The Regular Season Opens--I have a Small Part to Play--I am among
Lovers of Shakespeare--I too Stand at his Knee and Fall under the
Charm.
Up to this time the only world I had known had been narrow and sordid and
lay chill under the shadow of poverty; and it is sunlight that makes the
earth smile into flower and fruit and laugh aloud through the throats of
birds. But now, standing humbly at the knee of Shakespeare, I began to
learn something of another world--fairy-like in fascination, marvellous
in reality. A world of sunny days and jewelled nights, of splendid
palaces, caves of horror, forests of mystery, and meadows of smiling
candor. All peopled, too, with such soldiers, statesmen, lovers, clowns,
such women of splendid chill chastity, fierce ambition, thistle-down
lightness, and burning, tragic love as made the heart beat fast to think
of.
Perhaps if I had attempted simply to read Shakespeare at that time, I
might have fallen short both in profit and in pleasure; but it was the
_hearing_ him that roused my attention. There was such music in the sound
of the words, that the mind was impelled to study out their meaning. It
seems to me that a human voice is to poetry what a clear even light is to
a reader, making each word give up its full store of meaning.
At that time Forrest, crowned and wrapped in royal robes, was yet
tottering on his throne. Charlotte Cushman was the Tragic Queen of the
stage. Mr. James Murdoch, frail and aging, but still acting, was highly
esteemed. Joseph Jefferson, E. L. Davenport, J. K. Hackett, Edwin Adams,
John E. Owens, Dan. Setchell, Peter Richings and his daughter Caroline,
Mrs. D. P. Bowers, Miss Lucille Western, Miss Maggie Mitchell, Mr. and
Mrs. Conway, Matilda Heron, Charles Couldock, Joseph Proctor, Mr. and
Mrs. Albaugh, Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, the Webb Sisters, Kate
Reynolds, were all great favorites, not pausing to mention many more,
while Edwin Booth, the greatest light of all, was rising in golden glory
in the East.
Of the above-mentioned twenty-eight stars, eighteen acted in
Shakespeare's plays. All stars played a week's engagement--many played
two weeks, therefore at least twenty-four of our forty-two week season
was given over to Shakespearean productions, and every actor and actress
had the Bard at their tongue's tip.
In the far past the great disgrace of our profession was the inebriety of
its men. At the time I write of, the severity of the managers had nearly
eradicated the terrible habit, and I never saw but two of that class of
brilliant actor-drunkards, beloved of newspaper story writers, who made
too much of their absurd vagaries.
Looking back to the actors of '65, I can't help noticing the difference
between their attitude of mind toward their profession, and that of the
actor of to-day. Salaries were much smaller then, work was harder, but
life was simpler. The actor had no social standing; he was no longer
looked down upon, but he was an unknown quantity; he was, in short, an
actor pure and simple. He had enthusiasm for his profession--he lived to
act, not merely living by acting. He had more superstition than religion,
and no politics at all; but he was patriotic and shouldered his gun and
marched away in the ranks as cheerfully as any other citizen soldier.
But above all and beyond all else, the men and women _respected_ their
chosen profession. Their constant association of mind with Shakespeare
seemed to have given them a certain dignity of bearing as well as of
speech.
To-day our actors have in many cases won some social recognition, and
they must therefore give a portion of their time to social duties. They
are clubmen and another portion of their time goes in club lounging.
They draw large salaries and too frequently they have to act in long
running plays, that are made up of smartish wit and cheapest
cynicism--mere froth and frivolity, while the effective smashing of the
Seventh Commandment has been for so long a time the principal _motif_ of
both drama and farce, that one cannot wonder much at the general tone of
flippancy prevailing among the theatrical people of to-day. They guy
everything and everybody, and would jeer at their profession as readily
as they would at an old man on the street wearing a last year's hat.
They are sober, they are honest, they are generous, but they seem to have
grown utterly flippant, and I can't help wondering if this alteration can
have come about through the change in their mental pabulum.
At all events, as I watched and listened in the old days, it seemed to me
they were never weary of discussing readings, expressions, emphasis, and
action. One would remark, say at a rehearsal of "Hamlet," that Macready
gave a certain line in this manner, and another would instantly express a
preference for a Forrest--or a Davenport--rendering, and then the
argument would be on, and only a call to the stage would end the weighing
of words, the placing of commas, etc.
I well remember my first step into theatrical controversy. "Macbeth" was
being rehearsed, and the star had just exclaimed: "Hang out our banners
on the outward walls!" That was enough--argument was on. It grew
animated. Some were for: "Hang out our banners! on the outward walls the
cry is still: they come!" while one or two were with the star's reading.
I stood listening and looking on and fairly sizzling with hot desire to
speak, but dared not take the liberty, I stood in such awe of my elders.
Presently the "old-man" turned and, noticing my eagerness, laughingly
said: "Well, what is it, Clara? you'll have a fit if you don't ease your
mind with speech."
"Oh, Uncle Dick," I answered, my words fairly tripping over each other
in my haste. "I have a picture home, I cut it out of a paper, it's a
picture of a great castle, with towers and moats and things, and on the
outer walls there are men with spears and shields, and they seem to be
looking for the enemy, and, Uncle Dick, the _banner_ is floating over the
high tower!"
