It has become a firm article of belief that tragic drama, in Greece, grew out of the worship of Dionysus; that is to say, out of ideas and rites connected with the circling year, the mysteries of death and rebirth, alternating joy and sorrow, the sufferings and the triumph of the god, and so on. No doubt this might have happened; it sounds plausible. But did it happen? I think there are good reasons for being very sceptical about the whole theory.

It was bright in London on that day toward the close of the nineteenth century—or at least there were bright intervals. In the early morning the sun sparkled on the silver Thames, and as one strolled north along the Victoria Embankment from Westminster Bridge, Wordsworth's sonnet came to mind. Farther north still, as the river turned more and more to the east above Charing Cross it was pleasant to wander in the gardens. This was historic ground. At the foot of Buckingham Street was the seventeenth century Water Gate of York House and then the region known as the Adelphi, built by the brothers Adam. It had once been the site of Durham House, the home of the fourteenth century Bishop of Durham, and later of Lady Jane Grey and of Sir Walter Raleigh. Adelphi Terrace, looking on the Thames, had been inspired by Robert Adam's visit to the palace of Diocletian at Spalato though remodeling had now altered its original design. Robert and James Adam had resided at No. 4; Thomas Hardy had worked at No. 8; the Savage Club occupied Nos. 6 and 7. There were dramatic associations too. David Garrick had lived and died at No. 5; Richard D'Oyly Carte was in the Adam residence; and Bernard Shaw had recently moved into No. 10.

If there seem to be a too academically labored if really not truly scholarly pun involved in seeming to equate an American theatrical revolution with a roughly and arbitrarily chosen period of fifteen years including four of civil strife in these United States, I can only offer as defense that when I agreed, against my better critical judgment, to take on this particular assignment, I had no idea exactly what approach I should make to the difficult task of saying briefly something worthwhile and, if possible, not too obviously rehashed and hackneyed about that time when, in so many varied ways, despite the anxiety and distress of most Americans, the theatre was, at least in the North and in the constantly growing West, not existent on the periphery of normal living but rather increasingly centripetal toward the actual core of that living.

The latter decades of the nineteenth century saw great industrial expansion in America, achieved in no small measure by men of business acumen, men with a vision of the future. If money was being made by two or three or four relatively small businesses competing with one another, how much more could be amassed if these businesses were combined into one, thus eliminating competition! So these years became a period of mergers—mergers of men, money, and materials. Huge industries created huge fortunes, and a few men acquired wealth and power. That the theatre could escape the trend of such mergers was as unlikely as a flood in Death Valley. Oil had its Rockefeller, steel its Carnegie, railroading its Harriman, Vanderbilt, Gould and Hill, finance its Morgan and Cooke, the meat industry its Armour-and the theatre its Klaw and Erlanger.

Fourteen typewritten sheets of paper recently discovered in the effects of Robert G. Larsen, Keith's booking manager for Boston, give us Benjamin Franklin Keith's own account of his life and work. Evidently dictated in the leisure of retirement in 1912, two years before his death, these two letters gather together the facts and legends of a self-made man and the institution, Keith Vaudeville, that he had founded twenty-seven years before. One of these documents reminisces over his early travels, trials, and eventual success. The other papers are presumably answers to a number of inquiries by Larsen about the formative years of vaudeville, 1885 to 1900.