Note 500 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)

When advanced in life, and unfitted for sprightly parts, Mrs. Abington determined to appear as Scrub, the man-of-all-work to Lady Bountiful in Farquhar’s comedy, The Beaux’ Stratagem. “I was present,” says John Taylor, in his Records of My Life, “and remember nothing in her performance that might not have been expected from an actor of much inferior abilities. As a proof, too, that, like many of her profession, she thought herself capable of characters not within the scope of her powers, I once saw her play Ophelia to Mr. Garrick’s Hamlet; and, to use a simile of my old friend Dr. Monsey, she appeared like a mackerel on a gravel walk.”