--if faults they can be called which seem rather hard necessities, the
discolouring of the dyer's hand; greedy hungering after applause,
endless egotism, grudging praise--all are there; not perhaps in the
tropical luxuriance they have attained elsewhere, but plain enough.
But do we not also find, deeply engrained and constant, a sense of
degradation, a longing to escape from the stage for ever?

He did not like his children to come and see him act, and was always
regretting--heaven help him!--that he wasn't a barrister-at-law. Look
upon this picture and on that. Here we have Macbeth, that mighty
thane; Hamlet, the intellectual symbol of the whole world of modern
thought; Strafford, in Robert Browning's fine play; splendid dresses,
crowded theatres, beautiful women, royal audiences; and on the other
side, a rusty gown, a musty wig, a fusty court, a deaf judge, an
indifferent jury, a dispute about a bill of lading, and ten guineas on
your brief--which you have not been paid, and which you can't recover
--why, ''tis Hyperion to a satyr!'

Again, we find Mrs. Siddons writing of her sister's marriage:

'I have lost one of the sweetest companions in the world. She has
married a respectable man, though of small fortune. I thank God she is
off the stage.' What is this but to say, 'Better the most humdrum of
existences with the most "respectable of men," than to be upon the
stage'?

The volunteered testimony of actors is both large in bulk and valuable
in quality, and it is all on my side.

Their involuntary testimony I pass over lightly. Far be from me the