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Obiter Dicta by Augustine Birrell
page 73 of 118 (61%)

'O for my sake do thou with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works on, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.'

It is not much short of three centuries since those lines were
written, but they seem still to bubble with a scorn which may indeed
be called immortal.

'Sold cheap what is most dear.'

There, compressed in half a line, is the whole case against an actor's
calling.

But it may be said Shakespeare was but a poor actor. He could write
_Hamlet_ and _As You Like It_; but when it came to casting the parts,
the Ghost in the one and old Adam in the other were the best he could
aspire to. Verbose biographers of Shakespeare, in their dire extremity,
and naturally desirous of writing a big book about a big man, have
remarked at length that it was highly creditable to Shakespeare
that he was not, or at all events that it does not appear that he was,
jealous, after the true theatrical tradition, of his more successful
brethren of the buskin.

It surely might have occured, even to a verbose biographer in his
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