SIGNS of the changing seasons in nature may occasionally fail us but the annual September prophecy of the New York first-nighter is as certain as death. The famous white-gloved aboriginal of Broadway, who is willing to pay any price for seats from speculators rather than miss the gloomiest fulfillment of his doleful expectations, regularly shakes his head as each new theatrical season comes around and says the outlook is "very, very bad." He (or his father, or an uncle with the gout) has been saying that for twenty years.

At the year's inaugural premiere, which occurred before July was over, the Broadway Pessimist was on hand in all his dark dejection to bemoan the hopeless outlook. But let him moan; and let us, in cheerful mood, glance over the more important items in the voluminous managerial plans for the next eight months.

THE forecast gives us definite promises of more important Shakespearian productions than have been made in any single season in the last twenty years, and of tours of several leading English actors in repertoires of tried success. Yet it still cannot foretell the new and untried plays that will give the greatest favor. Broadway is the most open track in the world for the dark horse. Of the eighteen new plays that have attracted the largest audiences in New York during the last twelve months, only six were by dramatists who had had any previous success: "Romance," by Edward Sheldon, "Joseph and his Brethren," by Louis N. Parker, "Fanny's First Play," by Bernard Shaw, "Milestones," by Edward Knoblauch and Arnold Bennett, "The Whip," by Henry Hamilton and Cecil Raleigh, and "Broadway Jones," by George M. Cohan. All but two of the remaining twelve were by authors who had never had a play produced before; that is to say, a year ago to-day, the names of the men and women who have since delighted multitudes and enriched themselves with "The Poor Little Rich Girl" (Eleanor Gates); "Years of Discretion" (Frederick and Fanny Hatton); "The Governor's Lady" (Alice Bradley); "The Argyle Case" (William J. Burns, Harvey J. O'Higgins, and Harriet Ford); "The Good Little Devil" (Maurice Rostrand and Madame Edmond Rostrand); "The Conspiracy" (John Emerson and Robert Baker); "Stop Thief" (Carlyle Moore); "The Master Mind" (Daniel D. Carter) and the delightful dramatization of Louisa Alcott's "Little Women" (Marian De Forest), meant nothing whatsoever. Bayard Veiller and J. Hartley Manners, authors of "Within the Law" and " Peg O' My Heart," the greatest money-makers of them all, had gained only the most moderate favor with their previous efforts.

To appreciate the futility of prophesying the fates of the unacted manuscripts (approximately two hundred) with which American managers are now ready at the starting-post, one has only to ;compare the foregoing list of winners with last season's record of complete failures from such "dependables" as Augustus Thomas ("The Model," and "Mere Man"); George Broadhurst ("Just Like John"); James Forbes ("A Rich Man's Son"); Thompson Buchanan ("The Bridal Path"); Avery Hopwood ("Somewhere Else") and Charles Klein ("The Ne'er Do-Well").

Until last autumn, many years had passed since Shakespeare could be ranked among the Broadway dramatists. Occasionally an ambitious Juliet would make a "spring revival;" or an actor who had toured prosperously in the smaller cities would come here to lose his earnings. For the rest, Mr. Shakespeare came to town only in the van of E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe. But a year ago, William Faversham, guided by his shrewd wife, Julie Opp, organized a first-class company, ventured boldly with "Julius Caesar," and proved what everybody (except the managers!) had always known—that Shakespeare, when well acted, does not "spell ruin." The result has been that actors, generally long desirous of measuring their ability by the highest standard, have taken courage by the Faversham experience and are rushing wholesale into Shakespeare.

OF THESE interesting plans in detail, more later; but the definitely determined enterprises may be mentioned briefly. At the end of August, in California, Margaret Anglin begins the Shakespearian Restoration with four plays—"Twelfth Night," "As You Like It," "The Taming of the Shrew," and "Antony and Cleopatra" — with a Greek tragedy dropped in, for good measure. A week or so later, John Drew makes his first appearance in a Shakespeare part in twenty years, that is, since the Daly days of his famous association with Ada Rehan. His appearance at the Empire Theatre on Labor Day will be his first as Benedick. Laura Hope Crews and Mary Boland will be Beatrice and Hero.