"Where it ought to be," interpolated the old gentleman, who was English.
"So," I went on, "don't you think it ought to be read: 'Hang out our
banners! on the outward walls'--the outward walls, you know, is where the
lookout are standing--'the cry--is still, they come!'"
A general laugh followed my excited explanation, but Uncle Dick patted me
very kindly on the shoulder, and said: "Good girl! you stick to your
picture--it's right and so are you. Many people read the line that way,
but you have worked it out for yourself, and that's a good plan to
follow."
And I swelled and swelled, it seemed to me, I was so proud of the gentle
old man's approval. But that same night I came quite wofully to grief. I
had been one of the crowd of "witches"; I had also had my place at that
shameless _papier-mache_ banquet given by _Macbeth_ to his tantalized
guests, and then, being off duty, was, as usual, planted in the entrance,
watching the acting of the grown-up and the grown-great. _Lady Macbeth_
was giving the sleep-walking scene. Her method was of the old, old
school. She spoke at almost the full power of her lungs, throughout that
mysterious, awe-inspiring sleep-walking scene. It jarred upon my
feelings--I could not have told why, but it did. I believed myself alone,
and when the memory-haunted woman roared out: "Yet, who would have
thought the old man to have had so much _blood_ in him?" I remarked,
_sotto voce_: "Did you expect to find ink in him?"
A sharp "ahem!" right at my shoulder told me I had been overheard, and I
turned to face--oh, horror! the stage-manager. He glared angrily at me,
and began: "Since when have the ladies of the ballet taken to
criticising the work of the stars?"
Humbly enough, I said: "I beg your pardon, sir, I was just talking to
myself, that was all."
But he went on: "Oh, you would not criticize a reading, unless you could
better it--so pray favor us with _your_ ideas on this speech!"
Each sneering word cut me to the heart. Tears filled my eyes. I struggled
hard to keep them from falling, while I just murmured: "I beg your
pardon!" Again he demanded my reading, saying they were not "too old to
learn," and in sheer desperation, I exclaimed: "I was only speaking to
myself, but I thought _Lady Macbeth_ was amazed at the _quantity_ of
blood that flowed from the body of such an old man--for when you get old,
you know, sir, you don't have so much blood as you used to, and I only
just thought, that as the 'sleeping men were laced,' and the knives
'smeared,' and her hands 'bathed' with it, she might have perhaps
whispered: 'Yet, who would have thought the old man to have had _so much_
blood in him?' I didn't mean an impertinence!" and down fell the tears,
for I could not talk and hold them back at the same time.
He looked at me in dead silence for a few moments, then he said: "Humph!"
and walked away, while I rushed to the dressing-room and cried and cried,
and vowed that never, never again would I talk to myself--in the theatre
at all events. I mention these incidents to show how quickly I came under
the influence of these Shakespeare-studying men and women, some of whom
had received their very adequate education from him alone.
It was odd to hear how they used his words and expressions in their daily
conversation. 'Twas not so much quoting him intentionally, as it was an
unconscious incorporation into their own language of Shakespeare's lines.
Tramps were to them almost always "vagrom men." When one did some very
foolish thing, he almost surely begged to be "written down an ass." The
appearance of a pretty actress in her new spring or fall gown was as
surely hailed with: "The riches of the ship have come on shore!"
I saw a pet dog break for the third time from restraint to follow his
master, who put his hand on the animal's head and rather worriedly
remarked: "'The love that follows us sometimes is our trouble--which
still'" (with a big sigh) "'we thank as love!' But you'll have to go
back, old fellow, all the same." If someone obliged you, and you
expressed the fear that you had given him trouble, he would be absolutely
certain to reply, pleasantly and quite honestly: "The labor we delight in
physics pain!" And so on and on unendingly. And I almost believe that had
an old actor seen these three great speeches: The "seven ages" of man,
"To be or not to be!" and "Othello's occupation's gone," grouped
together, he would have fallen upon his knees and become an idolator
there and then.
Yes, I found them odd people, but I liked them. The world was brightening
for me, and I felt I had a right to my share of the air and light, and as
much of God's earth as my feet could stand upon.
I had had a little part entrusted to me, too, the very first week of the
season. A young backwoods-boy, Tom Bruce, by name, and I had borrowed
some clothes and had slammed about with my gun, and spoken my few words
out loud and clear, and had met with approving looks, if not words, but
not yet was the actress aroused in me, I was still a mere school-girl
reciting her lessons. My proudest moment had been when I was allowed to
go on for the longest witch in the cauldron scene in "Macbeth." Perhaps I
might have come to grief over it had I not overheard the leading man say:
"That child will never speak those lines in the world!" and the leading
man was six feet tall and handsome, and I was thirteen and a half years
old, and had to be called a "child!"
I was in a secret rage, and I went over and over my lines, at all hours,
under all kinds of circumstances, so that nothing should be able to
frighten me at night. And then, with my paste-board crown and white sheet
and petticoat, I boiled-up in the cauldron and gave my lines well enough
for the manager (who was _Hecate_ just then) to say low, "Good! Good!"
and the leading man next night asked me to take care of his watch and
chain during his combat scene, and my pride of bearing was most unseemly,
and the other ballet-girls loved me not at all, for you see they, too,
knew he was six feet tall and handsome.