hold their places in the line. But does any THEATRE reader remember the furore Charles Dickens created eighteen years ago, when he came here to read his own works to us? His début was set down for Mr. Beecher's church in Brooklyn, but the sale of seats was to take place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The night before the sale began Pierrepont street was a pandemonium. Speculators assembled in hundreds, and quarrelled, fought, and defied the authorities. The weather was so bitterly cold that the mob were forced to build a large bon-fire in the middle of the street to make existence endurable. Tramps seemed to rise up from the ground, and, as fast as they appeared, were engaged at fifty cents an hour to hold the speculators' places in the line. An 'hour was as much as even a tramp could endure, and towards early morning they successfully "struck" and secured a half-dollar for each half hour's waiting. The profits of the speculators were prodigious, but Charles Dickens got just the two or three dollars he demanded, but not a cent more. I forget how much Dickens made by this last and fatal visit to our shores, but I remember well that an experienced theatrical manager said, that had he received all the public paid to see and hear him, his "boodle "would have been, at the least, ten times greater than that he carried away. Carlyle said that had it not been for Dickens' American tour he might have been writing

blessed books until he was seventy," and I have always fancied it rather haid that the great novelist should have only realized about a tithe of his own hard earnings.

I am reminded by this of Dickens' manager, one George Dolby, who took great credit to himself for the success of the Dickens' campaign. He had as much to do with that success as the war correspondents had to do with General Grant's victories. I am opposed to ticket speculating on principle, just as I am antagonistic to corners in grain, pork or petroleum; but if "cornering or "speculating" is done, and I am a producer, I want to get the benefit of the boom." Dickens produced what everybody wanted, but the "other fellows," by which term I mean the sidewalk brokers, got ninetenths of the "pull." George Dolby ought to have prevented all this, but George didn't know enough to do so. However, on the reputation he had gained as Dickens' manager, George Dolby visited America again. This was some fourteen years ago, when he arrived here to "manage" the "Dolby Ballad Concert Company." An excellent company it was, seeing that it included Charles Santley, the famous English baritone, Edith Wynne, a great soprano, Madame Patey, the greatest concert

contralto of her time, Mr. Patey, the basso, Cummings, a fine tenor, and Lindsay Hoper, the well-known pianist. But the names of these great artistes only appeared in the concert programmes and on the posters, and in the advertisements was nothing but "Dolby." When the concerts took place everybody wanted to know what Dolby sang or what instrument he played. A few months of disaster ended the tour, and the Messrs. Chappell, the music publishers of London, who "backed" the venture, were a great many thousand dollars out. Carl Rosa then "took up" Santley, and placing him as the star of an English opera company, and packed the Academy of Music, with Santley as the hero of “Zampa" and" Fra Diavola." Carl Rosa eclipsed even this enterprise by joining forces with Herr Wachtel and singing Italian opera with Parepa, Adelaide Phillips, Wachtel and Santley as the quartette, and Ronconi as the buffo. It was a "scratch" company, but those who heard it said that Verdi and Mozart had never been sung better, and probably would never be sung so well again. George Dolby went home, and according to late advices is, in the language of the day, traveling on his "uppers" and vainly persuading managers to buy "his recollections of Charles Dickens in America." The reminiscences only cover a period of six months, but Mr. Dolby has contrived to fill three volumes with them, and is prepared to “recollect" Dickens to the crack of doom.

By the way, the craze of managers advertising themselves at the expense of their stars or attractions, is a very curious modern growth. The average agent or manager now-a-days insists upon having his name printed as boldly as his star, quite regardless of the fact that the public don't care a brass farthing who manages Mr. Booth or Madame Modjeska, providing these great artistes appear. I notice that estimable impresario, Mr. Miner, has been attacked by this foolish weakness, and is at present flooding the country with posters and lithographs announcing the arrival of Harry Miner's "Silver King." The uninitiated would suppose that Mr. Miner wrote the play, but I don't fancy that the genial Bowery manager wishes to deprive the real authors of the credit due to their admirable work.

