The Folk Costume Book

With

By Frances H. Haire, Director of Recreation, East Orange, N. J. twenty (20) full page illustrations (forty figures) in four colors by Gertrude Moser. 8vo. Size, 64 10 Full Cloth-Price, $6.00 with illustrations in

H authentic, practical, and comprehensive. The costumes illustrated

and described represent twenty (20) different nationalities. Much time and labor were spent in research. The costumes given are characteristic of the country to which they belong, and were selected with a view to their reproduction in inexpensive costume material. The Folk Costumes described and illustrated in color are as follows: AUSTRIA

HOLLAND

HUNGARY

IRELAND
ITALY

JUGO-SLAVIA

NORWAY
POLAND

RUMANIA

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Wigs and Make-up

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THE JANET DANCES

"Dances that Charm"

Clearly explained, easily read descriptions, arranged to records of best and popular music. From all parts of the world comes highest praise for their delightful and intrigueing themes. For amateur groups, wee-folk, beginning students and finished dancers. Send for list.

A Dictionary of Dance Terms, giving pronunciation and a working description of ballet technique. $3.00. JANET STUDIO PUBLICATIONS, 514 S. Douglas Ave., Springfield, Ill.

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New York

THE DRAMA TEACHERS SUMMER SCHOOL

announces its fourth season in Berkeley, California under the direction of

SAM HUME JULY 3 to JULY 31 1926

Practical training in stagecraft, producing, and acting designed especially for teachers will be offered.

Address communications to Alice B. Brainerd, 2308 Warring St., Berkeley, California.

Baltimore is the eighth city in size in these United States, with a population approaching 800,000 or about the same size as Boston, but it has at present but three professional theatres (exclusive of vaudeville and movies) against Boston's nine. It had a fourth, Albaugh's

Young Mrs. Winthrop, and one-actors by George Ade, Gabrielle Rogge, Ida Mae Waters, Charles Sumner, Molnar, and Haddon Chambers. Out at Johns Hopkins, students were giving, at their little Playshop, Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas, with effective scenery, restricted the spectacle.

record run, seven weeks, had been achieved at that house, it was burned out. As the play that made that record was Getting Gertie's Garter, perhaps it was a "judgment." A recent visitor to the charming southern city had to choose between George White's Scandals, Rose Marie and The Gorilla. As he thought none of them food for adults, he left the choice to two children whom he was taking, and they plumped for The Gorilla. This play was making a record of three weeks, a long one for Baltimore. Next week playgoers there may see The Student Prince and Cyril Maude in These Charming People. Two weeks without one good play!

Every now and then a good thing is tried out in the Maryland metropolis, so that New York demands "the original Baltimore cast."

LEE SIMONSON..

MAN AND SUPERMAN.

ALL OR NONE, a Comedy..

But the crowning glory of Baltimore's theatre is their Vagabond Players, now in their tenth year. What with the departed The Call of Life, The Green Cockatoo, with His Wedding Morning (from Anatole) that should now be running at Kathleen Kirkwood's tiny Triangle Theatre, and Anatole (by the Stagers) imminent, all in New York and his Trifling With Love in Baltimore, this is something of a Schnitzler season. I was fortunate enough to see The Vagabond's performance of Trifling With Love (Liebelei) which I had enjoyed, a score of years or so ago, with Katherine Gray as the unhappy heroine. It was called The Reckoning then, and has also been translated as Light O' Love and as Fair Game. It is a noble play, and should be revived more often. The settings of Fritz's bachelor rooms and of Christine's modest living room were thoroughNo. 6 ly appropriate, but did not (as had The Beggars Opera, The Vagabond's production just before) give them a chance to show any of the picturesque scenery for which they are famous.

Frontispiece

THE STARS THAT SHINE.. Books...

..Laurence Stuckey 205 Franklin Kent Gifford 207 210 Barrett H. Clark 211 Grace Elizabeth King 213 Clifford Thorne 216 Vandervoort Sloan 217 J. Vandervoort Sloan 218 Aurania Rouveyrol 219 221

J.

As is so often the case in our minor cities, the dramatic VOL. 16 culture of Baltimore has to be left mostly to its little theatres, which in the same week of January 11 were providing Victor Hugo, Schnitzler and Cushing. To take the last first, it is The Charles St. Follies which is far better than Getting Gertie's Garter, and bids fair to out-run that earlier record-breaker, as it too already is in its seventh week. It is credited to T. M. Cushing, the dramatic critic of The Baltimore Sun, as he wrote many of the lyrics, some of the music, and is reputed to have planned the whole thing. It includes, among its twenty follies, "My TwentyFoot Bookshelf," "Tea Rooms, "Blue Bus Blues" and "The Charles Street (like our Fifth Avenue) Cowboy." Probably, though rather small, the stage of the two-year old Play-Arts Guild's Guild Theatre is the best equipped of Baltimore's three little theatres. It has some room overhead for handling scenery. The Play-Arts Guilders are clamoring for American plays to produce, also to try out on "Guild Nights." Among their announcements for their four productions (only two dollars subscription for the four) are "A New Play by a Baltimorean," Bronson Howard's

