One often asks why a man, thus so serious and thorough in his approach toward life, should have been so transitorily mannered in his plays, and the reason may be in the very artisan character of his work.  Mr. Howard delivered a lecture before the Shakespeare Society of Harvard University, at Sanders Theatre, in 1886 (later given, 1889, before the Nineteenth Century Club, in New York), and he called it “The Autobiography of a Play.”  In the course of it, he illustrated how, in his own play, called “Lillian’s Last Love,” in 1873, which one year later became “The Banker’s Daughter,” he had to obey certain unfailing laws of dramatic construction during the alterations and re-writing.  He never stated a requirement he was not himself willing to abide by.  When he instructed the Harvard students, he was merely elucidating his own theatre education.  “Submit yourselves truly and unconditionally,” he admonished, “to the laws of dramatic truth, so far as you can discover them by honest mental exertion and observation.  Do not mistake any mere defiance of these laws for originality.  You might as well show your originality by defying the law of gravitation.”  Mr. Howard was not one to pose as the oracle of a new technique; in this essay he merely stated sincerely his experience in a craft, as a clinical lecturer demonstrates certain established methods of treatment.

In his plays, vivacity and quick humour are the distinguishing characteristics.  Like his contemporary workers, he was alive to topics of the hour, but, unlike them, he looked ahead, and so, as I have stated in my “The American Dramatist,” one can find profit in contrasting his “Baron Rudolph” with Charles Klein’s “Daughters of Men,” his “The Henrietta” with Klein’s “The Lion and Mouse,” and his “The Young Mrs. Winthrop” with Alfred Sutro’s “The Walls of Jericho.”  He was an ardent reader of plays, as his library—­bequeathed to the American Dramatists Club, which he founded—­bears witness.  The fact is, he studied Restoration drama as closely as he did the modern French stage.  How often he had to defend himself in the press from the accusation of plagiarism, merely because he was complying with the stage conventions of the moment!

It is unfortunate that his note-books are not available.  But luckily he wrote an article at one time which shows his method of thrashing out the moral matrix of a scenario himself.  It is called “Old Dry Ink.”  Howard’s irony slayed the vulgar, but, because in some quarters his irony was not liked, he was criticized for his vulgarities.  Archer, for example, early laid this defect to the influence of the Wyndham policy, in London, of courting blatant immorality in plays for the stage.

Howard’s femininity, in comparison with Fitch’s, was equally as observant; it was not as literarily brilliant in its “small talk.”  But though the effervescent chatter, handled with increasing dexterity by him, is now old-fashioned, “Old Dry Ink” shows that the scenes in his plays were not merely cleverly arrived at, but were philosophically digested.  How different the dialogue from the notes!