Play-making : a manual of craftsmanship. By: William Archer, to: Brander Matthews: James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 1929) was an American writer and educator.
(James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 192...)
James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 1929) was an American writer and educator. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at an American university and played a significant role in establishing theater as a subject worthy of formal study in the academic world. His interests ranged from Shakespeare, Molière, and Ibsen to French boulevard comedies, folk theater, and the new realism of his own day.Biographyedit Matthews born to a wealthy family in New Orleans, grew up in New York City, and graduated from Columbia College in 1871, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society and the fraternity of Delta Psi, and from Columbia Law School in 1873. He had no real interest in the law, never needed to work for a living (given his family fortune),1 and turned to a literary career, publishing in the 1880s and 1890s short stories, novels, plays, books about drama, biographies of actors, and three books of sketches of city life. One of these, Vignettes of Manhattan (1894), was dedicated to his friend Theodore Roosevelt. From 1892 to 1900, he was a professor of literature at Columbia and thereafter held the Chair of Dramatic Literature until his retirement in 1924. He was known as an engaging lecturer and a charismatic if demanding teacher. His influence was such that a popular pun claimed that an entire generation had been "brandered by the same Matthews." During his long tenure at Columbia, Matthews created and curated a "dramatic museum" of costumes, scripts, props, and other stage memorabilia. Originally housed in a four-room complex in Philosophy Hall, the collection was broken up and sold after his death. However, its books were incorporated into the university library and its dioramas of the Globe Theatre and other historic dramatic venues have been dispersed for public display around campus, mainly in Dodge Hall. Matthews was the inspiration for the now-destroyed Brander Matthews Theater on 117th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive. An English professorship in his name still exists at Columbia. William Archer (23 September 1856 – 27 December 1924) was a Scottish critic and writer. Life: He was born in Perth, the son of Thomas Archer. He spent large parts of his boyhood in Norway where he became acquainted with the works of Henrik Ibsen,and was later educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he received the degree of M.A. in 1876. Archer became a leader-writer on the Edinburgh Evening News in 1875, and after a year in Australia returned to Edinburgh. In 1878 he took up residence in London.In 1879 he became dramatic critic of the London Figaro, and in 1884 of the World, where he remained until 1905. In London he soon took a prominent literary place and exercised much influence. Archer had much to do with introducing Henrik Ibsen to the English public with his translation of The Pillars of Society, produced at the Gaiety Theatre, London, 1880. It was the first Ibsen play to be produced in London but made little impression.He also translated, alone or in collaboration, other productions of the Scandinavian stage: Ibsen's A Doll's House (1889), The Master Builder (1893, with Edmund Gosse); Edvard Brandes's A Visit (1892); Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1892, with Charles Archer); Little Eyolf (1895); and John Gabriel Borkman (1897); and he edited Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas vols., 1890–1891). In 1897 Archer, along with Elizabeth Robins, Henry William Massingham, and Alfred Sutro, formed the Provisional Committee to organize an association to produce plays of high literary intrinsic merit, such as Ibsen's. The association was called the "New Century Theatre" but was a disappointment by 1899, although it continued until at least 1904.In 1899, a more successful association, called the Stage Society, was formed to replace it. Max Beerbohm's caricature of Archer paying a humble visit to Henrik Ibsen was published in The Poets’ Corner, London 1904....
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Brander Matthews was a university professor and man of letters from the United States.
Background
was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Edward Matthews, of a family which had, since the seventeenth century, lived on Cape Cod, could, on the maternal side, claim descent from William Brewster, leader of the Pilgrims on their voyage to New England, as well as from Thomas Prince, twice governor of the Plymouth colony. His mother, Virginia Brander, was daughter of James S. Brander, a Scotsman who settled in America and married Harriet McGraw of Chesterfield County, Va. Thus, Brander Matthews came of American stock that might be rated as of the sturdiest and the best. Though born in New Orleans he became a devoted citizen and lover of New York City. Since the business ventures of the elder Matthews carried him north and south, east and west, the first years of Brander Matthews' life found him in various cities of the United States, and once on a long trip abroad. The father's wealth and fine taste allowed him to surround his children with luxuries and with beautiful objects of art. Brander Matthews passed a happy boyhood, among refined home influences, at school, in attending plays, and in wandering about the city that he grew to love. From the windows of his father's home in lower Fifth Avenue he saw the torchlight parade of Lincoln's supporters, and, shortly thereafter, regiment after regiment marching to the war. In 1866 the family again went to Europe and for a year and a half the growing boy saw at close range exciting affairs in France and viewed the art of Italy. In those lands he met notable persons, leaders in all walks of life.
