The lack of attention by managers to this matter of suitability often leads to very awkward results, chiefly in the case of the ladies. Many times we have listened to ravings about the beauty of the heroine, and when she has appeared there has been a giggle in the house on account of her lack of beauty. We have frequently heard references to the tiny feet of a healthy young woman who would hardly have got three of her toes into the glass slipper, or to the dainty hands of a lady who would split a pair of eights.
The beauty of the men is not so frequently referred to, but we sometimes have an ugly fellow vainly trying to live up to suggestions that he is an Adonis and merely looking ridiculous in consequence. The matter of age, too, enters into the question—at times disastrously. Some actresses are like Cleopatra or Ninon de l'Enclos, but many look twice their reputed age. It is only in the case of Juliet that it is deemed decent to refer to this difficulty, and then merely because Shakespeare has set her so cruelly young that everybody knows nobody can play and look the part.
In this matter a little good sense would work wonders. We critics are much to blame, and blamed, for not trying to force the entry of good sense. Some of our forebrothers never hesitated to talk bluntly about the physical unsuitability of players for their parts, but we have grown so mealy-mouthed that if Miss Florence Haydon were to play Rosalind or Mr Louis Calvert Romeo, we should merely use some obscure phrases about unsuitability of temperament instead of saying something usefully brutal about the folly of these admirable artists. If we go a little further, our editors are pestered with letters to which we have the privilege of replying.
The whole thing is absurd. The public is not deluded, and we hear murmurs in the theatre and outcries in the streets about the fact that Miss So-and-so is far too ugly for her part and Mr So-and-so too old, and the plays fail because the charges are true and the stage illusion has never been created, and the critic's authority—if any—is weakened. There are as many bad performances because the players are physically unsuitable as because they are otherwise incompetent.
If these ideas were acted upon the profession at large would gain, for the players would be put more constantly in circulation; on the other hand it will be suggested that the actors and actresses would grow less skilful, since it may be imagined that their highest achievements are exhibited when overcoming the greatest difficulties, in which proposition there is an obvious fallacy; and also that they would gain less experience, having a smaller variety in parts.
The advocates of the old stock system certainly would howl, because they think it did an actor good to play a great number of vastly different characters. It must, however, be recollected that in the time when the stock system flourished, putting aside the comparatively small classic repertoire, a very large proportion of the pieces were written upon more mechanical lines than the better plays of the present time, and parts tended to become classifiable into distinct well-known categories. To-day popular players are often engaged for long terms at theatres, where they are inevitably given characters for many of which they are unsuited in physique or temperament, to say nothing of age.
Another matter is the question of accent. From time to time we have players on our boards who speak English with a foreign accent in parts where such an accent is an absurdity. No doubt some have grappled with this difficulty very cleverly. Modjeska, for instance, Bandmann, Mlle. Béatrice, Marius, Juliette Nesville and the lady who played here as Madame Simon le Bargy.
The memory of few goes back to Fechter, and it would hardly be tactful to refer on this topic to several American players. The effect, however, necessarily is unfortunate; it is difficult enough on the stage to create illusions, and very important not to multiply difficulties. Opera, with the magic aid of music, may contend successfully against such monstrosities as one singer singing an Italian part in French, whilst the others offer various styles of Italian, Anglo-Italian, German-Italian, Swedish-Italian—almost any Italian save the lingua Toscana. Spoken drama is not so robust in this particular, and the matter in question does not happen often enough to acquire validity by becoming a convention.
[Stars ]
The past season has been comparatively disastrous to the theatres, and many pieces have failed; this state of things is coincident with healthy progress in English drama, and the year has seen several productions that would have startled as well as delighted enthusiasts a few years ago. Putting aside musical comedy and comic opera, one asks why it is that a great deal of money has been lost at the playhouses and a very large proportion of pieces have been failures.