Multiplying examples is unnecessary; there is enough food for reflection in these three recent plays. They are all marked with particular Americanism, and a prominent share of that Americanism is entrusted to actors foreign-born and foreign-bred.
We are so used here to accepting certain mannerisms of speech as indigenous to, and proper to, the theatre, and so many of our actors follow British pronunciation and inflection, that we hardly see the extent to which the natively English voice prevails on our stage. Once the thing gets on one's nerves, however, it is most noticeable. Indeed, the presence of English actors on the American stage is so pervasive of everything, from farce-comedy to society-tragedy, that they fairly invest our national drama.
Now of all insularities the most abominable, the one most to be shunned by this country is artistic insularity. It is an excellent cosmopolitanism that gives our patronage so generously to the greatest foreign stars, although it is bald snobbery that often leads us to favor mediocre importations over native genius. But it is surely carrying our worldliness too far when we accept and approve the hopeless incapacity of foreigners to enact _rôles_ demanding American local color. This may substantiate our proverbial patience, but it deals hard with our boasted sense of the incongruous. So much have unlike environments in a hundred years differentiated the two races that an English impersonation of an American character can never be acceptable to real criticism.
The reason for the sway of English actors over our stage is not far to seek. It is not that the best of them can act better than our best, for we have in our little day produced a very few of the greatest actors, tragic and comic. And we still have an excellent array of the plebs of the stage. It is the middle class--which is ever the grand average and backbone of any organization--that is not satisfactory and must draw on foreign aid. The average middle-class actor in England supplies the demand, for he is far above our similar caste in training and finish, and for good reason. In England the stage is taken more seriously than here, at least by the players. There an actor enters upon his career with the same desire for the thoroughness that comes from humble beginnings and complete experience as anyone entering upon any other profession. He may cherish vague hopes of greatness--as every American lawyer hopes to be President--but he is content if his lot is cast in respectable places, where the labor is agreeable and the compensation decent. The result is an army of thoroughly drilled actors that can do almost anything well, though they may do nothing brilliantly.