Kitabı oku: «Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889», sayfa 8
THE PASSING SHOW
The political season is over, and popular fancy lightly turns to thoughts of the drama. New York’s gay winter festivities are opening, and the theatres are nightly crowded with appreciative audiences. It would be strange indeed if, with upwards of twenty-five comfortable resorts for popular amusement in the metropolis, and a weekly change of attractions drawn from the best American and European sources, the most fastidious taste should fail to be pleased.
Probably the most successful of this year’s dramatic ventures is “The Yeomen of the Guard” at the Casino. The managers of that theatre have been wise to replace their variety-shows with this excellent comic opera. It steadily holds its own in spite of the critics, and after a three-months’ run continues as popular as ever. Mr. Aronson says it may remain at the Casino until the end of April. Gilbert and Sullivan’s productions are always new, always attractive. Each has a character of its own, yet no one could fail to detect the humor of Gilbert and the merry melodies of Sullivan in them all. If one may venture to compare their beauties, we should say that “Pinafore” excelled in vivacity – that peculiar sprightliness which the French call verve; “The Pirates” in humor; “Patience” and “Iolanthe” in satire – the one of a social craze, the other of political flunkeyism; and “The Yeomen of the Guard” in quaintness. The patter songs of the first are lacking in the last, hence its airs are not so dinned into one’s ears by the whistling youth of every street-corner, but the music is of a distinctly higher order. It is unfortunate that there is no change of scenery between the two acts. The dingy background of the Tower is not relieved by brilliance of costume, and the eye of the ordinary theatre-goer, accustomed to look for altered scenic effects, is disappointed at the repetition, only relieved by moonlight in the second act.
Some of the incidents of the play resemble “Don Cæsar de Bazan,” and are similarly worked out. Colonel Fairfax, imprisoned as a sorcerer, marries a young ballad-singer, who receives a hundred crowns, with the assurance that within an hour she will be a widow through her husband’s execution. He escapes, and is disguised as one of the Yeomen of the Guard, with whom, in spite of her vows, the young girl falls in love. A pardon for Fairfax arrives, his identity is established, the singer learns that the man she loves is already her husband, and all ends happily. In this transmutation of character, from the imprisoned sorcerer to one of the prison-keepers, we recognize the topsyturvydom of Gilbert, which is the distinguishing mark of his genius, from the Bab Ballads all through his later productions. In catchwords the present opera is lacking, and in the puns which never failed to draw out the “ohs” of the audience. But there is the same genial undercurrent of innocent humor which for years has amused the whole English-speaking public, and for which Mr. Gilbert deserves the lasting gratitude of a world too much given to life-sadness and mental worry. If “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” it is safe to say that the prescriptions of this most ingenious dramatic author have effected more widespread good than those of the most celebrated followers of Æsculapius.
It is especially to its music that the operetta owes its success. In this production Sullivan has excelled his former efforts. The first chorus is very fine, and in orchestration Sir Arthur shows himself to be without a rival. Its pure melodies form a valuable addition to English music, and mark the growth of a new school of which he is the leader. The influence of Wagner is clearly seen in some of its majestic marches, but the English composer escapes the metaphysical and unintelligible harmonies of the German school. Sir Arthur has evidently aimed at producing a more classical composition than any of his previous works, and he has done this perhaps at some slight sacrifice of immediate popularity. The jingle of “Pinafore” and “The Pirates” is replaced by a more sober style, which is likely to produce a lasting impression on English music.
