And the 111th:
'O for my sake do thou with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works on, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed.'
It is not much short of three centuries since those lines were written, but they seem still to bubble with a scorn which may indeed be called immortal.
'Sold cheap what is most dear.'
There, compressed in half a line, is the whole case against an actor's calling.
But it may be said Shakespeare was but a poor actor. He could write Hamlet and As You Like It; but when it came to casting the parts, the Ghost in the one and old Adam in the other were the best he could aspire to. Verbose biographers of Shakespeare, in their dire extremity, and naturally desirous of writing a big book about a big man, have remarked at length that it was highly creditable to Shakespeare that he was not, or at all events that it does not appear that he was, jealous, after the true theatrical tradition, of his more successful brethren of the buskin.
It surely might have occured, even to a verbose biographer in his direst need, that to have had the wit to write and actually to have written the soliloquies in Hamlet, might console a man under heavier afflictions than the knowledge that in the popular estimate somebody else spouted those soliloquies better than he did himself. I can as easily fancy Milton jealous of Tom Davies as Shakespeare of Richard Burbage. But—good, bad, or indifferent—Shakespeare was an actor, and as such I tender his testimony.
I now—for really this matter must be cut short—summon pell-mell all the actors and actresses who have ever strutted their little hour on the stage, and put to them the following comprehensive question: Is there in your midst one who had an honest, hearty, downright pride and pleasure in your calling, or do not you all (tell the truth) mournfully echo the lines of your great master (whom nevertheless you never really cared for), and with him
'Your fortunes chide,
That did not better for your lives provide
Than public means, which public manners breeds.'
They all assent: with wonderful unanimity.