The thought struck the agent to bring me out as a theatrical wonder; as
the restorer of natural and legitimate acting; as the only one who
could understand and act Shakespeare rightly. He waited upon me the
next morning, and opened his plan. I shrunk from it with becoming
modesty; for well as I thought of myself, I felt myself unworthy of
such praise.
"'Sblood, man!" said he, "no praise at all. You don't imagine that I
think you all this. I only want the public to think so. Nothing so easy
as gulling the public if you only set up a prodigy. You need not try to
act well, you must only act furiously. No matter what you do, or how
you act, so that it be but odd and strange. We will have all the pit
packed, and the newspapers hired. Whatever you do different from famous
actors, it shall be insisted that you are right and they were wrong. If
you rant, it shall be pure passion; if you are vulgar, it shall be a
touch of nature. Every one shall be prepared to fall into raptures, and
shout and yell, at certain points which you shall make. If you do but
escape pelting the first night, your fortune and the fortune of the
theatre is made."
I set off for London, therefore, full of new hopes. I was to be the
restorer of Shakespeare and nature, and the legitimate drama; my very
swagger was to be heroic, and my cracked voice the standard of
elocution. Alas, sir! my usual luck attended me. Before I arrived in
the metropolis, a rival wonder had appeared.
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