SCENE V.

THE LOCAL NEW YORK DRAMA.

"Like boys unto a muss." _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act iii. Sc. 13.

The number of plays based upon life in New York, all of which are strangely similar in title and in plot, or what must pass for plot, and all of which have been seen upon the New York stage since the first appearance of _Mose_, will surprise even those most familiar with our theatrical literature. Taken almost at random from various files of old play-bills, and from Mr. Ireland's _Records_, there were _A Glance at New York;_ or _New York in 1848_; _New York As it Is_; _First of May in New York_; _The Mysteries and Miseries of New York_; _Burton's New York Directory_; _The New York Fireman_; _Fast Young Men of New York_; _Young New York_; _The Poor of New York_; _New York by Gaslight_; _New York in Slices_; _The Streets of New York_; _The New York Merchant and his Clerks_; _The Ship-carpenter of New York_; _The Seamstress of New York_; _The New York Printer_; _The Drygoods Clerk of New York_, and many more, including _Adelle, the New York Saleslady_, which last was seen on the Bowery side of the town as late as 1879.

These were nearly all spectacular plays, and they were usually realistic to a degree in their representation of men and things in the lower walks of life. Rich merchants, lovely daughters, wealthy but designing villains, comic waiter-men, and pert chamber-maids with song and dance accompaniment, were placed in impossible uptown parlors; but the poor but honest printer set actual type from actual cases, and cruelly wronged but humble maidens met disinterested detectives by real lamp-posts and real ash-barrels, in front of what really looked like real saloons.

The original of all these local dramas was _New York in 1848_, or, as it was called during its long run of twelve weeks at the Olympic in that year, _A Glance at New York_. It was a play of shreds and patches, hurriedly and carelessly stitched together by Mr. Baker, the prompter of Mitchell's famous little theatre, in order to cover the nakedness of the programme on the night of his own annual benefit. It had no literary merit, and no pretensions thereto; and it would never have attracted public attention but for the wonderful "B'hoy" of the period, played by F. S. Chanfrau--one of those accidental but complete successes upon the stage which are never anticipated, and which cannot always be explained. He wore the "soap locks" of the period, the "plug hat," with a narrow black band, the red shirt, the trousers turned up--without which the genus was never seen--and he had a peculiarly sardonic curve of the lip, expressive of more impudence, self-satisfaction, suppressed profanity, and "general cussedness" than Delsarte ever dared to put into any single facial gesture. Mr. Chanfrau's Mose hit the popular fancy at once, and retained it until the Volunteer Fire Department was disbanded; and _A Glance at New York_ was fol-lowed by _Mose in California_, _Mose in a Muss_, and even _Mose in China_. Mr. Matthews, in an article contributed to one of the magazines a few years ago, records the fact that during one season Mr. Chanfrau played Mose at two New York theatres and in one theatre in Newark on the same night.

_The Mulligan Guards_, _The Skidmores_, and their followers were the legitimate descendants of _Mose_, and they came in with the steam-engines and the salaried firemen, who took away the occupation and the opportunities of Sykesy and Jake. Harrigan and Hart began their theatrical management at the Theatre Comique, opposite the St. Nicholas Hotel, in 1876, and introduced what may be called the Irish-German-Negro-American play, illustrating phases of tenement-house life in New York, and amusing everybody who ever saw them, from the Babies on our Block to Muldoon himself, the Solid Man. Mr. Harrigan wrote his own plays; both he and Mr. Hart were inimitable in their peculiar line as actors, and they were wise and fortunate in their selection of their company, which included Mrs. Annie Yeamans, "Johnny" Wild, and other equally talented artists, for whom "Dave" Braham, the leader of the orchestra, wrote original and catching music, which was sung and whistled and ground out from one end of the country to the other. Mr. Harrigan is a close observer and a born manager, and his productions have been masterpieces in their way. He puts living men and women upon the stage. He has done for a certain phase of city life what Denman Thompson has done for life upon a farm; and he is more to be envied than Mr. Thompson, because no class of theatre-goers enjoy his productions more than do the living men and women whom his company, with real art, represent. But, alas! his plays are not the _great_ American plays for which the American dramatic critic is pining; although, like _The Old Homestead_, and _Shenandoah_, and _Horizon_, and _Metamora_, and _Fashion_ they approach greatness, if only in the fact that they have introduced, and preserved, a series of purely American types which are as great in their way as are the dramatic characters of other lands, and greater and more enduring than many of the Americans to be found in other branches of American literature.