LECTURE ON MODERN DRAMA

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones will lecture, by invitation of the English Department, in Sanders Theatre this afternoon at 4.30 o'clock, on "The Corner Stones of Modern Drama." This lecture, which is open to the public, affords an opportunity to hear a master of an art little understood and extremely hard to practice.

Mr. Jones began his career by writing melodrama. Being obliged for his support to pursue this form of dramatic writing for ten years, he first won distinction with his still famous melodrama "The Silver King." After 1884 he was able to turn his efforts to writing other forms of drama, and brought out "Saints and Sinners." It was not until late in the eighties, however, that Mr. Jones gained a permanent hold on the better class of the public by means of his "Juda" and "The Crusaders." In the last fifteen or sixteen years Mr. Jones and Mr. Pinero have shared the position of teachers in the Renaissance of English drama. He has treated a great variety of subjects principally, satirically, realistically, and always thoughtfully.

All the theatre-goers since 1890 remember his successes in "The Case of Rebellious Susan," "The Rogue's Comedy," "The Liars," "The Maneuvers of Jane," and "Mrs. Dane's Defense." His insight into English life has steadily deepened, and his technique has become more assured. To his present mastery of technique, as much as to his knowledge of human motives is due his recent overwhelming success in New York with his last play, "The Hippocrites."

During these busy years of dramatic writing, he has always been willing to speak and write on the drama. He has ever argued for a wider acceptance of drama as an art and a literature, and for an honest treatment of whatever is essentially dramatic in English life today. In 1895 he collected his speeches and essays in a volume called "The Renaissance of the English Drama." The fruit of his experience since that time he is now putting into shape for a volume to bear the same title as this lecture, "The Corner Stones of Modern Drama."