Comedies

Shakespeare Smiles by Lawton Campbell. What happens when an unsuccessful playwright goes for inspiration to the statue of Shakespeare in Central Park. (6m.2w. others).

Dragon's Glory by Gertrude Knevels. A rich mandarin purchases the finest coffin in China only to find himself obliged to feign death and occupy it. (6m. 2w.)

Sweet and Twenty by Floyd Dell. A witty bit of entertainment of love in an American garden. (3m.1w.)

Tragedies

Thompson's Luck by Harry G. Grover. An avaricious New England farmer has such conceit in his luck that he causes the death of his child. (3m.1w.)

Sounding Brass by Edward Hale

Bierstadt. A prison warden uses on his son the methods he employs to break the spirit of his convicts, with tragic results. (3m.1w.)

Historical Plays Lord Byron by Maurice Ferber. A biographical play, depicting the picturesque and dramatic qualities of Byron's life. (8m.9w. others) A Child of the Frontier by Elma E. Levinger. A fine, vivid play dealing with the birth of Abraham Lincoln. (3w.)

Plays In Verse Two Slatterns and a King by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Chance plays a trick on the King who is seeking the neatest maid for his bride. (4 char.)

A Fan and Two Candlesticks by Mary MacMillan. At a Valentine costume party, a lost fan plays a part in deciding a question of love. (2m.1w.)

Fantasies

The King's Great-Aunt Sits on the Floor by Stuart Walker. More about the quaint characters of "Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil" and "Sir David Wears a Crown." (10m. 5 w.)

These are a few of the plays on our extensive list of dramatic publications. We shall be glad to send our complete catalogue on request, and to place your name on our mailing list.

Pierrot's Mother by Glenn Hughes. A character little known in Pierrot plays restores to Pierrot and Pierrette their love, lost in a misunderstanding. (1m.2w.)

The Heart of Frances by Constance G. Wilcox. Frances' affections are torn between two loves until she falls asleep one afternoon and her heart solves the problem. (3m.6w.)

Dramas

The Eldest by Edna Ferber. The eldest's lover returns after fifteen year's absence only to fall in love with her youngest sister. (3m.3w.) Wreckage by Colin Campbell Clemments and Mary Heaton Vorse. The death of a woman who has willed all her property to her considered young physician is questionable until her maid finally reveals the truth. (3m.3w.)

A Knight of the Piney Woods by Arthur MacLean. In the pine woods of the South, a young man under the influence of "Morte d' Arthur" proves himself worthy of Knighthood. (4m.1w.) Exile by Arthur Doyle. When Ma and Pa, on a lonely farm, entertain an escaped convict on Christmas Eve they have no idea he is their own son. (2m.1w.)

Domestic Comedies Suburbanism by Ray Parish. One thing after another makes an amusing picture of suburban life. (3m.4w.)

The Managers by Joseph C. Lincoln. Two retired sea captains on old Cape Cod vie with their niece for position of manager of the household. (2m.1w.)

Thursday Evening by Christopher Morley. Laura and Gordon, quarrelling on the cook's night out, are reconciled in an ingenious way by their respective mothers. (1m.3w.)

Satires

Sham by Frank G. Tompkins. A thief, burglaring and finding nothing worth stealing, reproaches the owners of the house for their shams and pretenses. (3m.1w.) Why Girls Stay Home by Maude Humphrey. Jinny, a flapper, almost flaps into an elopement but is prevented by a mother whose clever scheme makes Jinny's plans look unexciting. (2m.4w.)

A Morality Play for the Leisured

Class by John L. Balderston. A rich collector has died and finds himself in Heaven where his boredom at getting everything he desires is highly amusing. (2m.)

D. APPLETON and COMPANY 35 West 32nd Street NEW YORK

WE SELL PLAYS but

WE GIVE SERVICE

The result of specializing is Knowledge and a real Understanding of your needs. This is at your disposal in the form of a unique service that is personal.

We have the largest stock of plays and books of the theatre to be found.

We maintain a mail order department equipped to suit your individual need, whether your interest is the Professional Theatre, Little Theatre, Public Reading, Drama Clubs, Schools elementary, high or college, or the smallest amateur group.

This year we offer a new general service:

For one dollar, a short list of suggestions each month for ten months, beginning with October. Lists to cover a variety of subjects.

