Heroines of the Modern Stage

by Forrest Izard

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.