er than the sharpening of
his voice from stress of pain, changing from the full roundness of
its usual masculine robustness to a high womanish key, as he asks the
fatal questions, "Che disse? Che? Che fece?" What words could have
said so much as the dumb show with which he signifies that terrible
fact of which he can neither ask nor hear in words? And who can doubt
when he hears that cry of agony that bursts from his lips at Iago's
gross confirmation of his suggestion that it is the cry of a man
stabbed to the heart? His suffering is as real to us as the agony of
a lion would be if we stood by and saw some one drive a knife into the
beast up to the hilt. It equals in reality any exhibition of simple
unfeigned bodily pain, with all its intensity of violence. The word
"rant" never once comes into our minds.

Salvini expresses everything. He demands nothing from his audience but
eyes and ears; he _acts_ the part in every detail; he does just what
he aims to do. His motion is as unconscious and unfettered as that of
a deer or a tiger: whether he paces with a stealthy, restless tread up
and down the back of the stage, reminding us irresistibly of a caged
wild beast, or whether he half crouches, then drags himself along, and
then darts upon Iago in the last scene, it is always plain that his
body is the servant of his mind: he moves in harmony with his mood.

Despite, therefore, the natural tendency to scrutinize closely
the claims of a foreigner seeking to rule over our hearts as the
vicegerent of Shakespeare's sovreignty, there has been, and happily
can be, no question in regard to one essential point. That Salvini is
a born actor, a great tragedian, none will be bold enough to dispute.
In that rare combination of intellectual and physical qualities without
which no particular gift would justify his pretensions--intensity of
emotion, subtlety of perception, a power of impersonation implying of
itself the union of all the natural requirements with a mastery in their
display attainable only by consummate art--it is hard to believe that he
can ever have been excelled; though doubtless the mingled fire and
pathos of Kean transcended in their effect any like exhibition ever
witnessed on the stage. Except for the few--if any still survive--who can
remember the Othello of Kean, living recollection affords no opportunity
for a judgment founded on comparison.

The only question therefore which it is possible to raise relates to
S