MR. OLIVER LAY'S painting, a portrait of Edwin Booth, now on exhibition at Richard's gallery, No. 226 Fifth Avenue, is sure to attract attention, and certainly should not long wait a purchaser. The painting is life-size, and represents the great actor as Hamlet seated in one of his soliloquies. The effect of the whole is startlingly lifelike, and as a portrait the face and expression have been done more justice to than anything that has ever before been exhibited in the way of either photograph or painting. It is a misfortune that there is not some substantial theatre edifice where in a splendid vestibule and lobby might be hung such pictures as this. The only building worthy such a purpose is the Grand Opera House. What a pity it is that this superb structure is not situated where for this it would be most appropriate.

MR. W. D. HOWELLS, who is residing at "The Niagara," Buffalo, this winter, talked very entertainingly, at a recent meeting of the Buffalo Fortnightly Club, of the drama from the earliest period to the present time. He traced the marked similarities between the English and the Spanish drama. A peculiarity of Italian drama, said Mr. Howells, was that each city had its masque or character representing Comedy, which was frequently introduced into the plays: as, for instance, in Florence the masque was a character called "Stentorello," represented in almost every play. Denmark had a drama which, though limited, was of considerable power, and which had been delightfully treated in some of its aspects by Björnstjern Björnsen, himself a dramatic

writer of much excellence. America could hardly be said to have a drama which was distinctively American, unless that of the minstrels might be so called. Mr. Daly had put on the stage plays written by various American literary men, among them one or two adaptations from the speaker's novels, yet they had not held the boards for any length of time. Harrigan had done some very clever work by picking up from the actualities of life in New York, scenes, conversations and hits, which he had woven into plays that, though not of a high order of merit, were popular as presenting true pictures of real life.

THE editor of that admirable paper The Boston Transcript, in answer to an inquiry if 'Faust," in purely dramatic form, was ever played in Boston before the current performances of Mr. Wills' version, replied that in the season of 1859-60 (if his memory was not astray) a play founded on the legend, and with scenes partly worked over from Goethe, had a run at the Boston Theatre. Edward L. Davenport was the Mephisto (and a good one, too), Mrs. Davenport was the Marguerite, and Edwin Adams was the Faust. The piece was handsomely mounted and well played. Davenport and Adams have long since passed from life, and so, too, has Wallace Thaxter, the chief author or adapter of the play (here, again, memory may be deceptive), one of the brightest lights of journalism that ever shone in Boston. A season or two before, a ballet and pantomime in three acts was performed at the Boston Theatre by a company known as the Ronzani Ballet Troupe. A version in the original German was played by Mme. Fanny Janauschek in her first Boston engagement--Continental Theatre, April, 1868. And other dramatic forms of the legend (saying nothing about Gounod's opera) have been seen in Boston: a play at the Museum, with a Mr. Roberts as Mephisto, a few years after the Boston Theatre production, and another at the National Theatre, somewhere about 1853.

I AM glad to learn that Mr. Martin W. Hanley, the manager of Harrigan's Park Theatre (and who is also the husband of Marietta Ravel), has been made a life member of the Actor's Fund Association. He will be one of its pillars if I mistake not.

THE admirers of one of the most charming faces ever seen on the burlesque stage will be interested to hear that Miss Billie Barlow is playing in a pantomime company in the north of England. She takes the part of Prince Arthur the Bold in Babes of the Wood," and has become very popular everywhere.

AMONG the young writers who are attracting considerable attention is Miss Amelie Rives, who has recently written for Harper's Magazine. She belongs to an old Virginia family and has passed much of her life farther south, having gone to school in Mobile. Some one writes: She used to write then, and bring her effusions to my friend, who didn't think she was destined to make a hit with her pen. She is said to be quite a spoiled beauty. She is very fond of out-of-doors exercise and rides admirably, but not so well as her sister, who rides like one of Charles Lever's Irish heroes. Of course, Miss Amelie has her crowd of admirers and lovers, whom she is said to scorn. I remember a story to the effect that a lot of men were calling on her at one time. She came down-stairs and into the drawing-room dressed in a riding habit. She merely nodded to the men, saying that she was going for a ride and would be back after a while. The boobies waited. When Miss Rives returned, she went into the rear of the room, without noticing the men, seated herself at a desk, and appeared to be much absorbed. The callers thought that the muse was about to bring forth some beautiful child, and remained profoundly silent. Imagine their consternation and chagrin when the fair author turned from her work and exhibited a drawing containing excellent caricatures of all the men in their ridiculously stiff attitudes caused by respectful silence and waiting.

