"The result was that Mr. Mansfield was put in my place. The result is well known.
"Mr. Palmer was delighted, and I consoled myself with the thought that my refusal of the part had proved not only far better for the interests of the production, but was also the immediate cause of giving an early opportunity to one who has since done much for the stage."
Back To Comic Opera.
Oddly enough, in spite of his sensational success as the senile Baron, Mansfield's next engagement after "A Parisian Romance" had run its course at the Union Square Theater, was as Koko in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado." But the halt of this company in Boston brought the young actor a chance to connect himself with the famous Museum stock there, and he bade good-by to comic opera for good when he first trod the Museum boards as Chevrial, following this up with the title rôle in "Prince Karl."
A dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson's powerful story, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," followed, also at the Museum. It was in New York, in the summer of 1886, twenty years ago, that saw Mansfield's practical start as a star, with "Prince Karl," at the Madison Square Theater, where he submitted "Beau Brummel" four years later.
Meanwhile he had been invited by Henry Irving to play in London, where he made his first Shakespeare production in the shape of "King Richard III."
RISE OF MISS ANGLIN.
The Clever Canadian Woman, in the Role
of Roxane, Leaped from Obscurity
in a Single Night.
From Mr. Mansfield it is but natural to pass to Margaret Anglin, who, from practical obscurity, leaped to distinction in a night as Roxane, the heroine of "Cyrano de Bergerac." This was produced at the Garden Theater, New York, on the 2d of October, 1898, and the next morning readers of the papers were asking themselves why they had never heard before of this young woman, who had almost shared equal honors with the redoubtable Richard himself.
The first meager information about her was furnished by Acton Davies, in his Evening Sun notice of the play, from which it may prove interesting to quote a couple of paragraphs: