And he read out of that stage-book—­the genuine and old-established “book of the play”—­that wonderful volume, “which is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never do hold books:  and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the ceiling, professing to derive some intense consolation from the work between which and heaven there is a strong affinity.  Any one,” proceeds the author of “Pendennis,” “who has ever seen one of our great light comedians X., in a chintz dressing-gown, such as nobody ever wore, and representing himself as a young nobleman in his apartments, and whiling away the time with light literature, until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or his father shall come down to breakfast—­anybody, I say, who has seen the great X. over a sham book, has indeed had a great pleasure, and an abiding matter for thought.”

The Stranger reads from morning to night, as his servant Francis reports of him.  When he bestows a purse upon the aged Tobias, that he may be enabled to purchase his only son’s discharge from the army, he first sends away Francis with the stage-book, that there may be no witness of the benevolent deed.  “Here, take this book, and lay it on my desk,” says the Stranger; and the stage direction runs:  “Francis goes into the lodge with the book.”  Bingley, it is stated, marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked.  Two acts later, and the Stranger is again to be beheld, “on a seat, reading.”  But after that he has to put from him his precious book, for the incidents of the drama demand his very serious attention.

Dismissed from the Stranger, however, the stage-book probably reappears in the afterpiece.  In how many dramatic works figures this useful property—­the “book of the play”?  Shakespeare has by no means disdained its use.  Imogen is discovered reading in her bed in the second act of “Cymbeline.”  She inquires the hour of the lady in attendance: 

Almost midnight, madam.

IMOGEN.  I have read three hours, then; mine eyes are weak. 
Fold down the leaf where I have left!  To bed!

By-and-by, when Iachimo steals from his trunk to “note the chamber,” he observes the book, examines it, and proclaims its nature: 

                       She hath been reading late
    The tale of Tereus! here’s the leaf turned down
    Where Philomel gave up.

Brutus reads within his tent: 

Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turned down
Where I left reading?  Here it is, I think. 
How ill this taper burns!  Ha!  Who comes here?

And thereupon enters the ghost of Caesar, and appoints a meeting at Philippi.

In the third act of “The Third Part of King Henry VI.,” that monarch enters, “disguised, with a prayer-book.”  Farther on, when a prisoner in the Tower, he is “discovered sitting with a book in his hand, the Lieutenant attending;” when Gloucester enters, abruptly dismisses the Lieutenant, and forthwith proceeds to the assassination of the king.