The theatre has always been the plaything of monarchs. They, who are always on the world's stage, playing to the parquet of the people, find a pleasing relaxation in being able to become spectators for the nonce and watch the stage-kings and queens strutting the boards in the dignity lent them for the brief span of an evening. The fact that, in most Continental countries at any rate, the royal theatre is maintained by the Privy Purse with the aid of a State grant, enhances for the ruler the attraction exercised by the theatre in the case of less exalted mortals by the consciousness that he has a booth of living puppets ready to dance and declaim at his bidding.

While most sovereigns have not got beyond regarding the theatre as a recreation from the arduous labors of monarchy, the German Empire has presented the spectacle of two princes who have taken a serious business-like interest in the stage. These are the present German Emperor and the reigning Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The results of the latter's life-long devotion to the drama are too well known to be here recapitulated; besides the influence of the Duke's world-famed Meiningen players has made itself felt in every capital visited by them on their triumphant tour, and still holds its own against the modern trend towards realism. Of the fruitfulness of the Kaiser's efforts on behalf of the theatre, public opinion, as in the case of most public acts of this remarkable man, is chiefly divided because so little authentic on the subject is known. It shall be the endeavor of the writer to lift the veil a little and show the German Emperor in yet another rôle, that of stage-manager and playproducer.

The interest of the Hohenzollerns in the theatre is hereditary. Most of William II.'s predecessors on the throne of Prussia have manifested it, some in a platonic, others in a more tender form. There was the great dancer Barberini, whose twinkling little feet vanquished great Frederick, the all-conquering, and whose pretty face still smiles on the visitor from half a dozen frescoes on the walls of the Barberini Room at Sans Souci. King Frederick William III. was อ great theatre-goer, if we are to believe what, as the faithful Buschlein records, Bismarck once said about him. The old King used to drive seven times a week from the Pfaueninsel (his summer villa on the Havel, near Potsdam). or the palace at Potsdam, to the theatre in Berlin "in order to see worthless pieces, and afterwards to go behind the scenes and chuck the actresses under the chin and then drive back the long dusty road he came." The present Emperor's interest in the theatre is, it is needless to say, of a more serious order. He regards it only as another means of elevating the public mind and cultivating those qualities of patriotism and loyalty which stand highest in his eyes.

The strongly-marked sense of the effective and the dramatic in the character of William II. makes it only natural that he should be strongly attracted to the stage. Almost any one of his speeches, with their daring similes, their ardent language, and, above all, their ever-recurrent emphasis of the Imperial Ego, shows to what a large extent he possesses the actor temperament. His strenuous character and his dominating personality impel him to give effect to his taste for the theatrical, and it is therefore not surprising that his Schaffensdrang, his creative

passion, should express itself in his relations to the stage. Indeed, for a correct comprehension of the Emperor's complex character it is necessary to realize that a salient point is his quite remarkable capability as a stagemanager.

A favorite theme of the jeremiads in Parliament and Press in Germany about the evils of the personal régime is the transition from the simple ways of the first Emperor's court to the era of fanfares and pageantry of the second William. This is but a result of the stage-manager element in the Kaiser. One might almost say that every public ceremony in modern Germany bears the imprint of his hand. He is not content with occupying the centre of the stage, but insists that the supers and scenery shall be up to the mark, so that the whole production may create a lasting impression on the minds of the beholders. When the average Englishman, accustomed to the staid note of many of the functions attended by Royalty in England, reads over his eggs and toast at breakfast a report of some perfervid speech of the Kaiser, he cannot be expected to realize how well the Emperor's speeches accord with the circumstances of their delivery. Take, for instance, the ceremony of the swearing-in of the Berlin recruits, which is held at the end of October each year, and at which the Kaiser has made some of his most remarkable utterances. Gray is the color scheme of it all. Berlin is wearing its winter dress of gray, and blending with the grayness of the weatherbeaten buildings of Unter den Linden the gray-coated Guardsmen stretch away in rigid masses. In the middle stands a field-altar flanked with stacked drums, by it a gray figure der Kaiser. In this solemn atmosphere the Supreme War Lord's earnest words of admonition of the sanctity of the oath, sworn before God and himself, do not

fail of their impression on the peasant recruits.

It is the Emperor, too, who has revived the Frederician tradition in Prussia, and who has established a bodyguard at the Berlin Castle, dressed in Frederician uniforms and commanded by a sergeant bearing a pike. Again, it was he who arranged the delightful surprise for Adolf von Menzel, the venerable painter who reconstituted on canvas the glories of Frederick the Great and his times.

It had come to the Kaiser's knowledge that von Menzel, who was engaged on his now famous picture "The Flute Concert at Sans Souci," had applied for permission to the custodian of the palace to be allowed to make a sketch of King Frederick's music-room by candle-light, and had been refused. One day von Menzel received an invitation to a Gartenfest at Sans Souci, and, on arriving at the gate of the park, was astonished to be greeted by the Emperor, wearing the uniform of Frederick's principal adjutant, and made up to represent him. The old painter, who was thoroughly versed in the history of Frederick the Great, immediately entered into the spirit of the thing, and addressed the Kaiser by the adjutant's name (which escapes me). Von Menzel was conducted to the music-room, where he found a living representation of his picture by the light of innumerable candles. The entire Court, including the Empress, took part in the tableau vivant, which was the idea of the Emperor, and entirely carried out under his direction.

