victim of false
imprisonment in the Bastille, whence he issued forth after twenty
years of durance, never has he been so curiously and wonderfully
made-up as now, when he represents _Lear_, monarch of all he surveys.
Bless thee, HENRY, how art thou transformed!

[Illustration: Rather mixed. Mr. Irving as "Ophe-Lear."]

Sure such a _King Lear_ was never seen on any stage, so perfect in
appearance, so entirely the ideal of SHAKSPEARE'S ancient King.
It must have been a vision of IRVING in this character that the
divinely-inspired poet and dramatist saw when he had a _Lear_ in his
eye. For a moment, too, he reminded me of BOOTH--the "General," not
the "particular" American tragedian,--and when he appeared in thunder,
lightning, hail, and rain, he suggested an embodiment of the "_Moses_"
of MICHAEL ANGELO.

A strange weird play; much for an audience, and more for an actor, all
on his own shoulders, to bear. A one-part play it is too, for of the
sweet _Cordelia_,--and sweet did ELLEN TERRY look and so tenderly did
she play!--little is seen or heard. With _Goneril_ and _Regan_, the
two proud and wicked sisters,--associated in the mind of the modernest
British Public with Messrs. HERBERT CAMPBELL and HARRY NICHOLLS, as is
also _Cordelia_ associated either with _Cinderella_ or with _Beauty_
in the story of _Beauty and the Beast_--we have two fine commanding
figures; and well are these parts played by Miss ADA DYAS and Miss
MAUD MILTON. The audience can have no sympathy with the two wicked
Princesses, and except in _Goneril's_ brief Lady-Macbethian scene with
her husband, neither of the Misses LEAR has much dramatic chance. Pity
that Mrs. LEAR--his Queen and their mother, wasn't alive! Let us hope
she resembled her youngest daughter _Cordelia_, otherwise poor _Lear_
must have had a hard life of it as a married man.

Why should not Mr. IRVING give the first part of this play
reconsideration? Why not just once a week try him as a different sort
of _Lear_? For instance, suppose, to begin with, that he had had a bad
time of it with his wife, that for many years as a widower he had been
seeking for the opportunity of disposing of his daughters, handing
over to them and to their husbands the lease and goodwill of "The
Crown and Sceptre," while he would be, as King, "retired from
business," and going out for a lark generally. Thus jovially would he
commence the play, a rollicking, gay, old dog, ready for anything, up
to anything,