every ambitious actress wants to play. La Dame aux Camélias is brought back to the theatre, decade after decade, not by reason of the permanent importance of the author, but by reason of the recurrent aspirations of an ever-growing group of emotional actresses.

The most recent production of The Lady of the Camellias in New York was due to the justified ambition of Miss Ethel Barrymore. Miss Barrymore is a very able actress, and deserved to have her hour with this celebrated play.

The one thing which I found both difficult to understand and to forgive, in considering this most recent repetition of La Dame aux Camélias, was the tampering with the text that had evidently been commissioned by Miss Barrymore. Assuredly, a very famous piece that dates from 1852-if deemed worthy of a new appeal to public patronage-should be presented frankly as a play of 1852; and there is no reason whatsoever for disguising its historic date beneath a camouflage of those conventions that have recently become established on Broadway. It is as silly to cut out the soliloquies and the asides from a play of 1852 as it would be senseless to suppress the soliloquies of Hamlet.

Mr. Edward Sheldon, in attempting to "improve the text of an author who is commonly regarded as the foremost French dramatist of the nineteenth century, discarded the great soliloquy of the heroine as she writes her farewell letter to Armand [and this soliloquy will be recalled as the finest passage in the play by anybody who remembers the performance of Modjeska];

he decided to suppress the reappearance of the elder Duval in the midst of the gambling-scene, and transformed this whole third act into a sort of Greenwich Village masquerade; and he enclosed the entire text [in pursuance of the pattern exemplified in his own play, called Romance] within the framework of a prologue and an epilogue that accentuated, instead of lessening, the traits of artificiality apparent in the piece itself.

These frantic efforts to disguise an old play as a new play defeated themselves. It would be just as reasonable to require Hamlet to call up Polonius on the telephone, in order to establish a scientific reason for the reading of the famous soliloquy on suicide." Is that you, old man? This is Hamlet,- yes, H-A-ML-E-T, Prince of Denmark. I have something on my mind. Here it is are you listening? To be or not to be that is the question

Any resurrection from the past should be undertaken in a mood which admits a fitting reverence for the conventions of the past; and, though the younger Dumas has been honorably dead for many years, there is no reason why a recent playwright should be commissioned to rewrite the text of one of the most celebrated dramatists of modern times.

XI

HENRI LAVEDAN IN THE AMERICAN

THEATRE

Throughout the last three decades, Henri Lavedan, of the French Academy, has been recognized as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary French dramatic authorship; and, though his work is intimately national, he has enjoyed a quite unusual success in the commercial theatre of this country. The first of his plays to be presented in America was Catherine, which was produced by Annie Russell in 1898. Otis Skinner produced The Duel in 1906, and Sire in 1911. In 1918, Mrs. Fiske presented Service, and the latest item on the list, The Marquis de Priola, was added in 1919 by Leo Ditrichstein. Of these five plays, three have run for not less than an entire season in this country, and the others have been played for many weeks. weeks. What is the reason for this remarkable success of M. Lavedan with a theatre-going public that rejects so many European dramatists of even larger reputation on the ground that they are "foreign," and therefore not immediately comprehensible?

The reason is that Henri Lavedan is to be admired mainly as a painter of portraits. His greatest gift is his ability to delineate a character that is original in concept and vividly alive in execution. This is the

sort of character that every actor likes to play; and the significant fact should be remarked that each American production of a piece by M. Lavedan has been brought about by the personal desire of some prominent performer to depict the leading part. A playwright who can devise attractive acting parts,-like The Lady of the Camellias, for example,— stands a better chance of extensive success upon the boards than a more momentous dramatist who creates important characters that are true enough to life but not alluring to succeeding generations of actresses and actors. The dramatis persona of M. Lavedan are notable in equal measure as portraits and as parts, as characters and also as characterizations. They are sufficiently true to life to be admired by those commentative men of letters who, when they attack the theatre, may be described as "undramatic " critics; and, at the same time, they are sufficiently theatrical to inspire many actors with a keen desire to portray them.

Among his confrères of the French Academy, Henri Lavedan is recognized not only for his prime ability as a portrait-painter, but also for the literary ease and brilliance of his dialogue, and furthermore for his sincerity and earnestness as an almost homiletic moralist. His writing is particularly rich in that quality of sprightliness which the French call esprit; and, indeed, he first attracted attention, in the years of his apprenticeship, by publishing, in various journals and reviews, a series of little dialogues of which the most obvious merit was their literary liveliness. But, of course, this special quality is necessarily diluted by the

process of translation; and whatever residue may still remain is more than likely to fall upon deaf ears in a Broadway auditorium.

On the other hand, the American public is, no doubt, unconsciously attracted by the fact that M. Lavedan is more sincerely and emphatically "moral" in his work than any other of his French contemporaries, with the single exception of Eugène Brieux. The moral conscience of M. Brieux is social; he puts society, so to speak, on trial, and reads it a reverberating sentence from the judge's bench; but the moral conscience of M. Lavedan is individual; he creates a living villain, and then condemns him to his just deserts by fighting against him fairly and disarming him. In this respect, his method is similar to that of one of the most honorable authors of our recent English drama; and it would not be at all beside the mark to describe M. Lavedan as the French equivalent of Henry Arthur Jones. Alexandre Dumas fils, who-like Lavedan and Jones was both a playwright and a moralist, once said that a drama should set forth "a painting, an ideal, a judgment." Henri Lavedan fulfils this formula with ease. He is, first and foremost, a great painter; he never loses sight of the ideal, even though his primary employment at the moment may be directed toward depicting its reverse; and he is always ready with a judgment that shall be sufficiently impressive to satisfy the most exacting moralist among his auditors.

The Marquis de Priola, which was first produced at the Théâtre Français in 1902, with the great actor Le Bargy in the title rôle, is regarded by French critics