A Book Of The Play Part 6

After the riot in the footmen's gallery, the gentlemen of the county of Aberdeen resolved neither to give, nor to allow their servants to receive, any money from their visitors under the name of drink-money, card-money, &c., and instead, augmented their wages. This example was "followed by the gentlemen of the county of Edinburgh, by the Faculty of Advocates, and other respectable public bodies; and the practice was utterly exploded over all Scotland."

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 c.o.c.ks'-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 fas.h.i.+on 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."

CHAPTER X.

FOOT-LIGHTS.

As the performances of the Elizabethan theatres commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the public theatres of the period were open to the sky (except over the stage and galleries), much artificial lighting could not, as a rule, have been requisite. Malone, in his account of the English stage prefixed to his edition of "Shakespeare,"

describes the stage as formerly lighted by means of two large branches "of a form similar to those now hung in churches." The pattern of these branches may be seen in the frontispiece to "Kirkman's Collection of Drolls," printed in 1672, representing a view of a theatrical booth. In time, however, it was discovered that the branches obstructed the view of the spectators, and were otherwise incommodious; they then gave place to small circular wooden frames furnished with candles, eight of which were hung on the stage, four on either side. The frontispiece to the Dublin edition of Chetwood's "History of the Stage," 1749, exhibits the stage lighted by hoops of candles in this way, suspended from the proscenium, and with no foot-lights between the actors and the musicians in the orchestra. It is probable that these candles were of wax or tallow, accordingly as the funds of the theatrical manager permitted. Mr. Pepys, in his "Diary," February 12th, 1667, chronicles a conversation with Killigrew, the manager of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. "He tells me that the stage is now, by his pains, a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. _Now, wax candles and many of them; then, not above 3 lb. of tallow._ Now, all things civil: no rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden," &c. The body of the house, according to Malone, was formerly lighted "by cressets or large open lanthorns of nearly the same size with those which are fixed in the p.o.o.p of a s.h.i.+p."

The use of candles involved the employment of candle-snuffers, who came on at certain pauses in the performance to tend and rectify the lighting of the stage. Goldsmith's Strolling Player narrates how he commenced his theatrical career in this humble capacity: "I snuffed the candles; and let me tell you, that without a candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its embellishment." The illness of one of the actors necessitated the pressing of the candle-snuffer into the company of players. "I learnt my part," he continues, "with astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity, and bade adieu to snuffing candles ever after. I found that nature had designed me for more n.o.ble employment, and I was resolved to take her when in the humour." But the duties of a candle-snuffer, if not very honourable, were somewhat arduous. It was the custom of the audience, especially among those frequenting the galleries, to regard him as a b.u.t.t, with whom to amuse themselves during the pauses between the acts. Something of this habit is yet extant. Even nowadays the appearance of a servant on the stage for the necessary purposes of the performance--to carry chairs on or off, to spread or remove a carpet, &c.--is frequently the signal for cries of derision from the gallery. Of old the audience proceeded to greater extremities--even to hurling missiles of various kinds at the unfortunate candle-snuffer. In Foote's comedy of "The Minor," s.h.i.+ft, one of the characters, describes the changing scenes of his life. From a linkboy outside a travelling theatre he was promoted to employment within. "I did the honours of the barn," he says, "by sweeping the stage and clipping the candles. Here my skill and address were so conspicuous that it procured me the same office the ensuing winter, at Drury Lane, where I acquired intrepidity, the crown of all my virtues.... For I think, sir, he that dares stand the shot of the gallery, in lighting, snuffing, and sweeping, the first night of a new play, may bid defiance to the pillory with all its customary compliments.... But an unlucky crab-apple applied to my right eye by a patriot gingerbread baker from the Borough, who would not suffer three dancers from Switzerland because he hated the French, forced me to a precipitate retreat."

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 embarra.s.sing 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 a.s.sist 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 s.h.i.+ps 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."

Garrick, in 1765, after his return from Italy (according to Jackson's "History of the Scottish Stage"), introduced various improvements in the theatre, and amongst them, the employment of a row of foot-lights in lieu of the old circular chandeliers over head. The labours of the candle-snuffers in front of the curtain were probably brought to a conclusion soon afterwards, when oil-lamps took the place of candles.

The snuffer then found his occupation gone. Probably the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the lamps became his next duty; and then, as time went on, he developed into a "gasman," that most indispensable attendant of the modern theatre.

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 pa.s.sages. 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 a 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 bra.s.s 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 abolis.h.i.+ng the abominable mutton of our youth."

The first gas-lamp appeared in London in the year 1809, Pall Mall being the first and for some years the only street so illuminated.

