DRAMATIC SUGGESTIONS

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2985, 19 January 1881, Page 4

DRAMATIC SUGGESTIONS

(Prom the San Francisco Post.)

There doesn't seem to be much encouragement for native dramatists nowadays, and that's a fact. The other morning youn"' Symington .>kidmore, the " talented ama°teur elocutionist " of the Western Addition, called upon Manager Maguire and demanded to know if his four-act drama, entitled "Congestion," had been accepted. " It lias been here just sixteen months tomorrow," said Mr Skidmore, indignantly, " and I want a decision about it right fiway." " Lemme see. ' Congestion,' " repeated the urbane proprietor of Baldwin's, thoughtfully. " Ob, to be sure, yes ; I reached it last night. It's a fine play, sir." <( Clad yon think so'" said the dramatist, bracing up. " Yes. sir. With a few trifling changes and alterations, I should be glad to bring it out next season, or season after, if there wa3 a vacant date."

" What changes would you suggest ?" inqiiired the writer after a pause. " Lemme see. I believe I made a memorandum some where. Ah, yes. Here it is. Well, in the first place, I shouldn't make the heroine a lovely and refined young woman of high family. That's the same old stereotyped sort of thing. Now, if you could depict her as an escaped gaol-bird, imprisoned for robbing travellers in early life, it would hit the popular taste better." " Think it would, eh ?"

" Yes. And then that exemplary young _oan her lover, who is always working off high-flown sentiment and things. That's no go nowadays. Better fix him over into a sort of a swell counterfeiter, whose brother, a reformed pirate, is tracking him down for the murder of their foster sister in the prologue." " That's your idea, is it ?" " Exactly," continued the manager; " and there's ttiat benevolent old missionary, who finds the will in the second act. Audiences don't want moralizing, my dear sir. What they like in a play is sna.p, sir, and go. Better cause the old party to talk slang and go round hugging the servants, or else change him into a darkey who could do a break down in the tenement house act."

" But he subsequently turns out to be the father of the juvenile lady." " That makes the situation all the stronger. You see the juvenile lady's mother, the Countess What's-her-name, ran away in early life with the coloured coachman. All the J. L. hus to do is to make up as a dark brunette. Then you can have the nigger blown up or shot at the end of the fourth act, if you want to shako him, you know." " Can, eh ?"

" Yes, sir. And that reminds me that your poisoning the old lawyer who holds the forged note is too tame for anything. Butcher him, sir; butcher him! Blood is what the modern audience craves —gore! You should have the heavy villain and the heronine hack him all to pieces with carv-ing-knives right down by the footlights."

" Skin him alive, eh ?"

" Precisely. And while you are about it, if you could manage to introduce some new

kind of terrible catastrophe in the la?fc act— some sort of unique massacre, as it were it would liven the whole thing up." "Be an advantage, you think?" put in Skidmoro, sarcastically. " Possibly you object to the easy death of the infant heir in the third scene ?"

" I was about to mention that. Drowning children is very old-timcy, my clear sir. No style about it at all now. More agony — more realism is the thing. Suppose you turn that cathedral flat into a practicable soap factory scene, and have the child thrown into a vat of boiling tallow by the pretended legateo, or jammed into the hopper where the bones are ground. That would make a tremendous situation, as yon will see at once, the curtain coming clown as the remains are brought on in a big. That effect would just fetch the dress circle every time" Here's the manuscript. Just carry jut these few hints, and see me again in a couple of " But the choking disciple of Bouoicault had pocketed his work and slammed out. So the urbane manager calmly lit another cigar, and went back to fine the supes for not having their tights pulled up at rehearsal.