New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-02-23
By Ralph Block

TT is foolhardy thing TO say that
George Cohan is a modest man
u probably the most modest man on
Broadway. Nobody will believe it;
every one will retort at once with the
hundred Cohan songs celebrating the
rewards of self advertisement. Indeed
there is one of them, in the familiar
Cohan patter, in the latest Cohan pro-
duction,' "The Royal Vagabond." Yet the
fact remains that the real George Cohan
is q modest, violet-colored person who
is full of interesting ideas about the
world in general and Americans in
particular, but is much too afraid to
assert them loudly enough to have
them heard. All the red necktie and
checkered SERGE ideas in which George
Cohan garments himself to parade be-
low the Cooper-Hewitts are merely a
disguise to keep the public from pene-
trating underneath, to the thinking,
contemplative, black broadcloth George
Conan who lives inside He would like
to talk aloud-the real Cohan would
like immensely to make himself heard.
But he's afraid of being mistaken for
Serious Person. In the world he in
habits it is the arch crime. Even the
possession of a tombstone to fortune
doesn't save the Grave Thinker on
Broadway.
"The Royal vagabond" Is the con-
templative Cohan at his most coura-
geous. Merely as a comic opera "The
Royal Vagabond" is one of the choicest
amusements in these parts. It has the
deft Cohan skill in the manufacture of
It's episodes, the slanting Cohan humor
laid on with light touch, rather
extraordinary good taste in the selec-
ton of backgrounds and swiftness Of
movement that contributes largely to
the pleasure that may be derived from
it. But all this is not the essential
George Cohan. There is something more
in "The Royal Vagabond" which only
looks out tentatively now and then
from between the lines. chirps bit to
try it's voice, looks about timidly and
then retires shyly once more from
view. This is the Conan that is mod
est, the observer of the local scene
who has seen to the point of having
something to say, but who is mistrust-
full of himself and doesn't say it to
any considerable extent. Mark Twain
was a humorist whose humor was
finally commentary on modern civil
ization and human life in all its as
poets. The people who will scorn the
assumption of George Cohan's modesty
will doubtless point aloft equally con-
temptuous noses at any comparison
with Mark Twain. Nevertheless, it is
true that good deal of the Cohan fun
IS not merely the abstract opposition
Of ideas which yields comedy; it is an
opposition which finds its growing
space in the fertile ground for satire
that actually our youthful life abun-
dainty affords.
The. new Cohanized opera tells the
old story of the prince who was in
love with a peasant girl, but it adds
to the theme the twist that has come
to be expected from the Cohan hand.
What has been mistaken in previous
Judgments of the familiar twist has
been the notion that its source was
purely the desire to accumulate and
stimulate the interest of the audience
by changing the form of tho narrative
purely an artistic impulse. In truth.
the twist in this case derives its in
terest from the fact that it makes The
plot fit the case of the present as it
would do in no other way. The prince
ianguishes, so does the peasant maiden.
but neither for long. The prince. OBJ
serving the smoke Of revolution upon
the horizon, becomes in disguise rev.
olutionist himself, the maddest and the
baddest Of them all. When revolutions
are In order he makes one; he steals
a ready-made revolution from its lead
er by changing the signals, and, barred
by the throne from marrying his peas
ant girl, he turns his revolution against
the throne, topples it over and seats
himself upon it as the first republican
president of the land. In his own
WORDS as he says, he has made revo-
iution "for myself, by myself. and
against myself" Mobs of sweet maid
ems sing songs Of contemporary affairs
with this refrain, "Goodbv Autocracv