Further, it was always the strollers' principle of
action to stick at nothing: to be deterred by no difficulties in
regard to paucity of numbers, deficient histrionic gifts, inadequate
wardrobes, or absent scenery. They were always prepared to represent,
somehow, any play that seemed to them to promise advantages to their
treasury. The labours of doubling fell chiefly on the minor players,
for the leading tragedian was too frequently present on the scene as
the hero of the night to be able to undertake other duties. But if the
player of Hamlet, for instance, was confined to that character, it was
still competent for the representative of "the ghost of buried
Denmark" to figure also as Laertes; or for Polonius, his death
accomplished, to reappear in the guise of Osric or the First
Gravedigger; to say nothing of such minor arrangements as were
involved in entrusting the parts of the First Actor, Marcellus, and
the Second Gravedigger to one actor. Some care had to be exercised
that the doubled characters did not clash, and were not required to be
simultaneously present upon the scene.
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