of the matter is that a Simms, an Irving, a Poe, a Cooper, and a Neal, managed to succeed at all. They were in competition with acknowledged favorite and popular masters whose books were mailed across the ocean and reproduced with incredible speed. This is the reason that a distinctive American comedy was slow and hesitating about showing its head. It had to face competition with tried successes from London and had to cater to an audience fed on that type of drama. Its character was moulded to a great extent by the character of the comedies then being produced in New York. And these comedies were English comedies.

Ten plays of George Colman, Charles Dibdin, Thomas Holcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, John O'Keefe, R. B. Sheridan, the English adaptations from Kotzebue, and other pieces which went well in London, came laughing across the Atlantic. Then there was the rage of dramatization. Fanny Birney's "Evelina" appeared on Boston boards as "The Poor Lodger" (1811); "The Shepherdess of the Alps" waited thirty-five years and then came in 1815; Scott's embattled "Marmion" fought in America (1812); Mrs. Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" built a colonial reputation as "Fountainville Abbey" (1795).

Perhaps, though, the most important single influence in bringing this British atmosphere was even more direct. The plays came not so much in the portmanteaus of publishers as on the lips of players. Charles Mathews, George Frederick Cooke, Edmund Kean, Thomas Cooper, and many others came to push their fortunes or to receive applauding homage on a new stage in a new world. Thus it happened that the historic successes of Covent Garden and the Drury Lane, as well as the recent innovations there, crowded the playhouses of the States. There were theatres in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Fredericksburg, and Charlestown, but they might have been called Theatres-Royal of Liverpool, Drury-Lane, Covent-Garden, or the HayMarket, instead of Chestnut Street, Holliday Street, John Street, the Lafayette, or the Park Theatres, for all the difference their localities made.

A bibliographical study of any of the English playwrights of this period, of George Colman, Charles Dibdin, Thomas Holcroft, Mrs. Inchbald, John O'Keefe, Prince Hoare, R. B. Sheridan, will show editions of their plays which bear on their quaint title-pages the note: "Printed: London. Re-printed: New York." Of all the long series of dramas put through the press and "published by David Longworth, at the Dramatic Repository, ShakespeareGallery, New York," the very great majority are English plays put forth in pirated editions. Thus did the American drama exist, amid a perfect pandemonium of English plays which made their London applause so great that

it was re-echoed before the New York foot-lights. Dunlap tells how "The Abbé de l'Epee" was brought over in 1801 and we are not surprised; but we are surprised when we find even so obscure a piece as "The Deserted Daughter” put on with success in New York. Even though Britons liked it not, the very London hall-mark was guarantee for American production. There was one play ordered in New York which illustrates this influence and its force, says Weyelin, "From the prejudice then existing against American plays, it was announced as the production of an English author, received with unbounded applause in London."

Thus it is natural that the American comedies of the period between the Revolution and the Civil War fall into very nearly the same categories as the British comedies of the corresponding years. One kind of wit which gained acceptance in London was a ridiculous representation of provincials, of Irishmen and Scots, simple characters with such wit and antics and plain honesty as Irishmen and Scots seldom had. So in America we have imitations of these in "Rural Felicity" (1801) by John Winchell, "Kathleen O'Neil; or, A Picture of Feudal Times" (1829?) by George Pepper; and two sprightly Hibernian sketches from the pen of James Pilgrim, just before the guns of Moultrie turned belligerent thoughts to other fields of endeavor.

Another type which took the London audiences, especially after the "School for Scandal" had set the pace, was what might be called the drama of sensibility, the old sentimental comedy intermixed with a certain degree of stilted humor. So in America there was "The Female Patriot" (1795) by Mrs. Rawson, the "School for Prodigals" (1809) by Joseph Hutton, the "Fox Chase" (1808), and "The Trust" (1808) by Charles Breck, "Tears and Smiles" (1808) and "How to Try a Lover" (1811) by John N. Barker, and “The Sprightly Widow" (1803), "He Stoops to Conquer" (1804) and "The Merry Dames" (1804) by John Winshall. The regular drama in England showed the contagious influence of the farce, these American comedies did likewise. They are built about ingenious situations, and the characters are either on the one hand completely subordinated to the situations or on the other hand exaggerated in caricatures.

