John S. Lindsay

“ Without the aid of the theatre and the actors' art, the great majority of mankind would remain in ignorance as to the works of the most gifted writers; without those great reflectors of human thought, how many thousands there have been and are who never would have heard or read the plays of Shakespeare and other writers of genius, but who, by the assistance of the actor's delineations, have become familiar with the most sublime and beautiful thoughts and sentiments that adorn our language. ”

“ In the meantime a new star had appeared in our dramatic horizon; by the time Lyne had closed his engagement, it was in our ascendant, astrologically speaking, and by the time it had reached our zenith, or midheaven, it had shed another halo over the Salt Lake Theatre and the drama in Utah. This bright particular star was George Pauncefort. "He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one," an actor of rare and varied accomplishments, and proved to be an invaluable instructor and model for the company. ”

“ That Brigham Young was fond of the theatre also, and gave great encouragement to it, his building of the Salt Lake Theatre was a striking proof. He recognized the natural desire for innocent amusement, and the old axiom "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," had its full weight of meaning to him. Keep the people in a pleasurable mood, then they will not be apt to brood and ponder over the weightier concerns of life. ”

“ Why are they so highly prized? It is because Shakespeare was the grand High Priest of Nature! He got closer to the human heart than any and all other authors. To him nature was an open book, and he was so thoroughly in love with it, that he left no page unturned or unobserved; from the primer page or the humblest creations of nature's lavish hand up through the countless and variegated specimens of her handiwork to the crowning production of her creative power, man—this son of genius penetrated all her secrets, delved all her depths, scaled her loftiest heights. ”

“ Of such a character also are the plays of our gifted Salt Lake dramatist, the late Edward W. Tullidge. The present-day theatre-goers have little time to indulge in the reading of plays. The overwhelming mass of reading matter thrown from the press, keeps the general reader busy to keep abreast of the current literature of our times. So that plays form no part of the world's reading matter; here and there is one, some stagestruck soul who loves to get hold of and read a play, but the vast majority are content to let the actors read the plays for them, preferring to witness the acting of them. ”

“ Margetts was in distress. "What, in Utah!" he exclaimed. "The idea!" Where babies are our best crop, to be unable to procure one for his favorite farce. It was simply preposterous, absurd, incredible; he objected to play with nothing but a miserable makeshift of a rag baby. In agony he appealed to the stage manager, Mr. Caine, to know if the farce was to be ruined or made a double farce by the introduction into it of a grotesque doll like that! It would be worse than a Punch and Judy show. ”

“ The great bulk of dramatic entertainment is uplifting in its tendencies. The infinite variety of plays presented, showing human life in all conditions, and under every variety of circumstances, can not be otherwise than educational in effect upon those who witness them. However crude or devoid of literary merit a play may be, there seldom is one, however bald in plot or uninteresting in sentiment, but what "points a moral and adorns a tale."
In Shakespeare's day the theatre was even more or an educational institution than it is today. ”

“ Maguire by his own confession had been educated for the Catholic priesthood, and certainly a good priest was spoiled when John turned Thespian, but the stage fever caught him, and struck in so deep that he was irrevocably lost to a profession which he was capable of adorning, and exposed "to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that are generally in quiver to be hurled at the unfortunate actor or manager who does not achieve an unqualified success. ”

“ In those "palmy days of the drama," it was quite usual to have a farce after a five-act tragedy. On benefit occasions not infrequently there would be a long play, then an olio of singing and a fancy dance, and a farce to close the "evening's entertainment."
During this engagement Clara Jean Walters played the leading female roles, and rendered effective support, as indeed she always did. She was the most capable and versatile "leading lady" the stock company ever had and remained with it for several seasons a well-established favorite. ”

