assionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the
affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the
facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those
facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who
possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the
future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which,
under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue.
Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse
and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can
live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person
is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the
soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise
vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with
that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in
a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the
character:--

"Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are--the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities--but I have
That honourable grief lodged here, which burns
Worse than tears drown."

The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary
Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in
figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict
her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward
an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a
queen. This, obviously, is the main thing--that the individuality shall
be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the
royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis
has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur.
Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife
as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is
mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth,
recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughter
Perdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of
the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her
vindication--expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of
poetical eloquence in our language--name