Where public taste has quite outgrown
The faculty for being bored
By each anæmic baritone
Who murders "The Lost Chord,"
And singers, as a body, are
Cursed with a permanent catarrh!
III
THE ACTOR MANAGER
Long ago, our English actors
Ranked with rogues and vagabonds;
They were jailed as malefactors,
They were ducked in village ponds.
In the stocks the beadle shut them,
While the friends they chanced to meet
Would invariably cut them
In the street.
With suspicion people eyed them,
Ev'ry country-squire would feel
That his fallow-deer supplied them
With the makings of a meal.
They annexed the parson's rabbits,
Poached the pheasants of the peer,
And had other little habits
Just as queer!
Even Will, the Bard of Avon,
As a poacher stands confest,
And altho', of course, cleanshaven,
Was as barefaced as the rest.
He, a player by vocation,
Practised, like his buckskin'd pals,
Indiscriminate flirtation
With the gals!
Now, the am'rous actor's cravings
For romance are orthodox;
Nowadays he puts his savings,
Not his ankles, into "stocks."
Nobody to-day is doubting
That a halo round him clings;
One can see his shoulders sprouting
Into wings.
Watch the mummer managerial,
Centre of a rev'rent group;
Note with what an air imperial
He controls his timid troupe.
Deadheads scrape and bow before him,
To his doors the public flocks;
Even duchesses implore him
For a box.