Parsons was
exceedingly angry at the interruption, but the audience appear to have
tolerated, and even enjoyed the gag. As Reynolds himself leniently
writes: "Many performers before and since the days of Edwin have
acquired the power, by private winks, irrelevant buffoonery and
dialogue, to make their fellow-players laugh, and thus confound the
audience and mar the scene; Edwin, disdaining this confined and
distracting system, established a sort of entre-nous-ship (if I may
venture to use the expression) with the audience, and made them his
confidants; and though wrong in his principle, yet so neatly and
skilfully did he execute it, that instead of injuring the business of
the stage, he frequently enriched it."
Edwin seems, indeed, to have been an actor of some genius,
notwithstanding his "extravasations of whim," and an habitual
intemperance, which probably hastened the close of his professional
career--for the man was a shameless sot. "I have often seen him,"
writes Boaden, "brought to the stage-door, senseless and motionless,
lying at the bottom of a coach.
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