Two other influences were being felt in England; a comic opera tendency illustrated very well in "The Shepherdess of the Alps" (1780), already cited, and in "The Noble Peasant” (1786); and a tendency toward a combination of declamations and scenic solemnity, for this was the age of Kemble and Kean. So, in America, we find three plays which fit very well, though somewhat confusedly into that part of English drama that was under these two influences. Mrs. Rawson's "Slaves in Algiers; or, A Struggle for Freedom" (1794) with

songs and spectacles, John Hodgkinson's "Robin Hood; or, Sherwood Forest" (1808), and Joseph Hutton's "The Orphan of Prague" (1810), have scarce a line in them that is distinctly American, and they might as well have been put on in London.

What is thus seen, in a dramatic way, of this transoceanic similarity in the matter of managerial selections for stage production is additionally demonstrated by a brief scrutiny of the activities of two of the foremost American playwrights of the period. William Dunlap and John Howard Payne had British connections in an actual, physical, as well as in a literary sense. One of the most distinct characteristics in the life of Dunlap must be reckoned his propensity for journeying to London, attending the theatres there, adapting English plays, keeping in close touch with Holcroft, Colman, and other English writers, bringing over promising actors like Cooper and renowned ones like Kean, changing English versions of continental dramatists like "Pizarro" (1800), "The Voice of Nature" (1803), and "Fraternal Discord" (1800). Two of Payne's pieces were produced almost simultaneously in London and in New York, "Accusation" (1816) and "Adeline" (1822); and his first attempt, written at the age of fourteen, "Julia; or, The Wanderer" (1806), was based upon Mrs. Inchbald's and Benjamin Thompson's translation of Kotzebue's "Lover's Vows." The interrelation was obvious and evident between London and New York, through Dunlap.

In a larger sense we find these two men following the moods and fancies of the British stage, so that the American stage likewise had its Kotzebue rage in Dunlap's "Pizarro" (1800), his "Fraternal Discord" (1800), and in Payne's "Julia; or, The Wanderer" (1806); had its melodrama in Dunlap's "The Voice of Nature" (1803) from the French, and in Payne's "The Two Galley Slaves" (1823), “Adeline, the Victim of Seduction" (1822), “Ali Pacha; or, The Signet Ring" (1823), and “Accusation" (1816) from "La Famille d'Anglade"; had its comic opera on the English model in Dunlap's "The Glory of Columbia" (1803), and in Payne's "Clari; or, The Maid of Milan" 2 (1823); had its own patriotic spectacles after the fashion of those London productions which celebrated the glorious victories of Nelson, in Dunlap's "Yankee Chronology" (1811), and in S. B. H. Judah's "A Tale of Lexington" (1823); had its own local musical farce in the anonymous "Out of Place" (1808); had its replica of the farces of Foote and Bickerstaffe, Colman, and Mrs. Inchbald, in a type which may be represented by "A Trip to Niagara" (1829); had its touch of Orientalism, which Byron and Moore popularized in both Europe and America, and balanced the spectacular "Timour the Tartar" of Drury-Lane with "Ali Pacha; or, The Signet Ring (1823) by Payne; had its comedy of

2 In which "Home, Sweet Home" became popular and famous.

sensibility in Dunlap's "The Father" (1789), "Darby's Return” (1791), and "The Italian Father" (1799). The correspondence is complete and almost exact. America not only imported the London successes, but imitated them with its right hand when its left hand was trying to be original.

Though we may show similarities in the comedy of sensibility and in the Kotzebue stampede of moral dramas of domesticity, perhaps the best example of this intimate connection is to be found when we examine the great success of that type known as the melodrama. Within one year of the appearance of "A Tale of Mystery" from Pixerécourt on the Covent-Garden boards, no less than four editions of the London version stolen from France were in turn stolen from England and on sale in the bookshops of New York and Boston. The revolutionary simplification, the individual morality, the poetic justice of this genre were not only accepted but also eagerly followed in America. For some years the importations from England held the stage, and then the playwrights of the United States tried their hand at the same thing, beginning with John B. Turnbull and his "Rudolph; or, The Robbers of Calabria" (1807) "with marches, combats, and choruses." Turnbull's next play fits in as a good example of the form: "The Wood Demon; or, The Clock has Struck! A grand, romantic, cabalistic, melodrama, in three Acts: unsurpassed with Processions, Pageants, and Pantomime" (1808).

