Irvin S. Cobb

“ I saw my name in print on the program—wigs by Jones, costumes by Brown, shoes by Robinson, piano loaned by Green, book by Me. My friends congratulated me; they said I was discovered. I shall pass over the miseries of the first night; the audience is said to have suffered, but I suffered more severely. I stayed up to get the first copies of the morning papers and read what the critics said. Then I knew that my friends were wrong. They thought I was going to be discovered, whereas I had merely been exposed.
And that's the way to write a play. Sometimes a play succeeds and sometimes it fails. ”

“ For example, we had a scene where a group of chorus-men were made up as sailors. They came in, ye-heaving and ye-hoing, and lifting up first one leg and then the other by yanking on their waistbands.
Having gained heart, I ventured to ask the stage-manager why this should be so.
"There's nothing in the play, so far as I know, that says these sailor- boys have the white swelling," was my remark. "Why, then, should they make their entrance in this way?"
"Why?" he repeated,"Why? Why, because they always have. and that's all there is to it!" ”

“ Why, man alive, you've got your scenery and your props and your costumes and all that. All you've got to do is just to write to 'em. George Hobart, or one of those fellows, wouldn't want more than a day, or a day and a half at the outside, for a little job like that. Still, of course, we've got to figure that you are a little bit new at the game, and give you plenty of time. There'll have to be three acts, because we've got three sets of scenery. ”

“ Later he developed into a sunny-tempered, middle-aged barrister with a strong vein of humor and a heart so full of warm, human sympathy that there was hardly room for the customary supply of cockles that always go with that sort of a heart ”

“ You must give me the last two acts by next Saturday night, because I've got the chorus called for rehearsals on Monday morning. And say, let it all be good, bright, new stuff, will you—none of that old junk they've all been pulling?"
I wouldn't like to say that I worked like a Trojan, because I don't know how hard a Trojan can work. I do know the Trojans have a large annual output of linen collars and laundry-machinery and Republican politicians to their credit, so I assume that they are earnest workers ”

“ Like me, they had come to New York to be near the great centers of literary supply and demand. There was one young man—a true Bohemian, but with the shucks still on—who belonged to the leading Bohemian set of Michigan City, Indiana. ”