The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-04-19

New York, April 11.-ff you haven [
read Don QuixOte' since you were
boy or a girl, you may have forgotten
the merely incidental loves of Cardenio
and Luscinda, Fernando and Dorothea,
and remember only the celebrated mis-
adventures of the daft amateur knight
and his squire, Sancho Panza. AT the
outset of the new drama made from
the old book for Edward H. Sothern,
the two couples of lovers awake no
recollections; but when Quixote rides
In on horseback. and Sancho on dom
keyback, they are recognized as famil-
lar acquaintance. The mare Rosi-
mantle, to be sure, is not lean and lame,
as she used TO be, but so mettled that
she has TO be led into the inn yard
where the first quarter of the play has
been located. The donkey. though.
makes no bother For a dependable
actor on hoofs, the sire of mules is e
dependable creature. He viii stay
where he is put. and move nothing else
than his ears; but a horse is always
restively disturbing Even if Sothern
were TO borrow mare from the Bergh
agents for the role of Rosinante, prob
ably she might uproot a tree by balk,
push the garden wall away, jostle the
gate post and get more attention than
the star rider That was the way it
went on the opening night; and, unless
Sothern uses every evening a beast
ready to die the next morning, he will
have TO dope the healthy one or con-
rinue TO have his entrance spoiled.
X x x
This dramatiZation of Don Quixote"
is no casual or cheap experiment; it is
studied and costly; and it will add an
other carload of scenery and costumes
20 Sothern's touring train; for, while it
won't continue long in any one place,
it. surely will be carried in his roper
tory. So much of Ceramics book has
been put into it that. although it starts
at a quarter to s, it doesn't stop until
a quarter to midnight's Y. Even at
that, the mad knight errant, who sets
out to right wrongs by deeds of valor,
IS not seen in his charge on rushing
armies of sheep, nor in his cutting off
the heads of giants that are skins full
of blood-red wine, and those exploits
are related TO the audience, being i'm
possible of exhibition. Quixote's still
more celebrated battle with windmills
is not in the play at all, even by hear
say, and in that omission has not Kes-
ter, maker of the play, missed a CHANGE
"a triumph I'm theatric excitement?
Sothern submits to much mussing up
and tumbling around in the mock mis-
haps, and l can't think he would shrink
at being lifted and dropped by a wind
mills arm. For very highly artistic
Of design is the actor in this classical
burlesque of romantic knighthood, and
too deeply in earnest to dread physical
bumps or aspects of indignity. During
three acts he is fighting most of the
time with tormentors, whom his crazed
fancy turns into deadly foes; usually
~ 10 &C. E.,cf 81
roughly; and at the third drop of the
curtain, exhausted by a combat with a
bogus knight, hurt in body and tor
tured in mind, he is thrown into a
wooden cage, lifted on his captor' S
shoulders and carried away, crouching
ON all tours like a beast, wrenching at
the bars and making unhuman out
cries.
4 = 4
In one way "Quixote" is a problem
play: it raises the question whether TO
laugh at its hero or to weep; but SOth-
ern wishes his audiences to take him
seriously. and let all the laughing be
done on the stage, where women and
girls are as merry a chorus as any mu-
steal farce ever had, with leVity that
doesn't stop at dental grins, but is
noisy with all the notes known to
laughter, from chuckle to scream: and
none of the pony ballets is more vio-
lent with dances than these super
numeraries are in helping the men to
torment the lunatic. To me, stage fun
evolved from the distresses of lunacy
is never else than sad. Sothern speaks
QuiXote's sage dissertations as though
they were Hamlet's sOlilOquies, while
in dignity of behavior under the most
ludicrouS circumstances he is like him
self as Malvolio. The only other Quix-
ote ever seen on the American stage
was Irving's; and the tall spare Eng
lishman easily realized not only the
Knight of the rueful countenance, =
but as well the knight of the sad fig
ure." Sothern repeats the phrase de-
scriptive of the figure many times. al
though his shortness and thickness
forbids him to look gaunt. and he
Omits the one about a woeful counten-
ance, although he paints his face into
a portrait of woe.
You have often been sorry to see pic
lures in the books of, say, Dickens and
Thackeray, that don't gee with your
imagination of the characters; and I
won't except even Cruikshank's illus
trations of Dickens, or Genanis of Ger