Identifier: playsplayersleav00eato (find matches)
Title: Plays and players, leaves from a critic's scrapbook
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Eaton, Walter Prichard, 1878-1957
Subjects: Theater Actors, American Actresses, American
Publisher: Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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isfunny, it is wholesome, it is true—and, best of all,it is unconsciously and thoroughly American. THE SONG OF SONGS, WHICH ISSHELDONS The Song of Songs—Eltinge Theater,December 22, IQ14 The Song of Songs, which is Solomons, whichis Sudermanns, and which is now Sheldons. Asibilant fate seems to follow it! But Solomon need not concern us, the more ashe probably had nothing whatever to do with theoriginal song. The play by Edward Sheldon, basedon the novel by Hermann Sudermann, is our con-cern. The Song of Songs, in an English trans-lation, has gone into a good many editions and isdoubtless familiar to many readers of this review.It is a striking novel, full of that admirably subtlepsychology which characterizes the continentalnovelists when they analyze sensual passion, anddeveloping its theme slowly, with a wealth of neces-sary but unpleasant detail, till it builds up a con-vincing picture of a certain type of woman—or, let us say, a certain woman—in whom a sensual nature 104
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THE SONG OF SONGSAct IV THE SONG OF SONGS 105 and a passionate seeking for ideal love work to-gether for her undoing. Since Sudermann is adramatist as well as a novelist, it may be supposedthat he considered this theme one essentially adaptedto the novel rather than the play form. At anyrate, he wrote it as a novel, not a play. Mr. Sheldon, however, has made it into a play.In doing so he has achieved five acts of hifalutin. This isnt wholly his fault, by any means. Inthe first place, he has, no doubt in accordance withmanagerial suggestion, removed the scene of the playfrom the Continent to America—to Atlantic Cityand New York. That alone was a fatal error.Certain stories can be shifted from land to land with-out any harm befalling them. But stories whichare told in the realistic manner, with their effect de-pending so largely on accumulated detail and theirtruth being so largely a matter of local conditions,cap not be so transplanted. You can not transplantGorkys Night Refuge to a

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