dBooks desire

As a rule, a boy will do anything, or almost anything, to go to a
theatre. His delight in the drama is extreme--it possesses and absorbs
him completely. Mr. Pepys has left on record Tom Killigrew's "way of
getting to see plays when he was a boy." "He would go to the 'Red
Bull' (at the upper end of St. John Street, Clerkenwell), and when the
man cried to the boys--'Who will go and be a devil, and he shall see
the play for nothing?' then would he go in and be a devil upon the
stage, and so get to see plays." In one of his most delightful papers,
Charles Lamb has described his first visit to a theatre. He "was not
past six years old, and the play was 'Artaxerxes!' I had dabbled a
little in the 'Universal History'--the ancient part of it--and here
was the Court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past.
I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not
its import, but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of
'Daniel.' All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens,
palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not players.


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