"

FREDERICK WARDE'S RICHELIEU.

SOME time ago I saw Frederick Warde and his Company in the play of "Richelieu," and sat out the performance from beginning to end.

If any of the players did anything in the course of the evening that merited commendation, I failed to see it. At first I was inclined to be pleased with Miss Blair's Julie, but she did not improve on acquaintance. What she, like the rest of the cast, knows about the business she is engaged in, she has picked up, which is not the way to make one's self an artist. Miss Blair has a good appearance, very good, and is easy in her movements, but she does not read well, and the reading is the thing of things in the whole business; the difficult thing; the thing that makes or mars the actor more, perhaps, than all other things put together. What does the actor amount to that does not speak his lines well, no matter what his other merits may be?

But assertion is not criticism; merely to say this would benefit no one.

To particularize: Miss Blair has the bad habit, in common with many others, of letting the voice run down as the breath leaves the lungs, and the worse habit, in common with a still greater number of others, of continually misplacing the emphasis. She says, for example:

"I saw the impostor, where I had loved the god." The proper reading of the line is so evident that no one of any intelligence could go wrong in its utterance if he would use his intelligence; Miss Blair has the necessary intelligence; but, instead of using it, she blunders forward, leaving correctness to chance. Her emphasis makes the line say something like this: "I did not feel the impostor, nor smell the impostor, I saw the impostor." If Miss Blair, the next time she plays the part, will make "impostor and "god" strongly and equally emphatic, and will touch the other words quite lightly, with the exception of " loved," on which the voice should dwell a little, she will not only bring out the thought intended, but will make an effective climax for the speech, which she cannot do, reading the line as she does.

Again:

the words that every one that will take the trouble to think will emphasize.

In Miss Blair's utterance of her lines, examples like these are abundant; and yet she is one of the most intelligent readers in the company of which she is a member.

The other lady in the cast, Miss Mattie Wood, who spoke the lines of Marion De Lorme, must learn to pronounce English better than she does now before she will be acceptable in even as small a part as that of Marion, Even on the borders of civilization there is always likely to be some persons in an audience that know that "Eminence" should not be pronounced "Eminunce."

There are degrees everywhere. Among the bad there is always a worst. The worst in the "Richelieu cast, as the drama is presented by the Frederick Warde company, is Mr. Thomas E. Garrick, who attempts the personation of Baradas. Not till gesticulation and vociferation are all that is necessary to make an actor will Mr. Garrick be one, unless, meanwhile, he should ungergo a radical regeneration. If, however, Mr. Garrick's auditors were only half as well pleased with him as he, in his ignorance appears to be pleased with himself, he would be a popular member of his profession.

"Listen to me, lady;

I am no base intriguer. I adore thee," says Mr. Garrick, which is an intimation that he is an exemplary, an angelic, or a seraphic intriguer, and consequently a sort of intriguer whose suit her ladyship should be proud of. The school that Mr. Garrick has thus far studied (!) in is the school that turns out fakirs, not actors. He has thus far learned but little that he will not have to unlearn if he ever gets into a school that makes any demands on the intelligence. Mr. Garrick's auditors hear all he says, but they do not understand half of it.

As for Mr. Warde, he may be able to play some of the great parts in the classic and standard drama satisfactorily; but if he is. Richelieu is certainly not one of them. Of the wily, imperious cardinal in Mr. Warde's Richelieu, there is nothing. Men of the Richelieu stamp, however infirm they may be, never go about doubled up as Mr. Warde makes him go about. As long as they are able to be about at all they carry their heads up and their shoulders back. To the last they are erect, proud and commanding, in their bearing. Mr. Warde's manner of holding himself would not be objectionable in Shylock, but it is not characteristic of such stage personages as Lear, Richelieu, and the like.

