The Play and the Gallery

THE significance of the play to the audience is a subject upon which students of the acted drama invariably hold opinions, — opinions most bewilderingly various. One point in common, at least, they all admit, — the perennial attraction of the play.

“The people go to the theatre,” they grant easily enough : “they go nowhere else more willingly ; they go nowhere else in greater numbers. But why do they go ? What do they get, or not get, from the play? ”

It is an insistent question ; and it has provoked hundreds of speculative and involved answers, solemn, humorous, and exasperated. It is an alluring question, too ; for it may well have an almost limitless number of replies, — very nearly as many, indeed, as there are plays and audiences, and individuals in audiences. The difficulty with these replies is that they are ordinarily made, not by the audience, but by the questioners themselves. The people of the audience in the majority are, to use an expressive Scotch word, too canny to reply, if they could or would. Usually they neither can nor will ; they are too well informed as to the complexities of dramatic art and stage technicalities, and too knowing, and too busy trying to find out why the other people go to the play. Even the less learned and less knowing are yet too self-conscious to be other than cautious when they approach the subject. They seem to feel under the necessity of having some occult interest in seeing the play.

One afternoon, in Boston, at a most hilarious matinée performance of The Pride of Jennico, the extreme excitement of a girl — a sophomore, as she presently told me, of Radcliffe College — actually alarmed me. She wept copiously, she laughed most wildly, she shuddered, and she applauded Mr. Hackett, whenever he appeared or disappeared, with an exaggerated but delightful fervor. Between the acts she dried her eyes, and talked to me, though I was a stranger to her, about plays, — or, more accurately, players. “Did you ever see such eyes as Julia Marlowe’s ? ” she asked me. “I adore Julia Marlowe, anyway, don’t you?” “At Barbara Frietchie, ” she added, without waiting for any replies, she had “cried quarts.” She “positively worshiped Sothern, ” she declared ; but she had not seen his Hamlet, because she knew that she “could n’t possibly live through a play in which he had to die.” She mentioned Mr. Hackett, too. She was “wild to see him off the stage,” she said, though she knew that if ever she did she should “fall over in a faint.”

“You must find the theatre very interesting, ” was the one remark with which I interrupted her monologues.

“Oh yes,” she said fervently, “I do, and especially since I have begun to read psychology. ”

That sophomore undoubtedly does find the theatre interesting ; but could Professor James himself discover any connection between what she finds in it of most evident interest and her study of psychology ? With all her confidences, she still was canny when it came to the delicate point. She possibly does not know just why she goes to the play ; she may actually believe that her motive has something to do with the study of psychology. At any rate, even she had her reserves, confiding as she was.

The people in the audience who have not these reserves are the people in the gallery, the people who come from the city tenements to what are graphically known as the “rush seats.” They have not begun to read psychology, and they are not in the least self - conscious. They may be canny ; but they are not too canny to know why they go to the play, and, more delightful still, they are not too canny to tell it all to a sympathetic listener.

It has been my happy fortune to be regarded in this light by some of the people who see the play from the gallery ; and in the course of many conversations they have told me why they have gone to the theatre, and what they have taken from the theatre. Few things could be more charmingly simple than their relations to that least simple of all the arts, the acted play.

In the first place, they have gone to the theatre, and they go to the theatre, to see the play ; not to see the players, nor to see how they play the play, nor why they possibly play it thus, nor why they do not play it in some other way (“in any conceivable other way,” as I overheard a critic murmur, at a recent Shakespearean revival), nor what the author of the play meant, nor what he did not mean, nor what he should have meant. They may see all these things ; they frequently do see several of them ; but they go to the theatre to see the play. It is interesting to remember that in Shakespeare’s time the entire audience went to see the play.

Shortly after my experience with the sophomore to whom The Pride of Jennico had been interesting from a psychological standpoint, I said, for an experiment, to a young girl of about the sophomore’s age, who frequently goes to the unreserved gallery of the theatre, “ Why do you go to the theatre ? ”

“Why, to see the play! ” she said, in surprise.

This girl lives in one of the city tenements. I met her, as I have met other members of the audience in the gallery, at a college settlement. Through the college settlement and various charitable organizations, as well as through other means, I had gained some knowledge of the lives of the people in the city tenements, and of a few of the influences brought to bear upon them. It was not, however, until some of the people were very friendly with me that I found that, among their influences, none had been greater and more vital than the influence of the stage, of the acted play.

