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.
The stage could not live without its whispers, which, after all, are
only whispers in a non-natural sense. For that can hardly be in truth
a whisper, which is designed to reach the ears of some hundreds of
persons. But the "asides" of the theatre are a convenient and
indispensable method of revealing to the audience the state of mind of
the speaker, and of admitting them to his confidence. The novelist can
stop his story, and indulge in analytical descriptions of his
characters, their emotions, moods, intentions, and opinions; but the
dramatist can only make his creatures intelligible by means of the
speeches he puts into their mouths. So, for the information of the
audience and the carrying on of the business of the scene, we have
soliloquies and asides, the artful delivery of which, duly to secure
attention and enlist sympathy, evokes the best abilities of the
player, bound to invest with an air of nature and truth-seeming purely
fictitious and unreasonable proceedings.
But there are other than these recognised and established whispers of
the stage. Voices are occasionally audible in the theatre which
obviously were never intended to reach the public ear. The existence
of such a functionary as the prompter may be one of those things which
are "generally known;" but the knowledge should not come, to those who
sit in front of the curtain, from any exercise of their organs of
sight or of sound. To do the prompter justice, he is rarely visible;
but his tones, however still and small they may pretend to be,
sometimes travel to those whom they do not really concern. One of the
first scraps of information acquired by the theatrical student relates
to the meaning of the letters P.S. and O.P. Otherwise he might,
perhaps, have some difficulty in comprehending the apparently magnetic
attraction which one particular side of the proscenium has for so many
of our players. We say _our_ players advisedly, for the position of
the prompter is different on the foreign stage. Abroad, and, indeed,
during alien and lyrical performances in this country, he is hidden in
a sort of gipsy-tent in front of the desk of the conductor. The
accommodation provided for him is limited enough; little more than his
head can be permitted to emerge from the hole cut for him in the
stage. But his situation has its advantages. He cannot possibly be
seen by the audience; he can conveniently instruct the performers
without requiring them "to look off" appealingly, or to rush
desperately to the wing to be reminded of their parts; while the
sloping roof of his temporary abode has the effect of directing his
whispers on to the stage, and away from the spectators. It seems
strange that this system of posting the prompter in the van instead
of on the flank of the actors has never been permanently adopted in
this country. But a change of the kind indicated would certainly be
energetically denounced by a number of very respectable and sensible
people as "un-English," an objection that is generally regarded as
quite final and convincing, although it is conceivable, at any rate,
that a thing may be of fair value and yet of foreign origin. "Gad,
sir, if a few very sensible persons had been attended to we should
still have been champing acorns!" observed Luttrell the witty, when
certain enlightened folk strenuously opposed the building of Waterloo
Bridge on the plea that it would spoil the river!
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.
To singers, the convenient position of the prompter is a matter of
real importance. Their memories are severely tried, for, in addition
to the words, they have to bear in mind the music of their parts.
While delivering their scenas they are compelled to remain almost
stationary, well in front of the stage, so that their voices may be
thrown towards their audience and not lose effect by escaping into the
flies. Meanwhile their hasty movement towards a prompter in the wings,
upon any sudden forgetfulness of the words of their songs, would be
most awkward and unseemly. It is very necessary that their prompter
and their conductor should be their near neighbours, able to render
them assistance and support upon the shortest notice. But this
proximity of the prompter has, perhaps, induced them to rely too much
upon his help, and to burden their memories too little. The majority
of singers are but indifferently acquainted with the words they are
required to utter. They gather these as they want them, from the
hidden friend in his hutch at their feet. The occupants of the
proscenium boxes at the opera-houses must be familiarly acquainted
with the tones of the prompter's voice, as he delivers to the singers,
line by line, the matter of their parts; and occasionally these stage
whispers are audible at a greater distance from the foot-lights. In
operatic performances, however, the words are of very inferior
importance to the music; the composer quite eclipses the author. A
musician has been known to call a libretto the "verbiage" of his
opera. The term was not perhaps altogether inappropriate. Even actors
are apt to underrate the importance of the speeches they are called
upon to deliver, laying the greater stress upon the "business" they
propose to originate, or the scenic effects that are to be introduced
into the play. They sometimes describe the words of their parts as
"cackle." But perhaps this term also may be accepted as applying,
fitly enough, to much of the dialogue of the modern drama.
