holy father, now
Or shall I come to you at evening mass?"

Not long after the production of "Romeo and Juliet" I saw the
performance of a Greek play--the "Electra," I think--by some Oxford
students. A young woman veiled in black with bowed head was brought in
on a chariot. Suddenly she lifted her head and looked round, revealing a
face of such pure classic beauty and a glance of such pathos that I
called out:

"What a supremely beautiful girl!"

Then I remembered that there were no women in the cast! The face
belonged to a young Oxford man, Frank Benson.

We engaged him to play Paris in "Romeo and Juliet," when George
Alexander, the original Paris, left the Lyceum for a time. Already
Benson gave promise of turning out quite a different person from the
others. He had not nearly so much of the actor's instinct as Terriss,
but one felt that he had far more earnestness. He was easily
distinguished as a man with a purpose, one of those workers who "scorn
delights and live laborious days." Those laborious days led him at last
to the control of two or three companies, all traveling through Great
Britain playing a Shakespearean repertoire. A wonderful organizer, a
good actor (oddly enough, the more difficult the part the better he
is--I like his _Lear_), and a man who has always been associated with
high endeavor, Frank Benson's name is honored all over England. He was
only at the Lyceum for this one production, but he always regarded Henry
Irving as the source of the good work that he did afterwards.

"Thank you very much," he wrote to me after his first night as Paris,
"for writing me a word of encouragement.... I was very much ashamed and
disgusted with myself all Sunday for my poverty-stricken and thin
performance.... I think I was a little better last night. Indeed I was
much touched at the kindness and sympathy of all the company and their
efforts to make the awkward new boy feel at home.... I feel doubly
grateful to you and Mr. Irving for the light you shed from the lamp of
art on life now that I begin to understand the labor and weariness the
process of trimming the Lamp entails."

X

LYCEUM PRODUCTIONS (_continued_)

"MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING" TO "FAUST"

Our success with "The Belle's Stratagem" had pointed to comedy, to
Beatrice and Benedick in particular, because in Mrs. Cowley's old comedy
we had had some scenes of the same type. I have already told of my first
appearance as Beatrice at Leeds,