, 1892-02-20
NYM CRINELE'S LETTER.
What He Has to Say of "The
Broken Seal"
WHY 1T HAS BEEN CRITICISED.


Opera Matinees Becoming Popular.
NEW York. Feb. 1O.-Attention has mc
m%entarily conferred Oh a play produced las
week at Palmer's theater under the It'll
of THE Broken Seal" 1t is from the pc
of Mr.. Sydney Grundy, and it has fallei
under shallow censure because, lik
Judah" and one or two other recent al
tempts to take the contemporaneous dram
out of the conventional theatric rut, it vic
lates the foolish prejudice of the man VIII
judges life entirely from the playhous
standpoint.
The reception which the drama has re
ceived from the critics makes me think tina
they do not want the theater to advance
jot and that they are incapable of appre
ciating any other than a traditional view O
human affairs andindisposed to tolerate an.
writer who brings to his subject n large
and broader view of life.
Mr.. Grundy's drama rests upon the prob
lem of duty. Whether it is not nobler In
the soul to perform what is clearly a duty
to his fellow man, irrespective of the con
sequences to those he loves, is the question
here dealt with, and Al extreme case Is i'm
agined in order to bring the acute struggle
and the triumph fairly into view.
Something Of this sort was done both in
Judah" and in Margaret Fleming" and
neither play was a popular success.
What would you think, asks The Herald,
of n young lawyer in private life who, on
learning that his father was once false to a
magisterial duty, sets to work to make
that falseness clear to the world, knowing
that he will break his widowed mothers
heart and ruin his sweetheart's happinessi
1t seems to me that it is not difficult to
know what the world ought to think.
II that young lawyer is attempting to
correct a wrong, he belongs to the class for
whom the world has erected monuments
and of whom it has written poems.
But it seems that we cannot in our day
write plays about him.
The truth is the conventional man would
rather have n dramatic wrong than An I'M
dramatic right, and it is equally true that
from the very nature of things virtue can
never be as melodramatic as vice. True
aeroism in our life is not demonstrative
1t consists less in a violent defense of vir-
tue than in an abiding belief in her.
"The Broken Seal" presents us with two
men who disregard every conventional law
in obeying their consciences. One of them
is a priest, and he leaves his church in
order to tell IA secret confessed to him in
the confessional, that he may punish the
guilty and save the innocent. This makes
the shallow critic shudder. But it is a per-
fectly allowable dramatic situation, in
which it is presumed that a duty to God
may be more eXacting than n duty to the
church.
In Judah" n clergyman having told a
falsehood to screen "A woman he loved is
mainly bent upon purging himself from
that lie before the world, and the same
critic | have quoted threw up his hands
n exclaimed, why didn't he stick to
the lie like "A man." Mr.. A. NJ. Palmer
produced a play once at the Union Square
theater, the purpose of which was to show
that it was nobler to take n blow than to
resent it in certain circumstances The
play ought to have been called 1.-THE Other
Check Also" 1t wasn't. 1t was called
THE Danicheff."
Considering that the world had been
1900 yearstrying TO get that idea squareiy
into its head, it was curious to observe how
far behind the ethical principle the theatre
cal Jagged. The Danicheff" was a failure
with the populace, and the conventional
critic wanted the moral hero to pull n pis-
tol and kill his assailant on the spot.
/ have heard this same Mr.. Palmer say
that the theater was a place of relaxation.
The moment it tried to do any more than
amuse 1t antagonized its patrons. Doubt
less this is true in a sense. Ethical prob
lens and psychological puzzles strain the
attention and burden the relaxed mind.
The ordinary theater goer wants to leave
his mind with his umbrella, in the cloak
room. The appeal of the ordinary man
ager is something like this: If o want
TO escape from thought come here. This
is an asylum where you are safe from your
serious self.
There are several conscientious artists in
tsNla nralyap Gaa1 ~ and apann0 than iG
Miss Julia Arthur. This actress is one of
those phenomenal successes which the
theater is continually throwing to the sur
face. For u long time she roved about the
country, playing with all kinds of people
and in all kinds of plays, and never achiev-
ing distinction. One of her last i%tinerant
efforts was with the ringmaster Mr.. Harry
Lacy. All at once she made a hit in an
ephemeral play at the Union Square and
was pulled into notoriety overnight.
Then everybody wanted her, and ever
Mr.. Harry Lacy, who had exhausted the
horse market, sent for her.
She is a woman of ability and of prepos-
sessing appearance, but hard work did not
secure for her a recognition of either. Ac-
cident did it all. She stumbled into success
one night and woke up to find the town
talking about her. Mantell did the SAINT
thing. So did Clara Morris. So Miss
Arthur, who played for forty dollars q
week for six years, can now now command
a hundred and fifty.
The quality-if indeed it was quality al
all-that distinguished her vas strength.
She is a forceful, somewhat spasmodic anC
slightly old school declRimer. The very
antithesis of Marie Burroughs and Georgi,
Cayvan, neither of whom demonstrates
only suggests. She came in collision witt
an actor, MI. Henley, whose boast it is tina
he wipes the deck" with every leading
woman. He utterly failed to wipe out Mis-,
Arthur. She stood up to him manfully
and in the histrionic scrap scored n sue
cess" as the reporters say. That was how
she become a champion with the boys.
Put in opposition to Mrs. Booth, one see
at once that she lacks subtlety and finesse
She doesn't caress-she coerces.
But these forceful women are always
relief to the public. They seem to renew
the stalwartism of the past.
But enough OF the arid drama. l hav,
been going to the opera r~eligiously; haven
missed a night. If you suppose that
have taken a score and kept my finger OF
the dotted notes. you are mistaken. / hav,
rat in a reverie and taken in Meyerbeer
Gounod, Thomas and Verdi with an omnivo
rous relish. No pent up Utica contract.
my powers. TIL whole boundless musica
domain is mine. w.
1t has interested me TO study what tn