Carelessly glancing over the sea of faces beneath and around him, the minister continued:
"English critics contend that Madame Orme's 'Amy Robsart' is so far from being Scott's ideal creation, that he would fail to recognize it were he alive; still where she alters the text, and intensifies the type, they admit that the dramatic effect is heightened. She appears to have concentrated all her talent upon the passionate impersonation of one peculiar phrase of feminine suffering and endurance—that of the outraged and neglected wife; and her favourite rôles are 'Katherine' from Henry VIII., 'Hermione,' and 'Medea,' though she is said to excel in 'Deborah.' My brother who saw her last night as 'Medea' pronounced her fully equal to Rachel, and said that in that scene where she attempted to remove her children from the side of the new wife, the despairing fury of her eyes literally raised the few thin hairs that still faithfully cling to the top of his head. Ah—the parting with Leicester—how marvellously beautiful is she!"
Leaning against a dressing-table loaded with toilet trifles and bijouterie, Amy stood, arrayed in the costume which displayed to greatest advantage the perfect symmetry of form and the dazzling purity of her complexion.
The cymar of white silk bordered with swan's-down exposed the gleaming dimpled shoulders, and from beneath the pretty lace coif the unbound glory of her long hair swept around her like a cataract of gold, touching the hem of her silken gown, where, to complete the witchery, one slippered foot was visible. When her husband entered to bid her adieu, and the final petition for public acknowledgment was once more sternly denied, the long-pent agony in the woman's heart burst all barriers, overflowed every dictate of wounded pride, and with an utter abandon of genuine poignant grief, she gave way to a storm that shook her frame with convulsive sobs, and deluged her cheeks with tears. Despite her desperate efforts to maintain her self-control, the sight of her husband's magnetic handsome face, after thirteen weary years of waiting, unnerved, overwhelmed her. There in the temple of Art, where critical eyes were bent searchingly upon her, Nature triumphantly asserted itself, and she who wept passionately from the bitter realisation of her own accumulated wrongs, was wildly applauded as the queen of actresses, who so successfully simulated imaginary woes.
By what infallible criterion shall criticdom decide the boundaries of the Actual and the Ideal? Who shall compute the expenditure of literal heartache that builds up the popularly successful Desdemonas, Camilles, and Marie Stuarts; the scalding tears that gradually crystallize into the classic repose essential to the severe simplicity of the old Greek tragedies?
The curtain fell upon a bowed and sobbing woman, and the tempest of applause that shook the building was prolonged until after a time Amy Robsart, with tears still glistening on her cheeks, came forward to acknowledge the tribute, and her silken garments were pelted with bouquets. Among the number that embroidered the stage lay a pyramid of violets edged with rose geranium leaves, and raising it she bent her lovely head to the audience and kissed the violets, in memory (?) of her far-off child—whose withered floral tribute was more precious to the woman's heart than all the laudatry chaplets of the great city, which did homage to her genuine tears.
Some time elapsed while the play shifted to the court, recounting the feuds of Leicester and Sussex, and when Amy Robsart appeared again it was in the stormy interview where Varney endeavours to enforce the earl's command that she shall journey to Kenilworth as Varney's wife. The trembling submissiveness of earlier scenes was thrown away for ever, and, as if metamorphosed into a Fury, she rose, towered above him, every feature quivering with hatred, scorn, and defiance.
"Look at him, Janet! that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord, that I should acknowledge him,—him there, that very cloak-brushing, shoe-cleaning fellow,—him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege lord and husband! I would I were a man but for five minutes!—but go! begone!"
She paused panting, then threw back her haughty head, rose on tiptoe, and, shaking her hand in prophetic wrath and deathless defiance, almost hissed into the box beneath which Varney stood:
"Go, tell thy master that when I, like him, can forget my plighted troth, turn craven, bury honour, and forswear my marriage vows, then, oh then! I promise him, I will give him a rival, something worthy of the name!"