“My Lord Duke,—The photographs, which Your Grace did me the honour of sending arrived safely; and I can assure your Royal Highness that I am very glad to have them, and like them very much, particularly the large head of your late Royal Uncle’s little little son. I do not wonder that your excellent Uncle Richard should say ‘off with his head!’ as a hint to the photographer to print it off. Would your Highness like me to go on calling you the Duke of York, or shall I say ‘my own own darling Isa?’ Which do you like best?
“Now I’m going to find fault with my pet about her acting. What’s the good of an old Uncle like me except to find fault?
“You do the meeting with the Prince of Wales very nicely and lovingly; and, in teasing your Uncle for his dagger and his sword, you are very sweet and playful and—‘but that’s not finding fault!’ Isa says to herself. Isn’t it? Well, I’ll try again. Didn’t I hear you say ‘In weightier things you’ll say a beggar nay,’ leaning on the word ‘beggar’? If so, it was a mistake. My rule for knowing which word to lean on is the word that tells you something new, something that is different from what you expected.
“Take the sentence ‘first I bought a bag of apples, then I bought a bag of pears,’ you wouldn’t say ‘then I bought a bag of pears.’ The ‘bag’ is nothing new, because it was a bag in the first part of the sentence. But the pears are new, and different from the apples. So you would say, ‘then I bought a bag of pears.’
“Do you understand that, my pet?”
“Now what you say to Richard amounts to this, ‘With light gifts you’ll say to a beggar “yes”: with heavy gifts you’ll say to a beggar “nay.”’ The words ‘you’ll say to a beggar’ are the same both times; so you mustn’t lean on any of those words. But ‘light’ is different from ‘heavy,’ and ‘yes’ is different from ‘nay.’ So the way to say the sentence would be ‘with light gifts you’ll say to a beggar “yes”: with heavy gifts you’ll say to a beggar “nay”.’ And the way to say the lines in the play is—
‘O, then I see you will part but with light gifts;
In weightier things you’ll say a beggar nay.’
“One more sentence.
“When Richard says, ‘What, would you have my weapon, little Lord?’ and you reply ‘I would, that I might thank you as you call me,’ didn’t I hear you pronounce ‘thank’ as if it were spelt with an ‘e’? I know it’s very common (I often do it myself) to say ‘thenk you!’ as an exclamation by itself. I suppose it’s an odd way of pronouncing the word. But I’m sure it’s wrong to pronounce it so when it comes into a sentence. It will sound much nicer if you’ll pronounce it so as to rhyme with ‘bank.’
“One more thing. (‘What an impertinent old uncle! Always finding fault!’) You’re not as natural, when acting the Duke, as you were when you acted Alice. You seemed to me not to forgot yourself enough. It was not so much a real prince talking to his elder brother and his uncle; it was Isa Bowman talking to people she didn’t much care about, for an audience to listen to—I don’t mean it was that all through, but sometimes you were artificial. Now don’t be jealous of Miss Hatton, when I say she was sweetly natural. She looked and spoke like a real Prince of Wales. And she didn’t seem to know that there was any audience. If you are ever to be a good actress (as I hope you will), you must learn to forget ‘Isa’ altogether, and be the character you are playing. Try to think ‘This is really the Prince of Wales. I’m his little brother, and I’m very glad to meet him, and I love him very much,’ and ‘this is really my uncle: he’s very kind, and lets me say saucy things to him,’ and do forget that there’s anybody else listening!