Hisses the villain never escaped, and I was puzzled to know
how the poor actor could discriminate betwixt the hiss ethical and the
hiss aesthetic. But perhaps no player ever received the latter; the house
was very loyal to its favourites, all of whom had their well-defined
roles in every play, which spared the playwrights the task of indicating
character. Before the heroine had come on we knew that she was young and
virtuous--had she not been so for the last five and twenty years?--the
comic man had not to open his mouth for us to begin to laugh; a latent
sibilance foreran the villain. Least mutable of all, the hero swaggered
on, virtuous without mawkishness, pugnacious without brutality. How
sublime a destiny, to stand for morals and muscle to the generations of
Hoxton, to incarnate the copy-book crossed with the "Sporting Times!"
Were they bearable in private life, these monsters of virtue?
J. B. Howe was long this paragon of men--affectionately curtailed to
Jabey. Once, when the villain was about to club him, "Look out, Jabey!"
cried an agonised female voice. It followed from the happy understanding
on both sides of the curtain that--give ear, O envious lessees!--no play
ever failed. How could it? It was always the same play.
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