The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-05-29

groupings of business and loungers form.
ing our "Rialtos." Here the actor not only
scorns the pros as he would tramp, aud
will have none OF him as a companion, but
he will drink no liquor, eat no food, transact
no business, and frequent no thoroughfare
or haunt where the pros" is permitted to
come.
There are reasons for this close drawing
OF professional lines. An important one is
found In the fact that for very long time
London theatrical managers have sustained
an absolute monopoly fall dramatic per-
formances. By law the proprietors Of music
halls are forbidden to present any exhibit
bition of a dramatic nature. Their
compensation is in being permitted
to sell all manner Of liquors by hands Of
bewitching barmaids; of itself a great
source of attraction and profit To the
Legitimate" dramatic performer, any one
who has appeared in "the 'alls, from his
standpoint Of ethics, can by no possibility
ever become genuine actor or attain to his
social standing.
On the other kand. you will seldom find
an English, Irish or Scottish actor who is a
gentleman born and bred. do not mean
that be is always Of the so-called British
gentry" stock.
But do mean that the stock from which
be has sprung is usually of the best quality ;
bred; has been given excellent home and
school, and very often university training
that he is a reader, a student and traveller
and that the best regime and athletic sports
have done for him, physically. what his edu-
cation has done for him mentally, and his
unavoidable culture, of aud on the stage,
has done for both his ethics and his man
ners.
This is universal rather than exceptional.
He is therefore justly proud of his vocation.
Such names as those of Shakespeare,
Kemble, Garrick, Macready and Mathews
furnish endless pique and spur to his ambi-
ton, His excellent social status keeps him
in touch with the best rather than the I'M
desirable elements. He is well paid and GER
tain of employment, IL he has ability and
experience; and if be possesses only the
former, with some learning behind it, his
period OF apprenticeship is one of fair OPP
portunity and considerable treatment.
Without leaving his home and his daily
haunts and work, he has before him the
highest opportunities to which an actor
can attain within the confines of London
itself. Aud his every surrounding, accessi-
BILE aid in his profession, and, even in his
hours of relaxation which bring him the
fine friction Of the brightest minds of our
tins, he is an actor continually unwitttngly
and perforce Bothered and improved.
The latter is as true to-day as it was In
Shakespeare's time. And all this is why the
haunts Of London actors differ from the
hauuts Of American actors; and why, also,
their environment naturally produces the
ablest delineators not of intense and exag-
gerated character and situations, as with
the French, and somewhat with our Ameri-
can, school, but Of those fadeless good and
mellow comedies, dramas and tragedies
which appeal to the intellect and heart,
rather than to sensation hunger, the nerves
and the passions.
These changeless conditions naturally
give London actors as a class but two
places as may be regarded as their real
haunts-their homes and their clubs. The
first Of these may seem to Americans an