nd hopeful ambition."

The last phrase deserves some consideration. To a great extent the
reason why the stage causes so much unhappiness among actresses is that
a large proportion enter the profession not in a simple straightforward
way in the choice of a career, but because they dream of great triumphs.
Probably the career of Ellen Terry, and the exhibition of public
affection shown upon the occasion of her jubilee, brought many recruits
to the stage.

Putting aside the fact that Ellen Terry is unique, one may remark that
very few actresses can hope to get close to the top of the tree, for
obvious reasons. In the case of most careers and professions, nine men
out of ten who join them know perfectly well that they will never do
more than earn a decent living, and they shape their lives accordingly;
but nearly every young actress expects to become a leading lady at a
West End theatre, though there are few West End theatres devoted to real
drama, and in some out of the small number there will always be a
manager's wife or friend as an obstacle.

The misfortune is that few young actresses--if any--say to themselves
deliberately that they will aim at character parts, or old-woman parts.
Nearly all the old-woman and _grande-dame_ characters are played by
actresses who have been leading ladies and during some period have had
the painful experience of failing, on account of their age, to get the
engagements they have sought. The Juliet of one season is not the Nurse
or the Lady Capulet of the next; a considerable time passes before there
is such a shift of characters, and she acts nothing at all during the
interregnum, which is spent in vain attempts to get the Juliet parts,
met with cruel rebuffs on the score of age.

Now, some of the old-man actors on the stage are quite young; they have
chosen a particular line, conscious of the fact that nature has denied
them the privilege of playing parts that will cause the
stage-door-keeper to be deluged with amorous letters addressed to them,
and aware, too, that the triumphs of the broad comedian will never be
theirs. These young old-men are often quite as successful in old-man
parts as those who have served most of a lifetime upon the stage.

It is not more difficult for a young woman to play the old-woman
character or the _grande-dame_ part than for the young man to tackle the
Sir Peter Teazle or the ordinary modern old-man; nor is this the only
class of work other than that