Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ...drawing characters from the world as we know it, putting them in the proper setting, and putting into their mouths speeches which are not only fitting to the character, but original and mirth-inspiring in themselves. Every college man, whether from the West, which the author portrays, or from the more famous universities of New England, will recognize the types as faithful pictures, the incidents as plausible ones, and both as not taken at second-hand. Stage necessities make the football scene, in a way, an impossible one, but it is handled so deftly from the dramatic point of view that the audience finds itself irresistibly helping in the uproar which is part of its realism. Most of the actors in the large cast are known to wide fame, and their very youth and freshness add to such delusion as the piece creates. Mr. Savage, the producing manager of The College Widow," who is to-day outside the monopoly of the Theatrical Trust, is evidently not tied down by its obligations and ignorance, and has evidently been free to draft his forces where he would and train them in his own fashion. The result shows that he is a factor to be figured with, for about the whole performance there was the vim and go which come with new blood. No particular one of the company was really great in acting, but all were excellent; in fact, it would be difficult to point to a character in the play, from the Widow herself down to the least important of the pipe-smoking and 'rahing college boys, who was not admirably in drawing. Mr. Ade is highly to be congratulated on Mr. David Warfield the same thing is true. 'He is most fortunate in having for his manager the gifted Belasco. The play in which he appears, "The Music Master," by Mr. Alfred Klein, is reminiscent in plot a...