at one point the Prince of Denmark is instructed to 'enter reading.'
That stage direction I caught at, and by a happy 'improvisation'
spread it over the entire play. Not as 'Polonius' only, but as
`Bernardo' upon the midnight platform, as 'Osric,' as 'Fortinbras,'
as the 'Second Gravedigger,' as one of the odd Players--always I
entered reading. In my great scene with the Prince we entered
reading together. They killed me, still reading, behind the arras;
and at a late hour I supped with the company on Irish stew; for,
incensed by these novelties, the audience had raided a greengrocer's
shop between the third and fourth acts and thereafter rained their
criticism upon me in the form of cabbages and various esculent roots
which we collected each time the curtain fell.

"Every cloud, sir, has a silver lining. I continued long enough with
this company to learn that in our country an actor need never die of
scurvy. But I weary you with my adventures, of which indeed I am yet
in the first chapter."

"You shall rehearse them on another occasion. But will you at least
tell us how you came to Falmouth?"

"Why, in the simplest manner in the world. A fortnight since I
happened to be sitting in the stocks, in the absurd but accursed town
of Bovey Tracey in Devonshire. My companion--for the machine
discommodated two--was a fiddler, convicted (like myself) of
vagrancy; a bottle-nosed man, who took the situation with such phlegm
as only experience can breed, and munched a sausage under the
commonalty's gaze. 'Good Lord,' said I to myself, eyeing him,
'and to think that he with my chances, or I with his taste for music,
might be driving at this moment in a coach and pair!'