m. His smiling answer was:

"The one whose play the greatest number of good Americans go to see."

On this same occasion he was asked, "What seat in the theater do you
consider the best to view a drama or a musical comedy from?"

"The paid one," he retorted.

Back in Charles's mind was a definite and well-ordered policy about
plays. His first production on any stage was a melodrama, and, though in
later years he ran the whole range from grave to gay, he was always true
to his first love. This is one reason why Sardou's "Diplomacy" was, in
many respects, his ideal of a play. It has thrills, suspense, love
interests, and emotion. He revived it again and again, and it never
failed to give him a certain pleasure.

Once in London Frohman unbosomed himself about play requirements, and
this is what he said:

"I start out by asking certain requirements of every piece. If it be a
drama, it must have healthfulness and comedy as well as seriousness. We
are a young people, but only in the sense of healthy-mindedness. There
is no real taste among us for the erotic or the decadent. It is foreign
to us because, as a people, we have not felt the corroding touch of
decadence. Nor is life here all drab. Hence I expect lights as well as
shadows in every play I accept.

"Naturally, I am also influenced by the fitness of the chief parts for
my chief stars, but I often purchase the manuscript at once on learning
its central idea. I commissioned Clyde Fitch and Cosmo Gordon-Lennox to
go to work on 'Her Sister' after half an hour's account of the main
idea. Ethel Barrymore's work in that play is the best instance that I
can give of the artistic growth of that actress. The particular skill
she had obtained--and this is the test of an actress worth
remembering--is the art of acting scenes essentially melodramatic in an
unmelodramatic manner. After all, what is melodrama? Life itself is
melodrama, and life put upon the stage only seems untrue when it is
acted melodramatically--that is, unnaturally."

The foremost quality that Frohman sought in his plays was human
interest. His appraisal of a dramatic product was often influenced by
his love for a single character or for certain sentimental or emotional
speeches. He would almost invariably discuss these plays with his
intimates. Often he would act out the whole piece in a vivid and
graphic manner and enlarge upon the situations that appealed to his
special interest.

Plays thus describe