Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/305

Later Melodrama 287 had no political vision, though none of his contemporaries could be more earnest in the handling of social materials. The Third Degree (i February, 1909), The Gamblers (31 October, 1910), Maggie Pepper (31 August, 1911), are obviously built for effect; they have no organic growth. The truth is, Klein's solutions for the ills-of-America condition were all sentimental. He was much nearer his natural psychology in writing The Music Master (26 September, 1904) than in determining the outcome of social and economic problems. In 1900 melodrama had a grip on the interest of the Ameri- can middle class; it was the beau ideal of entertainment for the working people. Its violence accentuated the violences of American life, and Owen Davis and Theodore Kramer, the Thomas and Fitch of melodrama, flourished on half a dozen or more successes a year. The very names suggest their sentiment and colour: Tony, the Bootblack; Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model; Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl; Convict ggg. But soon, through the educational agency of the public libraries, the melodrama audiences began reading books more reserved in action, more logical in plot. While their eye would accept scenes of violence, their mind began to balk at repeated in- consistencies. Melodrama of this type began to fail, and the melodramatists were drawn towards work of a different kind. But the breathless stimulation, excitement, and variety of this special form of playwriting were taken over by the moving picture, which is based on restlessness, on kinetic motion. Until 1900 the modern American drama advanced by fash- I ions; managers followed like sheep in the wake of a popular success until the vein was exhausted. The dramatized novel went through its many phases of popular taste, beginning with Anthony Hope's The Prisoner oj Zenda, Stanley Weyman's Under the Red Robe, and Mrs. Burnett's The Lady 0} Quality, and passing to Paul Leicester Ford's Janice Meredith, which as a novel competed with S. Weir Mitchell's Hugh Wynnes The manager thought there was certainty in a play based on a book which had sold into the thousands. The book market was full of literary successes and was drawn upon for the stage. Mary Johnston's To Have and To Hold and Audrey; Winston Churchill's Richard Carvel and The Crisis; Charles ' See Book III, Chap. xi.