It has been said lately that I began my
career on an unfurnished stage, when the play was the thing, and
spectacle was considered of small importance. I take this opportunity of
contradicting that statement most emphatically. Neither when I began nor
yet later in my career have I ever played under a management where
infinite pains were not given to every detail. I think that far from
hampering the acting, a beautiful and congruous background and
harmonious costumes, representing accurately the spirit of the time in
which the play is supposed to move, ought to help and inspire the actor.
Such thoughts as these did not trouble my head when I acted with the
Keans, but, child as I was, the beauty of the productions at the
Princess's Theater made a great impression on me, and my memory of them
is quite clear enough, even if there were not plenty of other evidence,
for me to assert that in some respects they were even more elaborate
than those of the present day. I know that the bath-buns of one's
childhood always seem in memory much bigger and better than the buns
sold nowadays, but even allowing for the natural glamor which the years
throw over buns and rooms, places and plays alike, I am quite certain
that Charles Kean's productions of Shakespeare would astonish the modern
critic who regards the period of my first appearance as a sort of
dark-age in the scenic art of the theater.
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