not having been on the stage as a child. He was stiff with
self-consciousness; his eyes were dull and his face heavy. The piece we
played was Garrick's boiled-down version of "The Taming of the Shrew,"
and he, as Petruchio, appreciated the humor and everything else far more
than I did, as Katherine; yet he played badly, nearly as badly as I did;
and how much more to blame I was, for I was at this time much more easy
and skillful from a purely technical point of view.

Was Henry Irving impressive in those days? Yes and no. His fierce and
indomitable will showed itself in his application to his work. Quite
unconsciously I learned from watching him that to do work well, the
artist must spend his life in incessant labor, and deny himself
everything for that purpose. It is a lesson we actors and actresses
cannot learn too early, for the bright and glorious heyday of our
success must always be brief at best.

Henry Irving, when he played Petruchio, had been toiling in the
provinces for eleven solid years, and not until Rawdon Scudamore in
"Hunted Down" had he had any success. Even that was forgotten in his
failure as Petruchio. What a trouncing he received from the critics who
have since heaped praise on many worse men!

I think this was the peculiar quality in his acting afterwards--a kind
of fine temper, like the purest steel, produced by the perpetual fight
against difficulties. Socrates, it is said, had every capacity for evil
in his face, yet he was good as a naturally good man could never be.
Henry Irving at first had everything against him as an actor. He could
not speak, he could not walk, he could not _look_. He wanted to do
things in a part, and he could not do them. His amazing power was
imprisoned, and only after long and weary years did he succeed in