Autograph scene from Ah Sin by Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens]. [1876].

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Successful Authors -- Unsuccessful Playwrights I

Mark Twain and Bret Harte

American authors Mark Twain and Bret Harte collaborated in 1876 on writing the play Ah Sin. The play’s title character came from a Harte poem, “Plain Language from Truthful James.” The authors wrote the play expressly as a vehicle for the actor Charles T. Parsloe who was noted for his portrayal of Chinese characters. Ah Sin opened in Washington, D.C. on May 7, 1877, and moved to Augustin Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City that July. The play was not a success and ran for only 35 performances. After the first performance, The New York Times wrote:

Autograph scene from Ah Sin by Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens]. [1876].

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

The representation of the play called “Ah Sin” at the Fifth Avenue Theatre yesterday evening afforded frequent gratification to a very large audience. The fact that a good many spectators grew perceptibly weary as the performance approached an end, and the still more significant fact that the audience left the house without making the slightest demonstration of pleasure when the curtain fell upon the last scene, may imply that the piece, as a whole, is scarcely likely to secure a really strong hold upon the favor of the public…Humorists, romance writers, and poets are never born and seldom become dramatists, and both authors of “Ah Sin”, are now truing their ’prentice hand in seeking fame and fortune through the medium of the stage.

The remainder of the review praised the acting and directing, but squarely laid the failure of the play on the authors. Even a witty appearance on stage by Twain after the third act could not save the play from failure.

At right: This is an additional scene for the opening of the show in New York that Mark Twain wrote at the suggestion of Augustin Daly. The scene introduces the love interest of the plot.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

At right: Tuesday Night, July 31st, 1877, Mr. Daly Will Begin His Ninth Season with the Production of a Dramatic Work, in Four Acts, by Mark Twain and Bret Harte, Written Expressly for Mr. C. T. Parsloe, and Entitled “Ah Sin!” Program for Daly’s Fifth Avenue Theatre. [New York, 1877].

Autograph manuscript, the first version of “The Guardeen,” by Robert Frost. With 12 January 1942 presentation inscription to Earle Bernheimer. [1941].

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Robert Frost

“I will dabble in drama,” Robert Frost wrote to a friend in his sixty-ninth year. His dabbling had actually begun much earlier in 1917 with a one-act play, entitled A Way Out. In 1941, Frost wrote a three-act play, entitled The Guardeen, based on the same incident that inspired his one-act play—a summer trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1895, when he was courting his wife, Elinor.

At right: Moore, Hortense, ed. Bread Loaf Book of Plays. Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College, 1941. Inscribed to Earle Bernheimer by Robert Frost.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Frost’s earnest dabbling, however, referred to a pair of dramatic pieces, written in blank verse, and entitled A Masque of Reason and A Masque of Mercy. The “masques” were based loosely on the Biblical characters of Job and Jonah and their suffering at the hands of God. Both plays were published, and the Bread Loaf Little Theatre put on A Masque of Mercy in 1948. Hortense Moore adapted Frost’s poem “Snow” for the stage and this also appeared at The Bread Loaf School of English. Frost inscribed the following to his friend Earle Bernheimer in a book of Bread Loaf plays: “To Earle: This may well have started me on my downward career toward playwriting. The first result is The Guardeen in your possession. R.” It appears that Frost, himself, doubted his strength in the playwriting genre.