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Title: Epilogue To An Amateur Performance of "Richard II"
Author: Charles Lamb [
More Titles by Lamb]
(1824)
Of all that act, the hardest task is theirs,
Who, bred no Players, play at being Players;
Copy the shrug--in Kemble once approved;--
Mere mimics' mimics--nature twice removed.
Shades of a shadow! who but must have seen
The stage-struck hero, in some swelling scene
Aspiring to be Lear--stumble on Kean?
The admired actor's faults our steps betray,--
No less his very beauties lead astray!
In "sad civility" once Garrick sate
To see a Play, mangled in form and state;
Plebeian Shakspeare must the words supply,--
The actors all were Fools--of Quality.
The scenes--the dresses--were above rebuke;--
Scarce a Performer there below a Duke.
He sate, and mused how in his Shakspeare's mind
The idea of old Nobility enshrined
Should thence a grace and a refinement have
Which passed these living Nobles to conceive,--
Who with such apish, base gesticulation,
Remnants of starts, and dregs of playhouse passion,
So foul belied their great forefathers' fashion!
He saw--and true Nobility confessed
Less in the high-born blood, than lowly poet's breast.
If Lords enacting Lords sometimes may fail,
What gentle plea, Spectators, can avail
For wight of low degree who dares to stir
The long-raked ashes of old Lancaster,
And on his nothing-martial front to set
Of warlike Gaunt the lofty burgonet?
For who shall that Plantagenet display,
Majestical in sickness and decay?
Or paint the shower of passions fierce and thick
On Richard's head--that Royal Splenetic?
Your pardon, not your plaudits, then we claim
If we've come short, where Garrick had been tame!
[The end]
Charles Lamb's poem: Epilogue To An Amateur Performance Of "Richard II"
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