Peg Woffington

Name: Peg Woffington
Author: Charles Reade

by Charles Reade

Pages: about 196
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 3.6 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

ABOUT the middle of the last century, at eight o'clock in the evening, in a large but poor apartment, a man was slumbering on a rough couch. His rusty and worn suit of black was of a piece with his uncarpeted room, the deal table of home manufacture, and its slim unsnuffed candle.
The man was Triplet, scene painter, actor and writer of sanguinary plays, in which what ought to be, viz., truth, plot, situation and dialogue, were not; and what ought not to be, were--scilicet, small talk, big talk, fops, ruffians, and ghosts.
His three mediocrities fell so short of one talent that he was sometimes impransus.
He slumbered, but uneasily; the dramatic author was uppermost, and his “Demon of the Hayloft” hung upon the thread of popular favor.
She was a lady who in one respect fell behind her husband; she lacked his variety in ill-doing, but she recovered herself by doing her one thing a shade worse than he did any of his three. She was what is called in grim sport an actress; she had just cast her mite of discredit on royalty by playing the Queen, and had trundled home the moment the breath was out of her royal body. She came in rotatory with fatigue, and fell, gristle, into a chair; she wrenched from her brow a diadem and eyed it with contempt, took from her pocket a sausage, and contemplated it with respect and affection, placed it in a frying-pan on the fire, and entered her bedroom, meaning to don a loose wrapper, and dethrone herself into comfort.
But the poor woman was shot walking by Morpheus, and subsided altogether; for dramatic performances, amusing and exciting to youth seated in the pit, convey a certain weariness to those bright beings who sparkle on the stage for bread and cheese.

A short sample. Read the whole book

Peg Woffington

From the opening

More to read