Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/32

24 adopt it. Nor can it be urged that there is anything inelegant about it; for bonnets and street-jackets, as all continental travellers know, are not pronounced mauvais ton even at the Italiens in Paris.

In regard to the comparative excellence of the acting at Ameri- can and foreign theatres, I may quote Mr. Boucicault, who says it is better here than in England; and in the better class of our theatres I think it is. The only branch in which we are immeasurably distanced is in the field of broad burlesque, which American actors and actresses as a class are thoroughly incapable of portraying. In America the actresses who aspire to this line break into clog-dancing and banjo-playing, and, as they draw crowds and provoke laughter, they erroneously fancy they have reached the summit of burlesque excellence.

Where American histrionic talent shines most brightly is in fine sentiment or tragedy, and were it not that the American accent is so distasteful to English ears, I think such an actress as Mrs. Chanfrau, and one or two beautiful and sympathetic young women now charming American audiences, would scarcely have the meed of praise withheld from them by that London public which every player naturally holds in such high esteem.

It is rather curious that the American accent should be so unpleasant to English audiences, while the English accent is received without comment by the American public. "It is as far from your house to my house, as it is from my house to your house." If the Yankee twang is objected to by London audiences, I see no reason why dropped and inserted "h's" and the like should not be rebelled against by Americans. For it must be remembered that while a few bright particular stars of England consent to shine in the American horizon, that same horizon is densely clouded with the very refuse of the British stage; the tramps of circuit actors; such "barn-door" mouthers as lived and travelled even in Hamlet's time. These are the people who, in receipt of salaries such as the leading professionals in England do not obtain, are constantly grumbling at and abusing the country, and threatening to return to H'England—a menace they always fail to carry out. The French accent appears to be rather an advantage than otherwise in London, when we remember the success of Mr. Fechter and Mile. Stella Colas. In New York, However, we carry the cosmopolitan spirit still further by supporting a French theatre, two German theatres, two Italian troupes, one lyric and one dramatic, and a French opera—to say nothing of wandering Japanese, Chinese, and Arabs! These polyglot performances are not, as one might suppose, sustained solely by the foreign-born citizens who speak the foreign tongues in which they are given; but, with an absurdity which words fail to express, they are listened to by vast crowds of Americans, who sit