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It has been generally known that Jews have played an important role in the writing of the drama and in dramatic criticism in the last two or three decades, but we are only now beginning to realize the full extent to which they have influenced this field of literary creation. And strangely enough it is non-Jews who point this out even more emphatically than Jews.

M. Pierre Brisson, dramatic critic of the “Temp”, publishes an article in the theatrical daily “Comoedia”, in which he contends that the Jews have exercised a remarkable influence on modern dramatic art. The author quotes the names of the most widely known Jewish dramatic writers: Georges de Porto-Riche, Henry Bernstein, Tristan Bernard, Pierre Wolff, Francis de Croisset, Edmond See, Noziere, Alfred Savoir, Andre Picard, Romain Coolus, Henri Duvernois, Edmond Fleg, Paul Raynal, Jacques Natanson, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Andre Lang, Adolphe Orna, Henry Marx, Rone Wisner, Leo Poldes.

“There is no doubt but that there is a Jewish Theatre”, M. Brisson states, “Despite the differences between them, the Jewish authors have a way of feeling, of conceiving, of realizing, which is peculiar to them. It is very certain that these original traits do not reveal themselves on some points.” He then quotes the playwright Herman Bernstein:

“If the Jew is often disquiet and disquieting, it is due to an inexorable critical sense, to a constant, painful revision of his own desires, his self-hatred, his own inclination to everything which he feels.”

He then outlines the differences which stand out in the Jew:

“His sensibility, which strikes you first of all-a bitter, imperative sensibility which enjoys its own display; then a taste for dialect and almost cynical language in questions of love, instinctive search for situations which are violently audacious. And on the other hand, exultant egotism, a stubborn pride which is only stimulated by defeat, a state of aggressive rebellion which uneasily displays a spirit of revenge and conquest, and adhesion to extreme opinions; insurmountable aversion against anything which is disciplined, constrained, regulated; a perpetual ardor to fight and to conquer; an extremely dangerous and persistent ambition. The theatre which the Jews give us is in many points admirable. It holds you, it seizes you, it enters into the intimacy of your sympathies, but it imposes on one through the power of action, through its singular penetrating and revealing intelligence.”