cosmopolitan point of view that the average play-goer in America
lacked.

This leads to the interesting subject of "locality" in plays. Frohman
once summed up this whole question:

"As I go back and forth, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, the
audiences on both sides seem more and more like one. Always, of course,
each has his own particular viewpoint, according to the side of the
Atlantic I happen to be on. But often they think the same, each from its
own angle.

"You bring your English play to America. Nobody is at all disturbed by
the mention of Park Lane or Piccadilly Circus. If there is drama in the
play, if in itself it interests and holds the audience, nobody pays any
attention to its locality or localisms.

"But an English audience sitting before an American play hears mention
of West Twenty-third Street or Washington Square, and while it is
wondering just where and what these localities are an important incident
in the dramatic action slips by unnoticed. Not that English audiences
are at all prejudiced against American plays. They take them in the same
general way that Americans take English plays. Each public asks, 'What
have you got?' As soon as it hears that the play is good it is
interested.

"English audiences, for example, were quick to discover the fun in 'The
Dictator' when Mr. Collier acted it in London, though it was full of the
local color of New York, both in the central character and in the
subject. Somehow the type and the speeches seemed to have a sort of
universal humor. I tried it first on Barrie. He marked in the manuscript
the places that he could understand. The piece never went better in
America.

"On the other hand, one reason why 'Brewster's Millions' did not go well
in London was because the severely logical British mind took it all as a
business proposition. The problem was sedately figured out on the theory
that the young man did not spend the inherited millions.

"If the locality of an American play happens to be a mining village, it
is better to change its scenes to a similar village in Australia when
you take the play to London. Then the audience is sure to understand.
The public of London gave 'The Lion and the Mouse' an enthusiastic first
night, but it turned out that they had not comprehended the play. It
was unthinkable to them that a judge should be disgraced and disbarred
by a political 'ring.'"

The ideal play for Charles Frohman was always the one that he had