a play, and when there is no part for you in it,
I think it's wiser to leave it alone."

Every one knows when the luck first began to turn against Henry Irving.
It was in 1896 when he revived "Richard III." On the first night he
went home, slipped on the stairs in Grafton Street, broke a bone in his
knee, aggravated the hurt by walking on it, and had to close the
theater. It was that year, too, that his general health began to fail.
For the ten years preceding his death he carried on an indomitable
struggle against ill-health. Lungs and heart alike were weak. Only the
spirit in that frail body remained as strong as ever. Nothing could bend
it, much less break it.

But I have not come to that sad time yet.

"We all know when we do our best," said Henry once. "We are the only
people who know." Yet he thought he did better in "Macbeth" than in
"Hamlet"!

Was he right after all?

His _view_ of "Macbeth," though attacked and derided and put to shame in
many quarters, is as clear to me as the sunlight itself. To me it seems
as stupid to quarrel with the conception as to deny the nose on one's
face. But the carrying out of the conception was unequal. Henry's
imagination was sometimes his worst enemy.

When I think of his "Macbeth," I remember him most distinctly in the
last act after the battle when he looked like a great famished wolf,
weak with the weakness of a giant exhausted, spent as one whose
exertions have been ten times as great as those of commoner men of
rougher fiber and coarser strength.

"Of all men else I have avoided thee."

Once more he suggested, as he only could suggest, the power of Fate.
Destiny seemed to hang over him, and he knew that there was no hope, no
mercy.

The rehearsals for "Macbeth" were very exhausting, but they were
splendid to watch. In this play Henry brought his manipulation of crowds
to perfection. My acting edition of the play is riddled with rough
sketches by him of different groups. Artists to whom I have shown them
have been astonished by the spirited impressionism of these sketches.
For his "purpose" Henry seems to have been able to do anything, even to
drawing, and composing music! Sir Arthur Sullivan's music at first did
not quite please him. He walked up and down the stage humming, and
showing the composer what he was going to do at certain situations.
Sullivan, with wonderful quickness and open-mindedness, caught his
meaning at once.

"Much better than mine, I