My own love for the acted drama is somewhat great ; and I found, in visiting the women in many of the city tenements, that an involuntary betrayal of it sometimes melted their reserve, and even their occasional suspicion, as an application of the formal principles of social science would never have done. Their instant response was at times not without humor, but neither was it without significance. The moment they found me irresistibly sympathetic with a fondness for seeing acted plays, they regarded me no longer as an alien, who might be expected to give unsolicited advice on all subjects and to ask inconvenient questions on most, but as a kindred spirit. They seemed to feel that a person who could echo a wish that Miss Ellen Terry would come to America “a little oftener ” was privileged to give advice about keeping the back yard in order, and might even safely be trusted to take the children and have them vaccinated.

It has given me much delight to find that some of the people whom I have met in various tenements have thus strongly — as Mr. William Winter says most of us have in some measure — the dramatic perception. It has been to me so beautiful to have in common with them an interest in things so lovely as the drama and dramatic art. I meet it in new acquaintances among them with keen pleasure ; and they, when they happen to discover that I too like to go to see plays, seem always to feel “a kind of joy to hear of it.” They know how very much one can like it, for they themselves like it so well and it means so much to them.

They go from their tenements to see plays : they see, and they feel, and they think, and they effectually remember. They are influenced ; they are made greater or less ; and, simple as the influence may be, its result is surely felt by their associates and their surroundings.

They go not once, but often, — as often as they can buy tickets of admission to the galleries. The majority of them work throughout the day, and they go to the gallery in the evening. So much does the experience mean to them that many times they save for their suppers portions of the lunches brought in the morning to the shops and factories in which they work ; and thus, enabled to go directly from their work to the theatre, they gain another hour in which to await the opening of the doors leading to the gallery.

Once I remonstrated at some length with a young woman who made a habit of this unhygienic saving of time. “It will make you ill, ” I warned her.

“It gives me a better chance for a front seat, ” she responded, with the effect of presenting a complete justification of even a greater sacrifice of physical well-being than is represented by a supper made up of a banana and half a cheese sandwich.

Through this same young woman I found the first instance of many instances that I have found of the good given by the theatre through the gallery to the tenements.

Learning one day that she was ill, I went to her home to see her. It happened to be in the autumn of 1898. Mr. Richard Mansfield had been announced in a new play, Cyrano de Bergerac, by M. Edmond Rostand. By the merest chance I had with me a new copy of the English version of the play, to be used by Mr. Mansfield, and it was in my hand as I went into the room. The room lacked much to make it even approximately comfortable. The face of the sick girl was drawn and tired, until she saw that book. Then an eager light came into it ; she held out her hand.

“Oh, Mansfield’s big new play! ” she exclaimed. “I can hardly wait to see him in it! How kind you are to bring it to me! ”

I was more than a little surprised ; I had not supposed that she ever had heard of Mr. Mansfield or of Cyrano de Bergerac ; but I was interested. I had not brought the book for the girl, but I gladly left it for her. In the usual fashion I had brought some flowers for the tenement room, but she scarcely mentioned the flowers ; instead she asked me in how many plays I had seen Mr. Mansfield, and exactly what I thought of him in each of them.

She saw the play of Cyrano de Bergerac on its first night ; and I too saw it on its first night, urged thereto by the girl. “ What did you think of it ? ” I inquired, when she called at the settlement the next night to ask me what I thought of it.

“Well,” said she, “I think all the trouble came because they all cared so much about looks. Cyrano cared about looks, and Roxane cared about looks, and Christian cared about looks. Of course Cyrano’s carin’ made the most trouble, because he cared the most.”

This was interesting in the extreme : it was a true critical appreciation of the play, and the appreciation of a playgoer who was ignorant of any canons of dramatic criticism ; who was unaided by any authority of critic ; who had no theory, and felt no necessity of having any theory, as to the drama and dramatic art ; to whom, indeed, the words themselves were without meaning. She merely and simply had seen the play, and had seen it truly. This alone was interesting, but the girl continued : “Of course I’ve heard that looks don’t count much, and that feelin’ they do makes trouble. I never thought much about it ; but now I’ve seen it, I don’t believe I ’ll ever forget it.”

