Should we really care for the greatest actors of the past could we have them before us?
Should we find them too different from our accent of thought, of feeling, of speech, in a
thousand minute particulars which are of the essence of all three? Dr. Doran's long and
interesting records of the triumphs of Garrick, and other less familiar, but in their day hardly
less astonishing, players, do not relieve one of the doubt. Garrick himself, as sometimes
happens with people who have been the subject of much anecdote and other conversation,
here as elsewhere, bears no very distinct figure. One hardly sees the wood for the trees. On
the other hand, the account of Betterton, "perhaps the greatest of English actors," is
delightfully fresh. That intimate friend of Dryden, Tillatson, Pope, who executed a copy of
the actor's portrait by Kneller which is still extant, was worthy of their friendship; his career
brings out the best elements in stage life. The stage in these volumes presents itself indeed
not merely as a mirror of life, but as an illustration of the utmost intensity of life, in the
fortunes and characters of the players. Ups and downs, generosity, dark fates, the most
delicate goodness, have nowhere been more prominent than in the private existence of
those devoted to the public mimicry of men and women. Contact with the stage, almost
throughout its history, presents itself as a kind of touchstone, to bring out the bizarrerie,
the theatrical tricks and contrasts, of the actual world.
