I discovered
that there were cabals breaking out in the company, headed by the
clown, who you may recollect was a terribly peevish, fractious fellow,
and always in ill-humor. I had a great mind to turn him off at once,
but I could not do without him, for there was not a droller scoundrel
on the stage. His very shape was comic, for he had to turn his back
upon the audience and all the ladies were ready to die with laughing.
He felt his importance, and took advantage of it. He would keep the
audience in a continual roar, and then come behind the scenes and fret
and fume and play the very devil. I excused a great deal in him,
however, knowing that comic actors are a little prone to this infirmity
of temper.
I had another trouble of a nearer and dearer nature to struggle with;
which was, the affection of my wife. As ill luck would have it, she
took it into her head to be very fond of me, and became intolerably
jealous. I could not keep a pretty girl in the company, and hardly
dared embrace an ugly one, even when my part required it. I have known
her to reduce a fine lady to tatters, "to very rags," as Hamlet says,
in an instant, and destroy one of the very best dresses in the
wardrobe; merely because she saw me kiss her at the side
scenes;--though I give you my honor it was done merely by way of
rehearsal.
This was doubly annoying, because I have a natural liking to pretty
faces, and wish to have them about me; and because they are
indispensable to the success of a company at a fair, where one has to
vie with so many rival theatres.
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