nique talent to adapt itself with marvellous facility to the
intellectual life of various countries and nations, should bring forth
individuals gifted with power to project themselves into a character
created by art, and impersonate it with admirable accuracy in the
smallest detail. What the race as a whole has for centuries been doing
spontaneously and by virtue of innate characteristics, can surely be
done with greater perfection by some of its members under the
consciously accepted guidance of the laws of art." Many Jewish race
peculiarities--quick perception, vivacity, declamatory pathos, perfervid
imagination--are prime qualifications for the actor's career, and such
names as Bogumil Davison, Adolf Sonnenthal, Rachel Felix, and Sarah
Bernhardt abundantly illustrate the general proposition.

Strenuous efforts to ascertain the name of the first Jewish actor in
Germany have been unavailing. Possibly it was the unnamed artist for
whom, at his brother's instance, Lessing interceded at the Mannheim
national theatre.

Legion is the name of the Jewish artists of this century who have
attained to prominence in every department of the dramatic art, in every
country, even the remotest, on the globe. Travellers in Russia tell of
the crowds that evening after evening flock to the Jewish-German
theatres at Odessa, Kiev, and Warsaw. The plays performed are
adaptations of the best dramatic works of all modern nations. We
outside of Russia have been made acquainted with the character of these
performances by the melodrama "Shulammith," enacted at various theatres
by a Jewish-German _opera bouffe_ company from Warsaw, and the writer
once--can he ever forget it?--saw "Hamlet" played by jargon actors. When
Hamlet offers advice to Ophelia in the words: "Get thee to a nunnery!"
she promptly retorts: _Mit Eizes bin ich versehen, mein Prinz!_ (With
good advice I am well supplied, my lord!).

The actor recalled by the recent centennial celebration of the first
performance of "The Magic Flute" must have been among the first Jews to
adopt the stage as a profession. The first presentation, at once
establishing the success of the opera, took place at Prague. According
to the _Prager Neue Zeitung_ an incident connected with that original
performance was of greater interest than the opera itself: "On the tenth
of last month, the new piece, 'The Magic Flute,' was produced. I
hastened to the theatre, and found that the part of Sarastro was taken