To avoid
this, I have been obliged to cut _Othello_ into six acts, and to make
many changes in _Hamlet_." The intensity of feeling with which he
throws himself into the part he is representing was especially evident
on the occasion of his playing Saul. After the performance I was
invited to go behind the scenes to speak with him, and was surprised
as well as pained to find him utterly exhausted. I could not help
saying, "How can you exert yourself thus to please so few people?"
There were scarcely four hundred persons assembled to see this sublime
performance. He answered with honest simplicity, "They have paid their
money, and are entitled to the best I can do for them; besides that,
when I am on the stage I forget the world and all that is in it, and
live the character I represent." "You will," said I, "make a grand
Lear." "Yes," he replied, "I think I shall be able to make something
out of the old king. I have been reading the tragedy for some time,
but it will still take me two years to study it thoroughly."
Salvini related to me several anecdotes which show how quick he is to
master any difficulties accident throws in his way. "Once I bought,"
he said, "a play of a poor young writer which I thought I could make
something of; but when we came to rehearse it for the last time before
representation, it seemed to me utterly flat and unprofitable. The
piece was called _La Suonatrice d'Arpa_ ('The Harp-Girl').
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