The Play

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...in his achievement to date, which is imperfect largely through 19o THE COMMONWEAL June 23, 1926 its lack of full spiritual insight, than in the general direction it takes in furnishing serious material for the Negro theatre...

...out above all others-the double-edged fate which seems to In fact, Mr...

...The issue of what much ethical code...

...whose pennies freely and public, exceeds all limits hitherto imposed by horse-sense given founded seminaries and colleges and missions...

...All six of the plays opposed, not only by the whites, but by his own race as well...

...Two notorious alas...

...has gone before their comfortable city lives...

...of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, whose edge brings with it increasing respect and understanding...

...His plays-none tions of the South itself, where the numerically inferior whites of which has yet reached the New York stage, although resent any effort of the blacks to encroach on their own fields several of them have been produced by important little theatre of education and commerce, and where the blacks themselves groups-center for the most part in territory and about types still hover timidly under the shadow of the slave tradition...

...Like the earlier works of Eugene O'Neill, his plays accomplishing what his admirers believe, his work deserves show only a segment rather than a cross-cut of the circle of serious attention for its value in racial development and con- life...

...Green would probably answer that in the twisted and liarly one's own is the essence of that freedom of intellect and abnormal conditions in which his North Carolina Negroes emotional force without which political freedom is a bit of live, thwarted on every side and misguided both in their rea farce...

...plays themselves...

...doing for American drama what the most persistent efforts at self-education are swept away by the writers of the spirituals have done for Negro music...

...of them exclusively, however...

...And here is where the art as a man without in any way trying to bridge the barrier that and the good judgment of Mr...

...Green's work lies less Green...

...history...

...In Mr...

...Some few were...

...If you stop to consider it, this possession of something pecu- Mr...

...life and character...

...Green fall far short of greatsets the black and white races apart...

...It potentially, without tacitly approving even those shows to is principally known by letters and reports of clerics, priests, which it pays no official attention...

...the new land that they had founded, after the titanic religious One glance at the divorce laws of the various states is enough struggle that had driven them from Europe...

...If true, torrent of animal passion...

...let us say, the ugly-duckling artist who springs unexpectedly plays which we must regard as the contribution of a man and bewilderingly from a white family of settled business tradiof extraordinarily sensitive feeling and intuition...

...and the white closer and closer together on the same stage...

...munity would have a fairly definite idea of their scope from A report of Father David's first mission in Maryland says: the start...

...now published under the title, Lonesome Road*, are about the He is as much mistrusted by his own family and friends as, Negro and his relations to the dominant white population...

...spiritual ancestors found in Bishop David so devoted a friend, has given herein a ground sketch which should be of great value to the Pilgrims of Saint Mary's, who, under Father The Censorship Boomerang Lafarge, S.J., are collecting material to fill in detail the period W E have just been regaled with as flagrant a bit of comic- she outlines...

...Sister Columba he is on his way toward a more complete theatre...

...From this fact there is went under insensibly and progressively...

...Many an apple is rotten on one side only-where it cord, quite apart from the inherent dramatic worth of the has been bruised...

...One hears and common decency...

...It has given an honorable passport to the- generous people who came later, and who filled our cities with atrical material which, by almost unanimous consent of critics ordered parishes, schools, and hospitals...

...It cannot be invoked without putting the seal of Personal records of that time are scarce...

...Green is really ness...

...Yet divorce is a far clearer issue than the energy of both Church and state...

...The only constructive course is to allow each is timely and good reading for any American, particularly to develop to the utmost in its own idiom of action, emotion good reading for Catholic Americans too prone to forget what and thought...

...He has tried tions...

...and so on, right through our experience of life, there is nearly The same can be said for their educational value, once we always a potential balance which can be swung to the right accept the validity of his observations...

...Green admits that the plays are not generally strike all those Negroes in the South who try seriously to representative of the Negro race...

...never does one hear, except in Nor does this fact take account of the additional publicity some such book as this and its sources, dug out as from some bestowed on the plays examined...

...educational, in that they profess, at least, to rest on On the dramatic and literary side, there can be no question accurate observation of many slightly known phases of Negro of the power and frequent strength of Mr...

...speech common to the type of character depicted...

...Dickens certainly emplays directly written for the Negro theatre, he may have his ployed an analogous method in Oliver Twist, and other stories, chance to express for us the serious as well as the comic phases to effect many needed reforms in England...

...Here we have, perhaps, a problem P AUL GREEN is an instructor in philosophy in one of our which is not quite universal...

...Each race has a peculiar genius of its own, but like many T HE Life of the Right Reverend John Baptist Mary innocent chemicals they do not seem to mix without serious David (1761-1841) Bishop of Bardstown in Kentucky, consequences...

...A play advocating divorce for incom- of these conditions were Americans from the earliest growth patibility ought to be-if the censors were logical-highly of the new nation and long before "Americanization" could immoral in one state, and quite in sympathy with expressed possibly be anticipated as a problem to tax the wisdom and public will in another...

...opera censorship as one might hope to find in a fanciful The authoress is to be congratulated that the life of the Gilbert and Sullivan kingdom...

...A gangrenous leg is not the whole man...

...In a land such as ours, on the other hand, where "On his arrival among them, he found the congregation cold so many fine moral questions find themselves in that marginal and negligent of their Christian duties...

...The time has come to recognize openly that liberty of conscience possible, not by organized numbers, but censorship can be the greatest moral boomerang in dramatic by individual worth of character...

...protection of numbers among the Friends...

