Rehan was essentially a queen of comedy. Though she attempted from time to time impersonations of a grave and even of a tragic nature, and by virtue of sincerity and womanliness gave them much appeal, she never would have gained her preëminent position by such means. Her range was as wide, however, as the true meaning of the word “comedy,” and extended from the graceful performance of the mirthful or sentimental foolery of Daly’s adaptations, through the satire of _The Critic_ to the farcical comedy of _The Shrew_, the tenderly romantic comedy of _As You Like It_ and _Twelfth Night_, and the sophisticated “high comedy” of _Much Ado_.[142] It is difficult for one who has seen her in the part to think of Shakespeare’s Katherine, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, without at once thinking of Ada Rehan. The pride, the majesty, the complete identification with the varying moods of the character, and the humanity she gave to what can easily be made merely a stage figure, were quite irresistible. Perhaps she succeeded so well in this part because it was in many ways a reflection of her own personality.[143] Her Rosalind, by all accounts, was probably the best, possibly excepting Adelaide Neilson’s, that the American stage has seen; her Viola “manifested a poetic actress of the first order.” Add to these her Beatrice, her Mrs. Ford, her Helena, her Portia, not to speak of the half dozen heroines of Shakespeare she played before she joined Daly’s company, and you have a well rounded accomplishment as a Shakespearean actress, which, if she had done nothing else, would have won her fame. And she did much else. One of Mr. Daly’s noteworthy departures from the ordinary theatrical routine was his revival of various specimens of old English comedy: _The Country Wife_ (in Garrick’s version called _The Country Girl_), _The Inconstant_, _She Would and She Would Not_, _The Recruiting Officer_ were all Restoration comedies, modified by Mr. Daly to suit modern taste; and _The Critic_ was his one-act rearrangement of Sheridan’s famous three-act satire of that name. These pieces all involved difficult tasks for a modern actress, for their language is of another time, their feelings of a different civilization. The plays are never professionally revived nowadays; and Mr. Daly’s ventures with them succeeded mainly through the conspicuous ability of Miss Rehan to give her characters, whatever their dress or speech, naturalness and vitality.