Los Angeles herald., 1909-06-27
BY w. HERBERT BLAKE

A 4 OIE pCllAeiIo ulAC|AA9S@NeAA7AS ,
our playwrights are returning to
" the classicism of the three uni
ties. Free from the tight rein of a
French academy, the American stage
nevertheless is tending more and more
to adopt the constructive dogmas Of
the pre-romantic Partisan school. The
need of a unified action which shall
run, an unbroken thread through the
body of the plot was conceded long
ago, by well-built melodrama first OF
all And now the best new plays are
pointing straight to type of drama
which shall narrow its time limit to a
month, a week, perhaps even the
twenty-four hours of quick, concen-
trated action against which victor
Hugo launched his "Ernani' as an eX-
uberant, boyish protest. Hair our sue
cessful dramas now have limited the
change of scene to one or possibly TWO
shifts, and the familiar Same as Act
T. is doubtless kept permanently in
type in the composing rooms when
print theatrical programs.
Examples without number of the
tendency toward compression of acting
time may be cited. Secret Service,
sherlock Holmes" 1.-The Servant in
the House." Lady Frederick Jack
Straw" 1.-THE Lion and the Mouse
rise readily to the mind. Sucn OF these
as do not fall exactly within the
twenty-four hours groove of the elder
Gallic school, could be reduced to that
limit without impairing the action or
vigor of its portrayal. "The Servant
in the House." which we are to see at
the Mason in a few weeks, tells It's
story on a stage which remains scent
cally the same from the first act to the
last. 1t is a superb product OF intel :
ligent fidelity to the classic ideals or
the craft. The time consumed IN play
ing is intended to exactly reproduce
the time its characters take to i'm
print their deeds upon the page OF
life. The second act begins at the pre-
else place on the stage and IN
dramatic time at which the first act
leaves off and so to the end. Mr. ken
nedy. the author, has achieved tne
delicate constructive feat of elaborat-
ing a theme instinct with the highest
idealisun by a method which is more
realistic than any professed naturalist
ever dared attempt. The only thlng
comparable to it, in point o. massive.
suppressed narration, is the story OF
creation as unfolded by the writer OF
the first chapter of Genesis. 1t is some
thing like the "envoy" of a ballade'
with the three preliminary stanzas
brusquely eliminated.
Curiously enough, the temper OF our
feverish twentieth century mind is
closely akin to this leisurely conceived
dictum of the old French masters. The
''tired business man." so far as he IS
not a myth, demands play which
shall be as like as possible to an eX-
press train, a hurried cup of cottee, Il
yellow newspaper and a detectlVe
story. Hygienically, he is Goth, the
wise family doctors assure us; but ar
tistically he is at one with the best
brains who have ever studied the sub
feet of stagecraft He would be aston
jshed. possibly insulted, if some one
should inform him he was a good dra-
matte critic, but he is-just that.
Ibsen's wonderful dramas are the
best consistent instance of poignantly
swift action packed into small space
and time. Did you recall the scenery,
/ wonder in that terribly real scene in
"Chosts'' in which the accusing refrain
of Mrs Alving Ghosts! Ghosts" "
sweeps the disharmony of her life into
one burst of awful condemnation
What do Nora or Hedda wear, milady?
I'll warrant the tears blinded your per-
feet sartorial judgment too constantly
for you to recall. The master builders
do not depend on scenic shifts, costume
or baggage car art to touch the emo
tlons or fire the Imagination, for their
malleable metal is the heart and soul
of man. Any dramatist who really has
something to say, and knows how to
say it, can view a strike of property
men with equanimity.
When you go to the theater tonight
look on the play, good bad or taste
less, not as an entity in itself, but as
a part of mighty history-the history
of the greatest and diyinest of the arts.
Each play our younger generation Of
playwrights give us writes a page in
that history; changing the metaphor,
fits stone into the foundation Of that
slowly rising edifice-American dra-
matte art. The understructure has been
rough and ed-unrecognizable to
the architects of other lands who built
quite otherwise. But the mounting
lines of the structure reveal an ever
increasing conformity to type-the type
of symmetry and completeness which