An attendant came on to the platform, first, and made trivial and apparently unnecessary alterations in the position of the reading desk. A glass of water and a book were placed on it. After a portentous wait, on swept a lady with an extraordinary flashing eye, a masculine and muscular outside. Pounding the book with terrific energy, as if she wished to knock the stuffing out of it, she announced in thrilling tones: "'HAM--A--LETTE.' By Will--y--am Shak--es--peare." "I suppose this is all right," thought the young clerk, a little dismayed at the fierce and sectional enunciation. Then the reader came to Act I, Sc. 2, which the old actor (to leave the Kemble reading for a minute), with but a hazy notion of the text, used to begin: "Although of Hamlet, our dear brother's death, The memory be--memory be--(What _is_ the color?) _green_".... When Fanny Kemble came to this scene the future Hamlet began to listen more intently. _Gertrude_: Let not thy mother lose _her_ prayers, _Ham--a--lette_. _Hamlet_: I shall in all respects obey _you_, madam (obviously with a fiery flashing eye of hate upon the King). When he heard this and more like it, Henry Irving exercised his independence of opinion and refused to accept Fanny Kemble's view of the gentle, melancholy, and well-bred Prince of Denmark. He was a stickler for tradition, and always studied it, followed it, sometimes to his own detriment, but he was not influenced by the Kemble Hamlet, except that for some time he wore the absurd John Philip feather, which he would have been much better without! Let me pray that I, representing the old school, may never look on the new school with the patronizing airs of "Old Fitz"[1] and Fanny Kemble. I wish that I could _see_ the new school of acting in Shakespeare. Shakespeare must be kept up, or we shall become a third-rate nation! [Footnote 1: Edward FitzGerald.] Henry told me this story of Fanny Kemble's reading without a spark of ill-nature, but with many a gleam of humor. He told me at the same time of the wonderful effect that Adelaide Kemble (Mrs. Sartoris) used to make when she recited Shelley's lines, beginning: "Good-night--Ah, no, the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite. Let us remain together still-- Then it will be _good-night_!"