First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

From 1888 to 1919, Theodore Roosevelt maintained a steady stream of correspondence with the flamboyant scholar and critic Brander Matthews. Together they sought to promote a literary and cultural "progressivism" both within and outside the walls of academe. This book, bringing together 271 letters, is the first collection of their extant correspondence. As an essayist, critic, professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University, and president of several literary organizations (including the Modern Language Association), Matthews was among the most powerful "culture brokers" of his day. In...

Twenty-one plays from the drama of Greece, Rome, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and Norway from 500 B.C. to 1879 A.D., selected and edited with notes, biographies, and bibliographies, by Brander Matthews. In the Introduction he states: "A collection of masterpieces of the drama extending over a score of centuries serves to make plain something which ought never to be overlooked. The principles of dramatic art are unchanging though the ages, the same today in Paris or in New York that they were in Athens twenty-four hundred years ago." At the time of original publication in 1916,...

CONTENTS Playwrights on Playmaking Undramatic Criticism Old Plays and New Playgoers Tragedies with Happy Endings On the Advantage of Having a Pattern Did Shakespeare Write Plays to Fit His Actors? Strange Shakespearian Performances Thackeray and the Theater Mark Twain and the Theater Henry James and the Theater Stage Humor The "Old Comedies" The Organization of the Theater Memories of Actors At the time of original publication in 1923, Brander Matthews was Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University, and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

This vintage work contains Brander Matthews' 1912 treatise on drama throughout the ages; "The Development of the Drama." These pages tell the interesting story of the slow evolution of drama, from its crude beginnings far back in the forgotten past to the pictorial complexity of the present day. It explores how drama is changed by demands of the actors, by the size of and shape and circumstances of the theatres of the time, and by the changing prejudices of the contemporary audiences. The chapters of this book include: 'The Art of the Dramatist', 'Greek Tragedy', 'Greek and Roman Comedy',...

James Brander Matthews was born in New York in 1852. He was an American author and educator. Matthews was the first American Professor of dramatic literature. Matthews went to Columbia Law School and later taught literature at Columbia. Matthews has collected the best of American patriotic poems. Included are BOSTON, Ralph Waldo Emerson, PAUL REVERES RIDE, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON, Sidney Lanier, HYMN, Ralph Waldo Emerson, TICONDEROGA, V. B. Wilson, GRANDMOTHERS STORY OF BUNKER HILL BATTLE, Oliver Wendell Holmes, WARRENS ADDRESS, John Pierpont, THE OLD...

Contents Introduction The Ephemera: an Emblem of Human Life Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). The Whistle Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Consolation for the Old Bachelor Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791). John Bull Washington Irving (1783-1859). The Mutability of Literature Washington Irving (1783-1859). Kean's Acting Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879). Gifts Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Uses of Great Men Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Buds and Bird-voices Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). The Philosophy of Composition Edgar...

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"A Book About the Theater" from Brander Matthews. American writer and educator (1852-1929).