It had slipped on to the
floor, and both of them were too short-sighted to see it! Here was a
predicament! I had to stoop and pick it up for them.
The second time I put out my hand and cried: "Look out for my lilies,"
when Henry nearly stepped on the bunch with which a little girl friend
of mine supplied me every night I played the part.
Iolanthe was one of Helen Faucit's great successes. I never saw this
distinguished actress when she was in her prime. Her Rosalind, when she
came out of her retirement to play a few performances, appeared to me
more like a _lecture_ on Rosalind, than like Rosalind herself: a lecture
all young actresses would have greatly benefited by hearing, for it was
of great beauty. I remember being particularly struck by her treatment
of the lines in the scene where Celia conducts the mock marriage between
Orlando and Ganymede. Another actress, whom I saw as Rosalind, said the
words, "And I do take thee, Orlando, to be my husband," with a comical
grimace to the audience. Helen Faucit flushed up and said the line with
deep and true emotion, suggesting that she was, indeed, giving herself
to Orlando. There was a world of poetry in the way she drooped over his
hand.
Mead distinguished himself in "Iolanthe" by speaking of "that immortal
land where God hath His--His--er--room?--no--lodging?--no--where God
hath His apartments!"
The word he could not hit was, I think, "dwelling.
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