studied the performance, on March 8, 1882. It contained twenty-two scenes. Irving's most effective restoration was that of the scene in which the supposed death of Juliet is discovered (Act IV, Scene 5), on the morning of the day appointed for her marriage to Paris. The stage picture was exceedingly beautiful. The gradual increase of light, the songs of newly awakened birds, the music made by serenaders, and the entrance and distraction of the Nurse, combined to cause a thrilling effect. The part of the play which relates to Romeo's first love, Rosaline, of whom Mercutio, humorously commiserating his comrade's distressful condition, declares she "torments him so that he will sure run mad," has generally been excised on the stage; but it is of value as a study of the operation of love in youth, and because of the light which it casts on Romeo's temperament and the morbid nature of his first amatory passion. By Irving that portion of the play was in part retained. The setting for the tomb scene surpassed in detail and in weird, sepulchral, melancholy beauty any stage picture of the subject that ever had or ever has been devised. The tomb was a huge, gloomy crypt occupying the whole stage, accessible from the top by an irregular flight of stone steps. The body of Tybalt, covered with an ample purple pall, was conspicuous, and near it, "uncover'd, on the bier," was the lovely Juliet, in snowwhite robes of death. Irving acted Romeo, Ellen Terry Juliet, William Terriss Mercutio, Mrs. Stirling the Nurse. Irving, distinctively and superlatively intellectual, overweighted the part of Romeo, seeming, while he conveyed all its meaning, to expound rather than to impersonate it. The actor who is distinctively and superlatively intellectual must naturally find it difficult to identify himself with Romeo, for the reason that intellect inclines to look with either amused tolerance or scornful contempt on amatory passion; but Irving's performance was thoroughly illuminative and exceedingly interesting, and a more romantic figure than he presented could not easily be imagined. Ellen Terry, though mature in style for the part of Juliet, was incarnate beauty and feeling, one of the loveliest and most sympathetic beings ever beheld. Terriss was agreeably buoyant and merry as Mercutio. The Nurse, in the person of Mrs. Stirling, was

perfection, kindly, garrulous, pettish, coarse, salacious, sordid, the veritable old, familiar servitor so deftly drawn in Shakspere's text.

THE CHARACTER OF ROMEO

No ingenuity of analysis could discover obscurity in the poet's conception of either Romeo or Juliet. Romeo is a well-born, well-bred young man, ardent in temperament, chivalrous, romantic, brave, impulsive, governed by feeling, seldom amenable to reason, and absorbed by love and the longing for love. His sensibility is excessive. He has been first attracted and then repulsed by one girl, an object of his juvenile idolatry, and in the dejection consequent on that bitter experience he has become morosely melancholy, and is oppressed by a presentment of impending evil, "some consequence yet hanging in the stars." In Shakspere's transfiguration of the hero of Brooke's poem, Romeo is made a tragic character, a man predestined to calamity, and in the long annals of the stage the most affecting embodiments of the part have been presented by actors who could grasp and make actual that ideal, comprehending Romeo as the hapless victim of a malign, inevitable fate.

Hazlitt designated Romeo as "Hamlet in love," and that designation has often been cited as felicitously illuminative of the character. It seems true, however. only until it is examined. Hamlet reasons, darkly, indeed, at times, but logically. Romeo does not reason. Hamlet's melancholy proceeds from a profound, fixed, corrosive conviction that the mortal state of man is that of immitigable misery. Romeo's melancholy proceeds in the first instance from unrequited love; later, from a vague apprehension of disaster. Hamlet broods on the mystery of life, death, and "after death," and contemplates suicide; thinks, but cannot act. Romeo is not concerned about the state of man, but immediately, when apprised that Juliet is dead, obtains a poison, goes to the tomb of the Capulets, and kills himself beside her. Hamlet, after seeing the corpse of his once loved Ophelia laid in the grave, can moralize on life, augury, providence, and death, and within a short time engage in a fencing-bout. Romeo is a lover and nothing else, and to him love is everything

and all else nothing. No two men could be more radically unlike in nature than are Romeo and Hamlet, the one all emotion, the other a saddened intellect, trembling on the verge of madness. Romeo could never inquire of Juliet, as Hamlet does of Ophelia, "Why would you be a breeder of sinners?" and passionately counsel her to go "to a nunnery."

JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON

THE view of Romeo thus indicated is the one that was taken by Johnston ForbesRobertson, whose impersonation of that representative lover was the most sympathetic, impressive, and winning that has been given in recent years. It was intense, fervidly emotional, profoundly sincere, subtly suffused with an elusive spiritual quality ominous of predestinate ruin, artistically finished in every detail of action, and conveyed through the medium of a clear, refined, exquisite elocution delicious to hear. That accomplished actor first played Romeo with Helena Modjeska as Juliet when that great actress was filling her first engagement in London, at the Princess's Theater, in 1880. Later, in 1885, he acted Romeo to the Juliet of Mary Anderson, and in 1897 to the Juliet of Mrs. Patrick Campbell.

FEMALE ROMEOS

MANY women have tried to play Romeo. The most successful of them on the English stage was Ellen Tree (Mrs. Charles John Kean), who appeared as Romeo to the Juliet of Fanny Kemble, and whose classical head, symmetrical features, and tall and shapely figure enabled her to "look the part," while her efficient art enabled her to act it in such a way as to create illusion. On the American stage an early female Romeo was Clara Ellis, who assumed the part on April 2, 1846, at the Richmond Hill Theater, a house which stood at the corner of Varick and Charlton streets, New York, on the site of what had been the residence of the

American statesman Aaron Burr. The Juliet on that occasion was Mrs. Crisp, wife of the Irish comedian William Henry Crisp, as to whose fitness for the character history is silent: in comedy she was a dashing actress. Other notable female

actors of Romeo were Mrs. Hamblin (Eliza Marian Trewar); Mrs. Wallack (Ann Waring); the exceptionally beautiful Mrs. Barnes (Miss Greenhill), renowned also as Juliet; Mrs. Coleman Pope; Mrs. Sefton; Mrs. H. Lewis; Mrs. John Drew, and Susan Denin.

