བ་-བཟ་་་་བད་བ་བ་བ་ བ་ བ་་་བ་་བང་བ་བ་ བ་ བ་ འབ.

HE performance of Mrs. Fiske

THE

as "Becky Sharp" possesses the deepest interest to all who care for the fate of dramatic interpretation in America.

It did many things. It proved that a masterpiece of romantic literature is always essentially capable of dramatization, even though it be, as "Vanity Fair" has been called, "one of the most untheatrical works of genius." Therefore, the demand for plays which will attract a thinking audience may be met as long as the supply of great works of fiction is not exhausted, provided sufficient money is offered for the work, and dramatists are brave enough to undertake it.

Mrs. Fiske paid handsomely for "Becky Sharp," and Langdon Mitchell, with the assistance of his father, S. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, was fitted by literary insight and keen sympathies for just what he undertook to do.

The audience assembled in the Fifth Avenue Theatre, on the evening of September 12th, was an inspiration. One saw the faces of men and women who are devoting their lives to furthering culture among the masses in Greater New York. There were members of prominent literary clubs; public speakers who never go to a play when they can avoid it; editors, who, as a rule, leave first nights to their reporters. Throughout the house there was an atmosphere of brain power.

In

"Becky Sharp" proved that genius coupled with courage must win. a way this play was Mrs. Fiske's last chance in New York. She gave to it unlimited enthusiasm, thought, and money, and it justified the outlay. Seven years ago the writer heard Mrs. Fiske for the first time in Boston.

The management, with a desire to fill the theatre, had sent free tickets to the students of a dramatic school. Students are not easily pleased, but that night one of them decided that Mrs. Fiske would stir things to their foundations if her courage held out.

That it did hold out is now an old story. Everyone knows of her many failures to get a hearing in New York, of her great triumph as "Tess," followed by the pleasure she gave the few in "A Bit of Old Chelsea," and then her presentation of a series of plays not at all suited to her peculiar talents, until she came to us this season as the famous and infamous Becky.

Mrs. Fiske has overcome financial competition of a most crushing kind, physical disadvantages which would have daunted ten ordinary women, and that most disheartening difficulty in the path of a sensitive artist, a public lack of faith. To-day those who criticize her articulation ac- knowledge her genius.

No two people view a presentation from the same standpoint; yet the writer can not imagine a standpoint from which one could fail to see that

Mr. Mitchell and Mrs. Fiske intended to make their "Becky" better and not worse than Thackeray's heroine. Thackeray's Becky was thoroughly scheming and unscrupulous. She did despise her husband and she did sell herself. Mrs. Fiske's "Becky" did neither of these things voluntarily. She was not a bad woman at heart until she was driven to it by what seemed to her the only way out of the ruin which threatened her family. It is granted that the point at which Mr. Fiske came nearest slipping from the character was when she tried the hardest to hate herself, but it is not granted that once throughout the play she attempted to show Becky as "wretchedly heartless and abandoned." The exigencies of her art demand that this should not be. Who would go to see a play with Iago as the hero? Who would praise Zaza unless she had honestly loved one man? An audience must like the leading character, and this an American audience never does if that character is thoroughly false and depraved. Indeed, an American audience is very quick to resent anything which approaches heartlessness. That is why the second scene in this play did not score a total triumph. The scene is superb in its realism, exact in its develop ment, sweeping in its climax; but when the curtain drops on Becky alone looking after the departing trrops and saying as the guns boom, "Well, there they are, poor fellows, dying for their country, and I am dying for my breakfast," your artistic sense shivers.

We can not think that if Thackeray's Rebecca could have returned to us this September evening she would have raised a storm of protests. On the contrary, we think she would have been quite pleased with herself. She would have seen a naturally gay, light-hearted Becky who wanted life. easy and found it hard; a Becky who

never quite lost heart and courage even in the last scene where she certainly had lost her reputation and her fineness with it. Yet, even there, where the very tones of her voice had hardened, she was a fascinating Becky; a Becky who appealed to us, and the introduction here of the one unselfish deed of the play,-the restoration of Amelia to Dobbin-seems to show conclusively that from an ethical and artistic standpoint, Mr. Mitchell and Mrs. Fiske, in their heart of hearts, both wished us to be attracted by Becky Sharp.

