The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-07-21
J. but no radical change took

of the nation, but no radical change took
place until within the past thirty years.
The history of the stage, and therefore OF
the acting drama, may be divided into four
epochs, represented by Burbage, Betterton,
! Garrick and kean, each of whom rose to
the highest standard of genius-each SUI
preme in his own style of acting-each be-
ing the exponent of nature rather than ar
tificiality
If only life of Burbage or Burbage
diary could be produced, what a wealth OF
/ Shakespearean lore would be ours; but,
alas! this pleasure is denied us. We linger
i regretfully over the name of Burbage, for,
as the friend and first great exponent of
Shakespeare, we cannot think of the one
without a loving remembrance of the
| other. But few years after the death OF
Burbage, Betterton appeared and. like his
predecessor, devoted himself to what we
now call the legitimate, although equally
at home in low or high comedy. Better
ton honored the stage and was buried in
the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. He
was the first actor to introduce scenery to
| the English stage and was much abused for
it by the critics of his day. Thirty odd
years fall into the grave of the past
and Garrick takes the stage and at
once captures the world by the mar
Vicious force of his genius. All classes
yielded to him a genuine worship,
| for Garrick gave his world nature and
nature only. He despised artifciality
and conventionality and in their place
presented originality and nature. His
| splendid success at last aroused nest of
| literary hornets, dramatic critics, who I'M
successfully attacked his ascendency. Fell
low actors, alas were his most bitter foes,
but his triumph was not only magnificent
| but permanent, and his name will ever re-
main as one of the four great dramatic
stars of their time and perhaps of all time.
Garrick sleeps, and lol another star
arises. Edmund Kean entered the world
under circumstances s patnetiG IN the ex-
! treme. His young life was full of SORROW
sordid sorrow that corrodes and degen-
crates. A waif, wanderer, almost tramp
yet his native genius forced opportunity
and gave him a position on the English
stage not eclipsed by Burbage. Betterton
or Garrick. Kean was perhaps the herald
| of the school that was to follow, which
may be best described as sthe intense"
! Coleridge said that to see Kean act was
| .like reading Shakespeare by flashes of
| lightning" Alas! his life was brief and
full of bitterness. scarcely relieved by an
artistic success unparalleled in the history
of the stage.
| Keans style was a blending OF the re-
alistic and the ideal, and he had disciple
in Macready, who perpetuated the Kean
school of acting.
| John Kemble and Sarah Siddons added
to the luster of the times. Sarah was the
queen of the stage and John Kemble,
whose temperament drew him to the Sc
verely classical, was one of England's
greatest actors, touching the immortal
four, but not one of them.
Macready, the second Kean, the elder
Booth, Phelps, Montgomery, G. V. Brooke
and Barry Sullivan on the English stage,
and Edwin, the greatest of the Booths, the
greatest Hamlet the world has seen, For
rest, Mccullough and Barrett on the Ameri-
can stage, represent the period within the
memory of playgoers. But the drama of
the present is the result OF revolution
beginning some thirty years ago with the
opening Of the Prince of Wales Theater in
1866 by Mrs. Bancroft, where the comedies