between this and what has intrinsic merit and worth. A well-bred man is able to point out vulgar manners in his neighbor, although the latter may have convinced himself that his manners are irreproachable; in the same way, a well-taught critic can pick a grain of wheat from a field of chaff. A GALAXY OF STARS. LAST week should be a memorable one in the dramatic history of New York. The theatrical firmament was in a blaze of glory, and the stars which illuminated it were all feminine. Each star was in many respects of the first magnitude, and a comparison of their rise, progress and methods furnishes a very curious study, seniores priores, and we find Madame Fanny Janauschek at the far-away Windsor Theatre trying to repeat her former successes in the legitimate drama. Up and across town Mrs. D. P. Bowers is renewing her youth at the Fourteenth Street Theatre, and coming back to Broadway, Miss Genevieve Ward found that in "Forget Me Not" New York had remembered her. Just round the corner is the Union Square Theatre, and there Clara Morris as Miss Multon makes strong men blow their noses to conceal their tears, and weak women to abandon themselves to the ecstasy of their emotional natures. Moving up-town, Mrs. Langtry, like a later Queen of Sheba, captured all the Solomons of the city, and at the Casino Miss Violet Cameron drew audiences which were divided between curiosity to see a much advertised lady, and expectation that dramatic incidents not set down in the programme might occur. THE THEATRE'S critics will, of course, do justice to the artists who formed last week's galaxy. I am only concerned with some curious contrasts in their histories. The first peculiar fact brought to my mind is that of these six stars, five have been on the stage all their lives, and the other has been before the footlights just five years. The next remarkable fact is that the lady with the least professional experience has earned more money per annum than all the other five together. Of course, I refer to Mrs. Langtry, who in five years has amassed a fortune larger than that of actresses who have been before the public variously from a halfcentury to a decade. Madame Janauschek began her career as a child-actress in Bohemia, politeness prevents me from saying how many years ago. She was a mature woman when, twenty years ago, she first appeared in this country at the old Thalia Theatre in German tragedy. Two seasons of acting in the vernacular convinced her that there was no money to be made out of the German population of this country, and, like the resolute woman that she is, she set to work to learn English. She retired for a season to a little seaside resort and labored with two tutors. Next season she appeared in a repertoire of legitimate rôles in the English language, and the public, which had been mystified by her German tragedy, now recognized her as a tragedienne of extraordinary ability, who reached heights which had never before been touched, save by Rachel, Ristori and Charlotte Cushman. Acting is, and always has been, Madame Janauschek's life. Probably for this reason she forgot that audiences, and especially American audiences, are fickle, and that they love not only variety, but are passionately fond of youth. Janauschek should have retired ten years ago. Then she had fame and fortune. Her diamonds, the gifts of emperors, kings, and other potentates, were the envy of her coevals. Where are the fame, the fortune and the jewels now? Perhaps gone "where the woodbine twineth," but certainly not among portable property of the present day. Still believing in seniores priores, I come to Miss Genevieve Ward, who is remarkable from having made the fatal mistake of not taking to the dramatic stage when youth and beauty were in her possession. Miss Ward is not only a representative American actress, but a phenomenal one. In several respects she resembles our greatest American actress, Charlotte Cushman. Like Miss Cushman, she began her public career as an operatic singer, and only took to the dramatic stage when her singing voice failed. As Madame Guerabella, Miss Ward threatened to take the operatic world by storm. When her voice failed her. she retired from public in mortification and disappointment. When at length she reappeared as a tragedienne she, like many others in this world, wept over lost youth and neglected opportunities. But she was able to show that she had risen above the perfunctory style of acting traditional with the operatic stage. She is now one of the most consummate artistes of the day. She falls short of the tremendous power and sweeping passion of Charlotte Cushman, but she has many of that great woman's attributes, and in finesse, earnestness and fidelity to nature has few equals on any stage. Of Clara Morris round the corner at the Union Square Theatre little need be said here. She returns to the scene of her greatest successes revived in health and matured in power. Miss Morris has always been a great actress, but never a great artiste. Her education is imperfect, and her training, though a long one, lasting from childhood, irregular and erratic. She belongs to no school of acting, but has rather created an unmethodical system, if the term can be used, of her own. At one moment she is as crude as she was fifteen years ago at John Ellsler's Theatre in Columbus, Ohio; the next moment she is as brilliant and powerful as Rachel in her best days. A thoughtful critic some years ago said that while Miss Morris had bad quarters of an hour during every evening, she had moments of greatness which obliterated all former impressions of crudeness and carelessness. A walk of two blocks down Fourteenth street brings one to Mrs. D. P. Bowers. The experienced play-goer watches this lady's acting as he does that of Edwin Booth. He knows that he will find all the histrionic perfections combined. A blind man will listen to the music of this wonderful woman's voice and the perfection of her elocution, and feel transported. Equally will a deaf man follow the marvelous grace of her action and the extraordinary variety of her facial expression with rapt admiration. Mrs. Bowers, as of course everybody knows, has been on the stage all her life, and she returns to New York without one jot of her charm and power abated. "Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety." She only lacks physique to be as great a tragedienne as Charlotte Cushman, and in high comedy her only American rival is Mrs. John Drew. Mrs. Langtry went on the stage from dire necessity. But five years ago she attacked the drama very much as a bull assaults a gate, not that I mean anything discourteous by the com. parison. But Mrs. Langtry started for histrionic fame on the veni, vidi, vici principle, and though she reaped pounds sterling and American dollars, she achieved nothing beyond this but notoriety. She is a woman of strong will and natural talent, and by study and perseverance has blossomed into an eminently attractive and admittedly capable actress. Had she attacked the drama earlier she would probably have become by this time a brilliant high-comedy actress. Tragic and emotional acting are quite beyond her powers, but high comediennes are acceptable on all stages. Mrs. Langtry has had the courage and enterprise to surround herself with an admirable company, and in Mr. Chas. Coghlan and Mr. Fred Everill, she presents to New York actors of the highest culture and power. John M. Morton. MR. LAWRENCE BARRETT. WITH the exception of Mr. Edwin Booth, no player of tragic parts now on the American stage, is held in higher esteem by the public, the country over, than is Mr. Lawrence Barrett. Yet here in New York, where it would be most to Mr. Barrett's advantage to be held in high esteem as a player, he has never had a large following. The reason is that his peculiar style of delivery is not liked. Mr. Barrett is generally looked upon as being a brainy man, an earnest man, an ambitious man, and a studious man. He writes well, talks well, and manages well, but in the judgment of the metropolitan connoisseurs he does not play well. His culture and cleverness appear, they say, in everything he does except in his stage personations. There, say all the New Yorkers that are entitled to an opinion on the subject, Mr. Barrett fails to present that semblance of reality that he essays to present, except in "The Man O'Airlie." In all of Mr. Barrett's other personations, they find very little to commend, despite his advantages, which are by no means meager. He is master of stage technique, has a good voice, abundant physical strength, a clear articulation, pronounces generally in accordance with good usage, and is not lacking in earnestness -a virtue that makes amends for a longer list of shortcomings than does any other. In fact, Mr. Barrett possesses all the requisites necessary to make him very acceptable as a player of great tragic parts except that faculty that enables an actor so to speak the language of his part as to make it sound as though thought and language came to him as he proceeds. Mr. Barrett's elocution is so bad that, with his voice and articulation, it could hardly be worse. He never gets anywhere near the natural; is always artificial in the extreme. He never seems to think; always speaks his lines like a lesson conned; always races ahead as does the average school-boy when he comes forward to "speak his piece." He has often been charged with being sing-songy and preacher-like, and so he is; but the charge of being sing-songy does not half cover his shortcomings as a reader - far from it! The audible manner in which he takes breath --with a gasp and a movement of the shoulders -violates one of the first rules laid down by all writers on the art of using the voice, whether in speaking or in singing. Mr. Barrett's breathtaking is somewhat like this: "Irreverent ribald (gasp) If so (gasp) beware the falling ruins (gasp). Hark (gasp),. Walk blindfold on (gasp), behind thee (gasp) stalks the headsman (gasp); Ha, ha, how pale he is " (gasp). This gasping in taking breath is the old, barn-storming, camp-meeting mode of "slinging in" the passion or the pathos. It is an affectation, a fakir's trick - it's anything but art. Then Mr. Barrett never pauses. Of the value of the judicious pause he seems to be wholly ignorant. No other one thing does more to make one's delivery natural and impressive than the proper distribution of time. In extemporizing we pause instinctively, and for two reasons: to prepare our thought for presentation, and to give the listener