The Seven Ages of Acting.
1. First the Infant mewling and puling in the dresser’s arms—waiting to go on at eighteenpence a night.
2. Then the Pantomime Imp, with his whistle and dirty morning face, crawling like snail unwillingly to rehearsal.
3. And then the Jeune Premier, smoking like a furnace, with woeful bad legs. “Made-up,” too, in moustache and eyebrows.
4. Then the Melodramatic Artist, full of strange oaths, bearded, and wearing pads, jealous in liquor, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking bubble reputation, even at an East-end theatre.
5. And then the Low Comedian, in big ulster, with good flannel lined.
6. Sixth age, scene shifts, and at Christmas plays the lean and slippered pantaloon. The wardrobe hose, a world too wide for his shrunk shank.
7. Last scene of all in this strange, eventful history in second-sightedness, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything—but hot gin toddy.
Wallis Mackay.
St. Stephens’ Saturnalia, December, 1884.