A BOOK OF THE PLAY

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

This book, as I explained in the preface to its first edition, published in 1876, is designed to serve and entertain those interested in the transactions of the Theatre. I have not pretended to set forth anew a formal and complete History of the Stage; it has rather been my object to traverse by-paths connected with the subject—to collect and record certain details and curiosities of histrionic life and character, past and present, which have escaped or seemed unworthy the notice of more ambitious and absolute chroniclers. At most I would have these pages considered as but portions of the story of the British Theatre whispered from the side-wings.

Some additions to the text I have deemed expedient. The few errors—they were very few and unimportant—discovered in the first edition I have corrected in the present publication; certain redundancies I have suppressed; here and there I have ventured upon condensation, and generally I have endeavoured to bring my statements into harmony with the condition of the stage at the present moment. Substantially, however, the "Book of the Play" remains what it was at the date of its original issue, when it was received by the reading public with a kindness and cordiality I am not likely to forget.

DUTTON COOK.

69, GLOUCESTER CRESCENT,
REGENT'S PARK, N.W.

PLAYGOERS.

Jonson makes frequent complaint of the growing fastidiousness of his audience, and nearly fifty years later, the same charge against the public is repeated by Davenant, in the Prologue to his "Unfortunate Lovers." He tells the spectators that they expect to have in two hours ten times more wit than was allowed their silly ancestors in twenty years, who

There was an end of dramatic poetry, as it was understood under Elizabeth. Blank verse had expired or swooned away, never again to be wholly reanimated. Fantastic tragedies in rhyme, after the French pattern, became the vogue; and absolute translations from the French and Spanish for the first time occupied the English stage. Shakespeare and his colleagues had converted existing materials to dramatic uses, but not as did the playwrights of the Restoration. In the Epilogue to the comedy of "An Evening's Love; or, The Mock Astrologer," borrowed from "Le Feint Astrologue" of the younger Corneille, Dryden, the adapter of the play, makes jesting defence of the system of adaptation. The critics are described as conferring together in the pit on the subject of the performance:

The poet is supposed to make excuse:

Pepys, who, born in 1633, must have had experiences of youthful playgoing before the great Civil War, finds evidence afterwards of "the vanity and prodigality of the age" in the nightly company of citizens, 'prentices, and others attending the theatre, and holds it a grievance that there should be so many "mean people" in the pit at two shillings and sixpence apiece. For several years, he mentions, he had gone no higher than the twelvepenny, and then the eighteenpenny places. Oftentimes, however, the king and his court, the Duke and Duchess of York, and the young Duke of Monmouth, were to be seen in the boxes. In 1662 Charles's consort, Catherine, was first exhibited to the English public at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, when Shirley's "Cardinal" was represented. Then there are accounts of scandals and indecorums in the theatre. Evelyn reprovingly speaks of the public theatres being abused to an "atheistical liberty." Nell Gwynne is in front of the curtain prattling with the fops, lounging across and leaning over them, and conducting herself saucily and impudently enough. Moll Davis is in one box, and my Lady Castlemaine, with the king, in another. Moll makes eyes at the king, and he at her. My Lady Castlemaine detects the interchange of glances, and "when she saw Moll Davies she looked like fire, which troubled me," said Mr. Pepys, who, to do him justice, was often needlessly troubled about matters with which, in truth, he had very little concern. There were brawls in the theatre, and tipsiness, and much license generally. In 1682 two gentlemen, disagreeing in the pit, drew their swords and climbed to the stage. There they fought furiously until a sudden sword-thrust stretched one of the combatants upon the boards. The wound was not mortal, however, and the duellists, after a brief confinement by order of the authorities, were duly set at liberty.

Upon another occasion the poet writes:

While the fops were thus equipped, the ladies wore vizard-masks, and upon the appearance of one of these in the pit—

For it was the fashion of the gentlemen to toy with their soaring, large-curled periwigs, smoothing them with a comb. Between the fops and the ladies goodwill did not always prevail. The former were, no doubt, addicted to gross impertinence in their conversation.

So Dryden "prologuised" in 1672, attributing the absence of "all our braves and all our wits" to the war which England, in conjunction with France, had undertaken against the Dutch.

In the Italian opera-houses of London there have long prevailed managerial ordinances touching the style of dress to be assumed by the patrons of those establishments; the British playgoer, however, attending histrionic performances in his native tongue has been left to his own devices in that respect. It cannot be said that much harm has resulted from the full liberty permitted him, or that neglect on his part has impaired the generally attractive aspect of our theatrical auditories. Nevertheless, occasional eccentricity has been forthcoming, if only to incur rebuke. We may cite an instance or two.

In December, 1738, the editor of The London Evening Post was thus addressed by a correspondent assuming the character of Miss Townley:

In 1730 the "Universal Spectator" notes: "The wearing of swords, at the Court end of the town, is, by many polite young gentlemen, laid aside; and instead thereof they carry large oak sticks, with great heads and ugly faces carved thereon."

Elliston was, in 1827, lessee and manager of the Surrey Theatre. "Quite an opera pit," he said to Charles Lamb, conducting him over the benches of that establishment, described by Lamb as "the last retreat of his every-day waning grandeur." The following letter—the authenticity of which seems to be vouched for by the actor's biographer—supplies a different view of the Surrey audience of that date:

No doubt some reform followed upon this urgent complaint.

Regulations as to dress are peculiar to our Italian opera-houses, are unknown, as Mr. Sutherland Edwards writes in his "History of the Opera," "even in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where, as the theatres are directed by the Imperial Government, one might expect to find a more despotic code of laws in force than in a country like England. When an Englishman goes to a morning or evening concert, he does not present himself in the attire of a scavenger, and there is no reason for supposing that he would appear in any unbecoming garb if liberty of dress were permitted to him at the opera.... If the check-takers are empowered to inspect and decide as to the propriety of the cut and colour of clothes, why should they not also be allowed to examine the texture? On the same principle, too, the cleanliness of opera-goers ought to be inquired into. No one whose hair is not properly brushed should be permitted to enter the stalls, and visitors to the pit should be compelled to show their nails."

THE MASTER OF THE REVELS.

As Chalmers has pointed out, however, in his "Apology for the Believers in the Shakespearean Papers," the King's Chamberlain, or, as he was styled in all formal proceedings of the time, Camerarius Hospitii, had the government and superintendence of the king's hunting and revels, of the comedians, musicians, and other royal servants; and was, by virtue of the original constitution of his office, the real Master of the Revels, "the great director of the sports of the court by night as well as of the sports of the field by day." Still the odium of his office, especially in its relation to plays and players, could not but attach to his subordinates and deputies the Masters of the Revels; "tasteless and officious tyrants," as Gifford describes them in a note to Ben Jonson's "Alchemist," "who acted with little discrimination, and were always more ready to prove their authority than their judgment, the most hateful of them all being Sir Henry Herbert," appointed by Charles I. to an office which naturally expired when the Puritans suppressed the stage and did their utmost to exterminate the players. At the Restoration, however, Herbert resumed his duties; but he found, as Chalmers relates, "that the recent times had given men new habits of reasoning, notions of privileges, and propensities to resistance. He applied to the courts of justice for redress; but the verdicts of judges were contradictory; he appealed to the ruler of the state, but without receiving redress or exciting sympathy: like other disputed jurisdictions, the authority of the Master of the Revels continued to be oppressive till the Revolution taught new lessons to all parties."

Nevertheless, Cibber had been active in organising a form of opposition to the authority of the Chamberlain and the Master of the Revels, which, although it seemed of a trifling kind, had yet its importance. For it turned upon the question of fees. The holders of the patents considered themselves sole judges of the plays proper to be acted in their theatres. The Master of the Revels claimed his fee of forty shillings for each play produced. The managers, it seems, were at liberty to represent new plays without consulting him, and to spare him the trouble of reading the same—provided always they paid him his fees. But these they now thought it expedient to withhold from him. Cibber was deputed to attend the Master of the Revels, and to inquire into the justice of his demand, with full powers to settle the dispute amicably. Charles Killigrew at this time filled the office, having succeeded his father Thomas, who had obtained the appointment of Master of the Revels upon the death of Sir Henry Herbert in 1673. Killigrew could produce no warrant for his demand. Cibber concluded with telling him that "as his pretensions were not backed with any visible instrument of right, and as his strongest plea was custom, the managers could not so far extend their complaisance as to continue the payment of fees upon so slender a claim to them." From that time neither their plays nor his fees gave either party any further trouble. In 1725 Killigrew was succeeded as Master of the Revels by Charles Henry Lea, who for some years continued to exercise "such authority as was not opposed, and received such fees as he could find the managers willing to pay."

THE LICENSER OF PLAYHOUSES.

It will be seen that the Chamberlain had deemed it his mission to limit, as much as possible, the number of places of theatrical entertainment in London. Playgoers were bidden to be content with Drury Lane and Covent Garden; it was not conceivable to the noblemen and commoners occupying the Houses of Parliament, or to the place-holders in the Chamberlain's office, or in the royal household, that other theatres could possibly be required.

Still attempts were occasionally made to establish additional places of entertainment. In 1785, John Palmer, the actor famous as the original Joseph Surface, laid the first stone of a new theatre, to be called the East London, or Royalty, in the neighbourhood of the old Goodman's Fields Theatre, which had been many years abandoned of the actors and converted into a goods warehouse. The building was completed in 1787. The opening representation was announced; when the proprietors of the patent theatres gave warning that any infringement of their privileges would be followed by the prosecution of Mr. Palmer and his company. The performances took place, nevertheless, but they were stated to be for the benefit of the London Hospital, and not, therefore, for "hire, gain, or reward;" so the actors avoided risk of commitment as rogues and vagabonds. But necessarily the enterprise ended in disaster. Palmer, his friends alleged, lost his whole fortune; it was shrewdly suspected, however, that he had, in truth, no fortune to lose. In any case he speedily retired from the new theatre. It was open for brief seasons with such exhibitions of music, dancing, and pantomime, as were held to be unaffected by the Act, and permissible under the license of the local magistrates. From time to time, however, the relentless patentees took proceedings against the actors. Delpini, the clown, was even committed to prison for exclaiming "Roast Beef!" in a Christmas pantomime. By uttering words without the accompaniment of music he had, it appeared, constituted himself an actor of a stage play.

Gradually, however, it became necessary for the authorities to recognise the fact that the public really did require more amusements of a theatrical kind than the privileged theatres could furnish. But the regular drama, it was held, must still be protected: performed only on the patent boards. So now "burletta licenses" were issued, under cover of which melodramas were presented, with entertainments of music and dancing, spectacle and pantomime. In 1809, the Lyceum or English Opera House, which for some years before had been licensed for music and dancing, was licensed for "musical dramatic entertainments and ballets of action." The Adelphi, then called the Sans Pareil Theatre, received a "burletta license" about the same time. In 1813 the Olympic was licensed for similar performances and for horsemanship; but it was for a while closed again by the Chamberlain's order, upon Elliston's attempt to call the theatre Little Drury Lane, and to represent upon its stage something more like the "regular drama" than had been previously essayed at a minor house. "Burletta licenses" were also granted for the St. James's in 1835, and for the Strand in 1836.

The law continued in this unsatisfactory state till the passing, in 1843, of the Act for Regulating Theatres. This deprived the patent theatres of their monopoly of the "regular drama," in that it extended the Lord Chamberlain's power to grant licenses for the performance of stage plays to all theatres within the parliamentary boundaries of the City of London and Westminster, and of the Boroughs of Finsbury and Marylebone, the Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, and Southwark, and also "within those places where Her Majesty, her heirs and successors, shall, in their royal persons, occasionally reside;" it being fully understood that all the theatres then existing in London would receive forthwith the Chamberlain's license "to give stage plays in the fullest sense of the word;" to be taken to include, according to the terms of the Act, "every tragedy, comedy, farce, opera, burletta, interlude, melodrama, pantomime, or other entertainment of the stage, or any part thereof."

Under these conditions it is not surprising that for nearly a quarter of a century there was no addition made to the list of London theatres. But time moves on, and even Chamberlains have to move with it. Of late years there has been no difficulty in regard to the licensing of new theatres, and the metropolis has been the richer by many well-conducted houses of dramatic entertainment.

