Yet the
majority, with my political friend, would always prefer a Terriss as
Romeo to a Henry Irving.
I am not going to say that Henry's Romeo was good. What I do say is that
some bits of it were as good as anything he ever did. In the big
emotional scene (in the Friar's cell), he came to grief precisely as he
had done in Othello. He screamed, grew slower and slower, and looked
older and older. When I begin to think it over I see that he often
failed in such scenes through his very genius for impersonation. An
actor of commoner mould takes such scenes rhetorically--recites them,
and gets through them with some success. But the actor who impersonates,
feels, and lives such anguish or passion or tempestuous grief, does for
the moment in imagination nearly die. Imagination impeded Henry Irving
in what are known as "strong" scenes.
He was a perfect Hamlet, a perfect Richard III., a perfect Shylock,
except in the scene with Tubal, where I think his voice failed him. He
was an imperfect Romeo; yet, as I have said, he did things in the part
which were equal to the best of his perfect Hamlet.
His whole attitude before he met Juliet was beautiful. He came on from
the very back of the stage and walked over a little bridge with a book
in his hand, sighing and dying for Rosaline.
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