sterly; it
had imagination, nobility, quietude. With opportunity for ranting in
every second speech, he never ranted, but played what might well have
been a roaring part with a kind of gentleness. With every opportunity
for extravagant gesture, he stood, as the play seemed to foam about him,
like a rock against which the foam beats. Made up as a kind of Roman
Moltke, the lean, thoughtful soldier, he spoke throughout with a slow,
contemptuous enunciation, as of one only just not too lofty to sneer.
Restrained in scorn, he kept throughout an attitude of disdainful pride,
the face, the eyes, set, while only his mouth twitched, seeming to chew
his words, with the disgust of one swallowing a painful morsel. Where
other actors would have raved, he spoke with bitter humour, a humour
that seemed to hurt the speaker, the concise, active humour of the
soldier, putting his words rapidly into deeds. And his pride was an
intellectual pride; the weakness of a character, but the angry dignity
of a temperament. I have never seen Irving so restrained, so much an
artist, so faithfully interpretative of a masterpiece. Something of
energy, no doubt, was lacking; but everything was there, except the
emphasis which I most often wish away in acting.

DUSE IN SOME OF HER PARTS

I

The acting of Duse is a criticism; poor work dissolves away under it, as
under a solvent acid. Not one of the plays which she has brought with
her is a play on the level of her intelligence and of her capacity for
expressing deep human emotion. Take "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." It is a
very able play, it is quite an interesting glimpse into a particular
kind of character, but it is only able, and it is only a glimpse. Paula,
as conceived by Mr. Pinero, is a thoroughly English type of woman, the
nice, slightly morbid, somewhat unintelligently capricious woman who has
"gone wrong," and who finds it quite easy, though a little dull, to go
right when the chance is offered to her. She is observed from the
outside, very keenly observed; her ways, her surface tricks of emotion,
are caught; she is a person whom we know or remember. But what is
skin-deep in Paula as conceived by Mr. Pinero becomes a real human
being, a human being with a soul, in the Paula conceived by Duse. Paula
as played by Duse is sad and sincere, where the Englishwoman is only
irritable; she has the Italian simplicity and directness in place of
that terrible English capacity for uncertainty in