ramatist has imagined more or less than
the particular semblance of humanity exhibited by the actor on the stage.
Othello, as portrayed by Signor Novelli, is a man devoid of dignity and
majesty, a creature intensely animal and nervously impulsive; and if we had
never read the play, or seen other performances of it, we should probably
deny to Shakespeare the credit due for one of his most grand conceptions.
On the other hand, when we witness Mr. Warfield's beautiful and truthful
performance of _The Music Master_, we are tempted not to notice that the
play itself is faulty in structure, untrue in character, and obnoxiously
sentimental in tone. Because Mr. Warfield, by the sheer power of his
histrionic genius, has lifted sentimentality into sentiment and
conventional theatricism into living truth, we are tempted to give to Mr.
Charles Klein the credit for having written a very good play instead of a
very bad one.

Only to a slightly less extent is the dramatist at the mercy of his
stage-director. Mrs. Rida Johnson Young's silly play called _Brown of
Harvard_ was made worth seeing by the genius of Mr. Henry Miller as a
producer. By sheer visual imagination in the setting and the handling of
the stage, especially in the first act and the last, Mr. Miller contrived
to endow the author's shallow fabric with the semblance of reality. On the
other hand, Mr. Richard Walton Tully's play, _The Rose of the Rancho_, was
spoiled by the cleverest stage-director of our day. Mr. Tully must,
originally, have had a story in his mind; but what that story was could not
be guessed from witnessing the play. It was utterly buried under an
atmosphere of at least thirty pounds to the square inch, which Mr. Belasco
chose to impose upon it. With the stage-director standing thus, for benefit
or hindrance, between the author and the audience, how is the public to
appreciate what the dramatist himself has, or has not, done?

An occasion is remembered in theatric circles when, at the tensest moment
in the first-night presentation of a play, the leading actress, entering
down a stairway, tripped and fell sprawling. Thus a moment which the
dramatist intended to be hushed and breathless with suspense was made
overwhelmingly ridiculous. A cat once caused the failure of a play by
appearing unexpectedly upon the stage during the most important scene and
walking foolishly about. A dramatist who has spent many months devising a
melodrama which is dependent for