WITH A DISCOURSE BY WAY OF PROLOGUE ON THE PLAYHOUSES OF THE RESTORATION. BY J. FITZGERALD MOLLOY, AUTHOR OF ROYALTY RESTORED: OR, LONDON UNDER CHARLES II.;” COURT 66 ΤΟ HENRY IRVING, Esq. DEAR MR. IRVING, Since Garrick died, no player has studied more persistently or laboured more strenuously to elevate the stage than you. Your intelligence, inventiveness, and genius, as student, manager, and actor, have kept the highest form of histrionic art vigorous and fruitful among us. Through your ingenious powers and liberal enterprise the dramatist of all time has in the present age been familiarised to his countrymen; the greatest English poet of our day has been accepted as a playwright. Your scholarly conceptions and powerful representations have inspired new schools of acting, and have justly rendered you the recipient of weighed admiration, wrested from an unemotional age, and wrung from an unimaginative nation. Your stage has become the sanctuary of art, your theatre the home of culture. That this volume is not more worthy your acceptance, is to me a cause of regret; that it bears your name, a source of satisfaction. Believe me, Faithfully yours always, |