As soon as the house was full and the candles lighted my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit that he made a very proper centre to a tragick Audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend’s remarks because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end; one while he appeared much concerned for Andromache, and a little while after as much for Hermione; and was extremely puzzled to know what would become of Pyrrhus. When Sir Roger saw Andromache’s obstinate refusal to her lover’s importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence, “You can’t imagine, sir, what ’t is to have to do with a widow.” Upon Pyrrhus, his threatening afterwards to leave her, the Knight shook his head and murmured, “Ay! do it if you can.” This part dwelt so much upon my friend’s imagination that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, “These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray,” says he, “you that are a critick, is this play according to your dramatick rules, as you call them? Should your People in Tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of!”
The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. “Well,” says the Knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, “I suppose we are now to see Hector’s Ghost?” He then renewed his attention, and from time to time fell a-praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom, at his first entering, he took for Astyanax; but we quickly set him right in that particular, though at the same time he owned he should have been very glad to see the little boy, who, says he, must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him.