Show I An Analysis of English Players I BY FRANKLIN FRANKLI N FYLES New Nc York Nov 2 Three exponents of modern dramatic art at its London l est have just presented themselves in New blew ew York wih three very unusual plays once offensive here is bygone nom There is no indiscriminate i acceptance accept nce of English things on account of their origin That Lena Ashwell Forbes Robertson and Henry fH Irving come from approvals approval over I there has no more to do with their wel welcome welcome welcome come than It ought to tot toI The Th lady stranger among them Lena t I Ash Ashwell well was not helped to London re ret t rown by beauty That is clear ar at the thet I t fight sight of her She may Play have been I pretty when a girl but not possibly i r beautiful At present she is a comely 1 f woman with an almost handsome face rand sand a n tall pliant t figure Her own dark hair hall is unbleached and her visage is J not colored more than to produce the I I effect of a natural complexion under stage lighting Upon het her entrance she docs not look like an actress but a youngish woman in a state of genuine genuineness genuineness ness Her voice in its first words to a aNew aNew New York audience sounded harsh and metallic but that came of nervousness evidently for very quickly it was toned j agreeably to the utterance of a trained j English I speaker which Is as devoid of 01 cockney accent as a Yankee twang Miss Ashwell has not said much be before before before fore you forget to think of her elocution elocution elocution tion and listen eagerly for what she is Issa i saying sa with no res regard ird for for or how she says it Just as Clara Morris used to thrill you on so 50 this actress sends her voice straight to your heart with what whatever whatever ever vel message it has to convey She knows knowiS the tricks but does not play them openly If she came to America Amerita Ameri at 20 with the skill which has taken her fill 40 to acquire audiences would could go wild with enthusiasm over her Not that she is a genius but she Is gifted glUed and if she were wore as young as the girl she assumes to be in the play she might arouse us as Clara Morris did with emotionalism The drama chosen for the American d debut but of Miss Ashwell The Shula Shulamite Shulamite Shulamite mite is boldly original and startling ly peculiar A rich old Boer farmer r has taken talen for a second wife a young girl to whom in his admiration he applies ap applies applis plies plis the Biblical description of the th e beautiful Shulamite woman but he Is Isa Isn i ia s a n grim religionist and a believer in the th e scriptural injunction that wives should d obey their husbands also in the sacred assertion It is godly to chasten thoS those those e v we e love and for chasten he reads read s chastise when his beloved bride is f s ss disobedient Deborah has borne Oom Oo m whip meekly as South African African African can wives wh es do but now Robert the th e young oung superintendent of the farm teaches t her the shame and degradation n of such h usage Po fig o when Oom Simeon Simon comes at her he r again with a rawhide she Is deter determined determined determined mined not to take the strokes But how avoid them A sudden Idea comes to toler t ther o her ler She knows that he has prayed to tu t u God that as Abraham became a father fathe r at a hundred and four so he at 65 or 0 r thereabouts may beget a child by his hi s rs bride On the impulse Deborah tells to l s him that she is in a way to yield him h m offspring That is a lie but lie he believes believe s It joyously and becomes kind to the tin e wife where before be he was cruel cruet It Js is is said that in a weeks practice e i with Tic The before bringing it into Broadway young false promise of a baby and old Si glee thereat were taken as a joke that was was all the funnier for being intimate and obstetric That foreboded the fiasco of an emotionally planned drama Its authors Claude Askew and Edward Knoblauch would have been depressed if present But the first Gotham audience would have haye uplifted them for while it was not rapturous over the plays oddity there th re was no disposition toward levity false promise of progeny is the pivotal point in a plot so 50 melodramatic that it contains Oom Oem Sim Ona attempt to in inflict filet a death penalty when he learns that she has lied and the th killing of him by Robert in defense of her No one can complain of conventionality In this Play it s x There is so much singularity in Caesar Cae Caesar j sar and Cleopatra that Forbes Robertson Rob Robertson ertson dared not produce it itt in London where its author George Bernard Shaw is not tolerated even even as a joke I but waited to venture it in New York where is enjoyed as a serf serio comicality In this whimsical play Julius Caesar at t 55 goes g goes es to Egypt to see at 16 to sit with her on the feet of the Sphinx and discuss topics of modern interest in a modern man mani manner manner ner They were were as human as we are areso aret ar e so Fo t Shaw maintains and talk i in t 1 language as formal as our blank verse so 50 he puts colloquial English into thet thelt mouths as equivalent to their habitual diction thus assuming to give A D 1906 expression to B C 48 43 thought As Shaw has said that he heis is a better dramatist dra dramatist dramatist matist than Shakespeare re we may as aswell aswell a awell g well put aside the met metrical metrical metrical literature and wait for a e repertoire of classical plays to use in instead instead stead Shaw wrote with Forbes Robertson s Caesarian profile in mind it is said and he may have bethought him also of supremacy among stage stag e Shaws wit is sill boll pshaw v unless incisively uttered Caesar an and nd d Cleopatra was published in 1900 and an d Robertson Roberts n after trying tr it in Glasgow let it wait waft until American money was wa s ready to be risked in a n costly production production tion And it is a beautiful show of o f Egyptian splendors The story of it is f s that Julius Caesar not then a tyrant tyran t with grouches but a right am amiable amiable fable monarch found Cleopatra Cleopatr not yet ye t the voluptuous queen whom we knew as An onys ruinous siren but a merr merry y maiden whom the Roman ruler seated d on the Egyptian throne But I wont dt t epitomize a work that has been six si x years in print If Forbes Robertson were to bring out Cleopatra drama or o r and assume the role of the be bedeviled deviled Antony he might wish to bor bog borrow borrow bogrow row bis big beauteous American law Maxine Elliott Goodwin to em embody embody body the thc Sorceress of the Nile but his hi s own wife Gertrude Elliott Robertson although a less lovely creature to loo look k ks upon is better bettel able to realize reaUze Shaws Shaw s immature Egyptian girl who plays play s pranks on Caesar the Great and hash t yet developed dangerously dangerous c qualities Richard Mansfield Arnold Arnol d Daly and Robert Loraine Lorainc have delivered delivered delivered ered Bernard Shaws wit and humor to t g American an audiences effectually but bu t Forbes Robertson dims their achieve m with Caesar and Cleopatra X Sir Henry Irving nee Broadribb separated sep separated S P from his bIs name and wife early earl in his stage career and took Ellen Terry for an in inspiring InspirIng inspiring comrade in the art of acting Miss Terry earned and obtained her dues in fame and money The Irving son and heir hell Henry B is paired mat matrimonially matrimonially matrimonially and professionally with Dorothea Baird I believe he is well under way to greatness that will equal his fathers but hut not that his Dorothea will be as Ellen was a helpmate in acting That he means to carry her along into renown however Is i proved by Mauricette To be sure sure he gave only one evening and an afternoon to that play at the very end of his New York engagement as though grudging ly yet that he can twice in a while bile i stand back and let his wife w fe st step p in front of him is evidence of his devotiOn devoti Ii i ito to her nor For Irvings Irvines role in Mauri Mauricette Mauricette cette is that of an incredibly selfish and obdurately lustful man at the usually cooling age of 60 with a still fond though matronly wife whom he lie neglects for younger women omen i This play pkwy is from the thc French and you and I know how lax la is the Gallic view of connubial obligation in fiction if not in reality and may be this hus i band blamed much In Paris for acquiring a 3 passion for a young girl whom his wife brought into their home as a companion for herself but in Lon London London London don and New York no tolerance can be gained by such a scoundrel no matter how he may try to give to his black blackness blackness ness a hue of roseate sentimentality There must be a strong reason reas n why Irving impersonated him in London and now does It again in New York The reason is that the girl in the case Mauricette is the dearest of maidens only two years more than sweet 16 that she a whit to blame for the husbands love of her nor yet for lov ly loving ing him in her clean girlish way for to toh her h r he seems an ideal man and now you comprehend why Dorothea Baird Irving with her suitably gentle in ingenuous ingenuous individuality wishes to per perform perform form in Mauricette Eo Once I heard an eminent actor say that Sir Henry Irving had cultivated his mannerisms as a means of ot distin his performances and as proof the fact was cited that in some roles he put them off while in social life even when making malting speeches he betrayed no trace of them It means success for an actor said my friend when the caricaturists and the take him up Our first boost came when fun was made of his affectations Mrs Fiske knew she was on per leer way wa when her peculiarities were attacked by stage humorists Mrs Carter felt sure of herself when they began to pull her herred herred herred red hair Nevertheless Nevertheless the younger Irving does not ape his fathers singularities nor disclose any of his own There is a similarity between the two Irvings inthe in inthe inthe the intellectual face and the command commanding ing fug figure also in some tones of or the smoother voice and gestures of the themore themore themore more graceful pantomime but there is never neye any of the gro Bro grotesquely gait sit and speech Henry B is versatile too rather more so than his father I think The first half of Mau Mauricette Mau lIau Is light comedy with the faith faithless faithless less husband more amusing than de deplorable a volatile shallow humorous type of the gay Parisian It is not until he brings his licentious proclivities into his own household and makes his loyal i wife and th the innocent girl the sufferers i from from them that he lie becomes hateful and Before that Irving is a very I proficient p to Mauricette a in the bill billis billis billis I is Markheim esteemed l by y many ad admirers a admirers of Robert Louis eth ethical ethical ethlea II ical lea tales as worthier than Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Markheim goes to the I shop of a dealer to whom he has sold many stolen articles arti les but this time his I errand is to murder and plunder Having Hav Having HavIng I ing killed the man he begins to ran ransack ransack sack ack the place for his hoard of money i I Now Markheim is no common criminal crim criminal criminal inal but has a cultured mind and a susceptible conscience and when sud suddenly suddenly suddenly denly the weight of his awful deed depresses de depresses depresses presses him he flings himself across a a counter in remorseful agony Upon lift liftIng liftIng lifting Ing his head he sees a 3 man confronting him himAn All An of the room save sage that two faces Is dark Those These white visages are il illumined illumined Illumined so adroitly that the lighting falls on nothing else Its source is not I discernible and so its effect is super supernatural supernatural natural Stevenson calls the visitor a spirit You are left to guess whether it is the Hyde to a Jekyll in self or a Mephistopheles come to tempt a Faust He tells tens the murderer of his i peril argues that it would be futile as aswell aswell well weIl as foolish to abandon the job half done assures the wavering wretch that nothing can save him from a criminal j career and md offers to tell him where the j hidden money is There is a rap at the j door That is the servant says the spirit j Let her in and kill kilI her That Is your j only way I reject your aid says Markheim now resolute let me alone The spirit disappears The servant enters Go to the police Markheim says I have killed your master Quite as weird as Sir Henry in ih The Bells is Henry B in Markheim x Alongside those plays plas of London make I am a ashamed to place pace as New Yorks most remarkable output of the week The Day Before and Mam 1 1 selle Champagne as an entertainment based on the homicide The little theatre once known as Mrs Osbornes Playhouse Pla house where Harry Thaw and Stanford White picked out Evelyn Nesbit from the row of show showgirls showgirls showgirls girls submitted to wealthy profligates for admiration was reopened for this enterprise The expectation was that the house could be oe made bawdier than before by exploiting the tragedy which had got its start there Thaw White and Evelyn velyn by name as aswell aswell aswell well as by Imitation were the charac in The Day Before Thaw was represented as having married Evelyn away from White and hubby and wife were trying to be good together but White was determined that Evelyn should eo so back to him and be bo bad again The triune scenes offensiveness was made ridiculous by an actress weighing in at pounds to impersonate the pounds of Evelyns aesthetic and etherial beauty with the bulk threatening to burst the confines of the tiny stage with emotional phenomena The made out Thaw to have been provoked to kill White so the district attorney V deemed it un unlawful unlawful lawful and a nd asked the police pollee po lice Therefore IThe The Day Before only one performance The TIle extravaganza aganza of or Ia melle Champagne Is therefore continued by itself That was the play that was in progress s in a roof garden you know when Thaw shot White The stage di director director director rector who then thell announced the homi homicide homicIde homicide cide to the audience now comes before the curtain to tell why The Day Be Before Before Before fore given The show girl whom White selected from the new display on that fatal night to take out to supper is in the present company But the principal actress is the May whose marriage with Captain Putnam Bradlee Strong drove him from rom the United States army and rendered him uncongenial at the New York clubs which he had frequented After his in income income income come ceased he went on the vaude vaudeville vaudeville ville stage with May but as exhibits of celebrity they developed no value Now May is the who in the play emerges from a colossal bottle of champagne to bewitch a town rounder as the evil Spirit of Wine But a change has come over the he rev revelries revelries revelries of such men as Thaw and White since the one killed the other othen Seekers of show girls sit no more m re in the boxes and front rows of theatres to examine e amine every fresh array arraj of pretty young wo women women women men in the ballet choruses Twelve se selected selected selected specimens are put on view in this renewal of or Champagne and they are as handsome a lot as the theone theon theone one on in which Thaw and White espied Evelyn Nesbit but none of the former formerly ly shameless profligates go to see them and the enterprise is a a fiat flat failure as other folks wont even go to make malte fun of it |