THE LOCAL NEW YORK DRAMA.
"Like boys unto a muss."
_Antony and Cleopatra_, Act iii. Sc. 13.
The number of plays based upon life in New York, all of which are
strangely similar in title and in plot, or what must pass for plot, and
all of which have been seen upon the New York stage since the first
appearance of _Mose_, will surprise even those most familiar with our
theatrical literature. Taken almost at random from various files of old
play-bills, and from Mr. Ireland's _Records_, there were _A Glance at New
York;_ or _New York in 1848_; _New York As it Is_; _First of May in New
York_; _The Mysteries and Miseries of New York_; _Burton's New York
Directory_; _The New York Fireman_; _Fast Young Men of New York_; _Young
New York_; _The Poor of New York_; _New York by Gaslight_; _New York in
Slices_; _The Streets of New York_; _The New York Merchant and his
Clerks_; _The Ship-carpenter of New York_; _The Seamstress of New York_;
_The New York Printer_; _The Drygoods Clerk of New York_, and many more,
including _Adelle, the New York Saleslady_, which last was seen on the
Bowery side of the town as late as 1879.
These were nearly all spectacular plays, and they were usually realistic
to a degree in their representation of men and things in the lower walks
of life. Rich merchants, lovely daughters, wealthy but designing villains,
comic waiter-men, and pert chamber-maids with song and dance
accompaniment, were placed in impossible uptown parlors; but the poor but
honest printer set actual type from actual cases, and cruelly wronged but
humble maidens met disinterested detectives by real lamp-posts and real
ash-barrels, in front of what really looked like real saloons.
[Illustration: F. S. CHANFRAU AS MOSE.]
The original of all these local dramas was _New York in 1848_, or, as it
was called during its long run of twelve weeks at the Olympic in that
year, _A Glance at New York_. It was a play of shreds and patches,
hurriedly and carelessly stitched together by Mr. Baker, the prompter of
Mitchell's famous little theatre, in order to cover the nakedness of the
programme on the night of his own annual benefit. It had no literary
merit, and no pretensions thereto; and it would never have attracted
public attention but for the wonderful "B'hoy" of the period, played by F.
S. Chanfrau--one of those accidental but complete successes upon the
stage which are never anticipated, and which cannot always be explained.
He wore the "soap locks" of the period, the "plug hat," with a narrow
black band, the red shirt, the trousers turned up--without which the genus
was never seen--and he had a peculiarly sardonic curve of the lip,
expressive of more impudence, self-satisfaction, suppressed profanity, and
"general cussedness" than Delsarte ever dared to put into any single
facial gesture. Mr. Chanfrau's Mose hit the popular fancy at once, and
retained it until the Volunteer Fire Department was disbanded; and _A
Glance at New York_ was fol-lowed by _Mose in California_, _Mose in a
Muss_, and even _Mose in China_. Mr. Matthews, in an article contributed
to one of the magazines a few years ago, records the fact that during one
season Mr. Chanfrau played Mose at two New York theatres and in one
theatre in Newark on the same night.
_The Mulligan Guards_, _The Skidmores_, and their followers were the
legitimate descendants of _Mose_, and they came in with the steam-engines
and the salaried firemen, who took away the occupation and the
opportunities of Sykesy and Jake. Harrigan and Hart began their theatrical
management at the Theatre Comique, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in
1876, and introduced what may be called the Irish-German-Negro-American
play, illustrating phases of tenement-house life in New York, and amusing
everybody who ever saw them, from the Babies on our Block to Muldoon
himself, the Solid Man. Mr. Harrigan wrote his own plays; both he and Mr.
Hart were inimitable in their peculiar line as actors, and they were wise
and fortunate in their selection of their company, which included Mrs.
Annie Yeamans, "Johnny" Wild, and other equally talented artists, for whom
"Dave" Braham, the leader of the orchestra, wrote original and catching
music, which was sung and whistled and ground out from one end of the
country to the other. Mr. Harrigan is a close observer and a born manager,
and his productions have been masterpieces in their way. He puts living
men and women upon the stage. He has done for a certain phase of city life
what Denman Thompson has done for life upon a farm; and he is more to be
envied than Mr. Thompson, because no class of theatre-goers enjoy his
productions more than do the living men and women whom his company, with
real art, represent. But, alas! his plays are not the _great_ American
plays for which the American dramatic critic is pining; although, like
_The Old Homestead_, and _Shenandoah_, and _Horizon_, and _Metamora_, and
_Fashion_ they approach greatness, if only in the fact that they have
introduced, and preserved, a series of purely American types which are as
great in their way as are the dramatic characters of other lands, and
greater and more enduring than many of the Americans to be found in other
branches of American literature.