The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections by Ellen Terry
page 186 of 447 (41%)
page 186 of 447 (41%)
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always a touch of pride in the humility. Perhaps he would not have
received adulation in quite the same dignified way if he had never known what it was to wear the martyr's "shirt of flame." This is the worst of my trying to give a consecutive narrative of my first years at the Lyceum. Henry Irving looms across them, reducing all events, all feelings, all that happened, and all that was suggested, to pigmy size. Let me speak _generally_ of his method of procedure in producing a play. First he studied it for three months himself, and nothing in that play would escape him. Some one once asked him a question about "Titus Andronicus." "God bless my soul!" he said. "I never read it, so how should I know!" The Shakespearean scholar who had questioned him was a little shocked--a fact which Henry Irving, the closest observer of men, did not fail to notice. "When I am going to do 'Titus Andronicus,' or any other play," he said to me afterwards, "I shall know more about it than A---- or any other student." There was no conceit in this. It was just a statement of fact. And it may not have been an admirable quality of Henry Irving's, but all his life he only took an interest in the things which concerned the work that he had in hand. When there was a question of his playing Napoleon, his room at Grafton Street was filled with Napoleonic literature. Busts of Napoleon, pictures of Napoleon, relics of Napoleon were everywhere. Then, when another play was being prepared, the busts, however fine, would probably go down to the cellar. It was not _Napoleon_ who |
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