Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime,
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time;
Mad wag! who pardon'd none, nor spared the
best,

And turn'd some very serious things to jest.
Nor church nor state escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the gown, priests, lawyers, volunteers;
"Alas, poor Yorick!" now forever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
Ape the swoln dialogue of kings and queens,
When "Chrononhotonthologos must die,"
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.
BYRON-Hints from Horace. L. 329.

In all me time (the stage's prime!) and The Other One was Booth.

EDMUND VANCE COOKE-The Other One was Booth.

12

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.

CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.

13

See, how these rascals use me! They will not let my play run; and yet they steal my thunder. JOHN DENNIS See Biographia Britannica. Vol. V. P. 103.

14

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks:
Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks.
The founder's you: the table is this place:
The carvers we: the prologue is the grace.
Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish,
Though we're in Lent. I doubt you're still for
flesh.

Satire's the sauce, high-season'd, sharp and rough.

Kind masks and beaux, I hope you're pepperproof?

Wit is the wine; but 'tis so scarce the true
Poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew.
Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed
join.

Are butcher's meat, a battle's sirloin:
Your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste,
Are water-gruel without salt or taste.

GEORGE FARQUHAR-The Inconstant; or, The
Way to Win Him. Prologue.

15

Prologues precede the piece in mournful verse,
As undertakers walk before the hearse.
DAVID GARRICK-Apprentice. Prologue.

16

Prologues like compliments are loss of time; 'Tis penning bows and making legs in rhyme. DAVID GARRICK-Prologue to Crisp's Tragedy of Virginia.

17

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, "Twas only that when he was off, he was acting. GOLDSMITH-Retaliation. L. 101.

18

Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.

J. C. AND A. W. HARE- Guesses at Truth.

19

It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy,
It's very hard one can't enjoy

A little private spouting;
But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives,
Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives
The tragic Muse a routing.
HOOD-The Stage-Struck Hero.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced. it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 1.

20

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.

Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 19.

21

O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 32.

22

A hit, a very palpable hit.

Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 294.

23

Come, sit down, every mother's son, and re

hearse your parts.

Midsummer Night's Dream. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 74.