While The Vagabond's did not reach the heights they achieved a while ago in Masefield's Tragedy of Nan, they gave a very moving performance of a great and beautiful play. They are troubled by the lack of good American plays with small casts and small royalty charges, that have not been given professionally in Baltimore. They are considering for the balance of the season another play by an Austrian, two (one short) by Spaniards and one by a Russian. It is regrettable that they have almost entirely abandoned one-act plays. Public-spirited Baltimoreans should erect a fine civic theatre with accommodations for larger plays than their three excellent little theatres can at present give in their cramped quarters. Why should not drama lovers give this delightful city another enduring monument to the arts, such as they now have in the Waters Gallery?

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I

"Our language is incorrigibly noble! You know how it is when you go to the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford. come away so filled with majestic words that I can hardly resist greeting our homely chemist with 'Ho! Apothecary!' Douglas, in The Setons.

Throughout the morning of April 23, pilgrims became more evident on the quaint streets of the famous little town of Stratford-on-Avon. They made their way toward Bridge Street, and shortly before noon, the Mayor, preceded by the Beedle, stepped into the scene. When the last stroke of twelve had sounded, trumpets blew a fanfare, and at once the flags of many nations were unfurled to the breeze. The band played the national anthem of England and the ceremony on Bridge Street was at an end.

As

Then a procession of the poet's admirers moved to the Birthplace, and shortly afterward reversed its steps and made for Holy Trinity Church. Hundreds of people, laden with lovely flowers and gorgeous wreathes were in the procession which entered the church through an avenue of limes. the first of the procession filed through the Gothic porch, the organ rang out, and for twenty minutes the procession went through the church, piling the tomb of the poet high with daffodils.

Among those in the procession, her face as beaming and sunny as the day itself, and her arms filled with flowers, perhaps, too, a spray of rosemary for remembrance, was Madame Navarro, or Mary Anderson. It was she who earlier on Bridge Street had unfurled the American flag.

At one o'clock the Shakespeare Club held its annual meeting and banquet in the Town Hall. Many distinguished persons were present, representatives from the four corners of the world. The members of the club had assembled to do honor to England's greatest dramatist, and they brought their greatest living English dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, to propose the toast-and he is an Irishman!

The guests were for the most part affected with an uncanny curiosity, almost an apprehension, for what would this superman say on the birthday of a mere mortal such as Shakespeare? Everyone seemed to be aware of Mr. Shaw's animadversions regarding the sacred subject of "bardolatry." Everyone knew something of Shavian blasphemies.

Early in Shaw's youth, when he made his name as a dramatic critic, he had simultaneously made his name one in common with Tolstoy, Voltaire, and Taine-the arch-enemies of Shakespeare. Had he not found Shakespeare's work full of moral platitudes, jingo clap-trap, tavern vulgarities, bombast and drivel? The audience seemed to be unaware that Shaw's attacks, however, have been largely attacks on socalled admirers, interpreters, and producers of Shakespeare rather than of Shakespeare himself. Of course, it is difficult even now to understand just where Mr. Shaw in his brain of brain and heart of heart stands regarding his great competitor,

William Shakespeare. Yet, if the truth were searched for in Shaw's own commentaries on this subject, it would be discovered that he was at Stratford-on-Avon for the same reason that he might visit Bayreuth. His presence at Stratford-onAvon, strange as it may appear, was a tribute to a great musician.

"In a deaf nation," Shaw once remarked, "these plays of Shakespeare would have died long ago." And again: "It is the score that keeps Shakespeare alive and not the libretto." A strange fact to reflect upon, that Shaw, who finds in Shakespeare the ideas of Montaigne, the history of Plutarchus, the plots and stories of Bandello should be attracted so greatly to Shakespeare by his ear alone; while to Wagner, whose fame to-day rests primarily on his music, he has devoted so great space to the underlying and revolutionary meaning of the libretto.

Mr. Shaw stood up, smiling and tugging a little nervously at his beard, which is not at all as Mephistophelean as the caricaturists made it. Shaw himself has said: "Those who think the things I say severe, or even malicious, should just hear the things I do not say."

Everyone present held his breath. What would he say? He began in a typical Shavian manner by saying:

"It is a strange thing, indeed, when one is called upon to toast the health of a man who has been dead for over three hundred years. You will not need to be told that his health requires constant attention, and in Shakespeare's case it varies considerably, not only from time to time, but from place to place. I would not be surprised if some of their Excellencies, the Ambassadors of foreign powers, were not able to rise and give a record of Shakespeare's health in their countries far superior to what we could claim in any part of ours."