THIS Correspondent goes on: "As you may judge from her writings, this Miss Rives is a somewhat luxuriant young woman. Nothing is, or ever has been, too good for her. But they say her papa drew the line when she asked him to allow her to make a visit to Washington and to furnish her with a maid, a coachman, and a carriage and four horses for her stay at the capital. He declined this modest request, saying that she must dispense with all but the maid. I am told that Miss Rives was so indignant at this refusal that she shut herself up in her room and would see none of her family for a week."

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AND, in conclusion: "You have doubtless observed that Miss Rives has a rather warm instinct in writing-that she deals pretty directly with passions of the amatory order. Yet I am told that, warm as some of her expressions are, and suggestive as some of her scenes, the public does not get Miss Rives' writings in all their native strength. They do say that the editors of the magazines in which the stories appear find it necessary to materially tone down the Swinburnian color of the productions before they can be published in their moral periodicals. I have been a little surprised that so correct and virtuous a magazine as the Century allows Miss Rives a place in its chaste columnsnot that there is anything really objectionaole in what the lady writes, but that the Century is so very fearful of letting anything like human nature come beneath its Therefore, you may imagine my surprise when I learned that the stories had already been considerably modified in order to suit our delicate American palates."

covers.

Answer to Correspondent.-"Honeymoon," the month after marriage, is so called from the custom, practiced by the ancient Teutons, of drinking hydromel, or honey wine, for thirty days after marriage. Attila, the Hun, is said to have died from thus drinking at the end of his wedding feast.

Trophonius.

It

IN THE LIME-LIGHT'S GLARE. WHEN that little red-haired slip of genius, Minnie Maddern, failed to win permanent fame and fortune in Steele Mackaye's play "In Spite of All" at the Lyceum two years ago, I concluded that something was radically rotten in New York, and I am still clinging to that belief. Notwithstanding Minnie's freckled nose and her shapeless, atrocious gowns, that histrionic endeavor of hers was one of the subtlest, tenderest, most captivating exhibitions of artistic magnetism that our stage has ever seen. It quivered with a perfect agony of beauty It was an actual picture of throbbing, grand womanhood, without one fleshly insinuation, and not a single décollete gown. caught one or two whiffs of weak, piping praise from the professional critics, and then the star-like glow of Minnie Maddern was sent out to illuminate the western circuit. If she had been allowed to succeed at the Lyceum, America had then a chance to train a genius up to the prominence of a Bernhardt; but prairie blizzards and railroad restaurants knock sharp edges on to round corners, and Minnie will be fortunate now if she manages to preserve a bearable poise, and keeps the turgid dimensions of the wooly West out of her pathos. This failure of great ability to win a laurel crown from the army of pen-dribblers here in our midst is in itself a fiercer commentary than I could make on the usual unfortunate wrongness of the majority. Langtry reigns triumphant, Maddern exists perfunctorily. Horresco referens.

