the audience that night knew that they were seeing _real_ instead of
assumed emotion! Probably the difference did not tell at all.

At Leeds we produced "Much Ado About Nothing." I never played Beatrice
as well again. When I began to "take soundings" from life for my idea of
her, I found in my friend Anne Codrington (now Lady Winchilsea) what I
wanted. There was before me a Beatrice--as fine a lady as ever lived, a
great-hearted woman--beautiful, accomplished, merry, tender. When Nan
Codrington came into a room it was as if the sun came out. She was the
daughter of an admiral, and always tried to make her room look as like a
cabin as she could. "An excellent musician," as Benedick hints Beatrice
was, Nan composed the little song that I sang at the Lyceum in "The
Cup," and very good it was, too.

When Henry Irving put on "Much Ado About Nothing"--a play which he may
be said to have done for me, as he never really liked the part of
Benedick--I was not the same Beatrice at all. A great actor can do
nothing badly, and there was so very much to admire in Henry Irving's
Benedick. But he gave me little help. Beatrice must be swift, swift,
swift! Owing to Henry's rather finicking, deliberate method as Benedick,
I could never put the right pace into my part. I was also feeling
unhappy about it, because I had been compelled to give way about a
traditional "gag" in the church scene, with which we ended the fourth
act. In my own production we had scorned this gag, and let the curtain
come down on Benedick's line: "Go, comfort your cousin; I must say she
is dead, and so farewell." When I was told that we were to descend to
the buffoonery of:

_Beatrice:_ Benedick, kill him--kill him if you can.