In the note in which you thanked me with many kind words for send ing you my letter upon Imogen, you said, "And now you must give us Rosalind." I would fain think you wrote this because of some not unpleasing remembrance of the way in which, to use Rosalind's own phrase, "I set her before your eyes, human as she is," in the days when our kindred studies,-yours as a dramatist, mine as an interpreter of the drama,-first drew us into the communion which has ripened into a lifelong friendship. For whom would I try, with more alacrity, to execute a task so difficult, yet so congenial, than for the poet whose Lucy Carlisle, whose Mildred Tres

VOL. CXXXVI.-NO. DCCCXXVIII.

ham, and, last not least, whose exquisite Colombe are associated with the most pleasant recollections of my artist life?

With what sweet regret I look back to the time when, with other gifted men, Talfourd, Bulwer, Marston, Troughton, and the rest, -you made common cause with Mr Macready in raising the drama of our time to a level not unworthy of the country of Shakespeare! How generously you all wrought towards this end! How warmly were your efforts seconded by the public! And yet I use the word "regret," because of the sudden end which came to all our strivings, when Mr Macready threw up the enterprise just when it seemed

20

surest of success. It was an evil hour for my own art, and not less evil, I venture to think, for the literature of the drama. But for this, we might have looked to you for that fuller development of your dramatic genius, which I can well believe you did not care to put forth, when you were no longer sure of a combination of trained actors and actresses to understand, and to make others understand, the characters you had drawn. Grateful as I am for what you have given to the world in many ways, I have always felt how great a loss the stage has suffered from the diversion into other channels of that creative dramatic power which you, of all our contemporaries, seem to me pre-eminently to possess. You may remember saying at a casual meeting in Hyde Park, when I was expressing my love and admiration for Pompilia," Ah, if I could have had you for Pompilia, I would have made the story into a drama." Your words made me very happy. How gladly would I have done my best to illustrate a character so finely conceived !

"And now you must give us Rosalind." Your words lie before me as I take up your letter again, after a long interval of suffering, which, for nearly two years, has made my writing, and even continuous thought, impossible. They are my encouragement to throw myself again into that world, so ideal yet so real, in which, with Rosalind, it was so long my delight to sojourn, and to endeavour to put before you something of what was in my heart and my imagination when I essayed to clothe her with life. Ah me! what it will be to me to enter again into that delicious dreamland out of the life in death in which, for so long, I have been "doomed to go in company with pain"!

I need not tell you, poet as you are, that a young girl, as I was when first you saw my Rosalind, could not possibly enter into her rich composite nature in such a way as to do full justice to it. This is no more possible than it would have been for Shakespeare to have written, before the maturity of manhood, a play so full of gentle wisdom, so catholic in its humanity, so subtle in the delineation, so abounding in nicely balanced contrasts, of character, so full of happy heart, so sweetly rounded into a harmonious close, as "As You Like It." His mind had assuredly worked its way through the conflicts and perplexities of life, within as well as without, and had settled into harmony with itself, before this play was written.

In my girlhood's studies of Shakespeare this play had formed no part. Pathos, heroism, trial, suffering-in these my imagination revelled, and my favourites were the heroines who were put most sorely to the proof. Juliet, Desdemona, Cordelia, Imogen, I had brooded over until they had become, as it were, part of my life; and, as you will remember, in the more modern plays, in which I performed the prominent parts, the pathetic or tragic element almost invariably predominated. When, therefore, I was told by Mr Macready that I was to act Rosalind for my benefit at the end of a season, I was terrified. I did not know the words, nor had I ever seen the play performed, but I had heard enough of what Mrs Jordan and others had done with the character, to add fresh alarm to my misgivings. Mr Macready, however, was not to be gainsaid; so I took up my Shakespeare, determined to make the best of what had then to me all the aspect of a somewhat irksome task. Of course

I had not time to give to the entire play the study it requires, if Rosalind is to be rightly understood.

The night of performance came. Partly because the audience were indulgent to me in everything I did, partly, I suppose, because it was my benefit night, the performance was received with enthusiasm. I went home happy, and thinking how much less difficult my task had been than I had imagined. But there a rude awakening awaited me. I was told that I had been merely playing, not acting, not impersonating a great character. I had not, it seemed to my friends, made out what were traditionally known as the great points in the character. True, I had gained the applause of the audience, but this was to be deemed as nothing. Taken in the mass, they were as ignorant as I was, perhaps more so, as probably, even in my hasty study, I had become better acquainted with the play than most of them. was very necessary, I have no doubt, and wholesome for me, to be told this. But oh, what a pained and wounded heart I took with me that night to my pillow! I had thought that upon the whole I had not been so very bad,-that I had been true at least to Shakespeare in my general conception, though, even as I acted, I felt I had not grasped anything like the full significance of the words I was uttering. Glimpses of the poet's purpose I no doubt had, for I do not think I ever altered the main outlines of my first conception; but of the infinite development of which it was capable I had then no idea. Nor, indeed, was it possible I should. It was only when I came to study the character minutely, and to act it frequently, that this was revealed to me.