One of the best features of the production was the stage setting and the costumes. You felt as though you were looking at one of Thackeray's pictures, alive and breathing. All of the characters added to this impression. Mr. Barrymore, in particular, never for an instant ceased to be a study in the way he adapted his clothes to his parts. The audience gave little gasps of delight as each actor appeared, so true in looks were they to our Thackeray ideals.

The criticism of the play and the chief player is diverse, although generally appreciative. Mr. William Winter, of the New York Tribune, characterizes the play as "artfully planned, neatly constructed, and tersely written," although its "ethical defect" is heavy." Of Mrs. Fiske's "Becky,' he says: that "its lights are low and its shadows

"It was remarkable for its physical as well as mental brilliancy, its clear and pure verbal utterance, and its splendid energy of sustained, yet thoroughly concealed, artistic effort. It would be useless to make Becky Sharp as callous and as flippantly frivolous on the stage as she often is in the book, for that would defeat dramatic purpose. Mrs. Fiske furnished what the dramatist omitted -Becky's idea of her self-justification; for, very artfully, she laid a strong emphasis on the memory of Becky's ill treated and misguided childhood, and also on her inherent inability to escape from the blight of evil ways. The personality commonly denoted as the woman of the world has not, in our day, been better portrayed; and, as a general judgment on this play and this performance, it may with truth be said that Mr. Mitchell has got more out of the book of 'Vanity Fair' for dramatic purposes than anybody else that ever touched the subject, and that Mrs. Fiske has given to one of the

The critic of the Times thinks that "no dramalization of Vanity Fair' will ever satisfy the appreciative reader of Thackeray." He continues:

"The most obvious faults in his play, those that will be most talked of, are precisely those that were all but unavoidable in any dramatization of the novel. A knowledge of the book is essential to a complete understanding of the play, yet the better one knows the book, the more one loves it, the more trying must be the inconsistencies and insufficiencies in this retelling in action of a small part of its story. Yet Mrs. Fiske's

portrayal of Becky, in spite of the defects already described, is strong, and brilliant enough to justify Mr. Mitchell's play."

The Evening Post dissents. It observes:

"The failure of Mrs. Fiske to realize any. thing like the common ideal of the fascinating little blackleg was the crowning disappointment of the performance. It was generally supposed that the part would have suited her better than most which she has attempted recently, but her impersonation was notably and curiously deficient in some of its most essential attributes. It lacked charm, variety, brilliancy, snap, versatility, eloquence, sparkling deviltry, and style, being, indeed, chiefly remarkable for splendor of clothing and a certain placid assurance."

THE

HE father of modern domestic drama was Diderot, the great French encyclopedist, a photograph of whose statue appears on our cover this month. He it was who first abandoned the traditional themes of classic tragedy so long the exclusive source of European, particularly French drama, and portrayed the life of the bourgeoise. Although first of all a philosopher and critic, he gave much attention to the drama. His Paradoxe sur le comèdiènshould an actor actually feel the passions he portrays?-is famous. His influence in Germany appeared in the plays of Lessing and Schiller, and Goethe thought so much of his "Essay on Painting" that he translated it into German and wrote a long commentary on it. He stood in the first rank of literary critics of painting in which ("World's Best Literature") "he has never been surpassed for brilliancy, freshness and philosophic suggestiveness."

Denis Diderot was born in Langres, Oct. 5, 1713, and died in Paris July 30, 1784. He was educated for the church, but soon threw aside theology for the law. This also did not please him and he devoted most of his time to literature and science. An unfortunate marriage estranged him from his family and he then began to earn a rather precarious living by writing sermons, translating, and furnishing articles for a dictionary of medicine. His essays soon began to attract attention because of their boldness. His "Pensees Philosophiques," published in 1746, was punished by a sentence of parliament. Three years later he published his "Lettres sur les Avengles à l'Usage de ceux qui voient," which caused his imprisonment at Vincennes where he was often visited by Rousseau and Voltaire.

