He had to act first of all. Driven to
London and the drama by an irresistible impulse, when the choice of some
profession was necessary to make him independent of his father, seeing
he was himself, though very young, a married man, the first form in
which the impulse to the drama would naturally show itself in him would
be the desire to act; for the outside relations would first operate. As
to the degree of merit he possessed as an actor we have but scanty means
of judging; for afterwards, in his own plays, he never took the best
characters, having written them for his friend Richard Burbage. Possibly
the dramatic impulse was sufficiently appeased by the writing of the
play, and he desired no further satisfaction from personal
representation; although the amount of study spent upon the higher
department of the art might have been more than sufficient to render him
unrivalled as well in the presentation of his own conceptions. But the
dramatic spring, having once broken the upper surface, would scoop out a
deeper and deeper well for itself to play in, and the actor would soon
begin to work upon the parts he had himself to study for presentation.
Pages:
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140