With this proclivity, therefore, for the theatrical in real life, it is obvious that the stage offers the Emperor a ready means for indulging his predilection for pageantry and display. And the means are there to hand. As King of Prussia, William II. is the owner of the Royal Prussian Theatres, Königliche Schauspiele, of which there are

six, three in Berlin and one each at Wiesbaden, Cassel, and Hanover. The theatres are an heirloom of the King of Prussia, who receives a State grant for their maintenance, but has to make up the inevitable deficit out of his own pocket. It will be instructive for those who are in favor of a national theatre in England to learn that the Prussian Ministry of the Interior sets aside yearly £125,000 for the Royal theatres in Berlin alone, which sum is made up to £147,500 out of the Privy Purse. The annual deficit on this total, however, is seldom less than £15,000, and this the Emperor has to make good as well.

The Royal theatres in Berlin are the Royal Opera, the Theatre Royal (corresponding somewhat to the Comédie Française), and the Royal Operetta Theatre, where Mr. Tree and his company played some years ago when they were in Berlin. Up to quite recently the Emperor devoted his interest mainly to the Royal Theatre at Wiesbaden, at which a special festival, lasting three days-the so-called Wiesbadener Festspiele-is held annually. The Kaiser, who is the directing spirit, never fails to attend. His interest in the Wiesbaden theatre arose from the circumstance that its manager was George von Hülsen, a friend of his youth and brother of his personal aide-de-camp, Count von Hülsen-Haeseler, whose tragic death at Donaueschingen contributed to the settlement of last year's crisis. Some years ago Herr von Hülsen was transferred to Berlin in the

capacity of General Intendant der Königlichen Schauspiele, and since then the Emperor has concentrated his attention mainly on the Berlin Opera and Theatre Royal.

The Kaiser's general manager receives a handsome house free and the comparatively moderate salary of £900 per annum. The post is no sinecure, despite a numerous staff of assistants,

business aides, and stage-managers, for he is directly responsible to his Imperial master for the business of the Royal houses, and, consequently, for the amount of the annual deficit. However, a goodly part of this responsibility is taken off the shoulders of the general manager by the Emperor himself, who is ever to the fore with suggestions for new plays and revivals.

One of the principal contributory causes of the opposition to the personal régime in Germany is its activity in the domain of art, and without going more deeply into this wide subject, it may be said that in the drama too the Kaiser seeks to promote those didactic aims which have met with such an unqualified rejection in the field of painting and sculpture from the large majority of his subjects. He made a full confession of his views on the theatre in an address which he delivered to the actors of the Royal theatres on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his accession, June 16th, 1898, when he said:

Ten years ago when I came to the throne I emerged from the school of Idealism in which my father had brought me up. I was of the opinion that the Royal Theatre was primarily destined to foster among our people that Idealism in which, thank God. they are still so rich, and which still abundantly springs in warm waves in their hearts. I was of the conviction. and had firmly resolved, that the Royal Theatre must be an instrument of the monarch, like school and university. whose mission it is to develop and

prepare the growing generation for the work of preserving the highest intellectual possession of our splendid German Fatherland. Just in this way the theatre ought to contribute to the development of the mind and character and to the ennoblement of moral views. The theatre, also, is one of my weapons.

It is my heartfelt wish to express to you all my sincerest. deepest, most cordial Royal thanks for the readiness

with which you have undertaken this task. You have fully realized the lofty expectations which I cherished with regard to the members of my Opera aud uy Theatre.

It is the duty of a monarch to occupy himself with the theatre, as I have seen by the example of my dear departed father and grandfather, simply because it can be an enormous power in his hand, and I thank you for having succeeded in fostering and interpreting in so pre-eminent a fashion our splendid and beautiful language, and the creations of our intellectual heroes and those of other nations.

I thank you, moreover, for having followed all my suggestions and wishes. I am delighted to be able to say that all countries follow with attention the activity of the Royal Theatres, and look to your achievements with admiration. I cherish the firm conviction that the pains and labors which you have expended on your productions have not been in vain.

I now beg you to continue to stand by me, each in his way and in his position, to serve the spirit of Idealism with steadfast confidence in God, and to pursue the combat against materialism and un-German ways, into which many a German stage has unfortunately already fallen. So stand fast in this struggle, and hold out in loyal endeavor. Be assured that I shall always watch your achievements, and that you may be certain of my gratitude, my care, and my recognition.

