Representative American Plays/Her Great Match

by Clyde Fitch

Layout 2

HER GREAT MATCH
BY
Clyde Fitch

Copyright, 1916, by Alice M. Fitch and The Century Co.

All Rights Reserved

Printed, for the first time, from the original manuscript by permission of Mrs. Alice M. Fitch.

 

HER GREAT MATCH

Her Great Match represents the international play of to-day. It stands also for social comedy and it is representative of the work of its author in his best period.

Clyde Fitch was born in Elmira, New York, May 2, 1865. His father was a captain in the United States Army during the Civil War. He attended the Holderness School, New Hampshire, and graduated from Amherst College in 1886, and was already noteworthy in his college days for his interest in costume and rather luxurious accessories of life. He determined from the beginning to devote himself to the stage, and settled in New York, supporting himself by giving readings and tutoring while waiting for recognition. This came first when Richard Mansfield produced his Beau Brummel at the Madison Square Theatre, May 17, 1890. This picture of the Georgian dandy remains one of his most characteristic conceptions. Notwithstanding the success of this play and that of Frederic Lemaitre (1890), in which Henry Miller starred. Fitch had to wait and work hard before he attained a secure footing. He succeeded, however, in becoming probably the most prolific and the most successful of American playwrights. He was indefatigable in his exertions and produced in twenty years thirty-two original plays, besides twenty-three that were either adaptations from the French or German, revisions of other men's work, or dramatizations of novels. He lived surrounded by every luxury, and he made frequent trips to Europe, and died at Chalons-sur-Marne, September 4, 1909. At the time of his death, three plays, The City, A Modern Marriage, and The Manicure Girl, were in rehearsal.

The early work of Clyde Fitch was tentative, but when he produced The Climbers, January 21, 1901, he entered upon a more definite period of workmanship, and showed himself a master in delineation of the actions and motives of people moving in social relations. This social consciousness had been in his work from the first, but Beau Brummel is not so significant since it reflected the manners of an earlier day in England, and was a play of types rather than real people. What is of the most significance, Fitch did not limit himself to social satire; his greatest plays have in them a central idea, which unifies the drama and gives it body. In The Stubbornness of Geraldine, played after a tryout in New Haven, at the Garrick Theatre, New York, November 3, 1902, by Mary Mannering,—the theme is the fidelity and trust of a woman for the man she loves. In The Girl with the Green Eyes, produced by Clara Bloodgood in the leading role at the Savoy Theatre, New York, December 25, 1902, the central idea is that of jealousy and its terrible effects. In The Truth, tried out in Cleveland, Ohio, in October, 1906, and later played in New York with Clara Bloodgood as "Becky" and in London in 1907 with Marie Tempest in the same part, there is a masterly study of the effects of lying on the part of a woman who is not inherently bad but who is incapable of resisting the temptation of the moment to prevaricate. In The City, produced after his death, on December 21, 1909, at the Lyric Theatre, New York City, there is a study of the effect upon people coming to the city from a small town where they have been the principal family for many years. Even in plays that are more frankly melodrama, such as The Woman in the Case (1904), there was a well conceived unity of action since the theme turned upon the devotion of a wife to a husband who has been accused of murder, and of her saving him by her association with a woman of doubtful reputation who holds the key to his release.

