The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-04-15
MANTELL'S LEAR IS
 GREATEST OF ALL
Big Audience Witnesses Superb
 Enactment of Shakes pearean
 Drama at Park Theatre

For thirty years Edwin Forrest played Lear many times. Only old men can remem Der him. The great actor died in 1872. There are a few. who remember his Lear, and yet few. CT whose dramatic memory is strong enough as to enable them to compare his presentation with that of later. actors. Edwin Booth also gave the world a magnificent Lear. He made. his Lear famous, throughout the Eng fish speaking world. The actors art, in the past has not been capable of preservation as to the methods of any and particular of it's exponents What. may be, in this day of graphophones and moving pictures. remains to be seen.
 The tendency is to glorify the act. DTS of yesterday, and to assume that they did best what the living now do. If this were true, it would be a denial of the common fact that everything grows, and that the latest of anything is usually the best, referring of course to the best form of the newest thing
 Judged by this common rule of pro- gress, there ought to- be living men upon the stage capable of doing a> Lear as great as the inpersonations given by the great dead. Robert Man tell is such man.. Those who saw his presentation of the old king at the. Park, last night, were convinced
 
 predecessors. S se Never for an instant did Mir Man tell lose sight of the real character of Lear. His bursts of passion were be- yond the power of words to describe. His rendering of the curse upon his daughter Goneri1, was never present ed with more of the elements of ter TOT.
 . Aside from the capacity of hfanteFI as an actor, there is to be considered the. accessories with which he pre- sents his Lear, his scenery, his play CTS, his costumes and his stage effects. Leaving open the undeterminable question of. whether ManteIPs Lear would be as great, or greater than Forests or Booths, if they could be seen in the same city in the same year with the same accessories, the fact yet that no audience ever saw Lear as advantag geous1y as modern audiences are seeing it now, nor more wonderfully than a Bridgeport audi ence saw it last night.
 Added to ManteITs genius, is the genius of modern stagecraft and modern pictorial invention. The great est scene in Lear, the most difficult i to present, that in which the terror of the play reaches it's highest point, l that in which the actor must dc his | best is the scene upon the heath. The | situation demands the highest ex- pression, and the tempest within the | old mans heart and the clements out 1 side are in an awful concord.
 Such a scene as last nights could | not be presented in Booths tine,s much less Forests time. Such a | scene could not have been managed | by Mantel1 himself, until within re- cent times.
 There was the very darkness shot with forked lightning, frightened at instants with the broader fire. There | were the rolling clouds, ref1ecting the glare of the lightning, an open heath in very reality, upon which the storm l so far as human senses might deter mfne did actually beat in tremendous fury.
 Taking everything together 1t may safely be said that those who saw Lear, last night, say the best Lear ever upon the stage
 Let us leave undetermined who may have been the greatest actor in Lear's part. Let us be content with the knowledge that our Lear, taken to- gether with Mante1l and modern is the best that has been given to any people at any time.
 ManteI1 has been wise in giving his the Advantage of modern stagecraft. Shakespeare used all he L knew of. So did Mante11s predecess- ors. If he departs somewhat from tra adition, so did they, who were be- fore him.
 Who can doubt that Lear has gain ed a new meaning as the centuries. have sped? When Lear was written the horrors that it told were not so distant as they are now. Mans cruel ty to man was more than it is now, and the horrors of G1oster's binding, pr the hanging of CordeIia, were too familiar to make their modern ap- peal.
 This is a more humane age. We shall assume that ManteIIs presenta.- | ton is adapted to the understan ding 1 of the time in which he lives. The sorrow of Lear is increased in him, and the sympathy and pity of 1t is in concord with the sympathy and pity that has come upon mankind since the |