. I
want to revive Massinger's "Maid of Honor;" I want to act Camiola.

The necessity for carrying with us into the provinces a sufficient
number of various parts, and especially of plays in which my father and
myself could fill the principal characters, and so be tolerably
independent of incompetent coadjutors, was the reason of my coming out
in the play of "The Provoked Husband," before leaving London. The
passage in this letter about Lady Townley sufficiently shows how bad my
performance of it must have been, and how absolutely in the dark I was
with regard to the real style in which the part should be played. The
fine lady of my day, with the unruffled insipidity of her _low_ spirits
(high spirits never came near her) and the imperturbable composure of
her smooth insolence, was as unlike the rantipole, racketing high-bred
woman of fashion of Sir John Vanbrugh's play as the flimsy elegance of
my silver-embroidered, rose-colored tulle dress was unlike the elaborate
splendor of her hooped and feathered and high-heeled, patched-and-powdered
magnificence, with its falling laces and standing brocades. The part of
Lady Townley was not only beyond my powers, but has never been seen on
the English stage since the days of Mrs. Abington and Miss Farren, the
latter elegant and spirited actress being held by those who had seen
both less like the original great lady than her predecessor; while even
the Theatre Francais, where consummate study and reverend tradition of
elder art still prevail, has lost more and more the secret of _la grande
maniere_ in a gradual descent from the _grande dame_ of Mademoiselle
Contat to the pretty, graceful _femme comme il faut_ of Mademoiselle
Plessis; for even the exquisite Celimene of Mademoiselle Mars was but a
"pale reflex" of Moliere's brilliant coquette, as played by her great
instructress, Contat. The truth is, that society no longer possesses or
produces that creature, and a good deal of reading, not of a usual or
agreeable kind, would alone make one familiar enough with Lady Townley
and her like to enable an actress of the present day to represent her
with any verisimilitude. The absurd practice, too, of dressing all the
serious characters of the piece in modern costume, and all the comic
ones in that of the time at which it was written, renders the whole
ridiculously incoherent and manifestly impossible, and destroys it as a
picture of the manners of any time; for even stripped of her