It is Adler, however, who has been the belligerent promoter of the original and serious Yiddish drama. In 1893 he tried to introduce Gordin's plays and the new spirit of realism and literature into his company at the Windsor Theatre. But the old style is still strong in popular affection, and Adler's company rebelled. Whereupon Adler went to Russia to form a new company which would be more amenable to his ideas. He came back with the new troupe, and ordered a new play from Gordin, who produced _The Jewish King Lear_. At the first reading of the play the company protested, but Adler begged for a trial, telling them that they did not know what a good play was. The play proved a great and deserved success, and is now frequently repeated. It contains several scenes of great power, and portrays with faithful art the life of the Russian Jew. In 1894 Adler tried the experiment of leasing a small theatre, the Roumania, in which nothing but plays which expressed his ideas should be presented. A number of Gordin's plays were given, but the theatre had much the same fate that would befall a theatre up town which should play only the ideally best. It failed completely. After that both Adler and Gordin were compelled to compromise. Adler is now associated with a company which presents every kind of play known to the Ghetto, and Gordin has had to introduce horseplay and occasional vaudeville and comic opera into his plays. Even the best of the Yiddish plays contain these excrescences.
But both Adler and Gordin, while remaining practical men, with an eye to the box-office receipts, are working to eliminate more and more what is distasteful to them and impertinent to art. A year ago last autumn Gordin succeeded in having his latest play, _The Slaughter_, performed without any vaudeville accompaniment. He deemed it a triumph, particularly as it was successful, and felt a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Liptzen, who produced the play without insisting on unworthy interpolations.
Gordin now hopes that the days of compromise for him are past, and Adler expects to secure, some day, a theatre in which he can successfully produce only the serious plays of Jewish life. But both these men are pessimistic about the future of dramatic art in the Ghetto. They feel not only the weight of the commercial spirit, but also the imminent death of their stage. For the Jews of the Ghetto as they become Americanized are liable to lose their instinctive Yiddish, and then there will be no more drama in that tongue. The only Yiddish stage, worthy of the name, in the world will probably soon be no more. Jacob Adler consequently regrets that his "jargon" confines him to the Bowery stage, and Jacob Gordin longs to have his plays translated and produced on the English stage.