From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley
[Charles Coghlan], an actor whose previous record was fine enough to justify his engagement as Shylock, showed that night the fatal quality of indecision.
A worse performance than his, carried through with decision and attack, might have succeeded, but Coghlan's Shylock was not even bad. It was nothing.
You could hardly hear a word he said. He spoke as though he had a sponge in his mouth, and moved as if paralyzed. The perspiration poured down his face; yet what he was doing no one could guess. It was a case of moral cowardice rather than incompetency. At rehearsals no one had entirely believed in him, and this, instead of stinging him into a resolution to triumph, had made him take fright and run away.
People felt that they were witnessing a great play with a great part cut out, and "The Merchant of Venice" ran for three weeks!
It was a pity, if only because a more gorgeous and complete little spectacle had never been seen on the English stage. Veronese's "Marriage in Cana" had inspired many of the stage pictures, and the expenditure in carrying them out had been lavish.
In the casket scene I wore a dress like almond-blossom. I was very thin, but Portia and all the ideal young heroines of Shakespeare ought to be thin. Fat is fatal to ideality!
I played the part more stiffly and more slowly at the Prince of Wales's than I did in later years. I moved and spoke slowly. The clothes seemed to demand it, and the setting of the play developed the Italian feeling in it, and let the English Elizabethan side take care of itself. The silver casket scene with the Prince of Aragon was preserved, and so was the last act, which had hitherto been cut out in nearly all stage versions.
I have tried five or six different ways of treating Portia, but the way I think best is not the one which finds the heartiest response from my audiences. Has there ever been a dramatist, I wonder, whose parts admit of as many different interpretations as do Shakespeare's? There lies his immortality as an acting force. For times change, and parts have to be acted differently for different generations. Some parts are not sufficiently universal for this to be possible, but every ten years an actor can reconsider a Shakespeare part and find new life in it for his new purpose and new audiences.
The [aesthetic] craze, with all its faults, was responsible for a great deal of true enthusiasm for anything beautiful. It made people welcome the Bancrofts' production of "The Merchant of Venice" with an appreciation which took the practical form of an offer to keep the performances going by subscription, as the general public was not supporting them. [Sir Frederick and Lady Pollock], [James Spedding], [Edwin Arnold], [Sir Frederick Leighton] and others made the proposal to the Bancrofts, but nothing came of it.