On his liberation, he, in conjunction with d'Alembert, began the great work upon

which his reputation is founded-the "En cyclopédie." It's avowed aim was "to present in a single work the truths of science, the principles of taste, and the processes of all the arts." In reality, however, it was a means of spreading the new and radical views of its editors. Diderot himself wrote nearly all the articles on ancient philosophy, and all those on the trades and industrial pursuits. Two volumes of the Encyclopédie appeared in 1751, but were immediately suppressed and the publication of others forbidden because of the alleged hostility of the work to Christianity. This suspension was revoked and Diderot, who, on the withdrawal of d'Alembert, supervised the entire work, brought out five new volumes. A second suspension followed, on the same charges. Finally, however, Diderot was permitted to bring out the ten remaining volumes without further obstacle. Besides the Encyclopédie Diderot, found time to write a number of other works, histories, scientific treatises, and plays. The plays, though clever, have had no enduring life, but his novel, "The Nun," and his dramatic dialogue, “Rameau's Nephew," are very effective pictures of the corrupt society of the time, and his "Little Papers "-light essays or character sketches-are pearls of kindly humor and witty narrative. His reports (1765-67) of the Art Expositions at the Paris Academy, are considered one of the French classics.

All through his life Diderot had been considered an atheist, but, during his last year, he was frequently visited by the curè of St. Sulpice with whom he talked a good deal on religious subjects. He did not recant any of his peculiar philosophical opinions, but showed no enmity to Christianity. Our cover-picture is from a photograph of the statue in Paris erected to Diderot in 1837.

Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet and novelist, son of John Lockwood Kipling, formerly principal of the School of Art at Lahore, India, begins his life-story for us with his birth at Bombay, India, during Christmas week (December 30), 1865. His birth, education, and early experience were such as to qualify him for his chosen work in the world.

The Kipling family were delightful people, all clever, artistic in their tastes, and the kindest and most gracious of families. Three gifted nationalities have gone to make up Kipling's complicated nature. On his mother's side, Scotland and Ireland; and, on his father's side, England, though, four hundred years ago, the Kiplings came from Holland. There is likewise a mixture of two different temperaments in the genealogy.

As the child began to talk, he learned to call things by two different names, in Hindustani and in English. Through the servants he came in touch with all the religions in Asia; his ayah was a Roman Catholic, and he knelt with her at the same altar; other servants took him into mosques, others introduced him into the temples of the Hindus and Parsees. At the age of five he was taken to Eng. land and confided to the care of a clerical uncle. From his uncle's care he was sent to be educated at the United Service College, Westward Ho, in North Devon. His experiences at this school are now being told in his "Stalky and Co.," appearing in McClure's Magazine. In 1882, a boy of seventeen, he left college with the prize for English literature, and returned to India, as sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette, at Lahore, and contributed tales and verses to that and to other newspapers. He took the shortest cuts to

the writer's trade; namely, he wrote daily and under pressure. Some of his best tales-notably "The Man Who Would Be King "-vividly present this newspaper experience.

That choice of profession fixed his destiny. Kipling did all manner of journalistic work. He served also as special correspondent in Rajpootana and on the Northern Frontier. For seven years he studied life in India, high and low, in the slums of the "City of Dreadful Night," on the plains, on the hills, by the camp-fires of troops in the fields, in the palaces of her princes. Everywhere he saw, he heard, he photographed on the retina of his mind a marvelous series of living pictures which he could call up at will. So it came to pass that he became the interpreter of India to the people who send forth the rulers. to govern it.

In 1889, on his way to England from the East, he visited America. and tried to get publishers interested. in his writings, but was very unsuc cessful. Disgusted he sailed for London. There he was also unsuccessful at first and his books lay dusty and untouched upon the shelves. One day it was suggested that a certain. critic write up the life of Rudyard Kipling. This was done for the London World. That article was the beginning for Kipling.

In 1890, he published "The Story of the Gadsbys." In 1891, "The Light That Failed." In 1891, he wrote the "Naulahka," a story of the East and West, which he published in 1892. This story he wrote in conjunction with Wolcott Balestier whose sister he married in 1892. From 1892 to 1896 Mr. Kipling resided chiefly in the United Statesbuilding himself a home among the Green Mountains, at Brattleboro, Vermont. There he resided until he returned to England.