Nor was this all. Many months later I saw again the influence of that play for what Mr. Sothern has called “noble living.” A little girl, living in a tenement in the same neighborhood, burned her face very severely with fireworks. When I went to see her, I found with her the girl who considered a front seat in the gallery of more importance than food. The child who was burned was in great distress because some one had suggested that her face would be left disfigured. I hopefully expressed a contrary opinion ; but the girl who had seen Cyrano de Bergerac from the gallery said, with a conviction that quieted the child : “Well, it won’t matter — much — if it is, dear. Looks ain’t what count. It ’s what we do that counts.”

Several weeks later I met the child, entirely recovered, on the street. “My face ain’t scarred! ” she cried. “I ’m glad,” she continued, — “but ” —after a pause she added, “if it had er been, it would n’t er mattered — much. It’s what we do matters, not looks.”

The influence was simple in its trend, but it was potent ; and in the city tenements the new measure of values it created has a deep meaning. Simple as it was, what was the meaning of M. Rostand’s and Mr. Mansfield’s art in the play of Cyrano de Bergerac but just exactly that “it’s what we do that counts, not looks ” ? I had seen the play of Cyrano de Bergerac twice, and had read it twice as many times, and had read pages of critical appreciation of it ; but I confessed to myself that its real import was most suggested to me, after all, by the girl who merely had seen it once from the gallery. I never see her without recollecting that “it’s what we do that counts, not looks.”

One day I went to call upon a woman whose life had been very hard, whom circumstances might well have made more hard. She lived in one of the least model of tenements, and I had difficulty in groping my way through the dim hall and up the dark stairs. The woman received me in a room from which great poverty had not taken all cheer, and silently, stolidly waited until I should open the conversation. I had been warned that she would expect me “to do rather most of the talking.” Very much at a loss for a topic, I glanced around the room. On a small shelf in one corner I saw a picture, cut from a magazine, of Miss Ellen Terry as Portia. Supposing it to be purely decorative, I said, partly for the sake of breaking the silence, which was threatening to be protracted, “That is a beautiful picture.”

“Yes, but it ain’t as beautiful as she was,” said the woman unexpectedly.

“ Have you seen her ? ” I exclaimed, in amazement. It seemed scarcely possible.

“Yes,” said the woman, “once I saw her. I saw The Merchant of Venice, and she was in it. She was Portia.”

“She certainly was! ” I found myself agreeing, not without fervor.

The woman succumbed. She moved her chair nearer and prepared to tell me all about it. As she told me, she warmed more and more to her subject ; she gave me no further opportunity to do any of the talking at all.

“I did n’t care much for Shylock, ” she said reflectively, “but he was n’t a person you would want to care much ’bout ; but,” and her eyes lighted and she indicated the picture of Miss Terry, “she was lovely. It’s a long time since I saw her, but I’ve never forgot the things she said ’bout havin’ mercy, and how she looked when she said ’em. People ain’t always had mercy for me ; and when I ’ve wanted to pay ’em back for it or be mean to anybody, I jes’ remember her and what she said ’bout havin’ mercy — and I don’t want to be mean ’cause of her,” she concluded, almost shyly.

Ah, there are happily many of us who have the abiding joy of remembering how lovely Miss Terry is in The Merchant of Venice, and the things she says about having mercy, and how she looks when she says them ; but it is doubtful if there be quite as many who remember further, because of her, to “render the deeds of mercy.”

During three years that followed I was fortunate enough to find opportunities to make this woman’s life less hard ; but very recently some one laughingly told me that she had heard me designated fondly by my friend simply as “the lady who knew to say right off by heart all them things in the play I saw ’bout havin’ mercy, and gave me the book with ’em in.”

One day another woman in the same neighborhood, who had seen the book,— which its owner still prizes and exhibits, —met me with the inquiry, “Did you ever see a play named Othello ? ”

I told her that I had seen a play named Othello.

“Can you get the book of it to read ? ” “I have it,” I said to her. “Would you like to read it ? I shall be glad to lend it to you. Have you seen the play ? ”

“Yes,” said the woman, “and I’d love to read it. I saw it a long time ago. I rushed to it, to the gallery. The man that was Othello said what he said in Eye-talian. Did Othello when you saw it? I could n’t tell what he said, ’cause it was in Eye-talian, but I could see what he was like : he believed everything he heard. I see lots like that. Rememberin’ how he ended has kept me from believin’ lots I hear. ”

Even the man who “said what he said in Eye-talian ” has not had this influence upon all who remember what his Othello was like — if he were like anything or any one — and how he ended.

