The San Francisco call., 1898-11-13

e There is one thing to be said in faVor of "NIistakes Will Happen" which IS that it is a clean farce that no young man need blush to take his father to see However bad it may be as a piece of theatrical architecture, IL IS safe and wholesome in motive and cpl sode We want clean farces in Amer ica-we want clever ones, too, but they must be clean just the same. l nat Grant Stewards piece is not clever mas but little to do with the new natlohal policy, which is for all the deviiment you want, so long as 1t is within the bounds of decency. l believe III SlNlHe to the serious dramatist an almost uii, limited license as regards motlNe anu exploitation, providing he really IS serious dramatist; but not so to lAo f.,o ,.vi+o,. He must be held to a limit. The fact that he hash aI"aS been limited, that no sins anu pIo Ier7,s have been too sacred TOT HIS boo,se Ias+ helps to account TOT the vulgar plays of more ambitious nature ,bo+ have been pushed forward in the disguise of sincerity. The proht that has come out of tainted farce mas been on a1luring bait for the hack writers or the solemn stage. They have taken pruriency and prosperity to be Tn closer kin than alliteration. The result IS that such fake erotics as The Conquer ors." ''The Tree of Knowledge and "The Christian" built to shock and tickle the groundlings, can WalloW III popularity, while a strenuous 1psen play. or a Pinero imitation or a strenu> ous Ibsen play, or a brilliantly fantas- tical social satire by George Bernard Shaw Is damned and derided. Limit the farce writer, l say, and give the urgent dramatist a chance to utter himself. A farce ought not to deal in the vital passions and problems and make them part of the cheap smirking stock in trade of theatrical commerce. The most indecent play l ever saw on the stage was a piece called Don't Tell Her Husband" which was produced here by the Frawleys and lately given in New York under another title. It was written by Augustus Thomas, the cleverest of the American play writers, rand it was intended as a farce, and of all the jokes ever aimed at marital in fidelity it was the most brutal. MT. Thomas is not the only American who has tried to copy the stained pleasures of the Parisians. We are just recoy-
 
 tenderloin exposures rank enough to have called out the police. l say Ire covering" advisedly, because the quail ity and intention of farce are now look ing up. The American farce is now more or less typified in such pieces as "The Man From Mexi- co" and What Happened to Jones'" and no matter how long delayed is the coming of the American drama the American farce is an imme> diate fact. The American is by na- ture and habit humorous; he is sharp, alert and inventive in his fun. Look at our comic weeklies, which beat the world for smart, wholesome fun! And there is no reason why the theater should lag more than ten years behind the comic papers. The history of lit erature shows that in the long run the stage has always held it's own. It is having a hard fight now, but so is the fiction that you take from books in stead of from actors. Books try for long runs nowadays, just as plays do, and as with plays the effort usually kills them. Large immediate populari- ties and the newspapers are the dead Hest enemies of literary art. The book that is most like your favorite morn ing paper sells best-that Is, quickest. It has to sell out in a rush.
 People care almost as little about last years books as they do about last years papers The same with plays A few of the better plays and few of the better books live on a bit to die finger ing deaths in cheaper editions. (Of course am not considering the abso- Iute masterpieces.) The newspapers ! menace the theater by encouraging it !. too much It is the modern newspaper