" However, my son Teddy
made his first appearance in it, and had such a big success that I soon
forgot that for me the play was rather "small beer."
It had been done before, of course, by Benjamin Webster and George
Vining. Henry engaged Bancroft for the Abbe, a part of quite as much
importance as his own. It was only a melodrama, but Henry could always
invest a melodrama with life, beauty, interest, mystery, by his methods
of production.
"I'm full of French Revolution," he wrote to me when he was
preparing the play for rehearsal, "and could pass an examination.
In our play, at the taking of the Bastile we must have a starving
crowd--hungry, eager, cadaverous faces. If that can be well carried
out, the effect will be very terrible, and the contrast to the
other crowd (the red and fat crowd--the blood-gorged ones who look
as if they'd been all drinking wine--_red_ wine, as Dickens says)
would be striking.... It's tiresome stuff to read, because it
depends so much on situations. I have been touching the book up
though, and improved it here and there, I think.
"A letter this morning from the illustrious Blank offering me his
prompt book to look at.
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