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."
The reader may be reminded that Shakespeare has evinced a very
decided partiality for ghosts. In "The Second Part of King Henry VI.,"
Bolingbroke, the conjurer, raises up a spirit. In "Julius Cæsar,"
Brutus is visited in his tent by the ghost of the murdered Cæsar. In
"Hamlet," we have, of course, the ghost of the late king. In "Macbeth"
the ghost of Banquo takes his seat at the banquet, and in the caldron
scene we are shown apparitions of "an armed head," "a bloody child,"
"a child crowned, with a tree in his hand," and "eight kings" who pass
across the stage, "the last with a glass in his hand." In "Richard
III." quite a large army of ghosts present and address themselves
alternately to Richard and to Richmond. The ghosts of Prince Edward,
Henry VI., Clarence, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, Hastings, the two
young Princes, Queen Anne, and Buckingham invoke curses upon the
tyrant and blessings upon his opponent. It would be hard to find in
the annals of the drama another instance of such an assembly of
apparitions present upon the stage at the same time.
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:
BELVIDERA. Ha! look there!
[_The Ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre rise together, both bloody._
My husband bloody, and his friend too! Murder!
Who has done this? Speak to me, thou sad vision!
[_Ghosts sink._
On these poor trembling knees, I beg it. Vanished!
Here they went down. Oh! I'll dig, dig the den up.
You shan't delude me thus. Ho! Jaffier, Jaffier,
Peep up and give me but a look. I have him!
I've got him, father! Oh, now I'll smuggle him!
My love! my dear! my blessing! help me! help me!
They have hold on me, and drag me to the bottom.
Nay, now they pull so hard. Farewell. [_She dies._
MAID. She's dead.
Breathless and dead.
This may seem very sad stuff, but it would be unfair to judge Otway's
plays by this one extract. "Venice Preserved" is now shelved as an
acting drama, but it was formerly received with extraordinary favour,
and is by no means deficient in poetic merit. Campbell, the poet,
speaks of it, in his life of Mrs. Siddons, as "a tragedy which so
constantly commands the tears of audiences that it would be a work of
supererogation for me to extol its tenderness. There may be dramas
where human character is depicted with subtler skill--though Belvidera
might rank among Shakespeare's creations; and 'Venice Preserved' may
not contain, like 'Macbeth' and 'Lear,' certain high conceptions which
exceed even the power of stage representation--but it is as full as a
tragedy can be of all the pathos that is transfusable into action."
Belvidera was one of Mrs. Siddons's greatest characters. Campbell
notes that "until the middle of the last century the ghosts of Jaffier
and Pierre used to come in upon the stage, haunting Belvidera in her
last agonies, which certainly require no aggravation from spectral
agency." The play was much condensed for presentment on the stage; but
it would not appear that Belvidera's dying speech, quoted above, was
interfered with. Boaden, in his memoir of the actress, expressly
commends Mrs. Siddons's delivery of the passage, "I'll dig, dig the
den up!" and the action which accompanied the words.
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."
In his humorous notes to the published play, Fielding states, with
mock gravity: "Of all the particulars in which the modern stage falls
short of the ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the
great scarcity of ghosts. Whence this proceeds I will not presume to
determine. Some are of opinion that the moderns are unequal to that
sublime sort of language which a ghost ought to speak. One says
ludicrously that ghosts are out of fashion; another that they are
properer for comedy; forgetting, I suppose, that Aristotle hath told
us that a ghost is the soul of tragedy," &c. &c. But when, towards the
commencement of the present century, melodrama was first brought upon
the boards, the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe were being dramatised, and
such pieces as "The Tale of Mystery," "The Bleeding Nun," and "The
Castle Spectre," were obtaining public favour, it was clear that room
was being made for the stage ghost; the way was cleared for it to
become the be-all and the end-all of the performance, the prominent
attraction of the evening.
Here is an extract from Lewis's "Castle Spectre," including certain
stage directions, by no means the least important part of the play.
_Enter_ HASSAN, _hastily_.
HASSAN. My lord, all is lost! Percy has surprised the castle,
and speeds this way!
OSMOND. Confusion! Then I must be sudden! Aid me, Hassan!
HASSAN _and_ OSMOND _force_ ANGELA _from her father, who
suddenly disengages himself from_ MULEY _and_ ALARIC. OSMOND,
_drawing his sword, rushes upon_ REGINALD, _who is disarmed, and
beaten upon his knees; when at the moment that_ OSMOND _lifts
his arm to stab him,_ EVELINA'S _ghost throws herself between
them_. OSMOND _starts back and drops his sword._
OSMOND. Horror! What form is this?
ANGELA. Die!
