Page:Hamilton play 1917.pdf/6

vi had the honor of meeting, have expressed their satisfaction at the selection of this incident; and the authors feel that it is no breach of confidence to record that they have received words of praise from the two men who know more about Hamilton than perhaps anybody in America—two of his keenest admirers—Senator Lodge and Nicholas Murray Butler.

The historical record on which the play is founded can be seen by any student who is so far interested, by applying to the Lenox Library in New York. It is known as the "Reynolds Pamphlet" and is the document written by Alexander Hamilton himself.

The play keeps very close to history. The main incidents are, in all essential details, historically correct. It has been necessary to take some few liberties but these are of minor importance. The dialogue is not written precisely as it might have been spoken at the end of the eighteenth century. The authors believed that a slavish attempt to eliminate all words and phrases that were probably not in vogue at the time would result in many instances in tedious phraseology and a certain artificiality, which they particularly desired to avoid. They have however endeavored on the whole to maintain the atmosphere of the period.

The stage directions are designed and intended for the guidance of the actors and not for the entertainment of the reader. There is a growing tendency amongst writers of plays to introduce long and humorous stage directions that are often very entertaining in the library but very dangerous and misleading for the stage. They are misleading to a producer because they frequently make a scene appear to be very sparkling, while it is in reality exceedingly dull—the sparkle being confined exclusively to the stage-directions. They are dangerous for the actor because they make him believe that his part is a great deal better than it really is, and so he is apt to regard his audience as stupid because their intelligence fails to appreciate subtleties that he detected at the reading. In reality it is the author who is to blame; he has let the actors into certain dark secrets connected with their characters, without giving them the ghost of an opportunity, through the dialogue or situation, of conveying these confidences to the audience.