The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a queen. This, obviously, is the main thing--that the individuality shall be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur. Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth, recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughter Perdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her vindication--expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of poetical eloquence in our language--names herself "a great king's daughter," therein recalling those august and piteous words of Shakespeare's Katharine:-- "We are a Queen, or long have thought so, certain The daughter of a king." Poor old Antigonus, in his final soliloquy, recounting the vision of Hermione that had come upon him in the night, declares her to be a woman royal and grand not by descent only but by nature:-- "I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes, Like very sanctity, she did approach."