Two hundred years after his death what we know of David Garrick confirms that he was one of the true theatrical geniuses of all time. He was an actor of astonishing power and popularity, a manager-entrepreneur of extreme skill and insight, and a writer and adapter of great consequence for the theater of his era. He raised the status of his profession to a point well beyond that accorded to even the most successful of his forerunners and left it in a state of security and respectability that could hardly have been anticipated before he flashed like a meteor through the theatrical world in the second half of the eighteenth century. His achievements in acting (an area of endeavor that at least before the advent of the motion picture was almost literally "writ in water") have remained the subject of interest and debate well into the twentieth century...