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Some of the leaders of the new movement in the theater boast that ultimately they will do away with actors in favor of super-marionettes. Meanwhile we have the actors with us, and it is important that their ranks be replenished from season to season with new blood. Emergence of fresh Emergence of fresh talents in acting is one of the most exciting things about the theater. In every country, and in America especially, with our inordinate passion for personalities, upflaring names become national property long before their bearers leave the metropolis on tour. By this process Charles S. Gilpin, the negro actor in O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones," has already won transcontinental acclaim, and is scheduled to appear soon in London. As artist Gilpin will naturally be limited in the expression of his gifts, but it is conceivable that their decisive nature will call into being further media for their use.

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From overseas have come two other recruits of the first order, Jacob BenAmi and Joseph Schildkraut. BenAmi arrived from Russia by route of the Yiddish stages of the Ghetto and the Jewish Art Theater; and in a Danish play of no great importance, "Samson and Delilah," he disclosed astonishing spiritual insight, technical proficiency, and adaptability to our tongue. His work at the Jewish Art Theater is guaranty of a range unmatched on our stage since Mansfield. Schildkraut, trained in boyhood to our speech and on Reinhardt's and other German stages to the technic of his art, returned to America last autumn, and found ultimate rewards and opportunities in "Liliom" with the Theater Guild. To compare the two

without further evidence is invidious. We have room and to spare for both.

Growing skill of familiar players, too, promises to make up for those who have retired or lost their grip. Gilda Varesi, building slowly and surely, finally arrived at fitting outlet for her powers in the humors of "Enter Madame"; Clare Eames justified faith in her poise and intelligence in "Mary Stuart"; Carroll McComas was graduated honorably from the trivialities of farce to the exactions of realism in "Miss Lulu Bett"; and Lionel Atwill developed an unsuspected mastery of characterization in "Deburau." Less encouraging was the progress of some of our players, such as Walter Hampden, who added a prosaic Macbeth to an able, though uninspired, Hamlet; or Margaret Anglin, who spent the profits of "The Woman of Bronze," a tawdry and outmoded problem-play, on misplaced affections and aspirations for the classic Greeks and on an ambitious, but hardly expedient, effort to emulate Sarah Bernhardt as Jeanne d'Arc. Far less excusable and more dangerous to hard-won reputations were Mrs. Fiske's artistic dereliction in "Wake Up, Jonathan," and the fiasco of Ethel and John Barrymore in the futile and amateurish "Clair de Lune" from the pen of Mrs. John Barrymore.

To replace the finer impulses and the rebellious courage of the elder players, the institutional theater seems to be growing steadily in power. The Theater Guild, apparently, has little of the zeal for the native play of its progenitors, the Washington Square Players; but with a pugnacious board of directors and the scenic talents of Lee Simonson it is devoting an equal ardor to the quest for and the inter

pretation of significant European drama; while to the Provincetown Players has fallen the rôle of sponsor for untried American playwrights. The Neighborhood Playhouse continues to perform unpretentiously its dual task of social and esthetic guide for its locality, and occasionally, as in Galsworthy's "The Mob," to extend its influence potently and honorably to a far wider public. The Players' Fellowship, too, with Edith Ellis's dramatization of "The Dangerous Age" under the title of "The White Villa," indicated an original method of coöperative activity on the part of the actors themselves. Meanwhile, over the entire country the Little Theaters are springing to life of varying length and importance, although for the most part they have not yet outgrown the period of exclusive amateur clubs.

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All this, of course, sounds as if the theater in New York is the entire American theater, and

to a great extent this is true. It is even truer to-day than ever before, with prohibitive railroad rates and an indifferent public elsewhere cutting a play short at the end of its metropolitan engagement. New York is, thereby, becoming dramatically self-sufficient, and its independence is forcing on the rest of the country an autonomy which may or may not be desired, but which will compel the upbuilding of institu

tional theaters in the leading cities if the art and pastime of the theater are to be preserved.

By implication, too, the contemporary posture of our theater holds possibilities of service as international trial-ground not only for our own artists and playwrights and players, but for those of Europe who find the conditions of a constrained economy galling. Unlike the Continental theater, though, which provides leisure and detachment for experiment and an atmosphere wherein theories and projects may be worked out in private and revealed to the public only on their satisfactory completion, the American theater, like every other phase of our life, is a here-and-now, opportune institution. We cut and sew our political and intellectual and artistic linen in the streets, and we wash and mend it with equal shamelessness. We are stumbling awkwardly into an appreciation of the need for a more vivid theater. We

Costume design by NormanBel Geddes for "Erminie"

shall discover the ways to achieve it, just as we blundered into the expedients which make for social welfare. We are willing to try anything once, and the theater, despite its gambler's timidity, is in a mood to experiment. Those who understand us and our ways will not be discouraged if we expose our ignorance in the process, but will wait patiently for us to evolve something which, after all, is our

own.

