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

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

My sister wanted to be an actress. She never made it, but she does live in a trailer... so she read more

My sister wanted to be an actress. She never made it, but she does live in a trailer... so she got halfway. She's an actress, she's just never called to the set.

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks;
Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks.
The founder's read more

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.

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

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

The play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of
Hamlet, the character of the Prince of read more

The play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of
Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.

Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime.
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time;
Mad wag! who pardon'd none, read more

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.

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my
own just above the others; because in read more

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.

A long, exact, and serious comedy;
In every scene some moral let it teach,
And, if it read more

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

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express read more

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.