The Americans are a theatre-going people. More journals devoted to dramatic affairs are published in New York than in any European capital. Our native actors in many instances are unexcelled on any stage of the world; we have sent to England, to meet with unqualified favor from English audiences, J. H. Hackett, Miss Charlotte Cushman, Joseph Jefferson, Edwin Booth, John S. Clarke, Lawrence Barrett, Edwin Forrest, Miss Mary Anderson, Miss Kate Bateman, Augustin Daly's entire company of comedians, Mr. and Mrs. Florence, Richard Mansfield, and many more; while, with the exception of certain of Bronson Howard's comedies, "localized" and renamed, how many original American plays are known favorably, or at all, to our British cousins? _Rip Van Winkle_, although its scenes are American, is not an original American play by any means; it is an adaptation of Irving's familiar legend; its central figure is a Dutchman whose English is broken, and its adapter is an Irishman. Yet _Rip Van Winkle_, Joseph K. Emmett's _Fritz_, and _The Danites_ are the most popular of the American plays in England, and are considered, no doubt, correct pictures of American life. That the American dramatists are trying very hard to produce American dramas all theatrical managers on this side of the Atlantic know too well, for shelves and waste-paper baskets are full of them to overflowing. Frequent rejection and evident want of demand have no effect whatever upon the continuous supply. How few of these are successful, or are likely to live beyond one week or one season, all habitual theatre-goers can say. During the single century of the American stage not twoscore plays of any description have appeared which have been truly American, and which at the same time are of any value to dramatic literature or of any credit to the American name. By an original American play is here meant one which is the original work of an American author, the incidents and scenes and characters of which are purely and entirely American. In this category cannot be included dramas like Mr. Daly's _Pique_, or _The Big Bonanza_, for the one is from an English novel and the other from a German play; nor Mr. Boucicault's _Belle Lamar_, or _The Octoroon_, which are native here, but from the pen of an alien; nor plays like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, which are not original, but are drawn largely, if not wholly, from American tales; nor plays like _A Brass Monkey_ or _A Bunch of Keys_, which are not plays at all.