hand, assuming to be the
interpreters of the poets, must pour themselves through all subjects by
the use of their own personality. They are to be estimated accordingly
by whatever the competent observer is able to perceive of the nature and
the faculties they reveal under the stress of emotion, whether tragic or
comic. Perhaps it is not possible--mind being limited in its
function--for any person to form a full, true, and definite summary of
another human creature. To view a dramatic performance with a
consciousness of the necessity of forming a judicial opinion of it is
often to see one's own thought about it rather than the thing itself.
Yet, when all allowance is made for difficulty of theme and for
infirmity of judgment, the observer of Ada Rehan may surely conclude
that she has a rich, tender, and sparkling nature, in which the
dream-like quality of sentiment and the discursive faculty of
imagination, intimately blended with deep, broad, and accurate
perceptions of the actual, and with a fund of keen and sagacious sense,
are reinforced with strong individuality and with affluent and
extraordinary vital force. Ada Rehan has followed no traditions. She
went to the stage not because of vanity but because of spontaneous
impulse; and for the expression of every part that she has played she
has gone to nature and not to precept and precedent. The stamp of her
personality is upon everything that she has done; yet the thinker who
looks back upon her numerous and various impersonations is astonished at
their diversity. The romance, the misery, and the fortitude of Kate
Verity, the impetuous passion of Katharine, the brilliant raillery of
Hippolyta, the enchanting womanhood of Rosalind--how clear-cut, how
distinct, how absolutely dramatic was each one of those
personifications! and yet how completely characteristic each one was of
this individual actress! Our works of art may be subject to the
application of our knowledge and skill, but we ourselves are under the
dominance of laws which operate out of the inaccessible and indefinable
depths of the spirit. Alongside of most players of this period Ada Rehan
is a prodigy of original force. Her influence, accordingly, has been
felt more than it has been understood, and, being elusive and strange,
has prompted wide differences of opinion. The sense that she diffuses of
a simple, unselfish, patient nature, and of impulsive tenderness of
heart, however, cannot have been missed by a