[!--Note--] 10 ([return])
The last play she read aloud was Henry V. only ten days before she died.
[!--Note--] 11 ([return])
Now Mrs. George Combe.
[!--Note--] 12 ([return])
These sketches, once intended for publication, are now in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton. The introduction and notes were written in March, 1830—the conclusion in March, 1834.
[!--Note--] 13 ([return])
The alteration and interpolations are by Garrick, of whom it was said and believed, that "he never read through a whole play of Shakspeare's except with some nefarious design of cutting and mangling it."
[!--Note--] 14 ([return])
She played in London the following parts successively:—Juliet, Belvidera, the Grecian Daughter, Mrs. Beverley, Portia, Isabella, Lady Townly, Calista, Bianca, Beatrice, Constance, Camiola, Lady Teazle, Donna Sol, (in Lord Francis Egerton's translation of Hemani, when played before the queen at Bridgewater House,) Queen Katherine, Catherine of Cleves, Louisa of Savoy, in Francis I., Lady Macbeth, Julia in the Hunchback.
[!--Note--] 15 ([return])
The only parts which, to my knowledge, she chose for herself, were Portia, Camiola, and Julia in the Hunchback. She was accused of having declined playing Inez de Castro in Miss Mitford's tragedy, and I heard her repel that accusation very indignantly. She added—"Setting aside my respect for Miss Mitford, I never, on principle, have refused a part. It is my business to do whatever is deemed advantageous to the whole concern, to do as much good as I can; not to think of myself. If they bid me act Scrubb, I would act it!"
[!--Note--] 16 ([return])
At Dresden and at Frankfort I saw the Merchant of Venice played as it stands in Shakspeare, with all the stately scenes between Portia and her suitors—the whole of the character of Jessica—the lovely moon-light dialogue between Jessica and Lorenzo, and the beautiful speeches given to Portia, all which, by sufferance of an English audience, are omitted on our stage. When I confessed to some of the great German critics, that the Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, &c. were performed in England not only with important omissions of the text, but with absolute alterations, affecting equally the truth of character, and the construction of the story, they looked at me, at first, as if half incredulous, and their perception of the barbarism, as well as the absurdity, was so forcibly expressed on their countenances, and their contempt so justifiable, that I confess I felt ashamed for my countrymen.
[!--Note--] 17 ([return])
The resemblance was in the brow and eye. When she was sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence, he said, "These are the eyes of Mrs. Siddons." She said, "You mean like those of Mrs. Siddons." "No," he replied, "they are the same eyes, the construction is the same, and to draw them is the same thing."
I have ever been at a loss for a word which should express the peculiar property of an eye like that of Mrs. Siddons, which could not be called piercing or penetrating, or any thing that gives the idea of searching or acute; but it was an eye which, in its softest look, and, to a late period of her life, went straight into the depths of the soul as a ray of light finds the bottom of the ocean. Once, when I was conversing with the celebrated German critic, Böttigar, of Dresden, and he was describing the person of Madame Schirmer, after floundering in a sea of English epithets, none of which conveyed his meaning, he at last exclaimed with enthusiasm—"Madam! her eye was perforating!"
[!--Note--] 18 ([return])
In the Hunchback.