"
"I couldn't risk dropping the curtain for the business," answered the
actor, "_because it needed applause to take it up again_!"
Henry Irving never grew tired of a part, never ceased to work at it,
just as he never gave up the fight against his limitations. His diction,
as the years went on, grew far clearer when he was depicting rage and
passion. His dragging leg dragged no more. To this heroic perseverance
he added an almost childlike eagerness in hearing any suggestion for the
improvement of his interpretations which commended itself to his
imagination and his judgment. From a blind man came the most
illuminating criticism of his Shylock. The sensitive ear of the
sightless hearer detected a fault in Henry Irving's method of delivering
the opening line of his part:
"Three thousand ducats--well!"
"I hear no sound of the usurer in that," the blind man said at the end
of the performance. "It is said with the reflective air of a man to whom
money means very little."
The justice of the criticism appealed strongly to Henry. He revised his
reading not only of the first line, but of many other lines in which he
saw now that he had not been enough of the money-lender.
In more recent years he made one change in his dress.
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