The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-02-03

quite overshadowed by the fortunes that have resulted from the Shake spearean dramas. The gross receipts from Rip Van Wrinkle, Mir. Winter es- inmates at $6.960, ,o0o. and The Music Master is said to have earned S2,- 500,000. But Mir. Winter, by a very conservative estimate of the average receipts a performance at S350, shows that The Merchant of Venice has drawn into the box office tills at least s35,00O, 900, an asserts that the re- eeipts from Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet have been even larger More over, as Mir. Winter shows. it is im- probable that the big money-makers among modern plays will go on &C., cumulating fortunes, while the Shake- spearean dramas are good for hun dreds of years yet. The late Sir Henry Irving earned with Shakespearean plays. according to Mir Winter. at least s3,000,000, and Edwin Booth left a fortune of $60000o, even after build- ing a theatre costing more than s1,- o60,000, endowing an actors society and spending other enormous sums, all earned by Shakespearean roles and Bulwers Richelieu'
 "The death of Sir Herbert Tree dur ing the past summer leaves Mir. Rob- err Mantell,' continued Mir. Bullet. "as the only classic tragedian of first importance on the English speaking stage, To Mir. Mantell alone falls the task of keeping alive the great tradi- tions first established on the Eliza bethan stage by Richard Burbage, un der the tutelage of Shakespeare him. self, and handed down through the generations of Betterton, GarriclS, Kean. Kemble, Forrest, Booth and Irv- ing. That Lear. Hamlet. Macbeth, Othello and the other tragic heroes retain in Mir. Mantell much of the orig inal character given them by Burbage. is very generally conceded, though the succession of trasedians was broken at the outset by the reformation un- der Cromwell, when the theatre was all but abolished. still. when the res toration came. there were actors liv- ing who vividly remembered the old stage business and these became the teachers of the new generation of players.
 Though MT. Mantell, like all orig inal tragedians, has stamped his in- presentations with his own genius, all the great Hamlets. Lears. Macheths and Othellos have retained a family likeness throughout the course of stage history" said Mir Bullet. "Shylock is the only exception. Orig inally low comedy character, he is now sternly tragic. This family like ness IS que 10 1ron- pound traditions handed down from generation to gen. eration and they probably originated in the brain of Shakespeare himself, who, according to Chetwood, was his own stage manager. and who taught Burbage how to create his heroes. These traditions have survived the revolution wrought by Garric5, who substituted naturalness of expression for grandiloquence and the modern in- troduction of elaborate scenic and electrical effects.
 MT. Mantell is now regarded by the discriminat ting lovers of Shakespeare and the drama" MT. Bullet said, "as the connecting link between the classic and the modern schools of act ing. It is his endeavor, as he has more than once asserted, to combine the best of the elocutionary school with the hest of the school that demands real ism on the stage. Shakespeare wrote for actors whose power lay very largely in their voices and therefore in MT. Mantell splendid exponent is found though Shakespeare was not slave to the elocutionists as were the Greek dramatists. Hamlet's instruc- tions to the players, to suit the &C., ton to the word. the word to the ac- tion.' and to hold, as 'twere the mir TOT up to nature,' abundantly prove that Shakespeare knew the value of the sinking of the personality of the player into that of the character por-