SOURCE: “Augustus Thomas,” in World's Work, Vol. 18, August, 1909, pp. 11882-85.

[In the following excerpt, Brooks interviews Thomas about his method of dramatic composition and about his idea of what makes a play specifically American.]

Augustus Thomas is the most representative American playwright. He is the author of such plays as Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, In Mizzoura; and The Witching Hour, of last year, a new departure from his previous work, and, in fact, from all traditions of the stage. His plays, which now number more than twenty, are so widely known that probably half the people in the United States who have ever seen a play at all have seen one of them.

Mr. Thomas was born in St. Louis in 1859. He was a reporter and a law student. And for a time he worked in the freight department of a railroad. He is enthusiastic in political beliefs. It was he who last summer seconded the nomination of Mr. Bryan for the Presidency.

For twenty years or thereabouts Mr. Thomas has lived on a hillside overlooking New Rochelle. From the upper windows the view carries twenty miles, and over the hilly land between, one sees Long Island and the Sound. Below in the valley, a sheer descent from the house, lies the crowded town. And the little, bright-colored, ephemeral frame cottages scatter off among the fields—a ten years' growth. It is the type of the American scene, looked at and across and beyond from a point which holds it in relation with the wider world. It was there that Mr. Thomas made me welcome, and asked me into a great study with double doors. There was a death-mask of Lincoln, and over the fireplace a painting of the sea. But there were few books, and those were scattered about, evidently from recent and active use.

Mr. Thomas strolled about as he talked. When I asked him something of his way of working, he replied:

“I fancy that the methods of different men differ widely. I should be inclined to say that the method of any one man differed at different times, and was affected by the character of the task assigned him or which he set for himself.

“I have begun plays with only a character in view at the start. Under that condition one has to determine not only the difficulties through which his character shall pass, but necessarily the nature of those difficulties—whether serious or comic. This is, of course, predetermined by the kind of play in view. To take examples from my own work, let us consider the play In Mizzoura, written for Mr. Goodwin. The assignment there was to get a serious character for Mr. Goodwin, who up to that time had been regarded as a player of farce. ‘Mr. Goodwin is neither a tall nor a heavy man physically. To put him in a physical situation where he would properly triumph, it was necessary to supplement his physical conditions with some weapon. Now, a man using a weapon must do so either legally or illegally—as an heroic character it is better that he should do it legally. To do this, he must use his weapon either in a case of self-defense, or, if he is the aggressor, he must use it as an officer of the law. With one's attention directed to the problem of Mr. Goodwin as an officer of the law, there began to visualize the type of the small man with the gun. This fitted in with my recollections. At that time many of the most effective officers of the law in the West were small men—Mr. Goodwin was not unlike that type. There was then the necessity of finding a locale—I was most familiar with the State of Missouri. An officer with a gun in a rural district is most frequently a sheriff. Attention was directed to making Mr. Goodwin a sheriff. He was placed in Pike County because of its location in the state and of its historic importance. To act as sheriff, there must necessarily be a criminal. To give that criminal his full value in the play, it was essential that he should oppose Mr. Goodwin, not only officially but sentimentally, and that he should oppose him in type and brains. This made the criminal a dark man, fairly large, a rival in Mr. Goodwin's love affair. This necessitated a love affair. Mr. Goodwin at that time was no longer a very young man—his love affair ought to have about it a quality of maturity. This placed him in the protective and almost fatherly attitude to the girl. He began in the meshes of the story to be her benefactor. To place the girl in the proper light, his benefactions had to be secret benefactions. This suggested his having paid for the girl's tuition—the girl's need of this assistance—her wish for this education—by association and contrast, the kind of family that was around her. And so by easy stages the story grew. That is an example of a play starting with a character in view.

“When one starts with an idea or a theory instead of a character, it is worked out in the same kind of way. When one starts with an idea, one has to find an exponent of that idea, that is to say, proponent, and, as a dramatic necessity, an opponent. The human element immediately comes in, and around the personalities of this proponent and this opponent are gradually gathered the characters necessary to a dramatic exploitation of the idea. Of course, it is good dramatic construction, having got these characters, to eliminate the unnecessary ones and to concentrate, as far as possible, the interest.”

I was a little puzzled by his point about the legality of weapons, when he said that the hero could only use weapons legally. And I asked him if the illegal use of weapons would not, in a certain kind of play, add to the charm and perhaps the strength of the hero.