It may be well to examine a bit into this novel species of entertainment. A comedy dealing with ordinary people is enriched with some spectacle in the way of dances and decorations. There are some songs; there are scenes of high passion; but most important of all is the use of music, not to supplement, but to supersede, the words. In many moments of intense interest the characters do not speak at all; they merely act, as the music changes from cheerful and sweet to loud and raucous. Notes are interpolated throughout the printed play to indicate where characters and orchestra should shriek together, where the music expresses confusion, and pain of thought, and dejection, and joy. This mixture of dialogue and dumb show formed the mélodrame where “the concord of sweet sounds" never accompanied the words, but replaced them from time to time as a better means of interpreting emotion. It was not sentiment. It was not Sheridanism. It was romantic, a conscience yielding to the past and struggling with the future. It embodies the sweet simplicity of Wordsworth and the extravagant coloring of Byron. Such was the mélodrame which, after certain changes, has become our modern melodrama. The stage was believed to be a very efficient school of morality. "The Evil Eye" (1831) by James B. Phillipps, no less than "Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model"; "The Mountain Torrent" (1820) by S. B. H. Judah, no less than "The Fatal Wed

ding," were melodramas, though they were also by the chance of circumstance, included in the type of mélodrame. The hero is poor but honest; the heroine of the whitest white; the villain of the blackest shade; and the cause of the villain is always in the ascendant until the last act, when he goes straight to hell and the gallery gods rejoice at his fall.

This is the main outline of the class of play applauded at Drury-Lane which also held the stage in New York, but there was in it a very definite tendency. It was the age of romanticism, of interest in scenes and people remote from humdrum circumstances and situations. The novels of Scott were frequently dramatized in London into melodramatic mélodrames; so also "The Red Rover" (1828), "The Last of the Mohicans" (1849), and “Paul Jones; or, The Pilot of German Ocean"3 (1828) in New York. The American local appeal of these Cooper tales was of course some reason for their success. But the romantic drama placed in picturesque and remote scenes was just as well received. It was after the British manner that the anonymous author of "The Sultana; or, A trip to Turkey" (1822) follows Byron's "Don Juan" and quotes from Thomas Moore's "The Lighthouse"; that William Barrymore used improved scenic devices and settings in "The Snow Storm; or, Lowina of Tobolskow" (1818); that J. Stokes followed "Mark" Lewis's device of a bleeding nun in "The Forest of Rosenwald; or, The Travellers Benighted" (1820); that S. B. H. Judah combined music with Spanish scenery in "The Rose of Arragon" (1822); that W. G. Hyer emphasized romance pure but not simple in "Rosa" (1822); that M. M. Noah combined some of the new decorative romanticism with something of the old tale of terror elements as they were even then seeing combined in England, when he produced "The Wandering Boys; or, The Castle of Olival (1812); and "The Fortress of Sorrento" (1808). On both sides of the water the castles of Italy, the Gothic forests of Germany, the lattices of sunny Spain, the gorgeous costumes of the Levant, and the corsairs of the beautiful blue Mediterranean had an appeal that amounted almost to a clear call to follow fantastic legendary, and distant half-lights.

If the predominating characteristic of these plays between 1800 and 1850 was that they were not characteristically American at all, the reason is perhaps to be found in the fact that their writers were usually professional men of letters like Longfellow, whose "Spanish Student" (1843) and Irving whose "Bracebridge Hall" (1822) showed a closer literary union with the bookish traditions of Europe than with their fellow townsmen in the small cities of the States. Dunlap and Payne, already mentioned, are good examples, Samuel H. Chapman, author of "Red Rover" (1828), was an actor. M. M. Noah

This last by W. H. Wallack. It is interesting to note that another play on the same subject was taken by W. Berger in 1839 not from Cooper, but from Dumas.