Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/293

Bronson Howard 275 London theatres by calling it Brighton. In 1886 Howard de- livered a lecture before the students of Harvard University, illustrating the general laws of drama, and outlining the con- ventional traditions against which he worked. He was never able to escape them. Shenandoah (9 September, 1889) was ' more national than most of his work. To its preparation he ; brought that scholarly orderliness of mind which characterized the man in conversation. The successes of those early days when Howard was knock- ing at the doors of Daly and Palmer, were fitful, and, though they are known by name today, their lack of a true note of reality and their stereotyped romanticism make them im- possible either as reading dramas or as revivals. Joaquin Mil- ler's The Danites (Broadway Theatre, 22 August, 1877), J. Cheever Goodwin's burlesque Evangeline (Niblo's Garden, 27 July, 1874), Bartley Campbell's My Partner (Union Square, 16 September, 1879), Wallack's Rosedale (Wallack's Theatre, 30 September, 1863), Olive Logan's Surf (Daly's Theatre, 12 January, 1870), — these were the types of native successes. None of them exploited deep-founded American characteristics, though they suggested the melodrama of American life. It was only by individualizing and localizing that the American drama, previous to i860, became distinct. Only by these tradi- tional marks could one recognize American drama of the early days. Until Howard's attempt at reality. New York ' ' society " drama was either English or else crudely rustic, like Asa Trench- ard in Taylor's Our American Cousin (Laura Keene's Theatre, 18 October, 1858). Over into this period of transition came the Yankee, the backwoodsman, the humorous lawyer of "flush times. " As Howard said, writing of the American drama, the native dramatists were concerned with American character, hence Solon Shingle, Colonel Sellers, Judge Bardwell Slote, and Mose the fire-boy. Without them, we should not have had Joshua Whitcomb, Davy Crockett, and Pudd'nhead Wilson Perhaps one of the most typically American pieces produced] in this period of the seventies was Frank Murdock's Davy Crockett (New York, Niblo's Garden, 9 March, 1874), reminiscent in its colour of the elder Hackett's Colonel Nimrod Wildfire, and a romantic forerunner of Moody's The Great Divide. Mrs Bateman's Self finds continuation in Howard's Saratoga am