Education
On his return to New York in 1867, he prepared for entrance to Columbia College and in 1868 was admitted to the sophomore class, graduating in 1871. His best training for literary and professional pursuits was gained outside of college walls. After graduation he entered, at the age of nineteen, the Columbia Law School, attaining the degree of LL. B. in 1873.
Career
In consequence of the financial panic of 1873, the father's fortune dwindled, and in 1887 was found to be almost without assets. From the mid-seventies Brander Matthews devoted himself to literature, contributing to such periodicals as the Galaxy, the Nation, the Critic, Appletons' Journal, Puck, and others. A bibliography of those early, fugitive pieces would fill many pages. An early success was an article on "Actors and Actresses of New York, " in Scribner's Monthly, April 1879. Thereafter he published stories in that and other magazines, soon dropping from his name the baptismal James. But he was chiefly experimenting in playwriting, then the object of his ambition. During the decade of the eighties, he was prominent among the literary men and the artists of New York. He was of the group which, in 1882, founded the Authors' Club. Almost as an outcome of this was organized in 1883 the American Copyright League, known later as the Authors' League, in the activities of which he was prominently associated. With Laurence Hutton and others he founded in 1885 the Dunlap Society, devoted to printing important works relating to the theatre. The Kinsmen, a social club of international membership, with affiliations in London, was started in 1882, with E. A. Abbey, Lawrence Barrett, Laurence Hutton, W. M. Laffan, Frank D. Millet, and Brander Matthews as earliest members; W. D. Howells, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Joseph Jefferson, and Charles Dudley Warner were elected later. Matthews was, in 1889, one of the fifteen founders of The Players, that royal gift of Edwin Booth to his fellow actors.
His London associates were also notable. His first intimate acquaintance in that city was Austin Dobson, through whom he met Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, and Frederick Locker-Lampson. He became a member of the Savile Club and The Athen'um. Fleeming Jenkin, Thomas Hardy, William Black, W. E. Henley, and, somewhat later, Rudyard Kipling came, in greater or less terms of intimacy, among those he met in his London visits. In September 1883, Walter Pollock invited him to become a contributor to the Saturday Review, for which thereafter he wrote frequently. In this same decade, 1880-90, his interest in the theatre definitely shaped his writings. A volume on The Theatres of Paris (1880), since treasured by collectors, and another on French Dramatists of the 19th Century (1881), were followed in 1885 by his edition of The Rivals and The School for Scandal, the introduction to which threw light on several problems, hitherto unsolved, in the life of Sheridan. In 1884, his comedy, Margery's Lovers, was played in London, and three years later it was presented at a special matinée in New York, followed by subsequent performances in Chicago. With Laurence Hutton he edited in 1886 five volumes of essays, Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the United States. In collaboration with George H. Jessop he wrote the comedy A Gold Mine, produced in 1887 by John T. Raymond in Memphis, and in 1889 by Nat C. Goodwin, in New York. In 1889, also, William H. Crane staged Jessop and Matthews' farce, On Probation. Both of these plays were successful, as were the one-act comedies of the same period by Matthews--The Silent System, adapted from the French for Coquelin and Agnes Booth, and The Decision of the Court (1893), also played by the accomplished Mrs. Booth. Meanwhile, in the eighties, Matthews had written in conjunction with H. C. Bunner some short stories, collected under the title In Partnership. To St. Nicholas (November 1891 - October 1892) he contributed a serial story for boys, "Tom Paulding, " published in book form in 1892. These are only the more striking of his writings of that time. When Thomas R. Price, professor of English at Columbia College, spent the academic year of 1891-92 in Europe, he arranged to have Matthews, as a man of letters, lecture to the students during his absence. Matthews undertook the work with some hesitation but was so successful that he was appointed, in 1892, professor of literature in Columbia, a position he held till 1900, when he was created professor of dramatic literature, the first man, he always proudly asserted, to hold a chair of that title in an American university. His account in These Many Years (1917) of his earliest experiences in teaching shows him demanding from his classes more reading than they could perhaps digest, but he felt that "if they were exposed to the contagion of literature, some of them might catch it. " His success is shown by the large number of playwrights, critics, and novelists, once his students, who proclaim the inspiration of his lectures and his personality. Trained for his professorship by constant intercourse with many of the most stimulating minds of Europe and the United States, he brought to the classroom a wealth of personal experience, of anecdotes of great men, that was nothing short of a revelation to his listeners. Thenceforward Matthews' books were, to a great extent, by-products of his courses at Columbia. He wrote, to be sure, several volumes of fiction, all founded on life in the New York that he knew and loved: Vignettes of Manhattan (1894); His Father's Son, a Novel of New York (1895); Outlines in Local Color (1897); A Confident To-Morrow (1899); The Action and the Word (1900); and Vistas of New York (1912). But his major interests--in subjects relating to the theatre (especially to dramaturgy) and to questions of English language and literature--bore fruit in Americanisms and Briticisms (1892); Studies of the Stage (1894); Bookbindings Old and New (1895); Aspects of Fiction (1896); An Introduction to the Study of American Literature (1896); Parts of Speech (1901); The Historical Novel (1901); The Development of the Drama (1903); Inquiries and Opinions (1907); A Study of the Drama (1910); Moliére: His Life and His Works (1910); A Study of Versification (1911); Gateways to Literature (1912); Shakspere as a Playwright (1913); and A Book about the Theater (1916).
