of the odd-looking
gentlemen who are dubbed doctors of civil law on such occasions; and
the speeches of Prometheus, Oedipus, or Antigone, would be more
intelligible to the learned, and more amusing to the ladies, than
those Latin essays or the Creweian oration.

However, until I am vice-chancellor, the legitimate drama, Greek, Roman,
or English, seems little likely to revive in Oxford. _Our_ branch of
that great family, I confess, bore the bar-sinister. The offspring of
our theatrical affections was unrecognised by college authority. The
fellows of ---- would have done anything but "smile upon its birth."
The dean especially would have burked it at once had he suspected its
existence. Nor was it fostered, like the former Oxford theatricals to
which we have alluded, by royal patronage; we could not, consistently
with decorum, request her Majesty to encourage an illegitimate.
Nevertheless--spite of its being thus born under the rose, it grew and
prospered. Our plan of rehearsal was original. We used to adjourn from
dinner to the rooms of one or other of the company; and there, over our
wine and dessert, instead of quizzing freshmen and abusing tutors, open
each our acting copy, and, with all due emphasis and intonation, go
regularly through the scenes of _She Stoops to Conquer_. This was all
the study we ever gave to our parts; and even thus it was difficult to
get a muster of all the performers, and we had generally to play dummy
for some one or more of the characters, or "double" them, as the
professionals call it. The excuses for absenteeism were various. Mrs
Hardcastle and Tony were gone to Woodstock with a team, and were not to
be waited for; Diggory had a command to dine with the Principal; and
once an interesting dialogue was cut short by the untoward event of Miss
Neville's being "confined"--in consequence of some indiscretion or
other--"to chapel." It was necessary in our management, as much as
in Mr Bunn's or Mr Macready's, to humour the caprices of the stars of
the company; but the lesser lights, if they became eccentric at all
in their orbits, were extinguished without mercy. Their place was
easily supplied; for the moment it became known that a play was in
contemplation, there were plenty of candidates for dramatic fame,
especially among the freshmen; and though we mortally offended one or
two aspiring geniuses, by proffering them the vacant situations of
Ralph, Roger, and Co., in Mr Hardcastle's household,