At the New Theatre and Others; The American Stage Its Problems and Performances, 1908-1910 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910. Excerpt: ... posed by men of our race. Our musicians are doing themselves and us no good when they strain after this exotic fruit and leave the native garden just without their door unhusbanded. The book and score of an American "Patience" would do more for music in America than a wilderness of grand operatic attempts, because such a work would be native and natural, the spontaneous expression of our people. THE DRAMATIST AS MAN OF LETTERS THE CASE OF CLYDE FITCH To take Clyde Fitch seriously always surprised many serious people. To take the theatre seriously always surprises many serious people, for that matter--the theatre, that is, not of the printed page, not of the so-called "literary drama," but the actual playhouse, where farces and musical comedies, vaudeville and moving pictures, trivialities of all sorts, jostle with Shakespeare and Ibsen in the long effort to amuse. Now, Clyde Fitch was a man of that actual playhouse; his plays, though several of them have found their way into type, were designed for the footlights with no thought of type in mind. They were almost as much " produced " as written, for Mr. Fitch was his own alert stage manager and shaped his pieces in rehearsal. They were, most of them, frankly wrought to amuse, to entertain an audience in the playhouse, to bring the immediate returns of popularity and patronage. They were neither conceived nor considered as literature in the conventional sense. Mr. Fitch was perfectly willing to be a dramatic tailor, to cut a part to the measure of a star, to adapt from the French or German, to "dramatize" novels. Mostly, he may fairly be said to have been concerned not so much with weaving a fabric as cutting a garment; mostly he wrought, it seemed to his critics, not so much from a central idea, from an im...