ew
whiter and whiter.

"Then she is well and nothing can be ill;
Her body sleeps in Capulet's monument."

It was during the silence after those two lines that Henry Irving as
Romeo had one of those sublime moments which an actor only achieves once
or twice in his life. The only thing that I ever saw to compare with it
was Duse's moment when she took Kellner's card in "Magda." There was
absolutely no movement, but her face grew white, and the audience knew
what was going on in her soul, as she read the name of the man who years
before had seduced and deserted her.

As Juliet I did not _look_ right. My little daughter Edy, a born
archaeologist, said: "Mother, you oughtn't to have a fringe." Yet,
strangely enough, Henry himself liked me as Juliet. After the first
night, or was it the dress rehearsal--I am not quite clear which--he
wrote to me that "beautiful as Portia was, Juliet leaves her far, far
behind. Never anybody acted more exquisitely the part of the performance
which I saw from the front. 'Hie to high fortune,' and 'Where spirits
resort' were simply incomparable.... Your mother looked very radiant
last night. I told her how proud she should be, and she was.... The play
will be, I believe, a mighty 'go,' for the beauty of it is bewildering.
I am sure of this, for it dumbfounded them all last night. Now
you--we--must make our task a delightful one by doing everything
possible to make our acting easy and comfortable. We are in for a long
run."

To this letter he added a very human postscript: "I have determined not
to see a paper for a week--I know they'll cut me up, and I don't like
it!"

Yes, he _was_ cut up, and he didn't like it, but a few people knew. One
of them was Mr. Frankfort Moore, the novelist, who wrote to me of this
"revealing Romeo, full of originality and power."

"Are you affected by adverse criticism?" I was asked once. I answered
then and I answer now, that legitimate adverse criticism has always been
of use to me if only because it "gave me to think" furiously. Seldom
does the outsider, however talented, as a writer and observer, recognize
the actor's art, and often we are told that we are acting best when we
are showing the works most plainly, and denied any special virtue when
we are concealing our method. Professional criticism is most helpful,
chiefly because it induces one to criticize oneself. "Did I give that
impression to anyone? Then there must have been something wrong