awakening from the dream on the night before the battle.
Playgoers have seldom seen a dramatic climax so thrilling as his
hysterical recognition of Catesby, after the moment of doubt whether
this be not also a phantom of his terrific dream. It was not so much by
startling theatrical effects, however, as by subtle denotements, now of
the tempest and now of the brooding horror in the king's heart, that the
actor gained his victory. The embodiment lacked incessant fiery
expedition--the explosive, meteoric quality that astounds and dazzles.
Chief among the beauties was imagination. The attitude of the monarch
toward his throne--the infernal triumph, and yet the remorseful agony
and withering fear--in the moment of ghastly loneliness when he knows
that the innocent princes have been murdered and that his imperial
pathway is clear, made up one of the finest spectacles of dramatic
illumination that the stage has afforded. You saw the murderer's hideous
exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from
the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his
evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of
his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding
spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense
theatrical--for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the
fustian of Cibber, about mutton and short-lived pleasure, but the speech
that Shakespeare has put into Richard's mouth; the speech that inspired
Mansfield's impersonation--the brilliant embodiment of an intellectual
man, predisposed to evil, who yields to that inherent impulse, and
thereafter, although intermittently convulsed with remorse, fights with
tremendous energy against the goodness that he scorns and defies, till
at last he dashes himself to pieces against the adamant of eternal law.

XXI.

GENEVIEVE WARD: FORGET ME NOT.

In the season of 1880-81 Genevieve Ward made a remarkably brilliant hit
with her embodiment of Stephanie De Mohrivart, in the play of _Forget Me
Not_, by Herman Merivale, and since then she has acted that part
literally all round the world. It was an extraordinary
performance--potent with intellectual character, beautiful with
refinement, nervous and steel-like with indomitable purpose and icy
glitter, intense with passion, painfully true to an afflicting ideal of
reality, and at last splendidly tragic: and it was a shining exam