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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Besides the interest in such subjects , which lies below the surface , most people are willing to hear of actors , and actresses , and singers . They are a link between the domesticities , which they represent on the stage , and the public life to which they become allied by the representation . Their talent ( generally speaking ) is not
felt to be of a rarity or happiness , calculated to excite envy ; while their animal spirits , the more for that drawback , are held as a god-send and a recreation ; and the business they
deal in brings us into their society as if into their own houses , humours , and daily life . Hence , in reading accounts of them , in past times , we
naturally incline more to the comic or familiar among them , than the tragic ; and more to the women than the men . We like
to hear the name of Betterton ; but Cibber , somehow , is the more welcome . We care little for Quin , the tragedian ; but Quin , the good fellow , the boon companion , the deliverer of Thomson from the spungingliouse , is dear to us . Even
Garrick's name is injured by the sort of spurious footing he obtained in high life . We are not sure whether he was not too prosperous to be happy ; too much compelled to bow , and deteriorate himself , into the
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sedate airs of a common gentleman . On the other hand , though Foote was a man of birth , we have no misgivings about Foote ( except on the moral score ) . He always seems u taking off" somebody , or cracking jokes . Bannister , Dodd , Parsons , are hearty names : and as to women ! Mrs
Siddons , it is true , queens it apart , and , somehow , we are inclined to let her , and leave her ; but who ever tires of the names of Oldfield , and Bracegirdle , and Woffington ? All the flutters of all the fans of two centuries , and all the solid merits of
bodices and petticoats , come down to us in their names ; chequering Covent Garden like chintz , and bringing with them the bowing glories of the Congreves and Steeles . Who would not
willingly hear more of " Mistress Knipp , " whom the snug and didactic Pepys detained with him a whole ni ght on purpose to teach her his song of
" Beauty , retire " ? Mrs Jordan's laugh beat even the petit vis fol&tre ( the little giddy laugh ) of Madame d'Albret , which Marot says was enough to raise a man from the dead .
At least , we are not sure that there was a heart in the giddiness of the one , but who doubts it that ever heard the other ? and who would not willingly be told hundreds of stories of it ?
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DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS ; AND MARRIAGES FROM THE STAGE .
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154
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1837, page 154, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1835/page/10/
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