The St. Louis Globe Democrat says:—
“A diamond in the rough, but yet a diamond, was the mental verdict of the jury who sat in the Opera House last night to see Miss Mary Anderson on her first appearance here in the character of Juliet. It was in reality her debut upon the stage. She played, a short time since, for one week in her native city, Louisville, but this is her first effort upon a stage away from the associations which surround an appearance among friends, and which must, to a great extent, influence the general judgment of the debutante’s merit…. We believe her to be the most promising young actress who has stepped upon the boards for many a day, and before whom there is, undoubtedly, a brilliant and successful career.”
The St. Louis Republican has the following very interesting notice:—
“A fresh and beautiful young girl of Juliet’s age embodied and presented Juliet. Beauty often mirrors its type in this beautiful character, but very rarely does Juliet’s youth meet its youthful counterpart on the stage…. A great Juliet is not the question here, but the possibility of a Juliet near the age at which the dramatist presented his heroine. Mary Anderson is untampered by any stage traditions, and she rendered Shakespeare’s youngest heroine as she felt her pulsing in his lines…. She leads a return to the source of poetic inspiration, and exemplifies what true artistic instincts and feeling can do on the stage, without either the traditions and experience of acting. She colors her own conceptions and figure of Juliet, and by her work vindicates the master, and proves that Juliet can be presented by a girl of her own age…. The fourth act exhibited great tragic power, and no want was felt in the celebrated chamber scene, which is the test passage of this role…. It stamped the performance as a success, and the actress as a phenomenon…. The thought must have gone round the house among those who knew the facts—Can this be only the seventh performance on the stage of this young girl?”
Here is another notice a few months later on in Mary Anderson’s dramatic career from the Baltimore Gazette:—
“Miss Anderson’s Juliet has the charm which belongs to youth, beauty, and natural genius. Her fair face, her flexible youth—for she is still in her teens—and her great natural dramatic genius, make her personation of that sweet creation of Shakespeare successful, in spite of her immaturity as an artist. We have so often seen aged Juliets; stiff, stagey Juliets; fat, roomy Juliets; and ill-featured Juliets, that the sight of a young, lady-like girl with natural dramatic genius, a bright face, an unworn voice, is truly refreshing. In the scene where the nurse brings her the bad news of Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s banishment, she acted charmingly. In gesture, attitude, and facial expression she gave evidence of emotion so true and strong, as showed she was capable of losing her own identity in the role.”
As an amusing specimen of vindictive criticism, we subjoin a notice in the Washington Capitol, under date May 28, 1876. This lengthy notice contains strong internal evidence of a deadly feud existing between Manager Ford and the editor of the Capitol, and the stab is given through the fair bosom of Mary Anderson, whose immense success in Senatorial Washington, this atrabilious knight of the plume devotes two columns of his valuable space to explaining away.
Washington City Daily Capitol, 28th May, 1876.
“Miss Anderson comes to us on a perfect whirlwind of newspaper puffs. We use the words advisedly, for in none of them can be found a paragraph of criticism. If Siddons or Cushman had been materialized and restored to the stage in all their pristine excellence, the excitement in Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis and New Orleans, could not have been more intense. The very firemen of one of those cities seem to have been aroused and lost their hearts, if not their heads; and not only serenaded the object of their adoration, but got up a decoration for her to wear of the most costly and gorgeous sort. Under this state of facts we waited with unusual impatience for sixteen sticks to give the cue that was to fetch on the Juliet. It came at last, and Juliet stalked in. Had Lady Macbeth responded to the summons we could not have been more amazed. Miss Anderson is heroic in size and manner. The lovely heiress to the house of the Capulets, on the turn of sixteen, swept in upon the stage as if she were mistress of the house, situation, and of fate, and bent on bringing the enemy to terms. Her face is sweet, at times positively beautiful, but incapable of expression. Her voice, while clear, is hard, metallic, at intervals nasal, and all the while stagey. She has been trained in the old Kemble tragic pump-handle style of elocution, that runs talk on stilts. Her manner is crude and awkward. In the balcony scene she only needed a pair of gold rimmed glasses to have made her an excellent schoolmistress, chiding a naughty young man for intruding upon the sacred premises of Madame Fevialli’s select academy for young ladies. In the love scenes that followed she was cold enough to be broken to pieces for a refrigerator. But who could have warmed up to such a Romeo? That unpleasant youth pained us with his quite unnecessary gyrations and spasmodic noise. We soon discovered that Miss Anderson had been coached for Juliet without possessing on her part the most distant conception of the character—or capacity to render it, had she the information. She was not doing Juliet from end to end. She was as far from Juliet as the North Pole is from the Equator. She was doing something else. We could not make out clearly what that character was; but it was something quite different and a good way off. Sometimes we thought it was Lady Macbeth, sometimes Meg Merrilies, sometimes Lucretia Borgia, but never for a moment Juliet. We speak thus plainly of Miss Anderson because her injudicious and enthusiastic friends are injuring, if they are not ruining her. Her fine physique, her dash, her beautiful face, her clear ringing voice, have carried crowds off their heads—well, they are off at both ends; for on last Thursday night the amount of applauding was based on shoe leather. The lovely Anderson was called out at the end of each act. As to that, the active Romeo had his call. We never saw before precisely such a house. The north-west was out in full force. Kentucky came to the front like a little man. General Sherman, sitting at our elbow, wore out his gloves, blistered his hands, and then borrowed a cotton umbrella from his neighbor. Miss Anderson, with all her natural advantages, added to her love of the art, her indomitable will as shown in her square prominent jaw, has a career before her, but it is not down the path indicated by these enthusiastic friends. ‘The steeps where Fame’s proud temple shines afar’ are difficult of access, and genius waters them with more tears than sturdy, steady, persevering talent.
“Charlotte Cushman told us once that the heaviest article she had to carry up was her heart. The divine actress who now leads the English-spoken stage began her professional career as a ballet dancer, and has grown her laurels from her tears. We suspected Miss Anderson’s success. It was too triumphant, too easy. After years of weary labor, of heart-breaking disappointments, of dreary obscurity, genius sometimes blazes out for a brief period to dazzle humanity; and quite as often never blazes, but disappears without a triumph.