Bracegirdle to favor us with a recitation?"
Cibber handed his cane with pomp to a small actor. Bracegirdle did the
same; and, striking the attitudes that had passed for heroic in their
day, they declaimed out of the "Rival Queens" two or three tirades, which
I graciously spare the reader of this tale. Their elocution was neat and
silvery; but not one bit like the way people speak in streets, palaces,
fields, roads and rooms. They had not made the grand discovery, which Mr.
A. Wigan on the stage, and every man of sense off it, has made in our day
and nation; namely, that the stage is a representation, not of stage, but
of life; and that an actor ought to speak and act in imitation of human
beings, not of speaking machines that have run and creaked in a stage
groove, with their eyes shut upon the world at large, upon nature, upon
truth, upon man, upon woman and upon child.
"This is slow," cried Cibber; "let us show these young people how ladies
and gentlemen moved fifty years ago, _dansons."_
A fiddler was caught, a beautiful slow minuet played, and a bit of
"solemn dancing" done. Certainly it was not gay, but it must be owned it
was beautiful; it was the dance of kings, the poetry of the courtly
saloon.
The retired actress, however, had frisker notions left in her. "This is
slow," cried she, and bade the fiddler play, "The wind that shakes the
barley," an ancient jig tune; this she danced to in a style that utterly
astounded the spectators.
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