sang pianisimo his romance, "Elle est tellement innocente." It was fortunate for him, for they encored it. It was the only time that M. Dupin had sung it so well.

At the close of the second act, after the conspirators' chorus which made a great impression, a candle placed too near one of the red curtains set it on fire. In order to extinguish it one of the choristers had the happy idea of tossing upon it his blonde wig which caught fire immediately. The audience who saw what was the matter was not excited, and this miniature conflagration being put out the finale was resumed, this incident not preventing it from being warmly applauded and the waltz encored.

In the third act, a great sensation was produced by "enquenlade," which was twice en

Music to cause such things to be heard there. Of course I did not mix myself up in this discussion, in which furious adversaries of the light-headed sort gained the day. Moreover, at the present moment, I still think that it would have been interesting to hear in a large house, with the chorus and orchestra of the Opera, this second act, which, in short, as to words and music, is planned from beginning to end in the Opera Comique style.

After this series of 410 performances, the opera was revived over and over again. The greater part of the time it was played in a manner that was deplorable and calculated to weary the public of it. All the movements of the songs were changed, the costumes were soiled, indifferent actors

body, especially Paola and Desclauzas who well deserved it. On leaving, my ear caught these remarks uttered by two authors, M.Ms. H. and B.: “It is the greatest success of the year." "It is the Pré aux Clercs' of operetta."

For three entire months the house was completely sold out, the box-office not being opened in the evening. The manager who had mounted the piece without conviction— and without expense-predicting for it forty performances, placed in his cash-box receipts that were enormous, and unheard of at his theatre.

La Fille de Mme. Angot" was played uninterruptedly from February 21st, 1873, to twelve per cent.. that made 195,888 fr. for receipts. Note: the author's rights being April 8th, 1874, and produced 1,632,400 fr., 410 performances to be divided as follows: 65,296 fr. for the lever de rideau;" 65.296 fr. for the three authors, and 65,296 fr. for the composer. And thus it continued throughout hundreds of performances, the famous "lever de rideau" always taking onethird of the royalties.

disfigured the piece. For all that, the receipts were comparatively good up to the 8ooth performance, which has even been surpassed.

From the start the provinces and foreign countries were flooded with the work, and everywhere the success was the same. In London it was played hundreds of times and in three theatres at once.

In Germany and in Italy, the same success. In the provinces it rescued many theatres from bankruptcy; it enriched publishers, authors and managers, who were truly in need of it in 1872, after the war of the Commune; finally, for me, it partly justified the remark of Humbert when he brought me the manuscript; “Mon cher, I bring you wealth."

So, mon ami, these are all the particulars that my memory can furnish me of this operetta, which is the luckiest, if not the best, of all those that I have composed. Charles Lecocq.

GOETHE AND HIS WORK.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STAGE.

The speech delivered before the Goethe Society by Henry Irving, at the Madison Square Theatre, March 15, 1888.

When I was invited to meet the members of this Society, I had some misgiving that I might be expected to deliver the kind of address which could be given only by one who had devoted himself to the study of the great German poet. My mind has fortunately been relieved on that score, and I don't think the kind things which have been said of me need carry me into any elaborate discourse on the life-work of Goethe. But there is one phase of his career which has an immediate interest for an actor and a manager. Goethe at one time was director of a theatre, and his experiences in this

capacity at Weimar furnish some very useful lessons even in the present day. For Goethe endeavored to give practical life to an ideal which still haunts many earnest minds the ideal which places the functions of the stage entirely beyond and above the taste of the public. That is impossible. The popular desire for amusement Goethe regarded as degrading; the ordinary passions of human nature he sought to elevate into a rarefied region of transcendental emotion; and the actors, who naturally found some difficulty in soaring into this atmosphere, he drilled by the simple process of making them recite with their faces to the audience, without the least attempt to impersonate any character. His theory, in a word, was that the stage should be literary and not dramatic, and that it should hold the mirror, not up to nature, but to an assemblage of noble abstractions.

It is needless to say that this ideal was predoomed to failure; and my object now is not to discuss it in any detail, but to instance it as a useful warning to those whose discontent with the variety of public taste is apt to urge them toward impossible reforms.