Mr. Shaw went on to say that what Shakespeare's health required was what the health of many elderly gentlemen required, and that was country air.

"London," he remarked, "is entirely hopeless. I recall that time when I commenced my career in London, and in passing, I might say that for some years a very strong conviction has come over me that Stratford-on-Avon is my birthplace by a peculiar right. As a matter of fact I was born elsewhere, and the place where I was born I called my own country until I conquered England. As to the question of country air and London, when I first came to the Metropolis it was possible to produce what was called a play of Shakespeare with twothirds cut out and the remainder totally unintelligible to any human being, so far as the story was concerned. That play was carefully reviewed by all the London critics, and not one of them noticed that something had been omitted, but they were only too thankful perhaps for the omission to say anything about it. That was forty years ago, and it is still possible at the present time. I was present at the performance

recently of a very well-known play in London, and more of it was cut than in any previous production. Even Sir Henry Irving respected the text of that play more. The result was exactly the same. All the critics were highly complimentary about the performance, describing it as very interesting. They never noticed anything had been left out, and yet the play was the comparatively well-known one of Hamlet."

Mr. Shaw was here referring to John Barrymore's production of Hamlet then running in London.

"London is hopeless," Mr. Shaw continued. "There is a continual struggle between the people who regard the theatre as a resort of fashion and the play as a necessary evil to be made as short as possible, with intervals as long as possible, and those people who go to the theatre in hope of finding there real drama. If they called on the acting manager of a London theatre, and found him in a state of wild enthusiasm, what was it that had put him in that condition? It was not because a great actor or actress had given a magnificent performance of his or her part, because, probably, the acting manager had never seen the play. He was boiling over with pride because Lady Somebody or Lord Someone else had occupied seats in the stalls the previous night, and he felt, therefore, that the theatre had justified its existence."

Mr. Shaw expressed the belief that the country was not only necessary for Shakespeare's health, but for the health of the drama as well. He was not sure that in the future London might disappear. Indeed, he hoped it would. He went on, giving a sparkling dissertation on social conditions, economic problems, and other subjects savory to the Shavian heart. Then he resumed his comment on the drama.

"Beauty on the stage is not postcard beauty, and the actors and the actresses cannot put it on and take it off as they do their hats. It takes years of hard training to acquire. I myself am a humble follower-sometimes not so humble as I ought to be in Shakespeare's footsteps. In order to keep up a live and continuous interest in the theatre, it is necessary to present plays that demand exercise of moral judgment and criticism. Most of Shakespeare's plays are presented with the moral judgment hurled at the audience's head. If the villain does not tell them for five solid minutes that he is a villain and glories in his views, someone else in the play does. Everything is cut and dried. In the new drama people are put on

Photograph by Francis Bruguiere

The use of masks in

the stage, and the audience is left to make up its mind about them, sometimes with the direst of consequences. Sometimes it would get warm in appreciation of a character who turned out very ridiculous. This was seen notably in some of the plays of Ibsen, and in some authors whom I will not particularly allude to. This is characteristic of modern drama, and the play that holds the imagination the whole world over more than any other is the problem play of Hamlet. People enter on nonsensical discussion as to whether Hamlet is sane or insane. The point is that Hamlet found himself in a certain moral situation. He discovered that a crime had been committed in his family, and the general assumption was that he should go and commit another murder to set things right. Somehow or other he did not want to commit murder, but, as a matter of fact, he finally did it, almost by accident. The audience finds a man in great perplexity of spirit as to what his right course of conduct should be. His duty was perfectly plain. He had come to the time when somehow or other morality was in the melting pot, and he felt that he was on uncertain ground. He felt no impulse to his duty. That was the beginning of the modern drama, which challenged moral judgment, and we must try to make the drama an instrument of continual purification and criticism of spiritual problems." Whereupon the great moment arrived, celebrated since the days of David Garrick: that of giving the toast to the "Immortal Memory of William Shakespeare."

Wine glasses, bubbling, were raised in the air, and Mr. Shaw made the toast-with a glass of plain water! In that one anemic gesture Shaw made important reservations. Considering the time and circumstances, however, he behaved admirably; yet his statement mentioned before flashed in my mind: "Those who think the things I say severe, or even malicious, should just hear the things I do not say.'

Later in the afternoon I dropped in at the Shakespeare Inn. It is a quaint, old building maintaining as much as possible the atmosphere of an Elizabethan Inn. All the rooms are named after plays written by Shakespeare, and there are rooms called As You Like It, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and so on.

"In what room," I inquired of the inn-keeper," is Mr. Shaw staying?"

"In the Much Ado About Nothing" room he replied, without a smile.