VI
Where the performances of Shakspere’s plays at His Majesty’s were sometimes insufficient was in the acting; and this was not Tree’s fault, for he was always eager to strengthen his cast by the engagement of the best actors available. At more than one of his revivals of the ‘Merry Wives’ he persuaded Ellen Terry and Mrs. Kendal to emerge from retirement to disport themselves as the joyous dames who delight in befooling Falstaff. The fault lay in the fact that fine performers were not to be had. Actors who were good in Shaksperian parts have always been scarce, and they are now steadily becoming scarcer.
Even fifty years ago, when Edwin Booth opened the stately theater he had built for himself, there arose a loud outcry against the mediocrity of his company, an outcry which rankled in Booth’s memory and which led him a score of years later to explain to me that he thought the complaint, even if justified, was unjust to him, since he had secured as well equipt a company as it was then possible to collect, with Edwin Adams and Mark Smith at the head of it. This came back to my memory when Henry Irving a little later spoke to me about the difficulty he had had in getting fit performers for Laertes and Mercutio and the other important parts of youthful buoyancy. “I engaged Forbes-Robertson and George Alexander and William Terriss, one after another, and I tried to tempt them to stay with me,” so Irving said to me. “But they preferred to set up for themselves. I don’t blame them, of course; but it is now almost impossible for me to find anybody whom I can trust with these important parts.”
It was sometimes meanly suggested that Booth and Irving were each of them unwilling, and perhaps even afraid, to surround themselves with first class actors. The suggestion is as absurd as it is unworthy; and it is plainly contradicted by the record. In the sixties of the last century, when Booth was consolidating his reputation by the earliest hundred night run of ‘Hamlet’ that any actor had ever achieved, Bogumil Davison came to New York; and the young American promptly invited the German tragedian to play Othello to his own Iago. More than a score of years later Booth again appeared as Iago to the Othello of Salvini. At one time or another he joined forces with Charlotte Cushman and with Modjeska. Henry Irving was equally free from petty jealousy; he always treated Ellen Terry as a co-star; and when he engaged Mrs. Sterling for the Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ he advertized her name as prominently as his own. No actor ever displayed more generosity to a friendly rival than Irving did when he invited Booth to come for a fortnight to the Lyceum to alternate Iago and Othello.
It was never difficult for Jefferson to find competent actors to support him as Rip Van Winkle; and he always rehearsed the piece carefully to make sure of the needful unity of tone. But it was very hard indeed to find performers of presence, of authority and of the sweep of style required by the boldly contrasted and highly colored characters of a rich old comedy like the ‘Rivals.’ At one time or another Jefferson secured the companionship of Mrs. Drew, of John Gilbert, and of W. J. Florence, gladly sharing his glory with them. He was delighted with the brief tour of the ‘Rivals,’ when a galaxy of stars deserted their orbits to twinkle by the side of his Bob Acres. Mrs. Drew was Mrs. Malaprop, Julia Marlowe was Lydia Languish, Robert Taber was Captain Absolute, Nat Goodwin was Sir Lucius O’Trigger, Francis Wilson was Fag and William H. Crane was Sir Anthony Absolute. Here was truly an all-star cast; and the combination was triumphantly prosperous. I saw it at the sole performance in New York, a matinee at that; and it was perhaps the best all around rendering of the ‘Rivals’ that I have ever seen, altho several of those who took part in it, accustomed to the more modern methods of our latter-day dramatists, were not quite at ease in their efforts to catch the tone of artificial comedy.
It is true, alas! that there are actors, and some of them are expert and accomplished performers, who when they rise to be stars not only seek to grasp all the good things for themselves and to monopolize the spot-light, but who even go so far as to begrudge any laughter or any applause which may be evoked by the members of their companies. Forty years ago one of the most prominent comedians on our stage had this pitiable characteristic. At the first performance of a play specially written for him, this star was standing in the wings waiting his turn to go on. Suddenly there was a roar of laughter and a round of applause. “Who’s that?” cried the star, “What did he say?” And at the second performance the line which had been so well received was cut out. And twenty years ago there was an American comic actress of robust force and wide popularity who slowly lost the favor of the public because she insisted on producing plays in which she never left the stage and for which she engaged actors and actresses who were feeble and colorless.
It is not only natural, it is also wise, for a star to see to it that his part is interesting and that it holds its interest from the first act to the last. He cannot help knowing that he is the lodestone which attracts the audiences. They pay their money to see him; and they are not getting their money’s worth if they do not see enough of him. But the spectators are best pleased with the star himself, they are most likely to hold him in delighted remembrance and to want to see him when next he comes to town, if he has given them a well-balanced play, in which every part is filled by a performer who can get out of it all it is worth. There are some stars who are almost self-effacing, and who do not even care whether or not they have their full share of the emphatic situations upon which the curtain falls. It was pointed out by not a few of those who saw ‘Leah Kleschna,’ when Mrs. Fiske produced it with a brilliant and well-balanced cast,—John Mason, George Arliss, Charles Cartwright, William B. Mack,—that the star let Mack have the curtain of the third act.