Ebook The True Ophelia

The actresses who have succeeded in the part have done so sheerly by means of their own delightful personalities. They looked so beautiful, moved so gracefully, spoke in such sweet tones and wept with such pathos. But they would have been exactly the same had they been playing a sympathetic village idiot, weeping over a dead canary! One wonders who was the originator of the traditional nonentity. Some delightful beauty, maybe, whose rendering has seemingly been left unquestioned. It is strange that in the struggle for origin ality no one has ever attempted to play the character as Shakespeare — or Bacon — has created it; with business entirely in keep ing with the text, and in an atmosphere of sequential thought and feeling. If one did attempt it, she was too insignificant to have succeeded in making any impression officially, beyond perhaps gaining the reputation in the company of being a crank.