THE EXAMINER OF PLAYS.

The Lord Chamberlain holds office only so long as the political party to which he is attached remains in power. He comes in and goes out with the ministry. Any peculiar fitness for the appointment is not required of him; it is simply a reward for his political services. Of course different Chamberlains have entertained different opinions of the duties to be performed in regard to the theatres; and, in such wise, much embarrassment has arisen. The Chamberlain's office is supported by a grant from the Civil List, which is settled upon the accession of the sovereign. In addition, fees are received for the licensing of theatres, and for the examination of plays.

The Examiner of Plays has long been recognised as a more permanent functionary than the Lord Chamberlain, although it would seem the precise nature of his appointment has never been clearly understood. "I believe," said Mr. Donne, the late Examiner, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1866, "that it is an appointment that expires with the sovereign (at least, I infer so from the evidence which Mr. Colman gave in the year 1833), but I cannot say that from my own knowledge: I believe it to be an appointment for life."

The first Licenser of Plays sworn in after the passing of the Licensing Act of 1737 was William Chetwynd, with a salary of £400 a-year. But this deputy of the Chamberlain was in his turn allowed a deputy, and one Thomas Odell was appointed assistant examiner, with a salary of £200 a-year. Strange to say, it was this Odell who had first opened a theatre in Goodman's Fields, which, upon the complaint of the civic authorities, who believed the drama to be a source of danger to the London apprentices of the period, he had been compelled forthwith to close. He applied to George II, for a royal license, but met with a peremptory refusal. In 1731 he sold his property to one Giffard, who rebuilt the theatre, and, dispensing with official permission, performed stage plays between the intervals of a concert, until producing Garrick, and obtaining extraordinary success by that measure, he roused the jealousy of the authorities, and was compelled to forego his undertaking.

The author of "The Seasons" hardly seems a writer likely to give offence designedly to a Chamberlain. But Thomson was a sort of Poet Laureate to Frederick, Prince of Wales, then carrying on fierce opposition to the court of his father, and the play of "Edward and Eleonora"—a dramatic setting of the old legend of Queen Eleanor sucking the poison from her husband's arm—certainly contained passages applicable to the differences existing between the king and his heir-apparent. In the first scene, one of the characters demands—

And King Edward apostrophises his dead sire—

In 1775, however, the play was produced at Covent Garden. George III. was king, and the allusions to the squabbles of his father and grandfather were not, perhaps, supposed to be any longer of the remotest concern or significance to anybody.

The Licenser's keenness in scenting a political allusion oftentimes, indeed, entailed upon him much and richly-merited ridicule. The production, some fifty years ago, of a tragedy called "Alasco" furnishes a notable instance of the absurdity of his conduct in this respect. "Alasco" was written by Mr. Shee, a harmless gentleman enough, if at that time a less fully-developed courtier than he appeared when, as Sir Martin Archer Shee, he occupied the presidential chair of the Royal Academy. Possibly some suspicion attached to the dramatist by reason of his being an Irishman and a Roman Catholic. In any case, the Licenser found much to object to in "Alasco." The play was in rehearsal at Covent Garden; but so many alterations and suppressions were insisted on, that its representation became impracticable. We may note a few of the lines expunged by the Licenser:

It is difficult now to discover what offence was contained in these lines, and many more such as these, which were also denounced by the Licenser. Shee expostulated—for he was not a meek sort of man by any means, and he knew the advantages of a stir to one aiming at publicity—appealed from the subordinate to the superior, from the Examiner to the Chamberlain, then the Duke of Montrose, and wrote to the newspapers; but all in vain. The tragedy could not be performed. That the stage lost much it would be rash to assert. "Alasco" was published, and those who read it—they were not many—found it certainly harmless; but not less certainly pompous and wearisome. However, that Shee was furnished with a legitimate grievance was generally agreed, although in "Blackwood's Magazine," then very intense in its Toryism, it was hinted that the dramatist, his religion and his nationality being considered, might be in league with the author of "Captain Rock," and engaged in seditious designs against the peace and Protestantism of Ireland! Some five years later, it may be noted, "Alasco" was played at the Surrey Theatre, without the slightest regard for the opinion of the Examiner of Plays, or with any change in the passages he had ordered to be expunged. Westminster was not then very well informed as to what happened in Lambeth, and probably it was not generally known that "Alasco," with all its supposed seditious utterances unsilenced, could be witnessed upon the Surrey stage. Nor is there any record that anybody was at all the worse, or the treasury of the theatre any the better, for the representation of the forbidden tragedy.

It was questioned at the time whether the Chamberlain, by his deputy, was not exercising more authority than he was really clothed with, under virtue of the Licensing Act. He was entitled to prohibit the performance of any play; but could he make terms with the managers, and cut and carve their manuscripts, forcing upon them his capricious alterations? Further, it was asked by what right he delegated his power to another? The Act made no mention of his deputy or of such an officer as an Examiner of Plays. And then, as to the question of fees. What right had he to exact fees? There was no mention of fees in the Act. No doubt the managers had long been in the habit of paying fees—£2 2s. for every piece, song, &c. But it was urged that this was simply to secure expedition in the examination of their plays, which they were bound to submit to the Chamberlain fourteen days at least before representation, and not in pursuance of any legal enactment. The Examiner of Plays received a salary from the Chamberlain for the labour he performed; why should he levy a tax upon managers and authors, and so be paid twice over for the same work?

It is to be noted that in 1843 the Act for Regulating Theatres, commonly known as Sir James Graham's Act, became law. By this measure the powers of the Lord Chamberlain were enlarged and more firmly established; he was empowered to charge such fees as he might deem fit in regard to every play, prologue, epilogue, or part thereof, intended to be produced or acted in Great Britain, although no fee was in any case to exceed £2 2s. in amount. Further, it was made lawful for him, whenever he should be of opinion that it was fitting for the preservation of good manners, decorum, or of the public peace so to do, to forbid the performance of any stage play, or any act, scene or part thereof, or any prologue or epilogue or any part thereof, anywhere in Great Britain or in any such theatre as he should specify, and either absolutely or for such time as he should think fit. It was enacted, moreover, that the term "stage play" should be taken to include "every tragedy, comedy, farce, opera, burletta, interlude, melodrama, pantomime, or other entertainment of the stage."

The Act provides for no appeal against the decision of the Chamberlain. His government was to be quite absolute. If he chose to prohibit the performance of Shakespeare's plays, for instance, no one could question his right to take that strong measure; only another Act of Parliament could, under such circumstances, restore Shakespeare, to the stage. Of the Examiner of Plays the Act made no mention: that office continued to be the creation simply of the Lord Chamberlain, and without any sort of legal status. The old Licensing Act of 1737 was absolutely repealed; yet, unaccountably enough, Mr. Donne's appointment, bearing date 1857, and signed by the Marquis of Breadalbane, then Lord Chamberlain, began: "Whereas in consequence of an Act of Parliament, made in the tenth year of the reign of His late Majesty King George the Second," &c. &c.

A BILL OF THE PLAY.

The playbill is an ancient thing. Mr. Payne Collier states that the practice of printing information as to the time, place, and nature of the performances to be presented by the players was certainly common prior to the year 1563. John Northbrooke, in his treatise against theatrical performers, published about 1579, says: "They used to set up their bills upon posts some certain days before, to admonish people to make resort to their theatres." The old plays make frequent reference to this posting of the playbills. Thus, in the Induction to "A Warning for Fair Women," 1599, Tragedy whips Comedy from the stage, crying:

Taylor, the water-poet, in his "Wit and Mirth," records the story of Field the actor's riding rapidly up Fleet Street, and being stopped by a gentleman with an inquiry as to the play that was to be played that night. Field, "being angry to be stayed upon so frivolous a demand, answered, that he might see what play was to be played upon every post. 'I cry you mercy,' said the gentleman. 'I took you for a post, you rode so fast.'"

From a later passage in the same prologue Mr. Collier judges that the titles of tragedies were usually printed, for the sake of distinction, in red ink:

But this may be a reference to the colour of a cardinal's robes. There is probably no playbill extant of an earlier date than 1663. About this time, in the case of a new play, it was usual to state in the bill that it had been "never acted before."

An early instance of the explanatory address, signed by the dramatist or manager, which so frequently accompanies the modern playbill, is to be found in the fly-sheet issued by Dryden in 1665. The poet thought it expedient in this way to inform the audience that his tragedy of "The Indian Emperor" was to be regarded as a sequel to a former work, "The Indian Queen," which he had written in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. The handbill excited some amusement, by reason of its novelty, for in itself it was but a simple and useful intimation. In ridicule of this proceeding, Bayes, the hero of the Duke of Buckingham's burlesque, "The Rehearsal," is made to say: "I have printed above a hundred sheets of paper to insinuate the plot into the boxes."

Macready, under date of 28th September, 1840, enters in his journal: "Spoke to Webster on the subject of next year's engagement. He said that he understood I had said that while I was comfortable at the Haymarket I would stay. I mentioned the position of my name on the playbills; that it should not, on any occasion be put under any other person's, as it had been; that I should have the right to a private box when they were not let," &c.

Mention of Old Drury Lane and its burning bring us naturally to the admirable "story of the flying playbill," contained in the parody of Crabbe, perhaps the most perfect specimen in that unique collection of parodies, "Rejected Addresses." The verses by the pseudo-Crabbe include the following lines:

"The story of the flying playbill," says the mock-preface, "is calculated to expose a practice, much too common, of pinning playbills to the cushions insecurely, and frequently, I fear, not pinning them at all. If these lines save one playbill only from the fate I have recorded, I shall not deem my labour ill employed."

STROLLING PLAYERS.

With the Restoration, however, Thespis enjoyed his own again, and sock and buskin became once more lawful articles of apparel. Charles II. mounted the throne arm-in-arm, as it were, with a player-king and queen. The London theatres reopened under royal patronage, and in the provinces the stroller was abroad. He had his enemies, no doubt. Prejudice is long-lived, of robust constitution. Puritanism had struck deep root in the land, and though the triumphant Cavaliers might hew its branches, strip off its foliage, and hack at its trunk, they could by no means extirpate it altogether. Religious zealotry, strenuous and stubborn, however narrow, had fostered, and parliamentary enactments had warranted, hostility of the most uncompromising kind to the player and his profession. To many he was still, his new liberty and privileges notwithstanding, but "a son of Belial"—ever of near kin to the rogue and the vagabond, with the stocks and the whipping-post still in his immediate neighbourhood, let him turn which way he would. And then, certainly, his occupation had its seamy side. With this the satirists, who loved censure rather for its wounding than its healing properties, made great play. They were never tired of pointing out and ridiculing the rents in the stroller's coat; his shifts, trials, misfortunes, follies, were subjects for ceaseless derision. What Grub Street and "penny-a-lining" have been to the vocation of letters, strolling and "barn-strutting" became to the histrionic profession—an excuse for scorn, underrating, and mirth, more or less bitter.

The Thespian army had no need of a recruiting-sergeant or a press-gang to reinforce its ranks. There have always been amateurs lured by the mere spectacle of the foot-lights, as moths by a candle. Crabbe's description of the strollers in his "Borough" was a favourite passage with Sir Walter Scott, and was often read to him in his last fatal illness:

Indeed, strolling was only feasible during summer weather. Audiences could hardly be moved from their firesides in winter, barns were too full of grain to be available for theatrical purposes, and the players were then glad to secure such regular employment as they could, however slender might be the scale of their remuneration. There is a story told of a veteran and a tyro actor walking in the fields early in the year, when, suddenly, the elder ran from the path, stopped abruptly, and planting his foot firmly upon the green-sward, exclaimed with ecstasy: "Three, by heaven! That for managers!" and snapped his fingers. His companion asked an explanation of this strange conduct. "You'll know before you have strutted in three more barns," said the "old hand." "In winter, managers are the most impudent fellows living, because they know we don't like to travel, don't like to leave our nests, fear the cold, and all that. But when I can put my foot upon three daisies—summer's near, and managers may whistle for me!"

