chance. The anticipation of its pecuniary failure has not been put in
satisfactory conditions to any practical test. The last time that it
was put to a sound practical test it did not fail. While Irving was a
boy, Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre gave, in well-considered
conditions, the simple method a trial. Phelps's playhouse was situated
in the unfashionable neighbourhood of Islington. But the prophets of
evil, who were no greater strangers to Phelps's generation than they
are to our own, were themselves confuted by his experience.


V

On the 27th of May 1844 Phelps, a most intelligent actor and a serious
student of Shakespeare, opened the long-disused Sadler's Wells Theatre
in partnership with Mrs Warner, a capable actress, whose rendering of
Imogen went near perfection. Their design was inspired by "the hope,"
they wrote in an unassuming address, "of eventually rendering Sadler's
Wells what a theatre ought to be--a place for justly representing the
works of our great dramatic poets." This hope they went far to
realise. The first play that they produced was _Macbeth_.

Phelps continued to control Sadler's Wells Theatre for more than
eighteen years. During that period he produced, together with many
other English plays of classical repute, no fewer than thirty-one of
the thirty-seven great dramas which came from Shakespeare's pen. In
his first season, besides _Macbeth_ he set forth _Hamlet_, _King
John_, _Henry VIII._, _The Merchant of Venice_, _Othello_, and
_Richard III._ To these he added in the course of his second season,
_Julius Cæsar_, _King Lear_, and _The Winter's Tale_. _Henry IV._,
part I., _Measure for Measure_, _Romeo and Juliet_, and _The Tempest_