[AS YOU LIKE IT.](n02206)
There
has been a good deal of excitement lately over [
Mr. Nat Goodwin
](n02343) and his future
career
.
Mr. Goodwin's successful work [as David Garrick
](n02451)
stirred up the dear old classicists who are forever trying to force every young
man of promise into [classic comedy](n02448). [
Mr. Barron
](n01909), the talented and eminently
just critic on the [
Inter Ocean
](n02346), has fallen into a bad habit of discovering
genius. He has laid genius up against Mr. Goodwin and declares that he has
given the American
publio
public
a pledge which he must redeem; that the seal of
greatness is upon him and that he must begin to fast and pray and play
[
Shakespeare
](n01572). Now, why in the name of the [sacred nine](n02453) should Mr. Goodwin play
Shakespeare? Just because he is a thoroughly modern spirit, because by
personal tastes and sympathy he is peculiarly fitted to represent one of the
most amusing, if not one of the most elevating phases of modern American
society, why should he be relegated to the shades of classic comedy? Mr.
Goodwin has no particular love for Shakespeare and he is honest enough to
admit it. His literary tastes are not much above [
Bell's life.](n02454) He belongs to the
rapid, sporty set of young men who have more vivacity than brains and he is the
artistic exponent of his class. This is no discredit to Mr. Goodwin. He is to
be respected because he has recognized his limitation and has not essayed
[
Orlando
](n00357) or [
Bob Acres
](n02455). In his sphere Mr. Goodwin is an artist. The American
public has need for him and love for him. It is true that he can only
impersonate one type, but that type happens to be very much in vogue. All his
ac ing
acting
is strongly colored by his own personality, but he belongs to a
clan that is a very real part of American life and that has a strong influence
in the moulding of American society, and it has a right to a representative in
the great legislature of art. Mr. Goodwin represents it on the stage very much
as [
Mr. Richard Harding Davis
](n01679) does in literature, and he does it just as well.
There is no reason why Mr. Goodwin should draw a long face and confine himself
to [hardtack](n02456) and [congress water](n02280) to become an indifferent impersonator of classic
roles. If only the dear critics would permit a man to be great in his own way
and the way nature intended for him. Most of us would be rather sorry to see
Mr. Goodwin a better man than he is or even a more serious actor, for it would
unfit him for just the class of work that no other man can do so well. He has
his sphere, a sphere of human interest, and he fills it well. In art that
means success. He is not a perfect workman, and never will be. He jumps from
pathos to comedy, where a man of finer grain would glide so
subtlely
subtly
that
you could never tell just where the transition took place. But the public does
not demand perfect work; it only asks for something that every other actor cannot
do. Mr. Goodwin has the rare gift of reaching out to the people and appealing
to them, and he can delight you a whole long evening so thoroughly that you
almost forget that his art is not of the highest kind, for it is not.
Of
course the highest kind of art, whether in comedy or tragedy, is that which has
lofty types and conceptions back of it, which is elevated by high artistic
sincerity, warmed by a genuine love for all things human, stimulated by some
great belief. The highest kind of comedy is at bottom wholly serious
;
it is
only comic in its demonstration. [
Crane's
](n00495) impersonation
of [
Brother John
](n00726) is a pretty good sample of the higher comedy, and it is still
fresh in the minds of [Lincoln](n02315) people. Brother John is a perfectly serious man;
his life and actions are staid and serious. At heart he is a sentimentalist,
but his way of explaining it is comical; what he says in perfect seriousness seems comical to other people. That is what makes the best comedy in real life. The people who are professional jesters, who never have a
serious thought, soon pall on us. It is the very serious people who are
unconsciously funny, who make drawing room life somewhat less of a burden. It
is when our callers have no sense of comedy at all, when they take themselves
and the universe in the highest seriousness and never intentionally say a funny
thing that we sometimes have to bite our lips
o
to
prevent our laughter. It
is the same thing in literature. The youthful lover of [
David
Copperfield
](n01548) and [
Arthur Pendennis, esq.
](n02457), are only funny because they were
so desperately serious. The
unniest
funniest
man we know is a man whose
lie
life
is
one long, noble self sacrifice to his mother and sister, but who insists upon
discussing his "temperament" and "soul' every time we meet him. The
highet
highest
kind of comedy is that which at the same moment makes us want to cry a
little and laugh a great deal. That is the comedy that has heart in it.
