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6 WASHINGTON SQUARE PLAYS
Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays
Washington Square Plays
1. The Clod . . . . . By Lewis Beach
2. Eugenically Speaking . By Edward Goodman
3. Overtones . . . . . By Alice Gerstenberg
4. Helena's Husband . . . By Philip Moeller
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WALTER PRICHARD EATON
PREFACE BY EDWARD GOODMAN
Director of the Washington Square Players
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1925
Copyright, 1916, by
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
THE CLOD. COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY EMMET LEWIS BEACH
EUGENICALLY SPEAKING. COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY EDWARD GOODMAN
OVERTONES. COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ALICE GERSTENBERG
HELENA'S HUSBAND. COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY PHILIP MOELLER
In its present form these plays are dedicated to the reading
public only, and no performance of them may be given. Any piracy
or infringement will be prosecuted in accordance with the
penalties provided by the United States Statutes:
SECTION 28. That any person who willfully and for profit shall
infringe any copyright secured by this Act, or who shall
knowingly and willfully aid or abet such infringement, shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall
be punished by imprisonment for not exceeding one year or by a
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thousand dollars or both, in the discretion of the court.
SECTION 29. That any person, who with fraudulent intent, shall
insert or impress any notice of copyright required by this Act,
or words of the same purport, in or upon any uncopyrighted
article, or with fraudulent intent shall remove or alter the
copyright notice upon any article duly copyrighted shall be
guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not less than
one hundred dollars and not more than one thousand dollars. Act
of March 4, 1909.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN
CITY, N. Y.
INTRODUCTION
The rigid conventionality of the theatre has been frequently
remarked upon. Why the world should ever fear a radical, indeed,
is hard to see, since he has against him the whole dead weight of
society; but least of all need the radical be dreaded in the
theatre. When the average person pays money for his amusements,
he is little inclined to be pleased with something which doesn't
amuse him: and what amuses him, nine times out of ten, is what
has amused him. That is why changes in the theatre are relatively
slow, and customs long prevail, even till it seems they may
corrupt the theatrical world.
For many generations in our playhouse it was the custom to follow
the long play of the evening with an "afterpiece," generally in
one act, but always brief, and almost always gay, if not
farcical. Audiences, which in the early days assembled before
seven o'clock, had to be sent home happy. After the tragedy, the
slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after "Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's
"Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The Irish Widow." (These
two illustrations are taken at random from the programs of the
Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted until
comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the
present generation can remember when William Warren, at the
Boston Museum, would turn of an evening from such a part as his
deep-hearted Sir Peter Teazle to the loud and empty vociferations
of a Morton farce. The entertainment in those days would hardly
have been considered complete without the "afterpiece," or, as
time went on, sometimes the "curtain raiser." It is by no means
certain that theatre seats were always cheaper than to-day. In
some cases, certainly, they were relatively quite as high. But it
is certain that you got more for your money. You frequently saw
your favorite actor in two contrasted roles, two contrasted
styles of acting perhaps, and you saw him from early evening till
a decently late hour. You didn't get to the theatre at 8.30, wait
for the curtain to rise on a thin-spun drawing-room comedy at
8.45, and begin hunting for your wraps at 10.35. One hates to
think, in fact, what would have happened to a manager fifty years
ago who didn't give more than that for the price of a ticket. Our
fathers and mothers watched their pennies more sharply than we
do.
For various reasons, one of them no doubt being the growth of
cheaper forms of amusement and the consequent desertion from the
traditional playhouse of a considerable body of those who least
like, and can least afford, to spend money irrespective of
returns, the "afterpiece" and "curtain raiser" have practically
vanished from our stage. They have so completely vanished, in
fact, that theatre goers have lost not only the habit of
expecting them, but the imaginative flexibility to enjoy them. If
you should play "Romeo and Juliet" to-day and then follow it with
a one-act farce, your audience would be uncomfortably bewildered.
