Of other and flimsier cloth is the first original stage-play of William Archer, the man who translated Ibsen into English. The sinister trans-Himalayan villains, the throwing of the valet from the window, the wireless warnings, the aëroplane rescue, and the other obvious tricks of Archer's "The Green Goddess" are hardly the garments a dramatic critic, wearied by such expedients ineptly applied, might have been expected to wear to the theater for his début as a playwright.

Once the oddity of a critic on holiday has worn off, however, it is easy to join him and the Rajah of the sleek George Arliss on thrilling outing. Good journalism, these two plays,

Shaw's of a smart and sophisticated editorial column and Archer's of the first-page foreign correspondent. Not so Drinkwater's "Mary Stuart," for try as he might to make the story significant to a present-day audience by introducing a modern Mary in a prologue and epilogue in modern Edinburgh, his Queen of Scots was as distant as dagger and doublet and far less looming and eternal than his Abraham Lincoln.

Without the freshness of a first performance, Great Britain sent other plays of varying mode and moment. John Galsworthy, at his best in "The Skin Game" and at his most courageous in "The Mob," assisted Bernard

Shaw in retaining the leadership for the elder generation against the prediction that younger blood would displace them and their like after the war. One of the favorite arguments of the winter concerned the supposed political symbolism of "The Skin Game": Hornblower, upstart and manufacturer, symbolizing central Europe run amuck in an ordered world; Hillcrist, scion of tradition, symbolizing England on the defense; and both of them emerging from the fight with unclean hands. It matters not whether Galsworthy intended such a parallel; there it stands as plain as a windmill on a prairie, adding point to an already compact and moving drama. Equally plain is the implication of religious bigotry at the root of Ireland's woes contained in St. John Ervine's early, and in some ways most gripping, tragedy, "Mixed Marriage," which a homeless group of actors, headed by Augustin Duncan and Margaret Wycherly, revived and played intermittently on half a dozen stages. Less obvious to us in America is the symbolism of Barrie's "Mary Rose," with its curious and baffling tale of ghostly return of the dead; but there are those who suggest that the play had as its motive a hint to bereft Great Britain that the dead and the living are both happier in their own sphere. Finally, for needful contrast from tears and trouble, "The Beggar's Opera," one hundred and ninety-three years young, shamed a populace who thought itself sophisticated, and A. A. Milne of "Punch," with "Mr. Pim Passes by," and Harold Chapin, with "The New Morality," adroitly turned for us the tricks of the drama of trivial pleasantry.

France and Hungary alone from the

Continent sent us major works. Sacha Guitry, promised in person, was represented only by his chronicle of a famous clown, "Deburau." Despite Granville Barker's hippity-hop verse translation, it emerged at the hands of Lionel Atwill's suave characterization and David Belasco's expertly attuned production as a convincing proof that French taste in the theater is turning from the realistic to the romantic. Just what that realism was in its heyday was disclosed in Georges de Porto Riche's "Amoureuse," adapted to American conditions as "The Tyranny of Love," and later restored to its original locality. Written thirty years ago, it is still a stimulating example of the realistic manner at its best. "Liliom," Hungary's contribution, on the other hand, is neither realism nor romance; and yet it is both. Its author, Franz Molnar, calls it a "legend," but as interpreted by the Theater Guild there was no mistaking its genuineness as drama. Bold and naïve by turns, outspokenly common, and an instant later lyrical, it follows the vagrant course of its vagabond hero from flirtation to theft and suicide, from this random world of ours to a heaven of his own conception, and back again to earth for poignant proof of his worthlessness. Molnar has come near to inventing a new form of drama here.

& 5

Yet, after all, the search for a new theater is something more than a search for new styles in realism. Superficially, it consists in a quest for simpler, less cumbersome, more suggestive, and less merely representative scenes and costumes to clothe familiar plays or new dramas written on their model.

Fundamentally, it involves the discovery of wholly new ways of achieving emotional satisfaction in the playhouse. Obviously, progress has been prompter toward the superficial aim. It is easier to persuade producers and public to purchase new raiment than to grow a new soul. Yet fresh and exciting garments are likely to show up the prosy, monotonous, unimaginative character of that which they cover, and lead to its transformation in keeping with their challenge. That, at least, is the hope of those artists who are devoting their efforts to the superficial development of the art of the theater. That, I am sure, was the motive of Norman-Bel Geddes when he designed settings and costumes for the revival of "Erminie," which dance for sheer joy of line and hue. With faith in and a conception of a wholly new theater, he saw in despised musical comedy a means of attracting attention to the more daring things of which he dreams. That has been the patient purpose of Joseph Urban, too, through all these years of the Ziegfeld "Follies" and the past season's "Sally." And whether they realize it or not, John Murray Anderson, producer of "The Greenwich Village Follies," James Reynolds, designer of its most striking settings and costumes, and W. T. Benda, with his revival of the use of the mask, have assisted toward the same end.

