four or five hundred. Performances can be held here at the same time as in the main auditorium. And in summer, by opening the glass walls of this smaller auditorium, the "intimate" theater can be converted into a very attractive roof garden overlooking Central Park.

The situation of the theater is one of its most characteristic features. Separated by the width of the Park from upper Fifth Avenue, it adjoins Columbus Circle, which is already one of the chief traffic centers and is destined to become at no distant time the chief theatric center of the metropolis.

Architecturally the theater expresses admirably its ideal as a civic, even a national, institution.

Built of a beautiful

gray limestone, and occupying an entire block, it is, as an edifice, precisely what it is as an institution-the only foundation in either England or America which compares with the great artistic theaters of the Continent. As such it will be conceded, I think, that it fairly deserves the title of "new."

The company is to be a stock company; more than that, it is to be a repertory company, capable of playing more "sorts" than were dreamed of even in the category of Polonius. And it is of course to to be an ensemble, in which the work of every actor, famous or obscure, is to be subordinated to the one exclusive end of interpreting the play in hand. Yet it is clearly recognized that a true ensemble demands that the great rôles shall be no less admirably presented than the small. The whole must be always greater than the part; but there can be no whole unless the great parts are taken greatly. And here we come upon a vast practical difficulty. The commercial stage, as I have said, offers little inducement to artists who, however versatile, have no signal personal appeal for the great public; but it offers fabulous rewards to an actor whose personal charm and artistic power are obvious. Such actors have received one hundred thousand dollars yearly, even more; and are thus as expensive as an operatic star.

The New Theater company will number about forty actors. Under the director there are to be two stage managers-Mr. Louis Calvert, who, in addition to being one of the foremost English character actors, is recognized as the leading pro

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ducer of Shakespeare; and Mr. George Foster Platt, an American of much experience, whose productions of "The Three of Us" and The Man on the Box" were recognized as the most subtly artistic and effective in recent years. Prominent among the members of the company are Edward Sothern, Charles Cartwright, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Albert Bruning, Ben Johnson, Rowland Buckstone, Julia Marlowe, Rose Coghlan, Beverly Sitgreaves, Beatrice Forbes Robertson, Jessie Busley, Mrs. Sol Smith, Olive Wyndham, and Leah Bateman Hunter.

In its productions of Shakespeare the Theater promises certain very interesting novelties. Not that it has any fixed ideas on this much-mooted subject. It favors neither the elaborate scenic production nor the so-called Elizabethan production on a bare and ugly stage. It stands neither for presenting the full text nor for such wholesale cutting and rearrangement as many producers have permitted themselves. Each play is to be considered as a separate artistic problem; and the only aim will be to produce as much as possible of the effect Shakespeare intended.

The opening production is to be one of the greatest and by all odds the most neglected of the tragedies, "Antony and Cleopatra." It is a play in which the note of reality is strong, and it will be given an impressively beautiful scenic mounting. Yet the purpose is always to subordinate the scenery to the poetry and the acting. Those who saw Irving's productions at the Lyceum in London will remember many of them as elaborately detailed, not only in the painting, but in the matter of stage properties. The effects of lighting were minutely realistic, and varied from moment to moment as the day was supposed to advance or decline. Often one became deaf to the lines, dumb and blind to the actors, while watching what was essentially only the background, however beautiful. And to make time for the setting and shifting of such elaborate scenery the text had to be cut and whole scenes transposed, removing much of poetic worth and ruining Shakespeare's carefully composed narrative. Later producers have carried this method to absurdity. A recent production of the "Tempest " cut the opening scene of the

shipwreck, the most vigorous and striking thing of its kind in the drama, and supplanted it with the spectacle of a tempesttossed bark manned by infant actors who spoke no word. Obviously inartistic as this was, and irreverent to Shakespeare, it had one great advantage-that of implicit honesty.

In "Antony and Cleopatra " the scenes will not be treated realistically, but in a manner essentially decorative. They are from the brush of Mr. Jules Guerin, who is master of the simplest and largest effects in line and color. He served his apprenticeship on the paint-bridge of one of the old stock companies, graduated to architectural rendering, and has lately made exhaustive studies in color of the water and the temples of Egypt, its rocks, and its deserts. In his scenes for " Antony and Cleopatra" his aim has been in each case to strike a single decorative note, supremely simple though none the less accurate, the total effect which shall be of the utmost richness and harmony, but always an undertone.

The second Shakespearean production will be one of the airier comedies, and this has been intrusted to a no less celebrated American artist, who is likewise a master of decorative line and color. If successful, these productions will create a new precedent, and, it is hoped, a precedent of distinguished value.

The remaining Shakespearean production is a frank piece of popular romance, intentionally unreal, yet full of picturesque action, broad humor, and the most exquisite poetry. To set it with scenery in any modern manner would be only to emphasize the unreality of the story and so impair its interest and charm. Moreover, the scenes are so many and so varied that to illustrate them even with the simplest and most decorative pictures would involve the most cruel cutting of the text and the most disturbing transposition of scenes to suit the different sets. This play is to be produced in the Elizabethan manner, without perspective scenery. Even at that it has had to be slightly cut to bring it within the space of three hours.

The New Theater production will, however, be a very different thing from the bare and bald "Elizabethan” productions

of Mr. William Poel in London, which Mr. Ben Greet has made familiar here. These have, it is true, the great virtue of presenting an approximately complete text and the narrative ordered as Shakespeare ordered it. But, unfortunately, they were based on the traditional belief, repeated by all but the most recent historians of the stage, that Shakespeare had "no scenery," and only the simplest and crudest properties. Reynolds, Wegener, and others have now made it abundantly evident that, while they had probably no scenes painted in perspective, the Elizabethans made use of, all such properties as were required by the action, even practicable trees, and in addition could show house fronts, interiors, and city walls. And, far from being bare and crude, their productions were as rich and harmonious in the matter of hangings and properties as they were in costume.

The artistic purpose was not at all realistic, however, and not even so much decorative as symbolic. It was conceived, in short, as one would expect, in the manner of the paintings and sculptured reliefs of the Middle Ages, in which there is no proportion, no perspective, yet perfectly recognizable symbols of what is intended, most harmoniously composed. With a fuller text than has ever before been presented to a modern audience and a narrative undistorted, it is hoped that our audiences will be not unwilling to accept the Elizabethan stage convention and to enjoy its richness of tone and essential harmony. The study of Shakespeare's actual stagecraft, in addition, has revealed certain vivid dramatic values in the play not hitherto suspected by editors and stage managers.

The fourth classical production will be "The School for Scandal," and this also will have new features, for an account of which space fails. The eight productions of modern plays are, in part, representative of the most recent dramatic movements in America and abroad, and are all pieces which it is hoped will prove interesting to the general public. Two of the earliest productions will be by youthful Americans— "The Cottage in the Air," a light comedy by Edward Knoblauch, and "The Nigger," a nobly powerful drama of the South by Edward Sheldon, author of "Salvation Nell.”