"I'm a justice of the peace and know how to deal with strollers," says Sir Tunbelly, with an air of menace, in "The Relapse." The magistrates, indeed, were much inclined to deal severely with the wandering actor, eyeing his calling with suspicion, and prompt to enforce the laws against him. Thus we find in "Humphrey Clinker," the mayor of Gloucester eager to condemn as a vagrant, and to commit to prison with hard labour, young Mr. George Dennison, who, in the guise of Wilson, a strolling player, had presumed to make love to Miss Lydia Melford, the heroine of the story.

But strolling, in its old sense, is fast expiring. Barns have ceased to be temples of the drama. The railways carry the public to the established theatres; London stars and companies travelling in first-class carriages, with their secretary and manager, visit in turn the provincial towns, and attract all the playgoers of the neighbourhood. The country manager, retaining but a few "utility people," is well content to lend his stage to these dignified players, who stroll only nominally, without "padding the hoof," or the least chance of hardship or privation attending their rustical wanderings. Their travels are indeed more in the nature of royal progresses. Even for the "boothers" times have changed. Waste lands on which to "pitch" their playhouses are now hard to find; the "pleasure fairs," once their chief source of profit, become more and more rare; indeed, there is a prevalent disposition nowadays to abolish altogether those old-fashioned celebrations. And worse than all, perhaps, the audiences have become sophisticated and critical, and have not so much simple faith and hearty goodwill to place at the disposal of the itinerants. Centralisation has now affected the stage. The country is no longer the nursery and training-school of the player. He commences his career in London, and then regales the provinces with an exhibition of his proficiency. The strollers are now merged in the "stars." The apprentice has become the master, which may possibly account for the fact, that the work accomplished is not invariably of first-rate quality.

"PAY HERE."

The money received was placed in a box, and there seems to have been one person specially charged with this duty. Dekker, dedicating one of his plays to his "friends and fellows," the queen's servants, wishes them "a full audience and one honest doorkeeper." Even thus early the absolute integrity of the attendants of the theatre would appear to have been a subject of suspicion. "Penny galleries" are referred to by some early writers, and from a passage in the "Gull's Horn Book," 1609—"Your groundling and gallery commoner buys his sport for a penny"—it is apparent that the charges for admission to the yard, where the spectators stood, and to the galleries, where they sat on benches, were the same. In Dekker's "Satiromastix," one of the characters speaks scornfully of "penny bench theatres," where a gentleman or an honest citizen "might sit with his squirrel by his side cracking nuts." But according to the Induction to Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," first acted in 1614, at the Hope, a small dirty theatre on the Bankside, which had formerly been used for bear-baiting, the prices there ranged from sixpence to half-a-crown. "It shall be lawful for any man to judge his six pen'worth, his twelve pen'worth, so to his eighteen pence, two shillings, half-a-crown, to the value of his place; provided always his place get not above his wit ... Marry, if he drop but sixpence at the door, and will censure a crown's worth, it is thought there is no conscience or justice in that." It is probable, however, that the dramatist was referring to the prices charged at the first representation of his play. Sixpence might then be the lowest admission; on other occasions, twopence, or even one penny. The prologue to "Henry VIII." states:

But it is plain that the tariff of admission was subject to frequent alterations, and that as money became more abundant, the managers gradually increased their charges. In the "Scornful Lady" "eighteen pence" is referred to as though it were the highest price of admission to the Blackfriars Theatre. Sir John Suckling writes, about the middle of the seventeenth century:

It must always be doubtful, however, as to the precise portion of the theatre these writers intended to designate. As Mr. Collier suggests, the discordances between the authorities on this question arise, probably, from the fact that "different prices were charged at different theatres at different periods."

Apparently the royal decree was not very implicitly obeyed by the playgoers. At any rate we find, under date January 7th, 1668, the following entry in Mr. Pepys's "Diary" bearing upon the matter: "To the Nursery, but the house did not act to-day; and so I to the other two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there did by this means for nothing see an act in the 'School of Compliments,' at the Duke of York's house, and 'Henry IV.' at the King's House; but not liking either of the plays, I took my coach again and home." At the trial of Lord Mohun, in 1692, for the murder of Mountford, the actor, John Rogers, one of the doorkeepers of the theatre, deposes that he applied to his lordship and to Captain Hill, his companion, "for the overplus of money for coming in, because they came out of the pit upon the stage. They would not give it. Lord Mohun said if I brought any of our masters he would slit their noses." It was the fashion for patrons of the stage at this time to treat its professors with great scorn, and often to view them with a kind of vindictive jealousy, "I see the gallants do begin to be tired with the vanity and pride of the theatre actors, who are indeed grown very proud and rich," noted Pepys, in 1661. In the second year of her reign, Queen Anne issued a decree "for the better regulation of the theatres," the drama being at this period the frequent subject of royal interference, and strictly commanded that "no person of what quality soever should presume to go behind the scenes, or come upon the stage, either before or during the acting of any play; that no woman should be allowed, or presume to wear, a vizard mask in either of the theatres; and that no person should come into either house without paying the price established for their respective places."

Country managers would seen to have ruled their scale of charges in strict accordance with the means of their patrons; to have been content, indeed, with anything they could get from the provincial playgoers. Mr. Bernard, the actor, in his "Retrospections," makes mention of a strolling manager, once famous in the north of England and in Ireland, and known popularly as Jemmy Whitely, who, in impoverished districts, was indifferent as to whether he received the public support in money or "in kind." It is related of him that he would take meat, fowl, vegetables, &c., and pass in the owner and friends for as many admissions as the food was worth. Thus very often on a Saturday his treasury resembled a butcher's warehouse, rather than a banker's. At a village on the coast the inhabitants brought him nothing but fish; but as the company could not subsist without its concomitants of bread, potatoes, and spirits, a general appeal was made to his stomach and sympathies, and some alteration in the terms of admission required. Jemmy, accordingly, after admitting nineteen persons one evening for a shad apiece, stopped the twentieth, and said, "I beg your pardon, my darling, I am extremely sorry to refuse you; but if we eat any more fish, by the powers, we shall all be turned into mermaids!"

On the occasion of Grimaldi's engagement, "for one night only," it was found necessary to open the doors of the Maidstone Theatre at a very early hour, to relieve the thoroughfare of the dense crowd which had assembled. The house being quite full, Mrs. Baker locked up the box in which the receipts of the evening had been deposited, and, going round to the stage, directed the performances to be commenced forthwith, remarking, reasonably enough, "that the house could but be full, and being full to the ceiling now, they might just as well begin at once, and have business over so much the sooner." Greatly to the satisfaction of the audience, the representation accordingly began without delay, and terminated shortly after nine o'clock.

A settled distrust of the Bank of England was one of Mrs. Baker's most marked peculiarities. At the close of the performance she resigned the position she had occupied for some five hours as money-taker for pit, boxes, and gallery, and retired to her chamber, carrying the receipts of the evening in a large front pocket. This money she added to a store contained in half-a-dozen large china punch-bowls, ranged upon the top shelf of an old bureau. For many years she carried her savings about with her from town to town, sometimes retaining upon her person gold in rouleaux to a large amount. She is even said to have kept in her pocket for seven years a note for £200. At length her wealth became a positive embarrassment to her. She deposited sums in country banks and in the hands of respectable tradesmen, at three per cent., sometimes without receiving any interest whatever, but merely with a view to the safer custody of her resources. It was with exceeding difficulty that she was eventually persuaded to become a fundholder. She handed over her store of gold to her stockbroker with extraordinary trepidation. It is satisfactory to be assured that at last she accorded perfect confidence to the Old Lady in Threadneedle Street, increased her investments from time to time, and learned to find pleasure in visiting London half-yearly to receive her dividends.

It is conceivable—so much may perhaps be added by way of concluding note—that Mrs. Baker unconsciously posed as a model, and lent a feature or two, when the portrait came to be painted of even a more distinguished "manageress," whose theatre was a caravan, however, whose company consisted of waxen effigies, and who bore the name of—Jarley.

IN THE PIT.

There is something to be written about the rise and fall of the pit: its original humility, its possession for a while of great authority, and its forfeiture, of late years, of power in the theatre. We all know Shakespeare's opinion of "the groundlings," and how he held them to be, "for the most part, capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise." The great dramatist's contemporaries entertained similar views on this head. They are to be found speaking with supreme contempt of the audience occupying the yard; describing them as "fools," and "scarecrows," and "understanding, grounded men."

As patience and endurance are more easy to the man who sits than to the standing spectator, it came to be understood that a livelier kind of entertainment must be provided for the "groundlings" of the public theatres than there was need to present to the seated pit of the private playhouses. The "fools of the yard" were charged with requiring "the horrid noise of target-fight," "cutler's work," and vulgar and boisterous exhibitions generally. These early patrons of the more practical parts of the drama are entitled to be forbearingly judged, however. Their comfort was little studied, and it is not surprising, under the circumstances, that they should have favoured a brisk and vivacious class of representations. The tedious playwright did not merely oppress their minds; he made them remember how weary were their legs.

But it is probable that the tastes thus generated were maintained long after the necessity for their existence had departed, and that, even when seats were permitted them, the "groundlings" still held by their old forms of amusement, demanding dramas of liveliness, incident, and action, and greatly preferring spectacle to speeches. From the philosophical point of view the pit had acquired a bad name, and couldn't or wouldn't get quit of it. Still it is by no means clear that the sentiments ascribed to the pit were not those of the audience generally.

There were now critics by profession, who duly printed and published their criticisms. The awful Churchill's favourite seat was in the front row of the pit, next the orchestra. "In this place he thought he could best discern the real workings of the passions in the actors, or what they substituted instead of them," says poor Tom Davies, whose dread of the critic was extreme. "During the run of 'Cymbeline,'" he wrote apologetically to Garrick, his manager, "I had the misfortune to disconcert you in one scene, for which I did immediately beg your pardon; and did attribute it to my accidentally seeing Mr. Churchill in the pit; with great truth, it rendered me confused and unmindful of my business." Garrick had himself felt oppressed by the gloomy presence of Churchill, and learnt to read discontent in the critic's lowering brows. "My love to Churchill," he writes to Colman; "his being sick of Richard was perceived about the house."

That Churchill was a critic of formidable aspect, the portrait he limned of himself in his "Independence" amply demonstrates:

Charles Lamb was a faithful patron of the pit. In his early days there had been such things as "pit orders." "Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them!" he exclaims. Hazlitt greatly preferred the pit to the boxes. Not simply because the fierceness of his democratic sentiments induced in him a scorn of the visitors to the boxes, as wrapped up in themselves, fortified against impressions, weaned from all superstitious belief in dramatic illusions, taking so little interest in all that was interesting, disinclined to discompose their cravats or their muscles, "except when some gesticulation of Mr. Kean, or some expression of an author two hundred years old, violated the decorum of fashionable indifference." These were good reasons for his objection to the boxes. But he preferred the pit, in truth, because he could there see and hear so very much better. "We saw Mr. Kean's Sir Giles Overreach on Friday night from the boxes," he writes in 1816, "and are not surprised at the incredulity as to this great actor's powers entertained by those persons who have only seen him from that elevated sphere. We do not hesitate to say that those who have only seen him at that distance have not seen him at all. The expression of his face is quite lost, and only the harsh and grating tones of his voice produce their full effect on the ear. The same recurring sounds, by dint of repetition, fasten on the attention, while the varieties and finer modulations are lost in their passage over the pit. All you discover is an abstraction of his defects, both of person, voice, and manner. He appears to be a little man in a great passion," &c.

One does not now look to find members of the administration or cabinet ministers occupying seats in the pit. Yet the "Journals of the Right Honourable William Windham," some time Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and afterwards Colonial Secretary, tell of his frequent visits to the pit of Covent Garden. Nor does he "drop into" the theatre, after dining at his club, as even a bachelor of fashion might do without exciting surprise. Playgoing is not an idle matter to him. And he is accompanied by ladies of distinction, his relatives and others. "Went about half-past five to the pit," he records; "sat by Miss Kemble, Steevens, Mrs. Burke, and Miss Palmer," the lady last named being the niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who afterwards married Lord Inchiquin. "Went in the evening to the pit with Mrs. Lukin" (the wife of his half-brother). "After the play, went with Miss Kemble to Mrs. Siddons's dressing-room: met Sheridan there, with whom I sat in the waiting room, and who pressed me to sup at his house with Fox and G. North." Assuredly "the play," not less than the pit, was more highly regarded in Windham's time than nowadays.