It is only natural that alert managers, detecting the rewards to be reaped in these new fields, would try to unlock their secret. When the inquisitive one is as shrewd a craftsman as David Belasco and, like him, turns suddenly from supercilious condescension to emulation, the result is a bit droll, though at the same time encour

aging. Temptation to dwell on the amusing aspects of such a change of heart as "Deburau" indicates should probably give way to satisfaction that one of the most formidable opponents of a new theater has confessed his artistic sins at least tacitly. Of course the departure from a slavish realism in "Deburau" is not violent, but the step is a considerable one for Belasco and justifies itself at every point, and there may be hope that, mindful of this necessary readjustment, he may not be so rash in condemnation of other outposts to which he may have to advance in future. Far less can be said for those who attempt, like the producers of "Spanish Love" and "The Lady of the Lamp," to copy without comprehension or skill. Aimless association of actor and audience, as in the former, and a few massive pillars with gaudy splashes of color, as in the latter, have nothing to do with a new stage-craft.

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But we are making headway also in the fundamental evolution of the theater. It is impossible to explain its goal simply and clearly, since few of the leaders of the movement know exactly for what they are striving. They are dissatisfied with the realistic representation of life, with the mere telling of a story in the theater. They believe that by symbolic and abstract means, by the use of suggestion and significant form, with or without the aid of a story, they can appeal vividly to the human emotionsto the human emotions-as vividly at least as the traditional theater, once their audience becomes accustomed to what they are trying to do. Their efforts are probably parallel to the modern upheavals in painting and

sculpture, poetry and music. It is just possible that these tendencies will find a more congenial outlet through the theater than in any of the other arts, and that those who condemn them elsewhere may find them acceptable on the stage. At any rate, they need not necessarily displace the traditional theater, and the least we can do is to give them full opportunity to develop their possibilities side by side with it.

The only broad-minded attitude to take toward the abstract interpretation of "Macbeth" by Arthur Hopkins and Robert Edmond Jones, for instance, is one not only of toleration, but of welcome toward such experiments. Here (for the first time on Broadway) was a venture full-bodied and daring toward a new theater. It would have

been easy enough for producer and designer to repeat the formula of their "Richard III" of the previous season to erect the mass of castle which would serve, as the Tower of London did for "Richard," as a permanent symbolic background, and against it, more or less dimly discerned, to present the succession of scenes in camp and heath and cave and within and without the walls of Fores, Inverness, and Dunsinane.

But it is clear that Hopkins and Jones had no desire to repeat the formula; they preferred to try something new. So, discarding scenery as representative of location, they set out to devise backgrounds suggestive of the play's psychological moods, abstractions in shape and light and sound intended to summon in the spectator the vaulting

ambitions and ominous forebodings of Macbeth. Successful to varying degree in the settings, the experiment went on the rocks through failure fully to attune the acting and the other elements of the production to this difficult formula.

It may be, however, the experiment was doomed in advance by the choice of a play so clearly adapted to realistic settings, and presented in that manner for so many generations that audiences had difficulty in divesting themselves of these preconceptions.

But the spirit back of the attempt is clearly eloquent of the new blood that is unmistakably surging in our theater, and is bound to find and have its way in time.

The surer path to success with new esthetic formulas was displayed in the first motion-picture to command con

sideration as a work of art, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," imported from Germany to serve as stimulus not only to our films, but to our theater. The purpose of "Dr. Caligari" was not unlike that of the Jones-Hopkins "Macbeth"-to emphasize the strained and terrifying motives and emotions of a tale of mystery and violence by means of distorted windows and walls and streets and by unusual expressionistic postures of body and features. The matter of this motion-picture, with its preponderance of horror, is perhaps not for us, but the method is general and irresistible. Built from the ground up to be interpreted by this method, it encounters none of the obstacles and prepossessions which gather around familiar plays and stories, and defy the explorative artist to touch them.