"--of the way he
gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the
last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a
stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly,
unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with
him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence
nor of any _earthly_ presence: he seemed to be already in heaven.
Much has been said of his "make-up" as Charles I. Edwin Long painted him
a triptych of Vandyck heads, which he always had in his dressing-room,
and which is now in my possession. He used to come on to the stage
looking precisely like the Vandyck portraits, but not because he had
been busy building up his face with wig-paste and similar atrocities.
His make-up in this, as in other parts, was the process of _assisting
subtly and surely the expression from within_. It was elastic, and never
hampered him. It changed with the expression. As Charles, he was
assisted by Nature, who had given him the most beautiful Stuart hands,
but his clothes most actors would have consigned to the dust-bin! Before
we had done with Charles I.--we played it together for the last time in
1902--these clothes were really threadbare.
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