The
best plays no longer found decent representatives for any but one or two
of their first parts; the pieces of more serious character and higher
pretension as dramatic works were supplanted by burlesques and parodies
of themselves; the school of acting of the Kembles, Young, the Keans,
Macready, and their contemporaries, gave place to no school at all of
very clever ladies and gentlemen, who certainly had no pretension to act
tragedy or declaim blank verse, but who played low comedy better than
high, and lowest farce best of all, and who for the most part wore the
clothes of the sex to which they did not belong. Shakespeare's plays
_all_ became historical, and the profession was decidedly the worse for
the change; I am not aware, however, that the public has suffered much
by it.
GREAT RUSSELL STREET, March 5, 1831.
MY DEAREST H----,
I am extremely obliged to you for your long account of Mrs. John
Kemble, and all the details respecting her with which, as you knew
how intensely interesting they were likely to be to me, you have so
kindly filled your letter. Another time, if you can afford to give
a page or two to her interesting dog, Pincher, I shall be still
more grateful; you know it is but omitting the superfluous word or
two you squeeze in about yourself.
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