" Of his own share in the representation the stroller
speaks candidly enough: "I snuffed the candles, and, let me tell you,
that without a candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its
embellishments." But there has always been forthcoming a very abundant
supply of stories of this kind, not always to be understood literally,
however, concerning the drama under difficulties, and the comical side
of the player's indigence, distresses, and quaint artifices to conceal
his poverty.
A word should be said as to the courage and enterprise of our early
strollers. Travelling is nowadays so easy a matter that we are apt to
forget how solemnly it was viewed by our ancestors. In the last
century a man thought about making his will as a becoming preliminary
to his journeying merely from London to Edinburgh. But the strollers
were true to themselves and their calling, though sometimes the
results of their adventures were luckless enough. "Our plantations in
America have been voluntarily visited by some itinerants, Jamaica in
particular," writes Chetwood, in his "History of the Stage" (1749).
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