They would be unable to make the necessary adjustment of mood. If
you focus your vision rapidly from a near to a far object, you
probably suffer from eye-strain. Similarly, the jump from one
play to the other in the theatre gives a modern audience mind- or
mood-strain. It is largely a matter of habit. We, to-day, have
lost the trick through lack of practice. The old custom is dead;
we are fixed in a new one. If Maude Adams, for instance, should
follow "The Little Minister" with a roaring farce, or Sothern
should turn on the same evening from "If I Were King" to "Box and
Cox," we should feel that some artistic unity had been rudely
violated; nor am I at all sure, being a product of this
generation, but that we should be quite right.
Matters standing as they do, then, it seems to me that the talk
we frequently hear about reviving "the art of the one-act play"
by restoring the curtain raisers or afterpieces to the programs
of our theatres is reactionary and futile. All recent attempts to
pad out a slim play with an additional short one have failed to
meet with approval, even when the short piece was so masterly a
work as Barrie's "The Will," splendidly acted by John Drew, or
the same author's "Twelve Pound Look," acted by Miss Barrymore.
Nor is it at all certain that the one-act plays of our parents
and grandparents and great-grandparents, the names of which you
may read by the thousands on ancient playbills, added anything to
the store of dramatic literature. Some of them are decently
entombed in the catacombs of Lacy's British Drama, or still
available for amateurs in French's library. Did you ever try to
read one? Of course, there was "Box and Cox," but it is doubtful
if there will be any great celebration at the tercentenary of
Morton's death. For the most part, those ancient afterpieces were
frankly padding, conventional farces to fill up the bill and send
the audiences home happy. To the real art of the drama or the
development of the one-act play as a form of serious literary
expression, they made precious little contribution. They were a
theatrical tradition, a convention.
But the one-act play, nonetheless, has an obvious right to
existence, as much as the short story, and there are plentiful
proofs that it can be as terse, vivid, and significant. Most
novelists don't tack on a short story at the end of their books
for full measure, but issue their contes either in collections
or in the pages of the magazines. What similar chances are
there, or can there be, for the one-act play, the dramatic short
story?
An obvious chance is offered by vaudeville. The vaudeville
audience is in the mood for rapid alterations of attention; it
has the habit of variety. This is just as much a convention of
vaudeville as the single play is now a convention of the
traditional theatre. Indeed, anything longer than a one-act play
in vaudeville would be frowned upon. Any one wishing to push the
analogy can find more than one correspondence between a
vaudeville program and the contents of a "popular" magazine;
each, certainly, is the present refuge of short fiction. Yet
vaudeville can hardly be considered an ideal cradle for a serious
dramatic art. (Shall we say that the analogy to the "popular"
magazine still holds?) The average "playlet" -- atrocious word --
in the variety theatres is a dreadful thing, crude, obvious,
often sensational or sentimental, usually very badly acted at
least in the minor rôles, and still more a frank padding, a
thing of the footlights, than the afterpiece of our parents. It
has been frequently said by those optimists who are forever
discovering the birth of the arts in popular amusements that
vaudeville audiences will appreciate and applaud the best. This
is only in part true. They will appreciate the best juggler, the
cleverest trained dog, the most appealing ballad singer such as
Chevalier or Harry Lauder. But they will no more appreciate those
subtleties of dramatic art which must have free play in the
serious development of the one-act play than the readers of a
"popular" magazine in America (or England either) would
appreciate Kipling's "They," or George Moore's "The Wild Goose,"
or de Maupassant's "La Ficelle." To expect them to is silly; and
to expect that because the supreme, vivid example of any form is
comprehensible to all classes and all mixtures of classes,
therefore the supreme example is going to be developed out of the
commonplace stuff such mixed audiences daily enjoy, is equally to
misunderstand the evolution of an art product in our complex
modern world. But, indeed, the matter scarce calls for argument.
Vaudeville itself furnishes the answer. Where are its one-act
plays which can be called dramatic literature? It is a hopeful
sign, perhaps, that certain of the plays in this volume have
percolated into the varieties! But they were not cradled there.
