Charles Dickens
Book Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DRAMATIC AUTHORSHIP 405 CHAPTER XV DICKENS AS ACTOR, READER, EDITOR, AND PUBLIC SPEAKER Charles Dickens's life-long predilection for the stage probably originated during his school-days at Wellington House...
MorePurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DRAMATIC AUTHORSHIP 405 CHAPTER XV DICKENS AS ACTOR, READER, EDITOR, AND PUBLIC SPEAKER Charles Dickens's life-long predilection for the stage probably originated during his school-days at Wellington House Academy, although we have his own authority for stating that a taste for theatricals became apparent even prior to this period. When a mere child, he wrote a tragedy called "Misnar, the Sultan of India," founded no doubt on one of the " Tales of the Genii," a book which formed part of his precicrus library at Chatham, and in after years he said, when alluding to his first attempts at dramatic authorship, " achieved at the mature age of eight or ten," that they were represented " with great applause to overflowing nurseries." At school, he got up " The Miller and his Men," in a very gorgeous form, and took prominent parts in theatrical representations planned by himself and his fellow- pupils, the plays being acted with much solemnity before an audience of boys, and in the presence of the ushers. A little later, after he had finally left school, and had entered an attorney's office at Gray's Inn, he and Potter (a fellow-clerk) availed themselves of every opportunity of going to a minor theatre in the neighbourhood, and it is said that they sometimes even engaged to perform there. In 1833 Dickens wrote a travesty of Shakespeare's"Othello," entitled "The OThello," for private presentation in his own family, and two or three fragments of the original manuscript are still extant. It was at this period that he seriously thought of adopting the stage as a profession, but, under circumstances already related, the project was nipped in the bud. The future Novelist, however, wrote a farce for J. P. Harley in 1836, called "The Strange Gentleman," and about the same time was res...
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