Nutts. The actors do certainly bang away in large type now.
Nosebag. And the worst of it is, Mr Nutts, there seems a fate in it; for the bigger the type the smaller the player. I could show you a playbill with Mr Garrick’s name in it not the eighth of an inch. And now, if you want to measure on the wall “Mr Snooks as Hamlet,” why, you must take a three-foot rule to do it. Don’t talk on it. The players break my heart; but I go on sticking ’em of course.
Nutts. To be sure. Business before feelings. Have you seen Miss Rayshall, the French actress at the St James’s?
Nosebag. Not yet. I’m waiting till she goes to the ’Aymarket.
Tickle. But she isn’t a-going there.
Nosebag. Isn’t she? How can she help it? Being of the French stage, somebody’s safe to translate her.
Tickle. Ha, so I thought. But all the French players have been put on their guard; and there isn’t one of ’em will go near the Draymatic Authors’ Society without two policemen.
Pucker. Well, I’m not partic’lar; but really, gen’l’men, to talk in this way about plays and players, on a Sunday morning too, is a shocking waste of human life. I was about to say——
Nutts. Clean as a whistle, Mr Slowgoe. Mr Tickle, now for you. (Tickle takes the chair.)
Pucker. I was about to say, it’s nice encouragement to go a-soldiering—this flogging at Hounslow.