The most famous American actress to appear as Romeo was Charlotte Cushman, who played the part, in 1843, at the Walnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, and who was for the first time seen in it in New York on May 13, 1850, at the Astor Place Opera-House, then managed by Charles Bass, with Fanny Kemble as Juliet, and Charles Walter Couldock as Mercutio. Miss Cushman was fond of assuming male characters; there is record of her Hamlet, Wolsey, Claude Melnotte, etc., and her personation of Romeo has acquired a certain traditional esteem through reiterated commendation of the performance by persons who never saw it. The truth on the subject, I believe, is set down in the "Journal" of her friend George Vandenhoff, an accomplished actor and a judicious critic:

April, 1843.-Passing through Philadelphia, played my second engagement, five nights, at the Walnut Street Theatre, and on one night for Marshall's (manager) benefit; on which occasion Charlotte Cushman played Romeo, for the first time, I believe. I was the Mercutio. I lent her a hat, cloak, and sword for the second dress, and believe I may take credit for having

given her some useful hints for the killing

of Tybalt and Paris, which she executes in such masculine and effective style-the only good points in this hybrid performance of hers.

She looks neither man nor woman in the part, or both,-and her passion is equally epicene in form. Whatever her talent in other parts, I never yet heard any human being that had seen her Romeo, who did not speak of it with a painful expression of countenance, "more in sorrow than in anger." Romeo requires a man, to feel his passion and to express his despair. A woman, in attempting it, unsexes herself, to no purpose except to destroy all interest in the play and all sympathy for the ill-fated pair.

MERCUTIO

THE poet Dryden, 1688, recorded a tradition, which had lasted till his time, that

Shakspere had declared himself obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act of the play lest Mercutio should kill him, meaning that he felt himself unable to sustain beyond that point the exuberant animal spirits and the effervescent brilliancy of that manly, genial, jocund character. On this tradition Dr. Johnson sensibly remarks: Mercutio's wit, gaiety, and courage will always procure for him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play, nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued

his existence.

There is no record of the first performer of Mercutio. The most dazzling performance of the part given on the early English stage was that of Henry Woodward (1749), whose acting furnished a model for his successors. His temperament was gay, his action carelessly graceful, his person elegant. He possessed a fine voice, and his handsome face and vivacious demeanor enticed interest and prompted hilarity. He was the ideal comrade, and he lives in the dramatic chronicle as one of the most sympathetic and winning of comedy actors. Among Woodward's notable followers in Mercutio, on the English stage, were William Thomas Lewis, 1777; John Bannister, 1796; Richard Jones, 1814; Robert William Elliston, 1815, and Charles Kemble, 1829. Lewis reveled in the part. Bannister, manly, genial, humorous, pathetic, was charming in it. Elliston's performance was exuberantly gay with animal spirits, audacity of demeanor, sprightly speech, and vigorous action, but of that fine fiber of genius, that innate excellence of "one whom God hath made himself to mar" (so Romeo designates his friend), proba bly not even a remote suggestion.

On the American stage Mercutio has been assumed by many players of distinction, among them being John Singleton; David Douglass, 1762; Lewis Hallam, 1796; John Bernard, 1797; Edward Simpson, 1832; Lester Wallack, 1848; Charles Walter Couldock, 1850, and Edwin Adams, 1869. About sixty years ago, at the old Boston Museum, I saw with youthful delight the Mercutio of W. H. Smith (Sedley), and then and there obtained my first and lasting impression of

the character as shown in action,-a character to be loved as well as admired,

which so delighted me that I adopted Mercutio as a pen-name, and for several years wrote dramatic criticism under it. Other fine actors of Mercutio, on our stage, were H. P. Grattan, William Wheatley, Charles Fisher, and the younger James William Wallack; but the best of them all, within my remembrance, was Edward Loomis Davenport. That exceptionally versatile actor possessed exactly the affluent spirit, the joyous, careless, breezy humor, the generous, cheery mind, and the kind heart which are Mercutio's attributes. His speaking of the dream speech was deliciously fluent and natural, and he was the incarnation of exultant audacity and freedom when he said:

Men's eyes were made to look, and let them

gaze;

I will not budge for no man's pleasure, I!

JULIET AND HER PLAYERS

IN drawing Juliet the dramatist placed the emphasis more on feeling than on character; but her attributes of character are nobility, which includes chastity, integrity, and fidelity, decision, courage, fortitude, inflexibility of purpose, and the capability of passionate devotion. She is a beautiful girl, of a pure spirit, an ardent temperament, and an imaginative mind. She loves, once and forever; she lives for love, and for that only. She is romantic, but also she is discreet, resolute, and expeditious; she possesses the courage of her love, and, however fettered by circumstance and thrilled by fear and dread, she can bravely confront all perils, and persist in her devotion even unto death. It is true of Juliet, as it is of Romeo, that she is an idolater, one who loves madly, blindly, excessively, and therefore disastrously; for the reason that amorous idolatry, since it does not admit of rational conduct, necessarily precipitates ruin. It is, I believe, an erroneous assumption which declares that the denizens of a tropical clime are more passionate than natives of the temperate zones. That faith owes much to the melodious numbers of Byron and Moore. As often as I read the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet," I am more and more aware of its English atmo