"
"And have I not suffered? Do you think because you see me tripping
through some foolish, insipid _role_ that I am capable of nothing
better? Give me a chance and see what I can do."
"Oh! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,"
I began, and declaimed the speech with such despairing vigour that
our manager was impressed.
Well, the end of it was that he yielded to my suggestion.
It seemed a prosperous time to float a new Juliet. At a
neighbouring theatre a lovely foreign actress was playing the part
nightly to crowded houses. We might get some of the overflow, or the
public would come for the sake of comparing native with imported
talent. Oh! the faces of my traducers, who had said, "Those
Gascoigne girls have no feeling for art," when it was known that they
were out of the bill, and that Sybil Gascoigne was to play
Shakespeare. I absolutely forgot Jack for one moment. But the next,
my grief, my desolation, were present with me with more acuteness
than ever. And I was glad that it was so. Such agony as I was
enduring would surely make me play Juliet as it had never been played
before.
At rehearsals I could see I created a sensation. I felt that I was
grand in my hapless love, my desperate grief.
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