SOURCE: "Is George M. Cohan to Be Regarded as a Joke or a Genius?" in Current Opinion, Vol. LVI, No. 3, March, 1914, pp. 192-93.

In the following essay, the critic appraises the popular appeal of Cohan's works.

Why not write a history of the drama from Shakespeare to George M. Cohan? a witty man recently asked in a tone of raillery. "Yes, why not?" remarks Joseph Bernard Rethy in the International. The world is beginning to take Cohan seriously as a playwright. Once upon a time, as Peter Clark MacFarlane maintains in McClure's, Broadway unhesitatingly would have pronounced Cohan a joke. Today many people are questioning whether he is not a genius. When we remember that George Cohan did not see the inside of a schoolroom after he was eight years old, nor often enough before to remember now how to set a stage for one; that he has...