Somehow he had contrived surreptitiously to pick up the dates and leading facts of his father's campaigns (making a speciality of the Battle of Wagram), but the vague ambitions which they inspired only helped his little mind to prey upon itself. It was not "the times" (as with _Hamlet_) but his own nose that he found to be "out of joint."
The appeal of _Hamlet_ is to the intelligence; that of _L'Aiglon_, so obviously pathetic in his own eyes, is rather to the heart. Indeed the intelligence of the audience is here often in trouble; for a certain acquaintance with history is required and both actors and stage-management offer little aid to the average ignorance. While the more obvious and melodramatic situations--such as the death of _L'Aiglon_ or the business of the sentry--are treated at great leisure, it is assumed that all historical allusions, however necessary to an understanding of the situation, will be as tedious to the audience as to the players, and they are rushed through--as in the mirror scene---at a pace that baffles our halting pursuit.
If any male character lends itself to interpretation by a woman, it is such a character as _L'Aiglon_, who, for all his spasms of martial ardour, was half feminine. And to this side of him, and not this side alone, Miss MARIE LÖHR did justice in a performance of which her high spirit had not underrated the difficulties. But it is a long and exigent part, and there were times in the play when her physical strength was overtaxed. It would have taken the voice of a strongish _basso_ to drown the roar of a whole battlefield of ghostly warriors, with a military band thrown in.
I am not sure that Miss LÖHR quite realised for us the _Duke of Reichstadt's_ personality. I should not care to have the task myself, for a good many complicated elements were mixed in his nature. As Mr. Louis PARKER reminds you, a French father supplied him with ambition and love of action, an Austrian grandfather with hesitancy, and Spanish ancestors with fatalism, a very trying combination for even the original _Eaglet_ to handle--a mere boy who had never so much as heard of President WILSON'S League of Nation's. So it was excusable if Miss LÖHR failed to make us completely realise a personality which was almost certainly too much for the comprehension of its actual owner.