: Curiosities of the American Stage by Hutton Laurence - Theater United States History

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The Indian of Fenimore Cooper is the father of the stage Indian; and both have been described by Mr. Mark Twain as belonging to "an extinct tribe which never existed." A full list of the Indian plays more or less successful, known in other days and now quite forgotten, would be one of the curiosities of American dramatic literature. A few of them are here preserved:

THE REVOLUTIONARY AND WAR DRAMA.

THE FRONTIER DRAMA.

All this, of course, is the old, old story so often told on the stage before, and to last forever; but Mr. Murdoch seems to have told it better than any of his fellow-countrymen.

Its reception by the press was not cordial or kindly, and the severe things written about it had, it is said, such an effect upon its sensitive author that he literally died of criticism in Philadelphia, November 13, 1872. Frank H. Murdoch was a nephew of James E. Murdoch, the old tragedian, and was himself an actor of some promise. His single play was of so much promise that if there were an American Academy to crown such productions it might have won for him at least one leaf of the laurel.

THE STAGE AMERICAN IN THE CHARACTER PLAY.

The typical and accepted American of the stage, the most familiar figure in our dramatic literature, is a Jonathan, an Asa Trenchard, a Rip Van Winkle, a Solon Shingle, a Bardwell Slote, a Mulberry Sellers, and a Joshua Whitcomb; and even he does not always figure in the American play as it is here defined.

Mr. Warner and Mr. Clemens, jointly with John T. Raymond, are responsible for the character of Colonel Mulberry Sellers, a stage American from the Southern States. He is quite as much exaggerated as Slote, and quite as amusing. He can be found in part in all sections of the country, perhaps, but as a whole, happily for the country, he does not exist at all, except upon the stage.

THE LOCAL NEW YORK DRAMA.

These were nearly all spectacular plays, and they were usually realistic to a degree in their representation of men and things in the lower walks of life. Rich merchants, lovely daughters, wealthy but designing villains, comic waiter-men, and pert chamber-maids with song and dance accompaniment, were placed in impossible uptown parlors; but the poor but honest printer set actual type from actual cases, and cruelly wronged but humble maidens met disinterested detectives by real lamp-posts and real ash-barrels, in front of what really looked like real saloons.

THE SOCIETY DRAMA.

At the rising of the curtain on the opening night Mr. Crisp was discovered reading a newspaper; and he spoke as follows, the italics being Mr. Sargent's own:

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