the standard dramatists in which the actors have to fit themselves to
the parts. Then, if ever, technique is avenged!

All my life the thing which has struck me as wanting on the stage is
_variety_. Some people are "tone-deaf," and they find it physically
impossible to observe the law of contrasts. But even a physical
deficiency can be overcome by that faculty for taking infinite pains
which may not be genius but is certainly a good substitute for it.

When it comes to pointing out an example, Henry Irving is the monument,
the great mark set up to show the genius of _will_. For years he worked
to overcome the dragging leg, which seemed to attract more attention
from some small-minded critics (sharp of eye, yet how dull of vision!)
than all the mental splendor of his impersonations. He toiled, and he
overcame this defect, just as he overcame his disregard of the vowels
and the self-consciousness which in the early stages of his career used
to hamper and incommode him. His _self_ was to him on a first night what
the shell is to a lobster on dry land. In "Hamlet," when we first acted
together after that long-ago Katherine and Petruchio period at the
Queen's, he used to discuss with me the secret of my freedom from
self-consciousness; and I suggested a more swift entrance on the stage
from the dressing-room. I told him that, in spite of the advantage in
ease which I had gained through having been on the stage when still a
mere child, I should be paralyzed with fright from over-acute
realization of the audience if I stood at the wing for ten minutes, as
he was in the habit of doing. He did not need me then, nor during the
run of our next play, "The Lady of Lyons"; but when it came to Shylock,
a quite new part to him, he tried the experiment, and, as he told me,
with great comfort to himself and success with the audience.