BY RACHEL M. WALLACE T is not often that an audience witnesses the performance, by a single actor, of an entire play embodying ten or twelve different characters. This is what occurred at Association Hall, Brooklyn, on Saturday evening, November 4th, at the opening of the Brooklyn Institute's evening series of dramatic readings for the season, when a large and appreciative audience was entertained to such a unique rendering of an adaptation of Don Boucicault's play, "The Shaughraun," by Mr. Leland. T. Powers. Mr. Powers also recited two of Rudyard Kipling's poems: "Mandalay" and "Tommy." From the moment of Conn O'Kelly's introduction - a ne'er-do-weel young poacher and the branded scapegrace of the Irish comedy in question the audience appreciated his true nobility of character; for the reader clearly defined, beneath the poacher's staggering gait, and leering smile, and bold acknowledgments of evil doing, an underforce of open generosity and pure, manly honesty which instantly assured one that the boisterous, drinking rover was not as black as he was painting himself. When Conn, gleefully and with childish innocence, informed us that he thought he was in heaven on finding his lamented corpse surrounded by a "wake" consisting mainly of well-filled whiskey bottles, we felt called upon to be shocked at his hopeless degeneracy. But when his voice grew tender and his eyes brightened with earnestness, and we saw the loyal-hearted scapegrace pleading with his young master to fly for his life, and leave him to outwit or fall a victim to the danger which he was under no obligation to share, we judged him in a spirit mingled with more respect. And when, at the last, he proved himself the royal hero, had he suddenly stepped forth to plead his own cause, he would doubtless have found a friendly audience that would have been quite willing to "go his bail," and prevail upon Father Dolan to reward the anxious lover with absolution and the hand of "Moya, darlin'." The character was portrayed with a sympathetic insight that rendered it very human, and the hearty applause throughout the impersonation proved how thoroughly the audience was roused to responsive sympathy. The character of Father Dolan was interesting and lifelike. Mr. Powers presented him as a wise, solemn and rigidly righteous old priest, whose brightest trait was his underlying steadfast friendliness of heart. Robert Ffolliott, the idolized young master whom Conn twice rescues at the risk of his own life, was introduced as a courageous and impetuous youth, whose high spirit had been no whit crushed by his hardships. But I am inclined to think that the artist was rather unjust in his character sketch of Captain Molineux. The blasé English officer certainly doesn't introduce himself with the decorum of a parson; and his audacity deserves no extolling. But in view of the fact that he afterward so royally displays his gallantry and very practical contempt for a scoundrel's rudeness, it occurs to me that the reader was a shade too severe in his first judgment of him. According to Mr. Powers's rendering, when the captain first sallied forth he was a drawling, thoroughly insipid fop; and in less than two minutes, behold! he was transformed into a chivalrous gentleman. This sudden metamorphosis appealed to one as being nothing short of a miracle. "Circumstances make the man," they blandly tell us. True; but the best circumstance is liable to produce but a poor specimen of manhood, if it has utterly worthless material to start with Mrs. O'Kelly, Conn's mother, bustled herself upon the scene, and held her ground throughout the evening with a vim that commanded attention, if it didn't command anything else. The worried old soul provoked a great deal of unrighteous amusement, and her loud lamentations were very often drowned by the unsympathetic laughter of the audience, who failed to appreciate such calamities as Conn's unreasonable resurrection from the dead, occasioning a prodigal waste of the five dollars spent on his wake. However, this last impersonation was occasionally unpleasantly marred by a voice defect. The shrill, whinThe shrill, whining tone was not maintained throughout, apparently resulting from the fact that the reader was suffering from a slight hoarseness; the inconvenience appearing to annoy him considerably, at times producing a momentary nervousness which caused him to falter and drop his words. Of the three girl characters of the play, Robert Ffolliott's sister Claire, Arte O'Neale, his sweetheart, and Moya Dolan, the last character was rendered the most interesting. There was no noticeable straining to acquire the feminine tones, consequently these characters were presented in a natural and pleasing manner. the reader's voice was not in proper condition to produce the refined tones necessary to make these impersona. tions thoroughly adequate. But Mr. Powers introduced Moya, Conn's sweetheart, and Father Dolan's niece, as an attractively goodnatured young woman whose heart was greater than her practical common sense. She wore a broad smile, and moved with an easy swing, which persuaded the audience that the goodnatured Irish lass had reposed complete confidence in fickle for tune. The reader gave a striking impersonation of Corry Kinchella, a squireen who employs every villainous artifice in his power to rob the young orphans, Robert Ffolliott and his sister, of their fortune. He was presented as a man of strong character and indomitable will, brusque and determined in manner, but with the cold eye and harsh voice and hard, glum countenance of a thorough villain. Still more striking was the impersonation of the policy spy, Harvey Duff, the squirming tool through whose services the squireen accomplishes his evil designs. The bent form and faltering gait, the lack of decision in every weak movement, the frightened and constantly shifting glance from the evil eye, the nervously twitching fingers, the mouth drawn down at the corners, and the whining voice breaking with every word, rendered the character a startlingly truthful example of this miserable type of humanity. Mr. Powers then gave a quaint and really beautiful rendering of Kipling's musical little poem, "Mandalay." He entered