120 NINE YEARS OF AN ACTORS LIFE. 



might live without solicitation ; but managers think it their interest 

 to make actors work for their salaries, though a respectability of 

 conduct is said to be the only ' means whereby they live.' Actors 

 are, or should be, men of education and manners in short, gentle- 

 men, and are esteemed as such, until a bill appears bearing the 



stigmatizing impress of ' For the Benefit of Mr. .' The 



elegant. Barry was introduced to a distinguished nobleman, who, on 

 the next day being asked what he thought of the actor, replied ' Oh, 

 I thought him a perfect gentleman, until he asked me to take tickets 

 for his benefit/ " 



" During our stay in Liskeard, the notorious Rowland Stephenson 

 passed through the town, on an electioneering excursion ; and he 

 answered the application of a stranger to him, for support on her 

 benefit night, with a profuse liberality of 4. 1 I mention this, 

 merely to bear out an assertion, that the most profitable supporters 

 of the theatre are men of desperate fortunes : far be it from me to 

 deny that the noble and the virtuous are generous patrons of the 

 drama, for my individual experience proves the contrary ; but I do 

 maintain they are so few, that the theatre must inevitably fall, if the 

 support of the ignoble and the vicious did not preponderate as one 

 hundred to one." 



" The advocates of the theatre contend that a good moral is always 

 found in a good play ; this I know, but I likewise know that people 

 do not visit the theatre for instruction ; amusement is the grand ob- 

 ject; and though Hamlet says *I have heard that guilty creatures 

 sitting at a play have, by the very cunning of the scene, been 

 struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their ma- 

 lefactions ;' I doubt whether any man or woman ever left the 

 theatre, ' warned by despair,' or gave sign of sin, even by 'occult 

 guilt.' I repeat, amusement, not instruction, is the grand object on 

 visiting the theatre ; and disappointment, nay disgust, is felt when 

 that object is frustrated no matter how." 



From the numerous relations of the ups and downs 

 of a Thespian career, we select one and assure our read- 

 ers that the book contains many more effective but too 

 long for our limits. 



" The miseries of a sharing scheme, the lowest of all theatrical 

 speculations, never fell to my lot; but they have been described to 

 me in most lively colours. A person who is in possession of sundry 

 scenes and dresses calls himself a manager, and fits up a theatre. 

 He then collects his adventurers, and the probable receipts are 



