Page:As You Like It (1919) Yale.djvu/142

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As You Like It

were each assigned some actor of note. Among the more famous revivals of this century may be recalled Mrs. Woffington's Rosalind, together with Macklin's Touchstone, at Drury Lane, November, 1747. She had earlier played Rosalind in October, 1741, to Theophilus Cibber's Jaques. Francis Gentleman, writing in 1770 of this charming actress's Rosalind, found that her 'utterance and deportment were too strongly tinctured with affectation' to suit the simplicity of the forest of Arden. Peg Woffington's fame was derived from playing more sophisticated rôles. Again, at Drury Lane, in October, 1767, Mrs. Barry (also known at various times as Mrs. Dancer and Mrs. Crawford) played Rosalind, and King, Touchstone. John Taylor, writing the Records of My Life, in 1832–33, described her Rosalind as 'the most perfect representation of the character I ever witnessed. It was tender, animated, and playful to the highest degree.' The prompt-book appears to have been standardized by this performance. Mrs. Barry introduced into the fourth act the cuckoo song from All's Well That Ends Well (the music by Dr. Arne), and this alteration remained a part of the stage text for many years. This is the most notable deviation from the text of the First Folio which As You Like It underwent until recent times, apart from the 'cuts' to reduce the actual time of acting to one hour and forty-nine minutes. Although produced many times during the eighteenth century, Mrs. Inchbald, in 1808, said of this comedy: 'on the stage it is never attractive, except when some actress of very superior skill performs the part of Rosalind.' This complaint is borne out by the fact that the eighteenth century runs were less than average length for popular plays even with the most distinguished actresses, in turn, playing Rosalind.

Toward the close of the eighteenth century, however, there were two famous productions of As You