the play, the
Queen expressly says, "He's fat, and scant of breath." This line has
puzzled many commentators, as seeming out of character; but it merely
indicates that Richard Burbage was fleshy during the season of 1602.

The Elizabethan expedient of disguising the heroine as a boy, which was
invented by John Lyly, made popular by Robert Greene, and eagerly adopted
by Shakespeare and Fletcher, seems unconvincing on the modern stage. It is
hard for us to imagine how Orlando can fail to recognise his love when he
meets her clad as Ganymede in the forest of Arden, or how Bassanio can be
blinded to the figure of his wife when she enters the court-room in the
almost feminine robes of a doctor of laws. Clothes cannot make a man out of
an actress; we recognize Ada Rehan or Julia Marlowe beneath the trappings
and the suits of their disguises; and it might seem that Shakespeare was
depending over-much upon the proverbial credulity of theatre audiences. But
a glance at histrionic conditions in Shakespeare's day will show us
immediately why he used this expedient of disguise not only for Portia and
Rosalind, but for Viola and Imogen as well. Shakespeare wrote these parts
to be played not by women but by boys. Now, when a boy playing a woman
disguised himself as a woman playing a boy, the disguise must have seemed
baffling, not only to Orlando and Bassanio on the stage, but also to the
audience. It was Shakespeare's boy actors, rather than his narrative
imagination, that made him recur repeatedly in this case to a dramatic
expedient which he would certainly discard if he were writing for actresses
to-day.

If we turn from the work of Shakespeare to that of Moliere, we shall find
many more evidences of the influence of the actor on the dramatist. In
fact, Moliere's entire scheme of character-creation cannot be understood
without direct reference to the histrionic capabilities of the various
members of the _Troupe de Monsieur_. Moliere's immediate and practical
concern was not so much to create comic characters for all time as to make
effective parts for La Grange and Du Croisy and Magdeleine Bejart, for his
wife and for himself. La Grange seems to have been the Charles Wyndham of
his day,--every inch a gentleman; his part in any of the plays may be
distinguished by its elegant urbanity. In _Les Precieuses Ridicules_ the
gentlemanly characters are actually named La Grange and Du Croisy; the
actors walked on and played themselves; it