Description
Book SynopsisClyde Fitch (1865-1909) was the most successful and prolific dramatist of his time, producing nearly sixty plays in a twenty-year career. He wrote witty comedies, chaotic farces, homespun dramas, star vehicles, historical works, stark melodramas, and adaptations of European successes, but he was best known for his society plays, mirroring themes found in the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton. In fact, Fitch collaborated with Wharton on a stage adaptation of her House of Mirth. He was also a gay man, although that gentler adjective was not the term of his time. He was bullied in school and baited by critics throughout his career for what they supposed of his private life. He responded with impressive strength and integrity. He was, at least for a short time, Oscar Wilde’s lover, and Wilde influenced his early plays, but Fitch’s study of Ibsen and other European dramatists inspired him to pursue the course of naturalism. As he became more successful, he took greater control of the staging and design of his plays. He was a complete man of the theatre and among the first names enrolled in New York’s theatrical hall of fame.
Trade ReviewIn Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre: An Olive in the Cocktail, Kevin Lane Dearinger meticulously details the life and works of a prolific dramatist whose name and plays are not currently known, but who was the first American to be taken seriously as a playwright…. [T]he information in this book is bounteous and the subject almost forgotten, so this book is a valuable record of a highly interesting figure in the American theatre. * EDGE *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Act One: Inciting Incident Chapter One: “Not so delicate, my dear, as you think.” Chapter Two: “I think I’ll stick it out.” Chapter Three: “I am not trying to teach, but I want to suggest.” Chapter Four: “Like the little boy with the ice-cream” Chapter Five: “You must be happy just as you are, for you can’t be different.” Chapter Six: “Invent me a language of love.” Act Two: Rising Action Chapter Seven: “Isn’t it an opportunity!” Chapter Eight: “Certain temperaments of men” Chapter Nine: “I shut myself up in my room& went to work.” Chapter Ten: “Born differently” Chapter Eleven: “The right to call the heart in his bosom his own” Chapter Twelve: “To tell the Truth in the Theatre” Chapter Thirteen: “Bully!” Chapter Fourteen: “Sapho hangs about my neck!” Act Three: Plot Reversal and Recognition Chapter Fifteen: “I can do the biggest things in my power.” Chapter Sixteen: “Somehow I can’t stop working.” Chapter Seventeen: “Fool that I am, I write too much!” Chapter Eighteen: “Naturalness is absolutely essential.” Chapter Nineteen: “All the same I am ‘De-lighted’” Chapter Twenty: “To take my work, but not myself seriously” Chapter Twenty-One: “Realism is only simplicity and truth.” Chapter Twenty-Two: “Only by directing things myself” Chapter Twenty-Three: “Tired-er than ever!” Chapter Twenty-Four: “But, if I can only do it well.” Act Four: Catharsis Chapter Twenty-Five: “My name on too many playbills.” Chapter Twenty-Six: “My work must speak for itself.” Chapter Twenty-Seven: “Happy to be as I am.” Chapter Twenty-Eight: “To die in harness” Denouement Epilogue Bibliography Production Record Index About the Author
