as quite right to be angry. Such fooling on the
stage is very silly. I think it is one of the evils of long runs! When
we had seen "handsome Jack Barnes" imperturbably pompous for two hundred
nights in succession, it became too much for us, and the almond rings
were the result.

Mr. Tyars was the Prince of Morocco. Actors might come, and actors might
go in the Lyceum company, but Tyars went on for ever. He never left
Henry Irving's management, and was with him in that last performance of
"Becket" at Bradford on October 13, 1905--the last performance ever
given by Henry Irving who died the same night.

Tyars was the most useful actor that we ever had in the company. I
should think that the number of parts he has played in the same piece
would constitute a theatrical record.

I don't remember when Tom Mead first played the Duke, but I remember
what happened!

"Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too."

He began the speech in the Trial Scene very slowly.

Between every word Henry was whispering: "Get on--get on!" Old Mead,
whose memory was never good, became flustered, and at the end of the
line came to a dead stop.

"Get on, get on," said Henry.

Mead looked round with dignity, opened his mouth and shut it, opened it
again, and in his anxiety to oblige Henry, did get on indeed!--to the
last line of the long speech.

"We all expect a gentle answer, Jew."

The first line and the last line were all that we heard of the Duke's
speech that night. It must have been the shortest version of it on
record.

This was the play with which the Lyceum reopened in the autumn of 1880.
I was on the last of my provincial tours with Charles Kelly at the time,
but I must have come up to see the revival, for I remember Henry Irving
in it very distinctly. He had not played the dual role of Louis and
Fabien del Franchi before, and he had to compete with old playgoers'
memories of Charles Kean and Fechter. Wisely enough he made of it a
"period" play, emphasizing its old-fashioned atmosphere. In 1891, when
the play was revived, the D'Orsay costumes were noticed and considered
piquant and charming. In 1880 I am afraid they were regarded with
indifference as merely antiquated.

The grace and elegance of Henry as the civilized brother I shall never
forget. There was something in _him_ to which the perfect style of the
D'Orsay period appealed, and he spoke the stilted language with as much
truth as he wore the cravat an