At the end of this busy season, in the last days of hot July, Ellen Terry, on the occasion of her manager's benefit, played Lady Anne to his Gloucester in the first act of "Richard III.," and then, as we have seen in a former chapter, she started on her provincial tour.
She did not return to London until the late autumn. On November 1, 1879, we first saw that beautiful revival of "The Merchant of Venice," which, thanks to Ellen Terry's Portia and Henry Irving's Shylock, became one of the greatest of the long series of Lyceum triumphs, and remains to this day one of the most attractive items in the Irving repertory.
His impersonation of the "Jew that Shakespeare drew" is as instinct with purpose to-day as it was in 1879. I know that there are some critics who declare that he imparts so much dignity to the character that he dwarfs the other portraits in the play. That is true of the actor, but surely these critics are wrong? Most students of Shakespeare realise that Shylock never became actively malignant until the Christians, who on the Rialto had insulted him, who had called him misbeliever and cut-throat dog, and spat upon his Jewish gaberdine, had robbed him of his daughter and his ducats. Then the sufferance that he declared to be the badge of all his tribe broke down. Then, being a man as well as a Jew, he became, not unrighteously, savage, showed his teeth, and, living in a cruel age (when human torture was a thing of every day), viciously resolved to have his "pound of flesh." It is hardly likely that he thought it would come in his way when, in "a merry sport," he signed the bond with Antonio. That is the filled-in picture that Henry Irving gives us of this wonderfully outlined character. We may be horrified at the vindictive moods of his Shylock, but we understand him, and realise the cruel wrongs that have worked him up to a frenzied hatred of his bantering tormentors. He makes us see the patient endurance and personal dignity of the man, and, if at the end of the grandly wrought story we cannot quite sympathise with him, we are called upon to acknowledge the infinite patience of his punishment. To thousands and thousands of playgoers, and to those who dearly love their Shakespeare, Henry Irving has illumined the superbly limned design of Shylock.
Of Ellen Terry's Portia, in the days of the Bancrofts at the old Prince of Wales' Theatre, I have already spoken. In 1879 it was found to be as good as ever—nay, better than ever—for not only had time ripened her talent, but brought her into contact with a virile Shylock. She has indeed made the character her own, and this fact has been long acknowledged not only in England but in America. It remains to-day exactly what it has ever been, a perfectly executed realisation of one of Shakespeare's most beautiful feminine creations. And, indeed, whether it be in her handsome Italian gowns, or disguised as the "young and learned doctor" from Padua, she makes a lovely and most fascinating picture. Her illustration of the wonderful text leaves nothing to be desired. It carries with it the inspiration of genius, and yet it is all so sweetly natural. "As the gentle rain from heaven," it "drops upon the place beneath," and in the hearts of her hearers sets new, bright, and fragrant thoughts upspringing; while throughout it all runs the refined essence of dainty humour. Whenever I see such perfectly soul-satisfying Shakespearean portraits as these, I think of the matchless stained-glass windows in our grand churches and old cathedrals. Beautiful in themselves, as they are now, their designs must have at one time been crude and cold in the hands of their originators. But filled in with softly, yet richly-coloured and exquisitely blended glass (not with the hot reds, violent blues, and gaudy ambers that hopelessly disfigure so many modern efforts in this direction), they seem to soothe while they illuminate, and ineffaceably fulfil their earnest, bright, and inspiring intention.
On December 10, 1879, a benefit performance was given at the Lyceum, on behalf of William Belford, an actor who had done splendid service under Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells, and who in later years had been prime favourite as principal comedian at the Strand Theatre. He was not only a fine actor, but a prince among good fellows, and pre-eminent in the London Bohemia of those days, the happy home of the literary men, artists, and actors, of which Geoffrey Prowse wrote:—
"The longitude's rather uncertain,
The latitude's equally vague;
But that person I pity who knows not the city,
The beautiful city of Prague."