“As if nigger minstrels weren’t half-way to your Othello. No, you son of Satan. To hell with your capital! Didn’t you hear me say ditto to the rat-catcher? They are dens of the devil—theatres.”
“Then why do you run one?”
“Me! I don’t class my show as a theatre. Marionettes keep themselves to themselves.”
“But you play Shakespeare.”
Tony held up his fat glittering forefinger. “We pull Shakespeare’s strings—Polly and me. But there’s no actors the public can drag before the curtain.”
Will admitted the difference, but not the moral distinction.
“You ever met any actors and actresses?” said Tony.
Will could not pretend to that privilege—if Mr. Flippance and his daughter refused to be counted—and there was a long silence, in which Tony seemed to the outer eye to keep sips of brandy-and-water lingering on his palate, though he was really—it transpired—chewing the cud of bitter memories. For suddenly he burst out: “I lived all my life with ’em. I’ve managed ’em for years—or, rather, failed to manage ’em. Born in a Green Room, rocked in a Witches’ Cauldron, and baptized in grease-paint. My ma was a leading lady—she played heroines and my father wrote the melodramas. And they know a good melodrama at the ‘Eagle.’ ”
“Yes—I’ve heard of the ‘Eagle’ in London,” said Will.
“Ah, you know it by the song, perhaps: