This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... unintelligible world" shall be solved; and that one will be --"the divine Desdemona." Adieu, my friend. I have told you, as you wished me, what I thought about the three important female characters in Shakespeare to which you believed the least justice had been done. Would I had held your pen to write with! Adieu! Ever affectionately yours, HELENA FAUCIT MARTIN. To Miss Geraldine E. Jewsbury. [Before this letter was despatched, I learned that the dear friend for whom it was intended had sunk into a state of unconsciousness. As it was written, however, so I leave it, praying forbearance for what in it is merely personal-- the trifles which would have given it a special value in her eyes.] H. F. M. 31 Onslow Square, London, S.W., February 12, 1881. IV. JULIET IV. JULIET. 31 Onslow Square, 5th January 1881. 'So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows." OU ask me to write to you, dear friend, of Juliet, and of all my earliest dreams about her. Whose bidding should I heed, if not yours, my always loving, indulgent, constant friend? But indeed you hardly realise how difficult is the task you have set me. Of the characters about which I wrote to our dear Miss Jewsbury, I could speak as of beings outside, as it were, my own personality; but Juliet seems inwoven with my life. Of all characters, hers is the one which I have found the greatest difficulty, but also the greatest delight, in acting. My early girlhood's first step upon the stage was made as Juliet. To the last days of my artist life I never acted the character without finding fresh cause to marvel at the genius which created this childwoman, raised by love to heroism of the highest type. It was at the little theatre beside the Green at Richmond1...