[112] Barry Cornwall relates a precisely similar circumstance, to which Dr. Doran probably refers. [113] Miss O'Neill played Juliet on the 6th October (corrected in 2d edition). [114] Miss O'Neill (Lady Becher) died 29th October 1872, aged 80. [115] After Miss O'Neill married Becher and left the stage, she affected not even to know at what time the play began, and once, when some one quoted a line from one of her popular parts, she pretended not to know from whence it came. So says Payne Collier, but I know she went to see Kate Terry's Juliet, and that she sent to her the praise of "one who had played Juliet."--_Doran MS._ [116] I see no reason to suppose that it was not Wroughton's alteration that was performed this season also. [117] He played Achmet and Paul for his benefit. He played Eustace de St. Pierre ("Surrender of Calais") for the first time during this season. [Illustration: J. B. BOOTH.] CHAPTER XVI. EDMUND KEAN--CONTINUED. Between the last-named period, and the time when Edmund Kean played Virginius, there is but one character in which he produced any extraordinary effect, namely King Lear. This sustained, but I do not think it increased, his glory. His other characters only seem to glide past, and disappear. Such are Richard, Duke of York, in a compilation from several of Shakspeare's plays; Barabas, in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," the heaviness of which he relieved by a song, sweetly warbled; Selim, in Dimond's melodramatic "Bride of Abydos;" Young Norval, in which he was graceful and affecting; King John, which did not disturb the repose of Kemble; and Alexander the Great, which could as little stir the dead sleep of Verbruggen. Something more effective was his Brutus, in Payne's compilation. The scene of his simulated folly was skilfully played; that with the son whom he condemns to death, full of tenderness and gravity. He could not sustain Miss Porter's "Switzerland," and he would not support Mr. Bucke's "Italians." Soane literally measured him for Malvesi, in the "Dwarf of Naples," and misfitted him grievously. Mr. Twiss had no better success with the "Carib Chief," in which Kean played Omreah; and my recollections of his Rolla are not so agreeable as those which I have of Young, and even Wallack. Well do I remember his Coriolanus, for which he was physically unfitted; but only a great actor could have played the scene of the candidateship, and that of the death, as Kean did--who, however, gave more pleasure to the followers of the Kemble school by this performance, than he did to his own. He made up for all, by the grandeur, the touchingness, and the sublimity of his King Lear. It was throughout thoroughly original in conception and in execution, and by it he maintained his pre-eminency, and sustained, as I have said, without increasing his old glory. He did not quite realise his own assertion: "I will make the audience as mad as I shall be."