... his figure is that of a hippopotamus, his face like the hull and mouth on the panels of a heavy coach, his arms are fins flattened out of shape, his voice the gargling of an alderman with the quinsy and his acting altogether ought to be a natural, for it is certainly like nothing that Art has ever exhibited on stage.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) on Master William Betty (1791-1874), child actor |
... the ideal of the haberdashery clerk and of all the other chumps who had never heard of Rubens or the Greeks or fresh air.
Ralph Barton on Lillian Gish |
A crazy fanatic... a crazy cranky being... not only consistently dirty, but deplorably dull... A gloomy sort of ghoul... blinking like a stupid old owl.
Newspaper review of Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) |
A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) on Isadora Duncan (1878-1927), American dancer |
An ego like a raging tooth.
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) on Mrs Patrick Campbell (1865-1940) |
Foote is quite impartial, for he tells lies of everybody.
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) on Samuel Foote (1720-77), British actor and dramatist |
He will ultimately take his stand in the social rank... among the swindlers, blacklegs, pickpockets and thimble-riggers of his day.
Anonymous writer in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (1855) on Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-91), American showman |
lb me Edith looks like something that would eat its young.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) on Dame Edith Evans (1888-1976), British actress |
My Dear Sir, I have read your play. Oh, my dear Sir. Yours Faithfully
Henry Beerbohm Tree (1853-1917) to a would-be dramatist |
She was so dramatic she stabbed the potatoes at dinner.
Revd Sydney Smith (1771-1845) on Mrs Siddons (1755-1831), tragedian actress |
Smells to high heaven. It is a dramatised stench.
Newspaper review of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession |
Superabundance of foulness... wholly immoral and degenerate... you cannot have a clean pig stye.
Newspaper review of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession |
Two things should be cut - the second act and the child's throat.
Noel Coward (1899-1973) on a dull play with an annoying child star |
