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gauntlets. The doublet was open at the bosom, showing a white, ruffled shirt. The Order of the Garter was worn on the left leg. The face was, as usual in that actor's scheme of "make-up," provided with a mustache and a chin-tuft, and it bore no resemblance to any portrait of the actual Richard. In the battle-scene he wore spangled armor. One of Forrest's professional satellites, at one time, was an eccentric actor named Andrew Jackson Allen (1776–1853), who owned and used a patent for ornamenting leather with gold and silver, and on the occasion of some little dispute with Forrest he astonished that formidable tragedian by the inquiry: "What in would your Rich

ard be without my spangles?"

The Richard of Shakspere, like the Iago of that same marvelous delineator of human nature, knows himself, and for himself he wears no disguise. His mien, when he is communing with other persons, is habitually that of specious duplicity until his ambition is achieved. When alone he does not scruple to avouch himself a villain and to exult in his villainy. That distinction was scrupulously made and shown by Edwin Booth, whose assumption of hypocritical goodness when acting Richard, whether in the Cibber version or in the original,-which, suitably cut, he restored in 1877,-was indeed so deftly ingratiating that it might have deceived the most astute observer, and whose contrasted wickedness was so frank, entire, and cheerfully malignant as to be literally diabolical. The soft, sweet, resigned, melancholy tone in which he said to Catesby, in the scene with the Lord Mayor, "Call him again," made the use of deceit artistically beautiful, and caused in the listener a strange, indescribable, commingling of horror, amusement, and admiration, while the note of audacious blasphemy and sardonic scorn in his ejaculation, "Let not the heavens hear these telltale women rail on the Lord's anointed," caused a shudder. I would also here record my testimony that Edwin Booth was the only actor I ever saw who made not only possible, but probable, the wooing and winning of Lady Anne; and furthermore, he was, as nearly as I can ascertain from careful study and inquiry, the only actor of Richard who accomplished that effect. Compared with him

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in that scene, Edwin Forrest became ludicrous. Booth even made the physical deformity of Richard-deformity which in his embodiment was slight-only another attribute to interest and attract. In that scene he was an image of incarnate beauty, at once gentle and fiery, passionate and tender, brilliant, melancholy, eager, satirical, frank, loving, and noble. The brilliant, icy contempt and scorn with which he spoke the words: "Was ever woman in this humor wooed? was ever woman in this humor won?" are beyond description. Even to remember that performance, as given when he was in his prime, is to be thrilled and almost frightened; and that performance was all the more admirable because it was entirely a calculated, prepared, controlled work of art. Never have I been more startled in a theater than when, having one evening entered the house after the play had begun, I took a place in the front row and at the extreme verge of the audience, and Booth suddenly perceived me, as Lady Anne spoke the words: "Come, now, toward Chertsey with your holy load." Standing so that one side of his face was not visible to others in the audience, he bestowed upon me a cheerful grimace and wink, and instantly flashed toward the center, exclaiming: "Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down!" He was indeed a marvelous actor: "When comes there such another?"

Henry Irving's embodiment of Richard, often and brilliantly exhibited in England, -he produced the tragedy, according to Shakspere, at the London Lyceum, January 25, 1877,-was never fully shown before an American audience; but on one occasion (November 24, 1883) he acted the part in the opening scene, and afforded a signal evidence of his perfect comprehension of the spirit alike of the character and of the play. The scene displayed a street of old London, with many quaint buildings and the Tower in the background, and was brilliantly illumined, as with the brightest of summer suns. The buildings were gaily decorated. The air was flooded with the melodious clangor of many silver chimes. Upon that brilliant scene, Glo'ster, clothed in bright raiment, entered through an archway, and paused and glanced about and listened to the merry bells before he began to speak in

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murderous deeds being made to react upon him mentally and physically, and the effect of that reaction being shown in gradual but distinct changes of condition, aspect, expression, and voice. Pursuant to that theory, he made Richard youthful and gay at the beginning, and caused him to become grave, stern, massive, ruthless, and terrible, as the time lapsed and the action proceeded, till at the last prematurely old, he was seared, haggard, agonized, desperate, yet undaunted. One of the effective devices of pictorial stage busi

ness invented and employed by him was the use of a ray of red light which, streaming through the stained glass of a window in the throne-room, when the King was sitting alone upon the chair to which he had made his way by murder, fell upon his hand and seemed to bathe it with blood, causing him for a moment to shrink and shudder. The elder Booth and some actors who have followed his example denoted the entrance of the iron of remorse into the soul of Richard at the moment of his mother's denunciation of him. Mansfield showed it as early as that scene upon the throne. The most effective business he employed was that of mistaking Catesby for yet another apparition, when that officer suddenly enters at the culmination of the dream scene. No one, I think, who ever heard it, will ever forget the shrill, agonized sound of Mansfield's voice when he spoke the words: "Zounds! who's there!" Indeed, the whole of his action and delivery in that scene was magnificently expressive of tumultuous anguish, horror, and frenzy, the haunted murderer leaping wildly from his couch, whirling an imaginary sword, and plunging forward as if in battle with frightful forms invulnerable to mortal blows, and stumbling to his knees, uttering in an appalling shrick the words, "Jesu, have mercy!"

The subject of King Richard the Third is one of the most interesting in all the long and various annals of English history, and its presentation in the theater should be encouraged. False as Shakspere's tragedy is to history, a "consummation devoutly to be wished" is a judicious revision of it and such a restoration of it to our stage as would compel abandonment of the Cibber hash. Great as some of the performances of Richard were that were given by the old actors in Cibber's play, it is established by careful examination that the greatness of them was chiefly due to the powerful passages of the original text, selected and preserved by Cibber, in the mosaic which he made

out of Shakspere's text, the opportunities of acting thus provided, and the actor's capability of improving those opportunities. The resistless charm of the authentic theatrical character of Richard, as distinguished from the authentic figure of history, consists in the union of colossal will with instantaneous promptitude of action. He has been conceived and portrayed by the poet as a complete incarnation of that malign force in Nature which never sleeps, never rests, never pausesthe force of evil, provided in the mysterious scheme of things for the production of good. Richard affords startling contrasts, either moving furtively or braving all opposition and trampling upon everything. He is the embodied energy of an infernal spirit. Twice only is he checked, and then for only a moment. But, notwithstanding all his wicked power, Richard is human, and though he cannot be reached from without he is finally struck from within. The regnancy of his indomitable intellect, which carries him so high, and which should foresee, protect, and lead him to ultimate victory, crumbles in the flame of its own wickedness. Any expert, capable actor would always have an audience as Richard. Given an actor who can provide that personality with a fair and winning exterior and can display it by brilliant expression,-an actor who possesses the lithe body, the luminous face, the piercing eyes, the capacious, sonorous voice, the ruling brain, the fire, the terrible tragic power, and the consummate art which sometimes are combined in one man, as they were in Edwin Booth in his prime, and Shakspere's Richard the Third furnishes one of the greatest of all opportunities that even such a marvelously gifted actor can seize the opportunity to interpret and make actual in the theater a thrilling, terrific conception of intellectual power perverted to the service of evil and at the same time convincingly to demonstrate its utter futility when at last and inevitably it dashes itself against the adamant of Divine Law.

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