timorously
constructed, bowdlerized by stage managers and, for the most part,
poorly acted. Two of the three I have indicated are plays many seasons
old. The greatest of these is "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," interpreted
for us by the greatest actress who ever essayed the part. It indicated
a development I believe to be still in its infancy--a development that
was arrested before it had been weaned from its first timid suckling.

The public does not desire the problem play. It demands a play that
will end with a curtain definite, convincing. But in the problem plays
of the past it finds the material it fain would see applied to a
bolder, unequivocal purpose. In the eight years that have elapsed
since the production of Pinero's "Tanqueray," the public's stomach has
been strengthened. It is able to digest tragedies in drawing rooms. It
no longer requires peptonized drama. The playgoer no longer demands
whatever of primal passion is presented to him to be dressed in
doublet and hose. He can accept plain truths in the speech of the day,
villains and heroines in the costume of the clubs and Fifth Avenue.

The great play of the future must be a play of the times, must deal
with the real things of life, must balk at no expression of modern
tendencies, must reveal the skeleton in the twentieth century
cupboard.

The days of the historical romance are happily ended. Such milk and
water diet is food not fit for men. The new dramatist must provide us
with strong meat, properly served by players of intelligence and
insight, if dramatic art is to be rescued from the slough into which
it has so miserably sunk. The question is: Can America produce a
writer of sufficient originality, a manager of sufficient courage, an
actor of sufficient understanding to give the public what it asks?

If such there be, their names are not Clyde Fitch or David Belasco,
Charles Frohman or Daniel Frohman, Richard Mansfield or Amelia
Bingham.

JAQUES.

=Artistic Disarray=

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;--
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction--
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher,--
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly,--
A winning wave deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,--
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,--
Do more bewitc