Shadows of the Stage | Page 3

theatre, the
epoch of tie-wigs and shoe-buckles, the illustrious times of Wood and
Warren, when Fennell, Cooke, Cooper, Wallack, and J.B. Booth were
shining names in tragedy, and Jefferson and William Twaits were great
comedians, and the beautiful Anne Brunton was the queen of the stage.
The Boston veteran speaks proudly of the old Federal and the old
Tremont, of Mary Duff, Julia Pelby, Charles Eaton, and Clara Fisher,
and is even beginning to gild with reminiscent splendour the first days
of the Boston Theatre, when Thomas Barry was manager and Julia

Bennett Barrow and Mrs. John Wood contended for the public favour.
In a word, the age that has seen Rachel, Seebach, Ristori, Charlotte
Cushman, and Adelaide Neilson, the age that sees Ellen Terry, Mary
Anderson, Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Henry Irving, Salvini,
Coquelin, Lawrence Barrett, John Gilbert, John S. Clarke, Ada Rehan,
James Lewis, Clara Morris, and Richard Mansfield, is a comparatively
sterile period--"Too long shut in strait and few, thinly dieted on
dew"--which ought to have felt the spell of Cooper and Mary Buff, and
known what acting was when Cooke's long forefinger pointed the way,
and Dunlap bore the banner, and pretty Mrs. Marshall bewitched the
father of his country, and Dowton raised the laugh, and lovely Mrs.
Barrett melted the heart, and the roses were "bright by the calm
Bendemeer." The present writer, who began theatre-going in earnest
over thirty years ago, finds himself full often musing over a dramatic
time that still seems brighter than this--when he could exult in the fairy
splendour and comic humour of Aladdin and weep over the sorrows of
The Drunkard, when he was thrilled and frightened by J.B. Booth in
The Apostate, and could find an ecstasy of pleasure in the loves of
Alonzo and Cora and the sublime self-sacrifice of Rolla. Thoughts of
such actors as Henry Wallack, George Jordan, John Brougham, John E.
Owens, Mary Carr, Mrs. Barrow, and Charlotte Thompson, together in
the same theatre, are thoughts of brilliant people and of more than
commonly happy displays of talent and beauty. The figures that used to
be seen on Wallack's stage, at the house he established upon the wreck
of John Brougham's Lyceum, often rise in memory, crowned with a
peculiar light. Lester Wallack, in his peerless elegance; Laura Keene, in
her spiritual beauty; the quaint, eccentric Walcot; the richly humorous
Blake, so noble in his dignity, so firm and fine and easy in his method,
so copious in his natural humour; Mary Gannon, sweet, playful,
bewitching, irresistible; Mrs. Vernon, as full of character as the tulip is
of colour or the hyacinth of grace, and as delicate and refined as an
exquisite bit of old china--those actors made a group, the like of which
it would be hard to find now. Shall we ever see again such an Othello
as Edwin Forrest, or such a Lord Duberly and Cap'n Cuttle as Burton,
or such a Dazzle as John Brougham, or such an Affable Hawk as
Charles Mathews? Certainly there was a superiority of manner, a tinge
of intellectual character, a tone of grace and romance about the old

actors, such as is not common in the present; and, making all needful
allowance for the illusive glamour that memory casts over the distant
and the dim, it yet remains true that the veterans of our day have a
certain measure of right upon their side of the question.
In the earlier periods of our theatrical history the strength of the stage
was concentrated in a few theatres. The old Park, for example, was
called simply The Theatre, and when the New York playgoer spoke of
going to the play he meant that he was going there. One theatre, or
perhaps two, might flourish, in a considerable town, during a part of the
year, but the field was limited, and therefore the actors were brought
together in two or three groups. The star system, at least till the time of
Cooper, seems to have been innocuous. Garrick's prodigious success in
London, more than a hundred years ago, had enabled him to engross
the control of the stage in that centre, where he was but little opposed,
and practically to exile many players of the first ability, whose lustre he
dimmed or whose services he did not require; and those players
dispersed themselves to distant places--to York, Dublin, Edinburgh,
etc.--or crossed the sea to America. With that beginning the way was
opened for the growth of superb stock-companies, in the early days of
the American theatre. The English, next to the Italians, were the first
among modern peoples to create a dramatic literature and to establish
the acted drama, and they have always led in this field--antedating,
historically, and surpassing in essential things the French stage which
nowadays it