familiar to him, in their technical aspect, are “King Richard III.” (Cibber’s version), “Hamlet,” “Othello,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “Julius Cæsar,” “Macbeth,” “King John,” “King Lear,” “Coriolanus,” “Cymbeline,” “Measure for Measure,” “The Comedy of Errors,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Katharine and Petruchio” (Garrick’s version), “Twelfth Night,” and “As You Like It.” He played all sorts of parts in Shakespeare, from the slightest to some of the greatest: in San Francisco he would play anything,--the _Salanios_, _Guildensterns_, _First Messengers_, _Citizens_, etc., and frequently go on as a super,--merely to gain opportunity to be on the stage with the leaders of his profession, in order that he might observe them. Fired with emulous ambition, he would then obtain employment in any travelling or barnstorming company in which he could play some of the greater parts, and in that way,--acting, of course, at first in imitation of various distinguished players whose performances he had witnessed, but also, more and more as his experience grew, along experimental lines of his own contrivance,--he played, among other parts, _Mercutio_, _Marc Antony_, _Friar Lawrence_ and _Hamlet_. He also sometimes acted women;--in Shakespeare, notably, the _Nurse_, in “Romeo and Juliet,” and _Queen Gertrude_, in “Hamlet.” In short, the truth, respecting Belasco and his qualification for producing Shakespeare’s dramas, is that he is better qualified to present them than any other stage manager in America. His abstention from that field has been due to a variety of causes, chief among them being that, at first, while he was fighting his way to a position in which he could produce _anything_, and immediately after his achievement of that independence, the field of Shakespearean acting was almost exclusively occupied by famous, popular, and prosperous stars, who did not need his services, having their own, and with whom he must have vainly contended in an unequal rivalry; and, later, that there was an almost complete dearth of qualified Shakespearean performers. That dearth might not be so nearly complete now if Belasco had earlier turned his attention to the production of Shakespeare: on the other hand, he had to _win_ his place before he could fill it,--and the carpers who censure him for what he has not done would, in most instances, have been as vigorous in censure if he had brought out plays of Shakespeare as they have been because he has not: what they actually seek for is any ground for fault-finding. Belasco’s sound sense and good judgment were well shown in a recent conversation with me, relative to David Warfield’s ambition to play _Shylock_: “Warfield,” he said, “is wild to play _Shylock_, and is at me every little while to bring out ’The Merchant.’ I’d like to do it, but it isn’t practical just now, and so I tell him, ’Wait, wait,’--though he