Mr. Warde does unusual things and allows his support to do unusual things in the progress of the representation, all of which, it seems to

me, tends to take from the dignity of the central figure and to lesson the general effect. To particularize: He recoils in a cowardly manner before De Mauprat, in the midnight scene in third act. A man of Richelieu's intelligence would surely know that De Mauprat would be less likely to run him through if he showed a bold front than if he acted the poltroon. Then to the courtier that comes on in the fourth act he is most undignified in the lines,

"To those who sent you,

And say you found the virtue," etc.

Indeed, Mr. Warde, I think, often misconceives the spirit in which the individual speeches should be spoken. True, his way is often better calculated to stir the groundlings, who can always be stirred, as we know, with a little exaggeration.

But Mr. Warde's weakest point is his delivery. His elocution is not good; indeed it is very bad. His articulation is distinct and his pronunciation is correct; but aside from these two things there is nothing in his delivery to recommend it. He takes breath in the loud, gasping manner that every student of the art of using the voice-apparatus carefully avoids; he speaks in a sing-song, whining tone that is entirely foreign to anything that has any kinship with nature; and he misplaces his emphasis as no reader ever does, that approaches the mastery of the intellectual side of his work. Mr. Warde says:

"If he play the lion, Why, the dog's death."

"Messire de Mauprat is a patient man,
And he can wait.'

As far as the sense is concerned, the sentence would be better without the words "a," "man" and “and.” “Man" should barely be touched in the utterance. The important words are “patient” and “wait.”

Richelieu accuses De Mauprat of being gallant in steeds, not of being gallant in steeds words of a very different meaning; besides by using the wrong word, Mr. Warde spoils the

measure,

"I have re-created France."

Not so. I have re-created France. There is no question of France having been re-created by anyone else.

"I clove my pathway through the plumed sea."

CRITICAL SERVICE REFORM.

As a means of defense against the incomprehensible criticism that good plays and players receive from some sources, and bad plays and players receive from the same sources, we commend the following to respectable managers and the general public. Before admitting a representative of the press, the manager may, if he so wishes, institute an examination, in order to prove if the critic possesses the qualifications necessary for passing judgment upon a dramatic work. The following questions may be asked:

1. Who wrote " Hamlet?"

2. Has my press agent yet asked your opinion of art, and did he think that you had too high an opinion?

3. In whose works do you discover the greater amount of ethical merit, William Shakespeare's or Chas. Hoyt's?

4. Are you a Knight of Labor or a "rat?" 5. Why didn't you put on a necktie when you got up this morning?

6. Did your hair grow gray in your present service, or while you were driving a horse car? 7. How many dead-heads make a graveyard?

8. Is this your family with you, or a delegation from the Old Ladies' Home?

9. Would you dictate poetry to a typewriter?

10. Have you come here to criticise a play or a sparring match?

11. What is your method of getting from New York to New Jersey?

By asking such questions as these the manager may readily learn if the newspaper has sent a proper person to investigate what to him, the manager, is a very important venture. Accidents will happen in the best regulated newspaper offices.

(Grandly)

mama,

I tried to lead him on; (Sprightly) If you had gone to bed, papa, (Blandly) I'm sure I would have won. (Sighingly) He told me all his woes, mama, (Truly) And called his home 'a den;'(Cryingly) But yet he won't propose, papa, (Blue-ly) And will not ask me when. SCENE III.

(Coldly) (Dryly (Boldly) (Shyly) Some girls were not well-off. (Tearfully) He's bashful, I suppose, mama, (Kindly) And all that thing, but then(Tearfully) Can't you make him propose,

I used his Christian name, mama, He'd smile-and-hem—and - cough:

He thought it such a shame, papa,

MY DEAR MISS HALL:

BACK again, eh, like a hand-painted comet? They say that many Philadelphians felt no regret at being kept up till eleven o'clock to see you play Erminie.

Thine, and all of yours,

Charles, the Wrestler.

THERE are probably women who feel mad when they realize that "all the world's a stage," because a hat can't be made big enough to obscure it.