?He ingenuously seized opportunities, when his parents were away from home, to construct his private theatricals, which he did by converting folding doors into a green curtain, the back apartment into a stage and the front into a pit, boxes and gallery for the accommodation of his imaginary or, at best, scanty audience. ? his favourite play was Alexander, in which he enacted the principal part himself. The mad poetry of that piece was his favourite recitation and it would have been difficult to discover an actor who could give greater force to the tempestuous passage of his Bucephalus than young Maturin.?