Vol. 93

No. 3

HE

EDDA GABLER sat just across the table from me at supper after the play. It was all very well for Grant Allen, in his day, to say that Hedda was "nothing more or less than the girl we take down to dinner in London nineteen times out of twenty." Certainly she was something more this time, for Tess of the D'Urbervilles-not Hardy's Tess, perhaps, but ours-sat there, too. I was at supper with Hedda and Tess and Becky Sharp, for surely that was Becky's red hair that could be glimpsed in the shadow of the big hat and voluminous veil. That erect figure, vital, alert, indefatigable, eloquently animate, surely that was Becky. There was something of Becky, also, in the mutinous, gleaming humor, and a little something of Cynthia Karslake, stepping forth briskly from the pages of Langdon Mitchell's glittering comedy. Then there was my dear friend Mrs. BumpsteadLeigh, or at least her unmistakable lorgnette, not wielded now for the abashed discomfiture of others, but flirted and brandished, like the fan and the morsel of a handkerchief, just to enforce a few of the more fervent gestures-those vivid, arresting gestures which so emphasize and underscore a speech that, when you wish. to repeat it in black and white, you must

needs out-Brisbane Brisbane in your desperate recourse to capitals or italics. In the utter self-effacement of these enthusiasms of opinion, as we talked of the theater, there were the accents of great Lona Hessel, and in the deep conviction, the allpersuasive conviction, something of Rebecca West and Salvation Nell, sweet Nell of old Cherry Hill. It was not merely that you could not choose but hear: you could not choose but believe. She could say "Bosh!" for instance, with simply devastating effect. In fact, she did.

"Bosh!" said Mrs. Fiske, for of course it was Mrs. Fiske, "do not talk to me about the repertory idea. It is an outworn, needless, impossible, harmful scheme."

"I gather," I answered brightly, "that you are opposed to repertory."

"Well, Mr. Barker not only carried out the repertory idea in his season at Wallack's, but admitted then that he could conceive of no other kind of theater."

"Exactly," said Mrs. Fiske, in triumph. Indeed, she quite pounced on Mr. Barker and on me. I suspect she had been waiting for us. "And let me tell you that nothing more harmful has happened in the American theater in years than the Barker season at Wallack's."

Harmful? One heard many unkind things said of Mr. Barker at the time, but there never had been the suggestion that he worked an evil spell. Those who rejoiced over his "Man with a Dumb Wife" never suspected him later of doing harm in the theater.

"Harmful," said Mrs. Fiske,-"harmful and pernicious. One play, 'Androcles and the Lion,' Mr. Barker produced perfectly. It was a beautiful achievement, and what followed was all the more tragic because he had already shown himself a master of his art. A master. He had shown us how splendidly he could shine as a producer if only he would be a specialist a specialist like several of our own, though of the greatest value to us all because the loftier literature of the theater would have no terrors for Granville Barker. But he put the same company through the paces of a quite different play for which it was grotesquely unfitted. That is the essence and the evil of the repertory idea. He slaughtered "The Doctor's Dilemma'-slaughtered a capital play before our very eyes beyond all hope of a resuscitation in this generation."

In particular, as she recalled that evening, Mrs. Fiske saw the beautiful rôle of the wife so atrociously played that she wanted to rush from the theater and forget that it had ever happened. And what specially depressed her was the evidence. of the very harm she feared having its deadly effect on her own ingenuous companion, an earnest "student of the drama," who was applauding conscientiously at the end of each act.

"Why the applause?" asked Mrs. Fiske,

"Mr. Barker's unfortunate influence was the direct result, you see, of the importance of his position, of the fact that he was supposed to stand for what was good in the theater. When an ordinary manager"-she named one, but the reader can fill in to suit himself, for the range of choice is large-"when an ordinary manager produces a play badly, even very badly, he works no great harm. He has made no pretensions to what is idealistic in the theater. We have not taken him seriously. But Mr. Barker is not an ordinary manager. When he opened the doors of Wallack's the public was invited to come and see something fine and true, something representative of the best. We were told that here was something at least approaching the realization of a certain. ideal. We were told that we would be safe in regarding the offerings of the Barker system as offerings in good art, things real, vital, progressive; things to set the intellectual pace; something like a standard, a model, something to measure by.

"Now, all of us who know the theater know that even the most highly intelligent and cultivated people are for the most part mere children there. People whose understanding and taste in literature, painting, and music are beyond question are, for the most part, ignorant of what is good or bad art in the theater. This is strange, but true; and it always has been true. I shall never forget the first time I saw Duse in 'La Locandiera.' Mrs. Fiske's eyes shone as they always shine when she names the greatest lady of them all. "There, my friend, was probably the most perfect and utterly beautiful example of delicate comedy in all the world of acting in our day, yet I saw the

performance in the company of a highly cultivated woman who was excessively bored and who missed completely the marvelous spirit and the astounding revelation of technical fluency in that matchless performance."

