I came at last, however, to the
conviction, that, marked as was the distinction gained by this good
actor in parts such as these, and as the lighthouse-keeper--the
character originally sustained in private by Charles Dickens--in Wilkie
Collins's play, domestic drama was not his _forte_; or, rather, that it
was not his _fortissimo_. In fantastic burlesque, in the comic-terrible,
he was unrivalled and inimitable. In the domestic drama he could hardly
be surpassed, but he might be approached. Webster, Emery, Addison, could
play _Daddy Hardacre_, or the father in "The Porter's Knot"; but none
but himself could at once awe and convulse in _Medea_ and _the Yellow
Dwarf_. These domestic dramas interested, however, as much by their
subject as by the excellence of his acting. Moreover, the public are apt
sometimes to grow weary of burlesques,--their eternal grimacing and
word-torturing and negro-singing and dancing. Themes for parody become
exhausted, and, without long surcease, would not bear repetition. You
may grow puns, like tobacco, until the soil is utterly worn out. The
burlesque-writers, too, exhibited signs of weariness and feebleness.
Planche retired into the Heralds' College. The cleverest of the Broughs
died. His surviving brother was stupid.
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