Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/370

 run of the play was brief. In September he sailed for his second American tour (which at the time he intended should be his last), during which he played in the chief towns of Canada, as well as in those of America. His return to the Lyceum in May 1885 was marked by a mild disturbance owing to his attempt to introduce the practice of ‘booking’ seats in the hitherto unreserved pit and gallery, an attempt which he surrendered in deference to the objections raised. After a few revivals he put on, towards the end of the month, a slightly altered version of Wills's ‘Olivia,’ in which Miss Terry had appeared with great success elsewhere. Irving took the part of Dr. Primrose, and the play ran till the end of the season. Once more the theatre was redecorated and altered. On 19 Dec. came one of the greatest financial successes of Irving's management, Wills's ‘Faust.’ In this production Irving for the first time indulged in scenic effects for their own sake, and used them rather as an amplification of the author's ideas than as a setting for the drama. His Mephistopheles was one of his weirdest and most striking impersonations, and the play ran continuously for sixteen months, that is, till April 1887, new scenes of the students' cellar and the witches' kitchen being introduced in the autumn of 1886. In June 1887 Irving gave two special performances: one of Byron's ‘Werner’ (as altered by F. A. Marshall), in which he played Werner, and one of A. C. Calmour's ‘The Amber Heart,’ in which he did not appear. From Nov. 1887 to March 1888 he and his company made their third tour in America, ‘Faust’ being the principal thing in the repertory. In the week before he sailed for home, Irving gave at the Military Academy, West Point, a performance of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ without scenery. ‘Faust,’ ‘The Amber Heart,’ and ‘Robert Macaire,’ in which Irving played the title part, filled the short summer season of 1888 at the Lyceum, and the winter season opened with a revival of ‘Macbeth.’ The production was sumptuous, and Irving was now capable of expressing his idea of Macbeth more fully and with less extravagance than in 1875. In April 1889 a command performance at Sandringham enabled Queen Victoria, who was a guest there, to see Irving and Miss Terry for the first time. The programme consisted of ‘The Bells’ and the trial scene from ‘The Merchant of Venice.’ For his first production in the autumn of 1889 Irving chose Watts Phillips's drama, ‘The Dead Heart,’ as re-modelled by Mr. W. H. Pollock. He played Landry, and induced Sir Squire (then Mr.) Bancroft, who had retired in 1881, to play the Abbé Latour. On 20 Sept. 1890 he opened his winter season with ‘Ravenswood,’ a new version by Herman Merivale of ‘The Bride of Lammermoor.’ The play was too gloomy to be popular. After this there was no new production at the Lyceum till 5 Jan. 1892, when ‘King Henry VIII’ with music by Edward German was mounted with more splendour than Irving had allowed even to ‘Faust.’ The cost of production, which exceeded 11,000l. was too great to be profitable, though the piece remained in the bill for six months. In November ‘King Lear’ was put on; and in Feb. 1893 came the performance of Tennyson's ‘Becket.’ This play had been sent to Irving by Tennyson in 1879 (The Theatre, Oct. 1879, p. 175); and Irving, though he refused it at first (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ii. 196), had frequently thought it over. Not till 1892 (, i. 221–2; but see Alfred, Lord Tennyson, loc. cit.) did Irving decide to produce it; he then obtained Tennyson's approval of his large excisions, and persuaded him to write a new speech for Becket for the end of act i. sc. iii. Produced on 6 Feb. 1893, four months after the poet's death, ‘Becket’ proved to be one of Irving's greatest personal and financial triumphs; its first run lasted till 22 July, and it was frequently revived. Soon after its first production it was acted by command before Queen Victoria at Windsor.

Irving's fourth American tour lasted from Sept. 1893 till March 1894, ‘Becket’ being the piece most often played. This was Irving's most successful tour, the total receipts being over 123,000l. In the provincial tour which occupied the autumn of 1894 Irving appeared for the first time as Corporal Gregory Brewster in A. Conan Doyle's ‘A Story of Waterloo,’ or ‘Waterloo,’ as it was afterwards called. On 12 Jan. 1895 he produced at the Lyceum Comyns Carr's ‘King Arthur,’ which was followed in May by a bill consisting of Pinero's ‘Byegones,’ ‘Waterloo,’ and ‘A Chapter from the Life of Don Quixote,’ a condensed version of a play written to Irving's order by Wills in 1878. The fifth American tour occupied the months from Sept. 1895 to May 1896, and included towns in the south which Irving had not before visited, ‘King Arthur’ being the principal piece in the repertory. The following September saw him back at the Lyceum, where he produced ‘Cymbeline,’ himself playing Iachimo. On 19 Dec.