[91]
For even comic actors
seem to me to commit a gross offence against the
canons of their art when, if they have in the course
of some narrative to quote either the words of an old
man (as, for example, in the prologue to the Hydria),1
or of a woman (as in the (Georgus2), they litter them
in a tremulous or a treble voice, notwithstanding the
fact that they are playing the part of a young man.
So true is it that certain forms of imitation may be
a blemish even in those whose whole art consists in
imitation.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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