Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-12-13
WOMAN AT HARVARD
Mrs Fiske's Address to Students on the
 Theater.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Dec. 13.-Un- der the auspices of the Harvard Eth ical society Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, the actress, delivered an ad- dress on ''The Theater' in Sanders Opera House here The auditorium was crowded with Harvard and Rad cliffe students. Charles T. Copeland, lecturer on English literature at Har- yard, introduced Mrs. Eiske, who is the second woman ever asked to ad- dress the students of Harvard as a lec- turer. She spoke in part as follows:
 There can be little doubt that the Idea at times comes to the worker in any field of art that possibly after all one might better be giving life and thought and action to something other than any of the arts. That is to say. when one contemplates the facts of life about one there must sometimes arise a confusion of impulse as to which of the many ways is the right road of thought and relative effort to follow.
 we see "dfeamers gazing for hours at the ceiling of the Sistine chapel oblivious to everything but the thoughts and dreams inspired by that contem- plation. But ideal as these thoughts and beautiful as these dreams may be we wonder if the dreamers might not better spend their time even under the humble discipline of the Salvation Army at actual work with an im- mediate human purpose. ....
 "Oscar Wilde said that 'all art is un- necessary Ruskin proves what any philosophy must admit, that life with out art is brutal Art has a function beyond that of affording pleasure for the moment It should be an inspira- ton and 1t should be potent-indirectly. of course, and by degrees-in mitiga- ton of the terrors whose contempla- ton may induce a question as to its utility.
 Tt is not enough to say even that art is worth while It Is of greater worth. Tn some forms its influence ADWdEa uHCN OL AAC worlds misery. The sweeping terrors and horrors of war may gradually grow less until they disappear through the education that the arts assist verestchagin, the great Russian paint CT whose work was SO largely devoted to picturing wars inhumanity and ter TOTS and who lost his life in the midst of a carnage that his brush would have revealed to assist in a reformation of humanity. did not live in vain.
 "In mankind there survives savage, brutal instinct It is relic of the ages marked by the murder of all creatures. Those were the ages when the stron- gest among all classes of brutes en- joyed the longer lives. The world has not yet learned that the greatest coward is he who treats with cruelty a helpless living thing. nor has 1t yet quite learned that the vulgarest soul is that soul which finds pleasure ir in- ficting pain.
 Speaking to an audience like rnis which now have the honor to address. it would be an impertinence to outline the history of the theater. much less to try to point the ethical facts that relate to the stage. We see everywhere in the little towns as well as in the cities. a few persons of discrimination among the mass which Is indiscriminate in taste as well as in habit and impulse. In the great cities. # is true. there are found audiences for plays which shame the stage as we'll as those who patrO- nize them. but the discriminating class, made ID of persons whose taste sets standards after the chaos of . crazy dramatic miscellany has been resolved into constituents. Is the class that the theater must rely upon at all times to keep if within the bounds of sanity. One great play. like the leaven of Holy Writ. may serve to save the theater for any reason that may appear t0 be given over to the world. the flesh and tE- az-sF