been so full of the mighty "ego" that they have feit themselves under no necessity to submit to discipüne. There are very few actors in this country who cannot learn something from Richard Mansfield. Manstest's distinction as a stage director is due to the fact that to the costumes, the demeanor, the make-up, the demeanor of even the humblest super in his company he pays careful attention. His "Juis Casar." "Cyrano de Bergerac." Ivan the Terrible" and "Henry V." have been notable spectacular as well as dramatic productions, picturesque in their elaborate detail and investiture

of scenic beauty. In his guidance of the actors who are his principal support, Mansfield has a fine and true feeling for dramatic harmony; there is a thorough study of manners, exquisite skill in minute portraiture, and historical fidelity.

One of his friends says that Mansfield realizes that he is sometimes nervous and irritable and that he frequently begins a rehearsal with a note to the effect that he may say things he does not mean and that he hopes his people will try and understand him.

As for the newspaper men, one of them in enumerating the well-known “mannerisms" of Richard Mansfield, said recently:

"Perhaps somebody took out an accident insurance policy, hired a corps of private detectives for a bodyguard, donned chain-armor, and then gently apprised him of these things. Certain it is that in late years they have been gradually diminishing.”

A great man, be he actor, novelist or poet, ought to take criticism peaceably,— that is, if the critic knows enough to be a critic of great art. But I do not wonder at any man's impatience with much of the crude, illogical, mole-eyed and misinformed writing that passes for modern criticism.

The critics of the high order, critics who are scholarly, who have insight into the finer phases of genius, the subtler methods of imaginative interpretation of dramatic masterpieces, are all on Mansfield's side. During the last three years he has won the critics and won the public as never before. He has won universal

recognition of his great services to art, and as more is gradually learned about the man, justice is being done to his fine qualities of mind and heart.

Of the rôles with which the fame of Richard Mansfield is identified, the list is long.

On that memorable night at the Union Square Theater, New York, when he assumed the character of Baron Chevrial, he first excited the attention of thoughtful students of the drama. But before that he had acted with skill and distinction.

His American début was made September 26, 1882, in an opera called "The Black Cloaks," and the papers of the following day made note that the hit of the night had been made by an unknown young man who had assumed the character of Dromez, the leading comedy rôle.

His next appearance was in Planquette's "Rip Van Winkle," Mansfield's rôle being Nick Vedder. Then came the great triumph in "A Parisian Romance," when he made the character of Baron Chevrial stand out with startling vividness and power.

This was succeeded by his appearance in Boyesen's "Alpine Roses" in which

he created the rôle of Count von Dornfeld. Associated with him were Georgia Cayvan, W. J. Lemoyne, Marie Burroughs and George Clarke.

He then won success in a musical comedy called "La Vie," his rôle being another baron, with the euphonious name of von Wiener Schnitzel. Laura Burt acted with him.

Play produced in 1893.

A visit to England was followed in 1885 by his appearance in a play called "Victor Durand" in which he was another baron, the villainous De Mersac. Then he was Nasconi, Podesta of Syracuse, in a play called "Gasperone." The next season he was Herr Kraft in Steele Mackaye's drama "In Spite of All." Mrs. Fiske played with him. Then for some time he was in Boston playing Koko in "The Mikado."

Then came his own production of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and of the charming contrast to that gruesome tragedy, the memorable "Prince Karl." The

people who have seen only the later revivals of "Prince Karl" miss from them Mansfield's famous mimicry of amateur musical artists. This was exceedingly droll and amusing and showed to fine advantage the actor's vocal powers. The play is altogether delightful, full of humor, liveliness and rollicking fun, and one of its best features is the perfect sympathy it establishes between actor and audience. His production of "Prince Karl" in 1886 is especially notable because it inaugurated his career as an independent star. In 1887 came "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and the play called "Monsieur" in which Mansfield was Andre Rossini Mario de Jadot.

In 1889 came "Richard III." In 1890 he produced "Master and Man," he being Humpy Logan. To this same year belongs his famous "Beau Brummell." In 1891 his rôles were "Don Juan" and "Nero" in two plays of great interest. In 1892 he produced "Ten Thousand a Year," his character being Tittlebat Titmouse. To the same year belongs the production of "The Scarlet Letter," Mansfield, of course, being Arthur Dimmesdale. In 1893 came "The Merchant of Venice." Mansfield's Shylock is one of his most popular characters. In 1894 he produced Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man." The eccentric character of Captain Bluntschli brought out very entertaining phases of the actor's art. In 1894 he also produced his "Napoleon." In 1895 his character was Don Pedro XIV. in "The King of Peru." In the same year he was Rodion in "The Story of Rodion the Student." In 1896 his character was Sir John Sombras in "Castle Sombras." In 1897 he produced Shaw's "Devil's Disciple," his rôle being Dick Dudgeon.

In 1898 came that charming play "The First Violin," his rôle being Eugene Courvoisier. It was worth the price of admission to hear Mansfield sing Ben. Jonson's immortal lyric, "Drink to me only with thine eyes." The lullabies

sung to the little Sigmund were also touching and impressive.

