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    movement of Master . Betty . Booth made me shudder in the mad scene . It is by a reference to these engravings on my memory , that I can assure myself the acting which I then marvelled at , and thought , ( that is to say , believed , ) there was not much thinking in the matter , 'I took it as the vulgar do / so fine , was really bad . Perhaps I rhay be permitted to dilate on this subject hereafter ;

    at present suffice it to say , that acting is a very different thing to that which it is generally supposed to be . I am sure , at least , in saying , was supposed to be . The drama lias declined : it has done so ever since minuets were banished . Tragedy went out of fashion with whalebone petticoats and powdered periwigs . The * tragedy strut' and the wow-wo \ Ving' threw an air of grandeur and dignity over the actor , and enveloped him in a mysterious halo : it Was so unlike any thing else which the play-goers could see in the heavens above , in the earth beneath , or in the waters

    under the earth , therefore did they admire it , I would undertake by this day week to drill a bag of wool into as good ah actor as many of their favourites were . And you may hear them still , c Ah ! we shall never see such geniuses again f Verily I hope not ! If a correct view of acting , of what true acting

    consists , if the qualities of mind which are indispensable to the formation of the actor , were fairly understood , the excellent Shelly would hot have spoken in contempt of the player ' s art . It must have been the whalebone petticoat and powdered periwig style that he was looking at . And not more than one in fifty of those wh 6 pant to belong to the profession , or to win praises by

    amateurship , would presume to set himself before a theatrical audience ; then , perhaps an actor might be estimated at something more than an object on which vulgar curiosity may pay to stare . And we should require ho stronger proof of utter absence of honesty , or lack of ability to judge , in those whose pens were employed in laudation of the tragic powers of a boy . They did not confine themselves to an admiration of the boy ' s memoried tact , and

    imitation of a schooled manner , or I should not pause to comment on their honesty or judgment here . They gulled themselves and the world * by * criticaP examinations of the exhibition , as really good acting , as imagined feelings and creations of secondary existence : and , in their estimation , elevated the boy Betty to a

    level with—ay , to an eminence above the noblest theatrical spirits of the day . Had there been truth in the ' criticisms ; ' had he merited the eiilogies which were awarded to him ; had he deserved a hundredth part of them , the boy must have possessed the constitutional temperament , mingling with an innate fountain of moral faculties , which would have flourished and widened in

    manhood ; and thought and experience would have invigorated them in years : whereas the result in manhodd was decline , inefficiency . The original prihcijple , the grand faculty , the sacred fire was not there , or ft CotiW not have perished so : it would have battled

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    Myjrrsl Play . 483

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 483, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/43/