“That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone.”
He could act love, but could not feel it, could mimic passion without realising it.
“In many’s looks the false heart’s history
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,”
but with Willie Hughes it was not so. “Heaven,” says Shakespeare, in a sonnet of mad idolatry—
“Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate’er thy thoughts or thy heart’s work ings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell,”
In his “inconstant mind” and his “false heart” it was easy to recognise the insincerity that somehow seems inseparable from the artistic nature, as in his love of praise, that desire for immediate recognition that characterises all actors. And yet, more fortunate in this than other actors, Willie Hughes was to know something of immortality. Intimately connected with Shakespeare’s plays, he was to live in them, and by their production.