It always has that little shadow of pathos in the background and we feel it and
reverence, even while we laugh. We all remember the way Brother John
hugged [
Bobby
](n02458) and afterward wiped his eyes with a red handkerchief. The
genuineness, the warm humanness of that awkward embrace made a good many of us
misty about the eyes. That embrace was as far beyond Mr.
Goodwin as [
Hamlet
](n00399) is. We remember the way Brother John went into the ball room and cried, "Put
out those lights; stop that music!" It is the occasional assertion of the character and seriousness within that relieves and elevates
comedy. Contrast, rightly
usd
used
, gives the tone and shading to every
artistic creation. It is the laughter and reckless gaiety that
makes the first act of [
"Camille"
](n00070) so horribly pathetic, the seriousness of the poor inventor that
makes [
"The Poor
Relation"
](n02447)
so
funny.
Due to an apparent printing
error, there is a
gap of an unknown amount of text at this spot.
sides at [Wichita, Kas.](n02459)
He is not a particularly good man, he frequently [covets his neighbor's property](n02460)
and sometimes appropriates it. His one redeeming feature is that he goes to
the theatre. A few nights ago he was hanging around the hotel baggage room
and saw some large packages marked ["Jane Coombs Co. Theatre."](n02462) Thinking they
might be that actress' diamonds he carried them off. On opening them he
discovered that they contained 2,000 bill board portraits of [
Jane Combs
](n02461). Any
body who has had the doubtful pleasure of beholding Miss Coombs will sympathize
with the thief and decide that in this case his punishment was greater than his
sin.
If
[
Miss Lillian
Russel's
Russell's
](n00917) talent was as great as her temper [
Melba
](n00530) and [
Calve
](n01471) would
not be in the ring
all
at
all. Hitherto her general
disagreeableness has been reserved for her managers and husbands, but now her
fellow players are coming in for their share, and she has even succeeded in
disturbing the smiling good nature of [
Jessie Bartlett Davis
](n01417). Mrs. Davis' new
part, [
Idalia
](n02463), in [
"Prince Ananias"
](n02464) has been three times married and divorced.
The situation of course suggested Lillian and some mischievous reporter
relieved the dullness of his "copy" by saying that she imitated Miss Russell in
her costumes and manner. Miss Russell apparently retains childlike faith in
newspapers and when she read that one great was her wrath. She cut out the
slip and pasted it on a sheet of notepaper, wrote beneath it in a somewhat
nervous hand "Thanks, awfully," and sent it to Mrs. Davis. Mrs. Davis was
justly angry. She wrote an indignant letter to Miss Russell telling her
that
whn
when
she descended to imitation she would at least choose a loftier model.
That opened up a correspondence between the two fair dames, who are playing at
theatres just across the street from each other. If the letters were published
they would be spicy reading. Mrs. Davis is a good natured little woman when
she is let alone and is heartily sorry for it all now, but Miss Russell
continues sulky.
The
odious ["living picture"](n02465) craze had run its course in New York and was dying out.
People had tired of them as they tire of everything—even wickedness. The
evil of the exhibition was gone, for their popularity had died out. About a
week ago some very good ladies, lacking
someting
something
to do, having neither
husbands nor children nor enough literary clubs to employ their time, organized
a crusade against "living pictures." They wrote long articles for the
newspapers and they made public speeches. Now two weeks ago the "living
picture" business was a losing one. People had forgotten that they were entrancingly
wicked and only remembered that they were stupid and uninteresting and had quit
going to see them. Last week they appeared to crowded houses and are making
money. It is a pity. "Living pictures" are indecent and senseless and a
grotesque travesty on the paintings they claim to represent. Their influence
is evil and is unmodified by any kind of good or any wholesome pleasure. When
they were dead it was too bad to revive them. Very often in this world evil is
its own doom and carries its own death with it. As Napolean once said
the person who made the universe was clever, whoever he was. Who ever made
human nature understood his business. There are so many seeming paradoxes in
human society that will explain and rectify themselves if the reformer would
only give them time. The planets continue to travel in their appointed courses
without assistance, and so would human society if reformers would not attempt
to hurry nature and to aid providence. For every ill in human life God made a
cure, and it would all work out right some day if the reformer will only let it.