Fitch varied his social study with an international setting in The Coronet of a Duchess (1904) and in Her Great Match, and he wrote several plays which had an historical interest. Of these Nathan Kale, played first in Chicago, January 31, 1898, and Major André (1903), were tragedies of the Revolution, and Barbara Frietchie, first put on in Philadelphia, October 10, 1899, was a tragedy of the Civil War, in which the atmosphere of Maryland during the war is well portrayed. His interest in a play representing a "period" is illustrated by Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901), laid in New York City in the early seventies. Fitch succeeded quite well, too, in such a play as Lovers' Lane (1901), especially in his interpretation of a child's mind. In The Girl and the Judge (1901), laid in a Western town, he showed his ability in creating a situation, even if he did not develop it to the best advantage. The most important plays of Fitch are as follows: Beau Brummel (1890), Betty's Finish (1890), Frederic Lemaitre (1890), A Modern Match (1891), Pamela's Prodigy (1891), The Masked Ball from Le Veglione of Bisson and Carré, (1892), The Social Swim (1893), His Grace de Grammont (1894), April Weather (1894), Mistress Betty (1895), (produced ten years later as The Toast of the Town), Nathan Hale (1898), The Moth and the Flame (1898), The Cowboy and the Lady (Avith Willis Steel, 1899), Barbara Frietchie (1899), The Climbers (1901), Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901), Lovers' Lane (1901), The Last of the Bandies (1901), The Way of the World (1901), The Girl and the Judge (1901), The Stubbornness of Geraldine (1902), The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902), Her Own Way (1903), Glad of It (1903), Major André (1903), The Coronet of a Duchess (1904), The Woman in the Case (1904), Her Great Match (1905), The Truth (1906), The Straight Road (1906), A Happy Marriage (1909), The Bachelor (1909), The City (1909). This list includes all his original plays.

Her Great Match was written by Fitch while in Sicily and was produced first in Syracuse, New York, September 1, 1905, and then brought out at the Criterion Theatre, New York, September 4, 1905. It was successful and the contemporary criticism praised the delightful effect of the love episodes and the realism of the scene on the morning after the party. It is significant that in this international contrast, Fitch has endowed his American characters with a proper sense of social values without laying stress upon the matter at all, and that "Jo Sheldon"meets the Prince upon the human footing of a man and a girl charmingly in love with one another.

The following plays have been published: Nathan Hale (R. H. Russell, 1899), (rep. by W. H. Baker), * Barbara Frietchie (Life Pub. Co., 1900), * Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (Doubleday, Page and Co., 1902), * The Climbers (1906), * The Girl with the Green Eyes (1905), * The Stubbornness of Geraldine (1906), * The Truth (1907), * Her Own Way (1907), by Macmillan, * Beau Brummel (John Lane, 1908). Those starred can be obtained in the Samuel French reprints, and all of them, together with Lovers' Lane, The Woman in the Case, and The City, have been republished in the Memorial Edition, edited by M. J. Moses and Virginia Gerson (Little, Brown and Co., 1915).

Her Great Match has never before been published. The present text is printed from manuscript furnished the editor through the courtesy of Mrs. Alice M. Fitch, Miss Virginia Gerson and Messrs. Ernst and Cane, to all of whom the editor is indebted for information concerning Mr. Fitch.

For a bibliography of Clyde Fitch see A Beading List of Clyde Fitch, by John A. Lowe, Bulletin of Bibliography, Vol. 7, p. 30, July, 1912. For biography and criticism see Archie Bell, The Clyde Fitch I Knew, New York, 1909; L. C. Strang, Players and Plays of the Last Quarter Century, Boston, 1902, Vol. 2, Chap. 6; Montrose J. Moses, The American Dramatist, Chap. 10; B. H. Clark, The British and American Drama of Today, New York, 1915; and among many articles, Martin Bernbaum, Clyde Fitch, an Appreciation, Independent, Vol. 67, pp.123-131; W. P. Eaton, The Dramatist as Man of Letters, Scribner's Magazine, Vol. 46, pp. 490-97; Ada Patterson, How a Rapid-Fire Dramatist Writes his Plays, Theatre, Vol. 7, pp. 14-16, January, 1907—practically a statement by Fitch himself of his methods; The American Stage Loses Clyde Fitch, Theatre, Vol. 10, p. 112, October, 1909; Archie Bell, The Real Clyde Fitch, Theatre, Vol. 10, pp. 158-160, November, 1909. For a criticism of Her Great Match, see The Theatre, Vol. 5, p. 243, October, 1905.