The novel appears to be firmly set upon its picaresque path: the company moves from theatre to theatre (instead of from inn to inn), it meets with successes and failures, new people join it from time to time and we are regaled with their biographies, and the actors are even attacked by highwaymen and robbed of their clothes, like Joseph Andrews. All the ingredients of the once popular novel are there: even those characters of mysterious origin and gloomy past who are to struggle under a load of obscure guilt and painful eccentricity right up to the last chapter.