To return to the pit for a concluding note or two. Audiences had come to agree with Hazlitt, that "it was unpleasant to see a play from the boxes," that the pit was far preferable. Gradually the managers—sound sleepers as a rule—awakened to this view of the situation, and proceeded accordingly. They seized upon the best seats in the pit, and converted them into stalls, charging for admission to these a higher price than they had ever levied in regard to the boxes. Stalls were first introduced at the Opera House in the Haymarket in the year 1829. Dissatisfaction was openly expressed, but although the overture was hissed—the opera being Rossini's "La Donna del Lago"—no serious disturbance arose. There had been a decline in the public spirit of playgoers. The generation that delighted in the great O.P. riot had pretty well passed away. Such another excitement was not possible; energy and enthusiasm on such a subject seemed to have been exhausted for ever by that supreme effort. So the audience paid the increased price or stayed away from the theatre—for staying away from the theatre could now be calmly viewed as a reasonable alternative. "The play" was no more what once it had been, a sort of necessary of life. The example of the Opera manager was presently followed by all other theatrical establishments, and high-priced stalls became the rule everywhere. The pit lost its old influence—was, so to say, disfranchised. It was as one of the old Cinque Ports which the departing sea and the ever indrifting sand have left high and dry, unapproachable by water, a port only in name. It was divided and conquered. The most applauded toast at the public banquet of the O.P. rioters—"The ancient and indisputable rights of the pit"—will never more be proposed.

THE FOOTMEN'S GALLERY.

Of old the proprietors of theatres acted towards their patrons upon the principle of "first come, first served." If you desired a good place at the playhouse it was indispensably necessary to go early and to be in time: to secure your seat by bodily occupation of it. Box-offices, at which places might be engaged a fortnight in advance of the performance, were as yet unknown. The only way, therefore, by which people of quality and fashion could obtain seats without the trouble of attending at the opening of the doors for that purpose, was by sending on their servants beforehand to occupy places until such time as it should be convenient for the masters and mistresses to present themselves at the theatre. When Garrick took his benefit at Drury Lane in 1744, the play—"Hamlet"—was to begin at six o'clock, and in the bills of the day ladies were requested to send their servants by three o'clock. It was further announced that by particular desire five rows of the pit would be railed into boxes, and that servants would be permitted to keep places on the stage, which, for the better accommodation of the ladies, would be railed into boxes.

and in one of his epilogues he makes mention of the nuisance occasioned by the noisy crowd of servants disturbing the performance:

"Tom Dove," it may be noted, was a "bear-ward," or proprietor of bears, of some fame; his name is frequently mentioned in the light literature of the period.

At this time the servants were admitted gratis to the upper gallery of the theatre on the conclusion of the fourth act of the play of the evening. In 1697, however, Rich, the manager of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, placed his gallery at their disposal, without charge, during the whole of the evening. Cibber speaks of this proceeding on the part of Rich as the lowest expedient to ingratiate his company in public favour. Alarmed by the preference evinced by the town for the rival theatre in Drury Lane, Rich conceived that this new privilege would incline the servants to give his house "a good word in the respective families they belonged to," and, further, that it would greatly increase the applause awarded to his performances. In this respect his plan seems to have succeeded very well.

The example set by Rich seems to have been soon followed by other managers. For many years the right of the footmen to occupy the upper gallery without payment was unchallenged. In 1737, however, Mr. Fleetwood, manager of Drury Lane Theatre, announced his determination to put an end to a privilege which it was generally felt had grown into a serious nuisance. A threatening letter was sent to him, which he answered by offering a reward of fifty guineas for the discovery of its author or authors. The letter is given in full in Malcolm's "Anecdotes of London," 1810:

Arnot's "History of Edinburgh," 1789, contains an account of a servants' riot in the theatre of that city on the occasion of the second performance of the Rev. Mr. Townley's farce of "High Life Below Stairs," originally played at Drury Lane in 1759. The footmen, highly offended at the representation of a farce reflecting on their fraternity, resolved to prevent its repetition. In Edinburgh the footmen's gallery still existed. "That servants might not be kept waiting in the cold, nor induced to tipple in the adjacent ale-houses while they waited for their masters, the humanity of the gentry had provided that the upper gallery should afford gratis admission to the servants of such persons as were attending the theatre." On the second night of the performance of the farce, Mr. Love, one of the managers of the theatre, came upon the stage, and read a letter he had received, containing the most violent threatenings both against the actors and the house, in case "High Life Below Stairs" should be represented, and declaring "that above seventy people had agreed to sacrifice fame, honour, and profit to prevent it." In spite of this menace, however, the managers ordered that the performance should proceed. Immediately a storm of disapprobation arose in the footmen's gallery. The noise continued, notwithstanding the urgent orders addressed to the servants to be quiet. Many of the gentlemen recognised among this unruly crew their individual servants. When these would not submit to authority, their masters, assisted by others in the house, went up to the gallery; but it was not until after a battle, in which the servants were fairly overpowered and thrust out of the house, that quietness was restored.

It was not only while they occupied the gallery, however, that the footmen contrived to give offence to the audience. Their conduct while they kept places for their employers in the better portions of the house, appears to have been equally objectionable. In the Weekly Register for March 25th, 1732, it is remarked: "The theatre should be esteemed the centre of politeness and good manners, yet numbers of them [the footmen] every evening are lolling over the boxes, while they keep places for their masters, with their hats on; play over their airs, take snuff, laugh aloud, adjust their cocks'-combs, or hold dialogues with their brethren from one side of the house to the other." The fault was not wholly with the footmen, however: their masters and mistresses were in duty bound to come earlier to the theatre and take possession of the places retained for them. But it was the fashion to be late: to enter the theatre noisily, when the play was half over, and even then to pay little attention to the players. In Fielding's farce of "Miss Lucy in Town," produced in 1742, when the country-bred wife inquires of Mrs. Tawdry concerning the behaviour of the London fine ladies at the playhouses, she is answered: "Why, if they can they take a stage-box, where they let the footman sit the two first acts to show his livery; then they come in to show themselves—spread their fans upon the spikes, make curtsies to their acquaintance, and then talk and laugh as loud as they are able."

FOOT-LIGHTS.

Mr. Richard Jenkins, in his "Memoirs of the Bristol Stage," published in 1826, relates how one Winstone, a comic actor, who sometimes essayed tragical characters, appeared upon a special occasion as Richard III. He played his part so energetically, and flourished his sword to such good purpose while demanding "A horse! a horse!" in the fifth act that "the weapon coming in contact with a rope by which one of the hoops of tallow candles was suspended, the blazing circle (not the golden one he had looked for) fell round his neck and lodged there, greatly to his own discomfiture and to the amusement of the audience." The amazed Catesby of the evening, instead of helping his sovereign to a steed, is said to have been sufficiently occupied with extricating him from his embarrassing situation. Winstone, indeed, seems to have enjoyed some fame on the score of eccentricity. He took leave of the stage in 1784, being then about eighty years of age. But he was at this time so afflicted with deafness that it was impossible for him to "catch the word" from the prompter at the side of the stage. To assist him, therefore, in the delivery of his farewell address, one of the performers, provided with a copy of the speech, was stationed behind the speaker and instructed to keep moving forward and backward as he did, like his shadow. The effect must certainly have been whimsical. Winstone had been a pupil of Quin's, and had played Downright to Garrick's Kitely in "Every Man in his Humour," at Drury Lane, in 1751. He was a constant attendant at the Exchange Coffee House, the established resort of the Bristol merchants. "He had the good fortune at one time to win a considerable prize in the lottery, and often looked in at the insurance offices, where he sometimes received premiums as an underwriter of ships and cargoes." In consequence, he obtained much patronage, and always inserted at the head of the playbills of his benefit, "By desire of several eminent merchants."

Thackeray, in his novel of "The Virginians," has some very apposite remarks upon the limited state of illumination in which our ancestors were content to dwell. "In speaking of the past," he writes, "I think the night-life of society a hundred years since was rather a dark life. There was not one wax-candle for ten which we now see in a ladies' drawing-room: let alone gas and the wondrous new illuminations of clubs. Horrible guttering tallow smoked and stunk in passages. The candle-snuffer was a notorious officer in the theatre. See Hogarth's pictures: how dark they are, and how his feasts are, as it were, begrimed with tallow! In 'Mariage à la Mode,' in Lord Viscount Squanderfield's grand saloons, where he and his wife are sitting yawning before the horror-stricken steward when their party is over, there are but eight candles—one on each table and half-a-dozen in a brass chandelier. If Jack Briefless convoked his friends to oysters and beer in his chambers, Pump Court, he would have twice as many. Let us comfort ourselves by thinking that Louis Quatorze in all his glory held his revels in the dark, and bless Mr. Price and other Luciferous benefactors of mankind for abolishing the abominable mutton of our youth."

The statements of "Chiro-Medicus" may seem somewhat overcharged; yet, after allowance has been made for that exaggerated way of putting the case which seems habitual to "the faculty" when it takes up with a new theory, a sufficient residuum of fact remains to justify many of the doctor's remarks. That a headache too often follows hard upon a dramatic entertainment must be tolerably plain to anyone who has ever sat in a theatre. Surely a better state of things must have existed a century ago, when the grandsires and great-grandsires of us Londoners were in the habit of frequenting the theatres night after night, almost as punctually as they ate their dinner or sipped their claret or their punch. To look in at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, if only to witness an act or two of the tragedy or comedy of the evening, was a sort of duty with the town gentlemen, wits, and Templars, a hundred years back, when George III. was king. But gas had not then superseded wax, and tallow, and oil.

George Colman the younger, in his "Random Records," describes an amateur dramatic performance in the year 1780, at Wynnstay, in North Wales, the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The theatre had formerly been the kitchen of the mansion—a large, long, rather low-pitched room. One advantage of these characteristics, according to Mr. Colman, was the fact that the foot-lights, or floats, could be dispensed with: the stage was lighted by a row of lamps affixed to a large beam or arch above the heads of the performers—"on that side of the arch nearest to the stage, so that the audience did not see the lamps, which cast a strong vertical light upon the actors. This," he writes, "is as we receive light from nature; whereas the operation of the float is exactly upon a reversed principle, and throws all the shades of the actor's countenance the wrong way." This defect, however, appeared to our author to be irremediable; for, as he argues, "if a beam to hold lamps as at Wynnstay were placed over the proscenium at Drury Lane or Covent Garden Theatre, the goddesses in the upper tiers of boxes, and the two and one shilling gods in the galleries, would be completely intercepted from a view of the stage." Still, Mr. Colman was not without hope that "in this age of improvement, while theatres are springing up like mushrooms, some ingenious architect may hit upon a remedy. At all events," he concludes, "it is a grand desideratum."

Colman was writing in the year 1830. It is rather curious to find him describing theatres as "springing up like mushrooms," when it is considered that, notwithstanding the enormous extension of London, and the vast increase of its population, but one or two theatres were added to it for some thirty years. Meanwhile, the "ingenious architect," to whom he looked hopefully to amend the lighting of the stage, has not yet appeared. But then, one does not meet ingenious architects every day.

On December 3rd, 1872, there occurred the strike of some 2400 stokers; and, as a consequence, the West-end of London was involved in complete darkness, while in the City the supply of gas was limited to a very few streets. Upon the theatres this deprivation fell heavily. The performances were given up in despair at some houses, and carried on at others in a very restricted manner, by suddenly calling into requisition the twilight of tallow-candles and oil-lamps. The following advertisements, among many others of like tenor, appearing in The Times of the 4th December, are illustrative of the situation of affairs:

"COME, THE RECORDERS!"