Mary Anderson captured the town, as usual, on her return from England early in November. Palmer’s theatre was so crowded that it was difficult to get a seat even four weeks in advance, and the audiences were so enthusiastic that their enthusiasm constituted quite an interruption to the play. She chose “The Winter’s Tale” as her opening piece, taking the parts both of Hermione the queen and of her daughter Perdita. Miss Anderson is the first actress who has ever dared to so interpret the play. She tried it at the London Lyceum, to the horror of the critics, but it proved a great success. The resemblance between Hermione and her daughter, which Shakespeare insists on so strongly, gave Miss Anderson the idea of trying both parts. This plan had the additional advantage, that the leading lady is not suppressed by being cut out of the act in which Hermione does not appear. Her studies abroad have undoubtedly improved “Our Mary.” The coldness and statuesqueness with which she has been reproached could not now be discovered by the most adverse critic. She is more womanly, softer, less angular, and more graceful. The programme at Palmer’s should have been varied so as to give the public opportunity to see her in the old rôles that used to charm all beholders. One must not forget the exquisite scenery with which this piece has been set. It was used at the Lyceum, and, although it has been considerably cut down to fit the smaller stage of Palmer’s theatre, it is one of the best settings ever seen in this country.
Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett have been doing fairly with their Shakespearean revivals at the Fifth Avenue. There is no truth in the report that any difference has occurred between them. They will appear together at the Broadway Theatre next season, with better support, it is to be hoped, than they have recently had. Miss Mina Gale, who plays the leading female parts, however, is a promising young actress.
Agnes Booth has scored a great triumph as Mrs. Seabrook in “Captain Swift” at the Madison Square. For painstaking attention to detail, nicety of intonation, and powerful expression, Agnes Booth is in the front rank of leading ladies. We have seen her in many society dramas, and in each she has shown a charming appreciation of all the requirements. At the Madison Square, with its cosey stage, the visitor forgets that he is one of the audience, and feels almost like an intruder upon a scene in a private drawing-room. The situations in “Captain Swift” are striking. The hero, an illegitimate son of Mrs. Seabrook, goes away in his youth to Australia, cracks a bank, and returns after many years, unconsciously to become a rival to the legitimate son for the affections of his cousin. The mother discovers his identity, and discloses it to him in order to prevent the ill-starred marriage. The mingled expression of shame, suffering, and maternal love in Agnes Booth’s face during this scene is one not soon to be forgotten. The audience remains spellbound for a moment, then a burst of enthusiastic applause crowns her effort. In the original play, as written by Mr. Haddon Chambers, the hero, being followed by an Australian detective, commits suicide. As altered for the American stage – by Mr. Boucicault, it is said, – Captain Swift, to relieve the Seabrook family from embarrassment, gives himself up to the officers of justice. In either case the morale of the play – the portrayal of an absconding bank-burglar and horse-thief as polished, brave, generous, gentle – is to be regretted, as every apotheosis of vice should be. Mr. Barrymore, as Captain Swift, exhibits some capital acting, and Annie Russell makes a very graceful Mabel Seabrook.
Mrs. Burnett’s dramatization of her well-known story, “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” is attracting large crowds at the Broadway Theatre. It is peculiar in that it depends entirely for its success on the acting of a child, or rather children, Elsie Leslie and Tommy Russell alternating in the title rôle. This arrangement has been adopted because the part is so long that it would be too fatiguing for a young child to play it night after night. Both the children show a delightful unconsciousness in the recitation of their lines, but Tommy’s natural boyishness fits the character rather better than Elsie’s assumed character, although her gracefulness charms the audience. The motive of the play, as in the story, is the love of a boy for his mother; and this makes it a great attraction for the ladies.
A pretty play is “Sweet Lavender” at the Lyceum. Its plot is simple. A young lawyer falls in love with his housekeeper’s gentle little daughter, but family pride prevents their union until, by the opportune failure of a bank, his fortunes are reduced to a level with hers. Its clever details and quiet humor make it well worth seeing. Pinero, the author, is a playwright skilled in the mechanical arrangement of his situations, and everything runs smoothly. Miss Louise Dillon as Lavender, fits the part exactly.
Thompson and Ryer’s play of “The Two Sisters” at Niblo’s made many friends, in spite of its somewhat threadbare theme. There was the typical dissolute young man who seduces one of the sisters, and the benevolent hotel-keeper who befriends and marries the other. The villain murders his father, is arrested, and dies, while the betrayed girl is given a home by her sister’s husband. Some good singing is scattered throughout the play.
