sted and grew
with him as with a good landscape architect who keeps in nature's ways.
His departures into the classicism of Stephen Phillips, the romanticism
of Shakespeare, or the exotic French society drama were never as
valuable and delightful as his treatment of modern sentiment and
comedy."

In this respect a comparison with the workmanship of another genius of
the American theater, David Belasco, is inevitable. Belasco, the great
designer and painter of theatrical pictures, holds quite a different
point of view and possesses different abilities from those of Charles
Frohman. Belasco revels in the technique of the actor. Frohman's
_metier_ was the essentials. The two men were in many ways complements
of each other and per force admirers of each other and friends. In
brief, Belasco is the technicist; Frohman was the humanitarian.

Charles usually left details of scenery, lighting, and minor matters to
his stage-manager. "Look after the little things," he would say, in
business as in art, for he himself was interested only in the larger
themes. The lesser people of the play, the early rehearsing of involved
business, was shaped by his subordinates. The smaller faults and the
mannerisms of the actor did not trouble him, provided the main thought
and feeling were there. He would merely laugh at a suggestion to
straighten out the legs and walk, to lengthen the drawl, or to heighten
the cockney accent of a prominent member of his company, saying:

"The public likes him for these natural things."

Frohman's ear was musically sensitive. The intonations, inflections, the
tone colors of voice, orchestral and incidental music, found him an
exacting critic.

To plays he gave thought, study, and preparation. The author received
much advice and direction from him. He himself possessed the expert
knowledge and abilities of a playwright, as is always true of every good
stage-director. Each new play was planned, written, cast, and revised
completely under his guidance and supervision. His stage-manager had
been instructed in advance in the "plotting" of its treatment. The first
rehearsals were usually left in charge of this assistant.

At the first rehearsals Frohman made little or no comments. He watched
and studied in silence. Thereafter his master-mind would reveal itself
in reconstruction of lines and scenes, re-accentuation of the high and
low lights of the story involved, and improvement of the acting and
representatio