Music and the drama have been inseparably connected from the most remote date. Even in the cart of Thespis some corner must have been found for the musician. The custom of chanting in churches has been traced to the practice of the ancient and pagan stage. Music pervaded the whole of the classical drama, was the adjunct of the poetry: the play being a kind of recitation, the declamation composed and written in notes, and the gesticulations even being accompanied. The old miracle plays were assisted by performers on the horn, the pipe, the tabret, and the flute—a full orchestra in fact. Mr. Payne Collier, in his "Annals of the Stage," points out that at the end of the prologue to "Childermas Day," 1512, the minstrels are required to "do their diligence," the same expression being employed at the close of the performance, when they are besought either themselves to dance, or to play a dance for the entertainment of the company:

The Elizabethan stage relied greatly upon the aid of trumpets, cornets, &c., for the "soundings" which announced the commencement of the prologue, and for the "alarums" and "flourishes" which occurred in the course of the representation. Malone was of opinion that the band consisted of some eight or ten musicians stationed in "an upper balcony over what is now called the stage-box." Collier, however, shows that the musicians were often divided into two bands, and quotes a stage direction in Marston's "Antonio's Revenge," 1602: "While the measure is dancing, Andrugio's ghost is placed betwixt the music houses." In a play of later date, Middleton's "Chaste Maid in Cheapside," 1630, appears the direction: "While the company seem to weep and mourn, there is a sad song in the music-room." Boxes were then often called rooms, and one was evidently set apart for the use of the musicians. In certain of Shakespeare's plays the musicians are clearly required to quit their room for awhile, and appear upon the stage among the dramatis personæ.

At the Restoration, however, king, actors, and orchestra all enjoyed their own again. Presently, for the first time it would seem in an English theatre, the musicians were assigned that intrenched position between the pit and the stage they have so long maintained. "The front of the stage is opened, and the band of twenty-four violins with the harpsicals and theorbos which accompany the voices are placed between the pit and the stage. While the overture is playing the curtain rises and discovers a new frontispiece joined to the great pilasters on each side of the stage," &c. So runs one of the preliminary stage directions in the version of Shakespeare's "Tempest," arranged by Dryden and Davenant for performance at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1667. The change was, no doubt, introduced by Davenant in pursuance of French example. The authors of the "Histoire Universelle des Théâtres" state, regarding the French stage, that after the disuse of the old chorus in 1630, "à la place du chant qui distinguoit les actes et qui marquoit les repos nécessaires, on introduisit des joueurs d'instrumens, qui d'abord furent placés sur les aîles du théâtre, où ils exécutoient différens airs avant la commencement de la pièce et entre les actes. Ensuite ils furent mis au fond des troisième loges, puis aux secondes, enfin entre le théâtre et la parterre, où ils sont restés."

PROLOGUES.

"It is singular," Miss Mitford wrote to Mr. Fields, her American publisher, "that epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of my plays—'Foscari,' and prologues at another—'Rienzi.'" "Foscari" was originally produced in 1826; "Rienzi" in 1828. According to Mr. Planché, however, the first play of importance presented without a prologue was his adaptation of Rowley's old comedy, "A Woman never Vext," produced at Covent Garden on November 9th, 1824, with a grand pageant of the Lord Mayor's Show as it appeared in the time of Henry VI. At one of the last rehearsals, Fawcett, the stage manager, inquired of the adapter if he had written a prologue? "No." "A five-act play and no prologue! Why, the audience will tear up the benches!" But they did nothing of the kind. They took not the slightest notice of the omission. After that, little more was heard of the time-honoured custom which had ruled that prologues should, according to Garrick's description of them—

People, indeed, began rather to wonder why they had ever required or been provided with a thing that was now found to be, in truth, so entirely unnecessary.

The prologue-speaker of the Elizabethan stage entered after the trumpets had sounded thrice, attired in a long cloak of black cloth or velvet, occasionally assuming a wreath or garland of bays, emblematic of authorship. In the "Accounts of the Revels in 1573-74," a charge is made for "bays for the prologgs." Long after the cloak had been discarded it was still usual for the prologue-speaker to appear dressed in black. Robert Lloyd, in his "Familiar Epistle to George Colman," 1761, writes:

Steele, writing in The Guardian, in 1713, expresses much concern for the death of Mr. Peer, of the Theatre Royal, "who was an actor at the Restoration, and took his theatrical degree with Betterton, Kynaston, and Harris." Mr. Peer, it seems, especially distinguished himself in two characters, "which no man ever could touch but himself." One of these was the Apothecary in "Caius Marius," Otway's wretched adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet;" the other was the speaker of the prologue to the play in "Hamlet." It is plain that Mr. Peer's professional rank was not high; for these characters are not usually undertaken by performers of note. Steele admits that Peer's eminence lay in a narrow compass, and to that attributes "the enlargement of his sphere of action" by his employment as property-man in addition to his histrionic duties. Peer, however, is described as delivering the three lines of prologue "better than any man else in the world," and with "universal applause." He spoke "with such an air as represented that he was an actor and with such an inferior manner as only acting an actor, as made the others on the stage appear real great persons and not representatives. This was a nicety in acting that none but the most subtle player could so much as conceive." It is conceivable, however, that some of this subtlety existed rather in the fancy of the critic than in the method of the player. This story of Mr. Peer is hardly to be equalled; yet Davies relates of Boheme, the actor, that when, upon his first appearance upon the stage, he played with some "itinerants" at Stratford-le-Bow, his feeling but simple manner of delivering Francisco's short speech in "Hamlet"—

The delivery of a prologue by an actress—that is to say, of course, by a boy in female dress, personating the character of a woman—appears to have been an unusual proceeding upon the Elizabethan stage. Mr. Collier has noted instances, however. In the case of the prologue to "Every Woman in her Humour," 1609, spoken by the heroine Flavia, "Enter Flavia as a Prologue," runs the stage direction; and she begins—"Gentles of both sexes and of all sorts, I am sent to bid ye welcome. I am but instead of a prologue, for a she prologue is as rare as a usurer's alms." And the prologue to Shirley's "Coronation," 1640, was also delivered by one of the representatives of female character. A passage is worth quoting, for its description of ordinary prologue-speaking at this time:

It would seem that impatience was sometimes expressed at the poetic prologues and lengthy Inductions of the dramatists. The prologue to Beaumont and Fletcher's "Woman Hater," 1607, begins: "Gentlemen, Inductions are out of date, and a prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak and a bay garland; therefore you have it in plain prose, thus——." But the alteration did not please, apparently; at any rate, upon a subsequent production of the play, the authors furnished it with a prologue in verse of the old-established pattern.

The prologue to Ben Jonson's "Staple of News" entreats the audience to abstain from idle conversation, and to attend to his play, so that they may hear as well as see it.

and as "grounds of your people that sit in the oblique caves and wedges of your house, your sinful sixpenny mechanicks," &c.

It is plain, however, that the rudeness of Ben Jonson's prologues had given offence, for, indeed, he employed them not merely to lecture his audience, but also to lash and laugh to scorn rival playwrights. So to "The Magnetic Lady" no prologue was provided, but an Induction, in the course of which "a boy of the house" discourses with two gentlemen concerning the play, and explains that the author will "not be entreated to give it a prologue. He has lost too much that way already, he says. He will not woo the Gentile ignoramus so much. But careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approbation, he is confident it shall super-please judicious spectators, and to them he leaves it to work with the rest by example or otherwise." Further, the boy gives valuable advice upon the subject of criticism, bidding the gentlemen take seats and "fly everything you see to the mark, and censure it freely, so you interrupt not the series or thread of the argument, to break or pucker it with unnecessary questions. For I must tell you that a good play is like a skein of silk, which, if you take by the right end you may wind off at pleasure on the bottom or card of your discourse in a tale or so—how you will; but if you light on the wrong end you will pull all into a knot or elf-lock, which nothing but the shears or a candle will undo or separate."

And presently occurs the familiar passage—

Another prologue begins—

The more important critics are described as—

In right of the many quotations it has supplied to literature and conversation, Dr. Johnson's prologue spoken by Garrick upon the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, in 1747, may claim to be considered the most famous production of its class. It is not, in truth, however, a prologue as prologues are ordinarily understood, but rather an address, written to suit special circumstances, and having no connection with any particular play. Boswell describes it as "unrivalled for just and manly criticism on the whole range of the English stage, as well as for poetic excellence," and records that it was during the season often called for by the audience. Johnson's prologue to his friend Goldsmith's comedy of "The Good-natured Man" was certainly open to the charge brought against it of undue solemnity. The first lines—

Of prologues generally, Johnson pronounced that Dryden's were superior to any that David Garrick had written, but that Garrick had written more good prologues than Dryden. "It is wonderful that he has been able to write such a variety of them." Garrick's prologues and epilogues are, indeed, quite innumerable, and are, almost invariably, sparkling, witty, and vivacious. They could scarcely fail to win the favour of an audience; and then oftentimes they had the additional advantage of being delivered by himself.

Prologues have now vanished, however, and are not likely to be reintroduced. It must be added that they showed symptoms of decline in worth long before they departed. Originally apologies for players and dramatists—at a time when the histrionic profession was very lightly esteemed—they were retained by the conservatism of the stage as matters of form, long after they had forfeited all genuine excuse for their existence. The name is still retained, however, and applied to the introductory, or, to use Mr. Boucicault's word, "proloquial" acts of certain long and complicated plays, which seem to require for their due comprehension the exhibition to the audience of events antecedent to the real subject of the drama. But these "proloquial acts" are things quite apart from the old-fashioned prologue.

THE ART OF "MAKING-UP."

When, to heighten the effect of their theatrical exhibitions, Thespis and his playfellows first daubed their faces with the lees of wine, they may be said to have initiated that art of "making-up" which has been of such important service to the stage. Paint is to the actor's face what costume is to his body—a means of decoration or disguise, as the case may require; an aid to his assuming this or that character, and concealing the while his own personal identity from the spectator. The mask of the classical theatre is only to be associated with a "make-up," in that it substituted a fictitious facial expression for the actor's own. Roscius is said to have always played in a vizard, on account of a disfiguring obliquity of vision with which he was afflicted. It was an especial tribute to his histrionic merits that the Romans, disregarding this defect, required him to relinquish his mask, that they might the better appreciate his exquisite oratory and delight in the music of his voice. In much later years, however, "obliquity of vision" has been found to be no obstacle to success upon the stage. Talma squinted, and a dramatic critic, writing in 1825, noted it as a strange fact that "our three light comedians, Elliston, Jones, and Browne," each suffered from "what is called a cast in the eye."

Old John Downes, who was prompter at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields from 1662 to 1706, and whose "Roscius Anglicanus" is a most valuable history of the stage of the Restoration, describes an actor named Johnson as being especially "skilful in the art of painting, which is a great adjument very promovent to the art of elocution." Mr. Waldron, who, in 1789, produced a new edition of the "Roscius Anglicanus," with notes by Tom Davies, the biographer of Garrick, decides that Downes's mention of the "art of painting" has reference to the art of "painting the face and marking it with dark lines to imitate the wrinkles of old age." This, Waldron continues, "was formerly carried to excess on the stage, though now a good deal disused. I have seen actors, who were really older than the characters they were to represent, mark their faces with black lines of Indian ink to such a degree that they appeared as if looking through a mask of wire." And Mr. Waldron finds occasion to add that "Mr. Garrick's skill in the necessary preparation of his face for the aged and venerable Lear, and for Lusignan, was as remarkable as his performance of those characters was admirable."

Dogget, the old comedian of Queen Anne's time—to whom we owe an annual boat-race upon the Thames for a "coat and badge," and, inferentially, the popular burletta of "The Waterman"—was remarkably skilful, according to Colley Cibber, "in dressing a character to the greatest exactness ... the least article of whatever habit he wore seemed to speak and mark the different humour he represented; a necessary care in a comedian, in which many have been too remiss or ignorant." This is confirmed by another critic, who states that Dogget "could with the greatest exactness paint his face so as to represent the ages of seventy, eighty, and ninety, distinctly, which occasioned Sir Godfrey Kneller to tell him one day at Button's Coffee House, that 'he excelled him in painting, for that he could only paint from the originals before him, but that he (Dogget) could vary them at pleasure, and yet keep a close likeness.'" In the character of Moneytrap, the miser, in Vanbrugh's comedy of "The Confederacy," Dogget is described as wearing "an old threadbare black coat, to which he had put new cuffs, pocket-lids, and buttons, on purpose to make its rusticness more conspicuous. The neck was stuffed so as to make him appear round-shouldered, and give his head the greater prominency; his square-toed shoes were large enough to buckle over those he wore in common, which made his legs appear much smaller than usual." Altogether, Mr. Dogget's make-up appears to have been of a very thorough and artistic kind.

