内容简介：
A volume for theatre-lovers, written for anyone who shares the author's curiosity about the art of acting and about theatre past and present. The essays are divided into three sections. The first centres on Elizabethan theatre practice, the second highlights themes, episodes and contemporary taste in the 18th and 19th centuries in England, and the third focuses on 20th-century performances of Shakespeare at Stratford in the 1970s and in the New Globe as the new century begins. The cast of actors discussed includes Richard Tarlton, Will Kemp, David Garrick, Samuel Foote, Richard and Mary Ann Yates, Thomas Weston, John Kemble, Edmund Kean, Frederick Robson, Henry Irving, Ian Richardson and Ben Kingsley.