helpfulness of his message. Many go to the extreme of saying that
he should never be performed at all. With this question we are now
concerned only so far as to determine his attitude toward life and the
drama for there is no question as to his strength in determining the
tone and technique of later-day dramatists. As Mrs. Fiske herself has
said, “the most interesting, the most valuable plays written by others
are almost without exception pieces which display the influence of the
Norseman’s work. It would be an impertinence to say that Sudermann,
Fulda, Pinero, d’Annunzio and the Spanish playwright Echegaray do not
write interesting plays. They do, but after all their works are merely
those of devoted disciples--not those of the master.” To follow her in
her Ibsen creed (and she has the best critical thought with her) is to
believe him responsible for our search of truth in the theatre, for the
truth to nature that has brought a toning down of violent action and
heightened the desire, as Maeterlinck says, “to penetrate deeper and
deeper into human consciousness and place moral problems upon a high
pedestal. Bloodshed has grown less frequent, passions less turbulent;
heroism has become less unbending, courage less material and less
ferocious.” Ibsen appeals to the actor’s imagination, to all he has of
brain and soul. In these plays also the sensitive, discerning auditor
finds, not the sordid pessimism with which Ibsen has been so often
charged, but a burning zeal for rockbottom truth and sincerity and, in
some cases, the exaltation of tragedy. It is to be admitted that in his
reaction against the drama of futile romanticism, the “story book play”
of no character or consequence, Ibsen drew what were, in contrast, grim
pictures.
By her unmistakable vocation for the realistic drama, her intellectual
acumen, her power and habit of thinking out her parts, both in their
larger significance and in their revealing details, Mrs. Fiske
was obviously fitted for Ibsen. The restlessness of his women,
their curiosity, their keen concentration, found a response in her
temperament as her blonde and nervous person pictured their physical
aspect. Histrionic methods moreover adapted themselves to both mood
and matter. It is interesting to inquire in a little detail what these
methods were and are, for, with modifications, they characterize all
her work.
The keynote of Mrs. Fiske’s acting is akin to that of naturalistic
drama itself, as the dramatist himself understands it. He must portray
humanity as it is, with the selection and stress necessary for
effectiveness in the theatre. His heroines must be embodied through
similar methods. Such impersonation Mrs. Fiske accomplishes with the
utmost economy of gesture, action and voice. There is no staginess,
none of the aggressive grace of the actress playing a part; she is
rather the woman living it. There is obvious none of the routine
technique which actors frequently learn of each other, or in schools.
This is not to say that her style is not an outgrowth of an earlier
technique of a period when no doubt she was sufficiently “stagey” and
conventional. In the later period she has refined, out of this earlier
experience and her own insight, a method remarkable for its suggestion,
its repression, its freedom from familiar device. To the end of
theatric effect and illusion she, like all artists, has well defined,
recognizable means--some, like her wide-ranged, emotion-charged voice,
natural gifts; others more or less deliberate. How deliberate, it would
be hard to say, so closely knit in good acting are calculation and
instinctive action. Her power of imparting the details of impersonation
is notable. Gesture, walk, pose, facial play, intonation, pause, all
are worked out with precision and yet with a reticent naturalness
that makes strongly for effectiveness. Particularly convincing is her
power of pregnant silence. In Hedda Gabler, “Mrs. Fiske’s power of
ominously significant silence, of play of feature that reveals the
working brain behind, rises very high in the final scene with Brack.
He knows her share in Lovborg’s ruin; he can bring his knowledge into
play in the sordid theatre of the police court. The price of silence is
the submission that Hedda, with all her curiosity and zest for evil,
is too coldly cowardly to pay. All her tragedy has curdled mean. Her
only refuge is the meaner and cowardly escape of suicide. She does not
speak, yet one sees the idea germinate, mount and possess her, until it
flowers into reckless action.”[171]
In the first act of _Salvation Nell_ “Mrs. Fiske, as the scrub woman
in the barroom, sat holding her drunken lover’s head in her lap for
fully ten minutes without a word, almost without a motion. Gradually
one could watch nothing else; one became absorbed in the silent pathos
of that dumb, sitting figure. Miss Mary Garden, herself a distinguished
actress, said of this, ‘Ah, to be able to do nothing like that.’ In
_Pillars of Society_, while the Consul was making his confession to
the mob, again Mrs. Fiske, as Lona, sat quiet, one of the crowd; but
gradually, as she saw the man she loved throwing off his yoke of
hypocrisy, the light of a great joy radiated from her face, ending
in a stifled cry, half-sob, half-laugh of triumph, of indescribable
poignancy. To one beholder, at least, it brought the rush of tears,
and made the emotional as well as the intellectual drift of the play
completely clear, completely fused and compelling. Is not this acting
of a very high order, this so intense living in the whole life of the
drama that her quietest moment is charged with tingling significance?
