December 10: “The Stage but echoes back the publick Voice.”

Excerpted from Christopher Morley’s A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure:

DECEMBER 10, THURS. 1931

Hard is his Lot, that here by Fortune plac’d,
Must watch the wild Vicissitudes of Taste;
With ev’ry Meteor of Caprice must play,
And chase the new-blown Bubbles of the Day.
Ah! let not Censure term our Fate our Choice,
The Stage but echoes back the publick Voice.
The Drama’s Laws the Drama’s Patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live.

— Prologue spoken by MR. GARRICK, Drury Lane, 1747

I love this one.

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