Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/72

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN thing for the theater. Hopper's talents are being thrown away in comedy. He has the frame and the voice for tragedy. Heroics demand the heroic, but who have we among our tragedians that fills the bill? Look at Thomas W. Keene and E. H. Sothern! Splendid actors, I grant you, but neither with the robust voice or the stature. Here is Will, a man intended by Nature for the heroic, and the stage is using him as a clown. You are the manager to rectify this blunder, to give our stage a tragedian who looks the part."

And more in that vein. Frohman listened tolerantly to Thomas' enthusiasm and when the latter had run down, said:

"What you say is substantially true, no doubt, Gus, with the important exception that it can't be done. Will has all the physical attributes of tragedy and he is a first-rate actor, but his public expects him to be funny and would resent his being anything else. They have labeled him as comic and comic he must be."

Frohman, of course, was right. In the theater and out, the public likes to catalogue all the ingredients of life; insists upon doing so. That is good, this is bad; this is right, that is wrong; this is funny, that is sad; this is wise, that is