Is this not true ‘impersonation,’ indeed?”[172]
Akin to this power of eloquent silence is Mrs. Fiske’s use of
“felicitous pause.” In the middle of a sentence, sometimes in the
middle of a word, will come a momentary halt such as anyone in real
life is constantly making. The effect is strikingly realistic; the
wonder is that many others have not discovered and profited by its
simplicity and naturalness. And then, coupled with her many sided
faculty of repression, is a power of sudden, telling, emotional speech.
Piercing a mood of charged silence, a sentence spoken in Mrs. Fiske’s
eloquent voice is often of electrical effect.
By such methods, she made Hedda, “an abnormally evil and soulless
woman, steadily plausible, momentarily potent, always conceivably
human.” In the words of the same critic[173] she gave to Nora, in _A
Doll’s House_ “the very semblance of life. When these traits (disdain
of convention, curiosity, self-concentration) become abnormal and pass
over into morbid chagrin and recklessness, sordid selfishness, vicious
vindictiveness, hard soullessness and mean cowardice, Mrs. Fiske’s
intellect and her temperament follow them.”
Mrs. Fiske’s Rebecca West in _Rosmersholm_ excited differences of
opinion. To some any Ibsen play is a brilliant study of certain phases
of life, to others only a depressing study in degeneracy. It is natural
that the actress’ work should make varied impressions. In the moments
of intense passion she rose superbly to the occasion; her Rebecca had
intellectual poise; she suggested beautifully Rebecca’s renouncing
love. It was, as far as it went, a portrait equal to any of her others,
but in a degree she failed to suggest plausibly the fascinating
half-intellectual and half-emotional force that gave Rebecca her
influence in Rosmer’s house. She was a shade too detached, a little
lacking in the warmth that must have belonged to Rebecca’s ideals and
to her love for Rosmer.
One may frankly admit, indeed, that Mrs. Fiske’s acting does not please
all tastes. What some find to be her repressive force is in the eyes
of others “stilted awkwardness.” The qualities which to most are her
most salient characteristics are to some her “intolerable mannerisms.”
One comment on her Hedda was that there was “not a large or spontaneous
moment in it,” that it was “an adroitly articulated mosaic, an
assemblage of details, all precise exposition, rather than a jointless
and living whole.” Her personality has been described as “cerebral”
and “brittle,” and her art as “too predominantly intellectual.”
Attention has been called to her “maddening rising inflection,” and,
with wearisome reiteration, to what has been called her “unfortunate
mannerism of runningallthewordsofasentenceintooneanother.” In this
last criticism there is a measure of justice, for at times her speech
has been disconcertingly rapid. There has been improvement in this
respect of late years, however, and to those playgoers themselves
temperamentally adapted to enjoy her work, her enunciation has been
seldom indistinct, her so-called awkwardness and mannerisms full of
significance, and her “cerebral” acting and personality the means of
true impersonation.
_The Pillars of Society_, since it is a social satire rather than an
outright tragedy, afforded Mrs. Fiske as Lona Hessel an opportunity
for brilliant comedy. It was a small part, too small indeed to have
bestowed on it her powers. But she has never chosen plays for their
“star parts.” She made Lona a delightfully humorous, honest-hearted
woman, a masterpiece, within its limits, of satiric comedy. Especially
fine was her acting during Bernick’s confession to the mob. We have
already seen how she sat in one of her motionless silences, listening,
in her face the joy of victory--a joy that finally expressed itself
in “a little smothered sob of triumphant love which no other American
actress could have invented, or could have executed.”