Gradually, however, the new mode of lighting made way, and stole from the streets into manufactories and public buildings, and, finally, into private houses. The progress was not very rapid however; for we find that gas was not introduced into the Mall of St. James's Park until the year 1822. It is difficult to fix the exact date when gas foot-lights appeared upon the stage. But in the year 1828 an explosion took place in Covent Garden Theatre by which two men lost their lives.

Great alarm was excited. The public were afraid to re-enter the theatre. The management published an address in which it was stated that the gas-fittings would be entirely removed from the interior of the house, and safer methods of illumination resorted to. In order to effect the necessary alterations the theatre was closed for a fortnight, during which the Covent Garden company appeared at the English Opera House, or Lyceum Theatre, and an address was issued on behalf of the widows of the men who had been killed by the explosion.

In due time, however, the world grew bolder on the subject, and gas reappeared upon the scene. Some theatres, however (being probably restricted by the conditions of their leases), were very tardy in adopting the new system of lighting. Mr. Benjamin Webster, in his speech in the year 1853, upon his resigning the management of the Haymarket Theatre after a tenancy of fifteen years, mentions, among the improvements he had originated during that period, that he had "introduced gas for the fee of 500 a-year, and the presentation of the centre chandelier to the proprietors."

The employment of gas-lights in theatres was strenuously objected to by many people. In the year 1829 a medical gentleman, writing from Bolton Row, and signing himself "Chiro-Medicus," addressed to a public journal a remonstrance on the subject. He had met with several fatal cases of apoplexy which had occurred in the theatres, or a few hours after leaving them, and he had been led, with some success, as he alleged, to investigate the cause. It appeared to him "that the strong vivid light evolved from the numerous gas-lamps on the stage so powerfully stimulated the brain through the medium of the optic nerves, as to occasion a preternatural determination of blood to the head, capable of producing headache or giddiness: and if the subject should at the time laugh heartily, the additional influx of blood which takes place, may rupture a vessel, the consequence of which will be, from the effusion of blood within the substance of the brain, or on its surface, fatal apoplexy." From inquiries he had made among his professional brethren who had been many years in practice in the Metropolis, it appeared to him that the votaries of the drama were by no means so subject to apoplexy or nervous headache _before_ the adoption of gas-lights. Some of his medical friends were of opinion that the air of the theatre was very considerably deteriorated by the combustion of gas, and that the consumption of oxygen, and the new products, and the escape of hydrogen, occasioned congestion of the vessels of the head. He thought it probable that this deterioration of the air might act in conjunction with the vivid light in producing either apoplexy or nervous headache. He found, moreover, that the actors were subject not only to headache, but also to weakness of sight and attacks of giddiness, from the action of the powerfully vivid light evolved from the combustion of gas; and he noted that the pupils of the eyes of all actors or actresses, who had been two or three years on the stage, were much dilated; though this, he thought, might be attributable to the injurious pigments they employed to heighten their complexions; common rouge containing either red oxide of lead or the sulphuret of mercury, and white paint being often composed of carbonate of lead, all of which were capable of acting detrimentally upon the optic nerve.

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.

Beyond increasing the _quant.i.ty_ of light, stage management has done little since Garrick's introduction of foot-lights, or "floats," as they are technically termed, in the way of satisfactorily adjusting the illumination of the stage. The light still comes from the wrong place: from below instead of, naturally, from above. In 1863, Mr.

Fechter, at the Lyceum, sank the _floats_ below the surface of the stage, so that they should not intercept the view of the spectator; and his example has been followed by other managers; and of late years, owing to accidents having occurred to the dresses of the dancers when they approached too near to the foot-lights, these have been carefully fenced and guarded with wire screens and metal bars.

Moreover, the dresses of the performers have been much shortened. But the obvious improvement required still remains to be effected.

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 G.o.ddesses in the upper tiers of boxes, and the two and one s.h.i.+lling G.o.ds 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.

A concluding note may be added touching the difficulties that may ensue from the system of lighting the theatres by means of gas.

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 advertis.e.m.e.nts, among many others of like tenor, appearing in _The Times_ of the 4th December, are ill.u.s.trative of the situation of affairs:

SPECIAL NOTICE.--COURT THEATRE.--This theatre, from its situation, is in no way affected by the Gas Strike, and will be open every evening, and brilliantly illuminated.

ST. JAMES'S THEATRE.--The management having received no notice that, in consequence of the strike, the supply of gas would be discontinued, found at the last moment no light could be obtained, and were compelled to inform the crowds at the door that there would be no performance. _All Tickets_ issued last night will be available this evening.

GAS.--GAIETY.--SPECIAL NOTICE.--Arrangements (if necessary) have been made to light this Theatre with lime-lights and oil.