The woman came to the settlement to return the book. “It seems so real, to read it,” she commented.

“ Did it seem as real to see it played ? ” I asked.

“It seemed realer, ” she said meditatively, “’specially Othello.”

Who can say more than that it did, — especially Othello ? The woman who spoke was unconscious that she was making a plea for the theatre ; a plea to the stage and to the others of the audience, — a plea to them for larger opportunities to come under the influence of the stage. She was unconscious, too, that she was increasing the weight of responsibility as to the character of that influence.

That the influence has been of harm I have found to be quite as definitely true as that it has, in the lives of these three women, been of good.

A young woman in the tenements, whom I have known for more than three years, went to see one of the recently produced plays of which Nell Gwynn is the heroine. She was interested in history, and when she learned that Nell of old Drury had actually lived she went to the Public Library and inquired into the circumstances of her life. She came one night, after she had seen the play, to discuss it with me. She is as fond of discussing plays as of seeing them.

“Nell Gwynn was n’t a good woman, was she? ” she began.

It seemed wisest to express a doubt ; but I reminded her of the period in English history to which Nell Gwynn belonged.

“ Did the other people think her good then? ” the girl persisted.

“No, ” I replied, “ they scarcely did. ”

“But in the play she seems better than them ; she gets along best.”

This was too true to attack very strongly, though I made some effort to explain.

“But even if she did get along best then, and was n’t good, if people thought her bad then, what makes them think her good now ? ” the girl said, in reply to my attempt at enlightenment.

“But they do not.”

“The people who made the play do, ” insisted my companion, “ and everybody goes to see it and seems to think she is all right.”

From this point of view I could not move her, though I went the length of risking the hypothesis that the authors of the Nell Gwynn plays had created a fictitious heroine in Nell Gwynn’s historic place and given her the real heroine’s name. The girl had read too many historic novels, and she took plays too seriously, to be impressed by this theory, which from a mere historic standpoint strongly suggested itself. I had seen three Nell Gwynn plays, written by three respective authors, and the dénouement of each one had been, to express it very mildly indeed, historically unexpected. The theory was well grounded, but it did not help the girl. Her conception of the standard of good and evil held by the majority, and by the gifted who make plays, had been lowered, and lowered through the theatre.

It is probable that these plays were meant to give, and to most of their audiences gave, the merest amusement. This is more than possible ; but, however it may be forgotten, it still is somewhat relentlessly true that the stage is a power, that the theatre is an influence.

A boy, almost grown to manhood, living in the tenements, went at times to the gallery to see a play. I had known this boy also for several years, and realized that to an unusual degree his future rested upon the relative strengths of the influences which might be brought to bear upon him. With misgivings I listened, therefore, when he said one evening : “ I saw a play the other night named The Gay Lord Quex. The people in it are a bad lot, but they get out all right. The worst is the best, and they gets out best.”

“But in real life it is different,” I replied to his inference.

“Maybe it is, ” said the boy, “maybe it ain’t. There’s no tellin’.” This doubt he still holds. It is a dangerous doubt, and in the tenement district especially dangerous.

That the boy saw the play aright I thought probable. He saw in the same year Mr. E. H. Sothern’s Hamlet, having previously read the tragedy ; and of the production he said, “ I liked it ; but Hamlet was kinder in the play than in the book.” This same kindness in Mr. Sothern’s Hamlet was the subject of chief praise and chief blame from his ablest critics, some of whom insisted also that Hamlet is less kind in the book than in Mr. Sothern’s playing. If the boy saw thus truly Mr. Sothern’s exquisitely fine conception of Hamlet, it is more than probable that he saw as truly The Gay Lord Quex.

It is remarkable how truly the people who form the audience in the gallery see the play. They have in most cases none of the lights with the help of which even most devoted students of the acted drama still find themselves insufficiently lighted, but they do so unerringly see.

One girl whom I know is especially clear and definite in her views of plays. She went one night to see Miss Maude Adams in The Little Minister. “No,” she said decisively, “I did n’t get any enjoyment out of it. Lady Babbie had a kind of a taking way with her, but she was so childish! ” Most of us got so much enjoyment out of The Little Minister ; and did we not get it because Lady Babbie had such a “taking way with her, and was so childish ” ?

