"After the beating, wait at least ten seconds longer than you do--to rouse expectation--and when you do come on, make a little more of it. You ought to be very pale indeed--even to enter with a slight totter, done moderately, of course; and before you say a single word, you ought to stand shaking and with your brows knitting, looking almost terrible. Of course, I do not expect or desire to make a melodramatic actress of you, but still I think you capable of any effect, provided _it is not sustained too long_." A truer word was never spoken. It has never been in my power to _sustain_. In private life, I cannot sustain a hatred or a resentment. On the stage, I can pass swiftly from one effect to another, but I cannot fix _one_, and dwell on it, with that superb concentration which seems to me the special attribute of the tragic actress. To sustain, with me, is to lose the impression that I have created, not to increase its intensity. "The last passage of the third act is just a little too hurried. Break the line. 'Now, James--for England and liberty!'" I remember that I never could see that he was right about that, and if I can't see a thing I can't do it. The author's idea must become mine before I can carry it out--at least, with any sincerity, and obedience without sincerity would be of small service to an author. It must be despairing to him, if he wants me to say a line in a certain way, to find that I always say it in another; but I can't help it. I have tried to act passages as I have been told, just _because_ I was told and without conviction, and I have failed miserably and have had to go back to my own way. "Climax is reached not only by rush but by increasing pace. Your exit speech is a failure at present, because you do not vary the pace of its delivery. Get by yourself for one half-hour--if you can! Get by the seaside, if you can, since there it was Demosthenes studied eloquence and overcame mountains--not mole-hills like this. Being by the seaside, study those lines by themselves: 'And then let them find their young gentleman, and find him quickly, for London shall not hold me long--no, nor England either.' "Study to speak these lines with great volubility and fire, and settle the exact syllable to run at." I remember that Reade, with characteristic generosity, gave me ten pounds and sent me to the seaside in earnest, as he suggests my doing, half in fun, in the letter. "I know you won't go otherwise," he said, "because you want to insure your life or do something of that sort. Here! go to Brighton--go anywhere by the sea for Sunday! Don't thank me! It's all for Philippa."