There were no "passengers" in the cast.
The audience at first used to seem rather amazed! This thwacking
rough-and-tumble, Rabelaisian horse-play--Shakespeare! Impossible! But
as the evening went on we used to capture even the most civilized, and
force them to return to a simple Elizabethan frame of mind.
In my later career I think I have had no success like this! Letters
rained on me--yes, even love-letters, as if, to quote Mrs. Page, I were
still in "the holiday-time of my beauty." As I would always rather make
an audience laugh than see them weep, it may be guessed how much I
enjoyed the hearty laughter at His Majesty's during the run of the
madcap absurdity of "The Merry Wives of Windsor."
All the time I was at His Majesty's I continued to play in matinees of
"Charles I." and "The Merchant of Venice" at the Lyceum with Henry
Irving. We went on negotiating, too, about the possibility of my
appearing in "Dante," which Sardou had written specially for Irving, and
on which he was relying for his next tour in America.
On the 19th of July, 1902, I acted at the Lyceum for the very last time,
although I did not know it then. These last Lyceum days were very sad.
The reception given by Henry to the Indian Princes, who were in England
for the Coronation, was the last flash of the splendid hospitality which
had for so many years been one of the glories of the theater.
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