A month or so will pass before Sir Johnston and Lady Forbes-Robertson (Gertrude Elliott) arrive to dedicate the Shubert Theatre, in New York (The town, by the way, promises to add only four new theatres to its list, this season!) The ForbesRobertsons will, with that engagement, inaugurate their farewell tour of America; — that is, his farewell. Miss Elliott will continue on the stage. Their repertoire comprises eight plays. In "Mice and Men," they will be seen for the first time here in characters assumed, a decade ago, by John Mason and Annie Russell; in "Caesar and Cleopatra," which Bernard Shaw has partially rewritten, in "The Light That Failed" and "The Passing of the Third Floor Back," Sir Johnston will repeat performances we have seen; and, in the bill with the last named play, he will appear here for the first time in "The Sacrament of Judas," a one-act drama which has been in his English repertoire a dozen years but belonged, for America, to the late Kyrle Bellew. However, the most important items in the repertoire are " Hamlet," in which he is, of course, known to us to be supreme; "The Merchant of Venice," in which he has acted in America in only one or two of the smaller cities; and "Othello," in which he has never been seen outside his native land.

THE coming of the leading actor of the English stage, important as it is, need cause us no shame as long as we have Faversham and Sothern, especially as they both have accomplished actresses as their chief associates. Sothern and Miss Marlowe will continue in their present repertoire of three tragedies and six comedies. Faversham may venture comparison with Sothern and Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet; but he comes forward first in "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet." Cecilia Loftus will be his Desdemona and Juliet and Julie Opp and R. D. MacLean will play the next parts. Before producing these tragedies, however, Faversham will visit many cities which have not seen his excellent "Julius Caesar."

That play too will serve Tyrone Powers as the foundation for a repertoire which may grow to be as large as those of John E. Kellerd and Robert Mantell. Neither of the latter will add new plays to his list — but Mr. Mantell will revert to " King John" for the first time in several seasons, while Mr. Kellerd, in "Othello," will transfer himself from lago to the title role. Still another star who will act the Moor this season is James K. Hackett.

Henrietta Crosman, whose Rosalind did so much to establish her in the front rank of American actresses, contemplates a reappearance in that character as well as with a first attempt with Lady Teazle. The latter role, which Annie Russell acted in the New Theatre revival of "The School for Scandal," will be added to her charming Lydia Languish and Kate Hardcastle, in December, by Miss Russell's Old English Comedy Company, which has justified its right to be ranked with such endeavors in the classics as those of Sothern and Miss Marlowe.

Other important Shakespearian undertakings which will make the year unique include a visit by one of F. R. Benson's companies and by Granville Barker's London players, who make a great pretense of "new" and revolutionary ideas in staging. Lillah McCarthy is the leading actress of the latter, and the plays likely to be brought are "Twelfth Night," "Winter's Tale" and "Macbeth."

TIME was when Charles Frohman's annual statement, made on his return from Europe in July, was a pretty comprehensive forecast of the forthcoming season. But that was when the majority of our theatres depended upon English plays, or translations from the French. Of late, the situation has been almost reversed. With a single exception, all the markedly succesful dramas of the latest London season were sent over from this side of the ocean. The exception is "The Great Adventure," by Arnold Bennett, with which Winthrop Ames will open his new theatre. Janet Beecher has been engaged for the chief role.

With "General John Regan," the only other English-made piece barring musical comedy that can possibly be ranked among successes owned for this country by the Liebler Company, Mr. Frohman has been forced to venture with experiments, in place of the "sure things" of the old days. For Billie Burke, who will make a brief preliminary tour in "The Amazons," he has purchased an unacted comedy by W. Somerset Maugham, called "The Land of Promise;" for Blanche Bates, a short play by J. M. Barrie, "Half Hour," with which Stanley Houghton's 'The Younger Son" will be acted; and for Ethel Barrymore, a dramatization of "Tante," by C. Haddon Chambers. Another "book play" he will do is a version of "My Little Sister," by Cecily Hamilton. Among the foreign manuscripts in the Frohman luggage may be mentioned plays by Alfred Sutro, Hermann Sudermann, John Galsworthy, Herbert Henry Davies, Tristan Bernard, and Henry Bernstein.

However, four American authors may be discovered in the Frohman list. Richard Harding Davis has written "Who's Who," with which William Collier starts the season at the Criterion; and Augustus Thomas is responsible for "Indian Summer," designed for John Mason. The other Americans are Edward Sheldon and Thompson Buchanan.