with delightful sympathy into its spirit of soft, flowing melody and dreamy contentment, carrying his audience with him across a lazy tide to the Indian land of beauty, and bewitching the atmosphere about him until it grew heavy with the sweet perfume of tropical flowers and waving palm trees, and trembled with the sleepy hum of insects and the bewildering chorus from a thousand bird-throats. The poem was sung rather than spoken, the reader becoming a spirit embodiment of those old-time minstrel bards, who chanted their lays. Particularly pleasing was the sing- heart of the happy-go-lucky ex-solsong rhythm of the lines: "For the wind is in the palm trees, and the temple bells they say: Come you back, you British soldier, come you back to Mandalay." Another agreeable feature of this reading was that it afforded the audience a flash-light glimpse into the artist's soul. Great triumphs usually cost great sacrifices; and the character impersonator wins his laurel at the risk of forfeiting (or partly destroying) nature's rich gift to himhis own personality. Probably every soul in the audience unconsciously requests of the actor, or reader, or preacher, "Tell us something of yourself;" and to this earnest demand the impersonator is apt to make little or no response, appearing practically lifeless until one of his thousand imaginary characters speaks through him. Therefore, it was something of a pleasing revelation when the reader took it upon himself to place such rich sentiment into the dier from India. One wondered if the lonely exile would have sung his ode to Mandalay as pleasingly, had he been simply one of the artist's stock of characters. Mr. Powers closed the evening's entertainment with Kipling's spicy poem, "Tommy;" into which he plunged with a headlong leap that convinced the audience that the longsuffering Tommy Atkins was thoroughly roused to indignation. He clenched his fists, drew up his shoulders, rattled off the first sentence or two of his righteous complaint, halted, and then impetuously pawed the ground with a vim which threatened to develop, any instant, into a furious run; severely tempting the apprehensive audience to call out solicitously, citously, "Hold on! Tommy." However, the ill-treated red-coat checked his wrath sufficiently to recount the history of his wrongs, and then bowed himself off the platform with surprisingly good grace. R OUR FRONTISPIECES EPRODUCTIONS of paintings by Heinrich Hofmann serve as two of our frontispieces this month. The cover illustration, "The Christ," is from one of his later paintings, and is generally regarded as one of the strongest, most virile heads of the Saviour ever conceived in art. The painting, "Christ in the Temple, Reasoning with the Doctors," has made Hofmann's name a household word throughout the world. The face of the boy Christ is said to be the finest ever painted. This painting, which was finished in 1883, is now in the Dresden Gallery and is placed beside the "Christ Before Pilate" of the Hungarian artist, Munkacsy, the two sharing the honor of the highest place in modern religious art. It has further distinction in being one of the very few paintings representing our Saviour in his boyhood, religious art generally portraying Him as an infant or as a man grown. The painting made its first appearance in America, in wood engraving in Harper's Monthly and attracted wide attention. Dr. Hofmann, who has painted many other canvases, and is one of the most popular and widely known of modern German painters, is now professor in the Royal Academy, at Dresden The Madonna di Foligno of Raphael is too well known to need description. THE DRAMA RANCE. I. "Robespierre." The great romantic name among nations, the word which breathes more atmosphere of love, plots, intrigues, rebellions and chivalric incidents than any other word in history. France is prominently before the eyes of the American theatre-going public this winter. It is now an established fact that when a great idea comes to the world, it flashes simultaneously into the minds of several people. This is as true of the drama as of other things. Every season we have a run of certain kinds of plays. Two years ago we were flooded with "coon" songs. Last winter the distinctively romantic drama was the vogue. When Mr. Mansfield appeared in "Cyrano de Bergerac," and Mr. Sothern gave us his rendition of "The Three Musketeers," we had the beginning of the French movement which has swept over us this Fall. Mrs. Fiske heralded its coming in the great scene of Becky Sharp, on the eve of the battle of Waterloo. I say heralded, although several presumably French plays such as "The Girl from Maxim's," appeared before "Becky Sharp." These, however, had so little of the real French character in them that the sight of the light Gallic nature limping along on stolid English crutches was a grief and vexation of spirit to theatregoers. Henry Miller followed in "The Only Way," and gave us France in earnest, the France of the Communist. Then, a little later, Mr. Sothern gave us "The Song of the Sword," in which we have the Napoleon of the battle-field, and Miss Julia Arthur played "More Than Queen," showing us the Napoleon of the court. In all of these plays it was the glittering, dazzling, hotheaded France of history, the France which made and marred its own destinies in a day. These formed a fitting background in our minds against which to image the great figure of Robespierre, possibly not the Robespierre we looked for, and yet it may be that the eyes of Sardou really saw Robespierre as he was, better than the eyes of historians have ever been able to see him. The fanatical delirium and bestial wrath of the French Revolution has so colored our thought that in its glare it is all but impossible for the ordinary mind to see a white figure as one of the demagogues. However, if we consider that convulsion in the light of its final results, we find a purer and more responsible people. To the mind of the dramatist Robespierre was a man who looked through the blood of the present to the brighter scene of the future. In doing this, necessarily he saw as through a cloud darkly. In doing this, necessarily he thought himself the one man whose vision was suffi |