management,
of such typical plays of Shakespeare as "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet,"
and "Twelfth Night" that Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe have shown the
whole extent of their powers, and have read us the lesson we most
needed. The mission of these two guests has been to show us what we have
lost on our stage and what we have forgotten in our Shakespeare. And
first of all I would note the extraordinary novelty and life which they
give to each play as a whole by their way of setting it in action. I
have always felt that a play of Shakespeare, seen on the stage, should
give one the same kind of impression as when one is assisting at "a
solemn music." The rhythm of Shakespeare's art is not fundamentally
different from that of Beethoven, and "Romeo and Juliet" is a suite,
"Hamlet" a symphony. To act either of these plays with whatever
qualities of another kind, and to fail in producing this musical rhythm
from beginning to end, is to fail in the very foundation. Here the music
was unflawed; there were no digressions, no eccentricities, no sacrifice
to the actor. This astonishing thing occurred: that a play was presented
for its own sake, with reverence, not with ostentation; for
Shakespeare's sake, not for the actor-manager's.

And from this intelligent, unostentatious way of giving Shakespeare
there come to us, naturally, many lessons. Until I saw this performance
of "Romeo and Juliet" I thought there was rhetoric in the play, as well
as the natural poetry of drama. But I see that it only needs to be
acted with genius and intelligence, and the poetry consumes the
rhetoric. I never knew before that this play was so near to life, or
that every beauty in it could be made so inevitably human. And this is
because no one else has rendered, with so deep a truth, with so
beautiful a fidelity, all that is passionate and desperate and an
ecstatic agony in this tragic love which glorifies and destroys Juliet.
The decorative Juliet of the stage we know, the lovely picture, the
_ingenue_, the prattler of pretty phrases; but this mysterious, tragic
child, whom love has made wise in making her a woman, is unknown to us
outside Shakespeare, and perhaps even there. Mr. Sothern's Romeo has an
exquisite passion, young and extravagant as a lover's, and is alive. But
Miss Marlowe is not only lovely and pathetic as Juliet; she is Juliet. I
would not say that Mr. Sothern's Hamlet is the only Hamlet, for there
are still, no doubt, "points in Hamlet