Los Angeles herald., 1909-06-20
zAY tlOL LAND AT THE
Los ANGELES THEATRE
BY W. HERBERT BLAKE

In a succinct and graphic talk chron-
icled in the Seattle Times, Madame
Nazimova tells US why she is an Ib-
senite.
1T is a mistake to talk of Ibsen s
heroines," she declares. 'Ibsen has no
heroines, he has women. Shakespeare
has heroines. There is a simplicity
and grandeur about them that makes
them seem very remote from us and
very difficult for us to interpret and
present on the stage. Shakespeare s
women seem more like types, ideals,
than real persons. They are clear and
definite, either good or bad, coquettish
or demure, vixenish or humble, and
what they are at the beginning of the
play, that they stay till the curtain
falls. Perhaps women were really like
that 800 years ago and Shakespeare
drew them as he saw them. But the
position of women has changed since
then and we ourselves have changed.
I shall not brave the wrath of Mr..
Harry Mestayer by taking issue with
the great Russians estimate of Ibsen.
But an admiration which justifies it
self by detraction from the fame OF
Shakespeare invites analysis. To say
that the women in Macbeth or The
Merchant of Venice" are mere un-
evolving types is heavy tax on Gre
dulity. Is it possible that NazimoVa
sees no character change in Ophelia or
Portia? Is the marvellous psychology
ical study of Lady Macbeth lost on an
artist who makes Hedda's bewildered
life dilemma so appealing? What OF
Rosalind, and Desdemona, and even
tickle Jessica? Are we to suppose that
only our febrile modern atmosphere
can evolve character?
Perhaps the scalpel should go deeper
into the Nazimova dramatic philoso-
ply. Perhaps the sad Norwegian
delved so long in the laboratory as to
be blind to the glorious sunset of the
middle ages, as it staged the creative
marvels of the Elizabethans. There
were doubtless Heddas and Noras
without number in those London
streets in which young VIII snake
speare held horses and studied the
world One has but to read the news
columns to know that there are Lady
Macbeths and Jessicas today Trans
posing Nazimova's criticism, ii would
be simple truth to say that ShreW
Kate, for example, is both good ana
bad, alternately coquettish and de-
mure, a vixen pathetically humbled'
woman struggling into wifehood.
The changing position of woman has
hut accetuated her feminine qualities
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson to the
contrary notwithstanding NazlmoVa
trnnIies surprise that Americans do not
readily recognize the 1bsen characters
ALI around them. Timidly, would ven
ture the assertion that TINS is the naru-
ssf blow ever launched at the lbsen
,ne+bod We can so thoroughly forget
Shakespeare as to play the agnostic
about his existence. The children OF his
fancy have peopled the world. The re-
norter can chronicle life as microscop-
ica1Iv a s Zola or Ibsen. Only the artist
can create 1t. Granted even that the
Shakespearean family of characters
were not in the flesh when thelr douDles
trod the boards, the facr remains Una
they have since been born Oscar
wilde smoke the truth when he said
that life copies art. 1t is simply the
dream which men and women pursue, |
unconsciously sometimes, but ever
surely.
Judged most charitably, Hedda is but
a feverish phase of a passing civiliza-
tion. 1t IS quite another tempest
which blows through Shakespeare's |
pages. Nora is a piteous picture of one
nineteenth century wife. Cordelia and
Goneril are daughters of the future, as
of the past.
OF course, the real criticism of Shake
speare is that his women are too uni
versal, in point of both time and space
No playwright ever ndu less Lle BeO-
graphical mind. This cosmopolitanism
is too vast for us to grasp. Not hero
ines not women, but woman crowds
his canvas. When the society of the
future shall snap her fetters, perhaps
we shall recognize her as the vision
which haunted us so strangely in the
plays of sixteenth century 'ostler
Why not abolish the first night?
It is a strain on stock company tenn
pers and a critics sense of justice.
Why should a reviewer traditionally
be compelled to express his judgment
Of a play while its interpreters are
still uncertain of their roles and the
property mans weekly deluge of pro-
family over missing scenery is yet
The box office, of course, is the an
swer. But this is no answer at all
For the presence of two, or even three,
rival attractions on Monday night re-
necessitates a delay in re-
viewing some one or two of them The
present collisions could all be obvi-
tied If rival managers would agree on
lifferent days for opening and con-
'luding their bookings. The business
between theaters In
widely separated cities would make
his possible. Indeed. locally we have
partial approximation of the idea. s
he Burbank company puts on it's new q
lay Sunday afternoon. The Belasco (
hange comes Monday night. Yet no. /