It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifiying nothing.

[Langueduchatte]

I was remarking to myself how the world has changed.   (Such is aging; it does that to you.)  But really, I was thinking on how everyone aims to be (instantly) famous...like it was a good thing.  Personally, I cannot think of anything worse.  And now those of us with banal lives can broadcast our banalities ad nauseam with tweets and status updates (but that's a whole different rant!)   And even the talented ones want the same thing.  There are people whose work I respect...or rather respected (and, no, I'm not talking about Charlie Sheen here) who just 'famed-up' and sold out.

But then I was reminded of an essay by William Hazlitt - On Actors and Acting.:

Actors have been accused, as a profession, of being extravagant and dissipated. While they are said to be so as a piece of common cant, they are likely to continue so. But there is a sentence in Shakespeare which should be stuck as a label in the mouths of our beadles and whippers-in of morality. "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not: and our vices would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues." With respect to the extravagance of actors, as a traditional character, it is not to be wondered at. They live from hand to mouth: they plunge from want into luxury; they have no means of making money breed, and all professions that do not live by turning money into money, or have not a certainty of accumulating it in the end by parsimony, spend it. Uncertain of the future, they make sure of the present moment. This is not unwise. Chilled with poverty, steeped in contempt, they sometimes pass into the sunshine of fortune, and are lifted to the very pinnacle of public favour; yet even there cannot calculate on the continuance of success; but are, "like the giddy sailor on the mast, ready with every blast to topple down into the fatal bowels of the deep!" Besides, if the young enthusiast, who is smitten with the stage, and with the public as a mistress, were naturally a close hunks, he would become or remain a city clerk, instead of turning player. Again, with respect to the habit of convivial indulgence, an actor, to be a good one, must have a great spirit of enjoyment in himself, strong impulses, strong passions, and a strong sense of pleasure: for it is his business to imitate the passions, and to communicate pleasure to others. A man of genius is not a machine. The neglected actor may be excused if he drinks oblivion of his disappointments; the successful one if he quaffs the applause of the world, and enjoys the friendship of those who are the friends of the favourites of fortune, in draughts of nectar. There is no path so steep as that of fame: no labour so hard as the pursuit of excellence. The intellectual excitement, inseparable from those professions which call forth all our sensibility to pleasure and pain, requires some corresponding physical excitement to support our failure, and not a little to allay the ferment of the spirits attendant on success.

Written in 1817. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

So, I told myself to STFU and get on with my own business.

Just thought I'd share that one with you.

As ever, your most humble and obedient servant,

Langueduchatte