Los Angeles herald., 1909-10-17
BY W. HERBERT BLAKE

PLAY that is bound to be heard
u of is 1.-THE Passing of the Third
- Floor Back" by jerome x. Je-
rome, in which Mr.. es-Robertson
is now appearing al Maxine Elliott s
theater in New York. Mr., Jerome has
been known as a humOrist, but way at
the back of his humor there has been
ever an appetite for aspiration and
subtle sadness. 1t reached its climax
of complexity in the novel, Paul Kel-
YER" 1t appears to be refined to
delicate and poignant simplicity in his
latest play.
Down in Bloomsbury, London, there
is a boarding house. The members are
a thin souled and embittered lot, indi-
vidually dwarfed and shriveled by their
narrow lives and their narrower Jeal-
ousies There is a shreWish landlady
a slovenly servant, painted lady,
cad, snob, a satyr and many others.
Then comes the Passerby. No one
knows whence he halls, yet everybody
seems to recognize him as an old, old
friend He is only a wanderer looking
for cheap room, yet he carries Wlthln
him an universal kinship. 1t is as
comrade that he meets the folk of the
Third Floor Back, and it Is as COM
rades that they come to recognize
strange change in themselves. They
are surprised into happiness, as a child
turns a sob into a laugh. They learn
the meaning of their own cOmradeship
in the Third Floor Back, and what was
scrdid and cramped becomes instead
cozy and beautiful. 1t becomes so be-
cause they make it so, and they make
it so because a stranger has passed by
whom they found they knew, and who
knew them better than they knew
themselves.
That is quite all of the plot. The
method is not unlike that of the old
morality plays, from which the present
Notwithstanding drama has grown. 1t
is. in fact, divided into a prologue, a
play and an epilogue. At the last the
Passerby goes on, but one fanctes his
work is eternal More real and less
rnistily symbolic than Manson in The
Servant in the House the purport OF
his wanderings is less open to Specula-
ton and controversy. One may im-
agine his influence spreading from
Bloomsbury far east and west, as the
Servants" spread. One may think
of its becoming a social regeneration.
as assuredly 1t became in the Third
Floor Back, which, after all, was a
small city. The Passerby captured lhe
city by capturing its units, and before
all by capturing himself. For the
Passerby is Every Man. and so are
the people of the Third Floor Back.
Richard Burton. the essayist, has
called attention to the growing ten
dency to publish plays in book form.
1.-THE Melting Pot" and THE Great Di-
vide" are two recent instances. To him
il means the recognition of practical
dramatic writing as literature. The
Ancient and Exclusive Order of High
brows have become mob.
"The Point of View" in the October
Scribner calls attention to the curious
lrfnsbin between the Weber and Fields
burlesuues and the equally monde
script comedies of Aristophanes. Now
who would have suspected Joe and Lew
were classicists? The same acute OBJ
server detects a return to the baroness
of Elizabethan stage conditions in tho
recent Harvard Stadium production Of
Joan of Arc" And yet the papers
treated it as news.
Goldfeld has refused to stand for the
prize prurient play of the season.
Which was too good for which?
"Arsene Lupin," the play with a thief
for a hero, which has been accepted
by English and New York audiences as
a fairly serious drama was produced
in France originally as a burleSque.
The Gallo mind refuses to take either
its detectives or its criminals too seri-
ously. 1.-THE Third Degree" very likely
never would be understood in Paris.
They would merely laugh at Captain
Clinton; they would not think him the
villain. but the comedian. To bridge
this chasm of diverging temperament,
Charles Frohman made Arsene Iupin a
tolerably sober citizen. Perhaps we
shall recognize him as a captain Of in
dustry after the Ryder-Ganton type,
merely descending to a more daring and
unfettered form Of buccaneering.