Making-up is in requisition when the performer desires to look either younger or older than he or she really is. It is, of course, with the first-named portion of the art that actresses are chiefly concerned, although the beautiful Mrs. Woffington, accepting the character of Veturia in Thomson's "Coriolanus," did not hesitate to assume the aspect of age, and to paint lines and wrinkles upon her fair face. But she was a great artist, and her loveliness was a thing so beyond all question that she could afford to disguise it or to seem to slight it for a few nights; possibly it shone the brighter afterwards for its brief eclipse. Otherwise, making-up pertains to an actor's "line of business," and is not separable from it. Once young or once old he so remains, as a rule, until the close of his professional career. There is indeed a story told of a veteran actor who still flourished in juvenile characters, while his son, as a matter of choice, or of necessity, invariably impersonated the old gentlemen of the stage. But when the two players met in a representation of "The Rivals," and Sir Anthony the son, had to address Captain Absolute the father, in the words of the dramatist: "I'll disown you; I'll unget you; I'll never call you Jack again!" the humour of the situation appealed too strongly to the audience, and more laughter than Sheridan had ever contemplated was stirred by the scene.

Recent discoveries have no doubt benefited the toilets of the players, which, indeed, stood in need of assistance, the fierce illumination of the modern stage being considered. In those palmy but dark days of the drama, when gas and lime-lights were not, the disguising of the mischief wrought by time must have been a comparatively easy task.

However, supply, as usual, has followed demand, and there are now traders dealing specially in the materials for making-up, in theatrical cosmetics of the best possible kind at the lowest possible prices: "Superfine rouge, rose for lips, blanc (liquid and in powder), pencils for eyebrows, creme de l'impératrice and fleur-de-riz for softening the skin," &c. Further, there are the hairdressers, who provide theatrical wigs of all kinds, and advertise the merits of their "old men's bald pates," which must seem a strange article of sale to those unversed in the mysteries of stage dressing-rooms. One inventive person, it may be noted, loudly proclaims the merits of a certain "spirit gum" he has concocted, using which, as he alleges, "no actor need fear swallowing his moustache"—so runs the form of his advertisement.

By way of final word on the subject, it may be stated that making-up is but a small portion of the histrionic art; and not, as some would have it, the very be-all and end-all of acting. It is impossible not to admire the ingenuity of modern face-painting upon the stage, and the skill with which, in some cases, well-known personages have been represented by actors of, in truth, totally different physical aspect; but still there seems a likelihood of efforts of this kind being urged beyond reasonable bounds. So, too, there appears to be an excessive use of cosmetics and colouring by youthful performers, who really need little aid of this kind, beyond that application of the hare's-foot which can never be altogether dispensed with. Moreover, it has become necessary for players, who have resolved that their faces shall be pictures, to decide from what part of the theatre such works of art are to be viewed. At present many of these over-painted countenances may "fall into shape," as artists say, when seen from the back benches of the gallery, for instance; but judged from a nearer standpoint they are really but pictorial efforts of a crude, uncomfortable, and mistaken kind.

PAINT AND CANVAS.

In England, some six-and-thirty years later, there was born an artist and architect of even greater fame than Peruzzi: Inigo Jones, who, like Peruzzi, rendered important aid to the adornment of the stage. In his youth Inigo had studied landscape-painting in Italy. At Rome he became an architect; as Walpole expresses it, "he dropped the pencil and conceived Whitehall."

The simple expedient of writing up the names of the different places, where the scene was laid in the progress of a play, or affixing a placard to that effect upon the tapestry at the back of the stage, sufficed to convey to the spectators the intentions of the author. "What child is there," asks Sir Philip Sidney, "that, coming to a play and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes?" Oftentimes, too, opportunity was found in the play itself, or in its prologue, to inform the audience of the place in which the action of the story is supposed to be laid. "Our scene is Rhodes," says old Hieronymo in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," 1588. And the title of the play was also exhibited in the same way, so that the audience did not lack instruction as to the purport of the entertainment set before them.

It need hardly be stated that the absence of scenes and scene-shifting had by no means confined the British drama to a classical form, although regard for "unity of place," at any rate, might seem to be almost logically involved in the immovable condition of the stage-fittings. Some two or three plays, affecting to follow the construction adopted by the Greek and Roman stage, are certainly to be found in the Elizabethan repertory, but they had been little favoured by the playgoers of the time, and may fairly be viewed as exceptions proving the rule that our drama is essentially romantic. Indeed, our old dramatists were induced by the absence of scenery to rely more and more upon the imagination of their audience. As Mr. Collier observes: "If the old poets had been obliged to confine themselves merely to the changes that could at that early date have been exhibited by the removal of painted canvas or boarding, we should have lost much of that boundless diversity of situation and character allowed by this happy absence of restraint." At the same time, the liberty these writers permitted themselves did not escape criticism from the devout adherents of the classical theatre. Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Apology for Poetry," 1595, is severe upon the "defectious" nature of the English drama, especially as to its disregard of the unities of time and place. "Now," he says, three ladies "walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden; by-and-by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock; upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then, what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?" Dryden, it may be noted, in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesie," has a kindred passage as to the matters to be acted on the stage, and the things "supposed to be done behind the scenes."

Of later scene-painters, such as Roberts and Stanfield, Grieve and Telbin, and to come down to the present time, Beverley and Calcott, Hawes Craven and O'Connor, there seems little occasion to speak; the achievements of these artists are matters of almost universal knowledge. It is sufficient to say that in their hands the art they practise has been greatly advanced, even to the eclipse now and then of the efforts of both actors and dramatists.

THE TIRING-ROOM.

Alleyn's inventory still exists, or did exist very recently, in his own handwriting, at Dulwich College; it is without heading or date, and relates almost exclusively to the dresses worn by himself in his personation of various characters upon the stage. It is of interest, seeing that it demonstrates the assumption by Alleyn of various parts, if not in Shakespeare's plays, at any rate in the earlier dramas upon which the poet founded certain of his noblest works. Thus the actor's list makes mention of "a scarlet cloke with two brode gould laces with gould down the same, for Leir"—meaning, doubtless, "King Lear;" "a purple satin cloke, welted with velvett and silver twist, Romeo's;" "Hary the VIII. gowne;" "blew damask cote for the Moor in Venis;" and "spangled hoes in Pericles." Such entries as "Faustus jerkin and cloke," "Priams hoes in Dido," and "French hose for the Guises," evidence that the actor took part in Marlowe's "Faustus" and "Massacre of Paris," and the tragedy of "Dido," by Marlowe and Nash. Then there are cloaks and gowns, striped and trimmed with gold lace and ermine, suits of crimson, and orange-tawny velvet, cloth of gold and silver, jerkins and doublets of satin taffety and velvet, richly embroidered, and hose of various hues and patterns. The actor's wardrobe was clearly most costly and complete, and affords sufficient proof that theatrical costumes generally, even at that early date, were of a luxurious nature. In considering the prices mentioned in Henslowe's list, the high value of money in his time should of course be borne in mind.

Many noblemen and fine gentlemen also favoured the actors with gifts of their cast clothes, and especially of those "birthday suits"—Court dresses of great splendour, worn for the first time at the birthday levees, or drawing-rooms of the sovereign. As Pope writes:

To the hero of tragedy a feathered headdress was indispensable; the heroine demanded a long train borne by one or two pages. Pope writes:

Monmouth Street, St. Giles's, is now known by another name; but for many years its dealers in cast clothes rendered important aid to the actors and managers. It was to Monmouth Street, as he confesses, that Tate Wilkinson hastened, when permitted to undertake the part of the Fine Gentleman in Garrick's farce of "Lethe," at Covent Garden. For two guineas he obtained the loan, for one night only, of a heavy embroidered velvet spangled suit of clothes, "fit," he says, "for the king in 'Hamlet.'" Repeating the character, he was constrained to depend upon the wardrobe of the theatre, and appeared in "a very short old suit of clothes, with a black velvet ground and broad gold flowers, as dingy as the twenty-four letters on a piece of gilded gingerbread"—the dress, indeed, which Garrick had worn when playing Lothario, in "The Fair Penitent," ten years before. And it was to Monmouth Street that Austin repaired, when cast for a very inferior part—a mere attendant—in the same tragedy, in order to equip himself as like to Garrick as he could—for Garrick was to reappear as Lothario in a new suit of clothes. "Where did you get that coat from, Austin?" asked the great actor, surveying his subordinate. "Sir!" replied Austin boldly, "it is part of my country wardrobe." The manager paused, frowned, reflected. Soon he was satisfied that the effect of Austin's dress would be injurious to his own, especially as Austin was of superior physical proportions. "Austin," he said at length, "why, perhaps you have some other engagement—besides, the part is really beneath you. Altogether, I will not trouble you to go on with me." And not to go on as an attendant upon Lothario was precisely what Austin desired.

The characteristics of the "tiring-room" have always presented themselves in a ludicrous light to the ordinary observer. There is always a jumble of incongruous articles, and a striking contrast between the ambitious pretensions of things and their real meanness—between the facts and fictions of theatrical life. Mr. Collier quotes from Brome's comedy, "The Antipodes," 1640, a curious account of the contents of the "tiring-house" of that time. Byeplay, an actor, one of the characters, is speaking of the hero Peregrine, who is in some sort a reflection of Don Quixote:

A later dealing with the same subject may be quoted from Dr. Reynardson's poem of "The Stage," dedicated to Addison, and first published in 1713:

"HER FIRST APPEARANCE."

From the south-western corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields a winding and confined court leads to Vere Street, Clare Market. Midway or so in the passage there formerly existed Gibbon's Tennis Court—an establishment which after the Restoration, and for some three years, served as a playhouse; altogether distinct, be it remembered, from the far more famous Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, situate close by in Portugal Street, at the back of the College of Surgeons. Nevertheless, the Vere Street Theatre, as it was called, can boast something of a history; at any rate, one event of singular dramatic importance renders it memorable. For on Saturday, the 8th of December, 1660, as historians of the drama relate, it was the scene of the first appearance upon the English stage of the first English actress. The lady played Desdemona; and a certain Mr. Thomas Jordan, an actor and the author of various poetical pieces, provided for delivery upon the occasion a "Prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage in the tragedy called 'The Moor of Venice.'"

The introduction of actresses upon the English stage has usually been credited to Sir William Davenant, whose theatre, however, did not open until more than six months after the performance of "Othello," with an actress in the part of Desdemona, at Killigrew's establishment in Vere Street. "Went to Sir William Davenant's opera," records Pepys, on July 2nd, 1661, "this being the fourth day it had begun, and the first that I have seen it." Although regular tragedies and comedies were acted there, Pepys constantly speaks of Davenant's theatre as the opera, the manager having produced various musical pieces before the Restoration. Of the memorable performance of "Othello" in Vere Street, on December 10th, 1660, Pepys makes no mention. He duly chronicles, however, a visit to Killigrew's theatre on the following 3rd January, when he saw the comedy of "The Beggar's Bush" performed; "it being very well done, and was the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." He had seen the same play in the previous November, when it was represented by male performers only. But even after the introduction of actresses the heroines of the stage were still occasionally impersonated by men. Thus in January, 1661, Pepys saw Kynaston appear in "The Silent Woman," and pronounced the young actor "the prettiest woman in the whole house." As Cibber states, the stage "could not be so suddenly supplied with women but that there was still a necessity to put the handsomest young men into petticoats."

