Produced by David Starner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Representative Plays by American Dramatists
Edited, with an Introduction to Each Play
By MONTROSE J. MOSES
1856-1911
Illustrated with Portraits, and
Original Playbills
1921
To BRANDER MATTHEWS
Friend of the American Theatre
To whom all Critics of the Theatre are beholden.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Bibliographies.
Rip Van Winkle: A Legend of the Catskills. A
Comparative Arrangement with the Kerr Version.
By Charles Burke. 1850
Francesca da Rimini. By George Henry Boker. 1855
Love in '76. An Incident of the Revolution. By Oliver Bell Bunce. 1857
Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy. By Steele Mackaye. 1887
Shenandoah. By Bronson Howard. 1888
In Mizzoura. By Augustus Thomas. 1893
The Moth and the Flame. By Clyde Fitch. 1898
The New York Idea. By Langdon Mitchett. 1906
The Easiest Way. By Eugene Walter. 1909
The Return of Peter Grimm. By David Belasco. 1911
The Authors and Their Plays.
INTRODUCTION
The present volume of "Representative Plays by American Dramatists"includes many hitherto unpublished manuscripts. These are for the firsttime made available in authoritative form to the student of the Americantheatre. The Editor has tried consistently to adhere to his originalbasis of selection: to offer only those texts not generally incirculation and not used elsewhere in other anthologies. Exactions ofcopyright have sometimes compelled him to depart from this rule. He hasbeen somewhat embarrassed, editorially, by the ungenerous haste withwhich a few others have followed closely in his path, even to the pointof reproducing plays which were known to be scheduled for thiscollection. For that reason there have been omitted Mr. WilliamGillette's "Secret Service," available to readers in so many forms, andMr. Percy Mackaye's "The Scarecrow." No anthology of the presenthistorical scope, however, can disregard George Henry Boker's "Francescada Rimini" or Bronson Howard's "Shenandoah." In the instance of Mr.Langdon Mitchell's "The New York Idea," it is possible to supersede allprevious issues of this refreshing comedy by offering a text which, asto stage directions, has been completely revised by the author. Mr.Mitchell wishes to have this regarded as the correct version, and hashimself prepared the "copy" of same. Because of the easy accessibilityof Dion Boucicault's "The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana," it wasthought best to omit this Irish-American playwright, whose jovialprolixity enriched the American stage of the '60's and '70's. His"London Assurance" is included in the present Editor's collection of"Representative British Dramas: Victorian and Modern."
Of more historical significance than Joseph Jefferson's final version of"Rip Van Winkle," are the two texts upon which Boucicault and Jeffersonbased their play. It has been possible to offer the reader a comparativearrangement of the John Kerr and Charles Burke dramatizations.
In the choice of Steele Mackaye's "Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy" a period isillustrated which might be described as transitional. Executors of theAugustin Daly estate are not ready to allow any of Daly's original playsor adaptations to