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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Julia Marlowe's career, 1887–1924, came at an awkward point in the history of the American theatre, a transitional period when old traditions were fading and new ones had not yet been established. During her thirty years as an actress, a heterogeneous mixture of plays was seen on the American stage: Shakespeare and other old classics, emotional dramas adapted from the French and German, melodramas old and new, early attempts at realism, problem plays. Most strikingly innovative in this period were the dramas of Ibsen, Shaw, and O'Neill (his early plays), which questioned conventional values and often presented a disturbing view of human life and relationships. The range of plays was varied for performers, and the acting styles employed by the actors revealed a comparable diversity. According to Garff Wilson's classification, players like Helena Modjeska performed in the classic style characterized by grace, symmetry, and poetic grandeur; Clara Morris and Fanny Davenport perfected a highly emotional style, both specialists in the art of stage weeping; Otis Skinner abandoned the classics of Shakespeare and Restoration drama and became famous in sentimental comedy and romantic costume drama such as Kismet; Ada Rehan and Viola Allen, part of the “sisterhood of sweetness and light,” achieved popularity as actresses of the “personality school”; Richard Mansfield, a thoroughly transitional figure, clung to the classics in his repertoire but also produced and performed in the modern plays of Shaw and Ibsen; Minnie Maddern Fiske championed the works of Ibsen and a style of acting called the school of psychological naturalism.
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