The San Francisco call., 1895-07-28

clean, bright entertainment. The inter
esting part of it is that they sit down to
this mess of pottage with as much appe-
tite as though there were nothing better to
be had.
The thousands of people who have
listened to and enjoyed "a Black Sheep"
prove one thing. Hoyt is, perhaps, not a
man of overpowering intellect, but of much
excellent common-sense. He has seen
men and women behave like overgrown,
thick headed children, over whose intelli-
gence lies caul of inherited and environ
ment-cultivated stupidity. He has seen
his broad, rudimentary caricatures of peo-
pie and situations dawn upon these linn
tied intellects with the force of mental
dynamite, shattering the enveloping, dead
ening dullness and bringing a ray of light
where all had been dark before; not a
bright, informing ray, rather dull, gross
glimmer. But these people have actually
seen the joke and exploded in mirth there
at. The half-blind man, who perceives the
blurred, bare outlines of stable, is as
much entertained as is the artist before
whose discriminating eye the anatomy of
a tree is revealed in all the delicacy and
completeness which nature has bestowed.
This is the lesson Hoyt has learned-the
stage can be no higher than its patrons.
He pretends to be no better than his mas
ter. He tells us frankly that he gives the
public what it wants. One may smile at
the crudity, the vulgarlty, the shallowness
of this composition in dialogue, as he face
tiously calls it, but Hoyt laughs and
laughs best at the patronage his plays re-
ceive.
After all the proof of the theatrical pud-
ding is in the eating of it. And because
you don't care for the heavy half-raw food
shall your neighbor be compelled to dine
from menu of your choosing? There are
people, many, many of them, to whom
this coarse grained dish is a dainty. Their
childish, uneducated palates delight in the
unpleasant mixture which adults in intel
hgence avoid.
For ten men who fully appreciate the
delicacy and the artistic strength of Froh-
mans company, the lightness and spirit of
Fritz Williams, the. studied excellence of
Ferdinand Gottschalk's Interpretation of
aristocratic peculiarities, the modesty and
intelligence of Bessie Tyree, there are a
hundred in San Francisco and elsewhere
whose faces are red with congested meri-
ment, whose hands give out ear-splitting
applause. whose feet heat upon the floor in
unrestrained delight at the daintiness of
Hoyt's exquisite conceit in making Hot
Stuff playfully bite his lawyers ear and
the latter retaliate with the delicate atten-
ton of kick.
The Hayman Company is doing very
practical piece of business in running the
California for the kind of people whose
patronage of "a Black Sheep" attests the
qualities in amusement which appeal to
their taste--or lack of 1t. There are men
and women, evidently, who think cab
bages more beautiful than roses, squashes
more ornamental than sweet peas, and
turnips sweeter than violets. The Cali
fornia is the Hayman Company's kitchen
garden. May it thrive.
1t takes a mob of plebeian pleasure
seekers to support the aristocracy of thea
ter-goers; just as a nation of French serfs
was necessary so that the Trianon Opera
Company-that ethereal, sentimental COM
pany of silly players with realities-might
flourish in all its grace and polish. The
difference is, of course, that intellectual
beggary is not at all compulsory, and he
who would cultivate his taste, improve
mentally or morally, has the world before
him where to choose. 1t takes many Cali
fornia Theaterfuls of ecstatic Black
Sheep audiences to enable the Baldwin
management to give US Sir Richard
Kato or Sir Joseph Darby. Every hand
clap. every burst of laughter which greets
and applauds such show as the one at
the California enlarges our opportunities
of enjoying intelligence and art upon the
Baldwin stage.
One sympathizes with the California-it
is such pretty theater to be given over to
the mental sans-culottes, and it has seen
better days-but, if one is not of the Noun
tain, he gives the pleasure of his appreci-
ative presence and the profit of his dollar
and half to the Baldwin.
MIRIAM NICHOLSON.
Despite the endeavors of Theodore Dur
rants attorneys and the threats of Judge
Murphy, the management of the Alcazar
Theater advertises "The Crime of Gen.
tury" for next week. The manager de-