The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Autobiography of a Play, by Bronson Howard

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Title: The Autobiography of a Play
Papers on Play-Making, II

Author: Bronson Howard

Commentator: Augustus Thomas

Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18769]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PAPERS ON PLAY-MAKING

II

The Autobiography of a Play

by

BRONSON HOWARD

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

AUGUSTUS THOMAS

Printed for the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University

_in the City of New York_

MCMXIV

CONTENTS

Introduction by Augustus Thomas
The Autobiography of a Play by Bronson Howard
Notes by B. M.

INTRODUCTION

The qualities that made Bronson Howard a dramatist, and then made him
the first American dramatist of his day, were his human sympathy, his
perception, his sense of proportion, and his construction. With his
perception, his proportion, and his construction, respectively, he could
have succeeded as a detective, as an artist, or as a general. It was his
human sympathy, his wish and his ability to put himself in the other
man's place, that made play-writing definitely attractive to him. As a
soldier he would have shown the courage of the dogged defender in the
trench or the calmly supervising general at headquarters, rather than
the mad bravery that carried the flag at the front of a forlorn hope.
His gifts were intellectual. His writing was more disciplined than
inspired. If we shall claim for him genius, it must be preferably the
genius of infinite pains.

He saw intimately and clearly. His proportion made him write with
discretion and a proper sense of cumulative emphasis, and his
construction enabled him so to combine his materials as to secure this
effect. He was intensely self-critical; and while almost without conceit
concerning his own work, he had an accuracy of detached estimation that
enabled him to stand by his own o