“What the Poor of This Great City Must Endure”: The Sociological Narrative in Slum Plays

Abstract

In 1909, Current Literature published an anonymous article that addressed an ongoing argument about the ethical responsibility of theatre and theatregoing entitled “The Theatrical Muckraker Answered.” One side of this argument included the likes of Walter Pritchard Eaton whose argument that “certain of the theatrical managers [were] as devils luring our sons and daughters to perdition” was cited at length in the previous issue and “an avalanche of similar indictments in a larger number of publications.”¹ The other side included Jane Addams who commended “the American dramatist for his eagerness to attack serious problems on which the press and the church are silent.”² “At least a dozen plays,” she remarked, “are now on the stage whose titles might easily be translated into a proper heading for a sociological lecture.”³ More than half these plays were slum plays, including The Battle, which might be rechristened “The Need for Model Tenements”; The Writing on the Wall, “An Exposition of the Methods of Trinity Church in Administering Its Property”; The Easiest Way, “The Entrenchment of a Social Evil”; The Melting Pot, “The Value of Immigration”; and The Dawn of a To-morrow, “Optimism as a Rectifier of Social Wrongs.”⁴ The preponderance of slum plays on this list defending theatre against allegations of sensationalism and sophistry is significant in two ways for this study.