SOURCE: "Brander Matthews: Critic of the Theatre," in Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. XII, No. 3, October, 1960, pp. 169-76.

In the following essay, Bender provides an appreciative overview of Matthews's involvement with the theater as playwright, theoretician, critic and teacher.

The recent publication of Papers on Playmaking¹ and Papers on Acting² has brought back into print the name of an American theatrical figure who has almost been forgotten except on the campus of Columbia University where it is perpetuated in the name of the Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum and the Brander Matthews Chair of Dramatic Literature. Yet for almost half a century the opinions and theories of Brander Matthews loomed most importantly over the American dramatic scene. And even today, although the name is known to few, the theories evolved by Matthews remain important in much of our thinking regarding the theatre and the criticism of drama.

There is a...