Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/238

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN all feminine parts must be played by men. This is simple enough in farce and comedy; it often adds to the risibilities, as many a college dramatic club has demonstrated, but in serious drama there is no more severe test of an actor's ability. He begins with the enormous handicap of his audience's knowledge that he is a man masquerading as a woman, a basically ludicrous situation. Yet again and again on Gambol nights I have seen women's rôles in drama and tragedy played by men so extraordinarily well that I could think of few actresses who might have done the parts better.

The most memorable of all, it seems to me, was Ed S. Abeles' playing of the squaw in the sketch that became "The Squaw Man." The story was that of an English younger son who had settled on a Wyoming ranch in the eighties, and with no thought ever of returning home, had become a father of a half-breed son. When the child is some six years old a barrister arrives from England with word that the squaw man's father and elder brothers all are dead and that he has come into the title and the estate. The squaw man, sincerely devoted to the mother of his child, rejects both title and estate, but the lawyer pleads noblesse oblige. The squaw man