ecome _real_ "stars."
Jefferson found in Rip Van Winkle his _fit_, and has been wise enough
never to leave it. Sothern did the same in Lord Dundreary. Lester
Wallack has his own recognized line, the _blase_ man of the world,
which he never leaves, save to his misfortune. Edwin Booth keeps his
face, figure, and voice the same in all his characters, and people
crowd to see him. Why? Because he has a delicately handsome face and
figure, a melodious voice, and a clear, intellectual conception of
every part. They go to see Booth, not Bertuccio, or Brutus, or Othello,
and it is noticeable that his Hamlet is one of his most successful
pieces, because in it he is less disguised than anywhere else. The
greatest success Barrett ever made was in Cassius, because the part
fitted him, and no one has ever come near him in that part, where his
face and figure appeared as nature made them. Any one who has ever seen
Charles Fisher act Triplet in "Masks and Faces" must have realized the
same sense of entire completeness and fitness which attended Barrett's
Cassius, Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle, Lester Wallack's Elliott Gray,
Sothern's Dundreary, Harry Placide's Monsieur Tourbillon, Booth's Iago
and Richard III., Mrs. Scott-Siddons's Viola, Fanny Davenport's
Georgette in "Fernande," Mary Gannon's "Little Treasure," Maggie
Mitchell's "Fanchon" and "Little Barefoot."

In all these undoubted successes, old and new, with the sole exception
of Sothern's Dundreary, the actors and actresses appeared and appear
undisguised, talk in a natural voice, and fit their characters like
a glove, face, figure, and all. This essential of fitness between
character and physique is sometimes ignored by managers, with
disastrous effects, while its observance has made a success of many
a play, bolstered up by the influence of a single character. T. P.
Cooke's Long Tom Coffin in the "Pilot" was such an instance of
phenomenal success attained by the physique of one actor, carrying a
rubbishy play through. Charlotte Cushman's Meg Merrilies was another
such instance, the mere power of face, figure, and voice making a
triumph, spite of poor play, and even spite of unmitigated and
unnatural rant on the part of the actress. I have mentioned one
instance in my own observation of the consequences of putting actors
into ill fitting parts, in "Flying Scud." If the reader can imagine
Lester Wallack in Rip Van Winkle, Jefferson in Elliott Gray or Hugh
Chalcote, Barrett in Dun