A similar drama, full of love and murder, was “The Fugitive,” by Tom Craven, which had a very brief run at the Windsor.
Vivacious Nelly Farren and the London Gaiety Company, which recently held the boards of the Standard Theatre in “Monte Christo, jr.,” gave New Yorkers an enlivening taste of English burlesque. The play is nothing, the dancing everything.
The German opera season is well under way. The Metropolitan Opera House opened with “The Huguenots,” which was followed by “William Tell” and “Fidelio.” Herr Anton Seidl, with his unrivalled orchestra, makes these productions of the great German and Italian composers a yearly treat to lovers of music, which is looked forward to with eagerness and parted from with regret.
“The Old Homestead” holds its own at the Academy of Music; the “Brass Monkey” at the Bijou has had a longer run than it deserves; Clara Morris has been appearing in Brooklyn; Louis James and Marie Wainwright are beginning their New York engagement. “She” was pronounced a great success in Boston, over $1600 being taken in at one performance. Mr. Boucicault is conducting his Madison Square theatre-school of acting with patience and confidence, although the results thus far are not very promising. Of the eighty pupils, the men are awkward and the women lack talent. However, as Mr. Boucicault said, if but three or even one out of the eighty should come to dramatic eminence, it would be well worth all the trouble.
Our German fellow-citizens are to be congratulated on the opening of Mr. Amberg’s new theatre in Fifteenth Street. The location is central, the house is well built, the company good, and the repertory includes drama, comedy, farce, and comic opera.
There have not been many dramatic events abroad this season. The new Shaftesbury Theatre in London is possessed of such a wonderful fire-proof curtain that a few weeks ago the audience had to be dismissed because they could not raise it. “Captain Swift” proved a great success, financially, at the Haymarket, and “Nadjy” is attracting crowds at the Avenue Theatre. At Terry’s, “Dream Faces,” a one-act play, and “The Policeman,” a three-act farce, had good houses. Grace Hawthorne has just had to pay a hundred pounds to the owners of some lions. She was seeking to produce an English version of “Theodora,” and engaged a den of lions twelve months in advance of the time she wanted them. She demurred to paying for the animals that she had not used, but the case went against her. On the Continent there is not much doing. P. A. Morin, the dean of Holland’s dramatists and actors, recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance, his golden jubilee, at Amsterdam. It is announced that Patti will sing in “Romeo and Juliet,” at the Grand Opera House, Paris, giving three performances for one thousand dollars each.
More attention than usual is being paid just now to the development of musical taste on both sides of the water. Mr. Walter Damrosch has been lecturing in New York on Symphony. The Liederkranz and the Symphony Society have been giving enjoyable concerts; and Herr Moriz Rosenthal, the pianist, has met with a success that has only been rivalled in late years by Joseffy.
REVIEWS
When the late George Butler, quite regardless of fact, and for the fun of the thing, telegraphed from Long Branch to Dion Boucicault at New York, that Billy Florence and Jack Raymond had been saved from a watery grave by a huge Newfoundland, Boucicault responded, “God is good to the Irish.” This sentence, so often quoted, passed, without its point, among the masses. What Dion caught on the nib of his pen and wired to the world was the fact that these two famous comedians, with their English names, were Irish by birth, instincts, and blunders. The people that present to the earth the only race that has wit for its national trait never had two more striking illustrations of the fact than in these stage delineators of genius. Raymond is in his grave, and the inevitable dust of forgetfulness is gathering upon his tomb. But Florence, so kindly known throughout the land as Billy Florence, is yet alive, and very much alive. The evidence of this fact is before us in a book entitled Florence Fables (Belford, Clarke & Co.). Those so-called fables are not fables, but fiction without morals, but full of interest, which is much better, and come to the reader in the shape of love-stories, odd adventures, and strange incidents at home and in foreign lands.
