No. XLVI.

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THE CONVERSATION OF ACTORS.


Actors are rather generally esteemed to be what is commonly called "good
company." For our part, we think the companionable qualities of the
members of the _corps drámatique_ are much overrated. There are
many of them, we know full well, as pleasant and agreeable spirits as
any extant; but the great mass of actors are too outrageously
professional to please. Their conversation is too much tainted with
theatricals--they do not travel off the stage in their discourse--their
gossip smacks of the green-room--their jests and good things are, for
the most part, extracts from plays--they lack originality--the drama is
their world, and they think nothing worthy of argument but men and
matters connected with it. They are the weakest of all critics, their
observations on characters in plays are hereditary opinions of the
corps, which descend as heir looms with the part to its successive
representatives. There are, doubtless, some splendid exceptions--we
could name several performers, who talk finely on general subjects, who
are not confined to the foot-lights in their fancies, who utter jests of
the first water, whose sayings are worth hearing, and whose anecdotes
are made up of such good materials, and are so well told withal, that
our "lungs have crowed like chanticleer" to hear them. Others, we have
met with, who are the antipodes of those drama-doating gentlemen whom
we have noticed above, who rarely, unless purposely inveigled into it,