Unfortunately it also assigns limits to those powers which few actresses of the second or even third rank need despair of attaining.  Such a piece as this, it will be seen, makes the highest demands upon an actress.  Tenderly affectionate, and true with her husband, when she arranges with him the plan upon which so much depends:  heartless and insouciante in manner while she receives her guests; affectedly gay and vivacious while her husband’s fate is trembling in the balance; deeply tragic in her anguish when her fortitude has broken down; and finally overcome with joy as her husband is restored to her arms; she has to pass and repass, without a pause, from one extreme of her art to the other.  There is probably no actress but Sarah Bernhardt who could render all the various phases of this character as they should be rendered.  There is only one phase of it that comes fairly within Miss Anderson’s grasp.  Of vivacity there is not a spark in her nature; a heavy-footed impassiveness weighs upon all her efforts to be sprightly.  The refinement, the subtlety, the animation, the ton, of an actress of the Comedie Francaise she does not so much as suggest.  Womanly sympathy, tenderness, and trust, those qualities which constitute a far deeper and more abiding charm than statuesque beauty, are equally absent from an impersonation which in its earlier phases is almost distressingly labored.  While the actress is entertaining her guests with improvised comedy, moreover, no undercurrent of emotion, no suggestion of suppressed anxiety is perceptible.  It is not till this double role, which demands a degree of finesse evidently beyond Miss Anderson’s range, is exchanged for the unaffected expression of mental torture that the actress rises to the occasion, and here it is pleasing to record, she displayed on Saturday night an earnestness and an intensity which won her an ungrudging round of applause.  Miss Anderson’s conception of the character is excellent, it is her powers of execution that are defective; and we do not omit from these the quality of her voice, which at times sinks into a hard and unsympathetic key.”

Morning Post, 28th January, 1884.

“A change effected in the programme at the Lyceum Theater on Saturday night makes Mr. Gilbert responsible for the whole entertainment of the evening.  His fairy comedy of ‘Pygmalion and Galatea,’ is now supplemented by a new dramatic study in which, under the ambitious title ’Comedy and Tragedy,’ he has been at special pains to provide Miss Mary Anderson with an effective role.  This popular young actress has every reason to congratulate herself upon the opportunity for distinction thus placed in her way, for Mr. Gilbert has accomplished his task in a thoroughly workmanlike manner.  In the course of a single act he has demanded from the exponent of his principal character the most varied histrionic capabilities, for he has asked her to be by turns the