I often see women who seem to be made only to consume food. They miss their vocation sometimes and go on the stage, and by some occult aid they soar on pinions of gold to realms of brilliant success. Langtry is, of course, the most aggravating sample of misdirected adipose development, but after her come many others. She gets the most money for being the worst case. Rose Coghlan tried to compete with the lowness of Langtry's corsages in that recent bad failure, "In The Fashion," and just barely succeeded in escaping the conse

quences. Had she sneezed suddenly, she would have had an overflowing cause for regret. The self-control of the Langtry was missing in Coghlan. There is one thing the former does to perfection. She wears the open atmosphere on her neck with an air of reassuring security. The critics mistook that talent for dramatic genius. Minnie Maddern, you see, hid her light under a fichu, and the boys thought she was guying them. They would as soon have expected to see her in ear-muffs. They thought she twinkled like a star when she wore fleshings the previous year, but the long, complete dresses were a superfluity in their eyes. Such concealment fed on their damask cheek altogether too hungrily. They turned and kissed Fanny Davenport's obese "Fedora," and came back in a refluent undertow, with the slim, struggling form of Cora Potter in their clutches. You will find that sweeping voluptuousness in an actress intimidates the average man into an intellectual admiration, and that when a woman has no actual dramatic element to exhibit, she can substitute a physical one and get called artistic. This is only one unfortunate condition in things theatrical.

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A "QUEEN" of comic opera commands a high salary, say from three to four hundred dollars a week. To be a queen of comic opera a woman needs nothing but personal beauty and nerve. She can be as far removed from dramatic ability as Pauline Hall, Lillian Grubb and Isabella Urquhart are. She can be as outrageous a flirt and as affected a simpleton as Louise Montague is, and she may sing as persistently false as Anne Summerville does, and yet, if she combines opulent protuberances with an affluence of cold-blooded assurance, she deludes unthinking people into asserting that she ornaments her proper sphere. Only a few years ago Pauline Hall was nothing but a bunch of fine flesh, with a dull, handsome face. She was not capable of delivering a single line intelligently. She was hired to stand about with almost nothing to cover her nakedness, and if she had opened her

mouth the stage manager would probably have fined her. She graduated from this condition of nothingness to one of splendid conspicuousness by simply being trained to certain acts, as you could train a dog to jump through a hoop. She had a loud voice and she let it out. She cultivated a swagger, and kept her hands clasped behind her back. Her art stopped there, but her salary kept on. She never has possessed a single attribute which entitles her to stage prominence, except that she represents a certain type of cheap beauty that catches the admiration of careless people. The same things can be said of Grubb and Urquhart. They are magnified chorus girls, without the first principle of a dramatic capacity in their make-up. Compare their stolid stagnation with the sparkling sweetness of Lotta, with the vanished vivacity of Eliza Wethersby, or even the cute cleverness of Lina Merville, and you find them mere images moulded in vitalized clay. There is a decent amount of insincere grace about the plump roll of dimpled pinkness. Marie Jansen, and some one suggests that she has twinkling feet, but further than this she comes nowhere near being an artist. It seems impossible for any of our products in this line to attain the personal charm of French women like Théo and Judic. And yet they have the same training. Their trade demands volatileness, and instead they are heavy. Their lines call for action, action, and they stand still, twiddling a fan. They would go to sleep if it were not for the orchestra. Their finest achievement is to fit into tight garments, and make the dude squirm with excitement behind the curtain of a proscenium box. It would be a great relief if one of them would only cut a caper and show that her joints are not rusted. But there is little use of complaint in the matter. These high-priced birds of paradise are what nature made them, and their limit is a twitter. They fill a mission with luminousness, and in order to get anything better the public will have to wait till they fade from the fore-ground, and leave vacancies for girls that can act.

It seems sensible to suppose that if the dramatic and musical critics of New York would form themselves into an organization for the purpose of discussing art from their various points of view, some sort of criterion might in that way be reached by which plays, operas, and actors could be more justly judged, and merit be discovered and lauded. Critics now have many serious drawbacks to contend against. They are compelled to formulate and express an opinion within about two hours after the curtain drops on a new play. They are expected to give an exhaustive account of the author's motives and effects, the characters of the play, the scenery, dresses, and the manner in which each part was performed. Such haste is ruining. Then again the critic is too often hedged in by outside influences which will not allow him to express his honest convictions. Some one has an axe to grind, and the critic has to turn the grindstone or suffer serious consequences. This is criminal. If the talented body of writers who are the guardians of stage art in New York could unite and form a sort of labor union, merely for the purpose of saving their selfrespect and receiving justice as well as granting it, I believe that before long the value and the seriousness of criticism would be materially increased: the theatre and the press being made independent of each other and yet bound together in bonds of honest friendship. Such an organization ought never become autocratic and make demands, but it could at least be loyal to justice and be able to rebuke tyranny. The critics ought to learn, and act upon the knowledge that at present they do not command, as a body, the respect and confidence of the theatre-going public. They can get it, however, by drawing nearer to a fearless unanimity.

