The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1899-02-14
"CAESAR" AS A
PLAY AND AS
A PERFORMANCE
Warde Portrays a
Strong Antony.
TIvoLI's NEW COMIC OPERA
RAaTIME AND GAY oooNs AT
THE CALIFORNIA.
AIcazar Actors in "a Gold Mine. !"
Juvenile Cakewalkers Score
the Hit at the
orpheum.
RAGTIME AND GAY CoONS AT
THE CALIFORNIA.

A drop in the attendance at the Column
bia last night testified to the familiar
fact that Julius Caesar is the least pop
ular of the popular plays of
Shakespeare. First of all Caesar
lacks in the female interests. Its
women are few and subsidiary. 1t Is
you might say, a stag play which omits
too much that the public love. Leaving
the women out of the case sets a relent-
less limit to the passions. Politics. war,
mans love and treachery for his fellow
man-these are about all that's left for
the womanless playwriter to work on.
Even when women were denied the
joys of playacting female roles
were written and fmpersonated. That
she is able to revenge herself in the
present day by gobbling UP all the small
boy parts in sight is only an evidence Of
the popularity of the sex. Julius Caesar"
suffers for its over-masculinity. l have
read the play often and have seen it on
the stage as many times as any fellow
of my years, and admire much Of 1t with
Il say it in all modesty) something just
as good as cant admiration OF
the classics that is hammered into us in
our schooldays so that we may spout 1t
as a virtue in our after life-but / have
yet to see a performance of Julius
Caesar that fills me with the proper sus-
tanned excitement.
The play Is not cumulative in its dra-
matte effect 1t does not grip you and
carry you along in it's inevitable fate, as
"Othello" does, as Macbeth" as Ham
let" Divide the piece where Caesar dies
and you will have two fairly different
dramas. Cut 1t oftener and you will get
as many more as you want. 1 can ad-
mire the stabbing scene, the orations of
Brutus and Antony, the quarrel. scene, a
hundred lines that make famous quota
lions, and the pictured pomp and stride Of
old Rome; but for the life of me l can't
admire the play as a play. And in making
this statement ! copiously use the per-
sonal pronoun, not so much because it is
habit of mine to do so as because. this
is merely an individual note and not the
chorus of the whole paper. Those who
don't agree can consider Julius Caesar"
all over again, and then, still not agree
ing, regard this in the light of a confess
sion.
The best individual work in last night
performance was done by Mr.. Warde in
the part of Marc Antony. 1t would be a
very hard matter, l should say, not to
do well In Antony. What there is of the
part. is all plunhs. In the funeral grafton
it offers one of the best single speeches IN
the literature of the. drama; and since
modern stage management has trained
the mob to supply applause independent
of the outside audience, failure in this
grafton is the last thing the actor has
TO worry about. 1t becomes simply a
question of how we'll he does the scene
And with all respect to the late Ned
Buckley, who played such a brilliant An
tony with Booth. and Barrett, think that
Mr.. Warde's is as fine an Antony as this
generation has witnessed. There is some
thing more in 1t than firecracker oratory;
there is touch of satire, noble scorn
for the swayable passions of the mob:
And the emphasis and the business"
that illumine the reading and give dignity
and defniteness to the most extravaganza
phrases and the most obvious heroics-it
is in the mastery of such detail as well
as In the breadth of the general concep-
ton that Mr.. Warde attains to the su-
perlative of himself. So far in the season
this is the first chance that l have had to
praise Mr.. Warde without stint, SO
cheerfully make the most of it.
Mr.. James was the Brutus, good big
strong Brutus that left nothing undone
and overdid little; and Mr.. Collin KEN
per was "dignified and impressive
all that any actor does in the part of
Caesar. The rest of the cast did fairly
well-not to mention several interesting
peculiarities in the mob-with the unex-
pected exception Of Barry tombstone,
whose work, usually so sure and easy,
was very much to the bad in an over
wrought Cassius.
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