Identifier: fiftyyearsofacto01cole (find matches)
Title: Fifty years of an actor's life
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Coleman, John, d. 1904
Subjects: Actors and actresses
Publisher: London : Hutchinson & Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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but perseverance and a little coin accomplishes wonders, and I soon found myself taking part in a series of performances given by the club (I think we called ourselves the Garrick) at Pym's Theatre, Gray's Inn Lane. The manager, who was said to be by day a clerk in the Bank of England, by night was proprietor, manager, carpenter, and propertyman of the private theatre in Gough Street. He was a tall fellow with protrusive and pendulous gills, a bulbous and bibulous nose, a watery blue eye, and an insatiable and devouring thirst. What with his unchanging suit of rusty black and his white choker,he looked a clerical replica of Bardolph. My first part was Francesco Foscari, in Miss Mitford's tragedy of Foscari; my next, Hamlet (of course !) ; Miles Bertram, in The Wreck Ashore and the Duke Aranza in The Honeymoon in which, to our astonishment, our charming leading lady refused the part of Juliana, and insisted on enacting the secondary character, Zamora. Our astonishment, however, gave way to admiration when
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From a portrait by Jones. CHARLES JAMES MATHEWS. Life in London 105 she came forth in male attire. Truly she was "Jove's own page". Evidently she knew it. That was her last appearance on the stage. The Rolando of the night — a gentleman in an important mercantile position — lost his too susceptible heart to the fair Zamora and her beautiful legs, and they were married a month afterwards, and retired into private life, much to my indignation, as she had promised to play for my benefit in Buckstone's drama of The Bear Hunters, founded upon one of Colley Grattan's novels. In the last scene of this play I introduced an effect never contemplated by the author. I had to strangle the villain ; unfortunately, I had cut the web of my thumb badly a week before, and when I took my enemy by the throat, the wound burst out afresh, deluging the wretched Estevan with blood. The audience thought this a fine realistic effect, and applauded accordingly. It was realistic with a vengeance, for it nearly caused my death by lockjaw.

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