We have no Mrs. Siddons, no Kemble, no Rachel, no Talma; but we are confident that the actors and actresses of to-day are like the theatre of to-day,—they have more finish, and the results, while they may not rise to the plane of the school of Shakespeare, are nearer nature than they have ever been.
The school of declamation, which belonged to the plays of the past, is the severest loss the stage of to-day has felt. The actors and actresses fail in elocution. They do not know where to put their emphasis. They seem lost when they appear in costume, and Shakespeare to-day has no distinguished exponents.
The English-speaking stage of the century has been adorned by such eloquent interpreters and powerful tragedians as Edwin Forrest, Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Booth, and Henry Irving. But this illustrious roll has been almost extinguished by death; and, especially if applied to America, the question may well be asked, where is the actor or actress who can play Hamlet, or Macbeth, or King Lear, or Shylock as we were wont to see them rendered by those masters of the dramatic art, or as they should be rendered? Salvini and Rossi have both passed away. Irving verges on retiracy. Of the great dramatic actresses left to the closing of the century, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt stands preëminent. The day of the imposing declamatory drama seems to have lost its lustre at the sunset of the century.
SCENE FROM SHAKESPEARE’S PLAY OF “ROMEO AND JULIET.”
But the modern dramas and comedies are acted, even in the smaller parts, with admirable intelligence and effect, and we may add that the vice that disgraced the stage of the past is by no means so visible in the theatre of the present.
The coarseness that clung so long to the theatre is gradually disappearing, and the theatre-goers of to-day have discovered that the theatre, which was created to entertain the world, can do so without recourse to vulgarity.
The theatres of the United States are the handsomest and most convenient in the world. This Mme. Sarah Bernhardt acknowledged the other day, while criticising the theatres of Paris, which lack many conveniences.
Up to within twenty-five years of the close of the century, plays written by American authors were rare. Managers had to rely upon those composed in Europe. But at present the United States possesses many able and successful playwrights, just as it does its artists in all departments. There has not been a time during the century when the personal character of actors and actresses has escaped discussion, and sometimes violent criticism, by those prejudiced against the theatre. This does not seem to have lessened the estimation in which dramatic art is held, nor to have seriously diminished in number the legion who find in the drama their most pleasurable recreation and keenest intellectual delight. In answer to challenges of the morality of the stage, Bronson Howard has fittingly said: “I have never yet seen anybody who wanted a bad picture just because it was painted by a good man. It is society that corrupts the stage, not the stage that corrupts society.”