To this Mr. Thomas said: “Your hero who is illegal starts with some difficulty to be explained away—he hasn't a clear title to his heroism. When you consider your hero illegal and make your play concern his extrication of himself from the meshes of the law, you have a selfish procedure. Your hero then isn't as admirable as a hero who is working to extricate somebody else. A play is only two and a half hours long—why spend an hour's time in the selfish extrication of the gentleman when all of the time can be spent in the unselfish extrication of others? That is what I meant to imply.”

I asked him if in Arizona and in In Mizzoura he had had the deliberate intention of picturing the life of given states as separate parts of the country.

“Not the life of a given state,” he said, “but the picturing of life in different sections of the country. Except the very minute observations not specially valuable for exploitation in the theatre, there is but little difference between life in Alabama and, let us say, South Carolina. There is a difference between that section of the South, however, and the other section of the South, lying west of the Mississippi River. Those sections differ from the Middle West—say, Missouri—and that, again, differs from the great South-west as, for example, Arizona. In selecting these various sections, I was guided by their difference in social characteristics indicated by their relative points of view toward woman. In Alabama, the women of a certain class are recipients of very marked deference—are persons of conceded social domination. The men have the attitude of the cavalier, such as Colonel Moberly in the play Alabama shows in his complimentary kissing of the hand of the lady to whom he defers. In the Middle West, as in Missouri, there is an assumption of a more amusing and equal antagonism between the sexes. I don't mean that there is any less love or any less real tenderness, but there is considerably less hesitation on the part of the lady to criticize performances somewhat out of her special field. Also, in the Middle West, as I know it, the woman is a little more the custodian of her own welfare and integrity. These possessions in Alabama are more jealously guarded for her by her male protectors—any encroachment upon them is dealt with a bit more summarily. In Arizona, where women are numerically more scarce, they are also more self-reliant than in either of the other sections; also any mistake by one of them stands a better chance of forgiveness, after proper contrition, than it stands in either of the other sections.

“Of course, the country can be sub-divided by considering its sectional relation to any other subject as, let us say, politics or trade; but it seemed to me that this sub-division, according to the relation of woman to the community, was the most serviceable.

“I don't think the woman question is any more important in American plays than in those of other countries. It is important in all plays only because the sex question is the most fundamental. I believe that the sex question plays a less important part in the American than in the drama of any other country—certainly any country with whose drama I am familiar.

“The woman is essential to every play. There have been only one or two dramatic experiments attempted without female interest. But she is less important in the American theatre than she is in any other theatre with which I am acquainted, for this reason—you must have in the theatre either an interest in the problems of personal relation or an interest in another field, as, for example, character drawing. America is so large and the characters are so many that there is a very wide and new interest in them—also they have not been exhausted and worked out, as, for the theatre, the recognized characters of other countries have been.”

“Which of your plays, Mr. Thomas, do you regard as the most essentially American?”

“I should think that that play from the works of any man would be the most essentially American which would be the least interesting in any other country, which assumed an understanding of America by its audience. I should be inclined to say that among my own plays Alabama was that play. Alabama was not understood in London—Arizona was very well understood in London. I think Arizona would be understood in Germany or France. I don't believe that Alabama would be understood in either of those countries.”

“For what reason?”

“Alabama dealt with the sectional differences of the common country—it was the theatrical presentation of a national family quarrel. It depended for its success upon a fair comprehension of the conditions precedent as well as present.”

“What would you say are the elements that go to make up a distinctively American play?”

“An American play might be thoroughly American and at the same time universal. I believe that a play could be written with such a sure seizure of primal and eternal relationships as to make it go in Japan as well as in America. The things that so distinguish American plays as a class from the plays of other countries is the absence of the morbid consideration of the sex question and the absence of recognition and admission of stratified social ranks. To amplify that, a very strong French play may be written and succeed with the central idea only the morbid consideration from its several sides and angles of some sex question, even perverted. A successful English play can be written having for its central consideration the attempt of the individual to overcome the question of social caste.”

“What should you say is the one quality that makes a play popular in this country?”

“There is no particular quality,” he replied, “that has the field to itself. Any play will succeed in America which hopefully entertains; and, if I were to be called upon to name the most valuable quality in a play, I should say its expression of an ideal sufficiently above the level of its audience to attract them and not so far above that level as to be considered apocryphal or discouraging.”