Mrs. Fiske’s skillful acting of the lighter passages in _The Pillars
of Society_ gives point to a contention of many of her admirers--that
she should oftener be seen in comedy. In the two conspicuous instances
of her ventures into comedy--_Divorçons_ and _The New York Idea_,
she has been strikingly successful. In Sardou’s play she acted with
“a refined abandon that was positively captivating, making Cyprienne
deliciously capricious and delightfully feminine.” _The New York Idea_
William Archer found to be “a social satire so largely conceived and
so vigorously executed that it might take an honorable place in any
dramatic literature.” It is an example of high comedy, the comedy “that
smiles as it chastises.” The title is explained in one of the lines:
“Marry for whim and leave the rest to the divorce court--that’s the New
York idea of marriage.” In its lightness of mood and speech the play is
a comedy, yet in the author’s mind the underlying interest is serious,
his purpose being not to make fun of or satirize true love, but to make
fun of and call attention to the frivolous, inconsequential attitude
toward marriage and divorce. American playwrights have seldom attempted
the satirical high comedy of manners. _The New York Idea_, with its
spirited, delicately pungent wit, is by all odds the best example so
far. Mrs. Fiske brought to bear on her part, that of a wife whose love
for her husband persisted after divorce, a lightness and sureness of
touch that were a match for the play’s best qualities. Her resources of
changeful mood happily expressed Cynthia Karslake’s high bred reticence
of sentiment and rather sophisticated gayety.[174]
_Tess of the D’Urbervilles_ was written by Lorimer Stoddard within
one week, but the result was, in the opinion of William Dean Howells,
one of the great modern tragedies, worthy to be ranked with Ibsen’s
_Ghosts_. At least Mr. Stoddard wrote a strong, truthful play, in the
main faithful to the novel by Thomas Hardy that was its original. It
was felt at the time that the American stage had risen for once to
unaccustomed literary and dramatic heights. The play was produced in
1897. It was as Tess that Mrs. Fiske fully “arrived.” Of her most
notable characters only Nora in _A Doll’s House_ had preceded. Her
abilities had been generally recognized but until now play and part
had never so fortunately aided her. She was not Thomas Hardy’s Tess.
It was futile to expect that she would be, for the Tess of the book
was simple, primitive, impulsive, whereas Mrs. Fiske’s art was always
better adapted to reflection and complexity. Such qualities she gave
her Tess. And naturally her smallness and blondness do not at once
suggest Hardy’s heroine. Yet her work was enthusiastically praised.
In spite of her disadvantages, in this part, of person and method,
the keenness of her perception of _her_ Tess and the nervous force
with which she imparted that perception to the audience made a deep
impression. Ir moments like that in which she discovers her husband to
be ignorant of her past life, or that of the return of the supposed
dead Angel Clare, her power of repressed emotion was most effective.
While actually doing almost nothing, her horror and amazement were
strongly felt across the footlights. The few sentences to her husband
that recall the years of waiting and disillusion, were simply spoken
but with the agony of Tess’s pitiful tragedy. The play was at once
successful, and the admirers of Mrs. Fiske, who had waited long for a
suitable opportunity for her, felt at last satisfied.
It is as Becky Sharp, in a play based on Thackeray’s _Vanity Fair_,
that Mrs. Fiske is by many most gratefully remembered. The author was
Langdon Mitchell, who several years later was to write for her _The
New York Idea_. _Vanity Fair_ is of course an immensely complicated
study of all kinds of characters in all sorts of relations. At first
blush it does not seem promising theatrical material. Mr. Mitchell
wisely did not attempt to produce a “dramatization,” but selected the
most dramatic incidents of the book, took the bare plot thence and
wove about it, largely in his own dialogue, a well-constructed play.
The climax is the scene of Lord Steyne’s visit to Rebecca, with the
unexpected arrival home of Rawdon Crawley. This scene, played with
consummate skill by Maurice Barrymore as Rawdon, Tyrone Power (and
later George Arliss) as Steyne, and Mrs. Fiske as Becky, was admittedly
one of the high water marks in the history of American acting. The
scene of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the eve of Waterloo, with
the stage full of people at first gay and thoughtless, and then in
succession attentive, doubtful, certain of danger, terror-struck, was
a masterpiece of complex and thrilling illusion. Mrs. Fiske’s Becky
is thought by many her finest portrait. Here was an opportunity for
subtlety, for piquancy, for brilliancy, for varying moods, for humor.
