Birmingham age-herald., 1895-09-15

llls WilAAC dLQ iile OttiS OA his attire which seemed really suited to a bachelor knight and an eminent actor was his high color. It was a very inn posing structure which ran up several inches and crumpled obligmgly. If it had not there would have been nothing seen of Sir Henry's face below his nose. But 1t declined tnd fell away, so that his chin kept well above it.
 II never seems to me" he said in the low tone in which he always spoke off the stage-so low that at times ii is diffi-9 cult to distinguish his words-'that 1 am Tn a different country when I come to the United States. The Americans and Eng llsh seem very much alike, and very united. hear that there was a discus sioh once in magazines as to whether AmerlcanS hated England I don't know what the conclusion was, but I have never met the English who hated Amer icaps or the Americans who hated Eng land. They have always seemed to me as united as two peoples could be- irving s nranner of talking off the stag. IS very much like his speech on it. The -neduIatfons of his voice are much the !, same Even the peculiarfty of his gait IS the same. He walked. about his room at the Plaza quite as he does on the stage
 Inever saw but one of Ibsen's plays acted. he sad, when the reporter asked him his opinion of them, and have not read them all. Once I saw The Dolls House, and l saw in it some admiIa ble opportunities for the actors, particularly for the actress who played Nora. But I could not see in the play, or in those that l'haVe read, any breadth of interest The whole story, the whole action was on such a microscopic scale. Certainly the people who go the theater want 10 be interested in some wider field of action than those plays offer. I belive that par. tlcularly in America the romantic plays Will interest you. Your history and your lives seem to me to clad you to<An inter- est in them. Americans have seemed to me to be lnt9 ested in the romance of the iheater-not the romance of going to the stheater. but. the romance on the stage in the plays you see. This is true of Eng fish audiences, but especially true of the- atef-goers in America. l have never seen the possibility of the fbsen plays ever gaining great popularity With Us in England they never have. They are given from time to time, but have never at tracted large audiences. For my part I do not believe that they ever will"
 T am going to act in little play of Conan Doyle's, 'Waterloo,'" Irving sai when he was asked about the plays that the literary men in England were writ ing now. "It was not written for me. but Mir. Doyle wrote it and sent it to me and l accepted it. l suppose that dra- matists are all literary men to the same extent that novelsts are but there are
 
 learn the fundamental principles of dra- matic construction. l have known a poet in England to write a play without ever picturing to himself the action of any of the scenes on the stage Now, l don't think that such a man will ever write a good play, however great he may be a sa poet. Bulwer Lytton with 'Richelieu' and Money would never have been a successful dramatist without the assistance of Macready. They must learn first how to write for the stage. am delighted that Anthony Hopes play has made a success. l have known him for years and his father before him, who was q parson. As for the talk of literary men writing for the stage, l do not believe there Is man in Eng land today who deserves that title any more than Arthur Pinero, the dramatist.
 The talk about the plays of the day being inferior to those of fifteen or twen- ty years ago is something that one must always expect We are always grumb- ling and generally about the past hay ing been better than the present. If 1t isn't the plays it's the actors, and the theater- goers of one day are very hkely to compare an actor to one of his pre- decessors to the disadvantage Of the present actor. The one that went before is always remembered as better than his successors. With the drama 1t IS the ham way. I cannot see that the plays or
  those that are written now. They seem to me as good. People say that actresses have to go back to the older pieces when they want to find characters in which to do themselves justice. But there Is Plnero, who, in The Sec ond Mrs Tanqueray and The Notorious Mrs. Elbsmith,' is said to have written two parts which are splendid women's roles. Unfortunately l have never seen either of these pieces, but l am inclined to believe that the drama of today is infe- rior to what has been written. The com plaint against 1t is the usual thing that one must always expect to hear We are all very likely to praise what has gone before at the expense of the present"
 Sir Henry Irving and Miss Terry were to have gone to Saranac lake, but they have changed their plans, and will spend a week on Lake Champlain before open ing their season at Montreal Sir Henry is studying TOW the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar" with which his next season at the Lyceum theater in London will open. The play has not been given in London for many years. Ellen Terry will play Portia, and after this will come the production of Mime. Sans Gene" in which Irving is to play Napoleon and Miss Terry the title role.