This proves in my judgment that the school always starts by being shown what the popular taste is, and follows that, until some individual discovery that the popular taste is changed.  The tendency of the school is always to become academic and fixed in its ideas—­it is the individual who points to the necessary changes.  Schools and these special individuals are interdependent.

As to the present comedies in America:  in the first place, it is impossible as a rule to decide fully what are the tendencies of a school when one is living in the midst of its activities.  There is no marked tendency now; and as far as I can see it is only the occasional man who discovers the tendency of the times.  Pinero undoubtedly saw that the public was tired of the “tea-cup and saucer.”  Probably had he not thought so, he would have gone on in that school.

Undoubtedly more plays are written to order than are written on the mere impulse of authors, independently of popular demand.  The “order” play simply represents the popular demand as understood by managers, and the meeting of that demand in each age produces the great mass of any nation’s drama.  So far from lowering the standard of dramatic writing, it is a necessary impulse in the development of any drama.  It is only when the school goes on blindly without seeing a change in the popular taste that the occasional man I have spoken of comes on.  When the work of the school is legitimately in line with the public taste, the merely eccentric dramatist is like Lord Dundreary’s bird with a single feather that goes in a corner and flocks all by itself.  He may be a strong enough man to attract attention to his individuality, and his plays may be really great in themselves, but his work has little influence on the development of the art.  In fact, there is no development of the art except in the line of popular taste.  The specially great men mentioned have simply discovered the changes in the popular taste, and to a certain extent perhaps guided it.[A]

[Footnote A:  Originally published in “The Sunday Magazine” (New York) for October 7, 1906.]

=BOSTON MUSEUM=

1841

FORTY-EIGHTH REGULAR SEASON

MR. R.M.  FIELD, MANAGER

=SHENANDOAH=

COMMENCING MONDAY, NOV. 19, 1889.

* * * * *

Evenings at 7:45 and Wednesday and Saturday Afternoon at 2.

* * * * *

FIRST TIME ON ANY STAGE
OF THIS
NEW MILITARY COMEDY

=SHENANDOAH!=

Written Expressly for the Boston Museum by
BRONSON HOWARD, ESQ.

Author of THE HENRIETTA, THE BANKER’S DAUGHTER, YOUNG MRS. WINTHROP,
ONE OF OUR GIRLS, OLD LOVE LETTER, ETC.

WITH ENTIRELY NEW SCENERY BY LA MOSS,
AND THE FOLLOWING CAST: 

PEACE