During my provincial tour with Henry Irving in the autumn of this year I thought long and anxiously over the proposition that I should play in "Dante." I heard the play read, and saw no possible part for me in it. I refused a large sum of money to go to America with Henry Irving, because I could not consent to play a part even worse than the one that I had played in "Robespierre." As things turned out, although "Dante" did fairly well at Drury Lane, the Americans would have none of it, and Henry had to fall back upon his repertoire. _Ibsen's_ "_Vikings_" Having made the decision against "Dante," I began to wonder what I should do. My partnership with Henry Irving was definitely broken; most inevitably and naturally "dissolved." There were many roads open to me. I chose the one which was, from a financial point of view, madness. Instead of going to America, and earning £12,000, I decided to take a theatre with my son, and produce plays in conjunction with him. I hope it will be remembered, when I am spoken of by the youngest critics after my death as a "Victorian" actress, lacking in enterprise, an actress belonging to the "old school," that I produced a spectacular play of Ibsen's in a manner which possibly outstripped the scenic ideas of to-day by a century; of which at any rate the orthodox theatre managers of the present age would not have dreamed. At the Imperial Theatre, where I spent my financially unfortunate season in April, 1903, I gave my son a free hand. Naturally I am not inclined to criticise his methods. When I worked with him I found him far from unpractical. It was the modern theatre which was unpractical when he was in it. It was wrongly designed, wrongly built. We had to disembowel the Imperial behind scenes before he could even start, and then the great height of the proscenium made his lighting lose all its value. When his idea of dramatic significance clashed with Ibsen's, strange things would happen. Mr. Bernard Shaw, though impressed by Ted's work and the beauty that he brought on to the stage of the Imperial, wrote to me that the symbolism of the first act of "Vikings" was Dawn, youth rising with the morning sun, reconciliation, rich gifts, brightness, lightness, pleasant feelings, peace. On to this sunlit scene stalks Hiördis, a figure of gloom, revenge, of feud eternal, of relentless hatred and uncompromising unforgetfulness of wrong. At the Imperial, said Mr. Shaw, the curtain rose on profound gloom. When you _could_ see anything, you saw eld and severity--old men with white hair personating the gallant young sons of Ormulf; everywhere murky cliffs and shadowy spears, melancholy, darkness. Into this symbolic night enter, in a blaze of limelight, a fair figure robed in complete fluffy white fur, a gay and bright Hiördis, with a timid manner and hesitating utterance! The last items in the topsy-turviness of Ted's practical significance were entirely my fault.