It required a large portion of courage to venture abroad after sunset at
Christian Malford, for somebody’s apparition presented itself to the
walker’s imagination. Spritely gossips met near their wells with their
crooked sticks and buckets, to devise means for laying the disturbed
returners and their once native associates; but a party of strolling
players did more towards sending the spectres to the “tomb of all the
Capulets,” than the divinations of feminine power.
Application being made to the magistrate, who was not exempt from the
superstitious and revered infection, that plays might be performed in
the malthouse, said to be so daringly haunted, a timely caution was
given as to “Beelzebub and his imps,” and permission was granted, and
bills were circulated by the magnanimous manager himself. He was a
polite man, a famous anecdote retailer, retainer, and detailer, an
excellent spouter, and a passable singer. His dress and address were
eccentric. The hessians he wore, by fit necessity, were of the buskin
order; and, as bread was then dear, a sixpenny loaf might have supplied
the absence of calves. His pigtail-wig, hat, and all his apparel indeed,
served, when on the dramatic floor, most aptly the variations required
in his wardrobe.
I remember, when the “Miller of Mansfield” was played, the bell rang,
the baize was drawn up by a stable-halter, the fiddler began to scrape a
ditty by way of overture; but, before the miller could appear, a
smockfrock was called for, from one of the frocked rustics in the
gallery, (the back seats of the scaffolding.) This call was generously
obeyed. A youth pulled off his upper-all, proudly observing, that “the
player should have it, because his was a sacred persuasion.” The miller
appeared, and the play proceeded, with often repeated praises of the
frock. On another night, “Richard” was personated by a red-haired woman,
an active stroller of the company. Her manner of enacting the deformed
and ambitious Glo’ster so charmed the village censors, that for three
weeks successively nothing else would please but “Richard.” Nor was the
effect less operative in the field, (not of Bosworth)--Virgil’s
“Bucolics and Georgics” were travestied. Reaphooks, sithes, pitchforks,
and spades were set in contact in the daytime, to the great amusement
and terror of quiet people.--The funds of the company being exhausted,
the Thespians tramped off rather suddenly, leaving other bills than
playbills behind them. Ever after this the ghosts of the malthouse
disappeared, the rustics of the valley crying, as they triumphantly
passed, “Off with his head!” and others, replying in the words of
Hamlet, “Oh! what a falling _off_ is here!”
ΠΡΙ.
_Oct. 1827._
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