This same girl went to see Ben-Hur. She had been very eager to see the play, but she found it almost too disappointing for words.

“What was the trouble with it? ” I asked sympathetically.

“Well,” she sighed, “the scenery was grand, and the clothes were grand, and the chariot race was grand ; but when I go to the theatre I like to see acting.”

There are others of us who when we go to the theatre like to see acting! The particular play that this girl wanted I could not discover until she saw ’Way Down East, and explained quaintly that she liked it “because it touched the heart.”

’Way Down East touched her heart as truly as The Sunken Bell touched the imagination of another girl whom I met. I was sitting in the shelter of the settlement doorway one summer evening, telling fairy tales to some of the neighborhood children ; and she came in search of her little sister just as the last story reached its climax. Urged by the little sister, she sat on the steps to wait until the story should be ended.

“ Go on, ” the children said to me, impatient of the interruption. “You were where the lovely fairy came, dancing in the moonlight ” —

“Yes, ” I continued, “she came ; and she was very lovely. Her hair was spun of long, bright sunbeams, and she had a beautiful dress made of a soft red cloud ” —

The older girl laid her hand on my arm. “Why,” she said eagerly, “she must have looked just like Rautendelein ! Oh, did you see her, too ? ”

She waited until the story was finished, and then she plied me with questions. When she found that I “too ” had seen the beautiful production of The Sunken Bell, given with Mr. E. H. Sothern as Heinrich, and Miss Virginia Harned as the lovely, elusive Rautendelein, her delight was charming to see. She had so much to say about it all, but especially about Rautendelein.

Rautendelein had been to her, as Mr. Clapp said the entire production was to all of us who saw it, “a comfort and a joy.” She worked in a factory, but not even months of long, monotonous days had dimmed her memory of the “elfin creature.”

“She was like a fairy come true,” she said. “Sometimes, when I get tired, it rests me just to remember her, with her fairy ways and looks.”

Rautendelein was so actual to her that I longed to ask her the questions that so many of us have asked ourselves about the significance of Hauptmann’s “dear enigma,” but I did not. It seemed better to leave to her untouched the vision that Miss Harned had given her of the “ sweet fantasy ” with fairy ways and looks, whom it rested her to remember when she was tired.

An older woman whom I know told me one day that she “ loved the theatre, but had n’t had a chance to go for nine years.” I promptly invited her to go to a matinée with me on her next holiday. Since then we have seen several plays together. One of them was a delicate comedy, and it did not interest her ; another was a finely constructed tragedy, and it tired her ; another was a most thrilling melodrama, and it seized and held her attention.

It was given by the stock company of the Castle Square Theatre in Boston ; and the person in the play who appealed especially to my companion was the heroine, who, in the exciting course of the play, loses her reason through her grief at the unforgiving rage of the hero, and when, just before the final curtain, he relents, regains it. The absurd part was played in a manner surprisingly not absurd, and by a very young actress, Miss Eva Taylor. Realizing, doubtless, that if she must play so preposterous a rôle at all, her only hope lay in playing it seriously, she actually compelled even the humorously inclined in the audience to take at least her motive as seriously, and moved the others to tears for herself and hisses for the hero.

My companion was obviously affected. She was also unusually silent. When I met her, several days later, she immediately spoke of the melodrama. “I felt bad, ” she said, “to see you take it so calm, ’cause I knew you cared ’bout people’s sorrows, and that poor girl had such a hard time! But I see now that it would er been better if she had taken it calm, too, ’stead er gettin’ so excited an’ losin’ her mind.”

“It would have been rather more sensible,” I agreed.

“Yes, would n’t it? ” she said. “It’s better to take things calm. I never see it so plain till I see that play, and I ’ll remember it.”

To learn the value of self-control from a melodrama, and that melodrama, of all others, The Duel of Hearts, was so diverting that I often smiled at the mere memory of it.

Then, one day, some time after, two of the little children of the woman who had seen the melodrama fell ill, one of them quite beyond hope of recovery. When I went to see her, she was, even in her great trouble, quiet. It was an unusual, an unexpected mark of strength, and before I left her I could not forbear saying : “Not every one has your courage. You are even braver than I had hoped you could be, and you know how brave that is.”

“Don’t you remember,” she said, “when we saw that play, an’ talked ’bout how much better it is to take things calm ? I never thought I ’d have anything like this to take, when I made up my mind to take things calm, but I’m tryin’.”

