To the Yiddish critics the two words, "melodrama" and "shund," are often used as synonyms, as words with the same meaning. This is because in many cases the shund plays are melodramas, and the melodramas -- shund plays. However, this is not always so. And it is important that the theatre public should understand this difference.

A shund play knows no appeal for an intelligent person. A person with a little literary taste, with something of a finer concept, cannot tolerate such a notion. He simply suffers from mental pain when he is forced to attend. This, however, is not the case with the melodrama. Quite often plays of this sort are put on, by which intelligent people entertain themselves, although they know that they have no literary value.

Shund plays are written for a simple, undeveloped audience. Melodramas are written for a mediocre audience that comes to a theatre only as a diversion, for amusement.

Let us make this clear, by an example, on our Yiddish stage.

In his career of many years, Z. Libin as a playwright wrote two kinds of plays, literary and melodramatic. But he almost never wrote any shund. In his melodramas there is a lack of character and naturalness in the actions, but the conversations are always interesting and lively. It includes really good jokes and beautiful humor. The content is also interesting, from ancient life, sometimes zagar treats the melodrama as a question of life in a very original way. When one sees such a play, it seems that only a small thing is missing here, and that there it ascends from melodrama to the higher stage of true literature.

Take, conversely, the average play of the shund-writer, of a Solotorefsky, for example, everything in it is so exaggerated, so crazy, and dirty stupid, that the intelligent viewer feels offended, looking at this. The jokes are usually rude and old and have a spark of true humor. The conversations are uninteresting, its action is impossible, as are the individual scenes through which the action develops.

An intelligent theatre-goer can consciously spend an evening at a good melodrama; but it is impossible to imagine that he will consciously spend the night at a shund play.

This current season the Yiddish theatre has not produced any true literary plays. But no shund have been reported. And we hope that if we are not destined to see truly good dramas this season, we should at least be free from shund plays.

A shund play is a gift for the Yiddish audience; a melodrama is not. We know that to create pure literary plays is a difficult thing. We know that true literary dramatists here are important, as is all the literature. One really has to wait a long time for a really good literary play, and we must be patient. As was said, we are no exception in this regard. The situation with the nations of the world is no better.

But we must see that in these lean times, when no real literature is needed, the stage should not sink into the swamp of shund, because shund distorts, dampens and condemns; shund is an accident for the stage, a danger.

If it is already destiny to engage in meager plays, they should at least be good, interesting melodramas, such that intelligent people should be able to be entertained and amused, and no shund, which tickles the greatest elements among the theatre audience.