A notable instance is the exploitation by Charles Klein of the present-day captain of industry in “The Lion and the Mouse.”  The leading character in the play is differentiated on the stage, as in life, from the Wall Street giant of about 1890, as illustrated in one of my own plays, “The Henrietta.”  Mr. Klein’s character of the financial magnate has developed in this country since my active days of playwriting, and the younger dramatist was lying in wait, ready for him, and ready to seize his peculiarities for stage purposes.

Another thing is the fact that our dramatists are doing what our literary men have done, namely, availing themselves of the striking local peculiarities in various parts of the country.  A marked illustration of this now before the public is Edward Milton Royle’s “Squawman,” recently at Wallack’s Theatre.  The dramatist has caught his picture just in the nick of time, just before the facts of life in the Indian Territory are passing away.  He has preserved the picture for us as George W. Cable, the novelist, preserved pictures of Creole life of old New Orleans, made at the last possible moment.

I could go on mentioning many other plays illustrating phases of life and society in America, and there could be no better or more positive proof that a school of American dramatists already exists.  This school will undoubtedly continue to improve in the technical quality of its work, exactly as it has done in the past, and probably with more rapidity.

The question has been discussed as to whether we are ever likely to produce an Ibsen or a Shaw, and under what conditions he would be received.  As far as concerns what may happen in the future in the way of producing absolutely great dramatists and great plays, using the word ‘great’ in the international and historical sense, the opinion of anyone on that subject is mere guesswork and absolutely valueless.

The greatest drama in history was produced by Greece about four or five centuries before Christ, and for a few generations afterward.  Since AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Greece has scarcely given us anything.  Aristophanes and Menander are of course remembered, but the writers who endeavoured to follow in the footsteps of the masters were of far inferior merit.  The Roman Empire existed for nearly two thousand years without producing any drama of its own worthy of the name.  The Romans were not a dramatic people.  The works of the so-called Latin dramatists, such as those of Plautus and Terence, were mere imitations of the Greek.

France and England had sudden bursts of greatness followed by general mediocrity, with occasional great writers whose advent could not possibly have been predicted by anything in art preceding them.  Even the exception to this in France, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was apparently a flash of light that disappeared almost as suddenly as it came.  What is the use of posing as a prophet with such a record of the past?  Anyone else is at liberty to do so.  I would as soon act as harlequin.  Was there any wise man in England who, twenty-four hours before that momentous event in April, 1564, could predict that a baby named William Shakespeare would be born the next day?  To say that an American dramatist is to appear this year or in a thousand years who will make an epoch is simply ridiculous.