PREFA TORY NOTE



scenes breathed a reality which gave them life.
"Barbara Frietchie" has an intimate touch of
the South during the Civil War, without being
flamboyantly  colored. " Captain Jinks -as
excellent in technique as Sir Arthur Wing
Pinero's "Trelawny of the 'Wells' ", and ex-
celling Mr. Edward Sheldon's later attempt, in
"Romance", to embody the old-time flavor of
New York city,-revealed, without effort or pose,
that intimacy and contemporaneousness which
are to be found in some old Journal, written by
an eye-witness. In such achievements as these
"costume" plays, Mr. Fitch showed exceptional
ability, and won popular distinction.
  "Barbara Frietchie" deals delicately with the
love romance of Mr. Fitch's mother and father.
In plot it is simple, and it is theatrically effective,
as well as theatrically reflective of all the excite-
ment of war, without the panoply of war. As
soon as it was announced that Miss Julia Marlowe
would appear in the historical r6le, the papers
began to speculate as to how the dramatist would
handle the subject. " They've begun already
to scold me about lying," Fitch wrote to some
friend. Naturally, it would have been impossible
for him to gain much romantic interest by keep-
ing his heroine an old woman, to accord with
historical tradition. A concession had to be



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