also _Cordelia_ associated either with _Cinderella_ or with _Beauty_
in the story of _Beauty and the Beast_--we have two fine commanding
figures; and well are these parts played by Miss ADA DYAS and Miss
MAUD MILTON. The audience can have no sympathy with the two wicked
Princesses, and except in _Goneril's_ brief Lady-Macbethian scene with
her husband, neither of the Misses LEAR has much dramatic chance. Pity
that Mrs. LEAR--his Queen and their mother, wasn't alive! Let us hope
she resembled her youngest daughter _Cordelia_, otherwise poor _Lear_
must have had a hard life of it as a married man.

Why should not Mr. IRVING give the first part of this play
reconsideration? Why not just once a week try him as a different sort
of _Lear_? For instance, suppose, to begin with, that he had had a bad
time of it with his wife, that for many years as a widower he had been
seeking for the opportunity of disposing of his daughters, handing
over to them and to their husbands the lease and goodwill of "The
Crown and Sceptre," while he would be, as King, "retired from
business," and going out for a lark generally. Thus jovially would he
commence the play, a rollicking, gay, old dog, ready for anything, up
to anything, and, like old Anchises, when he jumped on to the back of
Æneas, "a wonderful man for his years." In fact, _Lear_ might begin
like an old King Cole, "a merry old soul," a "jolly old cock!" And
then--"Oh, what a difference in the morning!"--when all his plans
for a gay career had been shipwrecked by _Cordelia's_ capricious and
unnatural affectation.

[Illustration: Mr. Terriss as the Good Fairy.]

Then must commence his senility; then he would begin to break up. A
struggle, to show that there was life in the old dog yet, could be