It was inexpressibly pathetic. It was the most touching, and in many ways the most lovely, to me, of all the various meanings which the people of the tenements have told me they have found in plays. By the merest chance we saw the melodrama. By another chance the rôle of the impossible heroine was played by a young and naïvely sincere woman, whose mere sincerity redeemed its grotesqueness. Whatever else it lacked, it was sincere ; and it not only affected for the moment the woman of the tenement, but in her great need it kept still the force of the appeal it had made to her.

One of my particular friends in the tenements is a Polish girl, who, even when so slightly acquainted with the English language that she was unable to follow the lines of the play, went often to the gallery. She had seen Mr. Edwin Booth’s Hamlet, and Mr. Richard Mansfield’s Richard III., and Miss Ada Rehan as Katherine the Shrew, and Madame Modjeska as Lady Macbeth, and Sir Henry Irving as Shylock with Miss Ellen Terry as Portia, and Miss Julia Marlowe in many parts.

Miss Marlowe’s acting has been her greatest delight ; and when first I met her, it was her favorite and almost her only topic of conversation. She had, and she still has, a great deal to say about Miss Marlowe, — quite as much as the psychological sophomore, — and she says it freely and frequently ; but she never yet has mentioned Miss Marlowe’s eyes to me, nor has she ever said that she adored her. Very often, though, she says, “I like it, I like it much, to see Julia Marlowe act.”

When this girl heard that she might have most of Miss Marlowe’s plays to read, her pleasure was exceedingly great. She worked all day in a shop, but at night she read As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet, and made lists of words and phrases that puzzled her, and brought them to me and sent them to me for interpretation. Had she been urged to study Shakespeare, she doubtless would have refused ; but the joy of reading Miss Marlowe’s plays caused her not only to surmount the difficulties of reading, but to commit to memory some of the lines, and to ask for information regarding their author and “his other books.”

She afterward read Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, and had long arguments with me as to Hamlet’s madness, and the strict legality of Portia’s reasoning and triumph in the trial scene. She took these discussions so seriously that my belief in Hamlet’s madness — a belief contrary to her own — gave her much anxiety, and at intervals she would confront me with proofs against it in the shape of lines from the play. Even when she ceased to combat it in this way it distressed her. Not very long ago I met her. I had not seen her for more than a month, and she had much to say.

“Before Julia Marlowe, she comes, you will lend me When Knighthood Wass in Flower? ” she presently said.

“I certainly shall,” I promised.

“And Hamlet, do you yet think him, he wass mad ? ” she next anxiously inquired.

She wrote “appreciations ” of several Shakespearean characters. I suggested to her that she write next a sketch of Shakespeare’s life, and explained to her how to go about finding her material at the Public Library. One evening, about a week later, she came to the settlement. I was busy with a club meeting, but she said so earnestly that she absolutely must see me that some one came for me, saying in explanation that the girl was evidently in some dire need.

“Your mother is n’t worse ? ” I asked. Her mother had been ill.

“No,” she replied, “she iss better. But in a book at the Library it did say that a man named Bacon, he did write Shakespeare’s plays ! Did he ? ”

She became so imbued with Shakespeare that she involuntarily fell into his lines and used his words. Hearing me express a wish one day that better care might be taken of a tenement near the settlement, to which wish I added, “ It should be done, ” she said, “ Oh yes, and it would be ‘ if to do were ass eas-sy ass to know what were goot to do.’ ”

On another occasion, when I was spending an evening at her home, she filled a small glass with a wine brewed by her mother, and, turning to me, said with the greatest dignity and impressiveness, “I carouse to thy fortune, my friend.” Several weeks earlier I had explained to her that the words of the Queen in Hamlet, “The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet, ” were of themselves a good wish, and the act of itself a tribute.

She went to see Miss Marlowe as the Countess Valeska with eager anticipation, for she knew that the play dealt with Poland, her own native and beloved country.

“What did you think of it ? ” I asked, about as eagerly, when next we met.

The girl’s reply gave evidence of a minutely true view of the production. She was very thoughtful as she answered : “I did like it ; but Valeska wass a Polish woman, and Julia Marlowe iss an American woman. I wish Modjeska, she would play it. An American woman, — America is so different, — how can she know how feels a Polish woman ? ” She was so loath to find a deficiency in Miss Marlowe’s acting that she found it instead in her environment.

