Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/125

 Iago begins subtly to instil the poison, the carelessness with which Othello heard the first suggestion that Cassio had played him false; how, half sighing, and turning over his despatches as if he wished those lazy days to return, he said, "Oh yes, he went between us very often." The temperament of the actor, the dress, all fitted him nobly in this part; but his Iago continued to be the world's favorite, and I once asked him the reason.

"Oh," said he, "my wife dressed me so well for that part; she composed and made that dress." It was a superb dress of scarlet with pearl buttons running down the jacket. They looked like bullets; there was a hidden ferocity in that dress. Thomas Hicks painted a great picture of him in it.

Booth's rare smile was most effective in Othello. As he heard Desdemona tell her love, it broke over his face like a gleam of sunshine on a dark day. I saw his Hamlet many times. It was almost our only amusement in the first days of the war (he played it a hundred times in one season). He was the ideal mad prince. As some one said afterwards of Irving's Hamlet, "You forgot the player and thought only of the prince." His reading in this part was the best thing he did. He was again most wonderful with Barrett and Bangs in Julius Cæsar. He was the very best Cardinal Wolsey I have ever seen; how grand and old he was! But oh! his King Lear! To have heard Mrs. Kemble read that play and to see Booth play it was the very poetry of despair.

Like all geniuses, he did things of which he was unaware himself. The expression on Lear's face in his last wild moments, the gleam of recognition, the pleased memory, the joy of being still loved, the gratitude — to