The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1902-02-09
ON The FAILURE OF A PLAY.
TRUTH IN A FAMILIAR NIS0UO-
TATION or SHAKEsPEARE.
various Reasons Why Evelyn G~reenlear
s~utheriand's Joan o. me shoals" Was
Not tho min with which Henrietta
Crosman Could Touch an Audience.

@Ae y SSe' " Nttt SAVea. -
Not the Trims With which Henrietta
Although Shakespeare did not write
that the plays the thing In tho sense
Of the familiar quotation, the truth thus
misconveyed Ia beyond question. 1t has
been emphasized several times this season
by the failure OF good actresses In bad
plays. A favorite may ave a weak piece
with a strong role, but TO succeed with
altogether worthless material Is quite
impossible. 20 the play really 10 the thing
to touch the fancy Of ar audience as well
a. tho conscience Of the king The only
new drama put on our stage last week
was an flustI alton Of that point and several
others. Joan o. the Shoals was futile
for various r~easons. any one Of which was
sufficient to insure a fiasco. Yet it's scheme
for providing a suitable character for Hen
rietta CrosmAn was feasible. She had
won critical praise and promiscuous adj
miration In an imper sonation OF Nell
Gwynne a. a devil-may-oare Joker and
female s~washbuoklsr. Then why should
she not do a. well or better with q fisher
girl, FREQ as the winds that blow across
the Isles Of Shoals, wild as the waves that
break on them and as adventurous In her
protecting love Of a man as any man could
be for love Of q womanf II was reasonable
also to believe that Miss Crosman's ex-
ceptional talent for comedy might be ex-
plotted In melodrama. SO Evelyn Green
leaf Sutherland planned well. II was in
the execution that she went astray In every
possible direction, thus demonstra tinR
again the difficulties Of tho plAywright's
work. Mrs. Sutherland II an accomplished
writer. INC was for years q dramatic critic
for the Boston journal. She should know
all that can be learned by observation Of
the art. trade and mystery Of stageGaft.
Several Of her short pieces, acted on COCA
sions Of charity. have been good She COLI
Elaborated with Booth Harrington In making
the stage vUa on Of @Monsieur Beauoaire-
that Richard Mansfield uses. Yet when
abe undertakes q full-length. original drama.
the outcome Is at moo rejected by a kindly
audience and discarded by It's producer
at the end Of . week.
Grandiloquence made this drama ridicu-
lous. joan wa low-born and Inbred In
a hwless settlement Of fishermen, yet her
extreme loquacity was grammatical. Her
long and lofty fights Of diction were flaw
less In rhetoric. Her speech would have
been absurd In q Vassar graduate. and it
was altogether impossible In an uneducated
person. 50 we had the inoongruity OF q
girl who looked and behaved properly like
an untutored savage, but spoke like a COL
legian who had taken a first prize in ora
tory and then gone spouting mad. All
the characters. rom a cler gyman TO the
rA,,uh..N aak-, M A.
boslty, excepting a dumb boy. who may have
talked himself out by developing it too early
In life. This f1uency. moreover, was ar
ranged in long sentences meant to repre-
sent the quaint phraseology Of New Hamp-
shire coast people two centuries ago, but
II may well be doubted that they obsoured
their meanings In awkward derangements
that wasted words In q ratio Of fully sig
teen to one. There were indications that
Mrs. Sutherland had intended her play
TO depict the plain, simple, rugged life of
Portsmouth and the Shoals in 1882. Then
why did she, being no novice In literature,
make her personages talk like inmates OF
a retreat for insane spenbinders? For a
fact, the old woman whom she condemned
to the duckng stool as a common soold
was the most retioent among them. II the
punishment Of Yirian, the wooer Of Joan,
had fitted Ids crime Of ~macrology, he would
have been ducked all day long as fast as
the stool could be worked. Mslnotte's
description to Pauline Of Lake Como as a
place Of honeymoon resort will ever seem
like a mere prosaio item in a guide book
10 those who have heard Virian tell Joan
about the place In Spain that he would
take her to and what he would do with her.
One fault in Joan O. the Shoals is COM
mon to fiction written by women. Their
men ara not masculine. They do manly
things like women. Even II Miss Cross
mans sutton had been a vtrile actor the
emotions and behavior fixed for him by
the author wou ave nullifed his efforts
at heroism. Female playwrights and
novelists who went to the Republic last
week should have learned a lesson from this
lordling. who, II he we're the dangerously
amorous fellow described and had been
compelled TO fee from the English royal
court for aggressive valor on behalf OF
a fair lady, had left ali his m~asculinity
behind. Star actresses, too, may take
warning by Miss C~rosInan's error of judg-
ment, in which she is by no means alone.
They induce authors 10 belittle the heroes
In order 70 relatively enlarge the heroines
The consequence often il that I g man in
the case is not worth the ado that the woman
makes about him. And the undue domi-
nance thus given to her in the writing Is
sometimes aggravated in the acting. In
tho example under consideration Miss
Crosman was a vital. vehement, ~stalwart
Creature. while the blonce and delicate
Harry Woodruff, isually admirable in
boyish partS, was contrastingly and I'M
Economically weak. IL would have seemed
reasonable II she had laid him across her
lap and spanked him for proposing love
without marriage. Mrs. Sutherland had
not erred In making Joan brave and reso-
Lutte TO save Viuidr from capture, but she
should not have let Virdn hide from the
villain an leave Joan TO cope with him
alone. The audience despised him after
that and thong { Il rather bad luck Than
good when she got him for a husband,
Our star actresses need 10 learn tina stage
heroines require heroes M strong or stronger
than themselves II they are To engross US
IN their Joint affairs.
The general reader would not I've Interested
In an analysis of the construction of the