He inspired and directed the volume of Shaksperian Studies produced by the members of the department of English at Columbia University, in 1916, the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death. His autobiography, a striking gallery of pictures of life, here and abroad, among professional men and artists of the last half of the nineteenth century, appeared in 1917. Remaining volumes were compilations of mellow essays that he had contributed to various periodicals: The Principles of Playmaking (1919); Essays on English (1921); Playwrights on Playmaking (1923), and Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play (1926) the last his final production, and one of those most widely discussed. In it he treats of the theatre of that day, to which, after an enforced abstention, he returned with zest and enjoyment in 1924. In 1902 he delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences seven of his lectures on the development of the drama; three of these he repeated in the same year at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, London. In 1908 he gave before the Lowell Institute, Boston, six lectures on Molière. In 1910 he served as president of the Modern Language Association of America. In this same period he was actively writing, lecturing, and administering as chairman of the Simplified Spelling Board a cause which he took deeply to heart. He was one of the original members, in 1898, of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (president, 1913 - 14); in 1904, a central group from that organization was formed as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a select body to which he was, in time, elected. From 1922 to 1924 he was chancellor of the Academy, and in 1922 officer of the French Legion of Honor. Ill health forced his resignation from his prized professorship at Columbia; he resigned, formally, on the anniversary of his birth, February 21, 1924, less than a month, as it happened, after the death of his wife. He died on March 31, 1929.
(James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 192...)
Views
Quotations:
"a play is something written to be acted before an audience in a theatre"
"A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence. "
"The art of the dramatist is very like the art of the architect. A plot has to be built up just as a house is built-story after story; and no edifice has any chance of standing unless it has a broad foundation and a solid frame. "
"To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later. "
"Give a good deed the credit of a good motive; and give an evil deed the benefit of the doubt. "
"There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde's plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics. "
"In every artist we can perceive a man with both a message and a method. His message may be innate in him, but his method he has to acquire from others. "
"Be brief, be buoyant, and be brilliant. "
"A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it. "
"When I have no idea, I gnaw my nails and invoke the aid of Providence. "
Membership
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Personality
Unlike most praisers of past times, he found that much of the new was better than the old, and he won young actors by sympathetic understanding of their aims and their accomplishment. Honorary degrees came fast during the later years of his academic life. In his last years he found great pleasure in attending the dinners of The Round Table, a group of notable men who met and dined and talked, at intervals, during the winter. At the very end, before his last protracted illness, his keenest delight was in meeting kindred spirits at this club, or at The Century, or at The Players, or in his own home, or in the offices and in the Faculty Club of his beloved Columbia. To all these gatherings he brought an ardent friendship, an unwearied intellect, and a wit that had suffered no diminution with the passing of time.
He was an unforgettable figure in American life and letters. Brander Matthews was perhaps the last of the gentlemanly school of critics and essayists that distinguished American literature in the last half of the nineteenth century. His style is exact, fastidious, and founded on close study of French and English masters, yet easy and apparently spontaneous. His influence was felt most in the drama. His oft-repeated dictum that "a play is something written to be acted before an audience in a theatre" implied, of course, that playwriting is an art with rules of its own adapted to the medium in which it works. His best years coincided with the rise and acceptance of the "well-made" play as exemplified in the works of the Jones-Pinero school in England; of the theories and principles of that school he was a chief expounder for America. A comparison of the loosely constructed plays produced in this country before 1890 with the well-knit plays of subsequent years will show what he and his disciples largely helped to effect. He was a great personality, intolerant of affectation or pretense, but stimulating and helpful to all who aimed at genuine literary or artistic expression. His genius for friendship has seldom been equaled; a choice spirit, a wit, master, and inspirer of brilliant talk, he has become a tradition.
Connections
On May 10, 1873, before commencement, he married Ada S. Smith, an English actress well known under the stage name of Ada Harland. They had onlyone child, Mrs. Nelson Macy.