QUEEN ALEXANDRA AS AN AMATEUR ACTRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 129, 1 June 1901, Page 6 (Supplement)

QUEEN ALEXANDRA AS AN AMATEUR ACTRESS.

Some amusing recollections of Queen Alexandra as a girl are given in the "New York Independent," by the Danish Baron de Stampenbourg. Few people are aware, he remarks, that the secret aspiration of,. Princess Alexandra as a young lady was fo oe an actress. "Hot beauty, her perfection of. manner, and her not inconsiderable voice only tended to encourage her in an attainment of her ideal. Sho secretly studied the great playwrights BEHIND BLINDED WINDOWS at a late hour when she was supposed to be in bed. She and her two ssters, Dagmar, now Czaress-Dowager of Russia, and Thyra, the Duchess of Cumberland, arranged for amateur theatricals on an improvised scale. Alexandra always insisted on playing- the heroine. Being the oldest, her sisters surrendered the monopoly to her unconditionally. She is said to have evinced eon id arable talent, especially in character portrayal. As soon as her mother, the late Queen Louise, found that .Alexandra was stealing the hours of her sleep study) ing Goethe and Oehlensehlaeger, manifesting more than amateurish propensity for the stage, she banished thrat* ricals from the castle for ever. She forthwith impressed upon her artistically inclined daughter that she was put into the world for SOMETHING OF GREATER IMPORTANCE than amusing people, and that she would have to give up all thought of ever being permitted to follow any sort of a professional career. Very few girls, even among Royalty, have had an opportunity to give up as much for a professional choice as Alexandra was ready to lay upon the shrine of scenic art at that time. Later on, at her marriage to the Prince of Wales, her splendid destiny dawned upon her, and we hear no more of the 'stage struck' Alexandra."