A young woman veiled in black with bowed head was brought in
on a chariot. Suddenly she lifted her head and looked round, revealing a
face of such pure classic beauty and a glance of such pathos that I
called out:
"What a supremely beautiful girl!"
Then I remembered that there were no women in the cast! The face
belonged to a young Oxford man, Frank Benson.
We engaged him to play Paris in "Romeo and Juliet," when George
Alexander, the original Paris, left the Lyceum for a time. Already
Benson gave promise of turning out quite a different person from the
others. He had not nearly so much of the actor's instinct as Terriss,
but one felt that he had far more earnestness. He was easily
distinguished as a man with a purpose, one of those workers who "scorn
delights and live laborious days." Those laborious days led him at last
to the control of two or three companies, all traveling through Great
Britain playing a Shakespearean repertoire. A wonderful organizer, a
good actor (oddly enough, the more difficult the part the better he
is--I like his _Lear_), and a man who has always been associated with
high endeavor, Frank Benson's name is honored all over England. He was
only at the Lyceum for this one production, but he always regarded Henry
Irving as the source of the good work that he did afterwards.
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