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About The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903 | View Entire Issue (March 12, 1898)
THE COURIER. A " r more tawdry, and disgusting and biiity and the trick of Hushing vio ctaeap and unartistic than this, you lently under excitement. lie plays had better write it it will make a hit. the part with tremenduous vigor, dash Of course I have written about the and Arc. lie fills it with boisterous bad woman one always docs, but virility. lie throws into it a lavish there was a good one. And I don't vitality, he seems to be living at white think one could sit that play through heat, to be absolutely exhausting the were "it not for sweet little Mary Man- possibilities of every minute, to drain neriug, who comes in occasionally with the roses in bcr arms and roses in her cheeks, and youth in her pretty eyes to sweeten the air that the large odious Belle polluted. May the fates deal gently with Miss Mannering, the days and nights dry of their opportunities of revelry. Certainly Mr. Faversham has now established himself as one of the best, if not the best, leading men on our stage. In the first act this young vandal leaving her youth and that smile al- brings in a troupe of Parisian dancing ways, "and send her many years of girls whom he has cantured in their flight. During the dinner which fol lows, the officers and the nymphs be Conquerors," come so boisterous that Yevonnede fast that one Grandpre, the daughter of the house, m The Position Now Attained By J I Aroma's Greatest Piano i M The m m sunshine days. And now for "The "Misfortunes come so doth tread uoon another's heels. I will say for it that it is a brilliant piece, its immorality is grosser, coarser, franker than that which dan gles from "The Tree of Knowledge;" it is not so insidious and cloying and generally disgusting. The plays differ as a bad man and a bad woman differ. "The Conquerors" is much more shocking, but it docs not poison so comes in to demand order. Eric, who is half intoxicated, cries that they will do as they please. Rising from his seat he cries: "We are the con querors; your lands are ours, your houses are ours, your men are ours; yes, and you women are ours!'' At this Yevonne de Grandpre Miss Viola Allen dashes a glass of wine in his face. She does it magnifl- WDf&wf v JPy TjfipUgFii JatcKless SHJ4W . . . is such that an' person who speaks slightingly of it con demns themselves as being either irrosslv iernorant or thoroughly vicious. Therefore anyone that tries to kill your good opinion of it, is not worthy of your confidence. The only safe way is to examine the piano carefully for yourself . . . m m m m m m 0 m many things nor leave you so sick at centlj-, too, and the moment after it is heart as the fruit of the Tree. Its done you can see that horrible weak- hero is a-blackguard, but he is a frank ness seize her which follows violence ! ftftnNS ?AHQ 00 . I 5 S Western Representatives, 130 So 13th st. J blackguard and something of a man after all, a little bit like Kipling's "Love O' Women." The play is quite as brutal and barbarous as Titus An dronicus, wildly improbable and often grossly melodramatic, but it has a dash and glamour of its own and moves with tremenduous energy cx- ln women gently bred. One seldom eees as good a bit of work as that. In the second act Yevonne is alone in an inn where she has gone to await her brother. Eric knows she is there and comes to take his vengeance. He discusses his plan with his comrades in the most cold blooded manner and cept when the light opera choruses of takes no pains to choose his language, peasants and village maidens intrude They tell him flatly that if he perpe themselves, The local color, the echo trates his outrage they will never of the Franco-Prussian war saves it, speak to liim again, and leave him the military flavor, and all the "pomp He locks the doors and awaits Ye- and circumstance of glorious war."' There is no need to rehearse how wrought and hateful old nature laughs in her sleeve at the proud daughter of the Grandpres. She loves him. It is the old story of Edgar Salt us' Tristrem Varick over again. The fourth act is the most improba ble of all. Yevonne has iiidden Erie in her own room so that her brother who drinks absinthe the nectar of the gods itself is flavorless A rtcr one has studied musk the odor of violets is not perceptible. If we see all the delicate distinctions of lire trodden upon and outraged too often, we will no longer go to the theatre to see men and women die to defend them. Strike may not find and kill him. Thel'rus- out the ten commandments from the sian guards surround the house and canons of dramatic art and you have vonne. The scene which follows is young Grandpre's only road to safety absolutely nothing left. Blot out the brutal, offensive, cold-blooded and not lies through the window of his sister's one fact of sacredness of the honor of as a soldier. Jfow Mr. Paul Potter may say that it is nature that is at fault, not he. That young men are frequently brutes and that young ladies frequently like them for being such, that women have Mr. Potter stole the plot of ins piece even dramatically effective. It is too from Sardou, from Maupassant and long drawn out, and there is not even several others. Since all English plays infatuation between the man and borrow their material more or less woman to condone it. It is simply a from France, I fail to see why Mr. convulsion of brutal and cowardly Pottershould be blamed more severely hatred, the kind of thing that men than his contemporaries. punish by mob law, Finally the tears The first act is rather the best of the of the girl prevail and the man slinks piece. It takes place in the castle de oui like the dog that he is. But even Grandpre in Britany. The German then Mr. Potter was not satisfied. A soldiers have quartered themselves in drunken peasant enters, and seizing the castle. When