It is no sign of retrogression that there is a great popular demand for a kind of entertainment which would have excited Goethe's disgust, and which does not appeal very strongly to your sensibilities or mine. Goethe threw up the management of the Weimar Theatre because the Duke was curious to see a successful melodrama in which the chief incident was erected by a noodle. The poet thought this was a proof that the stage had gone to the dogs, and that it was high time for him to wash his hands of all responsibility for such a degradation. Whether this convinced Goethe that his instinct was prophetic when he introduced Mephistopheles to Faust in the form of a dog-some say a poodle-I cannot say; but his hasty conclusion that the drama had fallen to the level of **The Dog of Montargis" was no better founded than the assumption you sometimes hear to-day that the popularity of entertainments which are not of the highest class is evidence of the incurable frivolity, or coarseness, or ignorance of the vast mass of playgoers. I always wonder why the argument is applied only to the stage. You never hear any pulpit orator denounce the enormous sale of fiction which appeals to the ineradicable taste for exciting narrative. Such may say that a certain class of novel is immoral, but he does not deplore the unconquerable folly of depravity which buys sensational tales by tens of thousands, while the works of writers, who address a smaller public, are swamped on the bookstalls. Philosophy is always ready with an explanation of this, but she is supposed to have no business in the sphere of footlights. Yet I see no reason for condemning the stage, because its functions do not conform universally to the highest standard. No rational being believes that imaginative literature is hopelessly degenerate because the best novels are not as widely read as their inferiors.

There is another consideration which is too often overlooked. Even among educated people

the standard of taste in theatrical matters is extremely variable. Some are interested in Shakespeare, but only in his comedy; "Hamlet" bores them, but they are delighted by Much Ado About Nothing." Others care little for what is called the legitimate drama, but prefer lighter forms of entailment, which to playgoers of a serious cast are purely frivolous. Others, again, have a strong partiality for a certain kind of melodrama; they like to be harrowed by tremendous situations and amused by spectacular effects. Indeed, you may take a man of cultivated mind and discover that his taste for the theatre is extremely primative. Even genius is sometimes erratic in its appreciation of the stage. Goethe himself had astonishing ideas about Shakespeare. If there was one thing which Shakespeare understood better than another, it was the law of dramatic effect; yet Goethe thought it necessary to reconstruct Romeo and Juliet," and in "Wilhelm Meister" the players find it impossible to perform "Hamlet" without making Horatio son of the King of Norway. When I refreshed my memory of this episode, it occurred to me that a manager who should ever be accused of taking liberties with "Faust," might console himself with the reflection that they were rather overshadowed by the liberties which Goethe took with Shakespeare.

It is not just, therefore, to assume either that the public taste is degraded because it does not touch an ideal standard at every point, or that one fixed canon of taste can be applied to the drama, even in cultivated society. The theatre must always be the playground of a variety of sympathies and the arena of all manner of conflicting judgments. A theatrical manager has to satisfy many tastes, and much may be forgiven him if he has, like Faust, "the instinct of the one true way," and it should be remembered that a manager by sometimes charming the public with the popular novelties of the day may be able to command their support, when he seeks it, for a higher form of drama. Nature should be the manager's ideal, and art his familiar, and while inspired by the one and aided by the other of these, though his work may reflect the variable moods of his generation, because it is primarily his business to amuse, the sum of his efforts will be a substantial increase of the universal stock of wholesome pleasure. For, consider that the theatre gives a rare stimulus to every sort of mind. It affords a world of delight to a multitude whose imagination finds little food in their daily lives; it rouses dormant sympathies and makes war on idle prejudices; it presents with vivid force the simplest elements of life to all, and makes real to many some of the highest poetry. It is nothing to the purpose that some phases of the stage which do not correspond exactly to this description should be pointed out. Broadly speaking, what I say is true; and is an estimate of the functions of the theatre which is borne out by the best experience. You will see, therefore, how important it is that an institution which exercises such wide and varied influences should have all its agencies developed to the highest utility. What is necessary on the stage is a harmony of all its

features a unison of all its refinements. It is not enough to give an individual performance of consumate interest, for, in a double sense, the whole is greater than the part. Let everything have its due proportion; let thoroughness and completeness be the manager's aim; let him never forget that a perfect illusion is highest achievement; an ideal which I know to be the conscientious aim of many managers in your city.