“But Juliet,” I said, for the purposes of argumentation chiefly, “was an Italian woman, you know ; and you thought Miss Marlowe knew how she felt.”

“Ah,” said the girl, “Juliet, she wass just a woman ; but Valeska, she wass a Polish woman! ”

Even allowing for the Polish girl’s pride of race, who shall say otherwise or more truly than that Juliet was just a woman, and Valeska, peculiarly, a Polish woman ?

She saw The Pride of Jennico before I had seen it. “The princess and the man,” she reported, “they did behave like children ; but all the people in the theatre, they did like it much.” This was comprehensive, but was it not true ?

Is it not this youthful behavior that constitutes the essence of the romantic drama, and its particular and unfailing charm for “ the people in the theatre ” ?

My Polish friend had a companion who went to the gallery to see plays. She came to the settlement to meet me, because her friend had mentioned to her my interest in the stage and had lent her my books of plays.

She was a serious, thoughtful girl, and through closer acquaintance with her I found a most unique evidence of the power of the theatre, and the responsibility of the stage to those who come within reach of its influence.

“ Do you believe in seeing immoral plays when great actors and actresses act them ? ” the girl asked, one evening when we were reading aloud She Stoops to Conquer, and had drifted from the one play to plays in general.

It was a large question, and I hesitated. “I believe in seeing nothing that, for any reason, the person seeing it finds unwholesome to see, ” I replied finally, and vaguely.

“But you don’t know what you are going to see, when you go to the theatre,” the girl said. There was a certain grim humor in this too true observation, but she made it in all seriousness.

“When you are there, you very soon find that out, ” I said by way of reply, “ and you are not compelled to remain, you know, if you find that you prefer not. ”

She did not for many weeks return to the discussion of the subject. Shortly after it she went to see a dramatization of Quo Vadis? and the strong impression left by the play, and her subsequent absorption in reading and discussing the book, left us no time for more abstract conversations.

“I ’ll always remember that play! ” she exclaimed. “Lygia was so noble ; she stood up for her principles and was n’t afraid. I ’ll always think of her when I have to stand up for mine.”

By this time I had grown accustomed to definite instances of the influence of the stage in the tenement. This instance did not surprise me; it was not unexpected. My amazement came, however, some weeks later.

“I went to a play last night,” began the girl, one evening at the settlement. “I went to Zaza ” —

“You did? ” I interrupted, recalling our discussion.

“Yes,” continued the girl, “but I did n’t stay.”

“You did n’t? ”

“No, I did n’t stay,” she went on. “I had n’t been there long before I remembered what you said about going away from what was unwholesome ; and then I remembered how Lygia stood up for what was right and was n’t afraid, and how good Lygia was, and so I came home.”

Of the vital meaning of the stage to the simplest of its audience I had been certain. It was of much interest to find that meaning so real that a moral development produced by one acted play had made it impossible for the person in whom it had taken place to see another acted play. To the relative artistic values of the two plays the question is not directed. The influence was, and the influence must invariably be, the influence of the message of the art.

Mr. Jacob A. Riis gives as a reason for writing his studies of the New York tenements his belief that “every man’s experience ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it, no matter what that experience may be, so long as it was gleaned along the line of some decent honest work.” It is with the hope that they may be not only of interest, but perhaps also of use, to others who are interested in the stage and in the tenements, that these few of many instances of the influence of the theatre upon the people who go to its gallery from the tenements are given.

To me and to my work in the tenements they meant very much. Through them I was enabled to substitute volumes of Shakespeare, of Sheridan, of Goldsmith, of Rostand, of Washington Irving (the last was lent to a boy who had seen Mr. Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle), and of too many other masters of literature for present mention, for sensational papers and worse than sensational books. The value of the substitutions is evident, and the value of the acted play is more evident.

The influence of the theatre had been, through the gallery, a force, a real force for good and for evil. When it had been for good, it had been very good ; and chiefly it had been, it would seem, for good. At its beginning the acted play was meant to be a power for good. It was given, as it is given, with a seriousness of purpose, which was, and is, the secret of its power. It may be — with all its failures, it to-day is — a power for good. Wherever else it may glance aside, certain it is that the people of the gallery abundantly receive it, and through it affect social and moral standards in the tenements.

Elizabeth McCracken.