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My only regret in the theatre is that I could never sit out front and watch me.

Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime. In ever laughing Foote's fantastic time, Mad wag! who pardon'd none, nor spared the best, And turn'd some very serious things to jest. Nor church nor state escaped his public sneers, Arms nor the gown, priests, lawyers, volunteers, Alas, poor Yorick! now forever mute! Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote. We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes Ape the swoln dialogue of kings and queens, When Chrononhotonthelogos must die, And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.

As good as a play.

But as for all the rest, There's hardly one who stands the Artist's test. The Artist is a rare, rare breed. There were but two, forsooth, In all me time and The Other One was Booth.

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others, because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry, He formed it, and that was Sculpture, He colored it, and that was Painting, He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.

See, how these rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder.

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks, Plays are like suppers, poets are the cooks. The founder's you: the table is the place: The carvers we: the prologue is the grace. Each act, a course, each scene, a different dish, Though we're in Lent, I doubt you're still for flesh. Satire's the sauce, high season'd, sharp and rough. Kind masks and beaux, I hope you're pepperproof? Wit is the wine, but 'tis so scarce the true Poets, like vintners, balderdash and brew. Your surly scenes, where rant and bloodshed join. Are butcher's meat, a battle's sirloin: Your scenes of love, so flowing, soft and chaste, Are water gruel without salt or taste.

Prologues precede the piece in mournful verse, As undertakers walk before the hearse.

Prologues like compliments are loss of time, 'Tis penning bows and making legs in rhyme.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting 'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.

Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshifter, boxkeepeer, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into the bargain.

It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy, It's very hard one can't enjoy A little private spouting, But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives, Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives The tragic Muse a routing.

And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop To the low mimic follies of a farce, As a grave matron would to dance with girls.

The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please, must please to live.

Who teach the mind its proper face to scan, And hold the faithful mirror up to man.

This many headed monster.

This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew.

A long, exact, and serious comedy, In every scene some moral let it teach, And, if it can, at once both please and preach.

There still remains to mortify a wit The many headed monster of the pit.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart, To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.