The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-05-01
THE GENTLE Art OF PARODY.
,r sHOrLD DELIGHT AN AUTHOR,
nY,UiTIC on OTHERWISE.
.,.c,mrns--Cold storage Tragedy OF .
Harlem FIAT After Maeterlinck--The
nrsurrected TOist0y, . Parody OF
The Parody Played At the victOria.

nesurrected TOistoy, . Parody OF
the Parody Played At the Victoria.
n there Is anything that should delight
dramatic author or indeed the most ordi-
narv .cribper, it is parody To parody Is
~ nrai.e-obliquely. Yet many thin
.Linned scrbes and oompilers Of dramatic
srna,ons Chiefly from other mem zee fit
=, resent the trick rs an imertinence. A
,,Iaasng stroll through the primates' house
T. The Bronx zoo would convince any
,asty author that nature delights to parody
nor ber own works She created mainland
me me anthropoid ape. This Is reversing the
order Of creation, but 1t will serve No
et,udents of Shakespeare can point out the
-nurple passages" wherein that unique
man parodied the style of Marlowe and
other contemporaries.
And it is not difficult to parody a man
with a personal style. Every mannerism
Poe lends himelf to parody; Hawthorne not
so easily 1t is not a task 10 initiate Walter
Parers general rhythmic outline and verbal
instrumentation: but II Is almost impossible
to eaten the elusive beauty Of John Henry
Newmans delicately oadenced prose.
Among the modern playwrights Sardou
sr is mainly an affair Of gesture. With
what facility Victor Hugo can be parodied
may he seen in" Cyrano de Bergerao." 1t was
not for fun alone they nicknamed Rostand
Mile Hugo His verse has all the facility
bombast, swagger and Fictitious brilliancy
of Hugos without the power, sincerity,
in a word without the genius. Swinburne
suffered for years from irreverent parodists;
so did Browning. Probably one of the best,
i not the best volume OF parody, Is Bayard
Bra, lIarte, or Theodore Hook, or that
wonderful parodist Catulle Mendes, ever
beat Taylor in these diversions: Walt
Whitman, Poe, Swinburne, Browning-the
Is, is complete, and most complete are the
psrodies, and most artistic.
Owen Seaman in his Borrowed Plumes,
and other volumes Of delightful parodies,
has touched off the moderns with a feather
light touch. His Maeterlinck play is an ex-
prcise in the purest wit. The Belgian mystic
lends himself to parody more than any
living writer. His system of passionate
Japanese iteration: the naive quality of his
dialogues the almost grotesque happenings
natural phenomena-are all
fair fun for the archer who can shoot feath
cred epigrams. But the parody must 90 on
swift wings-at the first hint of heaviness,
Of strain. the charm and humor vanish.
We have not Mr.. Seaman's Maeterlinck
parody by us, and we can remember only
a phrase or two. The most comical idea
was Enter Symbol" This unfortunate
is hard pressed by fate, and the dialogue isl
near, dangerously near, the original
Theodosia Garrison wrote a capital
parody in Ainslees month or so ago She
called it "The Frozen" 1t deals with an
old man. wife. daughter and cook.
The scene is laid in the dining room Of
Harlem fat The old man has rheumatism.
He speaks:
.Ohl oh! oh! How cold it is! have been
in all the seven rooms, and each room is
colder than the other. Is this breakfast?
What are we going to have for breakfast?
am sure we are going to have something
terrible. The cook would see to that.
What is al this sawdust doing on the table?'
His wife answers him.
Hush! You have rheumatism. That is
not sawdust--it is breakfast food" The
is heard from: 1T tastes like
ice. l am sure 1t Is shredded
CO. See. father is blowing rings with his
breath. One would think he was horse
What is the matter with the coffee! Oh!
,h something else has happened to the
,offee." The wife joins in: 1T will not
The o coffee hS w not ogg oq On e ,hs
mind, we will eat it: Hark, bark! What is
hat?" The wife: THE steam! the steam
Oh, the janitor ia turning on the steam in
he radiator Put your hand on the radiator
rhe daughter; .Oh, it was not steam. My
land is frozen to the radiator what shall
do without my handf'
The voice Of the cook is heard: 1T is
he water pipe that burst, The noise you
ouch the radiator9 Now you have no
,and." But the old man will the rheuma-
ism is not dismayed. He asks for the cook
md let ,is look at her hair. A wall follows
,ver the discovery that the rubber plant
a frozen to death. Also the canary. He
ooks like little yellow chicken one gets
rom the cod-storage house. Never mind,
re will last long time" The wife ad-
i he swallows the fur. we'll and good
ur is warm. The iceman is heard sending
~ the ice. Some one asks to have the
window opened; the old man objects. He
avs 1 will not open the window-there are
20 many explorers about. They are look
ng everywhere for the North Pole what
Finally, the whole establishment goes up
n glacial blizzard. The wife is frozen
stiff. the cook crawls down the fire escape
% kill he janitor, and the old man Is frozen
o his chair. With a despairing Mater
inckian wall the daughter exclaims
He is frozen My mother is frozen.
The rubber plant is dead. have no hand
All Of which is submitted as good, legiti-
nate parody, especially the alluslon to
he horse. Charles Battell Loomis, the
humorist, is said to have written one
'ct parody Of Maeterlinck better than the
original.
And Tolstoy-why not Tolstoy2 Or.
rather, why not parody Of parody Why
not parody the stage version Of -The Res
lrrecton," which in the Bataille version
Tolstoy much diluted. and in
the Morton adaptation held nothing Of
the great writer? Here 10 a realistic parody
mot subtle, for subtlety is wasted on
THE REsURRECTIoNIsTs.
Scene A Moujik's Isbd. The air is SIN
with the thick light Of an oil lamp W! n
stands on the ground before a battered
ekon On the large clay-tiled stove re
reclining several female figures. They are
the two Blanches-Blanche OF Belasco's
and Blanche OF Hammerstein's 1t Is New
Years eve-in September! Without are
sounded at intervals the faint, appealing
tones Of the shofar. IN. B.-This piece is
played with two Mdslords, after the style
Of two Topsys The shofar is out Of season.
both Adslopas speak in unison: Voices