-
164. Curtain Speech
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
546 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 164 · The Educational Alliance was founded by public-spirited citizens concerned with giving aid to immigrants. Among sponsors were Isador Straus, Felix M. Warburg, Benjamin Altman, and Albert Friedlander. The Children's Theatre was a project of the Alliance in which Mark Twain took great interest. At a matinee performance ofThe Prince and the Pauper, which he attended with his daughter, Howells, and Daniel Frohman, he was delighted by a cast of juvenile actors, and by the audience of800, mostly children. He made a curtain speech at the end ofthe second act. Curtain Speech Performance of The Prince and the Pauper, Educational Alliance, Children's Theatre, New York, April 14, 1907 I have not enjoyed a play so much, so heartily, and so thoroughly since I played ~1iles Hendon twenty-two years ago. I used to play in this piece with my children, who, twenty-two years ago, were little youngsters. One of my daughters was the Prince, and a neighbor's daughter was the Pauper, and the children of other neighbors played other parts. But we never gave such a performance as we have seen here today. It would have been beyond us. My late wife was the dramatist and stage manager. Our coachman was the stage manager, second in command. We used to play it in this simple way, and the one who used to bring in the crown on a cushion-he was a little fellow then-is now a clergyman way up high-six or seven feet high-and growing higher all the time. We played it well, but not as well as you see it here, for you see it done by practically trained professionals. I was especially interested in the scene which we have just had, for Miles Hendon was my part. I did it as well as a person could who never remembered his part. The children all knew their parts. They did not mind if I did not know mine. I could thread a needle nearly as well as the player did whom you saw today. The words of my part I could supply on the spot. The words of the song that Miles Hendon sang here I did not catch. But I was great in that song. [Singing]: MARK TWAIN SPEAKING There was a woman in her town, She loved her husband well, But another man just twice as well. 547 How is that? It was so fresh and enjoyable to make up a new set of words each time that I played the part. If I had a thousand citizens in front of me, I would like to give them information, but you children already know all that I have found out about the Educational Alliance. It's like a man living within thirty miles of Vesuvius and never knowing about a volcano. It's like living for a lifetime in Buffalo, eighteen miles from Niagara, and never going to see the Falls. So I had lived in New York and knew nothing about the Educational Alliance. This theater is a part of the work, and furnishes pure and clean plays. This theater is an influence. Everything in the world is accomplished by influences which train and educate. When you get to be seventy-one and a half, as I am, you may think that your education is over, but it isn't. If we had forty theaters of this kind in this city of four millions, how they would educate and elevate! We should have a"body of educated theater-goers. It would make better citizens, honest citizens. One of the best gifts a millionaire could make would be a theater here and a theater there. It would make of you a real Republic, and bring about an educational level. [Interrupted by a young actress, he said]: I must apologize. I only want to tell this story and then I'll stop. [He told the story of a Negro who paid two dollars for a marriage license that had the wrong woman's name on it. But he concluded to marry that one rather than pay for another license because "there wasn't two dollars' difference between the two women."] Text / Composite, based upon: "Mark Twain tells of Being an Actor," Times, April 15, 1907; "Educating Theatre-Goers" in MTS (10):71-73; and MTS(23):330-31. There was a woman in her town, etc. / From a long ballad popular with rivermen in the...