The San Francisco call., 1898-12-04

gar, much abused popular melodrama has this unfailing characteristic-it VIII noiu. 1 in the face of every esthetic objection, your cheerful attention. In a comedy lie l must be presented in deliberately arti- ficial way-that is to say, presented unuer strictly artificial conditions. No one, Tor instance, in looking at portrait, IS asked to mistake it for a wax model or real parsonage In admiring l2-incn iand- scape we do not blame the artist, because we are unable to Scamper i'll reality over his fields or pluck the lilacs in his garden. We go to him neither for deception nor an imitation-but for an idea, an iliustra- ton or statement" Some more of MT. Zangwilrs epigrams: woman may be moved to sublime tears at a symphony concert and pay her music mistress 9 cents per hour tor mu- sic lessons.
 The gallery god who kicks his wife is usually the most rapturous applauder of the ethics of the melodrama.
 | Certain players have passed beyond criticism, but certain plays are dead and printed. You can buy them for 25 cents dozen, and they are mostly bad. | Since Shakespeare's time only two plays have been written that are at once Scandal and 'She Stoops to Conquer Both were written by Irishmen. The work of Bulwer Lytton and Sher1- dan Knowles looks literary-as an over dressed female looks fashionable to a (PSON servant girl.
 The critic no more remembers every play he sees than Congressman re- members every baby he kisses. The fight between Yvette Guilbert and Francisque Sarcey, the eminent French critic, still continues. The following is from the last letter written by M Sarcey to the saucy Yvette: Believe me, mad emoiselle instead of wasting your time lott at hes do better to mediate upon the advice of a critic who may be right, even though he paid for his seat. That critic strongly supported and praised you when you first appeared, because you then gave new life to the light, popular song by. a. little grain of originality, because you had your own manner and talent It is not he who has changed"
 In Sol Smith Russell's new play, s'The Honorable John Grigsby," the star plays a lawyer, who, although not endowed with wealth, never turns a client away and spends most of his time defending the poor and penniless. The principal action moves around young school teacher, who has incurred the displeas- ure of a rich politician and newspaper editor because she had undertaken the education of some negro children. The girls mother had been deserted in early life by her husband, the father of the
  CTS the politician is really the girls father and compels him to do her jus tice. She in turn marries Grigsby's son and happiness Is well distributed. 1t is not yet certain that the play will be a success, though announcement is made that Uncle Dick has been permanently retired.
 Israel Zangwill is dramatizing his fa- nous stories, "The Children of the Ghetto"
 
 There are queer happenings in New York State occasionally. A manager in Utica found he had booked two attrac- tions for the same date. He was forced to give both entertainments, the second beginning at Il o'clock p. m.
 William H. Crane is appearing at the Knickerbocker in a comedy written for Worth a Million" According to the New York criticisms the title does not indicate the value of the play.
 Gabrielle d'Annunzio has finished a new play entitled ""The Dream of an Autumn Night" By all accounts it contains noth- ing that could be fairly called indecent. It's chief peculiarity is that all the impor- tant characters are female; that none of them is respectable Is, of course, not pe- culiar. One woman-a countess-murders her husband for the sake of a young man who is infatuated with a Venetian cour- tesan, and the other-the courtesan-gets the young man to take her to the Coun- tess palace. The Countess sets fire to the gondola of the courtesan, who is cremated. Duse is to play the Countess.
 When Mime. Scalchi comes to this coun- try this time she will travel alone for the first time, she just having been divorced from her husband, Count Lolli, who was wines manufactured on her estates in Italy, and he was an altogether devoted husband.
 Actresses with odd names seem to be fad with Daniel Frohman just now In the cast of ''Trelawny at the Wells,' with which he is to begin the thirteenth annual season of the Lyceum Stock Company, are Hilda Spong, Ethel Hornick and Helma Nelson. They have important parts.
 From all indications New York is about to enter upon the richest operatic season 1t has ever known. The subscription sale of boxes and seats for the Grau Company closed last Saturday, and it was stated that the total amount received is $350, ,0O0 very close to $200 900 more than was taken in 1S95-96. Nearly all the boxes have been taken for the entire season. There will be performances on fifty-one nights and sey- enteen afternoons, covering a period of seventeen weeks.
 Assuming that Richard Mansfield is a human being. moved by impulses usually found in control, he must have felt some satisfaction the other day in declining to give professional matinee.'' says the St. Louis Republic. An unusually long petition was addressed to him, signed by nearly every, actor of importance then in an extra performance of 'Cyrano." It would be interesting to know just what proportion of the signers of the petition have been Mir. Manstield's maligners for many year. Certainly there is no man