"But "The Doctor's Dilemma,' " I ventured.

"Why," said Mrs. Fiske, "the public, always so easily misled in the theater, had been led this time to believe the Barker production good

art, whereas in truth it was bad art, very bad. That several of the parts were beautifully acted could not for a moment excuse the fact that, considered as a whole, the performance

was atrocious. Yet how could it be otherwise when the two leading parts, Jennifer Dubedat and the title rôle, were completely misrepresented? Furthermore,

en

tire scenes in the play were out of key and out of tempo. Now what should we say of

an opera in which

and in which whole passages were out of key and out of tempo? Your audience, trained to music, would immediately recognize the extraordinary deficiency and condemn it. In the case of 'The Doctor's Dilemma,' however, the audience, for the most part untrained in dramatic criticism, accepted as an example of good art the misrepresentation, the mutilation of a splendid play. So the mischief was worked, and, because of the very conspicuousness of Mr. Barker, ignorance and bad taste were encouraged. For Mr. Barker was more than an ordinary

art.

"So you see, my friend, we have had nothing so harmful and pernicious befall our theater in years as Granville Barker's season-unless-" and here Mrs. Fiske resorted to the whisper used by those in imminent danger of being shot for treason-"unless it was the New Theater."

This was a leap; and yet it was natural to move from the sorry, dismantled Wallack's to the sumptuous temple that overlooks Central Park from the west, the mausoleum which sheltered at first and for a little time the most ambitious at

tempt to endow drama ever made in America. It is no longer the temple of the drama, but the temple of the chorus. girl. The New Theater has become a music hall.

"Whatever the fine idealism, the unselfishness, the splendid and genuine philanthropy that launched the New Theater," said Mrs. Fiske, "it was headed from the first for shipwreck."

"Even had the building been right and the people within it right?"

"Even then," she went on. "There was one factor bound to wreck it."

"And that one factor-"
"Repertory."

This is worth underscoring, because there is little reason to believe that many of those who benevolently launched the New Theater yet recognize this diagnosis of the ills of which that endeavor perished. It is certain that four years after the New Theater closed its doors these same men were ready to endow virtually the same scheme under the directorship of Mr. Barker, the great producer from overseas. It is equally certain that even after Mr. Barker's first season they were ready to establish him here, and it should be kept in mind that this project failed of fulfilment for entirely adventitious and personal reasons. It would be neither tactful nor chivalrous to set these forth at this time. Besides, it does not matter. It is important to remember only that if Mr. Barker is not now the head of a lavishly endowed theater in New York, it is not because of any recognized flaws in his theory of the theater. And his theory of the theater is repertory. That theory is apparently still in favor. You are sure to hear it expounded at every luncheon given by the Society for the Gracious Patronage of the Drama. The very word is one to conjure with among all the little putterers in the theater.

They dream of an American Comédie Française. They yearn for an institutional playhouse which shall have a fairly fixed company for alternating performances of good plays, that shall provide change and freshness and much experience

for the actor, while it gives deserved, but unexpected, longevity to masterpieces too frail and precious, perhaps, to fill the auditorium eight times a week, and yet well worth nursing along in repertory. This was the theory of the New Theater; this is Mr. Barker's theory of the theater. It is not Mrs. Fiske's.

HER heretical and quite unfashionable sentiments on the subject were expressed over the supper-table one snowy evening. It was after the performance of "Erstwhile Susan" at a theater "somewhere in the United States," and this is only the memory of that conversation. From such memories alone-mine and others' - is there any prospect of spreading before the reader her theory of the theater; for in all the years she has worked in it she has written no solemn treatises, spoken seldom, given forth few, if any, interviews, and, having precious little enthusiasm for the past, indulged in no reminiscences. This has probably been due to no settled policy of stately silence, but rather to the overwhelming impulse of evasion every time an opportunity has arisen. It has been due a little, I imagine, to a feeling that as long as she would stage and play a piece, no more could be asked of her; a little, too, to her alert consciousness of the absurd, her lively horror of seeming to take herself too seriously. There it isthe deep-seated aversion to appearing in any degree oracular. Some time ago, as a matter of fact, there had been a vague suggestion of a dignified outgiving in which I was to conspire; but by the time I reached the place appointed the impulse had passed and left merely a disarming, but impenetrable, smile.

"Who am I to talk about the theater?” she asked that time, quite as though I had suggested it. "How can I, who in twenty years have done upon the stage so much of which I cannot approve, speak now as producer, as stage-director, or as actress? Ah, but the saving grace is that Mr. Fiske and I have made no pretensions, though it is maddeningly true in the theater that because you do a thing people will insist