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EDWIN BOOTH
creations, because of their many-sided
humanness, will permit.
I have seen him play Shylock, some-
times as a fierce money-catching old-
clothes dealer of Jewry; sometimes as a
majestic Hebrew financier and lawgiver;
sometimes, at his full maturity, in what
I suppose to be the just mean between
the two extremes : and the Jew was terri-
ble, vital, convincing, in every aspect. I
witnessed the advance in his impersona-
tion of Richelieu, whose theatricalism he
succeeded in interpreting in terms of fiery
sincerity, until the cardinal was equally
imposing in his wrath and fascinating
in his shrewdness and amiability. The
changes in his conception of lago were
peculiarly noteworthy, the movement be-
ing almost steady from lightness in tint
and texture to darkness and weiorht. His
early lago was a gay, jocund, comfortable
villain, malicious rather than malevolent,
at his strongest moments suggesting the
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