[61] In the second edition Dr. Doran says: "After he passed to Lincoln's Inn Fields, Rich designed to bring forward the 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' but no one seemed daring enough to undertake Falstaff. 'I will venture it,' said Quin, 'if no one else can be found.' 'You!' cried Rich, 'you might as well try Cato after Booth. The character of Falstaff is quite another character from what you think. It is not a little snivelling part that any one can do; and there isn't any man among you that has any idea of the part but myself!' Ultimately Quin 'attempted' the part; his conception of it was admirable, and the house willingly flung itself into a very storm of hilarious jollity."
OLD THEATRE ROYAL, EDINBURGH.
[CHAPTER XI.]
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.
In 1753-4 Mrs. Cibber returned to Drury; she played Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, and with him in every piece that admitted of their playing together. But Barry gained in Miss Nossiter a Juliet, not, indeed, equal to Mrs. Cibber, but one who increased his own ardour and earnestness in Romeo, his tenderness and anxiety in Jaffier, and his truth and playfulness as Florizel, inasmuch as that they were mutually in love, and all the house was in the secret.
Miss Nossiter, however, did not realise her early promise. Contemporary critics speak of the novice as being of a delicate figure, graceful in the expression of distress, but requiring carefulness in the management of her voice, and a more simple elocution. One of her judges curiously remarks:—"She frequently alarmed the audience with the most striking attitudes." The critic recovers from his alarm when speaking of another debutante (Mrs. Elmey), who acted Desdemona to Barry's Othello. "No part," he says, "has been better represented in our memory," and "we scarce knew what it was before she acted it."
Of poor Miss Nossiter there is little more recorded than that, at the end of a brief career, she died, after bequeathing to Barry, the Romeo, for whom more than Miss Nossiter professed to be dying,—£3000.