Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/297

 The Commercial Theatre 279 plays — the best of which were Squatter Sovereignty (Theatre Comique, 9 January, 1882), Old Lavender (Theatre Comique, 3 September, 1877), The Mulligan Guard Ball (Theatre Co- mique, 9 February, 1879) — were varied in their local colour, as were the farces of Charles Hoyt (i 859-1 900), who began play- writing with A Bunch of Keys (Newark, 13 December, 1883) and created such pieces of the political and social moment as A Parlor Match, A Rag Baby, A Texas Steer; or, Money Makes the Mare Go, A Trip to Chinatown, A Milk White Flag, and A Temperance Town. By 1880 the modern period of American drama was in the bud: a journalistic sense had entered the American theatre, and entered to good purpose, for it had given Howard a sense of reality. It has stayed in the theatre and has deprived it, in later exponents, of a logical completeness of idea. It has in most cases kept our drama external. Stage history must again be recalled, because the affairs of the theatre have so completely governed our playwrights. Howard, Heme, MacKaye, De Mille, Belasco, Gillette, Thomas, and Fitch — names which practically represent the American dramatist from 1888 until 1900 — grew up, fought, and flourished under the increasing shadow of the commercial theatre. After Daniel Frohman left the Madison Square Theatre and opened his Lyceum (in May, 1885), and after his brother Charles (1860-19 15) had opened the Empire Theatre (in January, 1893), with estimable stock companies, it became evident that two new elements confronted the American thea- tregoers. First, the interest in the play was largely centred in the personality of the player. Julia Marlowe, Edward H. Sothern, Otis Skinner, William Faversham, Henry Miller, Margaret Anglin, Maude Adams, James K. Hackett, Viola Allen, — all and many more came into prominence through th adoption of the "star" system — a system which was mon firmly believed in by Charles Frohman than by his brothej Daniel. But both of them began thus early to monopolizi certain English dramatists, tying them up in "futures," as Pinero was tied, and as, later, the English playwrights J. M. ^ Barrie, Jones, Carton, Marshall, Davies, and their generation were "signed up" by Charles Frohman on his yearly trips to London for material. " The theatre was run on principles more