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Hazel Kirke represents the domestic drama of the late seventies, and the work of a singularly interesting pioneer in the dramatic and theatrical history of this country. (James) Steele MacKaye was born June 6, 1842, at Fort Porter, in Buffalo, New York. His father. Colonel James M. MacKaye, a prominent lawyer and art connoisseur, was an abolitionist and a friend of Garrison, Emerson, and Lincoln. As a lad, Steele MacKaye studied art first at Newport under William Hunt in 1858 and 1859 and later in Paris in the Ecole des Beaux Arts and under Gérome, Coûture, and others. The Civil War brought him back to this country and he served for eighteen months, in the Seventh Regiment of New York and then in Colonel Burney's regiment, where he had the rank of Major. Illness compelling his retirement, he went again to Paris, and here, while executing commissions as an expert buyer of paintings, he became interested in photo-sculpture and afterwards introduced it into this country. On his return to Paris in 1869 he met Francois Delsarte and became his disciple in his classes in expression. The war of 1870 broke up this occupation and he returned to America where by lecturing on the principles of Delsarte, he secured funds with which he aided his master who had been ruined by the war. His initial lecture given in Boston, March 21, 1871, marks an epoch in our theatrical history, since his gospel was that of quiet natural force in expression as opposed to the artificial, over-emphatic style of the day. To express these ideas further he appeared on the stage in New York at the St. James Theatre, January 8, 1872, in his adaptation of Washington Allston's novel Monaldi, in which Francis Durivage was his collaborator. His success was real in all but financial return, and worn out with his first efforts as a manager he returned to Paris, studying and acting in French at the Conservatoire, under Regnier, where he played "Hamlet" among other parts and then going to England, where he became acquainted with Charles Reade and Tom Taylor. Under the latter's management, he acted "Hamlet" from May 3, 1873, to August of the same year in London and the provinces. After that, except for occasional benefits he acted only in his own plays, his most important parts being "Dunsfan Kirke," "Arthur Carringford" and "Aaron Rodney" in Hazel Kirke, "Paul Kauvar" and "Duroc" in Paul Kauvar, and "John Fleming" in Won at Last.

Steele MacKaye's work as a teacher was of great significance. He founded and conducted four schools of expression, the most important being the Lyceum Theatre School in New York which began in 1884, This school, through