Mazzini
stayed there some time, and Steele Mackaye, the American actor who
played that odd version of "Hamlet" at the Crystal Palace with Polly as
Ophelia. Perhaps a man with more acute literary conscience than Taylor
would not have condescended to "write up" Shakespeare; perhaps a man of
more independence and ambition would not have wasted his really fine
accomplishment as a playwright for ever on adaptations. That was his
weakness--if it was a weakness. He lived entirely for his age, and so
was more prominent in it than Charles Reade, for instance, whose name,
no doubt, will live longer.
He put himself at the mercy of Whistler, once, in some Velasquez
controversy of which I forget the details, but they are all set out, for
those who like mordant ridicule, in "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies."
When Tom Taylor criticised acting he wrote as an expert, and he often
said illuminating things to me about actors and actresses which I could
apply over again to some of the players with whom I have been associated
since. "She is a curious example," he said once of an actress of great
conscientiousness, "of how far seriousness, sincerity, and weight will
supply the place of almost all the other qualities of an actress.
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