Random Records, Volume 2H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830 |
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above-mention'd Actors afterwards appear'd arrival Audience Bannister Battle of Hexham Bill Biographia Dramatica call'd Captain CHAPTER characters COLMAN Comedy companion consider'd Covent Garden Covent Garden Theatre dinner Doctor Doctor Johnson Drama dramatick Dramatist Drury Lane Earle Edinburgh enter'd express'd famed Farce father finish'd follow'd french Frith genius gentleman Geordy George Keate Ghost give hand happen'd Hay-Market Theatre honour Jack Bannister Jewell journey kind King King's College Lady late living London look'd Lord Lord Townsend Margate ment mention'd miles Miles Peter Andrews Montrose morning Musical never night obtain'd occurr'd Old Aberdeen order'd pass'd perform'd Performers persons Piece Play post-chaise press'd publick publish'd reader recollect remain'd return'd road Rory Macleod scene scotch Scotland season seem'd sent SHAKSPEARE side Soho Square soon Stage theatrical tion told Town travelling turn'd Wife write Wynnstay young
Popular passages
Page 151 - O, reason not the need ! Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow" not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, Which scarcely keeps thee warm.
Page 67 - When to enforce some very tender part, The right hand sleeps by instinct on the heart, His soul, of every other thought bereft, Is anxious only where to place the left...
Page 14 - Merchant," and other deadly lively characters, little above those which are called, in stage language, " walking gentlemen." There was a very persevering skycoloured suit of laced clothes, which was always lugged out of the Haymarket wardrobe for him, upon such occasions; and Jack Bannister, in his light blue and silver, with a sword by his side, was, to all play-goers of that time, as infallible a token of a clever young actor in a bad part, as deep mourning is the sign of death in a family.
Page 13 - I shall have more frequent mention to make of him than of the others, enacted the insipid part of Captain Harcourt; whereby he suffered the fate (not very uncommon for an actor who, before he is of age, begins his profession in London) of buckling to a drudgery very much below his innate excellence ; but his abilities were then in the bud, and his line undecided ; so he took, for the convenience of the theatre, any line, good, bad, or indifferent, either in tragedy, comedy, or farce—no trifling...
Page 31 - Here's one to a very doleful tune, How a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty moneybags at a burden ; and how she longed to eat adders' heads, and toads carbonadoed.
Page 24 - ... one after the other, into different tracks. He had arrived at that height of London popularity, when his visits to various provincial theatres, in the summer, were productive of much more money than my scale of expense in the Haymarket, could afford to give him. As he wintered it, however, in Drury Lane, I profited, for two years more, by his acting in the pieces which I produced there. I then began to write for the rival house in Covent Garden, and this parted us as author and actor. But separating...
Page 275 - Doctor's funeral procession to be most inveterately comical, and even to outdo myself. " I did outdo myself at a furious rate ! I doubled all the faults of my first composition in my second. Instead of splashing carelessly with a light brush, I now deliberately laid it on with a trowel ; to say nothing of the flimsiness and improbability of my plot I laboured so much to sparkle in dialogue, studied so deeply for antitheses, quibbles, and puns, ' And glittering thoughts struck out at every line...
Page 176 - I made of it ! trusting, at the beginningof my fable, entirely to chance for a middle and an end. I had no materials for a plot, further than the common-place foundation of a marriage projected by parents, contrary to the secret views and wishes of the parties to be united ; and which, of course, is to be obviated by the usual series of stratagems, accidents, and equivoques. Alas! what those stratagems, &c. were to be, or how the second scene was to be conducted, I had not any idea, while I was writing...
Page 61 - Theatres, for, at least, some seasons to come ;—in, short, he banish'd me to Scotland; and sent me to King's College, in Old Aberdeen, escorted thither (whether under convoy or custody was somewhat equivocal) by the Chancellor of his Hay-Market Exchequer, Mr. Jewell. On my arrival there, I was to be...
Page 301 - ... eye-lashes had dropped off, through apprehension ; and they never, as you may perceive, Sir, have grown again.' I have heard much of the effects of fear, such as the hair standing on end, and even turning grey on the sudden, but of its causing eye-brows and eye-lashes instantly to vanish, in the side box of a theatre, unless they were false ones, and shaken off in a squeeze to get out, I never before or since met with an example. The gravity with which Mr. Keate told this story, and the ruefulness...