John Cavanagh

Cavanagh belongs to Hazlitt's gallery of figures who are great without the trappings of greatness—like Mrs. Siddons, who needs no robes to be tragedy personified. He is the athlete as artist, a man whose mastery is so complete that it annihilates rules and makes theories irrelevant. He matters because he extends Hazlitt's argument beyond the theatre: true excellence is self-evident, whether in a fives court or on a stage, and the pit is where we go to see it plain.