Brander Matthews 273
Winter. Winter' had a long perspective in theatre attendance,
and left available a large body of journalistic reporting; it may be said that from 1854 to the time of his death in 1917 his pen was recording theatrical matters continually. But he was not concerned with the development of an American drama; his professional duty was to take the theatre as it came to him nightly; to estimate it as a presented thing, and to measure its acting value. His attitude, as becomes a dramatic critic for newspapers, was not concerned primarily with the literary side. Therefore, neither his The Wallet of Time nor his other volumi- nous works give one a comprehensive view of American drama. Laurence Hutton,^ on the other hand, was interested in the appearance of American characteristics on the boards, and no more suggestive chapters can be read than in his Curiosities of the American Theatre. Certainly, his close friend and colla- borator, Brander Matthews, must have had Hutton in mind when he compiled his essays A Booh About the Theatre. It is to Professor Matthews — who has held the chair of Dramatic Literature at Columbia University since 1900, and who is the author of many poems, stories, and novels, as well as an essay- ist of wide range — that we must turn for estimates of American dramatists as distinct personalities in a native form of art. He has done for the American play what he has done for the sub- ject of drama in general: popularized the philosophy of the theatre. That service is of inestimable worth. He has edited old texts, he helped to found The Players and The Dunlap Society; but, unfortunately, he has written no book on Ameri- can drama. Yet his volumes of essays have full reference to the American theatre. He has a more organic sense of its develop- ment than either Hutton or Winter. In his reminiscences. These Many Years (1917), we not only have his love of the play well depicted, and his reflection of the New York, London, and Paris theatres during the period just sketched; but there is also the record of his own efforts as a dramatist — efforts coincident with those of Howells and Howard and James. One obtains fleet- ing glimpses of the managerial guUty conscience regarding the fate of American drama, in the efforts made by managers to engage the literary world in the interest of the theatre. In 1878 Professor Matthews wrote Margery's Lovers, produced in » See also Book III, Chap. xiii. ' Ibid. VOL. Ill 18