If the traditional theatre, then, is now in a rut which affords
no room for the one-act play, and if vaudeville is an empty
cradle for this branch of dramatic art, where shall we turn? The
one-act play to-day has found refuge and encouragement in the
experimental theatres, and among the amateurs. The best one-act
plays so far written in English have come out of Ireland, chiefly
from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin where they were first acted by a
company recruited from amateur players. Synge's "Riders to the
Sea," Yeats's "The Hour Glass," the comedies of Lady Gregory and
others of that school, have not only proved the power of this
form to carry the sense of reality, but its power as well to
reach tragic intensity or high poetic beauty. The sombre
loveliness and cleansing reality of Synge's masterpiece are
almost unrivaled in our short-play literature. Not from the Abbey
Theatre, but from the pen of an Irishman, Lord Dunsany, have come
such short fantasies as "The Gods of the Mountain" and "The
Glittering Gate," which the so-called "commercial" theatre has
quite ignored, but which have been played extensively by amateurs
and experimental theatres throughout America; and the latter
piece, especially, has probably been provocative of more
experimental stagecraft and a greater stimulation of poetic fancy
among amateur producers than any drama, short or long, written in
recent years.
When the Washington Square Players, for the most part amateurs of
the theatre, began their experiment in the spring of 1915, they
began with a bill of one-act plays. With but two exceptions, all
their succeeding productions have been composed of one-act plays,
usually in groups of four, the last one for the evening sometimes
being a pantomime. (It should be noted that a program of four
one-act plays has the unity of a collection. A short play
following a long one is overbalanced and the program seems to
most of us awry.) The reason for this choice was not entirely a
devotion to the art of the one-act play. When players are
inexperienced, it is far easier to present a group of plays of
one act than it is to sustain a single set of characters for an
entire evening. The action moves more rapidly, the tale is told
before the monotony of the actors becomes too apparent. Moreover,
the difference between the plays helps to furnish that variety
which the players themselves cannot supply by their
impersonations. Still again, it was no doubt easier for the
Washington Square Players to find novelties within their capacity
in the one-act form than in the longer medium. At any rate, they
did produce one-act plays, and are still producing them.
Four of these plays are presented in this book, four which won
approval first on the stage of the Bandbox Theatre and later,
acted by other players, in various other theatres. One of them,
"Overtones," is a theatrical novelty which if prolonged beyond
the one-act form would become monotonous. Another, "Helena's
Husband," is a bantering satire, an intellectual "skit," which
would equally suffer by prolongation. "Eugenically Speaking"
could certainly bear no further extension, unless its mood were
deepened into seriousness. Finally, "The Clod" approaches the
true episodic roundness of the one-act drama, or the short story,
in its best estate. Here is a single episode of reality, taken
from its context and set apart for contemplation. It begins at
the proper moment for understanding, it ends when the tale is
told. There is here more than a hint of the art of Guy de
Maupassant. And the episode is theatrically exciting -- a prime
requisite for practical performance, and spiritually significant
-- a prime requisite for the serious consideration of intelligent
spectators. In these four plays, then, written for the Washington
Square Players, the one-act form demonstrates its right to our
attention and cultivation, for it takes interesting ideas or
situations which are incapable of expansion into longer dramas
and makes intelligent entertainment of what otherwise would be
lost.
Because such organizations as the Abbey Theatre have demonstrated
the value of the one-act play in portraying local life, in
stimulating a local stage literature; because such organizations
in America as the Washington Square Players have demonstrated the
superior value of the one-act play as a weapon with which to win
recognition and build up the histrionic capacity to tackle longer
works; and, finally, because the one-act play offers such obvious
advantages to amateurs, it seems fairly certain that in the
immediate future, at least, the one-act play in America, as a
serious art form, will be cultivated by the experimental
theatres, the so-called "Little Theatres," and by the more
ambitious and talented amateurs. As our experimental theatres
increase in number -- and they are increasing -- it will probably
play its part, and perhaps no insignificant a part, in the
development of a national drama through the development of a
local drama and the cultivation of a taste for self-expression in
various communities. It is only when these experimental theatres
are sufficient in number, and the amateur spirit has been
sufficiently aroused in various communities, that the commercial
theatre of tradition will be seriously influenced. When that time
comes -- if it does come -- one of the results will undoubtedly
be a more flexible theatre, the growth of repertoire companies,
the expansion of the activities of popular players. In a more
flexible theatre, where repertoire is a rule rather than a
strange and dreaded experiment, and where actors pride themselves
on versatility and the public honors them for it, the one-act
play will again have its place, but not then as a curtain raiser
or afterpiece, to pad out an evening or "send the suburbs home
happy," but as a serious branch of dramatic art. In that happy
day Barrie will not be the only first-class talent in the
commercial playhouse daring the one-act form, or at least able
to induce a commercial manager to produce his work in that form.
