the little Madison
Square playhouse, in New York, which was the precursor of such modern
paraphernalia as came later with the foreign revolving stages.
He always stood on the threshold of modernism, advocating those
principles which were to fructify in the decades to follow him. Such
pioneer spirit was evident in his ardent advocacy of Delsarte methods
of acting; his own work as an actor was coloured and influenced by the
master whose pupil he became in the early years of his career. When
one recalls the methods of Wallack, and his shy approach toward
anything which was "natural," it seems very advanced to hear Mackaye
echoing the Delsarte philosophy. This advocacy was nowhere better
demonstrated than when, at a breakfast given him at the New York
Lotos Club, he talked on the rationale of art for two hours, and held
spell-bound the attention of Longfellow, Bryant, Louis Agassiz, James
J. Fields, E.P. Whipple, Edwin Booth and others. He once said:

A man to be a true actor must not only possess the power to
portray vividly the emotions which in any given situation
would be natural to himself, but he must study the character
of the man whom he impersonates, and then act as that man
would act in a like situation.

Mackaye's devotion to Delsarte was manifest in the many practical
ways he aided his teacher; he was rewarded by being left most of his
master's manuscripts. This passionate interest in the technique of
acting not only enriched his own work, but, in 1872, prompted him to
open a Delsarte house (the St. James Theatre), and later interested
him in a school of acting. Mackaye studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts
and the Conservatoire, in Paris, having as an instructor at the
latter institution M. Regnier. On his way back to America, Tom Taylor
persuaded him to attempt _Hamlet_ in London, at the Crystal
Palace. This essayal met with success. It also opened the way for
collaboration with Tom Taylor in the writing of "Arkwright's Wife" and
"Clancarty," and with Charles Reade of "Jealousy." At this time also
he commenced a dramatization of George Eliot's "Silas Marner."

There were no half-way measures about Mackaye; things of the theatre
and principles of the theatre caught and held his interest. At the
very last of his life, while he was at work on his "Spectatorus,"
which foreran the American idea of a Hippodrome, and which might have,
in years to come, happily housed his son Percy's "Caliban," he