The gentlemen sitting in that "Star Chamber of the house, the pit," were then besought to think respectfully and modestly of the actress, and not to run "to give her visits when the play is done." We have, then, a picture of the male performers of female characters:

The prologue concludes with a promise, which certainly was not kept, that the drama should be purged of all offensive matter:

In the epilogue the spectators were asked: "How do you like her?"—especial appeal being made to those among the audience of the gentler sex:

There was soon an ample supply of actresses, and a decline altogether in the demand for boy-performers of female characters. There was an absolute end, indeed, of that industry; the established actors had no more apprentices, now to serve as their footboys and pages, and now as heroines of tragedy and comedy. A modern playgoer may well have a difficulty in believing that these had ever any real existence, sharing Lamb's amazement at a boy-Juliet, a boy-Desdemona, a boy-Ophelia. There must have been much skill among the players; much simple good faith, contentment, and willingness to connive at theatrical illusion on the part of the audience. It must have been hard to tolerate a heroine with too obvious a beard, or of very perceptible masculine breadth of shoulders, length of limb, and freedom of gait. Let us note in conclusion that there is clearly a "boy-actress" among the players welcomed by Hamlet to Elsinore, although the modern stage has rarely taken note of the fact. The player-queen, when not robed for performance in the tragedy of "The Mousetrap," should wear a boy's dress. "What, my young lady and mistress!" says Hamlet jestingly to the youthful apprentice; and he adds allusion to the boy's increase of stature: "By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine!"—in other words: "How the boy has grown!"—a chopine being a shoe with a heel of inordinate height. And then comes reference to that change of voice from alto to bass which attends advance from boyhood to adolescence.

STAGE WHISPERS.

When the consummate villain of melodrama mysteriously approaches the foot-lights, and, with a scowl at the front row of the pit, remarks: "I must dissemble," or something to that effect, it is certain that he is perfectly audible in all parts of the theatre in which he performs; and yet it is required of the personages nearest to him on the stage—let us say, the rival lover he has resolved to despatch and the beauteous heroine he has planned to betray—that they should pretend to be absolutely deaf to his observation, the manifest gravity of its bearing upon their interests and future happiness notwithstanding. Moreover, we who are among the spectators are bound to credit this curious auricular infirmity on the part of the lover and the lady. We can of course hear perfectly well the speech of their playfellow, and are thoroughly aware that from their position they must of necessity hear it at least as distinctly as we do. Yet it is incumbent upon us to ignore our convictions and perceptions on this head. For, indeed, the drama depends for its due existence and conduct upon a system of connivance and conspiracy, in which the audience, no less than the actors, are comprehended. The makeshifts and artifices of the theatre have to be met half-way, and indulgently accepted.

It is certain, however, that with the first introduction here of operatic performances came the gipsy-tent, or hut, of the prompter. The singers voted it quite indispensable. It was much ridiculed, of course, by the general public. It was even made the special subject of burlesque on a rival stage. A century ago the imbecility was indulged in of playing "The Beggar's Opera" with "the characters reversed," as it was called; that is to say, the female characters were assumed by the actors, the male by the actresses. This was at the Haymarket Theatre, under George Colman's management. The foolish proceeding won prodigious applause. A prologue or preliminary act in three scenes was written for the occasion. The fun of this introduction seems now gross and flat enough. Towards the conclusion of it, we read, a stage-carpenter raised his head through a trap in the centre of the stage. He was greeted with a roar of laughter from the gallery. The prompter appears on the scene and demands of the carpenter what he means by opening the trap? The carpenter explains that he designs to prompt the performers after the fashion of the Opera House on the other side of the Haymarket. "Psha!" cries the prompter, "none of your Italian tricks with me! Shut up the trap again! I shall prompt in my old place; for we won't do all they do on the other side of the way till they can do all we do on ours." So soundly English a speech is received with great cheering—the foreigners and their new-fangled ways are laughed to scorn, and the performance is a very complete success.

into "It's a pity, don't you think, that Othello should place such a man in such an office. Hadn't we better tell him so, sir?"

Such players as this provoke the despair of prompters, who must often be tempted to close their books altogether. It would almost seem that there are some performers whom it is quite vain to prompt: it is safer to let them alone, doing what they list, lest bad should be made worse. Something of this kind happened once in the case of a certain Marcellus. Hamlet demands of Horatio concerning the ghost of "buried Denmark:" "Stayed it long?" Horatio answers: "While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred." Marcellus should add: "Longer, longer." But the Marcellus of this special occasion was mute. "Longer, longer," whispered the prompter. Then out spoke Marcellus, to the consternation of his associates: "Well, say two hundred!" So prosaic a Marcellus is only to be matched by that literal Guildenstern who, when besought by Hamlet to "Play upon this pipe," was so moved by the urgent manner of the tragedian, that he actually made the attempt, seizing the instrument, and evoking from it most eccentric sounds.

Mrs. Fanny Kemble, in her "Journal" of her Tour in America, gives an amusing account of a performance of the last scene of "Romeo and Juliet," not as it seemed to the spectators, but as it really was, with the whispered communications of the actors. Romeo, at the words "Quick, let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms," pounced upon his playfellow, plucked her up in his arms "like an uncomfortable bundle," and staggered down the stage with her. Juliet whispers; "Oh, you've got me up horridly! That'll never do; let me down! Pray let me down!" But Romeo proceeds, from the acting version of the play, be it understood:

Yet the ludicrous imperfections of this performance passed unnoticed by the audience. The applause seems to have been unbounded, and the Jaffier of the night was even honoured by a special call before the curtain!

There is hardly necessity for further record of the curiosities of stage whispers; but here is a story of a sotto voce communication which must have gravely troubled its recipient. A famous Lady Macbeth, "starring" in America, had been accidentally detained on her journey to a remote theatre. She arrived in time only to change her dress rapidly and hurry on the scene. The performers were all strangers to her. At the conclusion of her first soliloquy, a messenger should enter to announce the coming of King Duncan. But what was her amazement to hear, in answer to her demand, "What is your tidings?" not the usual reply, "The king comes here to-night," but the whisper, spoken from behind a Scotch bonnet, upheld to prevent the words reaching the ears of the audience, "Hush! I'm Macbeth. We've cut the messenger out—go on, please!"

Another disconcerted performer must have been the provincial Richard III., to whom the Ratcliffe of the theatre—who ordinarily played harlequin, and could not enter without something of that tripping and twirling gait peculiar to pantomime—brought the information, long before it was due, that "the Duke of Buckingham is taken!" "Not yet, you fool," whispered Richard. "Beg pardon; thought he was," cried Harlequin Ratcliffe, as, carried away by his feelings or the force of habit, he threw what tumblers call "a Catherine wheel," and made a rapid exit.

STAGE GHOSTS.

The ghost, as a vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct creature. As Bob Acres said of "damns," ghosts "have had their day;" or perhaps it would be more correct to say, their night. It may be some consolation to them, however, in their present fallen state, to reflect that they were at one time in the enjoyment of an almost boundless prosperity and popularity. For long years they were accounted among the most precious possessions of the stage. Addison writes in "The Spectator": "Among the several artifices which are put in practice by the poets, to fill the minds of the audience with terror, the first place is due to thunder and lightning, which are often made use of at the descending of a god, at the vanishing of a devil, or at the death of a tyrant. I have known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in very great alarm all the while it has been ringing. But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play, though he has done nothing but stalked solemnly across the stage, or rose through a cleft in it and sunk again without speaking one word. There may be a proper season for these several terrors, and when they only come in as aids and assistances to the poet, they are not only to be excused but to be applauded."

In Otway's tragedy of "Venice Preserved," the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre, which confronted the distracted Belvidera in the last scene, were for a long time very popular apparitions, although in later performances of the play it was thought proper to omit them, and to allow the audience to imagine their presence, or to conclude that Belvidera only fancied that she saw them. Here, however, is the extract from the original play:

For the time ghosts had been only incidental to a performance; by-and-by they were to become the main features and attractions of stage representation. Still they had not escaped ridicule and caricature. Fielding, in his burlesque tragedy of "Tom Thumb," introduced the audience to a scene between King Arthur and the ghost of Gaffer Thumb. The king threatens to kill the ghost, and prepares to execute his threat, when the apparition kindly explains to him, "I am a ghost and am already dead." "Ye stars!" exclaims King Arthur, "'tis well."

Here is an extract from Lewis's "Castle Spectre," including certain stage directions, by no means the least important part of the play.

"The Castle Spectre" enjoyed great success. It was supported by the whole strength of the Drury Lane company, John Kemble appearing as Earl Percy, and Mrs. Jordan as the heroine, and was repeated some fifty nights during its first season.

Against "The Castle Spectre" the critics, of course, raised their voices. Its popularity was viewed with much bitterness and jealousy. "The great run the piece had," writes the reverend author of "The History of the Stage," "is a striking proof that success is a very uncertain criterion of merit. The plot is rendered contemptible by the introduction of the ghost." "I hope it will not be hereafter believed," cried Cooke the actor, "that 'The Castle Spectre' could attract crowded houses when the most sublime productions of the immortal Shakespeare could be played to empty benches." A dispute arising in the green-room of the theatre between Lewis and Sheridan, Lewis offered to bet all the money which the play had brought that he was in the right. "No," said Sheridan, "I can't afford to bet so much as that; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll bet you all it's worth." Still, there was no cavilling down the play. The stage ghost was triumphant. He had attained his apogee. "The Castle Spectre" remained a stock piece for years, and has even appeared upon the stage in quite recent times.

Farther on the poet discourses of the ghosts in "Venice Preserved," of which mention has already been made:

A curious fact in connection with the Banquo of Betterton's time may here be noted. Banquo was represented by an actor named Smith; the ghost, however, was personated by another actor—Sandford. Why this division of the part between two performers? Smith was possessed of a handsome face and form, whereas Sandford was of "a low and crooked figure." He was the stage villain of his time, and was famed for his uncomely and malignant aspect; "the Spagnolet of the stage," Cibber calls him; but it is certainly strange that he should therefore have enjoyed a prescriptive right to impersonate ghosts.

Somewhat appeased at last, Dowton stayed his hand; but in the meantime Holland was summoned to appear upon the stage. The play was proceeding—what was to be done! All was confusion. It was not possible for Holland to present himself before the audience in such a plight as he had been reduced to. An apology was made "for the sudden indisposition of Mr. Holland," and the public were informed that "Mr. De Camp had kindly undertaken to go on for the part." Whether Dowton ever discovered his real persecutors is not stated. The story, indeed, may not be true, or it may be much rouged and burnt-corked, as are so many theatrical anecdotes, to conceal its natural poverty and weakness of constitution. But it is an amusing legend in any case.

The old melodramatic stage ghost—the spectre of "The Castle Spectre" school of plays—the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong and a teaspoonful of blue fire was lighted in the wings, probably found its last home in the travelling theatre long known as "Richardson's." Expelled from the regular theatre, it became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, appearing at country fairs, and bringing to bear upon remote agricultural populations those terrors that had long since lost all value in the eyes of the townsfolk. It lived to become a thing of scorn. "Richardson's Ghost" became a byword for a bankrupt phantom—a preposterous apparition, that was, in fact, only too thoroughly seen through: not to apply the words too literally. Whether there is still a show calling itself "Richardson's" (the original Richardson died a quarter of a century ago, and his immediate followers settled in a permanent London theatre long years back), and whether there is yet a phantom perambulating the country and calling itself "Richardson's Ghost," may be left to the very curious to inquire into and determine. The travelling theatre nowadays has lost its occupation. When the audiences began to travel, the stage could afford to be stationary.

THE BOOK OF THE PLAY.

Mr. Thackeray has described a memorable performance at the Theatre Royal, Chatteries. Arthur Pendennis and his young friend Harry Foker were among the audience; Lieutenants Rodgers and Podgers, and Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private box. The play was "The Stranger." Bingley, the manager, appeared as the hero of the sombre work; Mrs. Haller was impersonated by Miss Fotheringay. "I think ye'll like Miss Fotheringay in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan," observed the father of the actress. Bingley, we are told, was great in the character of the Stranger, and wore the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which stage tradition has duly prescribed as the costume of that doleful personage. "Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker had previously remarked. He had the stage jewellery on too, selecting "the largest and most shining rings for himself," and allowing his little finger to quiver out of his cloak, with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of the finger, and twiddling it in the faces of the pit. It is told of him that he made it a favour to the young men of his company to go on in light-comedy parts with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. "It had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who may have bought it for a shilling." But Bingley fancied the world was fascinated by its glitter.

