Their waggery at times drove me almost crazy; for there is nothing so Vexatious as the hackneyed tricks and hoaxes and pleasantries of a veteran band of theatrical vagabonds.  I relished them well enough, it is true, while I was merely one of the company, but as manager I found them detestable.  They were incessantly bringing some disgrace upon the theatre by their tavern frolics, and their pranks about the country town.  All my lectures upon the importance of keeping up the dignity of the profession, and the respectability of the company were in vain.  The villains could not sympathize with the delicate feelings of a man in station.  They even trifled with the seriousness of stage business.  I have had the whole piece interrupted, and a crowded audience of at least twenty-five pounds kept waiting, because the actors had hid away the breeches of Rosalind, and have known Hamlet stalk solemnly on to deliver his soliloquy, with a dish-clout pinned to his skirts.  Such are the baleful consequences of a manager’s getting a character for good nature.

I was intolerably annoyed, too, by the great actors who came down starring, as it is called, from London.  Of all baneful influences, keep me from that of a London star.  A first-rate actress going the rounds of the country theatres, is as bad as a blazing comet, whisking about the heavens, and shaking fire, and plagues, and discords from its tail.

The moment one of these “heavenly bodies” appeared on my horizon, I was sure to be in hot water.  My theatre was overrun by provincial dandies, copper-washed counterfeits of Bond street loungers; who are always proud to be in the train of an actress from town, and anxious to be thought on exceeding good terms with her.  It was really a relief to me when some random young nobleman would come in pursuit of the bait, and awe all this small fry to a distance.  I have always felt myself more at ease with a nobleman than with the dandy of a country town.

And then the injuries I suffered in my personal dignity and my managerial authority from the visits of these great London actors.  Sir, I was no longer master of myself or my throne.  I was hectored and lectured in my own green-room, and made an absolute nincompoop on my own stage.  There is no tyrant so absolute and capricious as a London star at a country theatre.

I dreaded the sight of all of them; and yet if I did not engage them, I was sure of having the public clamorous against me.  They drew full houses, and appeared to be making my fortune; but they swallowed up all the profits by their insatiable demands.  They were absolute tape-worms to my little theatre; the more it took in, the poorer it grew.  They were sure to leave me with an exhausted public, empty benches, and a score or two of affronts to settle among the townsfolk, in consequence of misunderstandings about the taking of places.