“ There were two children, a boy and a girl, the offspring of the Lyne-Cogswell marriage. The court, in giving Lyne the deliverance which he sought on the grounds of desertion, gave him the custody of the two children, and he had them in Salt Lake attending school, and he was very apprehensive that the mother might kidnap them. So when she had departed without any signs of having molested the children the veteran was happy, for he never dreamed they would return, but alas! for the contrariness of human nature, in this he was doomed to disappointment. ”

“ The theatre is so popular among the Mormon people, that in almost every town and settlement throughout their domains there is an amateur dramatic company.
It is scarcely to be wondered at that Salt Lake has the enviable distinction of being the best show town of its population in the United States, and when we say that, we may as well say in the whole world. It is a well established fact that Salt Lake spends more money per capita in the theatre than any city in our country. ”

“ She was not appalled, however, by the gloomy and hopeless pictures some of her friends were kind enough to paint for her, and bravely married the man she had set her heart upon and stuck by him through thick and thin, sunshine and storm, prosperity and adversity. On November 11th, 1872, Maude Kiskadden was born, within a stone's throw of the Salt Lake Theatre, and before she was a year old made her debut on the stage where her mother was a debutante some eight years before. It looks now as if it were fate, as if she was predestined for a great stage career. ”

“ The rivalry of the two Henrys served to throw theatrical circles in the Golden Gate City into a feverish excitement, and the result was that both houses did a good business, as every theatre-goer felt in duty bound to see both actors, and then compare their respective merits. Until Rignold played "Henry V" in New York no American actor had ever attempted the character; Barrett who had in conjunction with John McCullough managed the California theatre during the first three years of its career, saw an opportunity to do some business there and win some fresh laurels in a new part. ”

“ Not only did all amusement and business generally come to a sudden stop, but so serious was the situation that a general exodus of the people to the south was ordered by the church authorities and Salt Lake City was abandoned.
Meeting houses, theatre, stores and nearly all the dwellings in the city were vacated, and the intention was to burn the city rather than this "hell born" army should occupy and pollute it. ”

“ He told how hard he had to work, and what a loss of time the rehearsals and plays occasioned him; being up so much at nights, he could not get up very early in the morning—and could not but lose several hours every day. Besides, he said he did not think it right and just, when the theatre was taking in such large sums of money at every performance, that those who furnished the entertainment, whether in the art of music or the drama, should be expected to continue to do it gratuitously. ”

“ It was the custom to put up a new bill each week, so this gave the company about a week to get up in a new play and a new farce; with their daily occupations to attend to as well. Actors today would consider it a task to get up in a new play and a farce each week with nothing else to attend to. It will readily be understood from this statement that the original stock company of the Salt Lake Theatre had no sinecure, or "soft snap," to phrase it in the present vernacular, especially when it is made known that during all this season there was no such thing as salary attached to their positions. ”

“ On the 22nd, Washington's Birthday, the theatre was used as a ball room—the Firemen gave a "Grand Ball" and for the occasion the theatre was transformed, as it had been a number of times before, to accommodate an enormous crowd of dancers. The entire parquet was covered with floor made in sections, making the stage and the auditorium into one vast dancing hall. Hundreds who did not participate in the dance paid admission fees to sit in the circles and watch the dancers go through the bewitching and bewildering figures to the strains of a fine orchestra secured for the occasion. ”

“ They had a new play to exploit. They had feared to make the venture with it at the California theatre in San Francisco where they had been favorites, so they brought it to Salt Lake to "try it on the dog." This is a phrase thoroughly understood among theatrical people although it may savor of ambiguity to the uninitiated. It means simply that when a manager is at all dubious about the merits of a new production, he sends it into some comparatively obscure town to try its qualifications for pleasing in the metropolis. ”

“ The voices that have thrilled us, the animated and beautified forms that have called forth our admiration and praise, are stilled forever by the chilling touch of death; genius, mediocrity, incompetency, all alike go down, and the greatest names in a few brief years are forgotten; so transitory is the actor's fame. ”

