came to this country in early childhood and made her stage début, when only fourteen, at Newark, New Jersey. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Albany, and Louisville, then in turn claimed her as a member of their local stock companies, her work all the while growing in brilliancy and breadth until in 1879 Augustin Daly engaged her to play important rôles in his splendid company in New York. Here she stayed until Daly's death in 1899, playing such Shakesperian characters as Rosalind, Katharine, Viola, Beatrice, and Portia and greatly distinguishing herself, also, in the part of Lady Teazle and in other leading rôles of the famous old comedies. How well she bore off Nance Oldfield's famous part of Sylvia in the revival of Farquhar's "Recruiting Officer,' which Daly put on in 1885, we have seen in an earlier chapter. Perhaps Miss Rehan's most rollicking success was, however, obtained as Katharine in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew." She and Otis Skinner made a very great triumph in this piece when they starred together in it some fifteen or twenty years ago.

It was through Augustin Daly that Clara Morris, also, came into her own. Miss Morris was Canadian by birth, but passed most of her long life in this country and early went to school to stock companies of the West. Thus she developed into an actress of such power that Augustin Daly was glad to engage her, in 1870, for parts in his famous New York Company. But it was chance that enabled her immediately to play a leading part for him. "Man and Wife " was on the eve of production when Miss Morris joined the company, and the lady

who usually enacted the sentimental heroine had decided that she did not like her part. The actress who would ordinarily have taken her place had gone out of town for a holiday without leaving her address. Thus Miss Morris received a character which enabled her to leap, at one bound, into metropolitan prominence.

The gift of tears, which was soon discovered to be hers, proved a great asset in the kind of rôles which now fell to her lot. She possessed, too, decided originality in treatment of her parts. When she found that she was to play Cora in "L'Article 47" she made a study of insanity, both in asylums and medical books, with the result that on the play's first night (April 2, 1872) she impersonated the madwoman in such realistic fashion that the blood of the most hardened theatre-goers turned cold in their veins.

When Miss Morris played the heroine of "Alixe " at the old Fifth Avenue Theatre, January 21, 1873, William Winter declared her acting "one of the best pieces of nature interpreted by art " that he had ever seen. In this part, as she played it, could be seen, he added, that very rare thing on the stage, "an adequate and superb revelation of woman's passionate love."

After the destruction of the Fifth Avenue Theatre by fire, on New Year's Eve, 1873, Mr. Daly's Company played for a time at the Broadway Theatre, and here Miss Morris made a powerful impression in " Madelein Morel," her part being the congenial one of a repentant Magdalen who has turned nun, but who, at a thrilling crisis, calls down the wrath of Heaven upon her false

lover. It was now evident that the company's leading lady had grown to the proportions of a star, and henceforth, until her retirement from the stage, Miss Morris was seen in this capacity in all the principal theatres of America. A gifted writer, as well as a powerful actress, she succeeded in shedding a great deal of light upon real life behind the scenes as well as upon the technique of her profession. "When I am on the stage," she once said, "there are three separate currents of thought in my mind; one, in which I am keenly alive to Clara Morris, to all the details of the play, to the other actors and how they act and to the audience; another, concerned with the play and the character I represent; and finally, there is the thought that really gives me stimulus for acting."

To Clara Morris in this country, as to Ellen Terry in England, poets have been wont to write verses. We may very well close our chapter with these lines of Edmund Clarence Stedman which have been addressed to her:

"Touched by the fervour of her art,
No flaws to-night discover!

Her judge shall be the people's heart,
This western world her lover.

The secret given to her alone

No frigid schoolman taught her:
Once more returning, dearer grown,
We greet thee, Passion's daughter!"

CHAPTER XV

AMERICA'S OWN "LIVELY ART" AND WHAT IT HAS

MEANT TO OUR STAGE

THE suggestion for the title of this chapter has come to me from that highly original volume 1 in which Gilbert Seldes ingeniously defends the claim to recognition as modern art of slapstick in the films, as interpreted by Charlie Chaplin, of the "popular song," as manufactured by George M. Cohan, of the comic strip, of burlesque, of circus clowns, of acrobats and of ragtime. Ragtime for us in America began in the minstrel show. Minstrelsy must be closely related, therefore, to these other aforementioned lively arts. And so far as being "native" is concerned, Negro minstrelsy undoubtedly "leads all the rest."

Lawrence Hutton declares that Negro minstrelsy is "the only branch of the theatrical art, if properly it can claim to be an art at all, which has had its origin in this country. While the melodies it has inspired are certainly our only approach to national music."

It is interesting to note that no less distinguished an

1" The Seven Lively Arts." Harper and Brothers, 1924.

2 "Curiosities of the American Stage," page 91. Harper and Brothers.

actor than Edwin Forrest was the first person to make use on our stage of natural Negro character for dramatic purposes. This was when Forrest was under the management of Sol Smith and in the course of a summer engagement which he was playing in Louisville, Kentucky, in the summer of 1823. On this epoch-making night in the history of the American stage we learn that Forrest "acted the dandy in the first piece, a Negro in the second and Sancho Panza in the concluding pantomime, all for the sum of $2.00."1 It was not until 1828, however, that there was seen for the first time on our boards the new and peculiarly American form of entertainment known as minstrelsy which had its origin in the singing and dancing of the slaves on the plantations of the wealthy Southerners.

A Southern gentleman desiring amusement for his guests was wont to call in those among his slaves who could sing and dance, and when he sent out invitations for a party it was often the slaves who played the dance music. Authorities differ as to the exact date when white actors began to realize that there was money to be made by imitating the black man when thus employed. The first announcement that I have been able to discover of the impersonation of the singing Negro on the stage is found in Russell's Boston Gazette of Monday, December 30, 1799, in the same issue in which there is a page devoted to the great virtues of George Washington, who

1 "Theatrical Management in the West and South for Thirty Years; interspersed with Anecdotal sketches; Autobiographically given by Sol Smith, retired actor." Harper and Brothers, 1868.