“The play is done; the curtain drops,
Slow falling to the prompter’s bell
A moment yet the actor stops
And looks around to say farewell.
It is an irksome word and task:
And when he’s laughed and said his say
He shows, as he removes the mask,
A face that’s anything but gay.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray

The End of the Play, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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William Makepeace Thackeray 69

novelist 1811–1863

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