part of the Jewish doctor better
than any one else in England.
Mr. Sofaer’s position in the thea¬
tre is of unusual interest. He has
all the qualities of an actor—imagi¬
Ination, vitality, bodily grace, an
expressive face, an intultive control
of gesture, a voice of the greatest
beauty and power. He speaks verse
as no other English actor—not ex¬
cepting Gielgud—can speak it, so
using its music to clarify its mean¬
ing that, under his control, even
the language of Biron in Love's
Labour’s Lost“ comes to the audi¬
ence with unfading lucidity.
Yet Ithink I do him no injustice
in saying that, in the public eye,
he has never held the place he de¬
serves among the leaders of his pro¬
fessien. The reason is his appear¬
ance, which, though handsome, is
so pronouncedly Oriental as to limit
the range of his parts. Six years
ago he appeared in New York as
Isaac Cohen in The Matrlarch';
I am not aware that he is otherwise
known in the United States. Here,
though he has played with success
In pieces of all kinds, he is chiefly
known, as far as leading röles are
concerned, as a Shakespearean
actor. The reason is the simple one
that, while Shakespeare created
Shylock and Othello and even Jago,
who may be cast as an Oriental, if
you please, modern playwrights, un¬
less they want an Oriental villain
for a thriller, generally write for
Oecidental leads.“ Professor Bern¬
hardi“ provides Mr. Sofaer with an
opportunity that he has long de¬
served.
The play, though it has been per¬
formed only once before in Eng¬
land, and then privately, is familiar
to students of the theatre; but it
has a special and renewed interest
at the present time. It opens with
a scene in which a Jewish director
of a Viennese hospital refuses to
allow a priest to have access to a
dying patient. He s#ays that the
patient is happy, that she does not
know she is dying, that the priest’s
arrival would put into her the fear
of death. At this point, I think,
Schnitzler missed an opportunity.
Because he was writing as an anti¬
clerical Austrian, he never allows
the Catholic point of view on this
incident to be represented; instead,
he hurries on to the consequences
of the incident itself, showing how
from so small a seed there sprang
up a forest of intrigue.
Once launched on this subject, he
has the courage to examine it in all
its aspects, and the play becomes,
not simply a piece of Jewish and
anti-clerical propaganda, but a gen¬
uine study of differing sets of
values. Bernhardi himself is by no
means exempt from criticism; his
stubborn refusal to compromise in
little things, his fanatical lack of
proportion, his special variety of
spiritual pride are set ouf side by
side with the excessive desire of
priests and politicians to excuse
their immediate failures or weak¬
nesses by saying that it is often
necessary to subordinate the means
to the end. Schnitzler is not im¬
partial; he has his own prejudice
and does not conceal it; but his
satire is by no means undistributed.
The result is a play of rare bal¬
ance and subtlety and one that re¬
wards every perceptive delicacy of
the players. CHARLES MORGAN.