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"But," said the actor-manager, with a sudden recollection, "how about the besom?" "The besom!" repeated Pinchas, nonplussed for once. "Yes, thou sayest thou hast seen all the plays I have produced. Hast thou not noticed that I have a besom in all my plays?" "Aha! Yes, I remember," said Pinchas. "An old garden-besom it is," said the actor-manager. "And it is the cause of all my luck."
Until quite recently, it used to be held impossible for a playwright to raise his curtain upon his leading character or characters, because the actor-manager would thus be baulked of his carefully arranged "entrance" and "reception," and, furthermore, because twenty-five per cent of the audience would probably arrive about a quarter of an hour late, and would thus miss the opening scene or scenes.
McGowan takes pleasure in announcing that he has engaged the celebrated Actor-Manager, Mr. Sellers Micawber Handy, and his talented company of performers to appear Next Saturday Evening To celebrate the anniversary of the founding of By the official inauguration of the METROPOLITAN ACADEMY OF MUSIC
There was a sharp knock at the door, which Marion in her excitement had left ajar, and Prentiss threw it wide open with an impressive sweep, as though he were announcing royalty. "Mr. Charles Wimpole," he said. The actor-manager stopped in the doorway bowing gracefully, his hat held before him and his hand on his stick as though it were resting on a foil.
As a dramatist, Hall Caine wrote, at this period in his career, a play called "Alton Locke." founded on Kingsley's story. It was shown to Rousby, the actor-manager, who liked "the promise that it showed" and asked Hall Caine to write a play to his order.
It happened that one of the most curious documents of the period in question was a scrap of vellum containing a fragment of a chronicle of Prince Arthur, with an illuminated portrait of his mother. It had been purchased for a trifling sum by the late Mr. Carew, and was now in the possession of Lydia, to whom the actor-manager applied for leave to inspect it.
Milden, who were well known for their beauty and charm; Osmond Hall, the paradoxical playwright; Monsieur Faubourg, the psychological novelist; Count Sciarra, an Italian nobleman, about fifty years old, who had written a history of the Popes, and who was now staying in London; Lady Herman, the beauty of a former generation, still extremely handsome; and Willmott, the successful actor-manager.
Indeed, there was a case where an actor-manager usurped a king's prerogative and transferred the chief characters in a play by a young dramatist to the celestial regions of Burke, notwithstanding the protest of the author, who admitted his absolute ignorance of the manners, ways of thought, and style in conversation of the inhabitants of Belgravia: no changes were made except in the names, and yet nobody suggested that the play was particularly rich in solecisms.
The first to a schoolboy who had written to him about Nicholas Nickleby is quite charming; the second, to the famous actor-manager who after being a Londoner by birth and residence for half a century had just retired, is almost Charles Lamb-like; and the third deserved to have been put in the original mouth of Mrs. Gamp! DOUGHTY STREET, LONDON. Dec. 12th. 1838. Respected Sir,
Five minutes after I had sat down to lunch, he flung open the dining-room door, and marched in. It is his customary "entrance." In a previous state of existence, his soul was probably that of an Actor-Manager. From his exuberant self-satisfaction, I was inclined to think he must have succeeded in following the milkman's advice; at all events, I have not seen the colonel since.
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