Barrie is the dominating note in Mr. Frohman's programme. Once more we are assured that Maude Adams will devote a season to a series of plays by the literary baronet. Also, by the way, those other Frohman stand-bys — William Gillette's twenty weeks of repertoire and Alla Nazimova's tour of the world, acting in four languages — are brought out again and dusted off.

THE Barrie-Adams promise is reasonably convincing, inasmuch as it starts with a Christmas-time engagement at the Empire in "Peter Pan," as frequently before, and progresses to Barrie's latest full-length drama, "The Legend of Leonara," which is to be acted in London this month, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Sir John Hare in the chief roles. Considering the dimensions of the actresses and the actor, it is difficult to guess which part will be assigned to Miss Adams. After the "Leonora" play, she is to do a double-bill of Barrie, — "Rosalind," in which Irene Vanburgh appeared in London a year ago, and a new piece, "The Ladies' Shakespeare." Beside these playlets and the one assigned to Miss Bates, Sir James has supplied Mr. Frohman with The Will" and "The Little Policeman," fifty-minute dramas that will constitute an evening's bill; and "The Dramatists Get What They Want," a sketch that will be introduced in "The Doll Girl," an opera by the composer of "The Dollar Princess," in Which Hattie Williams and Richard Carle will re-open the Globe I heatre. Mr. Frohman also brings us the latest George Edwardes successes, "The Girl on the Film" and "The Marriage Market,"the latter for Donald Brian.

Stars who will need no new play this season are Mrs. Fiske, with "The High Road"; Doris Keane, with "Romance, Otis Skinner, with "Kismet"; Charlotte Walker, with "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (though she may do a new play by her husband, Eugene Walter, before spring); Robert Hilliard, with "The Argyle Case"; May Irwin, with "Widow by Proxy"; Richard Bennett, with "Damaged Goods"; H. B. Warner, with "The Ghost Breaker"; Sam Bernard, with "All for the Ladies"; and George Arliss, with "Disraeli"; David Warfield is to revive several of his earlier successes, including "The Auctioneer," his first play after leaving burlesque.

THE list of handsome young American stars will be increased this season by the addition of Edna Goodrich, who will come forward in a drama by Thomas Broadhurst, based on the Longfellow poem of " Evangeline." Frances Starr is to do a Belasco-ized version of " Le Secret," the Henri Bernstein thriller in which Madame Simone acted recently in Paris; and Grace George will start with an American comedy by Avery Hopwood. A piece called "Any Woman Would," by the author of "The New Sin," is among the several plays held in store for her by her manager and husband, William A Brady. Among the latter's other numerous ventures will be several companies each for three or four of his successes of last season, generally imported from London; a farce called "Oh, I Say!"; several plays by unknown authors; and, for the opening of the Thirty-ninth and Forty-fourth Street Theatres, respectively, "The Family Cupboard," by Owen Davis, and a musical farce made from the old-time Hoyt gaiety, "A Texas Steer."

BUT to return to youthful women stars: Laurette Taylor and Jane Cowl will continue until middle-season in their successes, "Peg o' My Heart" and "Within the Law," when the former will be rewarded with a new play by her husband, J. Hartley Manners, and the latter with a piece by Margaret Mayo, author of "Baby Mine." Carlotta Nillson has a drama likely to arouse considerable discussion in LeGrand Howland's "Deborah," which aroused many pious folk at its Canadian trial, last spring; and, judging from its reception in Philadelphia and elsewhere, Christie MacDonald has a sure hit in " Sweethearts," by Victor Herbert, in which she inaugurates the autumn season at the New Amsterdam Theatre, simultaneously with the pretentious revival of Reginald de Koven's " Rob Roy," at the Liberty. These productions will be presented by Klaw & Erlanger, who have many musical comedy ventures in the making, including "The Little Café," for Hazel Dawn, written by the authors of "The Pink Lady" and "Oh. Oh, Delphine!"; a Robinson Crusoe play in which Bert Williams will be Friday, and a half-dozen operettas from Vienna.

AND now George M. Cohan's leading —or perhaps, unleading—announcement is that this season will be his last on the stage; that hereafter he will devote himself entirely to playwriting. To that end, he has turned over all but one of his New York theatres to a booking office. On the other hand, he has taken on a theatre in Chicago, built a new one in The Bronx and has arranged to produce eleven new plays before the first day of November. Clearly, the Live Wire of Broadway has not grown lazy. Several of these pieces have had trial performances during the summer, notably "Nearly Married," by Edgar Selwyn, which, with Bruce McRae in the chief role, re-opens the Gaiety Theatre on Labor Day; "Something for Nothing," by Porter Emerson Brown, who wrote "A Fool There Was;" and "Cooper Hoyt, Inc."

