Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/68

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN of the comic. Does she glory in that distinction? She does not. She is very seriously determined, on the contrary, to make herself a dramatic actress and has enlisted, I understand, no less a person than David Belasco in the enterprise. And I know it to be true by something more than common report and the case of Miss Brice, for I have nurtured such an ambition, and of all the rôles I have played in the theater, my favorite is that of Jack Point in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeomen of the Guard",—a strolling jester who dies of a broken heart. I revel in that little touch of pathos.

Had I seen myself as Hamlet or Brutus in my freshman days I might not have this secret sorrow now, but I saw myself only as an actor; what genre of actor mattered little then. I had the first two physical essentials of the classics, stature and voice; not singing voice, but speaking voice, that deep-chested volume and resonance of speech demanded by the heroic roles of blank verse. My stature is not so uncommon, but such chest tones are, and suggest the classics at once. Something more than six feet, a bass rumble and proper enunciation are essential to tragedy, of course, but I know of no reason why I could not have acquired the other