Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World Quotes

“To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“He had done it as if in preparation for his work as a creative writer: he had mastered the technical aspect of writing, strengthening his verbal muscle, so that when he started to use his imagination, he knew exactly how to express himself.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“He very soon acquired the reputation of being the best public speaker of his time. He had taken pains to master the art, approaching it with scientific precision. On the morning of a day on which he was giving a speech, he once told Wilkie Collins, he would take a long walk during which he would establish the various headings to be dealt with. Then, in his mind’s eye, he would arrange them as on a cart wheel, with himself as the hub and each heading a spoke. As he dealt with a subject, the relevant imaginary spoke would drop out. When there were no more spokes, the speech was at an end. Close observers of Dickens noticed that while he was speaking he would make a quick action of the finger at the end of each topic, as if he were knocking the spoke away.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“Mostly, though, he made people laugh, with wicked impersonations of everyone around him: clients, lawyers, clerks, even the cleaning woman. When Pickwick Papers came out, his former colleagues realized that half of them had turned up in its pages. His eyes - eyes that everyone who ever met him, to the day he died, remarked on - beautiful, animated, warm, dreamy, flashing, sparkling - though no two people ever agreed on their colour - were they grey, green, blue, brown? - those eyes missed nothing, any more than did his ears. He could imitate anyone. Brimming over with an all but uncontainable energy, which the twenty-first century might suspiciously describe as manic, he discharged his superplus of vitality by incessantly walking the streets, learning London as he went, mastering it, memorizing the names of the roads, the local accents, noting the characteristic topographies of the many villages of which the city still consisted.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“Acting, Dickens and his contemporaries believed, was the art of gesture, no more and no less.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“But this was just filling in the time pleasantly. He wants someone to worship, not to know.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“My faith in the people governing us,’ he had said, ‘is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed, is, on the whole, illimitable.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“gradually he realizes that memories, however oppressive, are part of what it is to be human.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“Clearly, under all the success and the radiance and the easy charisma, there were rumblings of a deeper discontent.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World