ THE HEROINE (From the newspaper critique of the play made from the book)
“The role of Faith Draycourt was ably interpreted by that accomplished and experienced actress, —— ——, who is well remembered by the older generation of theater-goers for her fine performance of Juliet in 1876 at the old Bowery Theater.”
LIII
An arm-chair beside a reading lamp is the only place for worth-while drama. ”

“ Locke will agree with his critics that inasmuch as people always go to bed in the dark, it is but logical that, when the lights go out in the auditorium and one of his plays gets under way, they should go to sleep. ”

“ The plays which, in the last two decades, have, in the United States, made the least money: “The Thunderbolt,” “Strife,” [Pg 36] “The Three Daughters of M. Dupont,” “The Incubus,” and “General John Regan.”
IX
The unities of the Belasco drama: Time, place and (legal) action.
X
Constructive critic: One who builds up the newspaper’s theatrical advertising revenue.
XI
The producers of our two-dollar music shows are rapidly gobbling up all the vaudeville actors. This will immeasurably help vaudeville.
XII
The circuses will soon go into winter quarters. They cannot compete with the Drama Leagues. ”

“ Gentlemen, you mean psychotherapy.
ALL
Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s thought, anyway—something snappy and new. And Augustus Thomas is the only American playwright who thinks.
[Pg 57]
DIXON
Did you notice that reference to the “sweet and noble mother”? I think Roi Cooper Megrue wrote it—and I don’t like Megrue. He’s too fat looking. I think the play is punk. ”

“ You pay, therefore, two dollars for one hundred and fifteen minutes of entertainment, or about one and three-quarters cents a minute. Let us now see what you get for your money, and also the equivalent of what you could get for it did you spend it in other directions. ”