Fédora

[4] The Paris correspondent of The Era called Bernhardt's performance as Princess Fédora Romazoff "magnificent throughout … the most brilliant of her remarkable career".

The deceased needed only to lie still, and Parisian men of fashion took to spending one evening each as the distinguished corpse.

[6] In July 1883 Bernhardt led her company in Fédora as the final production in a series of French plays given at the Gaiety Theatre, London.

[8] Princess Fédora Romazoff is secretly engaged to marry Count Vladimir Yariskin, the son of the St Petersburg police chief.

Vladimir is found mortally wounded, presumably in an anarchist attack, and Fédora vows vengeance on the known perpetrator, Count Loris Ipanoff.

Not knowing that she was engaged to the dead man he admits to killing Vladimir, but calls it "the execution of a sentence".