The San Francisco call., 1898-03-20
 THE MYSTERIOUS MRS. RILEY AND THE IMPOSSIBLE MIR. BUGLE


Z tS SS SS am sorry that 'The Mysterious Mr. Bugle" turns out to be Of so nttle ac- count. It completely knocks cut the brilliant sermon on the woman drama fist which I had in mind for this Sap- bath. with Madeline Lucette Ryley TOT the timely text. I wonder II dramatlStS are ever so charitable to critics as to confess that it is their work which de- termines the quality of criticism!
 Ii is q comfortable reflection, any way. The more new plays l see the better am I reconciIed to my colleagues and myself The other day l reao III the New York Commercial AdVerusel, newspaper of conspicuous reserve aiiu reliability, a speech of Julia Marlo"e D in which she said that we nave lo drama nowadays because we nave A' dramatic critics. should nave pleoo- ured in arguing the point with MISS Marlowe. and would haVe--olilS' 9iA reading the next days Commercial Ad- ver+iser I found that that paper hao' with its customary reserve ana rella- h,lity published Miss Marlowe's entire daniaI of the speech. But about Mrs. Rvley. I feel particularly put out' re- ,r7arobering the glad ink poured over earlier efforts of this industrious young woman. In recalling certain trustful nrophecies of the wonderful Mrs ky Iev-to-be. I admit the fallibility or ara r,atic criticism, even in The Call. AL CT all. critics would do wiser to deal exclusively in the past and present ana let the future take care Of itseI. should hate to know Mrs Ryley through only her MT. Bugle," and at- tempt to cast her future on the mer- it's of that farce, In such clrcurn- stances the publication of her horo- scope would be libel.
 And yet "The Mysterious MT. Bugle' Is, for all its structural weakness ana arniable inanities, enthusiastically and characteristically Mrs. Ryley's. In a mild way it is a caricature of her bet ter style. The dialogue, while not SC sharp as that of An American Citi- gen. or even Christopher IT," is still in its brightest passages, on the same scheme of sublimated vaudevilleze; ano the whole social atmosphere of the piece is touched with that unconscious disregard of the conventions which is apparent in all of her work. Mrs. Riley Is not a writer of smart plays. The manners, the mental fashions of hel characters are far from urban. Her portraiture of the American quality like Henry Arthur Jones', when he .- gives us iukes and loidies in their an cestral halls is scarcely convincing. II my widest prophecy I could not have included a modern comedy of manner: among the possible accomplishments o1 Mrs. Ryley. But what she showed . special grasp of in An American Citi- zen" was that type of character most fittingly described in the title of the piece. She sketched the American cit izen, the young one of to-day. as he never has been done in any other play of my acquaintance. She sketched him with all his comic weekly wit, vaude- vile epigram, commercial fertility sound heart. quick nerve, good sense and enthusiastic manners. She showed the first stage representation of that phase of young American;sm whict \ meets the more serious emotions of life with a jest, and, like as not, a vaude- vile jest at that; the young American who is hopelessly, irreverently, damna- bly, impregnated with American humor And Nat Goodwin played the part which was nothing less than an ideali- zation of himself. He has done big
 
 him closer than did this part of Beres- ford Cruger in An American Citizen" I have no doubt that Mrs. Ryley copied Nat Goodwin shamelessly when she wrote An American Citizen" for him, but at all events she succeeded in striking one true note of American character, and, whatever the trustful- ness of the story. she wrote play with live man in it.
 
 But nobody lives in "Mr Bugle." The only attempts at human identity are in a comic aunt of rhetorical sarcasm, her brat of a son, who wears precocious spectacles and makes a business of fall- ing over chairs, and an imperturbable servant, suggestively humorous. The brat, I think, is new to the stage. al- though he died in print with the last generation of newspaper humorists but not valuable; the two others are an- tiquely English. The comic aunt and her tumbling offspring have no place at all in the plot, and the servant has served in earlier pieces in his same sug- gestive capacity. This leaves the per sonages involved in the actual intrigue so completely involved in a series of fe- rociously misfit situations that the sig nal speciality of each seems lunacy. Mrs. Ryley may say that this is not se- rious drama, nor even comedy, but farce She calls 1t, if you please, "a legitimate farce" a description that perhaps is used only to distinguish 1t from the song and dance and under clothes affairs which are commonly in cluded in the farce class, but neverthe- less one that inspires expectations of just the sort of farce Mrs. Ryley did not write. And that is good farce in which one, two or more persons of se- rin11s nrrnnSe md simple head if need