The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1906-12-23

factors. to make some such sacrifices for
the sake of the general success Of the
play in hand. -
The selection Of plays will also pre-,
sent problem of great Importance.
Naturally, some of the best of the clas-
time, but the project would fail of it's
principal object did it mot serve to
bring out and develop American play
Wrights and American plays. It has
been decided to have at the outset a
great prize competition, in which the
rewards held out will be sufficient to
tempt not merely the novices but the
established and successful playwrig hts
like CLYDE Fitch, Bronson Howard,
liam Gillette and George AIDE. There
will be two prizes, one for comedy
and one for serious drama.
1t is the intention of the founders to
proceed slowly and consider carefully
every phase Of the project as it is de-
veloped. In this way they hope to
avoid the failure which has overtaken
the New theater project in Chicago,
due to hasty and illconsidered plans.
Hartley Davis, we'll remembered here
for his repertorial and dramatic work
on T h ourna in the late eighties,
and since then a successful magazine
writer and critic in New York, . has
written a drama called f'Playing the
Game" which is now being presented
by Joseph J. and w. W. Jefferson, sons
of tAe late Joseph Jefferson The play
has'hot yet had metropolitan hearing,
but reports of its success elsewhere are
glowing. The Jefferson boys, by the
way, have recently broken away from
the "syndicate and gone over to the
independents. Last Monday evening
they appeared at the Lyric in Buffalo,
matte critic of Everybody's and a mem
Der Of the editorial staff of Ridgway's.
Bernard Shaw's latest play, EThe
Doctors Dilemma is provoking the
usual storm of criticism and debate
which always follows the production Of
one of his audacious plays in London.
WHAT It's real success as a play may be
doth not yet appear. But it has already
served 20 start discussion of medical
ethics that raises some delicate and i'm
portant questions. Here is a sketch of
the story from the New York Times:
The plot turns about the discovery of serum
for tuberculosis. The treatment is still in the
experimental stage and it has been possible to
prepare only enough for ten cases. These cases
are being carefully selected: Now appears an
dI'iSI' bupeudl ny Hdme, anu MS beautiful wife.
This excellent lady adores Dubedat as man
and as an artist. He is dying of consumption
VIII the pathologist save him? At first he
refuses, but consents. impressed with her an
peal that altho Dubedat is worthless as man
his achievements as an artist are beautifyng
and instructmg the world. Presently however
the pathologist, finding Dubedat to be an i'm
possible combination of artist and backguard
wonders whether his life is after all worth
saving; whether 1t might not after all be bet
ter for the lady that he should die before her
illusions are altogether destroyed.
About this time there comes to the patholosist
an old Fellow practitioner. good man morally
but or no special influence in the world: he
too. has developed phthisis. The question then
artists, SHALL the artist be cast aside and sha II
his place among the fortunate ten be given to
the inconsequential Esculapian.
Another element now enters into the nrob-
lem, because the pathologist discovers that he
has fallen in love with Dubedat's wife. ue
rehects that in the event Of the artists death
ne ne should be able to marry her. Carried away
by this hope he receives, treats and-cur the
fellow practitioner and hands the artist over
to the tender mercies of a fashionable physician
whom homie ne knows ,9S to be wretched bungleg.
t Du9edat ales on the stage after making an
artistic confession Of faith and after seeming
his wife,s promise to marry again ms sneed;lr
| as may be-becausc the idea of sorrowino
widow has always displeased his esthetic sense'
Lnere is an epliog in which the pathoogist
| asks the widow to marry him, confessing that
when he put the artist in the hands of his
| fashionable colleague he did it in the full ex-
recitation that the man would die; proposing to
kthe widow ne calls himself the dead husbands
murderer. The lady is appropriately shocked
| but her reply is that she has already married
again. ID. 49,. ieu
While this sort of dilemma is per-
haps rare in the life OF. the AVERAGE
practitioner, it is doubtless true that
many dilemmas involving life and
death beset the phvsician,s dailv