If the Steyne incident was the big moment of the play there were a
number of lesser ones. In the half-comic, half-tragic scene in which
Becky wheedles out of Steyne money to pay Rawdon’s debts, Mrs. Fiske
was superb. In its uniformly effective acting, its literary interest,
its legitimately spectacular appeal, and its success as an experiment
with the native dramatist, Becky Sharp stands strongly forth in any
review of Mrs. Fiske’s career.
In _Mary of Magdala_ Mrs. Fiske ventured, none too wisely, into the
field of poetic Biblical tragedy. Christ and his teachings, and the
greatest tragedy of all, form the substance of the play. The stage
management was imposing, the production sumptuous and accurate. Tyrone
Power as Judas was a genuinely tragic figure and in the strongest
scene--that of the temptation by the Roman who was seeking to have Mary
buy the safety of Jesus--Mrs. Fiske showed great power. Yet the play
was superficial and often clumsy, the treatment of its lofty theme
incongruous, and Mrs. Fiske’s acting in a measure disappointing. She
lacks the sensuous in her temperament and method, and on the whole she
lacked in this part sustained power. She was hardly the Magdalene of
the Orient.
More surely within the sphere designated by her large but specialized
talents was _Leah Kleschna_, a strong drama of the redemption of a
thief’s daughter by the influence of a man whose house she attempted
to rob. The narrative is continuously and plausibly interesting, the
incidents of great dramatic effectiveness. The play was “modulated
melodrama”--an effort to lift a story of striking incident and broadly
drawn emotions into the realm of reality. In the light it throws on the
nature of the thief, its making and its possible breaking, the play
had its social bearing. The immediate popularity of _Leah Kleschna_
was a hopeful sign to those interested in the growth of a worthy
native drama. With some point it was asked why the author had not
placed the scene of his play in America instead of Paris. Mr. McLellan
has not, perhaps, borne out the promise of this one play, but it is
interesting to note how many of Mrs. Fiske’s later plays have been of
native writing. To be sure success has not always been the result.
With moderately gratifying results she has played three one-act plays
of her own writing,--_The Rose_, _A Light from St. Agnes_, and _The
Eyes of the Heart_, all written years before, besides a one-act play,
_Dolce_, by John Luther Long. _The New York Idea_ and _Salvation Nell_
are both, of course, absolutely American. After _Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh_
and _The New Marriage_, both by Americans, came _The High Road_ by
Edward Sheldon, the young author of _Salvation Nell_. The foreign-made
plays, _Rosmersholm_, _Hannele_, _The Pillars of Society_ and _Lady
Patricia_ have varied this programme, but it is plain that Mrs. Fiske
in her encouragement of the native dramatist has been courageous and
persistent to a point that few of her rival managers have cared to
follow.
The most interesting instance is Mr. Sheldon. While he was still a
student in Harvard, his _Salvation Nell_ was accepted by Mrs. Fiske.
Produced in 1908, it made a curious impression. Without the contour or
substance of sound, full-bodied drama, and largely depending for its
popular appeal on the faithfulness of the scenes of the New York slums,
the play nevertheless showed the young author’s gift for situation, and
afforded Mrs. Fiske a part well adapted to her gifts. This comment is
almost equally true of _The High Road_, of four years later, which Mr.
Sheldon does not call a play at all. It is a “pilgrimage” in which Mary
Page is taken through nearly forty years of her life, successively as a
young New York State country girl, the mistress of a rich young artist,
the awakening young idealist rebelling as she matures, as the woman’s
labor organizer, and as the devoted wife of a distinguished statesman.
The play is not a great one, nor even a big one, but it is firmly
interesting and the range of effect for Mrs. Fiske is obvious.
Praise for her steadfast desire to search out native-made plays
cannot be too strong, and some of these ventures have been among her
unqualified successes, but many of her admirers feel that Mrs. Fiske’s
continued experimentation with the newer school of American dramatists
should be modified--if modification is necessary--to obtain the
thorough-going effectiveness of play, player and production she has at
times attained. Let us have more _Becky Sharps_ and _New York Ideas_,
even if it must be in revival.
