"Hitherto I should have said Beatrice; but here we have Beatrice with the pathetic touches of Rosalind superadded. Miss Terry is a model Shakespearean boy; there is no doubt about that, and has both laughter and tears at her winsome command.
"The loss of such a Rosalind to the stage as Ellen Terry would, and must have been, has ever formed a subject for regret with her warmest and most enthusiastic admirers. If ever woman lived who displayed in advance the temperament of Rosalind, it was Ellen Terry. What affection she would have shown for Celia; what tears would have been shed, and what anxiety displayed for Orlando at the wrestling bout; with what incomparable humour such a Rosalind would have started on her romantic journey; and oh! the scenes with Orlando in the forest, the love, the sport, the joyousness, the masquerading, and the tears, it makes one almost sad to know and feel what we have lost in this incomparable Rosalind."
Ellen Terry's performance in "Cymbeline" also excited the admiration of the French critic, Augustin Filon, who, in an article in the Débâts, headed "Une Grande Tragédienne," said that her Imogen prevented him from seeing the "absurdities" of the play! Much more than that, she compelled him to accept them. He had only to open his eyes and his ears and Imogen was before him. Her style is marked by a simplicity which, to inexperienced spectators, may seem the absence of art, but which, as a matter of fact, is the perfection of art. She entirely forgets that two thousand persons are following her movements and listening to her words. No glance at the audience, no intonation bearing traces of study, no obvious effort to delight! Désiré Nisand, referring to the débuts of Rachel, remarked, "This girl showed me that I had never understood Corneille or Racine." The same might be said of Ellen Terry, that "noble artist," in regard to Shakespeare.
Augustin Filon, it will be seen from this, has little or no patience with those who say that Shakespeare should be read instead of seen on the stage. He quotes the lines between Imogen and the attendant in the bedchamber scene—
"What hour is it?"
"Almost midnight, madam."
"If thou canst wake by four o' the clock,
I prithee call me."
The French censor had not hitherto seen the significance of these words. Ellen Terry's performance served to enlighten him. "She seemed to say," he records, "'Poor girl, it is not your fault if your mistress has sorrows which deprive her of sleep. Unhappy princesses are not the only people in the world. You need rest; get thee to bed, and if you oversleep yourself you are already forgiven.' All this," continues the writer, "is suggested by Ellen Terry's delivery of this simple speech."
In his interesting book on the English stage the same critic says: "Ellen Terry has not only been an incarnation, delicate, moving, impassioned, of Shakespeare's heroines, but has in her pure and sweet elocution set the poet's dream to music."