Long after, he gave these as his reasons: "First, it was written by Barrie; next, it was unmistakably a fine novelty. The most emphatic play in any theatrical season, the one that is most likely to focus general public attention, is the most novel. You can estimate its novelty by the amount of fineness a play contains; for the common in life, like the poor, is always with us and can never seem novel. Only the fine registers with the emphasis of novelty. People go to the theater not to see life as it is, but as they wish it were. The theater's business is to present not life, but the illusion of life. Youth is the illusion of life, old age the delusion, and 'Peter Pan' is packed with youth; so I was for it."

When he talked plays, Frohman always relied upon certain pet formulas.

He

knew nothing, and cared less, about the technic of the drama; he hated the term; but he ordered or accepted plays for himself or accounted for the success of plays produced by other men by squaring them. with two or three formulas as quaint as himself.

"You can't find any better scheme for play-building than the old nursery-tales. 'Monsieur Beaucaire,' 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' and all such plays in which youth is triumphant, are variations, and of course amplifications, of the tale of 'Prince Charming.' 'Peg o' My Heart,' 'DaddyLong-Legs,' and similar enormous successes the popularity of which cannot be accounted for in themselves, always win great audiences because the public, like so many tired children at the end of a long day, loves nothing so much as to hear the story of 'Cinderella.' 'Within the Law,' "The Lion and the Mouse,' and that kind of play almost never fail because they contain the formula of the woman triumphant. Americans love to see woman triumph over men. All great plays are written backward, not forward, because every great play is the solution of some human blunder. Every real dramatist, when starting to write a play, begins with the climax of his penultimate act, working backward and forward from that. Audi

ences instantly revolt from 'unhappy endings' not because they are unhappy, but because they are usually contradictions of the hopes implanted in them by the playwright and cherished until dashed by the unhappy ending. Detective plays almost always succeed because they make actors of auditors. For popular success it is important in the theater to work your audiences into that state of mind where every man and woman feels certain that they could save the situation, prevent a tragedy, avert a catastrophe, or effect the escape of a likable thief, if only they could step over the footlights or cry out. Then your audience is acting with your play. The best situation, in a theater sense, ever put on the stage is the screen scene in 'The School for Scandal.' That is because there are three characters on the stage,—two are in the foreground, and one is in the background, behind a screen, -and the suspense of the situation, what makes it fine drama, is that the audience knows all that the characters on the stage know and a little more besides; the auditors are just enough ahead of the plot to be wishful that it will work out their way. In such a case an unhappy ending would be a violation of the wishes already implanted in the hearts and minds of the audience. When I ask an author for an upward ending to an act or a play I mean an ending that will justify the expectations built up by the people who see that play on the premises already laid down."

But Frohman was most graphic when he talked of men,-especially when he told humorous stories,-for then he was really a remarkable actor; and by pantomime, facial expression, the crouching or the rearing of his shoulders and head, and the dexterous use of his hands, he could put a whole scene before you. "I like authors," he once said; "they are so like actors, only usually without an actor's sense of humor. But they always expect anything or everything of their work, just like actors; and if the roof over the stage should fall down during the performance of a play dramatized from an author's book, I would not put it past any author

-a

king were present. The author looked his part. He had a fine head of wonderful white hair, and I remember he wore then, and always after when I saw him, a rather large, curiously knotted scarlet cravat- kind of scarlet that I had never seen but once before, and then in a cardinal's robe. Of course there was awful tension on the stage among the actors; so much so that at the end of the second act Miss Russell became so wrought up that she flung her hands above her head and, just as the curtain fell, collapsed from exhaustion. I was terrified, and as quick as I could I jumped up from my seat and ran for the stage, fearing the worst; but as I passed Bret Harte I heard him murmuring, 'Great climax, real acting, wonderful scene!' He really believed it a part of the play."

"Fine" was Frohman's favorite adjective when he spoke in admiration of people or plays. He had barely a working vocabulary, and was always amused at the parade of words by others. Yet he had a gift that was like magic in cogently packing whole sentences into words. Compactness was the chief characteristic of his talk. In an hour Frohman could say as much as some would say in three. Usually when he talked he sat on the edge of his chair, often with one leg under him, like a tailor. Even when he leaned forward in the eager earnestness of talk, his shoulders were still square, and in the position were his three salient traits, alertness, precision, and tensity of will. The alertness shone clearest in his eyes. They were neither piercing nor searching, but steadily clear and bright. A fresh idea, a recollection recalled, an agreeable anticipation, a disappointment, of which the humor, but never the bitterness, remainedall in turn animated him. Frohman had eyes that were always seeing something -plays, authors, conditions, plans, and hopes, and seeing them as living things. Some eyes see to the heart of things, and others see all things as vague visions. Frohman saw everything alive. Tenaciously he would mentally grapple with words to make his meaning unmistakably

plain. Almost all his sentences were short. In every one the idea and the expression were closely knit. Sometimes he would pause, seemingly for an interminable period, filled only with "Ah's," and then to his lips would spring an expression of matchless conciseness, as well coined as a perfect piece of stage dialogue. The tensity of his attitude when he talked-his right hand resting lightly on his breast, his eyes distended as if to hypnotize-held one in a spell. His habitual manner was of keen and controlled vitality. Nobody was. ever more eagerly alive than Frohman; and yet he directed all his life into a single channel, and held it there. He never said he loved his work; he did not need to say so. His love of the theater and its people spoke spontaneously in his every sentence and glance. He never thought of it as a field for gain,-experience over and over cruelly taught him the opposite,

but he loved it as the greatest of all international games. England and America were his chess-board; stars, plays, and playwrights his pawns.

Frohman knew his playwrights as he did his stars, their tastes, their habits, what they liked to talk about, what they liked to do, their big sides and their little; but above all he knew better than they themselves how to get plays out of them, how to stimulate them to work, and when to bring pressure to bear on a play that threatened never to be finished. And the blend of fear and fondness that they had for him usually made them anxious to please him. One summer in Paris, Frohman had five playwrights, three English and two French, congratulating themselves on being his guests at his hotel, but soon all found themselves hard at work in separate rooms laying out fresh scenarios, revamping, or translating. Personal association with Frohman was always conditioned by one's direct or indirect connection with the theater. If you were an author and went for a stroll with him, the time would be put to immediate use in a talk of possible plays in your books. Once Frohman's door opened, and in strode Henri Bernstein, as excited as a