“ Flour was flour in those days, running as high at one time as twenty dollars per hundred, but the uniform church or tithing office price was six dollars per hundred, which was what the actors had to pay for it, but it was doled out very sparingly to them at times when it was commanding high prices in outside markets. With these orders they drew about all their provisions from the tithing store. Artemus Ward amused the world by telling how the Salt Lake Theatre used to take in exchange for tickets cabbage, potatoes, wheat, carrots, and even sucking pigs through the box office window. ”

“ Waldron as "Romeo." Rose Evans established herself very strongly in the favor of the Salt Lake theatre goers. Her "Hamlet" was liked, and she played it intelligently and perhaps as well as a woman could play it, but no woman can ever play "Hamlet" satisfactorily to the critical mind; and very few men out of the thousands of actors ever reach and handle it satisfactorily. Her "Juliet" was very acceptable, but Waldron's voice was' too basso profundo for "Romeo." It was hard to imagine him as the youthful love-distraught Romeo with his deep set vocal organ. ”

“ Brigham Young then made an address on the mission of the drama and his object in building the theatre, which avowedly was to furnish innocent and instructive amusement to the Saints. He inveighed somewhat extravagantly against tragedy and declared he wouldn't have any tragedies or blood-curdling dramas played in this theatre. This people had seen tragedy enough in real life and there was no telling the far-reaching and evil effects tragedies on the stage might have. He strongly opposed, too, the idea of having any Gentile actors play in this theatre. ”

“ Although Salt Lake City has been the chief nursery of these twin sources of amusement for the Mormon people, to find the cradle in which they were first nursed into life, we will have to go back to a time and place anterior to the settlement of Salt Lake. Back in the days of Nauvoo, before Brigham Young was chief of the Mormon church, under the rule of its original prophet, Joseph Smith, the Mormon people were encouraged in the practice of dancing and going to witness plays. Indeed, the Mormons have always been a fun-loving people ”

“ Moreover, they were gaining an experience in art that would have been perhaps impossible for them, had not this splendid theatre been erected in the home of the Saints. Brigham Young's comprehensive mind had grasped the advantage to his people of blending art with religion, and relieving the monotony of arduous pioneer toil with innocent and refreshing amusements. ”

“ The heart of man, that secret repository of so many contending passions; that cradle where the affections are rocked into life; that fountain whence so many varying emotions spring, that sea o'er which are swept the multitudinous passions of life, was also to him an open page ”

“ She strode out of the hotel like an enraged tigress. We all wondered what she was going to do, but in about five minutes she strode back in again with a handful of poor Freeman's whiskers in her clenched fist and her parasol broken to smithereens over the offender's face and head. In explanation she said, "I don't care how much he criticises my acting but he mustn't meddle in my family affairs." Freeman took revenge for this upon the writer several years later in Montana, by giving him a red hot roast while playing in a neighboring town. ”

“ Those living at a distance and visiting the city either on business or pleasure (which were generally combined) deemed themselves extremely fortunate if there chanced to be a play "on the boards" during their brief sojourn in the city.
The fame of the Social Hall and its talented company of players, dramatic and musical, had spread abroad in the land and many of the smaller towns began to emulate Salt Lake City and organized dramatic clubs. ”

“ So with many other plays we might cite; but compared with Shakespeare's plays they have proven to be short-lived and their fame but transitory. They have never found a permanent abiding place in the world of literature.
There is a strange, a marvelous thing in connection with the plays of Shakespeare. In his day the theatre was not popular, as it is in our times. The religionists held it in reprobation; actors were looked upon by the good church people as little better than vagabonds, and the occupation of play writing was scarcely reputable. ”

“ It was a good selection, well suited to the young people, and scored a success; only the older people in the community could remember George Pauncefort opening in the same play in 1864, and scoring a great triumph. The club had large and friendly audiences and their introductory play was pronounced a genuine success, both artistically and financially. It could not be otherwise than a good paying proposition, as Conference nights are always a harvest time for the theatre. ”