But that time is not yet. The one-act play in our country to-day
is an ally of the amateurs and the innovators. For that very
reason, perhaps, it is the form which will bear the most watching
for signs of imagination and for flashes of insight and
interpretative significance.
WALTER PRICHARD EATON.
Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
PREFACE TO THE PLAYS
If fools did not rush in where theatrical angels fear to tread,
this Preface would never have been written. Two years back the
Washington Square Players were called, by many who had theatrical
experience, fools. Now some term us pioneers. The future may
write us fools again, or something better -- the conclusion being
that the difference between the fool and the pioneer lies in the
outcome; the secret, that the motive power behind both is
enthusiasm.
Without enthusiasm the Washington Square Players could never have
come into existence, nor survived. From the first, when we had
barely enough money for rent and none for the costumes and
properties we borrowed and disguised, ours was an enthusiasm
strong in quantity as well as quality. The theatre is a peculiar
art. Both in production and reception it requires numbers and an
enduring faith. Many a similar attempt has failed because its
experimentation and expression have been restricted by a single
point of view. Many have not continued because the desire has
waned in the face of the hardships and sacrifices entailed. But
the Players rightly had a plural name. We were, and are, a
collection of many individuals -- actors, authors, artists, and
art-lovers -- all fired with the sincere desire to give to
playgoers something they had not been able previously to find on
the American stage. And our desire has been strong enough to face
and fight, and to continue to face and fight, the ever-growing,
ever-changing problems of finance, art, and human
inter-relations, which are the inescapable factors of the
theatre.
We believed in the democracy of the drama. But we understand
democracy to mean, not the gratification of the taste of the many
to the exclusion of that of the few, but the satisfaction of all
tastes. We had no quarrel with the stage as it was, save that
there wasn't enough of it. We felt there was a public that wanted
something other than it could get -- as evidenced by the rise of
such institutions as the Drama League -- and that that public was
large enough to support what it wanted once it learned where to
find it. The problem was to bridge the gap of waiting. And it was
met by the sacrifices of all those who worked at first for
nothing, and then for little more, so that the Players would not
fall into debt in the process of reaching an audience. As an able
New York dramatic critic stated, the establishment of the
Washington Square Players was merely one more proof that in
America, as elsewhere, joy was a greater incentive to work than
money.
This enthusiasm among the workers, both in quality and quantity,
was generously shared by the spectators. The public which looked
for plays, acting and producing different from what it could find
on the regular stage, proved us right in believing that it was
sufficiently large and interested to warrant our experiment.
Critics and patrons gave us from the first, and we hope will
continue to give us, that personal interest and sympathetic
appreciation which have been among the most vital factors
contributing to our growth.
So far we have produced thirty-two plays, of one-act and greater
length, and of these twenty have been American. The emphasis of
our interest has been placed on the American playwright, because
we feel that no American theatre can be really successful unless
it develops a native drama to present and interpret those
emotions, ideas, characters, and conditions with which we, as
Americans, are primarily concerned.
Of these twenty American plays the Drama League has selected four
for this volume of its series. Excluding comment on my farce --
for an author is notoriously unfit to judge his own work -- I
think it may be said that these represent a fair example of the
success the Players have met with in trying to encourage the
writing of American plays with "freshness and sincerity of theme
and development; skilful delineation of character; non-didactic
presentation of an idea; and dramatic and esthetic effectiveness
without theatricalism." They are the early products of a new
movement in the American theatre of which we are happy to be a
part, and if their publication meets with the sympathetic,
appreciative reception that has been accorded their production,
we feel and hope that not only these authors, not only the
Washington Square Players, but all of the workers in this new
movement will be encouraged and stimulated to a further effort, a
greater mastery, and a bigger achievement.
EDWARD GOODMAN,
Director of the Washington Square Players.
Comedy Theatre, New York, 1916.
I. THE CLOD
A One-Act Play
by
LEWIS BEACH,
Copyright, 1914, by
Emmet Lewis Beach, Jr.
(Note -- The author acknowledges indebtedness to "The Least of
These," by Donal Hamilton Haines, a short story which suggested
the play.)
