Juniata Sentinel And Republican

Liston, the Comedian

Liston, the famous comedian, was at this time a member of the Durham Company, and though he began his career there, by reciting Collins' Ode to the Passions, attired in a pea-green coat, buckskin top boots and powder, with a scroll in his hand; and followed this essay of his powers with the tragic actor's battle horse, the part of Hamlet; he soon found his peculiar gift to lie in the diametrically opposite direction of broad farce. Of this he was perpetually interpolating original specimens in the gravest performances of his fellow-actors; on one occasion, suddenly presenting to Mrs. Stephen Kemble, as she stood disheveled at the side scene, ready to go on the stage as Ophelia in her madness, a basket with carrots, turnips, onions, leeks and potherbs, instead of the conventional flowers and straws of the stage maniac, which sent the representative of the fair Ophelia on in a broad grin, with ill-suppressed fury and laughter, which must have given quite an original character of verisimilitude to the insanity she counterfeited. On another occasion he sent all the little chorister boys on, in the lugubrious funeral procession in Romeo and Juliet, with pieces of brown paper in their hands to wipe away their tears with.