It is a popular notion that, although all persons may not be endowed
with histrionic gifts, it is open to everybody to perform the duties
of a prompter without preparation or study. Still the office requires
some exercise of care and judgment. "Here's a nice mess you've got me
into," said once a tragedian, imperfect in his text, to an
inexperienced or incautious prompter. "What am I to do now? Thanks to
you, I've been and spoken all the next act!" And the prompter has a
task of serious difficulty before him when the actors are but
distantly acquainted with their parts, or "shy of the syls," that is,
syllables, as they prefer to describe their condition. "Where have
they got to now?" he has sometimes to ask himself, when he finds them
making havoc of their speeches, missing their cues, and leading him a
sort of steeple-chase through the book of the play. It is the golden
rule of the player who is "stuck"--at a loss for words--to "come to
Hecuba," or pass to some portion of his duty which he happens to bear
in recollection. "What's the use of bothering about a handful of
words?" demanded a veteran stroller. "I never stick. I always say
something and get on, and no one has hissed me yet!" It was probably
this performer, who, during his impersonation of Macbeth, finding
himself at a loss as to the text soon after the commencement of his
second scene with Lady Macbeth, coolly observed: "Let us retire,
dearest chuck, and con this matter over in a more sequestered spot,
far from the busy haunts of men. Here the walls and doors are spies,
and our every word is echoed far and near. Come, then, let's away!
False heart must hide, you know, what false heart dare not show." A
prompter could be of little service to a gentleman so fertile in
resources. He may be left to pair off with that provincial Montano who
modernised his speech in reference to Cassio:
And 'tis great pity that the noble Moor
Should hazard such a place as his own second
With one of an ingraft infirmity.
It were an honest action to say
So to the Moor--
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?"
In small provincial or strolling companies it often becomes expedient
to press every member of the establishment into the service of the
stage. We read of a useful property-man and scene-shifter who was
occasionally required to fill small parts in the performance, such,
for instance, as "the cream-faced loon" in "Macbeth," and who thus
explained his system of representation, admitting that from his other
occupations he could rarely commit perfectly to memory the words he
was required to utter. "I tell you how I manage. I inwariably
contrives to get a reg'lar knowledge of the natur' of the
_char_-ac-ter, and ginnerally gives the haudience words as near like
the truth as need be. I seldom or never puts any of you out, and takes
as much pains as anybody can expect for two-and-six a week extra,
which is all I gets for doing such-like parts as mine. I finds
Shakespeare's parts worse to get into my head nor any other; he goes
in and out so to tell a thing. I should like to know how I was to say
all that rigmarole about the wood coming; and I'm sure my telling
Macbeth as Birnam Wood was a-walking three miles off the castle, did
very well. But some gentlemen is sadly pertickler, and never considers
circumstances!"
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.
It is curious how many of the incidents and details of representation
escape the notice of the audience. And here we are referring less to
merits than to mischances. Good acting may not always obtain due
recognition; but then how often bad acting and accidental deficiencies
remain undetected! "We were all terribly out, but the audience did not
see it," actors will often candidly admit. Although we in front
sometimes see and hear things we should not, some peculiarity of our
position blinds and deafens us too much. Our eyes are beguiled into
accepting age for youth, shabbiness for finery, tinsel for splendour.
Garrick frankly owned that he had once appeared upon the stage so
inebriated as to be scarcely able to articulate, but "his friends
endeavoured to stifle or cover this trespass with loud applause," and
the majority of the audience did not perceive that anything
extraordinary was the matter. What happened to Garrick on that
occasion has happened to others of his profession. And our ears do not
catch much of what is uttered on the stage. Young, the actor, used to
relate that on one occasion, when playing the hero of "The Gamester"
to the Mrs. Beverley of Sarah Siddons, he was so overcome by the
passion of her acting as to be quite unable to proceed with his part.
There was a long pause, during which the prompter several times
repeated the words which Beverley should speak. Then "Mrs. Siddons
coming up to her fellow-actor, put the tips of her fingers upon his
shoulders, and said, in a low voice, 'Mr. Young, recollect yourself.'"
