Plumes and Satin

It is Easier to be Fairy GodMother than Playwright.

There was a day when actors walked upon the stage in their street clothes -or almost. But that was before the day of mud-sprinkling trucks, before the day of chorus girls, and before the Actors' Equity Association made the producer furnish costumes. When Shakespeare spoke of Cleopatra's infinite variety, he was not thinking of her wardrobe. But Flo Ziegfeld -what a different effect would light up his imagination!

Now by the order of Grub Street, Thalia meets her dressmaker every morning, Melpomene goes nowhere without her modiste, and Terpsichore: picks a wardrobe that, if brief, is always brilliant; for Grub Street has: found that pot boiling has a better : savor to the public if it is done in fancy dress.

Examine our oft-seen friend the Musical Comedy. She appears endlessly and she is always the same. She goes by every first name in the encyclopedia, but that does not deceive the public. She gets by on her costumes. To be sure it costs her a pretty penny. She spends a hundred thousand dollars on her dresses for this evening, tomorrow ' night her clothes may cost well nigh one hundred and fifty thousand. But why count the cost? The public gladly pays, to watch, twenty -thirty thousand dollars at a sitting.

With comedy it's only something less so. Where the dramatist falls ; down the dressmaker rises up. Costumes can make a good play better, or they can make a bad play ; pass for good. Sweet Nell takes gate receipts in good part on its costume. The last act of H. B. Warner's You and I is bolstered with gratuitous ; masquerade. Polly Preferred owes greatly to its costumes. And who can say how much has 18th century satin won of The Rivals and The School for Scandal?

And winning tragedies are almost all of high dress vintage, and not ; the least are handsome Romeo and Juliet.

The honest homespun play still holds the boards, and always will, but many a gold brick passes on its tinsel. Affairs might reach a worse state than this, for this at least is fire and food for Grub street, God bless its honest soul!