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And you, Mr. Merryman, the painted grin worn from your pale lips, you too were dissatisfied, if I remember rightly, with your part. You wanted to make the people cry, not laugh. Was it a higher ambition? The poor tired people! so much happens in their life to make them weep, is it not good sport to make them merry for awhile? Do you remember that old soul in the front row of the Pit? How she laughed when you sat down on the pie! I thought she would have to be carried out. I heard her talking to her companion as they passed the stage-door on their way home. “I have not laughed, my dear, till to-night,” she was saying, the good, gay tears still in her eyes, “since the day poor Sally died.” Was not that alone worth the old stale tricks you so hated? Aye, they were commonplace and conventional, those antics of yours that made us laugh; are not the antics that make us weep commonplace and conventional also? Are not all the plays, played since the booth was opened, but of one pattern, the plot old-fashioned now, the scenes now commonplace? Hero, villain, cynic–are their parts so much the fresher? The love duets, are they so very new? The death-bed scenes, would you call them UNcommonplace? Hate, and Evil, and Wrong–are THEIR voices new to the booth? What are you waiting for, people? a play with a plot that is novel, with characters that have never strutted before? It will be ready for you, perhaps, when you are ready for it, with new tears and new laughter.

You, Mr. Merryman, were the true philosopher. You saved us from forgetting the reality when the fiction grew somewhat strenuous. How we all applauded your gag in answer to the hero, when, bewailing his sad fate, he demanded of Heaven how much longer he was to suffer evil fortune. “Well, there cannot be much more of it in store for you,” you answered him; “it’s nearly nine o’clock already, and the show closes at ten.” And true to your prophecy the curtain fell at the time appointed, and his troubles were of the past. You showed us the truth behind the mask. When pompous Lord Shallow, in ermine and wig, went to take his seat amid the fawning crowd, you pulled the chair from under him, and down he sat plump on the floor. His robe flew open, his wig flew off. No longer he awed us. His aped dignity fell from him; we saw him a stupid-eyed, bald little man; he imposed no longer upon us. It is your fool who is the only true wise man.

Yours was the best part in the play, Brother Merryman, had you and the audience but known it. But you dreamt of a showier part, where you loved and fought. I have heard you now and again, when you did not know I was near, shouting with sword in hand before your looking-glass. You had thrown your motley aside to don a dingy red coat; you were the hero of the play, you performed the gallant deeds, you made the noble speeches. I wonder what the play would be like, were we all to write our own parts. There would be no clowns, no singing chambermaids. We would all be playing lead in the centre of the stage, with the lime-light exclusively devoted to ourselves. Would it not be so?

What grand acting parts they are, these characters we write for ourselves alone in our dressing-rooms. We are always brave and noble–wicked sometimes, but if so, in a great, high-minded way; never in a mean or little way. What wondrous deeds we do, while the house looks on and marvels. Now we are soldiers, leading armies to victory. What if we die: it is in the hour of triumph, and a nation is left to mourn. Not in some forgotten skirmish do we ever fall; not for some “affair of outposts” do we give our blood, our very name unmentioned in the dispatches home. Now we are passionate lovers, well losing a world for love–a very different thing to being a laughter-provoking co-respondent in a sordid divorce case.