“task to read all this trash, and to satisfy the bards that it was so.
“When I first entered upon theatrical affairs, I had some idea of writing for the house myself, but soon became a convert to Pope’s opinion on that subject. Who would condescend to the drudgery of the stage, and enslave himself to the humours, the caprices, the taste or tastelessness, of the age? Besides, one must write for particular actors, have them continually in one’s eye, sacrifice character to the personating of it, cringe to some favourite of the public, neither give him too many nor two few lines to spout, think how he would mouth such and such a sentence, look such and such a passion, strut such and such a scene. Who, I say, would submit to all this? Shakspeare had many advantages: he was an actor by profession, and knew all the tricks of the trade. Yet he had but little fame in his day: see what Jonson and his contemporaries said of him. Besides, how few of what are called Shakspeare’s plays are exclusively so!—and how, at this distance of time, and lost as so many works of that period are, can we separate what really is from what is not his own?
M