The book is sure of a wide sale, for the multitudes that have seen Florence in his merry performances, and learned to love as well as enjoy this finished comedian behind the footlights, will be curious to learn how he appears as an author. But they “who come to scoff” will hold on to enjoy. The name is enough to attract; the book itself is sufficiently charming to entrance the reader.
In the last issue of Belford’s we gave a specimen of the humor: to find the pathos and the true love the reader must consult the volume.
Divided Lives, a novel, by Edgar Fawcett (Belford, Clarke & Co.). – There is no more charming writer of English fiction than Edgar Fawcett, and the volume before us is one of his best. He builds upon the English method, animated by the French motive, and deepens the shallow affection of the first to the unfathomable depths of human passion to be found in the last. His dramatic ability holds one to the interest of his book whether it has plot or not. Of course he has his faults. His characters are known to us mostly by name, labelled, as it were, and he will at any time sacrifice one or a dozen to work up a dramatic effect. Then he has affectations, not precisely of style, but of phraseology, that irritate; and he cannot resist putting smart speeches into the mouths of everybody. Here is an example:
“Indeed, no,” Angela replied, “there never was a more devoted friend than Alva is. To leave her charming home, and all her gay town life, for weeks, just that she may be near me! It is something to vibrate through one’s entire lifetime.”
This is said by a little girl to her lover, and the lover responds:
“It teaches me a lesson. What is easier than to misjudge our fellow-creatures, and how wantonly we’re forever doing it! We are all like a lot of mountebanks behind an illuminated sheet. The uncouth shadows we cast there are the world’s misrepresentation of us.”
As these young people were desperately in love with each other, but then just engaged, this sort of talk, however clever, is as much out of place and jarring on one as would be the murder scene from Macbeth.
Edgar Fawcett is given to a delineation of social life in New York. This is a wide and varied field, and the author makes it intensely interesting. We have called attention, however, to the fact that he is not altogether correct. The English motive, of turning the interest upon social caste, is not true when applied to our mixed condition. We have no aristocratic class, as recognized in England; and the assumption of such in real life is too ludicrous and unreal for the purpose of the novelist. Mere wealth without culture, and culture without wealth, contend in a mixed condition with each other, without supplying the interest to be found in earnest endeavor to overcome unjust distinctions and power. When Mr. Fawcett does deal with a class he is not always just. In his Miriam Balestier, published in the November number of Belford’s, by far the most artistically beautiful work from the pen of our author, he by implication attacks an entire profession that has held through generations not only the admiration but love of the public. There is absolutely nothing in the vocation of an actor that either degrades or demoralizes. On the contrary, there is much to elevate and refine – the work sustained by art found in painting and music, the thought and feelings of the poets; and while this is meant to amuse, the stage has been the most potent factor in not only furthering civilization and culture in the masses, but awaking in the hearts of the many the loftiest patriotism known to humanity. It has awakened a deeper feeling for the home, a firmer trust in the law of right, and a stronger faith in virtue than aught else of human origin. That taints, stains, and abuses have attached is no fault of the drama. One could as well attack the bar or the pulpit because a few unworthy members have disgraced themselves, as to hold the stage responsible for the recognized evils that have fastened themselves to a part. That we have senseless burlesques and lascivious exhibits of nakedness at a majority of our theatres is the fault of the patrons, not the stage. The manager, like any other dealer in commercial wares, caters to the taste of his customers, and the stage is no more responsible for their productions than the street is for the wretched street-walker.