CHAPTER XI.

"COME, THE RECORDERS!"

Among the earlier emotions of the youthful playgoer, whose enthusiasm for dramatic representations is generally of a very fervid and uncompromising kind, must be recognised his pity for the money-taker, forbidden by the cares of office to witness a performance, and his envy of the musicians, so advantageously stationed for the incessant enjoyment of the delights of the theatre. But he perceives, with regretful wonder, that these gentlemen are habitually negligent of their opportunities, and fail to appreciate the peculiar happiness of their position; that they are apt, indeed, their services not being immediately required, to abandon their instruments, and quietly to steal away through the cramped doorway that admits to the mysterious regions beneath the stage. He is grieved to note that for them, at any rate, the play is _not_ "the thing." One or two may remain--the performer on the drum, I have observed, is often very faithful in this respect, though I have failed to discover any special reason why a love of histrionic efforts should be generated by his professional occupation--but the majority of the orchestra clearly manifest an almost indecent alacrity in avoiding all contemplation of the displays on the other side of the foot-lights. They are but playgoers on compulsion. They even seem sometimes, when they retain their seats, to prefer gazing at the audience, rather than at the actors, and thus to advertise their apathy in the matter. And I have not heard that the parsimonious manager, who proposed to reduce the salaries of his musicians on the ground that they every night enjoyed admission to the best seats, for which they paid nothing, "even when stars were performing," ever succeeded in convincing his band of the justice of his arguments.

The juvenile patron of the drama will, of course, in due time become less absorbed in his own view of the situation, and learn that just as one man's meat is another man's poison, so the pleasures of some are the pains of others. He will cease to search the faces of the orchestra for any evidence of "pride of place," or enjoyment of performances they witness, not as volunteers, but as pressed men. He will understand that they are at work, and are influenced by a natural anxiety to escape from work as soon as may be. So, the overture ended, they vanish, and leave the actors to do their best or their worst, as the case may be. But our young friend's sentiments are not peculiar to himself--have been often shared, indeed, by very experienced persons.

We have heard of comic singers and travelling entertainment givers who have greatly resented the air of indifference of their musical accompanist. They have required of him that he should feel amused, or affect to feel amused, by their efforts. He has had to supplement his skill as a musician by his readiness as an actor. It has been thought desirable that the audience should be enabled to exclaim: "The great So-and-So _must_ be funny! Why, see, the man at the piano, who plays for him every night, who has, of course, seen his performances scores and scores of times, even _he_ can't help laughing, the great So-and-So is so funny." The audience, thus convinced, find themselves, no doubt, very highly amused. Garrick himself appears, on one occasion at any rate, to have been much enraged at the indifference of a member of his band. Cervetto, the violoncello player, once ventured to yawn noisily and portentously while the great actor was delivering an address to the audience. The house gave way to laughter. The indignation of the actor could only be appeased by Cervetto's absurd excuse, that he invariably yawned when he felt "the greatest rapture,"

and to this emotion the address to the house, so admirably delivered by his manager, had justified him in yielding. Garrick accepted the explanation, perhaps rather on account of its humour than of its completeness.

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 cla.s.sical 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 a.s.sisted 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:

Also ye menstrelles doth your diligence Afore our depertying geve us a daunce.

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 personae._

The practice of playing music between the acts is of long standing, the frequent inappropriateness of these interludes having been repeatedly commented on, however. A writer in the last century expressly complains that at the end of every act, the audience, "carried away by a jig of Vivaldi's, or a concerto of Giardini's, lose every warm impression relative to the piece, and begin again cool and unconcerned as at the commencement of the representation." He advocates the introduction of music adapted to the subject: "The music after an act should commence in the tone of the preceding pa.s.sion, and be gradually varied till it accords with the tone of the pa.s.sion that is to succeed in the next act," so that "cheerful, tender, melancholy, or animated impressions" may be inspired, as the occasion may need. At the conclusion of the second act of "Gammer Gurton's Needle," 1566, Diccon, addressing himself to the musicians, says simply: "In the meantime, fellows, pipe up your fiddles." But in a later play, the "Two Italian Gentlemen," by Anthony Munday, printed about 1584, the different kinds of music to be played after each act are stated, whether a "pleasant galliard," a "solemn dump," or a "pleasant allemaigne." So Marston in his "Sophonisba," 1606, indicates particularly the instruments he would have played during the pauses between the acts. After act one, "the cornets and organs playing loud full of music;" after act two, "organs mixed with recorders;" after act three, "organs, viols, and voices;" with "a base lute and a treble viol" after act four. In the course of this play, moreover, musical accompaniments of a descriptive kind were introduced, the stage direction on two occasions informing us that "infernal music plays softly." Nabbes, in the prologue to his "Hannibal and Scipio," 1637, alludes at once to the change of the place of action of the drama, and to the performance of music between the acts:

The place is sometimes changed, too, with the scene, Which is transacted as the music plays Betwixt the acts.

