This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...with virtuous indignation and wild laughter. The new Lyceum company were seen to far more advantage in "Charles I." As Henrietta Maria, Ellen Terry once more had to "follow" another actress. This time her predecessor was Miss Bateman, who had played the part in broken French when the play was first produced at the Lyceum under her father's management. Ellen Terry very wisely discarded the accent on the ground that although harmless enough in the lighter scenes, it must inevitably cripple her in the last act. She might have added that, as all the characters in "Charles I." are supposed to be speaking in French, the accent was in any case an absurdity. The present eye praises the present object, and the poetic drama of W. G. Wills seems of small value to those who have found in at least one of his successors " Dumas speaking with the voice of Milton." Yet it may be questioned if any of the new poetic dramatists are nearly as effective as Wills was. It may be doubted if their elaborate exercises in verse, with their comparisons fetched from far, and their metaphors too difficult of comprehension to be commonplace, are to be preferred, in the theatre at any rate, to Wills's speakable, journeyman lines, which at their best have some of the grace and charm of Rostand, and at their worst are appropriate to the action of the play. Wills, besides an easy and fluent talent for verse-making, had an amazing sense of the theatre. He was as stupid about Cromwell as Shakespeare and his collaborators were stupid about Joan of Arc, but like them he was stupid of intention. No good playwright would fiddle about, doing justice to an historic Cromwell, in a play where his business was to make Charles I. a chivalrous, dignified, and roman...