hrase "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature." His slight pause
and eloquent gesture was the all-embracing word "Nature" came in answer
to his call, were exactly repeated unconsciously years later by the
Queen of Roumania (Carmen Sylva). She was telling us the story of a
play that she had written. The words rushed out swiftly, but
occasionally she would wait for the one that expressed her meaning most
comprehensively and exactly, and as she got it, up went her hand in
triumph over her head. "Like yours in 'Hamlet,'" I told Henry at the
time.

I knew this Hamlet both ways--as an actress from the stage, and as an
actress putting away her profession for the time as one of the
audience--and both ways it was superb to me. Tennyson, I know, said it
was not a perfect Hamlet. I wonder, then, where he hoped to find
perfection!

James Spedding, considered a fine critic in his day, said Irving was
"simply hideous ... a monster!" Another of these fine critics declared
that he never could believe in Irving's Hamlet after having seen "_part_
(sic) of his performance as a murderer in a commonplace melodrama."
Would one believe that any one could seriously write so stupidly as that
about the earnest effort of an earnest actor, if it were not quoted by
some of Irving's biographers?

Some criticism, however severe, however misguided, remains within the
bounds of justice, but what is one to think of the _Quarterly_ Reviewer
who declared that "the enormous pains taken with the scenery had ensured
Mr. Irving's success"? The scenery was of the simplest--no money was
spent on it even when the play was revived at the Lyceum after Colonel
Bateman's death. Henry's dress probably cost him about L2!

My Ophelia dress was made of material which could not have cost more
than 2_s._ a yard, and not many yards were wanted, as I was at the time
thin to vanishing point! I have the dress still, and, looking at it the
other day, I wondered what leading lady now would consent to wear it.

At all its best points, Henry's Hamlet was susceptible of absurd
imitation. Think of this well, young actors, who are content to play for
safety, to avoid ridicule at all costs, to be "natural"--oh, word most
vilely abused! What sort of _naturalness_ is this of Hamlet's?

"O, villain, villain, smiling damned villain!"

Henry Irving's imitators could make people burst with laughter when they
took off his delivery of that line. And, indeed, the original, too,