After a few years this monopoly was broken and a competing combination of managers succeeded in making it possible for players to decide between one or the other of these factions. Such liberty was secured at the cost of much money invested in new theaters which would never have been necessary but for the failure of the two parties to come to an agreement. It is necessary to have this understanding of the commercial conditions of the theater in order to comprehend the methods of the two groups of managers that control it to-day. In order to provide plays and companies for the numerous theaters which they have guaranteed to supply with material, it is necessary to bring forward so many productions that any system of artistic selection is not only impossible, but there is not even time for any evident consideration of the business chances of half the plays put before the public. So from the large number of plays and operettas annually seen, there are few of sufficient artistic importance to deserve mention. There are tendencies, however, which are highly significant of the tastes of the American public.

it was known here, did not arouse the appetite of New Yorkers to see the little drama as it did the Parisians who delighted in the tang of "La Marriage de Mlle. Beulemans," which was the original title of a play that came to France as almost the first work of two genuine Belgian dramatists. The importance of "Chantecler" was unfortunately diminished by the sensational tour de force of entrusting to a woman the part of the hero, which is a vibrant proclamation of the power of virility. So there was was no other significance to the production of Rostand's essentially Gallic poem in this country than the appearance of a popular actress in a new role. It is doubtful, however, if the admirers of Maude Adams found much to delight them in this artistic adventure of their favorite.

The taste for the native drama

manifested itself most strongly last winter in the success of a dramatic version of George Randolph Chester's stories under the title "Get Rich Quick Wallingford," which enjoyed a popularity unequalled by any other farce of the season. While there was of course a strongly national character to the fun of this study in getrich-quick methods of finance, the piece really is not much of an advance on the old Harrigan plays in its fidelity to any life outside the theater. A much more serious and more admirable specimen of the skill of the American dramatist was "As a Man Thinks," written by Augustus Thomas with his usual inclination toward some special phase of our life and character. It was the rôle of a Jew physician in which he succeeded in revealing most strikingly the effect of Jewish character on the lives of those about him. It would not be possible for the dramatist to write a play without imparting to it some of his intellectual theories-theories, moreover, which are likely to be much more familiar to others than they seem to be to him-so there is some use of the doctrines of Christian Science as an element of the play. It enjoyed such prosperity here as to prove the extent to which our public is eager to see dramas of their own life and time. "Excuse Me," which

One of these which made itself felt last season with special force was the preference of our audiences for plays of native authorship on American themes. Charles Frohman, who is the manager most convinced of the desire of American playgoers to delight only in the foreign masterpieces, had the disappointment of seeing every success of the Paris stage which he imported to this country meet with more or less decided rejection. "Le Bois Sacre," by de Flers and Cavaillet, had been one of the recent comic triumphs of the Paris stage. As "Decorating Clementine" it puzzled and bored New Yorkers, who had little interest in the literary struggles of a woman of fashion. Both "La Scandale," by Henry Bataille, and "La Vierge Folle," by the same author, met with no approval here, although Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who has usually controlled the interest of a certain part of the public until she was placed in a drama that had such slight appeal to our public was the heroine of "The Foolish Virgin." The curious local flavor of "Suzanne," as

enjoyed a long life in New York, was more important from its strongly marked national humor than from any other element in Rupert Hughes's farce.

a

The success which attended the latest visit of Sarah Bernhardt to this country was a contrast to the indifference with which every other manifestation of French art was concerned. The tribute was, of course, to the personality of this unique figure in the history of the stage and new generation found sufficient trace of her old time genius to reecho the praises which have sounded now for upwards of half a century. Another appreciation of a poet who writes in the French tongue was the success of the symbolic play "The Blue Bird" of Maurice Maeterlinck. It remains perhaps the most successful achievement of the now abandoned New Theater. That institution ceased to struggle against public indifference after its second season. Now that it has been renamed the Century, the production of "The Garden of Allah," there carries on the best spectacular standards of the institution, although it is doubtful if that theater formerly would have considered the play worthy of its pretensions. The abandonment of this enterprise was a real loss to the American theater.

