“Formerly Poets made Players, but now adays ’tis generally the Player that makes the Poet.  How many Plays would have expired the very first Night of their appearing upon the Stage, but for Betterton, Barry, Bracegirdle, or Wilks’s inimitable Performance.

“Who ever goes about to expose the Follies of others upon the Stage, runs great hazard of exposing himself first; and of being made Ridiculous to those very People he endeavours to make so.

“I doubt whether a Man of Sense would ever give himself the trouble of writing for the Stage, if he had before his Eyes the fatigue of Rehearsals, the Pangs and Agonies of the first day his Play is Acted, the Disappointments of the third, and the Scandal of a Damn’d Poet.

“The reason why in Shakespear and Ben.  Johnson’s Time Plays had so good Success, and that we see now so many of ’em miscarry, is because then the Poets wrote better than the Audience Judg’d; whereas now-a-days the Audience judge better than the Poets write.”

* He that pretends to confine a Damsel of the Theatre to his own Use, who by her Character is a Person of an extended Qualification, acts as unrighteous, at least as unnatural, a Part, as he that would Debauch a Nun.  But after all, such a Spark rather consults his Vanity, than his Love, and would be thought to ingross what all the young Coxcombs of the Town admire and covet.

“Is it not a kind of Prodigy, that in this wicked and censorious Age, the shining Daphne should preserve her Reputation in a Play-House?”

The Character of a Player was Infamous amongst the Romans, but with the Greeks Honourable:  What is our Opinion?  We think of them like the Romans, and live with them like the Greeks.

“Nothing so powerfully excites Love in us Men, as the view of those Limbs of Women’s Bodies, which the Establish’d Rules of Modesty bid ’em keep from our Sight.  No wonder then if Aglaura, Caesonia, Floria, and in general all the Women on our Stages, are so fond of acting in Men’s Cloaths.

“Caesonia is Young, I own it:  But then Caesonia has an African Nose, hollow Eyes, and a French Complexion; so that all the time she acted in her Sex’s Habit, her Conquests never extended further than one of her Fellow-Players, or a Cast-Poet.  Mark the Miracles of Fancy:  Caesonia acts a Boy’s Part, and Tallus, one of the first Patricians, falls desperately in Love with her, and presents her with two Hundred great Sesterces (a Gentlewoman’s Portion) for a Night’s Lodging.

“One would imagine our Matrons should be mighty Jealous of their Husbands Intriguing with Players:  But no, they bear it with a Christian Patience.  How is that possible?  Why, they Intrigue themselves, either with Roscius the Tragedian, Flagillus, the Comedian, or Bathillus, the Dancer.”