The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-09-30
From the New York World.

1 HE gorgeous, spectacular produc- @ ton of Ben Har," made at the
 Broadway theatre in the autumn of 1899, was given a glttering companion piece last night when, on the same stage, Klaw & Erlanger unfolded their wonder fully mounted dramatic version of Gen. Lew Walaces other Oriental, semi-his- torical romance, "The Prince of India"
 A great audience. for it was the thea tres opening for the season, sat marvell- ing and wide-eyed until the last picture faded away. Then the people awoke from their trance, realizing, not only what feats of illusion can be accomplished in the modern theatre with painted canvas and embroidered silk, but also what great progress scenic art, with the aid of new mechanical inventions, has made in the last seven years.
 Ben Hur' was conceded to have set new standard of pictorial stage adorn- ment in its time. It was the pride of its producers, who grew rich with the money and ambitious with the fame of certain kind it brought them Lest others, with the aid of later methods, might take thar fame from them they set out with the help of unlimited means to eclipse their own efforts and 'The Prince of India IS the result.
 Even sophisticated theatre-goers, fa- miliar with the hocus pocus of stage man agement, felt thrill as one after another of the bewildering, densely-peopled scenes of Byzantine romance and conquest were disclosed. They were intoxicated by the lights, inspired or 1ulled by the music, moved by its purely visual effect on the senses.
 So busy were eyes with seeing that no opportunity was left to think or analyze. This, of course, is the goal of scenic art . mooted question whether or not it is q legitimate purpose of the dramatic stage.
 There were pictures of riatous color, gleaming in white sunlight; there were scnes that soothed and lulled, bathed in delicate half-tones and the limpid rays of the silver moon: there were grim, dark scenes of battle charged with deep shadows and angry with the clash of ele- ments: and there were. other panoramas in which humans, richly clad and pane piled became in reality the scenery.
 Eleven of these elaborate spectacles were unfolded as the night wore on. They showed castles and palaces and landscapes in Constantinople and along the Bospho- rus regal interiors of princes and prin- cesses, visits of the Golden Horn, and bat tlefields beneath the ramparts of the capi- tai of the Turks. They ended with an i'm pressive view of the interior of the old church of Santa Sophia and the solemn ceremony of the extinction of Byzantine power.
 All these pictures clothed freely adapt ed dramatization of Gen. Lew Wallace 5 novel, written in blank verse by J. I. C.. Clarke, for which Prof. Horato Parker of Yale university composed dignified musi- cal accompaniment.
 Of the novel. as it is known between covers, but little remained. for in its book form the narrative contains little to recommend 1t for representation in action. But by intensifying and elabora- ting the wooing of Princess Irene by the dashing young conqueror, Mohammed IT. and introducing the Emperor Constantine as the princes romantic as well as martial rival, a romantic motive with sufficient backbone to sustain the whole structure was created. Then was introduced, ap- parently. to give religious significance to the whole, the legendary character of the Wandering Jew. symbolical of an as- piration to concentrate all religious be-