The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous ProseLamb, Charles
General
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous Prose
Lamb, Charles
English literature
I once sat in the Pit of Drury-lane Theatre next to a blind man, who, I
afterwards learned, was a street musician, well known about London. The
play was _Richard the Third_, and it was curious to observe the interest
which he took in every successive scene, so far more lively than could
be perceived in any of the company around him. At those pathetic
interviews between the _Queen_ and _Duchess of York_, after the murder
of the children, his eyes (or rather the places where eyes should have
been) gushed out tears in torrents, and he sat intranced in attention,
while every one about him was tittering, partly at him, and partly at
the grotesque figures and wretched action of the women, who had been
selected by managerial taste to personate those royal mourners. Having
no drawback of sight to impair his sensibilities, he simply attended to
the scene, and received its unsophisticated impression. _So much the
rather her celestial light shone inward._ I was pleased with an
observation which he made, when I asked him how he liked Kemble, who
played _Richard_. I should have thought (said he) that that man had been
reading something out of a book, if I had not known that I was in a
play-house.
I was once amused in a different way by a knot of country people who had
come to see a play at that same Theatre. They seemed perfectly
inattentive to all the best performers for the first act or two, though
the piece was admirably played, but kept poring in the play-bill, and
were evidently watching for the appearance of one, who was to be the
source of supreme delight to them that night. At length the expected
actor arrived, who happened to be in possession of a very insignificant
part, not much above a mule [? mute]. I saw their faint attempt at
raising a clap on his appearance, and their disappointment at not being
seconded by the audience in general. I saw them try to admire and to
find out something very wonderful in him, and wondering all the while at
the moderate sensation he produced. I saw their pleasure and their
interest subside at last into flat mortification, when the riddle was at
once unfolded by my recollecting that this performer bore the same name
with an actor, then in the acme of his celebrity, at Covent-Garden, but
who lately finished his theatrical and mortal career on the other side
the Atlantic. They had come to see Mr. C----, but had come to the wrong
house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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