"It was not long before the curtain rose, and disclosed to us the entrance of 'Leonato, Hero, Beatrice, and others.' The Beatrice was immediately singled out, and loud and long was the applause with which she was received--applause which she insisted, first, upon sharing with the Hero (not the heroine) of the evening (Miss Ruth Francis),[2] but which she was compelled afterwards to acknowledge for herself. The opening scene, as everybody knows, plunges us at once _in medias res_. Beatrice shows by her first utterance what way her thoughts are tending, and this strikes the key-note of the comedy. Her first expression is a gibe at Benedick, and when, shortly afterwards, the 'Signior Montano' himself appears upon the scene, the war of wits immediately begins. Let it be said _in limine_ that Miss Terry at once asserted herself as the very Beatrice that Shakespeare drew. That she would do so as far as personal presence was concerned was to be expected. Never was any one so well fitted to represent the 'pleasant spirited' lady, whose charms of face and figure are as irresistible as her verbal daggers. Somehow or other Miss Terry always is a perfect vision of the picturesque. Others may surpass her in special and particular marks of beauty or of manner, but no lady on the modern stage is so much of a picture in herself, or falls so readily into the composition of the larger picture formed by the combinations of a drama. "In this case Beatrice seemed to be bodily before us. Ere she had opened her mouth she had already begun to fill the imagination. We do not have many opportunities nowadays of seeing the heroine of 'Much Ado,' but here was the only Beatrice who had hitherto completely fulfilled the requirements of the part, so far as the outward and visible person is concerned. I cannot describe the vision. I admit my incompetency so to do without a blush. A pen is useless. It is the brush of a Millais that is wanted. The picture is in my mind, but not even a Ruskin could put it on paper. For, to the mere details of face and figure and attire, have to be added all the indescribable charm of facial expression and of bodily movement--of tone, of laugh, of gesture, and of bearing--which neither the penman nor the painter can successfully reproduce.