I think his failure as Othello was one of the unspoken bitternesses of Henry’s life.  When I say “failure” I am of course judging him by his own standard, and using the word to describe what he was to himself, not what he was to the public.  On the last night, he rolled up the clothes that he had worn as the Moor one by one, carefully laying one garment on top of the other, and then, half-humorously and very deliberately said, “Never again!” Then he stretched himself with his arms above his head and gave a great sigh of relief.

Mr. Pinero was excellent as Roderigo in this production.  He was always good in the “silly ass” type of part, and no one could say of him that he was playing himself!

Desdemona is not counted a big part by actresses, but I loved playing it.  Some nights I played it beautifully.  My appearance was right—­I was such a poor wraith of a thing.  But let there be no mistake—­it took strength to act this weakness and passiveness of Desdemona’s.  I soon found that, like Cordelia, she has plenty of character.

Reading the play the other day, I studied the opening scene.  It is the finest opening to a play I know.

How many times Shakespeare draws fathers and daughters, and how little stock he seems to take of mothers!  Portia and Desdemona, Cordelia, Rosalind and Miranda, Lady Macbeth, Queen Katherine and Hermione, Ophelia, Jessica, Hero, and many more are daughters of fathers, but of their mothers we hear nothing.  My own daughter called my attention to this fact quite recently, and it is really a singular fact.  Of mothers of sons there are plenty of examples:  Constance, Volumnia, the Countess Rousillon, Gertrude; but if there are mothers of daughters at all, they are poor examples, like Juliet’s mother and Mrs. Page.  I wonder if in all the many hundreds of books written on Shakespeare and his plays this point has been taken up?  I once wrote a paper on the “Letters in Shakespeare’s Plays,” and congratulated myself that they had never been made a separate study.  The very day after I first read my paper before the British Empire Shakespeare League, a lady wrote to me from Oxford and said I was mistaken in thinking that there was no other contribution to the subject.  She enclosed an essay of her own which had either been published or read before some society.  Probably some one else has dealt with Shakespeare’s patronage of fathers and neglect of mothers!  I often wonder what the mothers of Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia were like!  I think Lear must have married twice.

This was the first of Henry Irving’s great Shakespearean productions.  “Hamlet” and “Othello” had been mounted with care, but, in spite of statements that I have seen to the contrary, they were not true reflections of Irving as a producer.  In beauty I do not think that “Romeo and Juliet” surpassed “The Cup,” but it was very sumptuous, impressive and Italian.  It was the most elaborate of all the Lyceum productions.  In it Henry first displayed his mastery of crowds.  The brawling of the rival houses in the streets, the procession of girls to wake Juliet on her wedding morning, the musicians, the magnificent reconciliation of the two houses which closed the play, every one on the stage holding a torch, were all treated with a marvelous sense of pictorial effect.