The Stranger reads from morning to night, as his servant Francis reports of him. When he bestows a purse upon the aged Tobias, that he may be enabled to purchase his only son's discharge from the army, he first sends away Francis with the stage-book, that there may be no witness of the benevolent deed. "Here, take this book, and lay it on my desk," says the Stranger; and the stage direction runs: "Francis goes into the lodge with the book." Bingley, it is stated, marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. Two acts later, and the Stranger is again to be beheld, "on a seat, reading." But after that he has to put from him his precious book, for the incidents of the drama demand his very serious attention.

Dismissed from the Stranger, however, the stage-book probably reappears in the afterpiece. In how many dramatic works figures this useful property—the "book of the play"? Shakespeare has by no means disdained its use. Imogen is discovered reading in her bed in the second act of "Cymbeline." She inquires the hour of the lady in attendance:

Brutus reads within his tent:

And thereupon enters the ghost of Cæsar, and appoints a meeting at Philippi.

In the third act of "The Third Part of King Henry VI.," that monarch enters, "disguised, with a prayer-book." Farther on, when a prisoner in the Tower, he is "discovered sitting with a book in his hand, the Lieutenant attending;" when Gloucester enters, abruptly dismisses the Lieutenant, and forthwith proceeds to the assassination of the king.

But Gloucester himself is by-and-by to have dealings with the "book of the play." In the seventh scene of the third act of "King Richard III.," a stage direction runs: "Enter Gloucester in a gallery above, between two bishops." Whereupon the Lord Mayor, who has come with divers aldermen and citizens to beseech the duke to accept the crown of England, observes:

Says Buckingham:

A certain antiquary, when Kemble first assumed the part of Richard, took objection to the prayer-book he affected to read in this scene. "This book," writes Boaden, "for aught I know the 'Secret History of the Green Room,' which Kemble took from the property-man before he went on, our exact friend said should have been some illuminated missal. This was somewhat inconsistent, because one would suppose the heart of the antiquary must have grieved to see the actor skirr away so precious a relic of the dark ages, as if, like Careless, in 'The School for Scandal,' he would willingly 'knock down the mayor and aldermen.'" It was at this time, probably, that antiquarianism first stirred itself on the subject of scenic decorations. The solitary banner unfurled by Kemble, as Richard, bore a white rose embroidered upon it. "What!" cried the antiquaries, "a king of England battling with invaders and yet not displaying his royal banner!" And remark was made upon the frequent mention of armour that occurs in the later scenes of the play. We have "locked up in steel;" "What! is my beaver easier than it was?" "And all my armour laid into my tent;" "The armourers accomplishing the knights;" "With clink of hammers closing rivets up;" "Your friends up and buckle on their armour." Yet, as Boaden relates, it was no less strange than true, that, in Kemble's time, "excepting the breastplate and thigh-pieces on Richmond, not one of the dramatis personæ had the smallest particle of armour upon him in either army."

There is a stage-book in "King Henry VIII." The Duke of Norfolk, in the second act, "opens a folding-door; the king is discovered sitting and reading pensively." The book of Prospero is spoken of, but not seen. In "Hamlet" the stage-book plays an important part. Says Polonius to Ophelia, when he and Claudius would be "lawful espials" of her meeting with Hamlet:

The "book of the play" frequently figures in theatrical anecdote. Wilkinson relates, that when Reddish made his first essay upon the stage, he inserted a paragraph in the newspaper, informing the public that he was "a gentleman of easy fortune." He appeared as Sir John Dorilant, in "The School for Lovers," and in the course of his performance threw from him an elegantly-bound book, which he was supposed to have been studying. Observing this, a gentleman in the pit inquired of Macklin, who happened to be present: "Pray, sir, do you think such conduct natural?" "Why, no, sir," Macklin replied gravely, "not in a Sir John Dorilant, but strictly natural as Mr. Reddish; for, as you know, he has advertised himself as a gentleman of easy fortune." It has been pointed out, however, that the inaccuracy, fatal to so many anecdotes, affects even this one. The book is thrown away in strict accordance with the stage directions of the play; and it is so treated, not by Sir John Dorilant, but by another character named Belmont.

Macklin administered a similar rebuke, while his comedy of "The True-born Irishman" was in rehearsal, to an actor personating one of the characters, and acquitting himself very indifferently. Upon his mispronouncing the name of Lady Kennegad, Macklin stepped up to him and demanded angrily, "What trade he was of?" The player replied that he was a gentleman. Macklin rejoined: "Stick to that, sir! stick to that; for you will never be an actor."

There is a stage-book to be seen in "The School for Scandal." Joseph Surface affects to pore over its pages immediately after he has secreted Lady Teazle behind the screen, and while Sir Peter is on the stairs. "Ever improving himself," notes Sir Peter, and then taps the reader on the shoulder. Joseph starts. "I have been dozing over a stupid book," he says; and the stage direction bids him "gape, and throw down the book." And many volumes are needed in "The Rivals." Miss Languish's maid Lucy returns after having traversed half the town, and visited all the circulating libraries in Bath. She has failed to obtain "The Reward of Constancy;" "The Fatal Connexion;" "The Mistakes of the Heart;" "The Delicate Mistress, or the Memoirs of Lady Woodford." But she has secured, as she says, "taking the books from under her cloak, and from her pockets, 'The Gordian Knot' and 'Peregrine Pickle.' Here are 'The Tears of Sensibility' and 'Humphry Clinker.' This, 'The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality,' written by herself; and here the second volume of 'The Sentimental Journey.'"

It will be perceived that the property-master of the theatre is here required to produce quite a library of stage-books. Does he buy them by the dozen, from the nearest book-stall—out of that trunk full of miscellaneous volumes, boldly labelled, "All these at fourpence"? And does he then recover them with the bright blue or scarlet that is so dear to him, daubing them here and there with his indispensable Dutch metal? Of course their contents can matter little. Like all the other things of the theatre, they are not what they pretend to be, nor what they would have the audience think them. The "book of the play" is something of a mystery. Let us take for granted, however, that it is rarely interesting to the reader, that it is not one of those volumes which, when once taken up, cannot again be laid down—which thrill, enchain, and absorb. For otherwise what might happen? When some necessary question of the play had to be considered, the actor, over-occupied with the volume in his hand, fairly tied and bound by its chain of interest, might forget his part—the book might ruin the play. Of course such an accident could not be permitted. The stage-book is bound to be a dull book, however much it may seem to entertain Brutus and Henry, the Stranger and Bisarre, Hamlet and Joseph Surface, Imogen and Lydia Languish. It is in truth, a book for all stage-readers. Now it is a prayer-book—as in the case of Richard III.; and now, in "The Hunchback," it is "Ovid's Art of Love." According to the prompt-book of the play, Modus is to enter "with a neatly-bound book."

It is the misfortune of the "book of the play" to be much maltreated by the dramatis personæ. It is now flung away, now torn, now struck to earth; the property-master, it may be, watching its fate from the side-wings—anxious not so much because of its contents or intrinsic value, as on account of the gaudy cover his art has supplied it with, and the pains he must take to repair any injuries it may receive in the course of the performance.

"HALF-PRICE AT NINE O'CLOCK."

The plan of admitting the public to the theatres at "half-price," after the conclusion of a certain portion of the entertainments of the evening, has, of late years, gone out of fashion. Half-price was an institution of old date, however, and by no means without advantage to the playgoer.

Formerly, the prices of admission to the theatres were not fixed so definitely as at present. In Colley Cibber's time it was held to be reasonable that the prices should be raised whenever a new play was produced, on account of which any great expense in the way of scenery, dresses, and decorations had been incurred, or when pantomimes were brought out, involving an outlay of a thousand pounds or so. After the bloom had a little worn off these novelties, the prices fell again to their old standard; consisting for some years of four shillings, two shillings and sixpence, eighteenpence, and one shilling.

"Whenever a pantomime or farce shall be advertised, the advanced prices shall be returned to those who do not choose to stay; and, on Thursday next, will be published the manager's reasons for his conduct in the present dispute."

This arrangement was very far from giving satisfaction, however, and the disturbance was renewed the next night. A country gentleman, who had distinguished himself by the warmth and violence of his expressions of disapproval, was forcibly removed by the constables from the upper boxes and carried before a magistrate, who, however, it would seem, declined to entertain the charge against the offender. The theatre was closed for two or three nights, and a notice appeared in the playbills: "The great damage occasioned by the disturbances makes it impossible to perform." The manager published an address to the public in The General Advertiser, setting forth a statement of the case and justifying his conduct.

This appeal had its effect: the disturbance ceased: although there was some discontent that an arrangement so profitable to the manager had been agreed to. It was found that in practice, when people were once comfortably seated, "very few ever went out to demand their advanced money; and those few very soon grew tired of doing so; until at last it settled in the quiet payment of the advanced prices." Mr. Fleetwood, however, did not long continue in the management.

On the following night, Mr. Mallet's tragedy of "Elvira" was played for the first time. The disturbance was renewed, and Mr. Garrick was called for. He was asked peremptorily: "Will you or will you not give admittance for half-price after the third act of a play, except during the first winter a pantomime is performed?" The manager, dreading a repetition of the riot of the preceding evening, replied in the affirmative. A demand was then made for an apology from Moody the actor, who had interfered to prevent the theatre being fired. Moody appeared, and, after an Irish fashion, expressed regret that he had displeased the audience "by saving their lives in putting out the fire." This pleasantry was very ill received. Mr. Fitzpatrick's party insisted that the actor should go down on his knees and implore their pardon. Moody refused with an oath, and abruptly quitted the stage. He was received with open arms by Garrick in the wings, who assured him he should not suffer for his spirited conduct. But the tumult in the theatre became so great, that the manager was compelled to promise that Moody should not appear on the stage while he was under the displeasure of the public. A reconciliation was some time afterwards brought about between the actor and his audience. It may be noted that in 1763, according to a manuscript memorandum in his own hand (discovered by Mr. Parkes), Sir Phillip Francis, the supposed "Junius," commenced to write anonymously for the Press, the occasion being "a row in a theatre, to help Fitzpatrick out of the scrape."

The new plan was not found to work very well, however. A very thin audience attended the first performance, and a few hisses were heard in opposition to the project; the friends of the management applauding lustily. At the conclusion of the first entertainment, certain obstinate persons refused to resign their seats and make way for their successors, though the stage lamps were extinguished and they were threatened with total darkness. The manager then came forward, and formally announced that the first performance had concluded. One or two then threw their money on the stage, as the price of their admission to the second performance, and finding that the malcontents were resolved to keep their seats, the manager submitted and retired. The plan was only continued for ten nights, when the theatre was closed for the season. In a farewell address, the manager stated that the experiment, so far as he could judge, had succeeded; during the ten nights, compared with the ten nights preceding, an addition of one-third having been made to the number of persons visiting the theatre. Still, he did not feel justified in pledging himself to continue the arrangement in future seasons. There was indeed no further trial of the double-performance system in lieu of half-price.

"MY DEAR TOM,—This will be your first five-act production, and don't be offended if an old practitioner ventures to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience. Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play. The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are apt to damn without consideration that which they are no judges of—

"To be fore-armed against this contingency, contrive to make some character (either in the heat of passion, or in any way you please) briefly run over all the foregoing parts of the story, so as to put everyone in possession of what they otherwise would have lost by absence; and, take my word, you will reap the benefit of it."

Mr. Dibdin expresses so much gratitude for Mr. Lewis's counsel, and recommends it so earnestly to the consideration of all young dramatists, that we cannot doubt that some effect upon subsequent writings for the stage must in this indirect way have resulted from the half-price system, and in avoidance of its disadvantages, as set forth by the stage-manager of Covent Garden Theatre.

THE DRAMA UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

For such a triumph as fanaticism enjoyed over the fine arts in England during and for some time after the great Civil War, no parallel can be found in the history of any other nation. And it was not, be it remembered, the work of a capricious and cruel despot; it was the tyranny of a solemn legislative assembly. Hypocrisy had some share in the proceeding, very likely; but in the main the Puritanism of the time was sincere even to its frenzies of intolerance. Good men and true held that they were doing only what was sound, and wise, and right, when they made ruthless war upon poetry, and painting, and all the refinements and graces of life, denouncing them as scandals and sins, ungodly devices, pernicious wiles of the author of all evil; when they peremptorily closed the doors of the theatres, and dismissed actors, authors, managers, and all concerned, to absolute starvation.