fill the gaps with her own commentary. Adler writes vividly and with humor. He describes the director Hartenstein as "a young man from Galicia with long hair and short brains, half educated in Vienna, and half an actor", and refers to the poor of Whitechapel as looking as if they "had come out of their mothers already gray and old." Of his early London years, he writes, "We played for a tiny audience, on a stage the size of a cadaver, but we played well, with a drunkenness of happiness." In a small essay, "Shmendrick, My Mephistopheles", one of the last passages he wrote, Adler describes the last time he saw Shmendrick played, at a memorial for Goldfaden in 1912. Lamenting the choice of play for the memorial—"Goldfaden has written better things"—he nonetheless acknowledges, "that same bitter Shmendrick was our livelihood... I gritted my teeth. I called on the ghosts of Aristophanes, of Shakespeare, of Lope de Vega. I wept and swallowed my own tears... And I cursed the fate that bound me to him... Yet even as I cursed and condemned, the tears rose. For my whole life, my whole past, was before me on that stage... Poor weak first step of our Yiddish theater... I thank you for the happiness you gave us... I thank you Shmendrick—my beloved—my own." See also Solomon the Wise, 1906 play starring Adler Notes References Oxford Dictionary of National Biography External links Accessed September 29, 2006. 1855 births 1926 deaths Actors from Odesa People from Odessky Uyezd Odesa Jews Jewish Ukrainian actors Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United Kingdom American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Jewish American male actors Yiddish theatre performers