It is not a rich old gentleman, with the gout in
his vitals, brushed and got-up once a year to look as vigorous as
possible, and brought out for a public airing by the few survivors
of a large family of nephews and nieces, who afterwards double-lock
the street-door upon the poor relations. It is not a theatrical
association which insists that no actor can share its bounty who
has not walked so many years on those boards where the English
tongue is never heard--between the little bars of music in an
aviary of singing birds, to which the unwieldy Swan of Avon is
never admitted--that bounty which was gathered in the name and for
the elevation of an all-embracing art.
No, if there be such things, this thing is not of that kind. This
is a theatrical association, expressly adapted to the wants and to
the means of the whole theatrical profession all over England. It
is a society in which the word exclusiveness is wholly unknown. It
is a society which includes every actor, whether he be Benedict or
Hamlet, or the Ghost, or the Bandit, or the court-physician, or, in
the one person, the whole King's army. He may do the "light
business," or the "heavy," or the comic, or the eccentric. He may
be the captain who courts the young lady, whose uncle still
unaccountably persists in dressing himself in a costume one hundred
years older than his time. Or he may be the young lady's brother
in the white gloves and inexpressibles, whose duty in the family
appears to be to listen to the female members of it whenever they
sing, and to shake hands with everybody between all the verses.
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