If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner. Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another — cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.

To others we are not ourselves but a performer in their lives cast for a part we do not even know that we are playing.

The New York playgoer is a child of nature, and he has an honest and wholesome regard of whatever is atrocious in art.

I’ll play with it first and tell you what it is later.

The number of people that will not go to a show they don’t want to see is unlimited.

One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.

Play needs direction as well as work.

Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.

Playing Shakespeare is really tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you’re the king.

The last act crowns the play.