...New York: The United States Cathoseekers after the sensational who are trying to bring the Negro lic Historical Society...

...It inheres rather in the condisouthern universities-North Carolina...

...Like all men, black or white, who dare to be different to make us see more clearly the inner tragedy of the black from the standardized community about them, the Negro seekrace, of the Negro who dreams and aspires and never attains ing education courts misunderstanding on every side...

...If Mr...

...That is something which only remote archaeological study, of those who made it possible the managers themselves can appraise at its almost priceless to enjoy this liberty and material comfort, and who made box-office worth...

...Many sought the no possible escape...

...the animalism of the Negro is apt to remain paramount...

...Specifically," he writes, elevate themselves above their fellows, either through motives "the chief concern here is with the more tragic and uneasy of personal advancement, or through a more altruistic desire side of Negro life as it has exhibited itself to my notice through a number of years on or near a single farm...

...as he treads his lonely way from birth to death on a road Green's plays, every misfortune he suffers is at once attributed which he can share with no other man...

...Even where the gence of the Negro as a histrionic artist, thus releasing to other theme of education is introduced, the preoccupation with him one important channel of useful and constructive action...

...racial, in that they furnish definite material Their choice of theme, however, is confined largely to the for that rapidly developing phase of American life, the emer- sexual and related aspects of the Negro's life...

...Throughout the bleak side through the weight of constructive action, whether spirand tragic pages of Lonesome Road, one theme seems to stand itual or surgical, religious or scientific...

...Thus the expected has eration had built the Church...

...ligion-which, nevertheless, led in some instances to actual But at least the artists attempting to write for such a com- schism have beclouded all that earlier time...

...The almost defunct play jury bishop and protector of her house also represents a time in was called to life overnight, sent to view several productions, America's history which has been all but lost to sight in the and then asked solemnly for its verdict...

...For to apply, it is quite impossible to imagine any form of censor- how many decades had these people been utterly deprived of ship that would not have to end, in self-defense, either by their religion and even of their civic rights because of it, in tolerating nearly anything or condemning nearly everything...

...Green's plays...

...he left them fervent region where personal judgment alone is wrongly supposed and exemplary...

...Green, finds himself whites of a limited area in his own state...

...He showed, not he experiences, and thus win from all the respect due him only the mire, but the way out...

...BOOK S With every criticism one might level against it, the fact remains The Life of the Right Reverend John Baptist Mary David, that he is doing a far more constructive work than those by Sister Columba Fox...

...One review was sup- solution of later problems: that period of struggle, of disappressed completely-a logical if somewhat abrupt step...

...so truculently, as though in building churches our genplays were whitewashed completely...

...The plays also deal largely and this is of great importance, because it gives the Negro some- frankly with the problem of mixture of races, and the pseudothing that he can call his own-a chance for healthy expres- realism so prevalent on the stage today falls here into the sion in a field other than that of heavy manual labor without usual method of reproducing every blasphemy and vulgarity of at the same time throwing him into competition with the whites...

...But Dickens did of his life, the hopes, the aspirations, and the blights which not confine himself to the one aspect of life...

...Those to whom approval on everything it passes, and it cannot exist, even Bishop David came from France were not city dwellers...

...An- pointed hopes and sturdy faithful endurance or gradual hopeother review containing material which the New York Times less or unconscious submersion out of which grew those concritic summoned enough courage to call "foul," was allowed ditions which we accept so lightly and so easily-or even, to continue with the elimination of one sketch...

...by his friends to his overweening ambitions...

...This knowl- Fox (M.A...

...happened, and the greatest danger of censorship has been pub- One hears much, and most properly, of these good, humble, licly demonstrated...

...June 23, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 189 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Plays for the Negro Theatre to be helpful to their race...

...there later became known under the name of "Cahensleyism" and are always prudes and fanatics who fail to distinguish between subsequent conflicts of temporal policy unconnected with rethe destructive and constructive handling of serious material...

...We now recognize that the Negro has his music...

...Why wonder at their "negligence...

...Now there seems to be some promise that, with measure, that may be a just answer...

...The survivors to illustrate the point...

...In Maryland, where the most of those presented by current plays...

...of men and women whom he knows, the Negroes and the The aspiring Negro, according to Mr...

...Individual censors might make mistakes...

...To a certain clowning...

...New York: Robert M. McBride and Company...

...ancy...

...Many plays are first experiment in Catholic colonization was tried, deprived harmful and destructive, not through the technical issues they by newcomers in the colony of all rights, religious and civil, raise, but through the way in which their material is presented...

...And so we find The value and interest of these plays is three-fold-dra- the seeds of his tragedy taking root in the soil of universal matic, in that they have an amazing theatrical vigor and poign- suspicion...

...without even the consolation England had under persecution, You cannot have a just censorship without having first a rec- of heroic priests secretly administering the sacraments, some ognized and accepted ethical code...

...So long as the drama in this country meant purely ligious and mating instincts, the plays must reflect the conwhite drama, the unsuspected talents of the Negro were rele- sequences of this condition if they are to have any value as gated to, and limited by, the minstrel show and vaudeville an exposition of character and environment...

...bishops, and religious houses, rather than by research into the On the positive side, there would, of course, be less danger long years of struggle of the laity, when they had no priests, in censorship in a community which recognized a fairly definite no sacraments, and yet endured...

...Lonesome Road: Six Plays for the Negro Theatre, by Paul The chief importance, then, of Mr...

...It Barrett Clark, who writes the introduction to these plays, is takes the form of showing how easily and readily even the convinced that Green is...