The experience of this Japanese girl is the old ordeal over again, of woman’s sacrifice and anguish, when giving all for love. Something of Shakespeare’s Juliet is in that heroine, something of Goethe’s Margaret, something of the many passionate, wayward, mournfully beautiful ideals of woman’s sacrifice that are immortal in story and song. She is a loving and sorrowing woman, true, tender, faithful forever, and celestial alike in her
BLANCHE BATES AS THE PRINCESS YO-SAN, IN “THE DARLING OF THE GODS”
Photograph by Livingston Platt.
Belasco’s Collection.
love, her temptation, and her grief. The character of Yo-San combines some of the finest components of womanhood and, indeed, exemplifies virtues such as redeem the frailty of human nature—purity of heart and life, true love, endurance, heroism of conduct, and devoted integrity of spiritual faith. Blanche Bates gained the greatest success of her professional career by her impersonation of Yo-San. She was an entirely lovely image of ardent, innocent, ingenuous, noble womanhood—such an image as irresistibly allured by piquant simplicity, thrilled the imagination by an impartment of passionate vitality, and by its exemplification of eternal constancy in love,—the immortal fidelity of the spirit,—captured the heart. Her facility of action and fluency of expression were continuously spontaneous, and she was delightful both to see and to hear. Indeed, the acting of Miss Bates, which, from the first of her performances on the New York Stage, had shown a charming wildness and freedom, was, in the character of Yo-San, more unconventional than ever. Her appearance was beautiful, her action graceful, alert, vigorous, and free from all restraint of self-consciousness and finical prudery. The clear, keen, healthful north wind was suggested by it, the reckless dash of a mid-ocean wave, the happy sea-bird’s flight. There was no ostentation about it, no parade, no assumption of the moral mentor. Her personation of Belasco’s Juliet of Japan came in a time of dreary “problems,” “sermons,” “lessons,” “arguments,” “symbols,” and the flatulent nonsense of siccorized novels and dirty farces, and it came as a relief and a blessing—the authentic representative of youth, health, strength, love, and hope.
There is one moment in “The Darling of the Gods” when suspense is wrought to a point of intense tension, and when the inherent, essential faculty of an actor, the power to reveal almost in a flash the feeling of the heart and the working of the mind, is imperatively required. It is when Kara, wounded, exhausted, desperate, has sought refuge in the dwelling of the Princess Yo-San and, by her, has been succored and concealed. Migaku, the Shadow, a spy of the terrible War Minister, Zakkuri, has traced him to that refuge, but a devoted guardian of Yo-San, Inu, a Corean giant, has detected the presence of the spy, has seized and slain him, and has hidden the body in a stream. Zakkuri and the father of Yo-San follow the spy, and come to the dwelling of Yo-San. Zakkuri wishes that it be searched, but he agrees to accept her oath, if she will give it, that she knows nothing of the whereabouts of Kara. The Princess is summoned and, denying the presence of Kara, is required by her father to swear that she has spoken the truth. Words can faintly indicate the beauty of the picture and action which follow, as the girl seeks to protect her lover. The time is night. The scene is a strange, fantastic, fairy-like garden of old Japan, a bower of flowers with twining wistaria wreathing the trees and houses, and, far, far off, visible in the silver moonlight, a great snow-capped volcano, the peak of which is touched with ruddy light. The father and the dreaded Minister of War stand before the door. Miss Bates, as Yo-San, stood a little above them, dressed in soft, flowing white garments, open at the throat, her black hair loose about her face and shoulders, her beautiful dark eyes suffused with a fascinating expression of innocence, tranquillity, and tenderness. Without a moment of hesitation, on being required to take the most solemn of oaths, she, with sweetly reverential dignity, raised a bowl of burning incense and, holding it before her, spoke, in a voice of perfect music: “Before Shaka, God of Life and Death,—to whom my word goes up on this incense,—I swear, hanging my life on the answer, I have not seen this Kara!” Then, as the discomfited searchers withdrew, she stood a moment, in the soft light streaming upon her from within the house, and, gazing after them, added, looking upward, “It is better to lie a little than to be unhappy much!” If she had done nothing else,—though the remainder of her professional life should be barren,—that single moment stamped her as a great actress.
It is, in any time, a noble achievement—one too much praised in words, too little sought in deeds—to bring home and make vital to the human heart the sanctity and beauty of love. The actor who does this can do no more. Pictorial art upon the stage attains to a marvellous height when it presents such a scene as that of the River of Souls and the reunion of long-sundered souls, in this romantic, imaginative, and beautiful play. Such an achievement in the dramatic art as the setting before the public of such a play and such a performance as Blanche Bates gave of its heroine vindicate the beneficent utility of the Theatre, because it cheers and ennobles, and thus practically helps society, through the ministration of beauty. This is a hard world. Almost everybody in it struggles beneath burdens of care and sorrow. Multitudes of human beings dwell in trouble and suffering. An imperative need of our race is the strength of patience and the light of hope. Dramatic art, or any art, which satisfies that need, or even remotely helps to satisfy it, is a blessing. The rest is little, if at all, better than a curse.
There was fine acting in “The Darling of the Gods” besides that of Miss Bates. The part of Zakkuri, the War Minister,—a callous, remorseless, cold villain, of the Duke of Alva type,—is the main source of action in the drama, and it is elaborately and vividly drawn. It was played by George Arliss, who gave in it a thrilling incarnation of dangerous force and inveterate wickedness, almost humorous in its icy depravity: he had an exceptional success, even for an actor who always acts well.