Only the artistic achievements of Max Reinhardt in such bold experiments as mounting the second part of Goethe's "Faust" has attracted attention to Germany during the past year. There has been nothing of such importance from its principal dramatists during that time as to suggest future fame for it beyond the frontiers of their own country. Nor are such dramas as "Le Vieil Homme," by Georges Porto Riche, which delighted Paris for a brief term, ever likely to find their way to our stage. The graceful banalities of Pierre Wolff as revealed in his first Comédie Française play "The Marionettes," already acted in this country, are more suited to the taste of our audiences. It is true that the French dramatists seem, year after year, more and more limited by the interests and sympathies of their own home audiences. It seems impossible that they should really write with an eye on the market in the United States so rarely do they appeal successfully to its tastes. In Germany it is equally the tendency of the dramatic writers to keep near the hearts of their own people. It may be an inevitable result of this feeling in other countries that American playgoers have come to prefer dramas that deal with their own time and life.

clear references to Zeno the Stoic and his pupil Sphaerus, we must place the poet in the third century B. C. His verses show him to be a graceful writer of no depth and with little poetic gift.

P. Rylands 13 is a fragment of an epic dealing with the story of Linus and the Argive festival of the Arneïdes. With this should be named P. Oxyr. 1085, a second-century fragment of a poem by the Alexandrine versifier Pancrates, hitherto known to us from Athenaeus, who quotes four "not inelegant" verses, to which this discovery adds some 40 more. Pancrates suggested to the emperor Hadrian that a certain kind of lotus, which he declared had sprung from the blood of a man-eating lion slain by the emperor, should be named from the imperial favorite Antinous. The verses so pleased Hadrian that he gave Pancrates free maintenance in the Museum, a generous reward to judge the whole poem by the swollen and diffuse style of the part we have recovered.

Dramatic Texts.-The only significant gain in dramatic literature consists of 28 fairly complete verses from a satyric play, P. Oxyr. 1083. This probably dates from the fifth century B. C. since the choral element seems large, but in spite of the names of two characters, Oineus and Phoenix, it is impossible to determine the author. P. Rylands 15 is the lament of a girl whose lover has been carried away to become a gladiator; and 17 gives us six lines of an epithalamium which suggests the "Epithalamium of Helen" by Theocritus. No. 23 of the same volume contains a fragmentary epitome of the Odyssey, and 26 is one of the happy surprises, for it is nothing less than a part of Apion's "Homeric Glosses," dating from the first century, and therefore but slightly later than the date of composition. New Homeric scholia are given in 1086 and 1087 of the P. Oxyr., both of the first century of our era. The former is important for the history of the Aristarchean tradition, while the latter is non-Aristarchean, and gains additional interest by giving us new quotations from no less than 15 different authors.

According to the London Times of Nov. 11, Dr. Hunt has announced the recovery of about 400 verses of the "Ichneutae," "The Trackers," a satyric play by Sophocles. The publication of this fragment will be eagerly awaited by scholars.

History. In the field of history P. Oxyr. 1084 presents a second-century fragment of the first book of Hellanicus's "Atlantis," and 1089 a third-century fragment of an Alexandrian chronicle, in which is mentioned the prefect L. Avillius Flaccus attacked by Philo.

Homer. Of the fragments of extant literature Homer naturally claims the lion's share in the Rylands volume; no Homeric passages are given from Oxyrhynchus this year. The most interesting is 53, which represents the extensive remains of a vellum book dating from the third or fourth century. The text contains parts of books xii-xv and xviii-xxiv; the largest portions belong to xiii-xiv and xx-xxiv, in fact the lines for the last three books and a half are continuous, although a hole in the center of each leaf causes considerable gaps. The character of the text is "mixed," showing close agreement with no single manuscript or group, so that after all the chief value of this discovery is that it adds a new example to the oldest vellum books known.

The other Greek authors represented are Hesiod, Bacchylides, Herodotus, Hippocrates, Demosthenes, Isocrates, and Polybius.

1099

Latin papyri are so rare that every scrap is welcome. P. Oxyr. 1097, a leaf from a papyrus book of the fifth century, contains Cicero, De Imperio Cn. Pompei §§ 60-65, and In Verrem II, 1§§1-4 in a text of some critical value; 1098 offers a few fragments of Vergil, Aeneid ii, 16-23, 39-46. and P. Rylands 61 are of especial interest, the former because it contains a fragmentary Latin-Greek vocabulary of words drawn from the Aeneid iv, 659-705, and v, 1-6; the latter is a portion of Cicero, In Catilinam II, with a parallel translation in Greek. Both date from the fifth century and were intended for Greeks learning Latin. A few marks of quantity and accents are found on the Latin.