One remarks that the race of comic actors or low comedians never becomes extinct. That power of always seizing on the comic side in everything, of always being able to make an audience laugh throughout a whole piece, is never, happily, taken away from a world which would be too sad without it. Great poets do not occur more than once in a century: great novelists not more than twice: but the low comedian, the comic man, whose face, whose voice, whose carriage, are as humorous as his words, never fails us. Tarlton is followed by Kempe, Kempe by Armin, Armin by Schanke. So Robson follows Liston, and Toole follows Robson, with lesser lights besides.
There are many other actors. The painstaking Collier finds out what parts they played and where they lived. Alas! He tells us no more. Perhaps there is no more to tell. The rank and file of the theatrical company are never a very interesting collection. Underwood, Toovey, Eccleston, Cowley, Cooke, Sly, Argan--they are shadows that have long since passed out, made an exit, and so an end. They were forgotten by the audience the day after they were dead. Why seek to revive their memory when there is not a single solitary fact to go upon? A bone would be something: out of the skull of Yorick we might perhaps reconstruct his life, with all the adventures, love-making, disappointments, distresses and triumphs.
We know the place where they all lived; the place of a continual Fair without any booths, yet everything offered for sale: the music to cheer your heart--you could command it had you money in purse; the wine to raise your courage--you could call for it; the dancing to charm your eye--any girl would dance for you if you paid her; the new play to fill you with lofty thoughts--but you must pay for your seat; the jig to bring you back to the level of earth--or perhaps a little lower--you could buy it; the eyes of Dalilah at the sign of the Swan in the Hoope were directed to your purse; the ruffians belonging to the kennels and the bear garden; the drawers of the taverns and the sack and the tobacco, the boats and the boatmen, were all at your service. The players lived in this riot and racket, themselves a part: we catch glimpses of them, we can discern them amid the crowd: sometimes one of their women is ducked for a shrew; one of them is clapped in the Clink Prison: some are haled before the Bishop for acting in Lent--these unreasonable people really object to starving in Lent! And the place and the people and their manners and customs are deplorable but delightful; they are picturesque to the highest degree, but they are equally reprehensible. I wish we could go back four hundred years and see and listen for ourselves: but with all our admiration for the Elizabethan drama, I do not think that I should like to be one of the Show Folk or to live with them in that jovial colony on the Bankside in the days of the Globe and the Rose, the Hope and the Swan.