"The Clod" was produced by the Washington Square Players, under
the direction of Holland Hudson, at the Bandbox Theatre, New York
City, beginning January 10, 1916.
In the cast, in the order of their appearance, were the
following:
MARY TRASK . . . . Josephine A. Meyer
THADDEUS TRASK . . . John King
A NORTHERN SOLDIER . . Glenn Hunter
A SOUTHERN SERGEANT . Robert Strange
A SOUTHERN PRIVATE . . Spalding Hall
The Scene was designed by John King.
The Clod" was subsequently revived by the Washington Square
Players at the Comedy Theatre, New York City, beginning June 5,
1916. In this production Mary Morris played the part of Mary
Trask.
Later it was presented in vaudeville by Martin Beck, opening at
the Palace Theatre, New York City, August 21, 1916, with the
following cast:
MARY TRASK . . . . Sarah Padden
THADDEUS TRASK . . . John Cameron
A NORTHERN SOLDIER . Glenn Hunter
A SOUTHERN SERGEANT . Thomas Hamilton
A SOUTHERN PRIVATE . Gordon Gunnis
"The Clod" was first produced by the Harvard Dramatic Club, in
March, 1914, with the cast as follows:
MARY TRASK . . . . Christine Hayes
THADDEUS TRASK . . . Norman B. Clark
A NORTHERN SOLDIER. . Dale Kennedy
A SOUTHERN SERGEANT . James W. D. Seymour
DICK . . . . . . Richard Southgate
THE CLOD
CHARACTERS
THADDEUS TRASK
MARY TRASK
A NORTHERN SOLDIER
A SOUTHERN SERGEANT
DICK
-------
SCENE: The kitchen of a farmhouse on the borderline between the
Southern and Northern states.
TIME: Ten o'clock in the evening, September, 1863.
The back wall is broken at stage left by the projection at right
angles of a partially enclosed staircase, four steps of which,
leading to the landing, are visible to the audience. Underneath
the enclosed stairway is a cubby-hole with a door; in front of
the door stands a small table. To the left of this table is a
kitchen chair. A door leading to the yard is in the centre of the
unbroken wall back; to the right of the door, a cupboard, to the
left, a stove. In the wall right are two windows. Between them is
a bench, on which there are a pail and a dipper; above the bench
a towel hanging on a nail, and above the towel a double-barrelled
shot-gun suspended on two pegs.
In the wall left, and well down stage, is a closed door leading
to another room. In the centre of the kitchen stands a large
table; to the right and left of this, two straight-backed chairs.
The walls are roughly plastered. The stage is lighted by the
moon, which shines into the room through the windows, and a
candle on table centre. When the door back is opened, a glimpse
of a desolate farmyard is seen in the moonlight.
When the curtain rises, THADDEUS TRASK, a man of fifty or sixty
years of age, short and thick set, slow in speech and movement,
yet in perfect health, sits lazily smoking his pipe in a chair at
the right of the centre table.
After a moment, MARY TRASK, a tired, emaciated woman, whose years
equal her husband's, enters from the yard, carrying a pail of
water and a lantern. She puts the pail on the bench and hangs the
lantern above it; then crosses to the stove.
MARY. Ain't got wood 'nough fer breakfast, Thad.
THADDEUS. I'm too tired to go out now; wait till mornin'.
[Pause. MARY lays the fire in the stove.]
Did I tell ye that old man Reed saw three Southern troopers pass
his house this mornin'?
MARY [takes coffee pot from stove, crosses to bench, fills pot
with water]. I wish them soldiers would git out o' the
neighborhood. Whenever I see 'em passin', I have t' steady myself
'gainst somethin' or I'd fall. I couldn't hardly breathe
yesterday when the Southerners came after fodder. I'd die if they
spoke t' me.
THADDEUS. Ye needn't be afraid of Northern soldiers.
MARY [puts coffee pot on stove]. I hate 'em all -- Union or
Southern. I can't make head or tail t' what all this fightin's
'bout. An' I don't care who wins, so long as they git through,
an' them soldiers stop stealin' our corn an' potatoes.
THADDEUS. Ye can't hardly blame 'em if they're hungry, ken ye?
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