This town reminds me a little of Edinburgh.  How glad I shall be to see Edinburgh once more!  I expect much pleasure, too, from the pleasure of my aunt Dall, who some years ago spent some very happy time in Edinburgh, and who loves it from association.  And then, dear H——­, I am looking forward to seeing you once more; I shall be with you somewhere in the beginning of June.  I have had my first rehearsal here this morning, “Romeo and Juliet;” the theatre is much smaller than Covent Garden, which rather inconveniences me, as a novelty, but the audience will certainly benefit by it.  My fellow-laborers amuse me a good deal; their versions of Shakespeare are very droll.  I wonder what your Irish ones will be.  I am fortunate in my Romeo, inasmuch as he is one of my cousins; he has the family voice and manner very strongly, and at any rate does not murder the text of Shakespeare.  I have no more time to spare now, for I must get my tea and go to the theater.  I must tell you, though, of an instance of provincial prudery (delicacy, I suppose I ought to call it) which edified us not a little at rehearsal this morning:  the Mercutio, on seeing the nurse and Peter, called out, “A sail, a sail!” and terminated the speech in a significant whisper, which, being literally inaudible, my mother, who was with me on the stage, very innocently asked, “Oh, does the gentleman leave out the shirt and the smock?” upon which we were informed that “body linen” was not so much as to be hinted at before a truly refined Bath audience.  How particular we are growing—­in word! I am much afraid my father will shock them with the speech of that scamp Mercutio in all its pristine purity and precision.  Good-by, dear H——.  Ever your affectionate

F. A. K.

P.S.—­My mother desires to be particularly remembered to you.  I
want to revive Massinger’s “Maid of Honor;” I want to act Camiola.

The necessity for carrying with us into the provinces a sufficient number of various parts, and especially of plays in which my father and myself could fill the principal characters, and so be tolerably independent of incompetent coadjutors, was the reason of my coming out in the play of “The Provoked Husband,” before leaving London.  The passage in this letter about Lady Townley sufficiently shows how bad my performance of it must have been, and how absolutely in the dark I was with regard to the real style in which the part should be played.  The fine lady of my day, with the unruffled insipidity of her low spirits (high spirits never came near her) and the imperturbable composure of her smooth insolence, was as unlike the rantipole, racketing high-bred woman of fashion of Sir John Vanbrugh’s play as the flimsy elegance of my silver-embroidered, rose-colored tulle dress was unlike the elaborate splendor of her hooped and feathered and high-heeled, patched-and-powdered magnificence,