the curtain rises Yevonne by the throat attempts to one officer is banging at the piano, a finish what Eric had begun. Eric second is polisuing his pistols, a third hears her shrieks, returns and kills is stretched out on the sofa. They the peasant, leaving Yevonne uncon are making themselves thoroughly at scious. When she recovers she be home. -The hero, or rather the lead- lieves that Eric returned and fulfilled ing man of the play, is Eric von Rod- his threat, and that the peasant had e:k, a sub-lieutenant, a man well born, lost his life in defense of her honor, the son of a hero, young, handsome, This second assault can be called ana most, iranKiy a uiacKguaru. m nouiing out an anti-climax, and, as sacrified a noble brother to an un short, he is that figure always so tnex- usual, what people rail at as immoral, worthy lover before now. Mr. Whee plicable, yet obviously existing every is merely a sin against art. So long lock, president of the Actor's Society, where, a bad man whom everyone as a dramatic author is artistically made very much the same argument loves. He outrages every principle of true he is seldom morally false or re- to me the next morning. Very well, army discipline and his superior ofll- volting. Errors in ethics usually I don't dispute it, I only say that cers would almost compromise them- spring from faulty art. Immorality there are a number of things which selves to protect him; he insults and in art or in life, is simply bad taste, actually occur which I don't care to bullies women, and they send their The play from this act steadily de- see presented upon the stage, just as I brothers out to be shot for his sake, clines. Mr. Potter pays the price of don't care to see a surgical operation He is an overgrown young savage, as having outraged one's sensibilities. done there. It is all very well to han deficient in manners as he is in mor- In the third act, Yevonne takes her die such topics in literature, there the als, a cub who finds exquisite enjoy- vengeance. Eric is sitting in the draw- intellectual problem alone 'confronts ment in breaking furniture, smashing ing room with her veil in his hands, you. But when the thing becomes a china and shooting the eyes out of the wondering why he relented, why he, living and visible fact, when it is pre family portraits. He offers sacrilege who had never feared anything before, sented to you not by the entrancing to the church, violence to priests, in- had been afraid of this girl so entirely language of a master but bytheac dignities to women. Heishandsome within his power. The only sound is tual bodies of living men and women, and he is not afraid of the devil him- the play of the fountain in the rear the effect is wholly different The self. That is the best that can be said of the room. Miss Allen steals up be- imagination is so easily outraged and of him. Yet he is the most popular hind him with a dagger-fancy Miss deadened through the eye Did Mr man in his regiment. Even in the Allen with a dagger-and stabs him Potter and Mr. Frohman but know it the theatre you grow fond of him and in the back. A pretty mess she makes they are cutting off their own heads' he has by no means his company man- of it. She only inflicts a flesh wound After the public taste becomes sat nerson. The part could scarcely be and the man begins to beg pitiously utated and calloused by this sort of played better than Mr. Faversham for water. Yevonne is unequal to the thing, do they expect it will still find plays it. In New York chey say it is sight of his suffering. She runs to anything stimulating in Esmeralda" the hit of his life. He has the face the fountain and their supports his or "A Scrap of Paper"' Do they ex and physique for it. His face re- head while she puts the water be- pect that the fine sentiment of "Re minded me just a little of Joe Haw- tween his burning lips. As soon as meo and Juliet" can appeal to senses orth's at times in its emotional mo- she touches him an ancient miracle is dulled by such exhibitions? To a man room. It is her lover or her brother, woman and ;ou have destroyed all ar t he brute whom she believes has out- tlstic values, brought the whole raged her; or the man who has pro- structure of six thousand years of tected and cherished her from child- civilization crashing down about your hood. She lies to her brother and head, leaving you naked and defense Minds him to his death, right- out into less to the wrath of heaven as the the face of the picket guns. The fact brute who cowers before the thunder that he is not killed softens the situa- storm You are Caliban on his island, tion dramatically, but it docs not you have reached chaos again, affect the young lady's moral inten- "Faust," "Othello," "La Dame Aux tions. Of course there is an explana- Camelias," "Tessof the d'Urbervilles" tion between Eric and Yevonne and are meaningless, mere idle extrava he goes out to retrieve his lost honor ganzas upon a mythical theme. That one principle is as necessary to art as to society, without it we have noth ingnothing: It is the poetry of life, the source of everything, the inspira tion of everything, the goal of every thing. In it lies all the triumph of the good, all the tragedy of evil. Abol ish it, and the painter is without colors, the dramatist without con trasts, the poet without ideals. Art becomes as impossible as it was in de cadent Rome. Let Mr. Potter and Mr. Frohman beware how they train their public, or they will soon have to turn the Empire theatre into an arena, and bull fights and gladiatorial shows and living pictures will be the only "productions" that will draw at audience. Pittsburg, Pa. : mm exchmge hiioiil bank LINCOLN, Neb. S. H. Bckmiam, A. J. Sawyer. President. Vice-President. D. G. Wise, Cashier. CAPITAL ?25o.ooo. AAA DIRECTORS: A . J. Sawyer. S. H. Burnham, E.Finney. J. A. Lan caster, Lewis Gregory. X. Z. Snell, O. M. Lambertoon, D. G. Wing, S. . ourausD,
