Washington Square Plays

Name: Washington Square Plays
Author: Lewis Beach

by Lewis Beach

Pages: about 78
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 86 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 48 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

The Clod. Copyright, 1914, By Emmet Lewis Beach Eugenically Speaking. Copyright, 1914, By Edward Goodman Overtones. Copyright, 1913, By Alice Gerstenberg Helena's Husband. Copyright, 1915, By Philip Moeller
In its present form these plays are dedicated to the reading public only, and no performance of them may be given.
Printed In The United States At The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y.
The rigid conventionality of the theatre has been frequently remarked upon. Why the world should ever fear a radical, indeed, is hard to see, since he has against him the whole dead weight of society; but least of all need the radical be dreaded in the theatre. When the average person pays money for his amusements, he is little inclined to be pleased with something which doesn't amuse him: and what amuses him, nine times out of ten, is what has amused him. That is why changes in the theatre are relatively slow, and customs long prevail, even till it seems they may corrupt the theatrical world.
For many generations in our playhouse it was the custom to follow the long play of the evening with an "afterpiece," generally in one act, but always brief, and almost always gay, if not farcical. Audiences, which in the early days assembled before seven o'clock, had to be sent home happy. After the tragedy, the slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after "Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's "Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The Irish Widow." (These two illustrations are taken at random from the programs of the Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted until comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the present generation can remember when William Warren, at the Boston Museum, would turn of an evening from such a part as his deep-hearted Sir Peter Teazle to the loud and empty vociferations of a Morton farce. The entertainment in those days would hardly have been considered complete without the "afterpiece," or, as time went on, sometimes the "curtain raiser."

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Washington Square Plays

From the opening

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