I Was Playing The Part Of Richard The Third In A Country Barn, And
Absolutely "Out-Heroding Herod." An Agent Of One Of The Great London
Theatres Was Present.
He was on the lookout for something that might be
got up as a prodigy.
The theatre, it seems, was in desperate
condition - nothing but a miracle could save it. He pitched upon me for
that miracle. I had a remarkable bluster in my style, and swagger in my
gait, and having taken to drink a little during my troubles, my voice
was somewhat cracked; so that it seemed like two voices run into one.
The thought struck the agent to bring me out as a theatrical wonder; as
the restorer of natural and legitimate acting; as the only one who
could understand and act Shakespeare rightly. He waited upon me the
next morning, and opened his plan. I shrunk from it with becoming
modesty; for well as I thought of myself, I felt myself unworthy of
such praise.
"'Sblood, man!" said he, "no praise at all. You don't imagine that I
think you all this. I only want the public to think so. Nothing so easy
as gulling the public if you only set up a prodigy. You need not try to
act well, you must only act furiously. No matter what you do, or how
you act, so that it be but odd and strange. We will have all the pit
packed, and the newspapers hired. Whatever you do different from famous
actors, it shall be insisted that you are right and they were wrong.
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