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play, a script by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Britain’s poet laureate. It was set in ancient Greece at the Temple of Artemis. Neither the play’s pedigree nor its learned exoticism was lost on Irving, who consulted archivists at the British Museum and contracted his finest scene painters to re-create the great temple. The mysterious ceremony, the centerpiece of the show, was supplemented in typical Lyceum largesse with one hundred vestal virgins, who supported Ellen Terry in the role of Camma.
    Florence Stoker was recruited as one of the beautiful virgins. Perhaps she considered it a lark or as an attempt to ingratiate herself with her husband’s associates. There’s no question that she was pretty enough to be onstage and professional enough to be entrusted with the role. She was given a colorful costume and directed in the choreography—a fantasy pagan ceremony that Irving invented for the occasion. When Oscar Wilde heard that his dear Florrie would be making her debut onstage (standing behind his revered Ellen Terry), he sent Terry a package with two floral headdresses. His letter shimmered with intrigue.
    I wish you every success tonight. . . . I send you some flowers, two crowns. Will you accept one of them, whichever you think will suit you best? The other, don’t think me treacherous . . . please give to Florrie
from yourself.
I should like to think that she was wearing something of mine the first night she comes on the stage, that anything of mine should touch her. . . . You won’t think she will suspect? How could she? She thinks I never loved her, thinks I forget. My God, how could I?
    If the note seemed unnecessarily furtive or conspiratorial, this was probably Wilde’s idealism. Within the London theatrical world, his personal theatricality was in ascendance. When he later became a grand hero, and the most condemned of villains, the Stokers would have to learn how to accept him on their own terms.

Four
    THE ACTING MANAGER, “DISAGREEABLE THINGS”
    F ussie had been completely spoiled by Henry Irving. “I have caught them often sitting opposite each other at Grafton Street [Irving’s flat], just adoring each other!” Ellen Terry wrote. “Occasionally Fussie would thump his tail on the ground to express his pleasure.” The dog dined with Irving and stayed with him at hotels; the hotels that wouldn’t accept him were crossed off the tour itinerary. Fussie accompanied the company to theaters, wandered off whenever he wished, and created any amount of trouble. He went missing on trains, boats, and carriages and then inspired frantic searches.
    But he was careful to stay off the stage when his master was on it; even Fussie knew his place. Irving loved the limelight even more than he loved his little dog. However, Fussie became confused at a charity performance in New York, where Irving and other actors were performing short scenes. When Irving stepped offstage and put on his coat, the dog assumed that the show was over—this was how it worked at the Lyceum—and he promptly trotted across the stage to find the stage door. Unfortunately, actors John Drew and Maude Adams had just started their domestic scene. Drew watched the fat little terrier screech to a halt, and their eyes locked.
    â€œIs this a dog I see before me?” Drew began to extemporize, reaching his hand out slowly, to lure the pooch. “His tail towards my hand? / Come, let me clutch thee. . . .”
    Bram Stoker had even less success when he appeared on the Lyceum stage.
    He volunteered as a super for one of those famous crowd scenes. In 1880, Irving offered a spectacular version of Dion Boucicault’s 1852 play
The Corsican Brothers
. One of the most popular Victorian melodramas, it offered a little bit of everything: a ghost, a sword duel, revenge, and elaborate settings. When it first premiered, it was one of Queen Victoria’s favorite