The courier. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1894-1903, 1895-10-26

her whep he is gone. How she beats
the ......ed pillows with feaverish impa-
thence and strains her eyes out across
the glowing desert and the sleepy Nile.
The madness OF her fury when the mes
senger delivers his news, how her face
became famished and hungry and her
ewes burned like tigers and her very
flesh seemed to cleave to her bones.
How, but bah. il is not possible to de-
scribe it. 1t was like the lightning which
flashes and terrifies and is gone. Through
it all she keeps doing little things that
you do not expect to see on the stage,
things that make you feel within your
self how she loves and how she hates.
She gives you those moments OF abso-
Lutte reality OF experience, OF positive
knowledge that are the text OF all great
art. The thing itself is iu her, the alb
solute quality that all books write OF,
all songs sing OF, all men dream OF, that
only one in hundreds ever knows or re-
Allies. 1t leaps up and strikes you be-
tween the eyes, makes you hold your
breath and tremble And this reminds
me Of what Plutarch says. that Cleo
patra's chiefest charm was not in her
beautiful face, nor her keen wit, nor her
wealth OF wisdom, but "in the immen-
sity OF what she had to give" in her
versatility, her intensity, her sensitive
ness to every emotion, her whole iuxur-
liant personality.
wish it had been Sardou's Cleopatra
that Miss Lewis played, for, comparable
it is cheap and tawdry, it
has less beauty to mar, less dignity to
lose. There have been innumerable at
temps to dramatize that greatest love
story of the ages. They began with
Virgil, who tried to do it in that dra-
matte fourth book OF the Eneid in the
person Of the infelir Dido. Since then
poets and dramatists and novelists ga
ore have struggled with it. But among
hem all the great William is the only
nan who has made possible character
Il the Egyptian queen. Some wise men
'ay, indeed, that he had a living model
or it, and that his Cleopatra with
oh9bus' armorous pinches black and
deep in time" was none other
han the Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
The more one reads the Sonnets the
more probable that seems. and yet
hiuk he was great enough to have done
( without a model. He had no model
or Caesar or Brutus or Antony and GER
ainly none for Juliet. His mind worked
Independently OF any romances or trag-
dies in his own life. 1t, in itself, had
owed all loves. suffered all sorrow,
,nown all tragedies. sometimes think
hat il there is anything in the theory of
e-incarnation he must have been them
ii, Troilus, Antony, Romeo, Hamlet.
10 personal experience in fog-clouded
no love in dusky Elizabethian
'ondon could have brought to him the ,
IN and lango- Of the south, the beauty ,
nd luxury and abundant life of the
titus land. Il was amusing even while
was painful to see the childish way in T,
hich they played with his great pur- {,
Oeee and manUlod b;e oraot ~ a.
Their night. Father, forgive them, for
hey knew not what they did" The 8
Ieeful, irresponsible way in which they
ent through that fiji st scene where An.
my is down in Egypt kissing away
lngdoms and provinces. But Cleopatra
as one woman Of the ages. one UNIQUE
roduct OF the centuries, she had more 9
ian mortal resources and the love she +,