lves to the general scheme of the whole performance as he has
conceived it in his mind's eye. He makes such arrangements as he deems
necessary, devising wholly new effects to fit the more modern methods of
presentation, which are less purely rhetorical than they were in the
eighteenth century, and more pictorial. When Herr Barnay impersonated
_Mark Antony_ in the Meiningen revival of 'Julius Caesar,' the novel
stage-management gave freshness to the Forum scene and greatly increased
its force. As _Mark Antony_ ascended the rostrum, after _Brutus_ had
asked the mob to listen to him, the crowd was too highly wrought up over
the speech they had just heard to pay heed to the next speaker. They
gathered in knots praising _Brutus_; and the murmur of their chatter was
all the greeting that _Mark Antony_ received. Herr Barnay stood for a
moment silent and then he began his appeal for their attention:
"Friends--Romans--countrymen--!" but scarcely a citizen listened to him.

"Lend me your _ears_," he begged, "I come to bury Caesar not to praise
him!"

And then the nearest group or two grudgingly turned toward the rostrum;
and to these the adroit speaker addrest himself, coaxing, cajoling,
flattering,--making frequent pauses, in every one of which the audience
could see another band of citizens drawn under the spell of his
eloquence. When he had them all attentive, he played on their feelings
and aroused their enthusiasm; then, after a swift and piercing glance
around to see if they were ripe for it, he brought forth _Caesar's_ will;
and after that _Brutus_ was forgotten, and _Mark Antony_ held the mob in
the hollow of his hand to sway it at his will. It matters little whether
the credit of this most ingenious rearrangement was due to Herr Barnay
himself, or to the unseen stage-manager; the spectator could not but
recognize that a great play had received new illumination by it, and
that a certain richness of texture had been disclosed which had hitherto
lain concealed and unsuspected.

Sometimes, it must be confest, this craving after pictorial novelty
overreaches itself. Perhaps the allowable limit was not overstept when
Sir Henry Irving gave _Ophelia_ a fan of peacock-feathers, in order that
_Hamlet_ might play with it and have it in his hand when he has to say,
"Ay, a very peacock!"

But it may be doubted whether the boundary of the justifiable was not
crost, when the same stage-manager had the duel-scene of 'Romeo and
Julie