the wings would crack like hardening mud, and the drops would belly and sag so as to sweep the floor. If, as sometimes happened, there was not time for repainting, the offing of Elsinore would be presented by any old stock scene-a New England orchard or a Wisconsin prairie. It made little difference if the lights were low enough, and the gas-man would see to that! Historical accuracy and atmospheric effect were the last thing the scene-painter thought of. Not long ago an old scenepainter, now an artist of international reputation, was talking of a comrade of his youth, now the head of a great artistic scene-painting studio in the metropolis. "We worked side by side," he said, "for fourteen, sixteen hours at a stretch, but I could always outlast him. He lets things get on his nerves." The great virtue of the old scene-painter was physical endur

ance.

II

It was the tours of Henry Irving that made us all acquainted with the full possibilities of the scenic side of the drama.* In "The Merchant of Venice," Irving's stage showed now an actual Venetian street, with an actual Venetian bridge crossing the canal; and again, an actual room in the Palace of the Doges, with its wood-work and tapestries in exact reproduction. In "Faust" the architecture was copied from extant mediæval buildings in Nuremburg. · In "Coriolanus" the scenes in forum and capitol, domestic interiors and exteriors, camp and market-place, were all designed by no less an artist than Sir L. Alma Tadema, and according to the most careful archæological researches. A far cry, this, from the nameless, hard-working artist of the old stock companies! In a few years, accuracy and atmosphere were the watchwords of managers and critics alike.

As early as 1867, the local stock company with its frequent change of bill had begun to give way in America before the travelling

*Edwin Booth, in his splendid theatre on Twenty-third

Street, New York, made a series of beautiful and elaborate productions, beginning in 1869, fourteen years before Irving made his first American tour, and two years before he signal ized his advent at the Lyceum by appearing in "The Bells." Booth was, moreover, the first English-speaking actor to discard all the corruptions of Shakespeare's text and adhere as far as possible to the original, a fact of which all Americans should be proud. For better or for worse, however, Booth never made his productions of prime importance, and on tour his scenery was often little short of shabby.

"combination." Joseph Jefferson relates in his Autobiography the ways of those who first took their productions with them. What we now know as the road was then oftenest the canal; and when time pressed and the wind was favorable the itinerant star was glad to prop up a wing, while he sat on deck and puffed his content at the extra speed. After the advent of Irving in 1883. the change was rapid and decisive. The local scene-painter faded away, or betook himself to the metropolis, where he found employment on the paint-bridges of Broadway, and, in time, established scenic studios of his own, independent of the playhouse.

When a play has been accepted for production, it is sent to the scene-painter, who goes over it carefully, taking note of all details to be reproduced. Then if the subject is difficult, he makes a sketch of it in the flat. If this proves satisfactory to manager, actor, and author, he builds it up in a miniature model, on the scale of half an inch to the foot, as perfect in proportion and exquisite in detail as the finished scene. An old gentleman lately, looking over a collection of models in one of the New York studios, remarked that his granddaughter would be delighted to have them for dollhouses. The proprietor of the studio smiled to himself. The models for a single play cost well up toward a thousand dollars. For an ordinary four-act comedy the models, scenes, properties, and costumes cost, let us say, five or six thousand dollars. The cost of the great scenic productions is never as much as the press agents say, but has been known to exceed one hundred thousand dollars.

When the model is approved, the stage carpenter takes measurements for such framework as may be necessary. The flimsy construction of the old days has given way to the solidest sort of building. Windows slide in their sashes, doors slam shut, and lock. Staircases are solid to the tread. Trees are built up in the round, and columns are turned out of solid wood. But as every show is intended to travel among all the great cities of the continent, the heaviest scene must be made up of pieces short enough to be packed in a freight

car.

The scene-painter marks out the pieces of his model in tiny squares, and then hangs

a huge canvas beside the paint-bridge with corresponding squares in scale. The draughtsman stands on the bridge with a piece of charcoal on a stick like a billiard cue, and square by square copies the lines of the model, while an assistant raises and lowers the cloth with tackle. Then the body-paint is put on, and the details are added until the cloth is complete. The artist usually works under artificial light; but as the scene is intended to be viewed under the same condition, this is rather an advantage than a disadvantage. More hampering is the fact that he never sees his canvas in perspective until it has been set up in the theatre for rehearsal, when it is too late to revise it. As you look at the result on the paintbridge, it seems anything but finisheda mere mass of rough lines and daubs. The art of the scene-painter consists in making these rough lines and daubs in the one precise manner which, when seen from the auditorium across the footlights, will suggest,

are very far from being baseless fabrics, and the pageants they provide are anything but insubstantial. No marvel of earth, fire, air or water is too vast for their art.

III

IN extravaganza and melodrama, carpenter and scene-painter have quite overtopped the playwright. In their vision

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

-a local habitation, if not a name to the fine frenzies of the scene-painter. Girls, girls, girls! Nothing but girls-flashing, dashing, entrancing girls! Bright cheeks, glancing eyes, the twinkle of fleshings, the patter of nimble feet, the rush and swirl of march and counter-march, the constant