"... There were plenty of stalls vacant at the Lyceum, and the author and I sat in two of them... The first part of ''The Bells'' was not very enthusiastically received, but the audience was undoubtedly held by the big scene. In the stalls there was a general agreement that Henry Irving had fulfilled the promise of dramatic intensity which he had shown in his recitation of ''The Dream of Eugene Aram''.

The play left the first-nighters a little dazed. Old fashioned playgoers did not know what to make of it as a form of entertainment. But when the final curtain fell the audience, after a gasp or two, realised that they had witnessed the most masterly form of tragic acting that the British stage had seen for many a long day, and there was a storm of cheers. Then, still pale, still haggard, still haunted, as it were, by the terror he had so perfectly counterfeited, the actor came forward with the sort of smile that did not destroy the character of the Burgomaster or dispel the illusion of the stage."〔

"The thing Irving set out to do was to show us the sorrow which slowly and remorselessly beat him down. The sorrow, which he suffers, must appeal to our hearts. Irving set out to wring our hearts, not to give a clever exhibition of antics such as a murderer would be likely to go through. Here is a strong human being who, through a moment of weakness, falls into error and for two hours becomes a criminal - does what he knows he is doing - acts deliberately but acts automatically, as though impelled by an immense force, against which no resistance is possible."