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Both are from the last years of their careers. Their voices are stagy and affected, with the sharpened enunciation that was always necessary before electronic amplification. Terry’s voice is powerful but lilting, filled with sincerity. Irving’s voice gives evidence of his affectations: a quirky purr calls attention to itself.
    Irving was distant, demanding respect. Terry admitted that he allowed few people to know him; she wondered if Stoker really understood his friend. Max Beerbohm, the English writer and caricaturist, who knew Irving for years, believed that the actor gave the appearance of “watching from a slight altitude. I think [he] wished to be feared as well as loved.”
    Despite being his costar, Terry had only slight influence over Irving. Her opinion was apparently always considered and often dismissed. Stoker recalled a time when Irving had interpolated a new line into
Much Ado About Nothing
, a silly joke to close the scene:
    B EATRICE : Benedick, kill Claudio!
    B ENEDICK : As sure as I’m alive, I will!
    Irving was following a centuries-old tradition of bettering Shakespeare’s lines: During Irving’s early years onstage, the Bard was regularly rewritten, twisted, and tortured. Terry protested, “almost to tears.” She held every word of Shakespeare sacred and felt that this addition was wrong. Her reverence reflects the attitude of modern theatrical audiences.
    It was Irving’s theater, and Irving persisted, of course. Stoker dutifully agreed with the boss: “To my own mind Irving was right. . . . Modern conditions, which require the shortening of plays, necessitate now and again the concentration of ideas. . . . It may be interesting to note that this [new line] was not, so far as I remember, commented on by any of the critics.”
    Like everyone around Irving, Ellen Terry came to suffer. She was denied a number of excellent parts because—just like poor Isabel’s experience with
The
Bells
—every artistic decision was made by Irving and for the benefit of Irving. Her devoted fans, especially George Bernard Shaw, resented the limitations. The cult of Terry came to praise the greatness she’d achieved under duress and to grumble about the greatness that had been denied her.
    But for her part, Ellen Terry never complained; she threw herself into each role and adored Irving, seeming to tolerate every one of his faults. She also understood the rules of an egotist. Terry once explained to her son, “Were I to be run over by a steamroller tomorrow, Henry would be deeply grieved; would say quietly, ‘What a pity!’ and would add, after two moments’ reflection: ‘Who is there—er—to go on for her tonight?’”
    â€”
    Many shows were dependent on extras to fill the stage; they called them “supers,” short for supernumeraries. Most managers paid them sixpence a night; Irving paid one and sixpence (18 pence) and then raised that to two shillings (24 pence). It was a handy job, a little extra money, for theater porters, workmen, soldiers on leave, or other friends. Supers could work for an hour each night to make extra cash for their beer. Stoker was watchful for people who were working only as supers—he considered them loafers.
    One of Irving’s most famous effects, for a show called
The Lady of Lyons
, involved a platoon of troops, four abreast, marching past an open window and door. As the scene played out, the hero pledged himself to the army and rushed out to join the brigade. Astonishingly, the troops marched, and marched, and marched throughout the long scene, and then through the curtain calls. Irving used 150 men; they stomped across the stage at an even pace, and into the wings, then turned and ran in the opposite direction, behind the backdrop, to join the line as it marched in from the other wing. In this way, the procession of supers was truly endless.
    The Cup
was an 1881