I

Irving did not think of playing The Merchant of Venice until he had been to the Levant. The season of 1879–80 had been arranged before the end of the previous season. We were to commence with The Iron Chest; Irving had considerable faith in Coleman’s play and intended to give it a run. It was to be followed in due course, as announced in his farewell speech at the end of the second season, by The Gamester, The Stranger, Coriolanus, and Robert Emmett—a new play by Frank Marshall. It was rather a surprise, therefore, when on October 8, before the piece had run two weeks, he broached the subject of a new production. It had been apparent to us since his return from a yachting trip in the Mediterranean that he was not so much in love with the play as he usually was with anything which he had immediately in hand. Even if a play did not seem to possess him, I never saw him show the slightest sign of indifference to it in any other case.

On that particular evening he asked Loveday and me if we could stay and have a chop in the Beefsteak Room. He was evidently full of something of importance; it seemed a relief to him when supper was finished and the servant who waited had gone. When we had lit our cigars he said quietly:

“I am going to do The Merchant of Venice.” We both waited, for there was nothing to say until we should know a little more. He went on:

“I never contemplated doing the piece, which did not even appeal very much to me, until when we were down in Morocco and the Levant. You know the Walrus” (that was the fine steamer which the Baroness Burdett Coutts had chartered for her yachting party) “put into all sorts of places. When I saw the Jew in what seemed his own land and in his own dress, Shylock became a different creature. I began to understand him; and now I want to play the part—as soon as I can. I think I shall do it on the first of November! Can it be done?”

Loveday answered it would depend on what had to be done.

“That is all right,” said Irving. “I have it in my mind. I have been thinking it over and I see my way to it. Here is what I shall have in the ‘Casket’ scene.” He took a sheet of notepaper and made a rough drawing of the scene, tearing out an arch in the back and propping another piece of paper in it with a rough suggestion of a Venetian scene. “I will have an Eastern lamp with red glass—I know where is the exact thing. It is, or used to be two or three years ago, in that furniture shop in Oxford Street, near Tottenham Court Road.”

Then he went on to expound his idea of the whole play; and did it in such a way that he set both Loveday and myself afire with the idea. We talked it out till early morning. Indeed the Eastern sun was outlining the beauty of St. Mary’s-le-Strand as the time-roughened stone stood out like delicate tracery against the blush of the sunrise. Then and often since have I thought that Sir Christopher Wren must have got his inspiration regarding St. Mary’s on returning late—or early in the morning—from a supper in Westminster. The church is ugly enough at other times, but against sunrise it is a picturesque delight.

As we parted Irving smiled as he said:

“Craven had better get out that red handkerchief, I think.”

Therein lay a little joke amongst us. Hawes Craven who was—as happily he still is—a great scene painter, could work like a demon when time pressed. Ordinarily he wore when at work in those days a long coat once of a dark colour, and an old brown bowler hat, both splashed out of all recognition with paint. Scene-painting is essentially a splashy business, the drops of paint from the great brushes, of necessity vigorously used to cover the acres of canvas, “come not in single spies but in battalions.” But when matters got desperate, when the pressure of the time-gauge registered not in hours but in minutes, the head-gear was changed for a red handkerchief which twisted round the head made a sort of turban. This became in time a sort of oriflamme. We knew that there was to be no sleep, and precious little pause even for food, till the work was all done.

Of course no mortal man could do the whole of the scenery in the three weeks available. Scenes had to be talked over, entrances and exits fixed and models made. Four scene-painters bent their shoulders to the task. Craven did three scenes, Telbin three, Hann three, and Cuthbert one. The whole theatre became alive with labour. Each night had its own tally of work with the running play; but from the time the curtain went down at night till when the doors were opened the following night full pressure never ceased. Properties, dresses, and “appointments” came in completed perpetually. Rehearsals went on all day. On Saturday night, November 1—just over three weeks after he had broached the idea, and less than three from the time the work was actually begun—the curtain went up on The Merchant of Venice.

It had an unbroken run of two hundred and fifty nights, the longest run of the play ever known.

It is a noteworthy fact that one of the actors, Mr. Frank Tyars, who played the Prince of Morocco, after being perfect for two hundred and forty-nine nights, forgot some of his words on the two hundred and fiftieth.

For twenty-six years that play remained in the working répertoire of Henry Irving. He played Shylock over a thousand times.