The German is, as a rule, indulgent to those who rule him, but, in this matter of art and the drama, he stands no nonsense. Accordingly, the plays favored by his Majesty and produced with a profusion of historical detail serve rather to keep the Berliner out of the Royal Theatres, with corresponding effect on the box-office receipts and on Herr von Hülsen's sleep at night. It is unfortunately true that the Emperor's theory makes for perfervid patriotism rather than literary merit. The plays he puts on the stage, many of which are written to order, mostly

deal with the deeds of the House of Hohenzollern or the former rulers of Germany. The Imperial predilection for this species of play has given birth to a school of patriotic playwrights, the principal of these being Josef Lauff. an ex-Artillery officer, who abandoned gunnery for literature on the strength of success gained by some interesting romances of country life on the lower Rhine. For several years Lauff was the main purveyor of patriotism for the Wiesbaden "Festspiele," and it was on a libretto taken from his patriotic play "Friedrich Eisenzahn," dealing with an ancestor of the Electors of Brandenburg, that Leoncavallo wrote at the Emperor's request the opera "Der Roland von Berlin," which, after emptying the Berlin Opera House for successive nights. has now sunk to a well-merited oblivion. An anecdote about this play, the truth of which can be vouched for, aptly illustrates the frame of mind with which the Emperor approaches the theatre. Friedrich Eisenzahn is a citizen of Berlin who heads a furious revolt against the Elector of Brandenburg. In order to account for Eisenzahn's bitter hate. which in the play as produced remains unexplained, Lauff wove in a love theme. The wife of Ryke, Burgomaster of Berlin, figured as Eisenzahn's mistress, and she egged on her lover to hostility against the Elector because the latter had hanged her brothers, the Quitzows, the notorious Brandenburg freebooters. When the play was submitted in MS. to the Emperor to read he cut out the whole of this episode, giving his objections in a marginal note, pencilled in his characteristic big upright handwriting, to the following effect: "Eine Courtisane kommt in einem Hohenzollernstück nicht vor." (A courtesan has no place in a Hohenzollern play.)

So sanguine is the Emperor of the beneficial effect which the theatre is

capable of producing on the masses that in 1907 he inaugurated a series of workmen's performances at the Royal Operetta Theatre at which only severely classical plays of the stirring order were given, such as Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell," Goethe's "Götz von Berlichingen," Kleist's "Friedrich Prinz von Homburg." The general public were not admitted to these productions, tickets, at very reduced rates, being sent in batches to the various workmen's institutes. Such was the success that 200,000 applications were made for the ten performances given last winter.

The essence of the patriotic plays produced under his Majesty's supervision is what the Social Democrats call "Hurra-Patriotism." Like Nicholas Nickleby and Vincent Crummles' real pump the playwrights enjoying Imperial patronage have to write their plays around a definite object, the throne. The "Hohenzollernstücke," to quote his Majesty's own phrase, seek to show the monarch in an ideal light, as the father of his people, the Elect of God, “unbeirrt" by such modern inventions as constitutions and parliaments, diffusing a ray of mild beneficence from the throne. Some incident, generally historical, runs through the play, which ends in the triumph of Right and the apotheosis of monarchy, i.c., Hohenzollerndom amid a blaze of scenic splendor, brilliant dresses and flashing accoutrements. These plays call for little acting but make great demands on the Régisseur, and it is just this office that the Kaiser discharges with the most conspicuous success. The finer nuances of acting do not interest him or encounter from him the same recognition as from George of Saxe-Meinin

gen. What William II. loves is a stage full of supers, a scene like the March of the Priests in "Aïda," or the Entry of the Guests in "Tannhäuser."

At present the Emperor takes most

interest in the Berlin Opera. The Opera House is but a stone's throw from the Castle and he can easily run in and conduct rehearsals. It is entirely owing to his unflagging efforts that the productions at the Berlin Opera have attained to such a pitch of perfection in everything that concerns mounting, SO that the revivals of "Aida" and "Les Huguenots" are now regarded as standing without a rival both for the historical accuracy of the dresses and the richness and taste of the setting. When the rehearsals of a play, in which the Kaiser is interested, are under way, he loses no time in going to the theatre to see whether the instructions which he has appended to the stage directions in the MS. are being properly carried out. Some morning when the vast stage of the Opera is humming with activity the well-known primrose-colored motor car will drive up to the entrance, and the Emperor, accompanied only by a single adjutant, will emerge. In three minutes William II. will be seated at a big businesslike table placed in the stalls, before him a pile of paper and an array of pencils. When he is in the house there is no doubt whatever in anybody's mind as to who is conducting the rehearsal. His General Manager stands at his side in the darkened auditorium and conveys his Majesty's instructions to the stage, for the Kaiser never interrupts the actors himself. He makes a sign to von Hülsen, scribbles a note on a sheet of paper, while the manager, who is the pattern of unruffled suavity. just raises his hand and the performance ceases abruptly. There is a confabulation, the Emperor explaining, with that wealth of gesture peculiar to him, his views on the grouping of the supers, the positions of the principals, the dresses, the uniforms, the arms, using anything, pencil, penholder, or even his sword, to illustrate his meaning. Again and again up to a