SOURCE: "Remarks on Our Theatres," reprinted in The Bee and Other Essays by Oliver Goldsmith, Oxford University Press, 1914, pp. 3-7.

In the following, which was first published in the first number of the journal The Bee in 1759, Goldsmith censures the artificiality of the acting style prevalent on the London stage of his time.

Our theatres are now opened, and all Grub Street is preparing its advice to the managers; we shall undoubtedly hear learned disquisitions on the structure of one actor's legs, and another's eyebrows. We shall be told much of enunciations, tones, and attitudes, and shall have our lightest pleasures commented upon by didactic dullness. We shall, it is feared, be told, that Garrick is a fine actor, but then, as a manager, so avaricious! That Palmer is a most promising genius, and Holland likely to do well, in a particular cast of character. We shall have...