Daly’s Theatre, in the days when Ada Rehan was at the height of her charm and power, was sometimes called “the _Théâtre Français_ of America.” The leading man was John Drew (who did not become an independent “star” until 1892); the comedian was James Lewis, a talented, intelligent, genuinely comic actor;[139] the “dowager parts” were played by the incomparable Mrs. James Gilbert; and the younger women of the company were Isabel Irving and Kitty Cheatham, both clever actresses, though they paled beside Rehan. At Daly’s one saw acting that dispelled any impression of theatricalism. Mr. Daly’s rule was rigorous, his standards exacting.[140] He was altogether an exceptional manager, scholarly and thorough; and his instructions and advice were of immense benefit to the actors in his company,--a fact that Ada Rehan always freely acknowledged. The list of parts that Miss Rehan in the twenty years between 1879 and 1899 acted in Mr. Daly’s company is simply amazing in its extent and range. We think of her as Katherine, as Viola, Rosalind or Beatrice, but she had been with Mr. Daly several years before the company attempted Shakespeare. Before, there had been a long succession of plays whose names mean nothing to us nowadays. Many of them were adaptations, made by the versatile Mr. Daly himself, from the German. Adaptations from the French, the American, and English stage had seen in plenty; but the German comedies afforded Mr. Daly a comparatively unworked field of which he made the most. One gets a satisfying sense of the essential improvement since 1890 in the art of playwriting in America upon reflecting that these translations and rearrangements of pieces grown on a foreign soil would seem, if presented in our theatres today, peculiarly thin and artificial. Miss Rehan’s more discerning admirers regretted the waste of her great talent in them, but then, as now, the theatre had to be made a paying institution in order to exist at all, and these plays indubitably succeeded. The finished acting of the Daly company, admirable both in individual impersonation and in _ensemble_, made them one of the keenest of the theatrical pleasures of the day.[141] Miss Rehan did not at once leap into recognition as the leading American actress of the day. For a long time she was thought of merely as a prominent member of an excellent organization. Gradually, however, by sheer merit, her preëminence became evident. With confidence she undertook all kinds of rôles, and, in the midst of her work, there would occasionally flash forth an impersonation that would seem, what it often was, acting of unique quality.