t intelligence, is seen accepting it, for
its purpose, with contempt, as a thing to exercise her technical skill
upon." One reads of Mrs. Siddone that she could move a roomful of
people to tears merely by repeating the word "hippopotamus" with
varying stress. Should we thank the behemoth for this miracle?

Any one who understands, great acting knows that it is illumination.
There are those who are born to throw light on the creations of the
poets, just as there are others born to be poets. These interpreters
give a new life to the works of the masters, AEschylus, Congreve,
Tchekhov. When, as more frequently happens, they are called upon to
play mediocre parts it is with their own personal force, their
atmospheric aura that they create something more than the author
himself ever intended or dreamed of. How could Joseph Jefferson play
_Rip Van Winkle_ for thirty years (or longer) with scenery in tatters
and a company of mummers which Corse Payton would have scorned? Was
it because of the greatness of the play? If that were true, why is not
some one else performing this drama today to large audiences? Has any
one read the Joseph Jefferson acting version of _Rip Van Winkle_? Who
wrote it? Don't you think it rather extraordinary that a play which
apparently has given so much pleasure, and in which Jefferson was
hailed as a great actor by every contemporary critic of note, as is in
itself so little known? It is not extraordinary. It was Jefferson's
performance of the title role which gave vitality to the play.

Of course, there are few actors who have this power, few great actors.
What else could you expect? A critic might prove that playwriting was
not an art on the majority of the evidence. Almost all the music
composed in America could be piled up to prove that music was not an
art. Should we say that there is no art of painting because the
Germans have no great painters?

At present, however, it is quite possible for any one in New York with
car or taxi-cab fare to see one of the greatest of living actresses.
She is not playing on Broadway. This actress has never been to
dramatic school; she has not had the advantages of Alla Nazimova, who
has worked with at least one fine stage director. She was simply born
a genius, that is all; she has perfected her art by appearing in a
great variety of parts, the method of Edwin Booth. Most of these parts
happen to be in masterpieces of the drama. She is not unaccustomed to
playin