Most of my readers will perceive this: but I shall be sorry
if by any I am supposed to make pleas for the vices of men, or treat
their wants or infirmities with derision or with disdain.
{5} The Letter on Itinerant Players will to some appear too harshly
written, their profligacy exaggerated, and their distresses
magnified; but though the respectability of a part of these people
may give us a more favourable view of the whole body; though some
actors be sober, and some managers prudent; still there is vice and
misery left more than sufficient to justify my description. But, if
I could find only one woman who (passing forty years on many stages
and sustaining many principal characters) laments in her unrespected
old age, that there was no workhouse to which she could legally sue
for admission; if I could produce only one female, seduced upon the
boards, and starved in her lodging, compelled by her poverty to
sing, and by her sufferings to weep, without any prospect but
misery, or any consolation but death; if I could exhibit only one
youth who sought refuge from parental authority in the licentious
freedom of a wandering company; yet, with three such examples, I
should feel myself justified in the account I have given: --but such
characters and sufferings are common, and there are few of these
societies which could not show members of this description.
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