Yet probably from the front of the house nothing was seen or heard of
this. In the same way the players will sometimes prompt each other
through whole scenes, interchange remarks as to necessary adjustments
of dress, or instructions as to "business" to be gone through, without
exciting the attention of the audience. Kean's pathetic whisper, "I am
dying, speak to them for me," when, playing for the last time, he sank
into the arms of his son, was probably not heard across the orchestra.
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:
There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips,
And call thee back, my soul, to life and love!
Juliet continues to whisper: "Pray put me down; you'll certainly throw
me down if you don't set me on the ground directly." "In the midst of
'cruel, cursed fate,' his dagger fell out of his dress. I, embracing
him tenderly, crammed it back again, because I knew I should want it
at the end." The performance thus went on:
ROMEO. Tear not my heart-strings thus!
They break! they crack! Juliet! Juliet!
[_Dies._
JULIET (_to corpse_). Am I smothering you?
CORPSE. Not at all. But could you, do you think, be so kind as to put
my wig on again for me? It has fallen off.
JULIET (_to corpse_). I'm afraid I can't, but I'll throw my muslin
veil over it. You've broken the phial, haven't you? (_Corpse
nodded_).
JULIET (_to corpse_). Where's your dagger?
CORPSE (_to Juliet_). 'Pon my soul I don't know.
The same vivacious writer supplies a corresponding account of the
representation of "Venice Preserved," in which, of course, she
appeared as Belvidera. "When I went on, I was near tumbling down at
the sight of my Jaffier, who looked like the apothecary in 'Romeo and
Juliet,' with the addition of some devilish red slashes along his
thighs and arms. The first scene passed off well, but, oh! the next,
and the next to that! Whenever he was not glued to my side (and that
was seldom), he stood three yards behind me; he did nothing but seize
my hand and grapple it so hard that, unless I had knocked him down
(which I felt much inclined to try), I could not disengage myself. In
the senate scene, when I was entreating for mercy, and struggling, as
Otway has it, for my life, he was prancing round the stage in every
direction, flourishing his dagger in the air. I wish to heaven I had
got up and run away: it would have been natural, and have served him
extremely right. In the parting scene--oh, what a scene it
was!--instead of going away from me when he said, 'Farewell for ever!'
he stuck to my skirts, though in the same breath that I adjured him,
in the words of my part, not to leave me, I added, aside, 'Get away
from me, oh do!' When I exclaimed, 'Not one kiss at parting!' he kept
embracing and kissing me like mad, and when I ought to have been
pursuing him, and calling after him, 'Leave thy dagger with me!' he
hung himself up against the wing, and remained dangling there for five
minutes. I was half crazy. I prompted him constantly, and once, after
struggling in vain to free myself from him, was obliged, in the middle
of my part, to exclaim, 'You hurt me dreadfully, Mr. ----.' He clung to
me, cramped me, crumpled me--dreadful! I never experienced anything
like this before, and made up my mind that I never would again."
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.
We conclude with noting a stage whisper of an old-established and yet
most mysterious kind. In a book of recent date dealing with theatrical
life, we read that the words "John Orderly" uttered by the proprietor
of a strolling theatre, behind the scenes, or in the wings of his
establishment, constitute a hint to the players to curtail the
performances and allow the curtain to fall as soon as may be. Who was
"John Orderly," and how comes his name to be thus used as a watchword?
The Life of Edwin the actor, written by (to quote Macaulay) "that
filthy and malignant baboon, John Williams, who called himself
Anthony Pasquin," and published late in the last century, contains the
following passage: "When theatric performers intend to abridge an act
or play, they are accustomed to say, we will 'John Audley' it. It
originated thus: In the year 1749, Shuter was master of a booth at
Bartholomew Fair in West Smithfield, and it was his mode to lengthen
the exhibition until a sufficient number of persons were gathered at
the door to fill the house. This event was signified by a fellow
popping his head in at the gallery door and bellowing out 'John
Audley!' as if in the act of inquiry, though the intention was to let
Shuter know that a fresh audience were in high expectation below. The
consequence of this notification was that the entertainments were
instantly concluded, and the gates of the booth thrown open for a new
auditory." That "John Audley" should be in time corrupted into "John
Orderly," is intelligible enough. We don't look to the showman or the
strolling manager for nicety or correctness of pronunciation. But
whether such a person as John Audley ever existed, who he was, and
what he did, that his name should be handed down in this way, from
generation to generation, we are still left inquiring.