A long, exact, and serious comedy;
In every scene some moral let it teach,
And, if it read more

A long, exact, and serious comedy;
In every scene some moral let it teach,
And, if it can, at once both please and preach.

And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop
To the low mimic follies of a farce,
As read more

And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop
To the low mimic follies of a farce,
As a grave matron would to dance with girls.

Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime.
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time;
Mad wag! who pardon'd none, read more

Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime.
In ever-laughing Foote's fantastic time;
Mad wag! who pardon'd none, nor spared the best,
And turn'd some very serious things to jest.
Nor church nor state escaped his public sneers,
Arms nor the gown, priests, lawyers, volunteers;
"Alas, poor Yorick!" now forever mute!
Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote.
We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes
Ape the swoln dialogue of kings and queens,
When "Chrononhotonthelogos must die,"
And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.

I sweat. If anything comes easy to me I mistrust it.

I sweat. If anything comes easy to me I mistrust it.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good
play needs no epilogue.

If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good
play needs no epilogue.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my
own just above the others; because in read more

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my
own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union
and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God
conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was
Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it
with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal
Drama.

There still remains to mortify a wit
The many-headed monster of the pit.

There still remains to mortify a wit
The many-headed monster of the pit.