Ellen Terry and Her Sisters

by T. Edgar Pemberton

I cannot think that "King Arthur" lived as long as it should have done, but I fear it came at a time when frivolous playgoers were so absorbed in the dresses and doings of the Giggling Girl—the Gurgling Girl—the Gargling Girl—or whatever that volatile and versatile young lady was for the moment presenting, that they could not do much homage to Sir Thomas Malory, Lord Tennyson, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Arthur Sullivan, and Sir Henry Irving—for it was at this period that our great actor-manager was honoured with his well-won knighthood.

In the early autumn of 1896 a new Shakespearean prize was offered to Ellen Terry, and she eagerly seized upon and materially profited by it. Contenting himself with the unsympathetic part of Iachimo (how admirably he played it!), Henry Irving resolved to revive the far too seldom seen "Cymbeline," and of course the ideal Imogen was at hand. "I love the part!" says Ellen Terry with her infectious enthusiasm, and, loving it, she brought it out in all its beauty and fragrance just as the beneficent sun unfolds the petals and extracts the sweet scent of the rose.

Agreeing as I do with every word he says on the subject, I must here once more quote my good friend, Clement Scott:—

"Ellen Terry," he writes, "astonished dramatic students with her Imogen on September 22, 1896. Ellen Terry's Imogen was not only a surprise—it was a revelation. It may not satisfy the old school, but it will certainly delight the new. It is not the reading of Helen Faucit, the best of the Imogens remembered; it may be picked to pieces by schoolmen and students; it was of course un-Shakespearean; but Ellen Terry's Imogen is Ellen Terry with twenty years or more off her merry shoulders. I can only describe Ellen Terry's Imogen as her Beatrice mingled with her Rosalind that might have been.

"No, it was not that; it was Ellen Terry, that peculiar amalgam of witchery, charm, and wilfulness which has baffled every critic of her work. I shall be told that this is not Imogen; but it is Ellen Terry's Imogen, and she held her audience in the palm of her hand. Imogen was never played in like fashion before. The scene in which Imogen was summoned by her dear milord to Milford Haven may not be Shakespearean, but it was pure Ellen Terry at her best.

"She bounds about the stage like a young fawn, she kisses her hand, she kisses her dear lord's letter, she is a wilful madcap and a romp. Is this Imogen, the King's daughter, the serious, thoughtful Imogen of Shakespeare? Who cares? What does it matter to the audience? It is the Imogen of Ellen Terry, and she has undoubtedly made out a good case.

"It may be heresy to the old school to hear an actress interpolating asides and adding remarks and breaking in upon the text with charming gestures, but Ellen Terry does it, and every one loves her for doing it.

"So far so good for the earlier and middle scenes. There was a hesitating period, and an Ellen Terry period; but when we got to the Fidèle scenes then came the revelation, the touching of the heart, the true tears. There was only one remark in the house, 'Oh, what a Rosalind she would have made!' And many added, 'and ought to make.' Here in these scenes we had comedy of the finest flavour, and pathos exquisitely true. Few will forget the eminently Rosalind-like incident of the sword at the entrance to the cave—it was the bloody 'kerchief over again—and few indeed will fail to admire the nervous passion, the really eloquent grief, over the supposed body of the headless Posthumus.

"The success of the Fidèle scenes nerved the actress to a fresh attack, and in the grand reconciliation scene she played with the romance and activity of a girl of eighteen. It was a surprising effort from first to last; and of all the Shakespearean essays of this delightful artist, from her own stand-point, this was assuredly the best.