Excerpt from The Criteroin Theatre

A still older friend of his, T. W. Robertson - the author of the evergreen Caste comedies - shook his head at the experiment. Byron, he wrote, has too little 'go' in him for an actor. His acting is a false step, and I knew it would be. But the public took to his attractively dry utterances of his own witticisms, and he succeeded not only as Sir Simon but in several of his own subsequent comedies, and still later in the very difficult character of Cheviot Hill in a revival Of W. S. Gilbert's delightful Engaged.

It is a rather curious fact that Byron, who had just celebrated his fortieth birthday when the Criterion Theatre was opened, should, like Charles Wyndham, have studied for the medical profession. But his heart was ever in stageland, and he soon abandoned the hospitals for the playhouses. It gives one some idea of the enormous fertility of his pen that in the year in which as manager, actor, and author he helped to launch the Criterion, he produced eight different pieces, and, to show how far he was from being played out, one has only to remember that he brought out in the following year Our Boys, which held the Vaudeville boards from january loth.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.