In 1898 came the stupendous production of "Cyrano de Bergerac." He played this for two seasons. Then in 1900 came another costly offering, "Henry V." In 1901 came that charming play, "Monsieur Beaucaire." In 1902 he put on another costly Shakespearian production, "Julius Cæsar," Mansfield acting Brutus. In 1903 he gave an English version of "Alt Heidelberg," his character being Prince Karl Heinrich. In 1904 came his marvelous presentment of "Ivan the Terrible." In 1905 he gave the first presentation in English of Molière's "Le Misanthrope." In many respects the rôle of Alceste is Mansfield's greatest.

Now this list of plays is significant, not alone because some of them are great plays but because they are kept in Mr. Mansfield's repertory and every season he gives representations of them. This is one reason why his company has to be under excellent discipline. It has to be "kept up" in fully a dozen plays,-that is, ready to produce them at any time. Several of these plays are things of shreds and patches and would soon be forgotten did they not possess a central character, which, as interpreted by Mansfield, stands out with vivid force and dramatic significance. These personalities as enacted by him have also authoritative and vital ethical value. He is "a great public teacher through the impersonations which he has chosen for his repertory. . . . By a per contra method he tells us what traits of character to avoid, since the exercise of them is fatal to life or happiness.'

"The supreme merit of Mr. Mansfield's impersonation of Jekyll and Hyde" says William Winter, “is that it transcends personal display; that it comes home to every human heart and has a meaning for every human soul."

Richard Mansfield's technical equipment is extraordinary. It seems as if he had at his command every theatrical resource and expedient. In the hands of

an actor of inferior equipment, a rôle like that of Mr. Hyde might seem cheap and tawdry, but he has a wonderful power to invest it with a certain truth and convincing realism which is simply irresistible. William Winter is right when he calls Mansfield's "Mr. Hyde" an "assumption remarkable for prodigious power." It is no easy matter to make stage deaths satisfactory. The tendency is to overact. The spectator does not submit willingly to the horrible alone. An appeal to the imagination is required, suggestion rather than too much detail. Mansfield always dies impressively. The deaths of Baron Chevrial and of Mr. Hyde partake indeed of the horrible, but the just balance between the fitting, the essential and the aweinspiring seems to be maintained. The death scenes of Beau Brummell, of Cyrano de Bergerac and of Brutus are most powerful and touching, and they furnish excellent examples of Mansfield's artistic method-a method which takes account of the value of cumulative interest. There are no anti-climaxes in this method.

This list of plays proves many things, the most obvious being, of course, that Richard Mansfield's versatility is unmatched on our contemporary stage. Many of these plays deal with tremendous tragic forces working amid tragic circumstances towards an inevitable destruction. They deal with grim horror, with colossal crime, with sorrow, and with death. These tragic forces and situations he treats with temperamental

Courtesy of Mr. Mansfield.

sympathy and superb distinction. He has the imaginative grasp, the far-reaching vision of the true tragic poet. But to say that Richard Mansfield's power lies in his being a great tragedian is but a statement of a half-truth. In sparkling, brilliant comedy, in the expression of delicate, poetic sentiment, in the display of genial kindliness and heroic generosity, in the expression of the lighter phases of satire, in cynical wit, in rollicking humor, he is also masterly.

He has his limitations, to be sure, for he is but human. He has often shown

defects-"mannerisms" if you choose but during these twenty years that he has been presenting new plays nearly every year and keeping before the public so many of the old, we notice every season a broadening and deepening of his art, a gradual elimination of what is crude and experimental, a progress more and more certain towards perfection.

of

Richard Mansfield is a leader of the stage not only because he is a man of genius, of artistic temperament, of insight and judgment, but because of this versatility which makes it necessary that he be seen in many or perhaps all of his portrayals in order to gain the full measure of the man, to realize the scope the powers with which he is endowed. One needs to see the sardonic malignancy, the meditative villainy, the solitary and lonely remorse of his Richard; the creepy, repulsive villainy of his Mr. Hyde; the delicacy and deftness of his portrayal of the fascinating Beaucaire; the crafty, hideously courteous sensuality of his Chevrial; the poetic wistfulness and the sad thralldom of his Jekyll; the airy grace, the proud and tender charm of his Beau Brummell; the sardonic cruelty and fierce racial hatred of his Shylock; the simplicity and loving heroism of his Eugene Courvoisier; the fine patience,

the chivalrous devotion of his wise and witty, self-effacing Cyrano; the baleful, somber gloom of the suspicious, conscience-haunted Ivan; the tragic splendor, the melancholy dignity of the dis

traught Brutus; the beautiful sincerity of the restless, impatient, half-tender, half-cynical Alceste.

It cannot be denied that, whatever qualities an actor who essays rôles diametrically opposed to each other may or may not have, it is absolutely essential that he have the power to create illusion. Mansfield infuses into his impersonations of Brummell, Chevrial, Ivan, Richard, so insistent a reality, such supreme force, that the spectator has the continual sense of illusion. But his power to create this illusion is not due merely to his mastery of externals, to his changes in physical aspect. His Gloster is different from his Brummell, his Nero, or his Napoleon, not only in make-up, in gesture, in innumerable phases of stage business, in marvelously swift changes in facial expression, in vocal contrasts, and in the alternate flash or smouldering of the light in his eyes; but these impersonations make their impression by the denotement of those mental and spiritual qualities which differentiate one character from another. Here comes in the faculty of