y that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in
Hermione, and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was
preferred. Everybody preferred it--even those who knew that it was not
the better of the two; for everybody loves the sunshine more than the
shade. Hermione means grief and endurance. Perdita means beautiful youth
and happy love. It does not take long for an observer to choose between
them. Suffering is not companionable. By her impersonation of Hermione
the actress revealed her knowledge of the stern truth of life, its
trials, its calamities, and the possible heroism of character under its
sorrowful discipline. Into that identity she passed by the force of her
imagination. The embodiment was majestic, tender, pitiable,
transcendent, but its colour was the sombre colour of pensive melancholy
and sad experience. That performance was the higher and more significant
of the two. But the higher form of art is not always the most
alluring--never the most alluring when youthful beauty smiles and rosy
pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond to happiness. By her
presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image and
incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No
exercise of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an
instantaneous correspondence between the part and the player. The
embodiment was as natural as a sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt
about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches of all around her continually
depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate superiority, her
superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly show
forth her nobility of soul. One of the subtlest side lights thrown upon
the character is in the description of the manner in which Perdita heard
the story of her mother's death--when "attentiveness wounded" her
"till, from one sign of dolour to another, she did bleed tears." And of
the fibre of her nature there is perhaps no finer indication than may be
felt in her comment on old Camillo's worldly view of prosperity as a
vital essential to the permanence of love:--

"I think affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind."

In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the
poetry of sentiment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has
put into the mouth of Perdita; and poetry could not be more sweetly
spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in that delicious