Identifier: lifeartofrichard01wint (find matches)
Title: Life and art of Richard Mansfield : with selections from his letters
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Winter, William, 1836-1917
Subjects: Mansfield, Richard, 1857-1907
Publisher: New York : Moffat, Yard and company
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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a brilliant fare-well season on the European stage would sometimescome into his mind. He had, however, determinedthat there should be a limit to his prodigious toil,and he remained resolute in his determination. Hewould begin the year 1910 as a private man, andthe Stage should see him no more. But the releasehad been too long delayed and even the thought ofrelief had come too late. In the summer and autumnof 1906 the effects of sickness and weariness becamemore and more evident in his conduct and in hisletters. He suffered much from dyspepsia and dis-order of the liver, and his nervous system was com-pletely shattered. The burdens imposed on himwere many and heavy, and his mind was continuallytroubled with anxiety about the future. His let-ters to me revealed an ever-deepening melancholyand almost hourly fluctuations of feeling and changesof plan. A sense of isolation and loneliness, longfamiliar to him, seemed to color all his thoughts.He brooded much upon the troubles of life, and,
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A FATAL MISTAKE 309 at times, convinced himself that he was universallymisunderstood and disliked. The imperative neces-sity of shaping a course for the new theatricalseason was ever present in his consciousness, toagitate and perplex him. He had asked for mycounsel,—as for many years had been his custom,—and I had given it; advising him to augment hisShakespearean repertory by acting King John, orby producing Henry the Fourth and then TheMerry Wives of Windsor, and acting Falstaff.No actor possessed of such a fine intellect and suchabundance of rich humor has attempted Falstaff onour stage within the last fifty years. At first theplan seemed to interest him, but he soon becameindifferent to it, and eventually rejected it. Theidea had become persuasive in his belief that prac-tical success on the stage could be obtained only bystriking out a new path, by showing odd and strangespectacles, and by being singular. It was essentialthat his new season should prove largely remunerative,

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