I for one" (and here Clement Scott speaks for many of us) "shall never forget the end of the play, with the libations poured in honour of Artemis, and amidst music and flowers and processions, faultless in colour, and of classic pomp, making the dull mind live in another age, we hear intoned with strophe and antistrophe of chanting chorus, the double appeal by Camma and Synorix, containing as it does the most impassioned poetry of the play.
"I said at the time, 'If there ever was a play that from its intrinsic merits demanded a second, if not a third visit, it is "The Cup." At present the landscape of Mr. W. Telbin, and the decorative splendour of Mr. Hawes Craven's Temple of Artemis, absorb all attention. We seem to see before us the concentrated essence of such fascinating art as that of Sir Frederick Leighton and Mr. Alma Tadema in a breathing and tangible form. Not only do the grapes grow before us, and the myrtles blossom, the snow-mountains change from silver-white at daytime to roseate hues at dawn, not only are the Pagan ceremonies acted before us with a reality and fidelity that almost baffles description, but in the midst of all this scenic allurement glide the classical draperies of Miss Ellen Terry, who is the exact representative of the period she enacts, while following her we find the eager glances of the fate-haunted Mr. Irving. The pictures that dwell on the memory are countless, and not to be effaced in spell or witchery by any of the most vaunted productions of the stage, even in an era devoted to archæology. We see, as we travel back through the enchanting vista, the first meeting of Synorix and Camma--he with his long red hair and haunting eyes, his weird pale face and swathes of leopard skins; she with her grace of movement, unmatched in our time, clad in a drapery sea-weed tinted, with complexion as clear as in one of Sir Frederick Leighton's classical pictures, and with every pose studied but still natural.
"We remember Camma as she reclined on the low couch with her harp, moaning about her husband's late-coming, and can recall the hungry eyes of Synorix, as he drank in the magic of her presence. All was good here, the tenderness of the woman, the wicked eagerness of her lover, the quick impulsive energy of the husband. Difficult as it was to study the acting, when so much had to be seen, still it was felt that Mr. Irving, Mr. Terriss, and Miss Ellen Terry had well opened the tragedy long before the first curtain fell.