prepared his speech." Yet the same critic is obliged to confess that,
at seventy years of age, a younger man might have _personated_ but
could not have _acted_, Hamlet better. He calls his voice "low and
grumbling," but confesses that he had such power over it that he could
enforce attention even from fops and orange-girls. I dare say you
all know how Steele and Addison admired his acting, and how
enthusiastically they spoke of it in _The Tatler_. The latter writes
eloquently of the wonderful agony of jealousy and the tenderness
of love which he showed in _Othello_, and of the immense effect he
produced in _Hamlet_.

Betterton, like all really great men, was a hard worker. Pepys says
of him, "Betterton is a very sober, serious man, and studious, and
humble, following of his studies; and is rich already with what he
gets and saves." Alas! the fortune so hardly earned was lost in an
unlucky moment: he entrusted it to a friend to invest in a commercial
venture in the East Indies which failed most signally. Betterton never
reproached his friend, he never murmured at his ill-luck. The friend's
daughter was left unprovided for; but Betterton adopted the child,
educated her for the stage, and she became an actress of merit, and
married Bowman, the player, afterwards known as "The Father of the
Stage."

In Betterton's day there were no long runs of pieces; but, had his
lot been cast in these times, he might have been compelled to perform,
say, _Hamlet_ for three hundred or four hundred nights: for the rights
of the majority are entitled to respect in other affairs besides
politics, and if the theatre-going public demand a play (and our
largest theatres only hold a limited number) the manager dare not
cause annoyance and disappointment by withdrawing it.