Memories of a Manager. By Daniel Frohman. (W. Heinemann. 55.
net.)—Mr. Frohman was for many years a manager, and, it would seem, a successful manager, in New York. American play- goers will find much to interest them, and English something. An outsider is struck by the surprising number of "stars" and by the vast prices paid to performers of renown. Here the great musicians seem to have the advantage over the great actors. Twenty tlousand pounds a year is a good salary, but what is that to £600 which Kubelik, the violinist, earned in a single night ? Another impression is concerned with the ethics of the drama. These seem to have deteriorated during the last ten years in the States. In England there has been nothing of the kind—for a reason which it would not be polite to mention. But the best thing in the book, to our mind, is the Shakespeare-Bacon contro- versy regarded from the manager's point of view. Mr. Frohman's idea of how the Hamlet with which we are familiar was made up is really convincing. "One can fancy Polonins coming to the prompter's table and saying : I beg your pardon, Mr. Shakespeare, but I am the First Old Man of this company. I'm blamed if I play this doddering old Chamberlain!'" Shakespeare smooths him down and writes the great speech of advice to Laertes to make up. But the Bacon theory goes by the board.
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