Washington Square Plays

								

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 recircles, 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