The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-12

Katharine Roof In the Outlook.
 T HE current excuse for the fall
 ure in New York of Du Mauriers
 x play, An Englishman's Home" that has convulsed all England with a wave of patriotism, was that 1t was too essentially English for an Amer ican public. This. however, was not the case, for its drama Is of the kind that is universal. Its moving quality lay in the contrast--developed in scenes of heartrending realism between the hu- mane life of peace and domesticity brought suddenly face to face with the cruel machinery of cold blooded modern warfare. The audience was disposed to take 1t as comedy with an occa- sional touch of broad farce, especially at the end, when the peace-bred old Engiishman, left alone amid the ruins of his home, with the shot of the enemy falling about him, catches up his musket to defend his home and does not known how to set it-a situation so poignantly significant of the life of peace His desperate attempts to load and work his weapon were received with shrieks of laughter. It was a pre- dicament, therefore a joke. When. in the concentration of despair. he final ly mastered the mechanism, set, and discharged 1t. killing his man, there was mingled laughter and applause. Smart old boy."'"Good work" etc., probably represented the state of mind of the laughers The enemy was not killed within sight of the audience. a1f~~ T1.,A when 1t came to pass that the old man must pay the penalty with his life, when they saw him carried off to be shot, there was a puzzled cessation of mirth and they were obviously at loss for the point. Again. in preceding scene, in the midst of the battle. when a young girl, stunned into vacancy by the audiences and awfulness of the trag
 edy, is sent for water for a dying soldier, she goes out repeating mechan- ically. "A cloth and basin of water. a cloth and a basin of water"-one of the many striking pieces of psycho- logic realism of which the piece was full-the audience was convulsed with north, repetition of a phraes being another label of the joke.
 Almost as universally humorous as the joke of the predicament Is the one on-her tor him) idea. In the theatre all retorts, no matter how bitter, tragic or heartbroken their character, are re- garded as repartee designed to call forth mirth. In The Great Divide," wh en the woman who has been trapped into marriage says to the man who has literally bought her and is seeking to win her love with gifts. "I see. my price has risen!" ripples of mirth were heard all over the house. One woman near me gave piercing shriek of joy. before Mrs. Fiske undertook to com promise with existing conditions to the extent of producing plays with some of the universal appeal of melodrama such as salvation Nell" and Leah Klishna') her performances were pe- culiarly liable to provoke this misap- pretending mirth. have often heard people speculate upon the cause, as If 1t were some peculiar misfortune that at- tended the steps of this actress. But the explanation is perfectly simple. l, is merely that Mrs. Fiske's plays were for the most part of class that Is over the heads of a large proportion of her audience. Therefore both the character of the lines and her way of delivering them-in the natural manner of speech,a and without the labelling em- phasis employed by the popular second rate actor-caused the point to elude the native majority. One of Mrs. Fiske's most interesting part in an earlier play Hove Finds the Way"-was that of a crippled girl whose nature had be- come warped by her misfortunes added to an unsympathetic environment. The girls retorts made in pathetic bitter ness of spirit were received with hilar- ious delight by the audience. who evil dently labored under the impression