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Francis Bacon

By PIERRE MILLE [Translated by CHARLES LOUIS SEEGER] Drawings by FLORENCE HOWELL BARKLEY

W

HEN Baptiste, on finishing his military service, was engaged as a valet by M. Sébastien Mahaut of the French Academy, he had hopes of certain perquisites in addition to his wages, not to mention the honor of waiting upon a distinguished personage; for he was of a thrifty disposition and possessed a romantic turn of mind. In the days when he was an orderly he had heard a guest at his colonel's table remark that men of letters led very dissipated lives. This did not trouble him in the least degree. He pictured to himself frequent tips and theater-tickets in such profusion that he could not only use them for his personal delectation, but have some left over to sell. He saw himself attired with supreme elegance, thanks to the clothes which his master, after wearing a few days, would turn over to him. And then the

benefits of various kinds that would fall to his lot in his inevitable rôle of Cupid's messenger,-not presents alone, but the gratuitous favors of ladies' maids,-for so it was that things happened on the stage, especially in the pieces that he had seen played in the provinces.

But the cook took pains to undeceive him the first evening. Baptiste fell from the clouds.

"The housework is heavy," she informed him, "with four children and madame. That is why they have to have a man. If you were not fresh from the country, you would know what it means to live in a little house at Montrouge. They took it to save money. And you imagine monsieur would deceive madame? Ah, la! la! You have n't really looked at him."

"I thought these novelists-" faltered Baptiste, still incredulous.

"But monsieur is n't a novelist," protested the cook; "he is he is-a philologist. I think that's what they call it. At the Academy they did n't know how to make the dictionary,the spelling and all that, so they borrowed him from another academy where they 're all very knowing and where he was already. Monsieur a novelist! You make me laugh. Look for yourself; you won't find a novel in the house."

Baptiste was inclined to take all this as mere exaggeration. He soon discovered, to his great disappointment and a corresponding melancholy, that the cook had understated the truth. M. Sébastien Mahaut lived the life of a cloistered monk. He had to be wakened, summer and winter, at seven o'clock in the morning, and he worked until noon, with naught to cheer him but a sober cup of tea. He wrapped himself in an old dressinggown of Pyrennes wool, the remains of a holiday that he had spent at Mont Dore fourteen years before. Baptiste was shocked; he had supposed that members of the French Academy could not write unless enveloped in a red robe or at least in Turkish costume. That was the idea he had of their talent. The rest of M. Sébastien Mahaut's wardrobe consisted of his academician's uniform, extraordinarily shabby, because it dated from the time when he had been elected to the other academy; an evening suit which had to last five or six years; and a very modest street suit. There was not even a cigar in the house; M. Sébastien Mahaut did not smoke. On the very rare occasions when one was "at home" of an evening, he went to the nearest tobacco shop and bought two packages of "Londres" at thirty centimes.

"He went to the nearest tobacco shop”

And what the cook had said about the books was too true: light literature was conspicuous by its absence. Books arrived every day, however, in astonishing numbers, often five or six at a time, seldom fewer than two or three. Some were in paper covers, others were bound in various leathers and all manner of cloths. There were books in French, in English, in German, in Greek, and in Latin. At first Baptiste opened them with eagerness and curiosity, in the hope of finding something to satisfy his senses and his imagination. But it was not long before he so tired of them that he would not have deigned even to break the string with which the parcels were tied, had not M. Sébastien Mahaut issued strict orders, once for all, that he should undo them and cut the pages. After this the academician would look rather skeptically, as a general thing, at the dedications that adorned

the fly-leaves: "To the Master, feeble testimonial of respectful admiration"; “To the eminent Sébastien Mahaut, from his colleague and friend"; "To the illustrious author of 'Onomastique et Toponymie,' modest contribution of a faithful disciple."

Conscientiously, he ran through them, shrugged his shoulders, and once in a while kept one of the volumes on his desk. After reading it more carefully, he might give it the honor of a place in his library. But he rejected the greater part after an instant's glance, and a sigh of regret at having wasted so much of his precious time. He scribbled a few very courteous acknowledgments and said in a tired voice:

"Baptiste, take these up-stairs-you know-to the garret.'

When the garret was full, M. Mahaut ordered them packed in hampers and sent to the country.

One day Baptiste had an idea. He suggested:

"Instead of spending money for carriage, monsieur would do well to sell those books. It would bring in a good deal of money to monsieur."

M. Sébastien Mahaut shook his head.

"I never could bear to do that," he said, "on account of the dedications. It would seem like betraying the confidence of those poor people."

"Monsieur has great delicacy," replied Baptiste, but inwardly he demurred.

Then a plan began to shape itself in his resourceful brain. It was with a certain timidity that he put it into effect, his master's scruples with regard to the dedications having inspired him with doubt as to its prudence. But among the volumes there were some

that were not inscribed, having been received directly from the publishers. Baptiste took five or six of these to a dealer in second-hand books, who paid him three francs for them. He decided that this branch of commerce had its peculiar advantages. The returns were mediocre, but the merchandise cost him nothing.

This initial profit gave him the taste for more. He ventured the sale of books bearing dedications, and, to his great surprise, the bookseller offered him very respectable prices, sometimes twenty-five centimes, sometimes even a franc, more on each volume. Baptiste, astonished, inquired the reason for this difference.

"It is because of the autograph dedications," replied the bouquiniste; "and if the buyer sees that the book has belonged to the library of a

"Monsieur has great delicacy'"

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