The closing of the theatres by the Puritans, in 1642, plainly distressed the musicians almost as much as the players. Their occupation was practically gone, although not declared illegal by Act of Parliament. "Our music," writes the author of "The Actor's Remonstrance," 1643, "that was held so delectable and precious that they scorned to come to a tavern under twenty s.h.i.+llings for two hours, now wander with their instruments under their cloaks--I mean such as have any--into all houses of good fellows.h.i.+p, saluting every room where there is company with: 'Will you have any music, gentlemen?'"

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 a.s.signed 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 Theatres" state, regarding the French stage, that after the disuse of the old chorus in 1630, "a la place du chant qui distinguoit les actes et qui marquoit les repos necessaires, on introduisit des joueurs d'instrumens, qui d'abord furent places sur les ailes du theatre, ou ils executoient differens airs avant la commencement de la piece et entre les actes. Ensuite ils furent mis au fond des troisieme loges, puis aux secondes, enfin entre le theatre et la parterre, ou ils sont restes."

Theatres differ little save in regard to their dimensions. The minor house is governed by the same laws, is conducted upon the same system, as the major one. It is as a humbler and cheaper edition, but it repeats down to minute particulars the example of its costly original.

The orchestra, or some form of orchestra, is always indispensable.

Even that street-corner tragedy which sets forth the story of Punch and Judy, could not be presented without its pandean-pipe accompaniment. The lowest vagrant theatre must, like the lady in the nursery ballad, have music wherever it goes. No doubt this is often of most inferior quality, suggestive of a return to very early musical methods. But poverty constrains to primitiveness. Mr. Pepys, comparing the state of the stage under Killigrew to what it had been in earlier years, notes: "Then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best," &c. The orchestra of a strolling theatre has been known to consist of one fiddler only, and he has been required to combine with his musical exertions the discharge of secretarial duties, enlivened by occasional appearances on the stage to strengthen casts, or help fill up the scene. The strollers' band is often of uncertain strength. For when the travelling company meets with misadventure, the orchestra are usually the first to prove unfaithful.

They are the Swiss of the troop. The receipts fail, and the musicians desert. They carry their gifts elsewhere, and seek independent markets. The fairs, the racecourses, the country inn-doors, attract the fiddler, and he strolls on his own account, when the payment of salaries is suspended. A veteran actor was wont to relate his experiences of fifty years ago as a member of the Stratford-upon-Avon company, when the orchestra consisted only of a fife and a tambourine, the instrumentalists performing, as they avowed, "not from notes but entirely by ear." Presently the company removed to Warwick for the race week. But here the managerial difficulties increased--no band whatever could be obtained! This was the more distressing in that the performances were to be of an illegitimate character: a "famous tight-rope dancer" had been engaged. The dancer at once declared that his exhibition without music was not for a moment to be thought of.

One of the company thereupon obligingly offered his services. He could play upon the violin: four tunes only. Now, provided an instrument could be borrowed for the occasion, and provided, moreover, the tight-rope artist could dance to the tune of "There's Nae Luck," or "Drink to Me Only," or "Away with Melancholy," or the "National Anthem," here was a way out of the dilemma, and all might yet be well.

Unfortunately a violin was not forthcoming at any price, and the dancer declared himself quite unable to dance to the airs stated! How was faith to be kept with the public? At the last moment a barrel-organ was secured. The organist was a man of resources. In addition to turning the handle of his instrument, he contrived to play the triangle and the pan-pipes. Here, then, was a full band. The dancer still demurred. He must be a.s.sisted by a "clown to the rope,"

to chalk his soles, amuse the audience while he rested, and perform other useful duties. Another obliging actor volunteered his help. He would "by special desire and on this occasion only," appear as clown.

So having played Pangloss in the "Heir at Law," the first piece, he exchanged his doctorial costume for a suit of motley, and the performance "drew forth," as subsequent playbills stated, "universal and reiterated bursts of applause from a crowded and elegant audience." The experiment of the barrel-organ orchestra was not often repeated. The band of the Leamington Theatre was lent to the Warwick house, the distance between the establishments being only two miles.

The Leamington audience were provided with music at the commencement of the evening only; the Warwick playgoers dispensed with orchestral accompaniments until a later period in the performances.

CHAPTER XII.

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. Planche, 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--