AMONG Cohan's other new things are a dramatization of the "Potash and Perlmutter" stories for the opening of the George M. Cohan Theatre; one of "Seven Keys to Baldpate," by Cohan himself for Wallace Eddinger, at the Astor; a suffragette play called "Home Ties," by George Middleton, husband of Fola LaFollete; " Back Home," by Irvin Cobb and Bayard Veiller; and, among the other plays by known and unknown authors, one with music, for Raymond Hitchcock and Flora Zabelle. While all this is going on, the Yankee-Doodle comedian himself will be touring in "Broadway Jones" — just to keep his joints from getting stiff.

AS A certain New York newspaper has been saying regularly for the last twenty years, the "first gun of the season was fired" at the Winter Garden in July, with "The Passing Show," of 1913," a sumptuous revue by Arthur Atteridge, set to spirited music by Jean Schwartz and others. A farce from the French will reopen the Garrick; while a comedy by the Hungarian author of "The Devil" is scheduled to start the season at the Lyceum, and "The Fight," by Bayard Veiller, at the Hudson. In the one, the leading performer will be Julian L'Estrange, and in the other, Margaret Wycherley, who is Mrs. Veiller.

ANOTHER new star, Joseph Santley, has been chosen to start the season at the Lyric, the piece being "W'hen Dreams Come 'True," a musical comedy by Philip Bartholomae and Silvio Hein. An operetta will also begin the autumn season at the Casino, with DeWolf Hopper as the leading player. Thrillers on a small scale have been prepared for the Princess Theatre, and on a large scale for the Hippodrome. In October, the Little Theatre will commence its third season with " Prunella; or, Love in a Dutch Garden," an old favorite in London but a novelty to us.

IT is rather too early to speak definitely about all the distinguished foreigners who may visit us before spring; but several tours have been settled on. Next in importance to that of Sir Johnstone and Lady Forbes-Robertson, comes the first visit of Cyril Maude, proprietor of the smart little London theatre known as the Playhouse and, since the withdrawal from management of Sir John Hare, generally recognized as the leading comedian of the British capital. Oddly enough, Mr. Maude, though an Englishman, made his debut in this country. That was over thirty years ago, in the traveling Shakespearian company of the late Daniel E. Bandmann. John E. Kellerd was also a minor member of that troupe. Mr. Maude's wife, Winifred Emery, who has shared stellar honors with him for twenty years, will not accompany him to America, her place being taken by their daughter, Marjorie Maude. Among the plays in the Maude repertoire will be "The Second in Command," produced here a decade or so ago by John Drew; "Beauty and the Barge," imported by N. C. Goodwin, a year or so later; and " The Headmaster," "The Part'klar Pet" and a version of "Rip Van Winkle, all three new to us.

MAURICE MAETERLINCK'S wife Georgette Le Blanc, is to come over in his drama of "Mary Magdalen," originally acted in this country by Olga Nethersole, though recently acclaimed in Europe as entirely new. Also, H. V. Esmond and Eva Moore are to come in mid-winter, bringing the company from the London Criterion Theatre in Mr. Esmond's "Eliza Comes to Stay."

TO wind up this very incomplete list of plans, let us listen to three hustlers from the West. John Cort, Oliver Morosco and H. H. Frazee are so much mixed up with one another in their ventures that it hardly seems worth while to undertake to untangle them. The first and the last opened two handsome theatres, the Cort and the Longacre, in Forty-eighth Street, last season; and the middleman, so to speak, supplied the Cort with a "knock-out" in "Peg o' My Heart."

AMONG the more immediate productions by these Three Wise Men from The West are "The Escape," by Paul Armstrong, with Catherine Calvert in the chief part; "The Money-Moon," by J. Hartley Manners, from Jeffery Farnol's novel; and "The Tik-Tok Man of Oz," an extravaganza by the author of "The Wizard of Oz," which has been received enthusiastically in Chicago. But most of their ventures are with new authors; so, of course, the Broadway Pessimist may enjoy the fulfillment of his darkest prophecy. On the other hand, there is last season's record. However, let us agree for the sake of tradition that the outlook is very, very dubious.