There is much that this noble figure, of a man who
has done his good work and yet remains to grace the
world, would give us to reflect upon ; but I am sure that
Sigr. Salvini, Italian, and therefore chivalrous to his
finger-tips, would not prevent any longer the entrance
of those who are waiting, less worthy and even, at times,
neglectful though they be. Out of compUment to him,
we will take first his son, Sigr. Gustavo Salvini, whose
reputation in Italy fully entitles him to a high, though
not a foremost, place. Report has it that, as to methods
of acting, he and his father are not of one mind. That
may well be ; this much is certain — that they are very
different men, and that the fire of the father of eighty is
lacking in the son of forty, whose style instead a rather
scholarly correctness and studied elegance informs. He
is not the handsome man his father was — nay, stiU is;
his voice, even now, has not the same ringing tones ; and
his face and bearing strike one as those of a man
who might have been a distinguished man of letters,
or a diplomatist, as well as — or, even better than — an
actor. I saw him play King Lear and Orestes. He
was better in the latter part. He passed among his
classic surroundings with an aptness and success that
suggested a man a trifle out of place, perhaps, in the pre-
sent day. His only apparent fault was a desire to build
pose on pose which should be plastically effective, needing
an extreme agility ; so that his movement, in changing
from one position to the other, gave sometimes the idea




/Vi,i,'(>^/-,(/>/; ,'iv



ni- SAXCTI



ITALIAN PLAYERS 203

of an india-rubber baJl. But he was wonderfully suc-
cessful in timing his emotions to the slow measure of
the tragic verse ; and, by so doing — though throughout
there is not one detail of absolute nature, — ^by keeping the
convention all in harmony, he produced a piece of striking
reahty. His King Lear could only be criticised by
saying that it did not impress. 