parties, in response to the injured husband's inquiry. In Act Four it is said by the Countess that she loves and always has loved her paramour, whom she hails as her "discoverer" and "deliverer," with much more erotic fudge about her having "asserted the right of selfpreservation" in the commission of adultery. Seldom or never has such a farrago of rotten nonsense been uttered from the stage as Mrs. Campbell enunciated in that scene of hysterical blather. The drift of the preachment is a sentimental extenuation of conduct that everybody knows to be wrong. There is a story that poor King George the Third, when his insanity was yet incipent, would give audible responses from the royal pew in St. George's Chapel, while the service was in progress, and that once, when the vicar was reading the Commandments, his majesty was heard to ejaculate approbation of each one till the seventh, when the royal voice astonished the congregation by an emphatic protest, crying, "That's a pity! That's a pity!" That would seem to be the opinion of Sudermann and his disciples.

"THE SORCERESS."

Sardou's play of "The Sorceress" was presented at the New Amsterdam Theatre, on October 10, 1904, and Mrs. Campbell assumed the chief part in it. The play is almost as edifying as Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," and the chief part is almost as credible as Scott's "Fenella"-the only absurdity that the great master of

fiction ever drew. Mrs. Campbell, who is nothing if not abnormal, offered a variant of the old, familiar type of amorous female crank, so frequent in Sardou's melodramatic concoctions, and so useful to performers who mistake singularity for genius and delirium for inspiration, and she offered it in her customary style, of affected embellishment and vapid eccentricity.

The character is a dusky, ardent, female Moor, named Zoraya, resident of Toledo, Spain, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and occupied in dispensing drugs, prosecuting intrigue, and practising mesmerism. The charms of Zoraya are irresistible. She has dark, lustrous eyes. She has a bust of what Browning calls "superb abundance," and an expansive satin back-the telescopic, giraffe figure, the one that undulates. She is a Venus, -and the entire male population of Toledo is agitated by her. Don Palacois, in particular, a youth betrothed to Joana, daughter of the Governor of Toledo, finds his manly bosom rent with passion for the enchanting mesmerist, whom he meets by chance, in the woods, and who at once responds to his wooing, with prodigal liberality. The Don, however, must be wedded to Joana, and, in order to vitiate the nuptials, of which she obtains knowledge after becoming Palacois's concubine,— Zoraya mesmerizes that obnoxious female, immediately after the wedding, and elopes with the willing bridegroom. Then the holy fathers of the Inquisition become anxious, and Zoraya,-confessing herself a witch, in

order to save the imperilled life of Palacois,-is convicted of sorcery and condemned to death. Later the Governor reprieves her, as a recompense for awakening the sleeping Joana, and she is released. A furious Toledo mob then assails her; she is defended by Palacois, at a cathedral door; and finally, further resistance being impossible, those lovers commit suicide.

Sardou's drama, aside from two scenes, is a prolix medley of pretentious nonsense. The passages relative to the strangulation of an inquisitorial agent and to the trial of Zoraya show good dramatic construction, suspense, and contrast well maintained, and they afford opportunities for acting. The rest is trash. Mme. Bernhardt, who for some time acted Zoraya, made a glittering show of feline vitality in it. Mrs. Campbell, like Dr. Johnson's Panting Time, "toils after her in vain." In this performer's acting the conspicuous attribute was affectation. There was much sibilant vocalization, as of a jubilant lemon-squeezer. There was much self-conscious posing. The moon-eyed stare of ecstasy, fixed on nothing, frequently became visible. There was the contortion of anguish, and there was the clinging clutch of desperation: old stage properties, all of them, and readily at the command of an old stager. There was, of course, the effort to invest absurdity with a semblance of reason, but the whole fabric was hollow. There was no effect of sincerity, and, consequently, no illusion. The delivery of the vehement denuncia

tion of the Inquisition was voluble, but blurred, only partially articulate, and, from lack of innate dignity, more like scolding than passionate eloquence. Mrs. Campbell evinced no tragic power. Acting should impart something to an audience, some treasure of thought, some impulse of feeling, some suggestion of beauty. Mrs. Campbell's acting imparted nothing beyond revelation of a morbid personality. The actress, nevertheless, had her audience for in America there is an audience for everything.

"ELECTRA."

The reader of "Vanity Fair" cannot have forgotten Thackeray's description of the entertainment given at Gaunt House, when Becky Sharp figured, in the charade, as the murderer of the slumbering Agamemnon: “her arms are bare and white-her tawny hair floats down her shoulders her face is deadly pale-and her eyes are lighted up with a smile so ghastly that people quake as they look at her. . . . A Great Personage insisted on being presented to the charming Clytemnestra. 'Heighha? Run him through the body. Marry somebody else, hay?' was the apposite remark made by his Royal Highness."

That "apposite remark," after all, contains the essence of the subject-known to scholars, but not, perhaps, to all readers. Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, in concert with her lover, Ægisthus, has murdered her hus

band and those criminals reign in his place. Of the three children of Agamemnon,-those children being Orestes, Electra, and Chrysothemis,-only Chrysothemis remains in the palace of Argos, she being, somewhat ignominiously, submissive to Fate. Orestes, absent, has been reported dead. Electra is expelled, and all her life is devoted to grievous wailing for her departed sire and to the thirst for vengeance upon his murderers. False assurance that her brother Orestes has indeed perished aggravates her woe and largely augments both the bulk of her lamentation and the length of her speeches. Orestes presently returns to Argos and, to the great comfort of Electra, he kills both Clytemnestra and Ægisthus. Later Orestes is pursued by furies, but, being protected by Apollo and acquitted at a trial before the Areopagus, under the presidency of Minerva, he is cleared from censure. The theme is set forth in detail by Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, the latter having given particular attention to the episode of Electra's passion, anguish, and avenging purpose.

It was a variant version of the play of Sophocles that Mrs. Campbell chose for theatrical exposition, and which she brought forth in America, at the Garden Theatre, New York, on February 11, 1908. She appeared as Electra, but, as she did not possess the qualifications of a tragic actress, her emergence in that part was not impressive. In one respect the character and the performer were found accordant, both being intrinsically artificial,