Send requests or orders in care of Mail Order Department.

The Drama Book Shop

INC.

29 West 47 Street

NEW YORK CITY

Production is the word most often used by those who are connected with radio broadcasting stations when they are asked what is most needed to make radio permanent as an amusement enterprise.

Just what is meant by that word "production,' not many of those arranging broadcasting studio programs are able to say definitely but all know that it means something that will interest the radio fans more permanently than the programs that have been produced in the past.

To work out the term production and to bring about the presentation of better radio programs, WLS, the Sears Roebuck Agricultural Foundation station, in Chicago, has arranged with the Drama League of America to secure proper material for radio production, in this case production

JACK RANDALL CRAWFORD

Publishing Office, Mount Morris, Illinois Editorial Offices, 59 East Van Buren Street, Chicago

Published monthly and copyrighted in the United States of America by the Drama Corporation. Entered as second class matter June 26, 1919, at the post office at Mount Morris, Illinois, under the act of March 3, 1879.

Yearly Subscription, $3.00 per year in advance. Single Copies, 50 cents.

CONTENTS

are

This action of WLS now places on the Drama League of America a new responsibility which the League plans to shoulder in an active manPlays by radio ner. possible and better radio programs will be the result if more plays are broadcast. To this end the Drama League of America. through its membership, must enter into the big task assumed. Millions are interested in radio and millions will be interested in any organization which will bring about better radio programs. The League can and will do this. It will be a great thing for drama in the United States if it can be shown that drama by radio is not only possible but a great success with the radio fans.

Every possible kind of cooperation is being given to the

ARABESQUE..

DECEMBER, 1925

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN...

Frontispiece Joseph T. Shipley 87 SEVERAL NEW PLAYS FOR BROADWAY....Barrett H. Clark 90 THE VAUDEVILLE PHILOSopher.. Marshall D. Beuick 92 THE RED SLIPPERS, a Play... Antoinette Panella 94 MR. GALSWORTHY AND OTHERS IN THE LOOP J. Vandervoort Sloan 96 THE PERSIMMON THIEF, a Comedy. Ken Nakazawa 97 THE LITTLE THEATRE MONTHLY 99

League by WLS and the League must depend upon its membership to see that the plan does not fail for lack of co-operation on the part of the membership.

When good drama is being put into the homes of the people of the land by way of the radio and through this a greater appreciation of drama is brought about on a nationwide scale, another achievement will have been made by the Drama League of America that will add to its reputation of being the most notable organization in the country for the furtherance of the best that is to be had in the theatre.

GENERAL FEDERATION OF WOMAN'S CLUBS PLAY WRITING CONTEST

Through the courtesy of Samuel French, play publisher, prizes amounting to $400 are offered by the Community Drama Committee to members of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs for creative work. First prizes $250, second prizes $100, third prizes $50.

RULES GOVERNING CONTEST Contributors must be members of a club affiliated with its state federation. Direct membership in the General Federation is not obligatory. Plays must be one-act, unpublished, unproduced and original; no adaptations from stories will be considered. They must be capable of production upon an ordinary stage with simple accessories. Acting time not to exceed forty-five minutes.

Manuscripts must be typed on one side of paper and be signed with pen name only. Securely attached to the manuscript shall be an envelope bearing on the outside the name of play and pen-name of the writer and inside the sealed envelope the name and address of the author and the name of her club. No manuscript can be returned. Please keep copy.

As soon as the contest is decided, plays not winning a prize become the property of the writer; plays winning a prize become the property of the Samuel French Publishing Company to be published without royalty either of book or production.

In case the judges decide that no play submitted is up to the required standard for publication the prize will not be awarded.

Contest closes February 1, 1926.
Send all manuscripts to

Pearl Bennett Broxam,

Chairman Community Drama
Maquoketa, Iowa.

Gilbert and Sullivan are unique. They rise out of a background where no historian of the theatre has traced their prototypes, to leave a galaxy of musical plays no followers have matched. The musical comedies of today, at their rarest peaks of genuine art, of combined musical value and verbal appeal, sometimes achieve the triumph of recalling the masters. A lilt in The Chocolate Soldier, the humorous duet in Natja, a catchy phrase of The Red Mill, a melody of Apple Blossoms, a mood of Robin Hood-here and there a reminder, a moment's capture, of the light-hearted joy of Gilbert and Sullivan. Never has their secret been rediscovered.

Before the comic operas of these Savoyards, the English stage reveals little that might have served as their model. It is true that until 1832 "drama" was allowed at only two theatres, so that anywhere else Shakespeare and those who followed him were presented in the guise of musical pieces. There was also The Beggars' Opera. Closer than any of these, however, were the Parisian vaudevilles, ancestors of our own musical comedy. The vaudeville was a brief skit, combining rapid-fire dialogue with popular songs of a satirical, sentimental or suggestive nature, precisely as in our shows today. Scribe, the master of stage technique, wrote several hundred of these very successful playlets which were being copied in England, and which Gilbert, who translated French plays for the London stage, must have known.

Somewhat as Shakespeare worked his way up from adapter of earlier plays to a dramatist in his own right, Gilbert began as a translator and adapter; then with Sullivan wrote a few musical novelties, such as Thespis, and Trial by Jury, to be used as after-pieces to the evening's play. In these D'Oyly Carte saw the germ of a full night's entertainment, and for the company he organized, the collaborators wrote The Sorcerer. This ran, in 1877, for the then phenomenal period of one hundred and seventy-five performances. It was followed in 1878 by H. M. S. Pinafore which established a world's record of seven hundred nights. In rapid succession and success rippled forth The Pirates of Penzance and Patience, after which the three friends erected the Savoy Theatre (1881) for their continuing and unparalleled performances.

Although the public welcomed the operas with riotous enthusiasm, the critics, faced by a new magic, were discomfited. There is no longer any hesitancy in acclaiming the works, but their charm remains unanalyzed. In morals the plays are Victorian to the core; the nether extremities are carefully couched as "limbs"; the suggestiveness of modern references speaks from another world.

Fading is the taper waist,

Shapeless grows the shapely limb,

And although securely laced

This is perhaps the most daring allusion Gilbert ventures; and he binds the body, not to the rousing vision of love, but to

the ridiculous spectacle of an elderly woman clinging desperately to youth

Spreading is the figure trim. Stouter than I used to be, Still more corpulent grow I— There will be too much of me In the coming by-and-by.

On the other hand, the songs are often sentimental. Yet the mood differs from that of the present-day sentimental lyric, for it is playful, not to be taken seriously, laughing at itself out of a make-believe world. Marco's "only recipe for complete happiness," from The Gondoliers, for example, is a mingling of lover's desires and clever phrases.

Take a pair of sparkling eyes,
Hidden, ever and anon,

In a merciful eclipse

Do not heed their mild surprise

Having passed the Rubicon,

Take a pair of ruby lips;

Take a figure neatly planned
(Be particular in this)

Take a tender little hand
Fringed with dainty fingertips,

Press it-in parenthesis-
Take all this, you lucky man,

Take and keep them-if you can!

A more subtle distinction, which may be significant, also sets these sentimental ballads apart from our own: they do not directly address a beloved one-like You Are the Girl of My Dreams, Kiss Me Again, Be My Bouncing Baby and I'll Be Your Daddy Dear-but they sing in the third person, they carol in general, of love's delights

cate mockery; we undergo a peculiar combination of emotions as though we were at one and the same time in love ourselves and not in love but amusedly watching the dear idiocies of a loving couple.

Their handling of sentiment is, of course, but one facet of the Gilbert and Sullivan sparkling charm of the operas. Humor, equally brilliant, flashes through them all. Mainly it is verbal play. Gilbert delights in crescendos of rhyme and metrical arrangements. In all the plays one leans farther forward at the start of the patter-song. Whether it be that you want a receipt for that popular mystery known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon, or you hearken to the criminal's pledge "Henceforth all the crimes that I find in the Times I've promised to perpetrate daily," or you hear that a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon (if you listen to popular rumor), or you find relief to learn from the Gondolier-kings that the privilege and pleasure that they treasure beyond measure is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State, or you listen to the very pattern of a modern major general teeming with a lot o' news with many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse, or to check the flood by a relentless dam!-consider the advice of the esthete:

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,

An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a nottoo-French French bean!

Though the Philistines may jostle you will rank as an apostle in the high esthetic band

If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand!

Yet how can we possibly cut off the wildest of all, the nightmare song with its madness and tumultuous careening down the cataract of lines to the final Niagara-roar:

You're a regular wreck with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover;