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Show I Dramatic Commenl' Justin Huntley McCarthy, the author of "If I Were King," lately, in a mngazlne article, explained why. In his opinion. K. II Sotirorn was the greatest of romantic actors Mr. McCarthy wrote of Mr. Sothern: If tho elder Sothern might have been a great romantic actor the .ouuger Sothern Is a great romantic actor. The term "romantic actor" has been much abused. It is not enough for a player to garb himself n doublet and hose and to carry a sword as long as that of Captain Spnvcmo: the trappings of tho Paladin Pala-din sit most ungainly upon many .shoulders, and there be raw. modern voices which utter very uncouthly the glowing speech of the horoes. "Ho who would understand the, poet," says Goethe, ''must wander lu the poet's lund." The true romantic actor must havo wandered in the kingdom of romance, ro-mance, have seen with living eyes the ciistle of enchantment and have brought bach from his adventure some of the maslc clfts that are only conferred in fairyland. It is tho possession pos-session of those gift that place Mr. Sothern In the front rank of romantic actors. The more I studied the artist's method the more I admired the artist. .vii acior io nc a .mcai ucuii inusi carry within himself the potentialities potentiali-ties of many indlvlduallsms: must be. as who should say. a quiver stocked with many arrows, lie must have tho mind of a Toet, the heart of a hero; he must be a philosopher, he must be a humorist, he must possess limitless lim-itless sympathy. I havo often envied en-vied tho actor for the way in which ho multiplies his life, being year In and year out for sonic glowing hours of every day himself a freeman of tho kingdom of dreams, king, soldier. Jester, adventurer. lover, laugher, defying the drive of years. But It Is only the great actors who convince their happy spectators of the irresistible irre-sistible reality of their make-believe. And this can oidy he when the actor has the power to understand all passions, pas-sions, and, understanding, to interpret inter-pret them with never-falling freshness fresh-ness which makes It ever appear that he is living his mimic life for lho first time, that the thlnss which appear ap-pear to be happening to him are happening to him unexpectedly, and Und him as they would find him. unprepared un-prepared It is tho possession of this power which makes Mr. Sothern ono of the foremost and ono of th noblest masters of his craft When Mr Sothern aTpears at the Sail Lake thoator on February V and be will b Mon In "If I Were "Rlias;" or Friday Fri-day oYonlng and at the Saturday mntluoo. and "IJhuimi" Saturday night. "I lwv never been In liaKdad." confesses con-fesses Otis Skinner, who import) mite th bestir of Badad In Edward Knoblauch's Kno-blauch's Arabian Nlchu play. "Klaniot. "and what I more. J do not especially caro If I novor go to Bagdad! I'm content con-tent with tlia Bagdad provided by tho author, tho producer and all the weno painters, costumes and proporty maker who took u hand In cr'jatlng the Bagdad of 'KlHtnei.' Should I actually po to Itag- , dad I aboukl probably learn a lot ot i facts duaty mix! dlSMCTeoabio facta but I doubt very much If I should got noaror to the truth about the ati'-iont city and tho oriental character than I have cotton cot-ton through study of the play and throuvh close roadlnjr of tho works of such orientalists ori-entalists a Sir Richard Burton and An-lolne An-lolne Gnllaud. "Truth and fa-i. It seems to m. are very different things. Th phouvrnipher. tho statistician and the bomtat nows-papor nows-papor reporter glv you farm- the painter, the novelist and tho poet ?lvr you truth. Of course truth Is merely well dlgost-d ; fact, plun imagination and Imagination , Is, after all. about the gretiteat thins In the world. In commerce and artlwuvhlp as well as In art. - A skilled-actor presents pre-sents a more truthful nacc figure of a truck driver than the truck driver could present of himself. Tho truck driver Is fact the actor, by adding Imagination to fact. prents truth. Tin trouble with a good bit of the alase roallsnt of tho day Is, that It Ih untruthful by reason of Its adherence to fact. "Durlnc the pnt quarter century we've boon having a sort of man mi for fact, not onlv In the theater, but In literature, in initio anil in tho other arts. Tho writers of miirk-ralclnz fiction hi our maguzne are stronc on facts, but has any one of lhm presented as truthful a picture of tho life and manners of our Period as Dickens and Thackeray presented pre-sented of their period? Or does the clatter clat-ter of tho kitchen reproduced In StrauVs's Domestic Symphony present the truth of domesticity? "A rebellion against aggrandizement of mere fact Is comlnc very Eoon. I think. Science Itself as represented by Sir Oliver Lodge Is uciriniilnz to wonder It fact Is everything- Science has come to be a good bit of a bully bully armed with a bagful of fact?. And it has been the habit of science to hurl those facts, like so many cobblestones, at anything and everything that It cannot understand. Usuallv, of course. It Is a deluMon or a superstition that is smashed, hut not Infrequently In-frequently It Is a truth n splendid, beautiful beau-tiful truth, smashed by an ucly Uttlo ha If -understood fact. . . "But to got back to Bagdnd. support ; I wont there for a week, a month or even a vear to learn how to play HaJJ. the beggar. 7 would see u mosque or two, a dusty caravan slouching along a narrow street, and I should hear the muezzin calling from his minaret and a thousand voices on every side crying "baksheesh." All these things I have seen and heard in Tunis and Algiers. But r saw and hoard them as an outsider , just ns I should do in Bagdad and In the building up of tho character of HaJJ tho remembrance of t'.iom has helped me but little. The spirit of it nil remains In my memory, of course, and It is the spirit rather than tho facts that I have endeavored to put Into the characterization. characteriza-tion. Fortunately, my visit to northern Africa occurred several years beiorc i encountered "Kismet." ap that I brought to the studv of the play an idealized picture of the orient, Instead of a rn.en.,al array of everyday facts. Old -Father Time docs that much for us. Ho sifts out the unimportant facts and preserves the spirit of truth and so doing he shows himself to be the greatest artist of us all." The reception accorded Richard Bennett Ben-nett and his co-workers In "Damagod Goods," which will be seen hero late In tho season. In the Inrge cities In the caBt, has been phenomenal. In only three cities Boston. Cincinnati and Newark-did Newark-did anv opposition develop, but In no Instance In-stance were any of Mr. Bennett s performances per-formances stopped or Interfered with. In Cincinnati tho director of public safety" appointed a committee of five censors, comprising tho health officer, a clorgvman, a newspaper critic, a collego professor nnd the president of the woman's wom-an's clubs. Four of the five censors. Including In-cluding the women's clubs' representative. representa-tive. Indorsed the play. In Boston the mayor took exception to one character, but. us the police commissioner failed to agre.o with him. Mr. Bennett's engagement, engage-ment, wns fulfilled without molestation. In Newark the situation was directly reversed, re-versed, tho mayor finding nothing objectionable objec-tionable and the police chief considering tho plav Immoral. However, the latter, fearing defeat In the courts, refrained front Interfering with the production. A millionairess composer Is the latest thing on Broadway. She Is Anita M. Baldwin, daughter of "Lucky" Baldwin, tho famous California plunger. She wrote the. Incidental music for "Omar, the Tent, maker," In which Guy Bates Post Is appearing ap-pearing at the Lyric theater. The music, which Is part of the Persian atmosphere, has attracted a great dcul of attention, but tho name of "Anita Baldwin" on the programme did not suggest to anyone the California girl who Inherited the Baldwin millions. Sho wos Riven tho commission com-mission to write tho music by Richard Walton Tully. author of the play, who is also a Callfornlan. Miss Baldwin was divorced recently from IT. L. McClaughry. whom she married mar-ried shortlv after Inheriting millions from her frit hor. It Is said that she turned to music as a relief after her marital troubles. Several of her compositions have boon given In concerts In Los Angeles, An-geles, but this is the first tlmo that she has written music for a play, and It is the first time that her compositions have I been given In New York. |