Mad folk of the theatre

the long version

Here are Thomas Betterton, a member of King Charles II's company at Drury Lane; Nell Gwinn, honest little alley cat who won that same King's fickle heart; James Quin and the gallant days of Bath; George Anne Bellamy, well-named the beautiful, who seems to have passed through every known adventure of living; Tate Wilkinson, eighteenth-century barnstormer; delectable Dora Jordan, who year after year was London's favorite, as well as the Sailor Prince's; George Frederick Cooke, the first actor of real power to face an American audience; Edmund Kean, "perhaps the greatest genius the English-speaking stage had ever known"; the Elder Book, with his strange moods of forgetfulness and frenzy; and in Will-of-Avon's Night, Shakespeare himself comes to life, with many another great figure of the stage, to revel in The Players' library. Certainly, a mad company, my masters, and glad and at times sad and also, at times, it must be confessed, bad, but, oh, so delightfully human always, and, through the interpretation of this great artist of the theatre, so delightfully enjoyable! -- from dust cover.