Representative Actors; A Collection of Criticisms, Anecdotes, Personal Descriptions, Etc., Etc., Referring to Many Celebrated British Actors from the Sixteenth to the Present Century with Notes, Memoirs, and a Short Account of English Acting (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1888. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... John Quick. 1748-1831. He is a pleasant little fellow, and barring that he plays my business I wish his stay with us was much longer. He has not an atom of improper consequence in his composition.--Charles Mathews. Little Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Islington), with his squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle.--Ibid. Many who never saw the original Vortex (" Cure for the Heartache") and the great Silky on the stage, may yet remember old Quick the octogenarian, with his blue coat and basketbuttons, his snow-white waistcoat, black knee-breeches, silk stockings, shoes and buckles, the latter being on the Sabbath both at knee and instep of diamonds--or paste. Quick was a great favourite with George III.; but his acting went out of fashion when a more intellectual school appeared. Munden knew little, but Quick knew less; noise and extravagance were with him substituted for nature and humour. There is a print often in the old picture shops, of Humphreys and Mendoza sparring, and a queer angular exhibition it is. What that is to the modern art of pugilism, Quick's style of acting was to Dowton's; the latter rounded off the square corners of Quick's old men, and brought them nearer if not quite to the standard of truth and nature. Quick quitted the stage in disgust; when he left it he was as capable as he had been for the twenty years previous, and twenty years afterwards he remained as capable as when he left. He drank freely, sometimes six or seven glasses of rum and water in the evening after dining; and he had in his old age a fancy for all the old houses about his retreat (Pentonville). Quick loved to sit and talk of Garrick and Goldsmith, and what the dramatist said to him (Quick) when he enacted Tony Lumpkin on the first night of the production of " She Stoops...