Siddons visited provincial towns, these companies were
ready to support them in Shakespeare. They were also ready to play
burlesque, farce, and comedy to fill out the bill. Sometimes the "stars"
would come for a whole season; if their magnitude were of the first
order, for only one night. Sometimes they would rehearse with the stock
company, sometimes they wouldn't. There is a story of a manager visiting
Edmund Kean at his hotel on his arrival in a small provincial town, and
asking the great actor when he would rehearse.
"Rehearse! I'm not going to rehearse--I'm going to sleep!"
"Have you any instructions?"
"Instructions! No! Tell 'em to keep at a long arm's length away from me
and do their d----d worst!"
At Bristol, where I joined Mr. J.H. Chute's stock company in 1861, we
had no experience of that kind, perhaps because there was no Kean alive
to give it to us. And I don't think that our "worst" would have been so
very bad. Mr. Chute, who had married Macready's half-sister, was a
splendid manager, and he contrived to gather round him a company which
was something more than "sound."
Several of its members distinguished themselves greatly in after years.
Among these I may mention Miss Marie Wilton (now Lady Bancroft) and
Miss Madge Robertson (now Mrs.
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