I rather
wanted more shouting and distant roar in the Bastille Scene--since the
walls fell, like Jericho, by noise. A good dreadful growl always going
on would have helped, I thought--and that was the only point where I
missed anything.
"And I was very glad you got your boy back again and that Mr. Irving was
ready to have his head cut off for you; so it had what I call a good
ending, and I am in bright spirits to-day, and ever
"Your real friend,
"E.B.-J."
"I would come and growl gladly."
There were terrible strikes all over England when we were playing "The
Dead Heart." I could not help sympathizing with the strikers ... yet
reading all about the French Revolution as I did then, I can't
understand how the French nation can be proud of it when one remembers
how they butchered their own great men, the leaders of the
movement--Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre and the others. My man
is Camille Desmoulins. I just love him.
Plays adapted from novels are generally unsatisfactory. A whole story
cannot be conveyed in three hours, and every reader of the story looks
for something not in the play. Wills took from "The Vicar of Wakefield"
an episode and did it right well, but there was no _episode_ in "The
Bride of Lammermoor" for Merivale to take.
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