His _self_ was to him on a first night what
the shell is to a lobster on dry land. In "Hamlet," when we first acted
together after that long-ago Katherine and Petruchio period at the
Queen's, he used to discuss with me the secret of my freedom from
self-consciousness; and I suggested a more swift entrance on the stage
from the dressing-room. I told him that, in spite of the advantage in
ease which I had gained through having been on the stage when still a
mere child, I should be paralyzed with fright from over-acute
realization of the audience if I stood at the wing for ten minutes, as
he was in the habit of doing. He did not need me then, nor during the
run of our next play, "The Lady of Lyons"; but when it came to Shylock,
a quite new part to him, he tried the experiment, and, as he told me,
with great comfort to himself and success with the audience.
Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.
Even up to the last five years of his life, Henry Irving was striving,
striving. He never rested on old triumphs, never found a part in which
there was no more to do. Once when I was touring with him in America, at
the time when he was at the highest point of his fame, I watched him
one day in the train--always a delightful occupation, for his face
provided many pictures a minute--and being struck by a curious look,
half puzzled, half despairing, asked him what he was thinking about.
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