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AN ESSAY ON ACTING, &c.
AS I have a long Time (twenty Years, or more) made the STAGE, and ACTING, my Study and Entertainment, I look upon my|self, and indeed am thought by my Inti|mates, a proper Person to animadvert upon,
An essay on acting: in which will be consider'd the mimical behaviour of a certain fashionable faulty actor, ... To which will be added, a short criticism on his acting Macbeth.
About this Item
- Title
- An essay on acting: in which will be consider'd the mimical behaviour of a certain fashionable faulty actor, ... To which will be added, a short criticism on his acting Macbeth.
- Author
- Garrick, David, 1717-1779.
- Publication
- London :: printed for W. Bickerton,
- 1744.
- Rights/Permissions
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To the extent possible under law, the Text Creation Partnership has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above, according to the terms of the CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). This waiver does not extend to any page images or other supplementary files associated with this work, which may be protected by copyright or other license restrictions. Please go to http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/ecco/ for more information.
- Link to this Item
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http://name.umdl.umich.edu/004809594.0001.000
- Cite this Item
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"An essay on acting: in which will be consider'd the mimical behaviour of a certain fashionable faulty actor, ... To which will be added, a short criticism on his acting Macbeth." In the digital collection Eighteenth Century Collections Online. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/004809594.0001.000. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 5, 2025.
Pages
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or approve, the Errors and the Excellencies of the Theatre; and as there can be no better Opportunity offer itself than now, when the Town is running after their little fashi|onable Actor, in a Character of which he is, properly speaking, the Anticlimax of, or ra|ther the Antipode of Shakespear; I will en|deavour in the following Dissection of our Puppet Heroe, to convince my dear Country Men and Country Women, that they are madly following an Ignis fatuus, or Will of the Whisp, which they take for real substantial Light, and which I shall prove to be only the Rush-light of Genius, the Idol of Fashion, and an Air-drawn Favourite of the Imagination.
HOW are we degenerated in Taste! Oh how chang'd! how fallen!* 1.1 That our Thea|tre shall be crowded with Nobility, Ladies and Gentry, to see Macbeth Burlesqu'd, or Be—g—k'd, which are synonimous, when they might read Mr. Theobald's Edition of him, without throwing away their Money,
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mispending their Time, ruining their Taste, or running the Hazard of catching a vio|lent Cold, for a mere Non-entity: However, that I may not seem to be prejudic'd against Mr. G—k, as I really am not, for I ad|mire him, for thus boldly daring to deceive and cheat three Parts of the Nation; I shall, having now crack'd the Shell of my Spleen against the Town, come to the Kernel of Reason, and present 'em this little sweet Nut of theirs, worm-eaten to the Sight, imbit|ter'd to their Taste, and abhorr'd to their Imaginations, as Shakespear terms it.
IN order to do this, I shall present my Readers with the following short Treatise upon ACTING, which will shew 'em what ACTING ought to be, and what the present Favourite in Question is not.
Notes
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* 1.1
Milton's Paradise Lost.