WHERE IS IT?
Drawing-room of a private house in London.
WHEN IS IT?
Now.
WHAT TIME IS IT?
Act 1. A morning.
Act 2. A few mornings later.
Act 3. Another morning.
Act 4. The same morning.
(Good morning.)
Was Stronger Than the Play.
In the same year, 1890, Miss Adams appeared at the same theater, in what was styled its regular season, opening on October 21 as Dora Prescott, another ingénue rôle, in De Mille and Belasco's "Men and Women." This was followed in the fall of 1891, also at Proctor's, by De Mille's play from the German, "The Lost Paradise," in which Miss Adams was cast for the lame mill-girl, Nell.
This Henry C. De Mille, it may be remarked in passing, was the father of the W.C. De Mille who wrote "Strongheart" for Robert Edeson, and who is an instructor in the Empire School of Acting, sometimes known as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
In the spring of 1892 John Drew left Daly's, whereupon Charles Frohman decided to make him his first star, and he chose Maude Adams to be his leading woman. It is now an old story—the hit she instantly made as the wife who assumes intoxication in a crisis of the Clyde Fitch comedy from the French, "The Masked Ball."
That it was the actress and not the part that triumphed was proved by the falling down of the piece when it was tried some few years since, under supposedly favorable auspices in London.
Miss Adams was at once established as a metropolitan favorite of the first water. The play ran as long as time could be secured for it at Wallack's (then known as Palmer's), and was removed to the Manhattan (then the Standard), where it finished out the season.
She continued with Drew for five years, and became a star in "The Little Minister" in the fall of 1897, with Robert Edeson for her first leading man.
HACKETT'S EARLY DREAM.
It Came True When He Saw His
Name in Letters of Fire in Front
of a Broadway Theater.