I faintly answered: "I'm sorry, sir, but I have to play Gertrude."
"Oh, no you won't!" he cried, "not with me!" He was furious, he stamped his feet, he turned to the manager: "What's all this infernal nonsense? I want a woman for this part! What kind of witches' broth are you serving me, with an old woman for my Ophelia, and an apple-cheeked girl for my mother! She can't speak these lines! she, dumpling face!"
Mr. Ellsler said, quietly: "There is sickness in my company. The heavy woman cannot act; this young girl will not look the part, of course, but you need have no fear about the lines, she never loses a word."
"Curse the words! It is, that that little girl shall not read with the sense one line, no, not one line of the Shakespeare!" his English was fast going in his rage.
Mr. Ellsler answered: "She will read the part as well as you ever heard it in your life, Mr. Bandmann." And Mr. Bandmann gave a jeering laugh, and snapped his fingers loudly.
It was most insulting, and I felt overwhelmed with humiliation. Mr. Ellsler said, angrily: "Very well, as I have no one else to offer you, we will close the theatre for the night!"
But Mr. Bandmann did not want to close—not he. So, after swearing in German for a time, he resumed rehearsal, and when my time came to speak I could scarcely lift my drooping head or conquer the lump in my throat, but, somehow, I got out the entreating words:
"Good Hamlet, cast thy Knighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark."
He lifted his head suddenly—I went on:
"Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust."