One thinks again of Terry in reading of Margaret Woffington. “The Woffington” was a beauty, a hard worker, an adept in comedy, and only less successful in tragedy. She played captivatingly the rakish Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar’s _The Constant Couple_; she was notably good in parts as diverse as Sylvia in _The Recruiting Officer_ and Cordelia in _Lear_; but the parallel to Ellen Terry appears when we read of her lovely Portia and of her Rosalind (a part that Terry was born to play, but somehow never tried). “Peg” Woffington was one of that long line of geniuses with whom Ireland has continued to enrich the English theatre, from her day and Sheridan’s down to that of Ada Rehan, Bernard Shaw and Synge. Frances Abington, a person of temper and caprice, but a true daughter of comedy nevertheless; Dora Jordan, who was really two Dora Jordans,--“one the whimsical, hoydenish performer, all laughter, or the delineator of graceful sentiment,--the other, only seen off the stage, a shrewd little woman, of kind heart and exquisite sensibility”; Mary Robinson, the “Perdita” of him who was to be George IV of England, and a graceful, appealing actress of the tenderly comic and of such characters as Viola and Rosalind--the Julia Marlowe of the eighteenth century; such are hints of a few of those women who have continued the line of gifted actresses of comedy and sentiment down from the days of Bracegirdle and Oldfield. For commanding figures in tragedy, for the Duses and Bernhardts of earlier days, we must look, as a rule, outside of England and America. There is, to be sure, always Sarah Siddons, a majestic figure, a veritable Queen of Tragedy, who made her characters--such as Lady Macbeth and Queen Katherine--awe-inspiring even to those who acted with her. Her niece, Frances Ann Kemble, was prevented from being a truly great actress only by a dislike for the stage. As it was, with her Juliet, her Belvidera in _Venice Preserved_, and her Julia in _The Hunchback_ she takes her place in that succession of tragic actresses which, with the change in theatrical fashions, has now ceased, and which has had its best examplars on the Continent rather than in England. In Charlotte Cushman, America produced a tragic actress of commanding dignity and power. She was “a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past,” a stately and vigorous woman, unique as Meg Merrilies, and a powerful and poetic interpreter of Shakespeare’s tragic women. The daughter of a Jew, Rachel Felix was a Parisian by birth, and thus far she was an earlier Bernhardt. In the thrilling intensity of her acting and in the capricious imperiousness of her own nature, she again suggests Madame Sarah. She introduced a measure of naturalness of speech and spontaneity of action into the French theatre, and here her influence was like that of Duse.