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.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

My mother wanted me to be a lawyer and I wanted to be an Actor. So I went to school, read more

My mother wanted me to be a lawyer and I wanted to be an Actor. So I went to school, majored in theatre, and said 'Mom, I have to choose my own destiny. I want to be an actor.' A couple of weeks after I graduated college I called my mother up and said 'Can I borrow $200?' and she said 'Why don't you act like you've got $200.'

You need three things in the theatre--the play, the actors and the audience,--and each must give something.

You need three things in the theatre--the play, the actors and the audience,--and each must give something.

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.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

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

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

Practice as if you are the worst, perform as if you are the best.

Practice as if you are the worst, perform as if you are the best.