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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
tude of her speeches to her husband pro-
duced an indescribable effect of the terrible
and the piteous in combination. A
spectacle it was of a great love, driven by
its impulse to minister to the loved ob-
ject; being itself utterly and fatalistically
hopeless and barren of comfort and of the
power to comfort.
But, on the whole, Miss Cushman's
impersonation of the Queen Katharine of
Henry VIII. must be accounted her crown-
ing achievement, and, therefore, the high-
est histrionic work of any American ac-
tress. I shall merely note, with little
detailed comment, the grandeur and sim-
plicity of the character as she presented
it in the first three acts of the play. Here,
her Katharine was a document in human
flesh, to show how a heavenly minded
humility may be a wellspring of dignity,
how true womanly sensibility may exalt
the queenliness of a sovereign. The bear-
ing of Katharine at the trial, in the second
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