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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Autobiography of a Play, by Bronson Howard This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Autobiography of a Play Papers on Play-Making, II Author: Bronson Howard Commentator: Augustus Thomas Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18769] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PLAY *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project) PAPERS ON PLAY-MAKING II The Autobiography of a Play by BRONSON HOWARD WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AUGUSTUS THOMAS Printed for the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University _in the City of New York_ MCMXIV CONTENTS Introduction by Augustus Thomas The Autobiography of a Play by Bronson Howard Notes by B. M. INTRODUCTION The qualities that made Bronson Howard a dramatist, and then made him the first American dramatist of his day, were his human sympathy, his perception, his sense of proportion, and his construction. With his perception, his proportion, and his construction, respectively, he could have succeeded as a detective, as an artist, or as a general. It was his human sympathy, his wish and his ability to put himself in the other man's place, that made play-writing definitely attractive to him. As a soldier he would have shown the courage of the dogged defender in the trench or the calmly supervising general at headquarters, rather than the mad bravery that carried the flag at the front of a forlorn hope. His gifts were intellectual. His writing was more disciplined than inspired. If we shall claim for him genius, it must be preferably the genius of infinite pains. He saw intimately and clearly. His proportion made him write with discretion and a proper sense of cumulative emphasis, and his construction enabled him so to combine his materials as to secure this effect. He was intensely self-critical; and while almost without conceit concerning his own work, he had an accuracy of detached estimation that enabled him to stand by his own o
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