In “Henry VIII.”  Mr. Irving had little to do.  In that play the labour and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of the public.  In “Lear,” Mr. Irving has everything to do.  From beginning to end there is only one character.  Even the fascinating Cordelia is but a silver cloud on the far horizon.  “The King is coming” is the cry of the play.  His madness is more, as to display and effect, than the sense of all the others.  The scene is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is alight with feeling and purpose.  The other actors are not to blame that, to a large extent, they are thrown into the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly congratulated upon their self-suppression and their passive sympathy.  It is a hard task to play the part of two heartless and treacherous daughters, and a pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of Edmund, yet all this was admirably done.  It cannot be an easy thing to come forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic villain is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his execration the exact degree of his success.  So admirably can Mr. Irving himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that any godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.

In many minor parts—­or along the subsidiary lines of great parts—­Mr. Irving’s subtlest power comes into effective play.  Who, for example, can be more gentle or more graceful with a little child?  Who could hug the “fool” more fondly than old King Lear?  Then recall his wonderful recognitions of old friends.  When, in “The Dead Heart,” he is liberated from the Bastille, how old times slowly but surely dawn into consciousness, and how quickly the dawn hastens into the noontide of the tenderest fellowship and highest festival of joy.  It is verily a resurrection.  After eighteen years’ entombment this political Lazarus comes forth to liberty, to leadership, to dominance.

In “Lear,” there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the recognition of Gloster and of Cordelia. Gloster is blind and bandaged. Cordelia has been long out of sight—­if not in actual days yet in depth of feeling—­and the King himself is demented.  Little by little things shape themselves in the memory and fancy of the King.  There is something confusedly familiar in the voice of Gloster which, tone by tone, settles into recognition.  In the case of Cordelia the father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification: 

            “Do not laugh at me,
    For, as I am a man, I think this lady
    To be my child Cordelia.”