Life — April 11, 1889 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MRS. LANGTRY. HEN the history of the drama of the nineteenth century is written there will be accorded to Mrs, Langtry a niche in the temple of histrionic fame. It may be said that Bernhardt, Morris and Rachel were greater in tragedy; that Kate Claxton, Mrs. Bancroft and Agnes Booth excelled her in the delineation of melodramatic heroines; that Ros- ina Vokes, Lotta and Mrs. James Brown Potter soared higher in the realm of burlesque ; but Mrs. Langtry possesses a loftier claim to distinc- tion, It was she who originated the Worth School of Acting, and to her efforts is primarily due the success of the costume-drama which has carried the present decade of theatre- goers by storm. And it may also be said of Mrs. Langtry that she has originated a valuable economic movement, inci- dental to her elevation of the stage. In earlier eras of civilization, when a woman was deserted by her hus- band, or it became necessary for her to desert him, there was poverty and desolation before her. Now, owing entirely to Mrs. Langtry’s enlight- ened example, there opens to women in these circumstances a roseate vista of glittering possibilities. The great- er the brutality with which she has been treated, or the more reprehen- sible her own conduct, the brighter rises her star of hope. All she needs then is an introduction to the Prince of Wales, a course of study with Worth in Paris, an opportunity to write a soap advertisement, and a manager like Abbey, and there open before her the potentiality of wealth beyond Dr. Johnson's idea of the ultimate possibilities of the Thrale brewery. Mrs. Langtry’s artistic creations are too well known to need detailed mention. In ‘‘A Wife’s Peril” she performs a foot-race and a wrestling- match with a vigor that has made Myers and Muldoon sick with envy, in raiment that causes every one of her female observers to go home despairing. Her ‘Lady Macbeth” was attired in a degree of gorgeousness that would have ruined Mr. _Macbeth if it had been true to life, and would have obviated any trouble in the family arising from domestic discord. Her ‘Lena Despard” was costumed in a manner that might have bankrupted all the old and young gentlemen of ‘As in a Looking-Glass.” Her entire repertoire in the clothes drama is, in fact, on a scale of magnifi- cence unprecedented in the annals of histrionic art. It may also be noted that Mrs. Langtry has developed a new field of advertising, and has raised the market price of dudes. Before the innovations she introduced our local dies were considered of LIFE'S GALLERY OF BEAUTIES, No. 13. MRS. LANGTRY. no particular value, save as they occupied positions of conspicuous ornament in the club windows along the avenue; but, with Mrs, Langtry’s adoption of one of their number as a special-car advertise- ment attachment, they have become valuable as ultimate possibilities in a simitar direction, ‘When dramatic scholars begin to appreciate the higher claims of the spectacular over the emotional on the stage, when the ability to wear clothes is appreciated above mere talent in the portrayal of passion and character, then, and not ’till then, Mrs. Langtry will be accorded the first position among the histrions of the age. comicbooks.com