ety,
rather than the theatre, has made the lives of actors as we see them in
these volumes, in many cases so tragic, even sordidly tragic.

If misery and madness abound in stage life, so also does an indomitable
cheerfulness, always at least a cheerful countenance. Dr. Doran's book
abounds, as might be expected, with admirable impromptus and the like;
one might collect a large posy of them. Foote, seeing a sweep on a
blood-horse, remarked, "There goes Warburton on Shakespeare!" When he
heard that the Rockingham Cabinet was fatigued to death and at its
wits' end, he exclaimed that it could not have been the length of the
journey which had tired it. Again, when Lord Carmarthen, at a party,
told him his handkerchief was hanging from his pocket, Foote replaced
[81] it with a "Thank you, my lord; you know the company better than
I." Jevon, a century earlier, was in the habit of taking great
liberties with authors and audience. He made Settle half mad and the
house ecstatic when having, as Lycurgus, Prince of China, to "fall on
his sword," he placed it flat on the stage, and, falling over it,
"died," according to the direction of the acting copy. Quaint enough,
but certainly no instance of anybody's wit, is the account of how a
French translation of a play of Vanbrugh--not architect of Blenheim
only, but accomplished in many other ways--appeared at the Odeon, in
1862, with all fitting raptures, as a posthumous work of Voltaire
recently discovered. The Voltairean wit vas found as "delightful in
this as in the last century."

Of Shakespeare on the stage Dr. Doran has a hundred curious things to
note:--that Richard the Third, for instance, who has retained a so
unflattering possession of the stage, was its "first practically useful
patron." We see Queen Elizabeth full of misgiving at a difficult time
at the popularity of Richard the Second:--"The deposition and death of
King Richard the [82] Second." "Tongues whisper to the Queen that this
play is part of a great plot to teach her subjects how to murder
kings." It is perhaps not generally known that Charles Shakespeare,
William's brother, survived till the Restoration.

Oldys says, a propos of the restoration of the stage at that time:--

"The actors were greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance,
more especially in Shakespeare's dramatic character, which his brother
could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and
possibly his memory s