Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

105
tiat selects one episode from a reign or an incident in o.
life for dramatic illustration"-* . Among the dissenters was
Henry James, who considered the itches'Sabbath "a horror
cheaply conceived, and executed with more zeal than discretion",
and cared nothing for "the importunate limelight which is
perpetually projected upon somebody or something". Irvlng^s
sinister nature was "superficial - a terrible fault for an
archfiend", and the acting, especially thrt of Ellen Terry,
was grossly inadequate.
The Lyceum Faust was, according to opinion, a worthy
illustration or a gross vugarization of r>n acknowledged
masterpiece. The Dead Heart was less open to charges of
desecration. Ellen Terry disclosed her opinion of it in a
letter to Elizabeth Winter, the critic's wife:
.'/hen we change our procrautme at the Lyceum we
are going to do The Dead Heart - an old Adelphi
play by Watts Phillips - the situations of the
play are fin$,, ; (the words^ are rubbish - "but Hush
!!!!!!!!!!*{ - we AUST llssemble) (one or two S's?)...
—— —— 33.
The play's story is that of a young man who is wrongfully
imprisoned in the Bastille, and after his release during the
Revolution, takes revenge upon those who have v.ron^ed him; it
resembles A Tale of Two Cities and The Count of ^onte Gristo
and was perhaps a cign of that revival of Dumas and Dickens
heralded by Robert Buchanan. The firct ret is preceded by
a prologue, in which the eircurastances of Robert Landry's
in^r :: asonrncnt are shovm, and then the curtain rises on the
taking of the Bastille. Landry is "brought out an