I do not presume to maintain that any method of representation, however admirable, can be fully adequate to the portrayal of Shakespeare. Nor do I concern myself very much with the familiar reproach of overlaying our great dramatist with ornament. I have before said that the values of the aids and the adjuncts of scenery and costume has ceased to be a matter of opinion; these have become necessary. They are dictated by the public taste of the day and not by the desire for mere scenic display. Shakespeare commands the homage of all the arts; and their utmost capacity, when rightly directed, can do no more than pay tribute to his splendor-the splendor of the greatest master of our mother tongue, the most completely equipped of all the literary men who ever wrote. More than this, he had the most intimate and varied knowledge of the stage, and that is why his work is the actor's greatest pride and most exacting trial. To play Shakespeare with any measure of success, it is necessary that the actor shall, above all things, be a student of character. To touch the springs of motive, to seize all the shades of expression, to feel yourself at the root and foundation of the being you are striving to represent-in a word, to impersonate the characters of Shakespeare-this is a task which demands the most exacting discipline, the widest command of all the means of illustration. Of all the triumphs of the stage there is none so exulting as that of a representation of Shakespeare which gives to the great mass of playgoers a strong and truthful impression of his work, and a suggestion to the ideal which his exponents are honorably struggling to obtain.

It may strike you that in all this there is not much which immediately concerns the Goethe Society; but I take some pride in the fact that the Lyceum production of "Faust" has enormously multiplied the readers of one of the greatest poems in any language. That, at all events, is some service to the study to which you are devoted, and I may even venture to hope that the interest excited by the performance of "Faust" in America may even bring your society some earnest recruits. I have found a great variety of views about a certain personage in red; and it has been fervently urged that I have done his character serious injustice. I would not willingly wrong any man, much less a spirit, and if I have in any way treated that personage with disrespect, I hope that this reparation in the presence of the Goethe Society will be regarded - hereafter," as a handsome apology. Perhaps you will remember this in days to come when you think of our honest effort to give, within the limit of three hours, the best possible representation of the dramatic part

of "Faust," and when you recall, as I am sure you always will, the joyous, tender and pathetic simplicity of Ellen Terry. To speak of Ellen Terry as an actress is to disarm criticism; and to all who know her the charm of her sunny sweetness is a perpetual delight.

And we, too, have remembrances which we shall ever cherish. During our third tour in America we have found no abatement of the popular interest with which our earlier experiences were so fully charged. Sympathy, which is the breath of artistic life, has been frankly and freely accorded, and we are happy in the thought that this gathering to-day represents the recognition by lovers of dramatic art that, be our methods what they may, our allegiance to its highest principles is steadfast and true.

PHILADELPHIA NOTES.

March 20.

The eighty-second anniversary of Edwin Forrest's birthday was celebrated, March 9, by the inmates of the Forrest Home. A very interesting feature of the exercises was a performance of a scene from the third act of Hamlet," with Madame Michels as the Queen, Frank Lawler as Prince Hamlet, Harry Bascombe as Polonius, and Richard Penistan as the Ghost.

Mme. Michels, or, as she is better known, Mis. M. A. Tyrrel, was born in London Feb. 15, 1815, and made her debut there in 1833, at the Queen's Theatre, as Desdemona. Her first appearance in this country was in 1883, at the Bowery, as lady Macbeth.

Frank Lawler, the youngest of the beneficiaries. was born at Albany, N. Y., Jan. 28, 1834, and under the assumed name of Horton made his first professional appearance at Troy, in 1853, as Doggrass, in "Black-Eyed Susan.' In 1868 he appeared at the Lyceum Theatre, London, as the King, in " Hamlet," a character in which he was at his best. Failing in health a few years ago, he became an inmate of the Home.

Harry Bascombe, the latest addition to the little colony, was born in Boston in 1833, and made his debut twenty years later at the Boston Museum in Speed the Plow.

Richard Benistan, born in London Nov. 27. 1829, appears to have withdrawn from the stage sometime prior to 1855, as in that year he was conducting a saloon in this city, and doing a prosperous business. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he won the capital prize of $100,000 in the Havana Lottery, gave his saloon to his bartender, bought a farm in Kentucky, and invested his money in horses. His presence in the institution as an inmate tells the result of his investment.

Jefferies.

THE Seventh Regiment will present a large burlesque at the Metropolitan Opera House on Thursday, April the 12th, with Mr. Coward in the leading rôle. The rehearsals are well under way and things point to an excellent performance.

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