So long as citizens take their wives and children to witness the shameless productions, so long will the managers produce them, and when remonstrated with, shrug their shoulders, and ask, “Well, what would you?” The pulpit denounces the drama, but leaves untouched their congregations in their patronage of its abuse. The great city of New York, for example, lately entertained a convocation of Protestant clergymen, met to consider the sad fact that they were preaching to empty churches, and to devise means through which to awaken the religious conscience of the multitude. They went to their meetings along streets where every other house was a saloon, where the beastly American practice of “treating” makes each a door to ruin; and they passed corners where the walls were aflame with pictured advertisements of naked legs, bare bosoms, and faces fairly enamelled with sin. One reads their debates with amazement. Their clerical minds were troubled with what? The doings of “papists,” as Catholics were designated.
Our pen has carried us from our author. Of course Mr. Fawcett will say – and say with truth – that his strictures were aimed at the abuse and not the legitimate use of the drama. But his fault was that he does not make this clear, and by intimation he leaves himself open to the charge.
Aside from this, his work is a work of genius; and his story of the little girl who struggled with such vain endeavor against her environment will live among the noblest productions of fiction given us.
The Professor’s Sister, by Julian Hawthorne (Belford, Clarke & Co.). – This is the most successful work of a successful novelist, and holds the reader entranced from the first page till nearly the last. We say reader, but not all readers. Mr. Hawthorne is as peculiar in his work as his eminent father was, with a more select audience. He is at home in the wild, weird production of humanity, touched and marked by a spiritualism that is far above and beyond the average readers of romance. If it calls for as much culture, in its way, to enjoy a work of art as its creation called for in the artist, Mr. Hawthorne’s fictions demand the same tastes and thought the author indulges in. The little girl who craves love-stories, or the traveller upon the cars who picks up a book to lose in its pages the wearisome sense of travel, will scarcely select the Professor’s Sister, and if he or she does, will wonder what in the name of Heaven it is all about.
There is another class, however, that will read with avidity and interest every page of this book, and this class grows wider in our midst every day. One meets at every turn a man or woman who will tell, in a matter-of-fact way generally, that is positively comical, of some experience he or she has had with spooks. This, not the old-fashioned experience with ghosts. All that has long since been relegated to the half-forgotten limbo of superstitious things. One hears of communions with the dead, told off as one would tell of any ordinary occurrence common to our daily life. This is the natural reaction of the human mind against the scientific materialism of the day, that seeks to poison and destroy all religious faith. Religion is as necessary to health of mind as pure air is to that of body, and when deprived of either, we struggle for loop-holes of light and breath with instinctive desperation. Shut out the light of heaven from the soul, be it in library or laboratory, and one sickens and resists.
Mr. Hawthorne wisely lays the scene of his story in Germany. The rarefied condition of the German mind is recognized the world over, and through the everlasting smoke of philosophers’ and students’ pipes one is prepared for all sorts of fantastic shapes moving through the mist. The author opens with a talk on occult subjects that sounds like voices heard in a fog-bank. With the reader thus prepared, he plunges him into a drama where substantial men and women mingle with spirits, and the strange story does overcome us like a summer’s cloud, without our special wonder.
We have said the story holds one spellbound till near the end. The dénoûment is not good. “Calling spirits from the vasty deep” is much easier than disposing of them after they come. To give a satisfactory explanation of the mystery, and to exorcise the spirit back to rest, make no easy task, and Mr. Hawthorne is not to blame for finding it difficult.
