File:Mary Anderson as Galatea in Pygmalion and Galatea Players and plays of the last quarter century.jpg

Identifier: playersplaysofla02strauoft (find matches)
Title: Players and plays of the last quarter century; an historical summary of causes and a critical review of conditions as existing in the American theatre at the close of the nineteenth century
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Strang, Lewis Clinton, 1869-1935
Subjects: Theater -- History Theater -- United States Acting and actors
Publisher: Boston, L.C. Page
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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voice were not lost, but passed into the consciousness of the people. They became, in fact,a strong influence in the English theatre, an influence that made possible dramatic achievements as much farther removed from Robertson as Robertson himself was removed from the drama that immediately preceded him. It is an interesting comparison, — that between Tom Robertson and W. S. Gilbert, Robertson's direct successor in the field of English comedy. Both were protests against artificiality, bombast, and emotional formalism.Yet, except in the single particular that both were innocently obvious in their dramatic methods, their character delineation, and their plot development, they were entirely different in their mental equipment. Robertson was painstakingly conventional, while Gilbert was painstakingly unconventional. Gilbert was fully as much a pamphleteer and a critic as he was a dramatist, and it was temperamentally impossible for him to avoid making a point,never mind how much he violated character or
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MARY ANDERSON As Galatea in Pygmalion and Galatea. Robertson and the English Drama 35 situation in so doing. In his pursuit of the vastly different, he was continually going to extremes. Thus The Palace of Truth, with its startling reversals of the ordinary, was too logically illogical to be grasped by the impressionable, but rarely thoughtful theatre audience. In his peculiarly Gilbertian way, Gilbert worked with the same platitudes that Robertson did: but while Robertson strove to make these platitudes seem novel by breathing into them a trifle of freshness and originality, Gilbert ruthlessly uncovered their pretensions, and,by turning them upside down, revealed relentlessly their absurdities. Gilbert's two best dramatic works were Pygmalion and Galatea and Comedy and Tragedy. The first is still a great favourite with actresses; and although it is written around the trite theme of a statue coming to life, its conceits are so daintily handled, there is such a wealth of wit in its lines, and its d

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