“You’re very hard to please, Valerie Nikolaitch.”
“Not at all. But you watch him; to tell you the truth, I can’t. Do you think I am watching him?”
“Well, who then?”
“Ah, brother, look at Ophelia. There’s an actress for you!”
“But Valerie Nikolaitch, she’s only a student.”
“Idiot! Don’t mind that. You didn’t notice how she said the words:
“‘He spoke to me of love, but was so tender,
So timid, and so reverent.’[1]
Of course you didn’t. And I’ve been nearly thirty years on the stage, and I tell you I’ve never heard anything like it. She’s got talent. You mark my words, in the fourth act she’ll have such a success that your Kostromsky will be in a fury. You see!”
[1] Perhaps—“He hath, my lord, of late made many
tenders
Of his affection to me.”
The Russian lines do not clearly correspond to any of Shakespeare’s.—ED.