On the next performance the parts were interchanged. A figure arrayed in a flowing amber robe over a purple brocaded gaberdine; a small, snow-white turban; a face dark, yet not “black”—such was Irving’s conception of Othello, which indeed answered to our ideal of the Moor. His tall figure gave him advantage. His reading of the part, again, was of the romantic, passionate kind, and he leant more on the tender side of the character than on the ferocious or barbaric. In the scene of Desdemona’s death or murder, there was now another and more effective arrangement: the bed was placed in the centre of the stage, and the whole became more important and conspicuous. When it was at the side, as in the Booth arrangement, it was difficult to believe in the continued presence of the lady after her death, and there was an awkwardness in the efforts to keep in sight of the audience during the struggle. There is not space to give details of the points which distinguished this conception—it is virtually a new character; but it will always be played by Irving under a disadvantage, as the play of his expressive face—the meaning, “travelling” eyes—is greatly veiled by the enforced swarthiness and Æthiop tint. Booth’s Iago had been seen before, and was much praised. It was on the old “Mephistopheles” lines. The dress, indeed, strangely meagre and old-fashioned, scarcely harmonized with the rich costumes about him. The whole of this transaction, as I have said, did honour to the English actor. Nothing more cordially hospitable could have been imagined. At the time there was a “Booth party,” who gave out that their favourite had not had fair play at the Princess’s, and that on a properly-appointed stage his superiority to all rivals would be apparent. These and other utterances were scattered about freely. Irving might have passed them by with indifference. It was certainly not his duty to share his stage with a stranger and a rival. At the same time we may give him credit for a certain delicate _finesse_, and he may have later thought, with a smiling, good-humoured complacency, that, owing to his allowing the experiment, the issue had turned out very differently from what “good-natured people” had hoped. The mortification for the American must have been the greater from the disadvantage of the contrast, which brought out in the most forcible way the want of “distinction,” the stock of old, rather faded, devices with which he came provided, and which he tried on his audience with an antique gravity. Audiences have, unfortunately, but little delicacy. In their plain way they show their appreciation of whom they think “the better man” in a business-like manner; and I remember how they insisted that the encouraging applause which they gave to the new actor should be shared by his host. It should be mentioned that the prices on this engagement were raised to the opera scale—a guinea in the stalls, half-a-guinea for the dress-circle.