Impressions of Henry Irving - 1908 Author:Walter Herries Pollock Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Before the decisive day of The Bells I had seen Irving as Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist at the Queen's Theatre, with Toole as the Artful Dodger, the ... more »always charming Nelly Moore as Nancy, and John Clayton (a notable performance) as Monks; and as Digby Grant in Two Roses at the Vaudeville with the excellent cast which many playgoers will still remember. On both these occasions I was still an undergraduate, but old enough as a playgoer to have a vivid recollection of the extraordinary intensity which " little Robson " possessed (or which possessed him) in flashes which he could not, or believed he could not, sustain through a whole part. This intensity was brought to my recollection by passages in Irving's Bill Sikes, which, moreover, was an absolutely life-like and consistent character throughout. Years afterwards, and after he had completely won his spurs as a tragedian in Hamlet, I asked him where, if anywhere, hehad found a model for this striking rendition. He replied, " I got at it by quietly observing certain street corners I know of where fellows of that kind congregate." As he spoke, standing up, he became for the moment one of those fellows, hang-dog, suspicious, truculent, with an air that indicated a desperate daring if he were brought to bay. More than that, in that brief transformation he somehow made one see not only the man himself, but all his surroundings, the minatory tavern corner, and the group of equally cunning but less daring companions hanging on the words and movements of the central figure. Those who have seen John Parry will remember how in the light and charming entertainments where the imagined Mrs. Roseleaf was the chief personage, he exhibited the same power, with a difference, of calling up a whole scene with a word, a look, a gesture. The...« less