A thirsty bee will kiss a flower,
And then extract the honey;
A relative will praise your power,
And carry off your money.

An elephant will bathe his skin,
And dust it till it's black;
A relative will praise his kin,
And stab them in the back.

We fear no fire nor goad nor sling,
Nor any man that lives;
We do not fear a single thing

Except our relatives.''

THE THEATRE AS A POWER.*

WILLIAM FAVERSHAM

In being asked to come before you to-day, I realize that the honor is paid me because of my association, for so many years of my life, with the theatre.

I must tell you that I began my work in the theatre, or let me say my study of the theatre, as a boy. No one can give so many years to a cause without feeling that he is capable of seeing something of the vital truths belonging to it; consequently, it is of the theatre that I shall speak to you. The business of my life has been the theatre; but there is always the dream, as well as the business, and it is the dream that has made it interesting.

Only a few years ago when I stood on the stage and the curtain went down on Stephen Phillips' beautiful poetic tragedy, "Herod," which I had launched, one of my great dreams had come true.

I feel quite frank in saying that I owe everything to the theatre. To Irving, the prophet of our art, and to the Lyceum Theatre, London, that one-time Mecca of the artistic dramatic world, that shrine of England's greatest achievement in the theatre, I owe my artistic life.

I had an elder sister whose belief it was that boys, from ten years on, should see everything that was good and worthy and well-done in the theatre. Consequently, be

* A lecture under the auspices of the Musical and Dramatic Committee of the University, in 101 California Hall, on the afternoon of April 8, 1912.

tween the ages of ten and seventeen, I was taken on an average of three times a week to the Lyceum Theatre, where I was able to see Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in Irving's masterly productions of Shakespeare. In this theatre I was afterwards able to watch many rehearsals. In the other London theatres, I saw much of the work that was done by Mr. and Mrs. Kendall, Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, Charles Coghlan, John Hare, Wilson Barrett, and the great Edwin Booth. I even saw Barry Sullivan and Dion Boucicault; also Rossi, the great Italian, who did one of the most remarkable pieces of work as Romeo, whose imagination so illuminated and glorified his characterization that you forgot he was a short, stout man. Years afterwards I was able to see the wonderful classical work of our present great actor, Forbes Robertson.

The conditions of my life were such that instead of being sent away to school for any great length of time, I lived at home, the only boy amongst a number of women. I think the average person would have thought that I was very badly brought up, but I saw between the ages of ten and seventeen all the best that England could give in the way of the theatre. At the age of seventeen I ran away to become an actor-and, it seems laughable to me now, my family was much amazed that I should do so!

I don't know whether you in America know about what they call "fit-ups" in England, but when I disappeared to join a troupe of players, it was in one of these "fit-up" companies. I often slept in a bath-house, because generally at the sea-side places where we played we could not find rooms within our means: but I had compensation for all physical discomforts; for I played a great many of the great leading rôles, including Hamlet, which I did on Saturday nights. A friend has since said that the management wisely arranged that so that the people could recover over Sunday.

And it wasn't a bad life. We were studying and working at Shakespeare, Scott, Lytton, Dickens, and other well

known dramatists, not to mention all of Ouida's romantic books that were possible of dramatization. I remember that during the first three or four months I was on the stage, I created the role of Lord Bertie Cecil in Ouida's "Under Two Flags," and was arrested, with the manager of the company, for daring to dramatize, or play in a dramatization of, Ouida's most popular novel, without the publisher's consent or paying the publisher's royalty. I remember very well that when I was taken up before the authorities one of them asked me my "business" or "calling," and I very proudly told him "I am an actor. It was, indeed, a world of romance and dreams, but high ambitions.

It seems to me no institution has had so varied and so curious a career as the theatre. Take it from the time when the old religious plays were done by the priests, of one of which mysteries such an excellent description exists in Charles Reade's "The Cloister and the Hearth," when young Gerard, the hero, sees his first play. I quote the following:

"From another group he learned there was a Mystery being played under canvas hard by, and all the world gone to see it. This revived his hopes, and he went and saw the Mystery. In this representation, divine personages, too sacred for me to name here, came clumsily down from heaven to talk sophistry with the cardinal Virtues, and nine Muses, and the seven deadly Sins, all present in human shape, and not unlike one another. To enliven which weary stuff, in rattled the prince of the power of the air, and an imp that kept molesting him and buffeting him with a bladder, at each thwack of which the crowd were in ecstacies! When the Vices had uttered good store of obscenity, and the Virtues, twaddle, the celestials, including the nine Muses, went gingerly back to heaven, one by one: for there was but one cloud: and two artisans worked it up, with its supernatural freight, and worked it down with a winch, in full sight of the audience. These disposed

of, the bottomless pit opened and flamed in the centre of the stage; the carpenters and Virtues shoved the Vices in, and the Virtues and Beelzebub and his tormentor danced merrily round the place of eternal torture to the fife and tabor. This entertainment was writ by the Bishop of Ghent, for the diffusion of religious sentiment, 'by the aid of the senses,' and was an average specimen of theatrical exhibitions so long as they were in the hands of the clergy.' But, as Charles Reade goes on to say, "In course of time, the laity conducted plays, and so the theatre, I learn from the pulpit, has become profane.'

Of course, I might use this story of Charles Reade's in retaliation, or answer, to that recent gentleman of the church in New York who claimed that the theatre meant 'nothing but evil,' and could see nothing of value in it. This clergyman proceeded to say that out of the productions in New York last year there were five plays that the critics said were not fit for the public to witness. Consider that there are over seventy theatres in and around that city, and that many hundreds of productions go in them during the year, but that all that fell under his ban were five. This seems to me to speak well for the drama of the present moment, but, and this to me is the most important matter, the sooner we get rid of those five, the better. The point is, you must not allow those five evil trees to grow any branches.

Perhaps it would be well to determine how far I feel the theatre exists as an influence in the life of a country. I rank it high, very high. It is as great as the pulpit, if not greater. This is demonstrated by the fact that our very buildings are sought by the clergy to deliver their lectures, sermons, talks, call them what you will, in. We have a medium which is more appealing to the people. Ninety-five per cent of the people remember what they see and hear-five per cent, what they read. This is a scientific fact. Of course, that doesn't mean that the intelligence of this majority is any less capable than the intelligence of the minority which