We cannot drop the book without calling attention to the author’s happy use of English, in depicting character. Here is a specimen:
“Madame Hertrugge was white, red, and black. Her skin was white, her cheeks and lips red, her hair, eyes, and eyebrows black. Her mouth was beautifully formed, and firm, with a firm chin. Her eyes were rather full, imperious, and ardent. She was overflowing with vitality. The hand which she extended to one in greeting was soft but strong, with long fingers. She was dressed in black, as became her recent widowhood; but she had not the air of mourning much. She was sensuous, voluptuous, but there was strength behind the voluptuousness. You received from her a powerful impression of sex. Every line of her, every movement, every look, was woman. And she made you feel that she valued you just so far as you were man. You might be as nearly Caliban as a man can be, but if you were a man she would consider you. You might court her successfully with a horsewhip, but if she felt the master in you, and were convinced that you were captivated by her, she would accept you. It was ludicrous to think of the senile old merchant having married such a creature. In fact, marriage, viewed in connection with this woman, seemed an absurdity. There was nothing holy about her, nothing reserved, nothing sacred. I don’t mean that she was not ladylike, as the phrase is. She knew the society catechism, and practised it to a nicety, but like a clever actress, rather than by instinct or sympathy. It was obvious that she didn’t value respectability and propriety the snap of her white fingers, save as a means to an end; and if she were in the company of one whom she trusted intimately, she would laugh those popular virtues to scorn with her warm, insolent breath. As it was, all the forms and ceremonies in the world could not disguise her. Her very dress suggested rather than concealed what was beneath it. She was a naked goddess – a pagan goddess – and there was no help for it. She made you realize how powerless our nice institutions are in the presence of a genuine, rank human temperament.
“And be it here observed that I am here writing of her as a temperament, and nothing more. I knew nothing of her former life and experience. I had no reason to think that her conduct has ever been less than unexceptionable. But the facts about her were insignificant compared with her latent possibilities. Circumstances might hitherto have been adverse to her development; but opportunity – rosy, golden, audacious opportunity – was all she needed. She certainly bore no signs of satiety; she had nothing of the blasé air. She was thirsty for life, and she would appreciate every draught of it. She was impatient to begin. And, contemplating her abounding, triumphant, delicious well-being, it seemed as if she might maintain the high-tide of enjoyment until she was a hundred. It really inclined one to paganism to look at her.”
What Dreams May Come, by Frank Lin (Belford, Clarke & Co.). – This is a cleverly constructed story of English life by an American pen, and the average reader is kept in doubt as to the sex of the author. There is a clear, incisive style of the masculine sort on one page that indicates the man; there is a treatment of female wearing apparel on another that gives proof of the feminine. With us there is one feature that solves the doubt. The pages abound in convictions. Now the female mind, as a general thing, is not given to doubt. When a woman believes anything she believes it, and her faith is as firm as the solid rock. She stands “on hardpan,” to use a phrase common to the Pacific slope. Although the book is built on dreams, the theory of heredity it is written to promulgate is no dream in the mind of this fair author. We have called attention to the fact that the use of the novel to illustrate some doctrine, philosophical or religious, is really an abuse. One takes up such form of fiction to be amused, and one feels put upon and abused to find it an essay more or less learned on life and things. If a little information can be injected in the story unbeknownst, like the parson’s liquor told of by President Lincoln, well and good; but it is rarely done successfully. If philosophy is indulged in, one quickly detects the bald head and wrinkled brow; if it is religion, the cloven hoof or wicked tail of Satan betrays the author.
When it was once proposed by a staff officer to drive an obnoxious guest from headquarters by a liberal use of burnt brimstone, General Sherman said, “That is high strategy in its way, but it is not war.” “When one goes a turkey-hunting one does not care to be killed by bears,” said an old hunter; and when a seeker after amusement, to be found in a love-story, opens what purports to be a novel, it is shocking to find it a learned treatise on some abstruse subject.
The book before us is another illustration of this defect. It opens with an exquisite picture of Constantinople a hundred years since. In this prologue some wicked conduct is rather hinted at than told. After this the story opens and moves on pleasantly enough, until the fact is developed that the hero and heroine are reproductions of the sinful grandfather and grandmother long since lost to the census-taker of the British empire. What was evil in the ancestors is an innocent love in the descendants; and the fair author exhibits considerable power by preserving the sanity of her characters, to say nothing of that of the reader, in the complications and situations that follow.
The book is of interest to us, not so much for what it accomplishes, as the promise of better things. It exhibits all the qualities necessary to a successful writer of fiction. There is a keen appreciation of character, a love of nature, and a clear, incisive style that make a combination which if properly directed insures success.
