Other duties, hardly less arduous, would fall to
him in the after-pieces. "I remember," said King, the actor famous as
being the original Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby, "that when I had
been but a short time on the stage, I performed one night King
Richard, sang two comic songs, played in an interlude, danced a
hornpipe, spoke a prologue, and was afterwards harlequin, in a sharing
company; and after all this fatigue my share came to threepence and
three pieces of candle!" A strolling manager of a later period was
wont to boast that he had performed the complete melodrama of "Rob
Roy" with a limited company of five men and three women. Hard-worked,
ill-paid, and, consequently, ill-fed, the stroller must have often led
a dreary and miserable life enough. The late Mr. Drinkwater Meadows
used to tell of his experiences with a company that travelled through
Warwickshire, and their treasury being empty, depended for their
subsistence upon their piscatorial skill. They lived for some time,
indeed, upon the trout streams of the county. They plied rod and line,
and learned their parts at the same time.
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