Since the drama is irrevocably related to the theater, all the varied
ramifications of the show business have their interest and their
significance for students of the stage. It is not too much to say that
there is no form of entertainment, however humble and however remote
from literature, which may not supply a useful hint or two, now and
again, to the historian of the drama. For example, few things would seem
farther apart than the lamentable tragedy of Punch and Judy and the
soul-stirring plays of the Athenian dramatic poets; and yet there is
more than one point of contact between these two performances. An alert
observer of a Punch-and-Judy show in the streets of London can get help
from it for the elucidation of a problem or two which may have puzzled
him in his effort to understand the peculiarities of Attic tragedy. Mr.
Punch's wooden head, for example, has the same unchanging expression
which characterized the towering masks worn by the Athenian performers.
In like manner a nondescript hodgepodge of funny episodes, interspersed
with songs and dances, such as Weber and Fields used to present in New
York, may be utilized to shed light on the lyrical-burlesques of
Aristophanes as these were performed in Athens more than two thousand
years ago.
Perhaps even a third instance of this possibility of explaining the
glorious past by the humble present may not be out of place. A few years
ago Edward Harrigan put together a variety-show sketch, called the
'Mulligan Guards,' and its success encouraged him to develop it into a
little comic drama called the 'Mulligan Guards' Picnic,' which was the
earliest of a succession of farcical studies of tenement-house life in
New York, culminating at last in a three-act comedy, entitled 'Squatter
Sovereignty.' In this series of humorous pieces Harrigan set before us a
wide variety of types of character, Irishmen of all sorts, Germans and
Italians, negroes and Chinamen, as these are commingled in the
melting-pot of the cosmopolitan metropolis. These humorous pieces were
the result of a spontaneous evolution, and their author was wholly
innocent of any acquaintance with the Latin drama. And yet, as it
happened, Harrigan was doing for the tenement-house population of New
York very much what Plautus had done for the tenement-house population
of Rome. A familiarity with the plays of the Latin playwright could not
but increase our appreciation of the amusing pieces of the
Irish-American sketch-writer; and a familiarity with the comic dramas of
Harrigan could not fail to be of immediate assistance to us in our
desire to understand the remote life which Plautus was dealing with.
The plays of the Roman dramatist were deliberately adapted from the
Greek, and they therefore had an avowedly literary source, whereas the
immediate origin of the plays performed in New York was only an
unpretending sketch for a variety-show; but both of these groups had the
same flavor of veracity in their reproduction of the teeming life of the
tenements. Humble as is the beginning of the 'Mulligan Guard' series, at
least as humble is the beginning of the improvised pieces of the
Italians, the comedy of masks, which Moliere lifted into literature in
his 'Etourdi,' and in his 'Fourberies de Scapin.' In the hands of the
Italians the comedy of masks was absolutely unliterary, since it was not
even written, and its performers were not only comedians, but acrobats
also. And here the drama is seen to be impinging on the special sphere
of the circus--just as it does again in the plays prepared for the New
York Hippodrome. It is more than probable that this improvised comedy of
the Italians is the long development of a primitive semi-gymnastic,
semi-dramatic entertainment, given by a little group of strollers,
performing in the open market-place to please the casual crowd that
might collect.
Equally unpretending was the origin of the French melodrama, which
Victor Hugo lifted into literature in his 'Hernani' and 'Ruy Blas.' It
began in the temporary theaters erected for a brief season in one or the
other of the fairs held annually in different parts of Paris. The
performances in these playhouses were almost exactly equivalent to those
in our variety-shows; they were medleys of song and dance, of acrobatic
feats and of exhibitions of trained animals. As in our own
variety-shows, again, there were also little plays performed from time
to time, at first scarcely more than a framework on which to hang songs
and dances, but at last taking on a solider substance, until finally
they stiffened themselves into pathetic pieces in three or more acts,
capable of providing pleasure for a whole evening. The humor was direct,
and the characters were painted in the primary colors; the passions were
violent, and the plots were arbitrary; but the playwrights had
discovered how to hold the interest of their simple-minded spectators,
and how to draw tears and laughter at will.
In fact, the more minutely the history of the stage is studied, the more
clearly do we perceive that the beginnings of every form of the drama
are strangely unpretentious, and that literary merit is attained only in
the final stages of its development. Dramatic literature is but the
ultimate evolution of that which in the beginning was only an
insignificant and unimportant experiment in the show business; and it
must always remain intimately related to the show business, even when it
climbs to the lonely peaks of the poetic drama. Whatever its value, and
however weighty its message, it is still to be commented upon under the
head of "amusements," for if it does not succeed in amusing, it ceases
to exist except in the library, and even there only for special
students. It lives by its immediate theatrical effectiveness alone, even
if it can survive solely by its literary quality.