Clever Four-footed Actors in Their Favorite Roles.

DRAMA A LA HAGENBECK

Some Comments on the Intoduction of "Real Live Animals" on the Stage and Its Legitimate Limits

  Some earnest and well-meaning devotees of the drama have remarked recently upon the apparent incongruity of giving up the stage of a leading local theater, lately graced by a powerful emotional actress in [illegible] plays, to an aggregation of animal performers; in other words, alternating the legitimate drama with out-and-out hippodrome. But although the idea is a little startling at first, a little reflection will show that these two features of what is now commonly known as the "amusement business" are not so very far apart, after all. The incursion of four-footed actors upon a stage formerly devoted to Pegasus has of late years become a matter of no small moment. . . .

  But in these modern days of stage realism the animal actor gets there with four feet. He frequently occupies the center of the stage to the exclusion of the biped Thespians, and occasionally to their discomfiture. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with its donkey and "pack of fierce Siberian bloodhounds," is probably responsible for this innovation, but the practice has increased and broadened until the introduction of a whole menagerie into the theater is only its legitimate outcome. . . .