The times., 1898-12-11

Grafton to make use of much of the ma
terlal that served some years back, the
authors of earlier days had in their grasp
little OF the mater now in vogue. Ac-
cordingiy the budding playwright may
prcfit by their brains and his own. Screen
scenes. curtain hidings and mixed identi-
ties are still used in these years, but the
newer tricks were Of no service when the
Older ones were invented. Thus, though
We may not have a Shakespeare now we
can give creditable limitations of him.
, while al the genius OF the "Bard OF
: Avon, could not have conJured him into
being such parsonage as-William GIL
iette.
Nor did the theatergoers of the oiden
time lose but little by this. All the stage
business Shakespeare ever devised could
not have expressed Hamlet's lunacy SO
well as the Gillette-like use of single
cheap cigar handled with discretion But
Sir Walter Raleigh had not at that time
been given historic douche bath by his
servant and consequently the Dane had to
content himself with speaking mourning
speeches to heaven and the fellow in the
fly gallery. Even now--now that straight
Havanas may be gotten by wholesale for
almost nothing-stage managers do not
see the propriety of furnishing the Prince
with a supply of emotion-exhibitors, and
the consequence is unfortunate. William
Gillette could not play Hamlet without
six months course of Nit-Nieotine.
The weed might hare been used with
equal advantage in many other classic Of
feringS. Had Cleopatra,s feigned Illness
in the first act of Anthony and CIeopa-
ira been but the result of excessive
| cigarette smoking audiences had felt less
like she were tricking her master: had
Juliets entrance into the tomb been the
result of a tobacco heart no one could
have blamed her for Romeos death. and
had Lears infirmity been caused by too
great fondness for the pipe he might
have been forgiven his many lido
cies. So actors would have been
spared the trouble of giving to Iago
a constant expression of subtle viIlainy
had that dark-souled gentleman been al
lowed to grow black mustache and puff
away at gold-tipped coffin nail" Thor
ough sympathy with the Anti-cigarette
Society would have allowed the poet to
nave made Catherine victim of the same
pernicious habit and thus have raised n
question as to her sanity. or purely
commercial instinct might have permitted
him to have made goodly stipend per
week by putting into the shrew's lips
| line to the effect that cigarette smoking
had no bad results for her because she
used exclusively Hodgkin's Hula Kula
| brand.
But ignorance of the usages of 1.-The
weed was not the only matter in which
! the ancient playwright. was given lot
more difficult than that of the modern
one. There are scores of other con-
temporary tricks that might have served
with equal worthiness in medIaeval ages
Richard. for example, might have been
| made a thousand times more hideous
I than he was had the great dramatist but
known of the awful aspect of the Cyrano
| de Bergerac-John Drew nose Such an
! appendage should have taken from the
King his lop-sided appearance without in
| any way destroying his homeliness The
| self-murder of Antony would have SEEM
| ed thrice realistic had there but been a
book shelf at the front of the stage with
| volume of 1ngersoll's rs Suicide a
| Sin?" on its top shelf, while that noble
Roman might greatly have increased the
| effect of his demise had he been enabled
to use revolver instead of a sword. The
| act of thrusting blade under ones arm
and then pulling it out while wearing the
expression assumed by man with collie
| is not half so awe-inspiring as the srec-
| tacle of a would-be corpse firing four
shots at the floor before giving up the
| ghost, shutting off his mortal coil and
kicking the bucket
1t was In devising means of death that
Shakespeare most often repeated himself.
There were apparently but two methods
of leaving the world in the time of the
Bard-by being carried off In a litter held
in the hands of four unwashed supers or
| by quietly finishing up behind the scenes
and having messenger relate the matter
| to the audience. While there is more
| poetry in either of these methods than In
being run over by brewery wagon or
| hit with a half brick, the latter means
are infinitely more practical and certainly
more versatile. There are so many ways
!, of dying just now that the modern play
wright has an inestimable advantage in
| selecting. He may make his hero suffer
| from nightingale of anything from the
| jim-jams to a round trip ticket abroad on
| French line of steamers. The villain
may be injured by the collapse of a stone
house or by inadvertently swallowing a
paper of fancy pins And II the immortal
William had only chosen to live a few
hundred years from date he might have
arranged that when his deceased martyrs
1 came before the curtain to make their
i bows a streopticon could throw on the
! drop a sign reading something fike this:
| "Ripan's Resurrection Bitters are guaran-