Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/181

Rh veteran of the veterans. What a fine, green old age is his! Holland can be more intensely funny than any man on the stage. He is scarcely so successful in sustained parts as in eccentric bits; and he has the art to take a character for which the author has done nothing, and render it one of the telling features of the play. There is not an item of dress, nor a gesture, nor an expression, nor an attitude that is not considered and sustained with conscientious care.

When Booth was playing Hamlet for a hundred nights, Mrs. James Wallack acted the Queen. It was an artistic study. Mrs. Wallack as Anne Waring was a great favorite, and her Elvira in Pizarro was considered remarkable. She is a fine artist, but acts but little, preferring no doubt, the retirement and rural repose of her husband's country seat at Long Branch.

Miss Bateman is cold, statuesque and monotonous, and depends for success upon occasional electrical bursts of intense passion. As with Booth, her personal appearance has much to do with her success. Like him, she has no mastery of delivery. She would find it impossible to successfully cope with one of Shakespeare's intellectual women.

We cannot pay our compliments to all our actors, but it would be a grievous offence to omit mention of genial John Brougham. The excellent "J. B." insists now on playing only in his own dramas, but it is more satisfactory to think of him as stolid Jack Bunsby, or glorious Joe Bagstock, or dashing Sir Lucius O'Trigger. In each of these he was inimitable. Of all our Irish actors, he has been the only one who could act the Irish gentleman; and the Rivals, without Mr. Brougham as Sir Lucius, is difficult to endure. Mr. B. writes a brilliant extravaganza, and acts burlesque in a broad, rollicking, highly enjoyable way. He would do well to revive his burlesque of Metamora, written fifteen or twenty years ago, in which his imitations of Forrest are capital. There is a touch of melancholy in John's countenance now, that was not so before, and he seems to act without that gusto and relish that characterized him in the Chambers Street days with Burton.

Brougham and Stuart, it is said, are to unite in conducting a new theatre on Union Square. It is the third enterprise of the kind we hear of. Where are the actors for so many new ventures? Even Wallack, with a prevailing eagerness all through the profession to act under his management, finds it difficult to select a company suitable for his purpose. There are a great many grand actresses, so we hear, to the right and left of us, and yet where is there one who can unite the breeding of society, the finish of the artist and the beauty of person fitly to succeed Madeline Henriques? When Wallack must go a begging we can hope for no great success with the others. Let us hope the new theatres are not