C. M. S. McLellan.

THE frontispiece of THE THEATRE this week is a portrait of Mr. Harry Edwards, the valuable and respected member of Wallack's company, a distinguished entomologist, and the writer of an admirable series of articles in THE THEAIRE entitled "Among My Autographs."

ANECDOTES OF FAILURES.

THE old saying: "Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost," is as much the rule in regard to dramatic productions and producers, as it is the motto of cowards when placed in positions of danger. The unsuccessful play is seized upon by the devil of oblivion, and the actors in it try not only to forget that they have taken part in a failure, but even to make others do the same. The readers of THE THEATRE cannot help being au fait with the successes of the past, but perhaps they may be interested in a few reminiscences of bygone failures. Let me then tell you something of unsuccessful plays. Unsuccessful plays! What a crowd of memories those words bring up! Perhaps the most absolute failure which has occurred in the last ten years was "Serge Panine," at Daly's Theatre. Some will remember that a great deal of excitement was caused at the time by a man who disapproved of some of the ideas in the play, openly expressing it by hissing a speech made by one of the characters. In an English theatre this would not have been noticed, but it was a violation of American custom, and the man was requested to leave the theatre. He did so, and then very foolishly wrote a letter to a morning paper thereby bringing himself into unpleasant prominence. This, in itself, was a sufficient advertisement to fill the theatre, but Mr. Daly seeing that the play did not suit his regular patrons, wisely withdrew it. The scene at the Bijou Opera House, on the first night of "Apajune" was a remarkable one. I never have seen such disorder in a theatre, either before or since. There was a strong party in the four front rows who had evidently come to damn the piece and they did it! The first act passed off fairly well, except that as each actor came upon the stage, large bouquets of cabbage-leaves were hurled at him by the disturbers of the peace in the front rows. Several of the performers came so “rattled" on receiving these marks of esteem, that they forgot their parts, and the act ended in the midst of wild confusion. Cat-calls

and cheers greeted the chorus girls when they appeared in the next act, and as they stood in the middle of the stage, some one in the third row threw a small live alligator in their midst. You can imagine the effect! Already nervous from the doubtful reception which the first act had received, they huddled together on one side of the stage and screamed, entirely forgetting the musical director and the chorus which they should have sung. At last the alligator crawled off the stage and the girls regained their self possession and their voices. Again, in the third act, a mistake of the stage carpenter produced a musical effect, not laid down in the score of the opera, but which nevertheless caused a good deal of amusement. In this act two of the characters appear in the same disguise, both personating Apajune, the Water Sprite, and dressed in suits of green, with tall, pointed caps made of reeds. One of the side entrances was very low, and the first man who came through it had his cap completely knocked over his face in such a manner as to muffle his voice, and make him sing his ballad with an impromptu reed accompaniment as it were. These were only a few of the incidents connected with that memorable first night. I have never been able to discover the cause of the animosity, which was so openly displayed on this occasion. It must have some personal spite, for when "Apajune" was revived at the Casino, it made a hit and ran for some time to large houses. Another failure which was memorable for more reasons than one was the production at Booth's of "Never Too Late to Mend Theatre. This was the last regular production at the old house, although Modjeska, I think, closed it in a one-night performance, but of what play I cannot remember. For some days after the theatre closed, a poster fluttered on one of the Sixth Avenue boards, which was torn in such a way that it read as follows: Booth s Theatre

— TOO

LATE TO MEND, and the circumstance was noticed by several of the papers at the time. Comic opera failures are, perhaps, the most numerous, and, strange as it may