One important factor in Mrs. Fiske’s success has been only hinted. The
married life of people of the theatre has been a frequent and sometimes
justified cause for unpleasant comment. In the case of Mrs. Fiske much
of the success of the better known half of the house has been to a
degree due to her husband. It is pleasant to record this fact--not that
it is a unique situation (for married stage folk can be normally happy
more readily than is thought) but because Mr. Fiske’s share in his
wife’s productions has not been wholly understood. In a recent letter
which Mrs. Fiske distributed to the press she gives to her husband a
generous share of the credit for the excellence which has always marked
the productions of the Manhattan Company. To him is due, she says, the
taste and thoroughness of the settings. The play which she was giving
at the time and which gave the announcement point, was _The High Road_.
The second act is placed in an apartment in upper New York, furnished
by an artist of training and knowledge. The scene bears this out in
a way that strikes a new note in stage decoration. The tapestries,
the reproductions of oil paintings, carved doors and mantelpiece, the
furniture, are accurate to the last detail.
Mr. Fiske leased and managed the Manhattan Theatre in New York for
the few years beginning in 1901. With this theatre as headquarters
the Fiskes waged vigorous war for eight years against the so-called
theatrical syndicate, a combination of theatre owners and producing
managers which had for years been acquiring the leases or ownership of
most of the theatres of the country. The Fiskes steadfastly held out
against the dictates of this syndicate as to their plans for tours, and
preferred not to become the property of a monopoly which was operated
primarily for its money gains. When their continued resistance was
strengthened by other “independents,” the trust made it increasingly
difficult to find theatres to play in. During her tour in 1904 in _Leah
Kleschna_ Mrs. Fiske in some cities played in summer gardens, and on
improvised stages in halls, much as she used to do in the old days of
barnstorming. With the rise of a rival syndicate, a rise made possible
partly through Mrs. Fiske’s help, the lines have loosened and the
Fiskes have no longer any difficulty in “booking” their plays.
The Fiskes’ organization has become definitely known as the Manhattan
Company, though they no longer control the theatre of that name. “As a
producer of plays” Madame Réjane once said, “Mrs. Fiske has no superior
in Europe.” The uniformity of ability in the actors, the adjustment of
the characters which often kept Mrs. Fiske herself in the background,
contrary to the usages of “stars,” the detailed excellence of the stage
“business” (as the ballroom scene in _Becky Sharp_) have always given
the productions the interest, the appearance of life itself. It is
familiar knowledge among those who have closely watched the American
stage that Mrs. Fiske is one of the best stage directors of the time.
The careful, extended rehearsal of a play is hard work, but Mrs.
Fiske, with the active nervous temperament that demands hard work, is
equal to it. She personally directs the rehearsals of her companies,
and when one remembers _Mary of Magdala_, for instance, which demanded
a hundred actors and was rehearsed more than six weeks, or when one
recollects the practically flawless stage management of any Fiske
production, her merit as an imaginative producer becomes apparent. Like
her acting, her stage management is quiet, effective, tensely alive.
During the retirement immediately following her marriage, and since,
Mrs. Fiske has found time to write a number of plays. _A Light from
St. Agnes_ is a one-act play of much dramatic power telling a tragic
story of low life among the bayous of Louisiana. _The Rose_ is another
one-act tragedy once played by Rosina Vokes’s company. _The Eyes of the
Heart_ is likewise a short play, having for its principal character an
old blind man who, after losing his fortune, is kept in ignorance of
his poverty by his family and friends. All three of these pieces were
played at various times and with considerable success by Mrs. Fiske
and her company. She wrote several other plays, some of them longer,
but none well known today. _John Doe_ was a dramatization of a sketch
by Mr. Fiske; _Grandpapa_, _Not Guilty_ and _Common Clay_ were all
long plays; _Fontenelle_, which she wrote with Mr. Fiske, was played
by James O’Neill; _Countess Roudine_ was written with the help of Paul
Kester and was once in the repertoire of Modjeska. _The Dream of
Matthew Wayne_ was also written by Mrs. Fiske.
Mrs. Fiske has said that the life of an actor is intolerably narrowed
if he has no interests outside the theatre. Such interests she has. The
strongest is her devotion to the welfare of dumb animals. The trapping
of fur bearers, the cruel conditions in cattle trains, lack of shelter
on the ranges, bull-fights, vivisection, all have had her for an enemy.
Individual cases of cruelty are constantly receiving relief at her
hands and to various allied causes her money and time has been given
generously. She often makes addresses before meetings in the interest
of such reforms, and at such times the actress is quite forgotten in
the humane woman.[175]