time to comprehend. Who has ever heard an extemporizer race ahead as Mr. Barrett does? No one! and no one ever will, for that mode of utterance is contrary to nature. Nor does Mr. Barrett show that appreciation of the thought expressed by the language he utters that we should expect him to show. He misplaces the emphasis very often. Here are some examples we have in "Richelieu : " "If he show violence If he play the lion, Why, the dog's death!" It is hardly necessary to say that violence and lion are the words to make emphatic. "I found France rent asunder There is nothing in the context to justify this reading. Richelieu says nothing about getting or losing France. "You bear it bravely." Of course bravely, not you, should receive the emphasis. There is no question of the manner in which any one else hears it. "Think your guardian star Rains fortune on you." If Mr. Barrett has any reasons for this reading, they are far-fetched. The emphatic words are worthy judge and law. These examples sufficiently show, I think, that Mr. Barrett is not the student he is generally credited with being, for surely slips like these would not occur if he gave the reading of his parts the consideration it deserves. The reading, the utterance, the elocution, in the player's art, is the difficult thing, the important thing, the thing in which the fewest excel, the thing that wings dramatic genius and enables it to soar. All the rest of the actor's art is comparatively easy. True, these slips in the placing of the emphasis are not noticed by one person in a thousand, but if the emphasis is always intelligently placed, every one of the thousand is more deeply impressed, because he more fully comprehends. The manner in which the words are uttered has almost-perhaps quite- as much to do with making the thought clear to the listener as have the words themselves. Finally, I do not think that Mr. Barrett is always correct in his conception of the spirit in which the individual speeches should be spoken a matter in which instinct guides, rather than study. A single example must suffice. In the fourth act, Richelieu replies to the "courtlackey," Clermont, who comes in with a simple message from the King, in this wise: one of the "motes that live in his daylight." We excuse Richelieu for losing his self-control in his scene at the end of the act with his formidable rival, Baradas, but if we give the matter a moment's thought, we do not excuse him for losing it in his reply to Clermont. The actor that gets into the elocutionary slough Mr. Barrett is in is irretrievably lost. The more industrious he is in his vocation, the more his faults become emphasized, the farther he gets away from nature. The Burbages, Bettertons, Garricks, Keans and Forrests never have been and never will be produced by any such school as the one Mr. Barrett cultivates. The gasping, chanting, galloping actor never has and never will achieve excellence. The tones of the Barrett school are not real, not honest, not truthful; and reality, honesty and truthfulness are as desirable, as necessary, in dramatic art as they are in any other art. Next to Mr. Barrett, the member of the Barrett organization that most interested me was Miss Minna K. Gale, a young lady of unusual accomplishments and of good personal appearance, that is comparatively new to the stage. Miss Gale, if we except Miss Genevieve Ward, is probably the most accomplished woman on the English-speaking stage. She speaks two languages besides English sufficiently well to play in either of them. But accomplished and ambitious as Miss Gale is, I do not think that she is destined ever to achieve excellence as a player, or ever to be a favorite with the theatregoing public. A lack of dramatic instinct will prevent her ever achieving the one, and a lack of native winsomeness will prevent her ever being the other. Miss Gale can be in earnest, and earnestness is a great thing, but it is not everything. Miss Gale has evidently taken some pains with her Julie and her Portia. I have heard both parts worse read, yet in both parts she makes many slips that a woman of her intelligence and habits of study should not make. In fact, the woman that makes such blunders as Miss Gale makes in these parts has, as yet, hardly earned the right to ask the public to come to see her personate them. Her first scene in The Merchant of Venice" was better read, in some respects, than were any of the subsequent scenes, though she did begin by mispronouncing the third word in it. Aversion and peise are two other words that Miss Gale would do well to consult the authorities with regard to. She has other faults of pronunciation better characterized, perhaps, as inelegancies that a study of the dictionaries would not remedy. Her orthoepic shortcomings are the more noticeable on account of an ambition she sometimes evinces "to paint the lily." As evidence that Miss Gale has yet much to learn before her elocution will be satisfactory, let me cite a few of her more glaring errors in the placing of the emphasis in the part of Portia, a part whose beauties more appear in the reading than in the acting, when it is satisfactorily played. Miss Gale says: "In choosing wrong I lose your company." It is not Bassanio's choosing, but his choosing wrong that