[79] Clement Scott.
[80] Ellen Terry dismisses Ibsen’s women as “silly ladies,” “drawn in straight lines,” and easy to play; a characteristic, if radically unjustified view.
[81] “She has always been an indefatigable and charming letter-writer, one of the greatest letter writers that ever lived,” says Mr. Shaw, the happy recipient of many of her letters.
[82] On one of her last American tours Miss Terry attended in New York the first night of a young playwright’s new work, and at the end of the third act he was presented to her. She congratulated him warmly: “It is very good,” she said, “your play is very good indeed, and I shall send all my American friends to see it.”
“In that case,” said the playwright, with a very low and courtly bow, “my little piece will sell ninety million tickets.”
[83] The dates of her most important impersonations since joining Henry Irving: Ophelia in Hamlet, 1878; Pauline in The Lady of Lyons; Ruth Meadows in The Fate of Eugene Aram, Queen Henrietta Maria in Charles I, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, 1879; Iolanthe in King René’s Daughter, Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, 1880; Camma in The Cup, Letitia Hardy in The Belle’s Stratagem, Desdemona in Othello, 1881; Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Beatrice at the Lyceum (her previous appearance had been at Leeds), 1882; Viola in Twelfth Night, 1884; Olivia in Olivia (revival), Margaret in Faust, 1885; Ellaline in The Amber Heart, 1887; Lady Macbeth, in Macbeth, 1888; Catherine Duval in The Dead Heart, 1889; Lucy Ashton in Ravenswood, 1890; Queen Katherine in Henry VIII, Cordelia in King Lear, 1892; Rosamund in Becket, Nance Oldfield in Nance Oldfield, 1893; Queen Guinevere in King Arthur, 1895; Imogen in Cymbeline, 1896; Madame Sans-Gêne in the play of that name, 1897; Clarisse in Robespierre, 1899; Volumnia in Coriolanus, 1901; she acted under Irving’s management for the last time in 1902, playing Portia at his final performance at the Lyceum; Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1903; Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire, 1905; Lady Cecily Waynflete in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, 1906. On April 28, 1906, the fiftieth anniversary of her first appearance, she played Francisca in Measure for Measure (once only) at the Adelphi.
[84] Mr. Shaw’s article on Ellen Terry appeared, in German, in the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna. And there are several striking passages concerning her in the Dramatic Opinions and Essays.
[85] Yet, characteristically, she was better satisfied than some of her admirers: “I have sometimes wondered,” she wrote, “what I should have accomplished without Henry Irving. I might have had ‘bigger’ parts but it doesn’t follow that they would have been better ones, and if they had been written by contemporary dramatists my success would have been less durable. ‘No actor or actress who doesn’t play in the classics—in Shakespeare or old comedy—will be heard of long,’ was one of Henry Irving’s statements, and he was right.”
[86] Ellen Terry never played The Man of Destiny. Irving accepted it and shelved it.
[87] The first to appear was an elderly woman who long before noon on Monday placed herself and her campstool outside the entrance to the theatre. The performance was not scheduled to begin until the next day at half past one. During Monday afternoon and evening the gathering outside the doors steadily increased in size, until, at midnight there were many hundreds. Miss Terry, late Monday night, appeared to greet the waiting enthusiasts, and Mr. Arthur Collins, the manager of Drury Lane, furnished them a supper of hot coffee, rolls and cake. When the doors were at last opened many of those who had thus patiently waited failed to find room within the theatre. The proceeds of this entertainment, together with those of a popular subscription in England and America, went to Miss Terry and amounted to about forty thousand dollars.