The disappointment centred itself, where it had been least expected, in Charles Coghlan's Shylock, and "The Merchant of Venice," without a strongly appreciative and audience satisfying Jew of Venice is doomed to collapse. It was in this way that the beautifully painted and firmly built house of cards tumbled down. It was, and is, inexplicable. Charles Coghlan had over and over again proved himself to be the best of actors. Critics, aware of his latent power, had thought him thrown away on the comparatively trivial parts he had been called upon to play, and felt certain that when he could "let himself go," he would electrify. The power was there--in after years it made itself manifest; but, for some strange reason, it lay dormant in his Shylock--or at any rate in his Shylock of 1875. There was no lapse of memory on the actor's part--no physical breakdown. The character had evidently been most carefully studied, and the delivery of Shakespeare's lines left little or nothing to be desired. Apparently the actor had made the fatal mistake of thinking that Shylock was one of those strong parts that would--in theatrical parlance--"play itself." He was utterly wrong. If Shylock does not reveal himself in his distinctly true colours, not even the ideal Portia can prevent his fading from the picture, and leaving Shakespeare's canvas a blank. David Garrick's contemporary, Charles Macklin, whose name will ever live as the first appreciative impersonator of this superbly drawn character--as full of light as it is of shade--said of his first appearance in it, and when he had from the outset found his audience in sympathy with him:-- "These encomiums warmed but did not overset me. I knew where I should have the pull, which was in the third act, and reserved myself accordingly. At this period I threw out all my fire; and as the contrasted passions of joy for the merchant's losses and grief for the elopement of Jessica, open a fine field for an actor's powers, I had the good fortune to please beyond my wildest expectations. "The whole house was in an uproar of applause. The trial scene wound up the fulness of my reputation; here I was well listened to; and here I made such a silent yet forcible impression upon the audience that I retired from this great attempt well satisfied. "On my return to the green-room after the play was over, it was crowded with nobility and critics, who all complimented me in the warmest and most unbounded manner; and the situation I found myself in, I must confess, was one of the most flattering and intoxicating in my whole life. "No money, no title, could purchase what I felt. And let no man tell me after this what fame will not inspire a man to do, and how far the attainment of it will not remunerate his greatest labours. By Heaven, sir, though I was not worth fifty pounds in the world at the time, yet let me tell you that I was Charles the Great for that night."