You speak into it and everything is recorded, voice, tone, intonation, everything. You turn a little wheel, and forth it comes, and can be repeated ten thousand times. Only fancy what this suggests.

In 1875 again with Bateman he was seen as the title character in Macbeth; in 1876 as Othello and as Philip in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Queen Mary; in 1877 in Richard III; and in The Lyons Mail. His younger son Laurence Irving (1871–1914) became a dramatist and later drowned with his wife in the sinking of the Empress of Ireland.

He was the first actor to be awarded a knighthood. Irving is thought to have been the inspiration for the title character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.