will rob Portia of his company. "There is something tells me, but it is not love, I would not lose you." Clearly lose is the emphatic word, not I. This blunder is so gross that it can be accounted for only on the score of heedlessness. "How all the other passions fleet to air! Oh, love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy." Of course, other, not passions is the word to emphasize. "Though, for myself alone, I would not be ambitious in my wish." Miss Gale, it would appear, understands Portia to mean that she would not be, though she may seem ambitious, or something of that sort. "Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault." Comment is here unnecessary. "Lorenzo, I commit unto your hands, The husbandry and manage of my house." What does Miss Gale suppose hands to stand in contradistinction to? Lap or pockets, perhaps. "The quality of mercy is not strained." This reading says that though the quality of some other thing is or may be strained, the quality of mercy is not strained. Shylock has just asked: "What will compel me to be merciful? Portia replies: “Mercy does not come by compulsion.” Now the thought expressed in this para phrase by the word compulsion is precisely the thought here expressed by Shakespeare with the word strained. In reading, as in grammar, it is the thought that always determines. "It is twice blessed : It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." If it had been anywhere said that mercy is once blest, then this reading would be correct. The meaning of the next line is this: Mercy is something that blesses the man that gives, as well as the man that receives. "It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown." No good reason can be adduced for making better the most emphatic word in this line. There is nothing in the context to which it stands in contradistinction. How well mercy becomes the throned monarch is not the question being considered. The two most emphatic words in the line are monarch and crown, the latter being the more emphatic of the two. "To stop his wounds lest he do bleed to death." This reading makes Portia object, not to Antonio's dying, but to his bleeding to death. In order to make Portia say what she does say, death, not bleed, must be emphasized. Had space permitted, which it does not, I should have been glad to say something about some of the other principals of the Barrett organization, the gentleman that played Baradas and Gratiano excepted; for as he has not yet got beyond the broadaxe and jackplane period of his vocation — long as he has been at it — he, as yet, is hardly a fit subject for criticism. Alfred Ayres. Actors should not forget that in a certain sense they are tutors of the people. Quite as much as lecturers or elocutionists should they be particular in the matter of pronunciation. Within the last week actors of sufficient education and experience to know better, have mispronounced upon one or another of the stages of the city, the following words: "hovel," "chiaro-oscuro," "aspirant," "peremptory." "parent." It is bad enough to hear bad pronunciation in conversation without hearing it on the stage. Buffalo Express. - Miss Annie Clarke, for so many years the leading lady at the Boston Museum, does not pretend to have left the stage for good. During John Gilbert's annual engagement at the Museum she will undoubtedly support him. PHRENOLOGIST AND IMPRESARIO. THE gallant Impresario got it into his cranium that he would like to have his head examined and his bumps felt, so he disguised himself by taking the bouquet out of his button-hole, and toddled toward a phrenologist in Avenue Q. Having paid a fee of fifty cents, he sat in the artist's chair, and the operator, Mr. Smith, proceeded to tickle his temples. "Very strange head, sir," he remarked, after scratching the visitor's scalp till the blood came. "You use wretched pomatum, sir, and your ears are enormous." Never mind me hears, hexamine me 'ead." "This bump," said Mr. Smith, jabbing his thumb-nail into the Impresario's best wave, "shows me that you are a gormandizer and a beer drinker, while yonder protuberance proclaims you to be a liar and a horse-thief." "Indeed!" "Yes, sir, I can read by these bumps that you are haughty, insolent, impatient, stuck-up, ignorant, fond of rum, and have large feet." Hexamine me musical bump, please." Your musical bump does not exist, sir; you know nothing of music whatever." But, great Gawd, sir, I am an himpresario !" Makes no matter, sir. Furthermore, you are cruel, miserly, cold-blooded, repulsive and saucy." How is my organ of combativeness?" "You would run before a flea." 64 That is so; what else?" "You are also ignorant, purse-proud, a punster, a communist and a loafer, and professional reasons alone prevent me from boomeranging your miserable jaw." Well, well, I never did see such a phrenologist," said the Impresario. "Here, take this ten-dollar bill. You deserve it for frankness." "Thanks," said Mr. Smith, "allow me now to feel your bumps again. The ones on the other side yes, I see, they denote as I thought, courage, ambition, charity, pride and love. You are a philanthropist and a worthy citizen, a Wilberforce and a Leonidas, a Napoleon and a Pope Gregory ——— "But the ten-dollar bill is bad, Mr. Smith" |