The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-08-21
DYING ON THE STAGE.
Paris PlnywriGhts Believe In Stage Murder and Suicide.

IT. P. OConnor in Chicago Tribune. |.
 It would be difficult to say for cer-
 tain. without a hint from statistic Il authority. whether there are more
 deaths in the year in French plays than in English, but the impression one gets, as merely an occasional witness of the productions from Paris. is that
 the playwrights of the "gay city, are sworn among themselves that the
 interests of the serious drama are only
 properly served by plays that end in
 murder or suicide, or both. The ha-
 bitual playgoer of Paris Is probably
 proof against this impression. his fa-
 miliarity with the characteristics of his country's dramatists. together with hls
 wide acquaintance with the French
 theatre generally. breeding in him an
 indifference. or rather an insensibility.
 to the things that strike the more
 watchful stranger. Judging French
 theatricals as we see them done over
 here, serious drama would not be rec
 ognized as Partisan goods if It's final curtain descended upon living hero and a living heroine. The mortality among the principal characters in
 French drama Is simply appalling.
 Mime. Bernhardt has had what Is probably the greatest experience of all tTaReulenucS III tuc VI Sul- eide. Her deaths by self-administered poison total up roughly to 10000; she has jumped into the scenic artists Seine over 1000 times; she has sent over 5000 bullets into her head from a revolver; and nearly the same number of daggers has the great actress, to the inexpressible sorrow of intemperately sympathetic spectators, plunged deep down into the shiffon at the side of her bodice. At reception one night at Mr. Leopold Rothschild's, lady asked Mime. Bernhardt if she really kept a coffin at hee house in Paris. answered the actress, with a smile: "and so would you if you were the morgue's most constant customerw
 M. Decoeur. who as Don Enrique in La Sorciere" performs the sensational and not over-fastidious act of killing himself by sucking from the lips of Zoraya the poison by which she herself has ended her life, Is quite an old hand at suicide. It Is not often that the have called upon him to drown or poison himself. these modes of suicide being, as rule, reserved for the heroine of the stage--as. indeed. ts the case in real life. M. Decoeur's means of self destruction has mostly been represented by the shrill revol- yer, and he estimates that he has used this weapon against his life on some- thing like 1000 occasions-which is a large record for a hero, seeing that 1t Is generally the heroine of French drama who is required to clear up the of intrigue by suicide. M, Tarride. whose success with Mme. ReJane last year is still fresh in the minds of all who have been enjoying bfs performances this season at the Avenue, is another noted suicide ex- pert, and this notwithstanding the fact that his stage career has been associ- ated with comedy quite .as much as with tragedy. and that he can not date his debut farther back than 1889.
 It is to the revolver that M. Tarride, too, owes most among his thousands of deaths, and he. in common with so many actors who have had to use fire- arms on the stage has had his embar- rassins moments with defective capss