The stage mantle of Garrick fell on John Philip Kemble, who brought to Shakspere’s plays accurate and truthful scenery and costumes. Hamlet was his favourite part--and as he was a meditative and scholarly rather than a fiery actor, he made a deep impression with it. Sarah Siddons was his sister. She was called the Queen of Tragedy, and was indeed an ideal Roman matron in her impassioned acting of great parts, coupled with a dignified, almost commonplace everyday life. In a famous picture Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her as the tragic muse. She played Lady Macbeth as probably no one else has ever played it, indeed it is said when she was studying the part she became so frightened at her own impersonation that she rushed up stairs and jumped into bed with her clothes on. In Queen Katharine (Henry VIII), she played the part so realistically that the Surveyor, to whom she had said, “You were the Duke’s Surveyor, and lost your office on complaint of the tenants,” came off the stage perspiring with emotion and said, “That woman plays as if the thing were in earnest. She looked me so through and through with her black eyes that I would not for the world meet her on the stage again!” Edmund Kean was a little man, but he played Shylock in the Merchant of Venice and Richard III as they had never been played before. Iago, too, was a famous character of his. He was admired by the aged widow of David Garrick, who called him David’s successor, and he was praised by Byron. Each age seems to have had its actor. Garrick was Johnson’s friend. Kean belonged to Byron’s day, and the actor of Dickens’s time was Macready. The great American actor was Edwin Booth, who made us familiar with the whole line of Shaksperean tragic characters during nearly the whole of the last half of the nineteenth century. Who that has seen him slip on to the stage as the hunchback Richard III, or walk in the calm dignity of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, attired all in black velvet, can ever imagine those characters in any other personation! The great tragedies seem to be the plays in which great actors have become most famous; but no play of Shakspere’s, not even the Merchant of Venice, has been more popular than Romeo and Juliet. In the time of Garrick a certain Barry Spanger was said to be the ideal Romeo. Charles Kemble, son of Philip, played it with great success. And his daughter Fanny Kemble was brought out as Juliet, much against her wish, to save her father’s fortunes. She had had no training for the stage; but the play ran for one hundred and twenty nights with the greatest success.