The World - Monday, April 8, 1895

DRAMATIC NEWS AND NOTES
Frogman Will Produce Wilde's
Newest Play-Mrs. Patrick Campbell
May Be Induced to Visit Us.

Charles Frogman was asked a dozen times Saturday if he still intended to produce Oscar Wilde's latest comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest," of which he has the American rights, and which has to be done by the stock company at the Empire Theatre. Mr. Frohman is a sensible business man, about whose constitution there lurks, nevertheless, some sentiment, but he smiled at the oft-repeated question. "I shall most decidedly produce "The Importance of Being Earnest,'" he said. "I have a good deal of money invested in it; scenery has been painted, and many other preparations made. Mr. Alexander and I own this play, and the fact that its author has come to grief since we bought it is really none of our business. If I buy a house in this city, and learn afterwards that the architect who planned it was a criminal, there is no earthly reason why I should pull down the house. I burn Edison's electric light. Suppose Edison went out one morning and committed a murder; would you think me levelheaded if I had all his fixtures torn out of my theatre? All this talk about Oscar Wilde's plays being ruined by this London scandal is the silliest sort of nonsense. "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a bright, frothy comedy, of an absolutely moral nature. It has been a big success in London-an enthusiastic success, in fact-and as I have taken great pride in presenting to New Yorkers such English dramatic efforts as "The Bauble Shop," "The Masqueraders" and "John-a-Dreams," I feel a certain inanagerial glory at giving them another good London work. The cable messages from London about changes being made at the theatres where Wilde's plays are running are virtuous but inaccurate. At one house they have been rehearsing new comedy by Jones for some time, and at the other a new play, by Carton, has been announced for weeks. I look at the matter sensibly-or try to do so. I don't see why the patrons of the Empire Theatre should lose the opportunity of seeing one of the wittiest plays I have ever read, simply because its author has got himself into a scrape. I am not offering them the author, but the play. The play's the thing, anyway, and if 'The Importance of Being Earnest' were the work of Tom Smith or John Jones, it would be eually worth producing. By the bye, the original title of "The Importance of Being Earnest" was "Lady Lancing." The name was perfectly irrelevant. Once during the progress o fthe one of the characters remarks, "The former Lady Lancing says," Mr. Alexander changed the name.