For instance, his first entrance as Hamlet was what we call, in theatrical parlance, very much "worked up." He was always a tremendous believer in processions, and rightly. It is through such means that royalty keeps its hold on the feeling of the public and makes its mark as a figure and a symbol. Henry Irving understood this. Therefore, to music so apt that it was not remarkable in itself, but a contribution to the general excited anticipation, the court of Denmark came on to the stage. I understood later on, at the Lyceum, what days of patient work had gone to the making of that procession.
At its tail, when the excitement was at fever-heat, came the solitary figure of Hamlet, looking extraordinarily tall and thin, The lights were turned down--another stage trick--to help the effect that the figure was spirit rather than man.
He was weary; his cloak trailed on the ground. He did not wear the miniature of his father obtrusively round his neck! His attitude was one which I have seen in a common little illustration to the "Reciter," compiled by Dr. Pinch, Henry Irving's old schoolmaster.
Yet, how right to have taken it, to have been indifferent to its humble origin! Nothing could have been better when translated into life by Irving's genius.
The hair looked blue-black, like the plumage of a crow; the eyes burning--two fires veiled, as yet, by melancholy. But the appearance of the man was not single, straight, or obvious, as it is when Idescribe it, any more than his passions throughout the play were. Ionly remember one moment when his intensity concentrated itself in a straightforward unmistakable emotion, without side-current or back water. It was when he said:
The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King and, as the curtain came down, was seen to be writing madly on his tablets against one of the pillars.
"0 God, that I were a writer!" I paraphrase Beatrice with all my heart. Surely a writer could not string words together about Henry Irving's Hamlet and say nothing, nothing.
"We must start this play a living thing," he used to say at rehearsals, and he worked until the skin grew tight over his face, until he became livid with fatigue, yet still beautiful, to get the opening lines said with individuality, suggestiveness, speed, and power:
_Bernardo_:Who's there?
_Francisco_: Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
_Bernardo_:Long live the king!
_Francisco_: Bernardo?
_Bernardo_:He.
_Francisco_: You come most carefully upon your hour.
_Bernardo_:'Tis now struck twelve: get thee to bed, Francisco.
_Francisco_: For this relief much thanks: 't is bitter cold.
And all that he tried to make others do with these lines he himself did with every line of his own part. Every word lived.
Some said: "Oh, Irving only makes 'Hamlet' a love poem!" They said that, I suppose, because in the nunnery scene with Ophelia he was the lover above the prince and the poet. With what passionate longing his hands hovered over Ophelia at her words, "Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind!"THE SCENE WITH THE PLAYERS
His advice to the players was not advice. He did not speak it as an actor. Nearly all Hamlets in that scene give away the fact that they are actors and not dilettanti of royal blood. Henry defined the way he would have the players speak as an order, an instruction of the merit of which he was regally sure. There was no patronising flavour in his acting here, not a touch of "I'11 teach you how to do it." He was swift, swift and simple--pausing for the right word now and again, as in the phrase "to hold as 't were the mirror up to nature." His slight pause and eloquent gesture, as the all embracing word "nature"came in answer to his call, were exactly repeated unconsciously, years later, by the Queen of Roumania (Carmen Sylva). She was telling us the story of a play that she had written. The words rushed out swiftly, but occasionally she would wait for the one that expressed her meaning most comprehensively and exactly, and, as she got it, up went her hand in triumph over her head--"Like yours in Hamlet," I told Henry at the time.
IRVING ENGAGES ME ON TRUST
The first letter that I ever received from Henry Irving was written on the 20th of July, 1878, from 15A Grafton Street, the house in which he lived during the entire period of his Lyceum management.
DEAR MISS TERRY: I look forward to the pleasure of calling upon you on Tuesday next at two o'clock, With every good wish, believe me, Yours sincerely, HENRY IRVING.
The call was in reference to my engagement as Ophelia. Strangely characteristic I see it now to have been of Henry that he was content to take my powers as an actress more or less on trust. A mutual friend, Lady Pollock, had told him that I was the very person for him;that "All London" (a vile but convenient phrase) was talking of my Olivia; that I had acted well in Shakespeare with the Bancrofts; that I should bring to the Lyceum Theatre what players call "a personal following." Henry chose his friends as carefully as he chose his company and his staff. He believed in Lady Pollock implicitly, and he did not--it is possible that he could not--come and see my Olivia for himself.