It

As I recall the incidents of this first performance, I am reminded

one

how little the public knew of the disadvantages under which used sometimes in those days to be called upon to play important parts. To an artist with a conscience, and a reputation to lose, this was a serious affair. In much the same hurried way I was originally called upon to act Lady Macbeth, and this before the Dublin audience, which, I had been told, was then in many respects more critical than that of London. After the close of the Drury Lane season, in June, I acted a few nights in Dublin with Mr Macready. Macbeth was one of his chief parts, and to oblige the manager, Mr Calcraft, I had promised to attempt Lady Macbeth; but in the busy work of each day, up to the close of the London season, I had had no time to give the character any real thought or preparation. Indeed the alarm I felt at the idea of presuming to go upon the stage in such a character, made me put off grappling with it to the last possible moment. The mere learning of the words took no time. Shakespeare's seem to fall into the mind intuitively, and to live there for ever. Mr Macready at our one rehearsal taught me the business of the scene, and I confided to him the absolute terror I was in as the time of performance drew near. He kindly encouraged me, and said, from what he had seen during the rehearsal, he was sure I should get on very well.

At night, when it was all over, he sent to my dressingroom to invite me to take the call of the audience along with him. But by this time the poor frightened "Lady" had changed her sleep-walking dress with the extremest haste, and driven away home. I was rather scolded for this the next day by Mr Macready, for he said he had told me to remain, feeling assured the audience

would wish to see me. But this I had quite forgotten, thinking only of the joy of having achieved my fearful task, and desirous of running away from and forgetting it as quickly as possible.

I have no remembrance of what the critics said. But Mr Macready told me that my banquet and sleepwalking scenes were the best. In the latter, he said, I gave the idea of sleep, disturbed by fearful dreams, but still sleep. It was to be seen even in my walk, which was heavy and unelastic, marking the distinction - too often overlooked-between the muffled voice and seeming-mechanical motion of the somnambulist, and the wandering mind and quick fitful gestures of a maniac, whose very violence would wake her from the deepest sleep, a criticism I never forgot, always endeavouring afterwards to work upon the same principle, which had come to me then by instinct. Another remark of his I remember. Of the sleep-walking scene, he said: "Oh, my child, where did you get that sigh? What can you know of such misery as that sigh speaks of?" He also told me that my first scene very promising, especially the soliloquy, also my reception of Duncan, but that my after-scenes with him were very tame. I had alto gether failed in "chastising with the valour of my tongue.'

was

The only criticism I remember, besides Mr Macready's, on this my first attempt, was that of a most highly cultivated and dear lady friend, who said to me a day or two afterwards: "My dear, I will never see you again in that character. I felt horror-stricken. Lear says of Cordelia, 'So young and so untrue!' I should say of your Lady Macbeth, 'So young and yet so wicked!""

Her antipathy was equalled by

To the last night of my my own. performing the character I retained my dread of it; so much so, that when I was obliged to act it in the course of my engagements (as others did not seem to dislike seeing me in it so much as I did the acting it), I invariably took this play first, so as not to have it hanging over my head, and thus cleared my mind for my greater favourites. Not that, in the end, I disliked the character so much as a whole. I had no misgivings after reaching the third act, but the first two always filled me with a shrinking horror. I could not but admire the stern grandeur of the indomitable will which could unite itself with "fate and metaphysical aid " to place the crown upon her husband's brow. Something, it seemed to me, was also to be said in extenuation of Lady Macbeth's readiness to fall into his design, and to urge him on to catch that crown "the nearest way." If we throw our minds into the circumstances of the time, we can understand, though we may not sympathise with, the wife who would adventure so much for so great a prize. Deeds of violence were common; succession in the direct line was often disturbed by the doctrine that "might was right"; the moral sense was not over-nice, when a great stake was to be played for. Retribution might come or it might not; the triumph for the moment was everything, and what we should call, and rightly call, murder, often passed in common estimation for an act of valour. Lady Macbeth had been brought up amid such scenes, and one murder more seemed little to her. But she did not know what it was to be personally implicated in one, nor foresee the Nemesis that would pursue her waking, and fill her dreams with visions of the old man's blood