_Disengages herself from_ HASSAN, _who springs suddenly forward,
and plunges her dagger in_ OSMOND'S _bosom, who falls with a
loud groan and faints. The ghost vanishes._ ANGELA _and_
REGINALD _rush into each other's arms._
"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.
It may be worth recording that in the course of the play, the great
John Kemble was required to execute, not exactly what is now known as
a "sensation header," but still a gymnastic feat of some difficulty
and danger. Earl Percy has something of the agility of a harlequin
about him, and when he obtains admission into his enemy's castle to
rescue Angela, he is required to climb from a sofa up to a gothic
window high above him, and then, alarmed by the approach of his negro
sentinels, to fall from the height flat again at full length upon his
sofa, and to pretend to be asleep as his guards had previously left
him. Kemble is said to have done this "as boldly and suddenly as if
he had been shot." When people complimented him upon his unsuspected
agility, he would answer: "Nay, gentlemen, Mr. Boaden has exceeded all
compliment upon this feat of mine, for he counselled me from Macbeth
to 'jump the life to come.'" "It was melancholy," comments Mr. Boaden,
recording the success of the play, "to see the abuse of such talents;"
and then he adds the remarkable opinion: "It is only in a barn that
the Cato of a company should be allowed to risk his neck!"
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.
Formerly the public had been satisfied with a very prosaic ghost. A
substantial figure, with a whitened face, and a streak of red paint on
his brow, was thrust through a trap-door, and it was held that all had
been done that was necessary in the way of stage illusion. The ghost
of Hamlet's father was frequently attired in a suit of real armour
borrowed from the Tower. There is a story of a ghost thus heavily
accoutred, who, overcome by the weight of his harness, fell down on
the stage and rolled towards the foot-lights, the pit raising an alarm
lest the poor apparition should indeed be burnt by the fires of the
lamps. Barton Booth, the great actor in the time of Queen Anne and
George I., is said to have been the first representative of the ghost
in "Hamlet" who wore list shoes to deaden the noise of his footsteps
as he moved across the stage. In the poem of "The Actor," by Robert
Lloyd, the friend of Churchill, published in 1757, we have an explicit
description of the treatment of ghosts then in vogue upon the stage,
with special reference to the ghost of "our dear friend" Banquo:
But in stage customs what offends me most
Is the slip-door, and slowly rising ghost.
Tell me--nor count the question too severe--
Why need the dismal powdered forms appear?
When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king,
And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting,
When keenest feelings at his bosom pull,
And fancy tells him that the seat is full;
Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place,
To frighten children with his mealy face?
The king alone should form the phantom there,
And talk and tremble at the vacant chair.
Farther on the poet discourses of the ghosts in "Venice Preserved," of
which mention has already been made:
If Belvidera her loved lost deplore,
Why for twin spectres burst the yawning floor?
When, with disordered starts and horrid cries,
She paints the murdered forms before her eyes,
And still pursues them with a frantic stare,
'Tis pregnant madness brings the visions there.
More instant horror would enforce the scene
If all her shudderings were at shapes unseen.
It may have been due to Lloyd's poem, and to the opinions it expressed
and obtained favour for, that when Drury Lane Theatre opened in 1794
with a performance of "Macbeth," the experiment was tried of omitting
the appearance of Banquo's ghost, and leaving its presence to be
imagined by the spectators. The alteration, however, was not found to
be agreeable to the audience. While granting that Mr. Kemble's fine
acting was almost enough to make them believe they really did see the
ghost, they preferred that there should be no mistake about the
matter, and that Banquo's shade should come on bodily--be distinctly
visible. Further, they were able to point to Shakespeare's stage
direction: "Enter the ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeth's place."
Surely there could be no mistake, they argued, as to what the
dramatist himself intended. In subsequent performances the old system
was restored, and in all modern representations of the tragedy the
phantom has not failed to be visible to the spectators. Nevertheless
Banquo's ghost remains the _crux_ of stage managers. How to get him
on? How to get him off? How to make him look anything like a
ghost--respectable, if not awful? How to avoid that distressing titter
generally audible among those of the spectators who cannot suppress
their sense of the ludicrous even in one of Shakespeare's grandest
scenes? Upon a darkened stage a ghost, skilfully attired in vaporous
draperies, may be made sufficiently impressive, as in "Hamlet," for
instance. The shade of the departed king, if tolerably treated, seldom
provokes a smile, even from the most hardened and jocose of
spectators. But in "Macbeth" the scene must be well lighted, for the
nobles, courtiers, and guests are at high banquet; and the ghost must
appear towards the front of the stage, otherwise Macbeth will be
compelled to turn his back upon the public, and his simulated horror
will be absolutely thrown away; if the actor's face cannot be seen,
his acting, of necessity, goes for little or nothing. Even in our own
days of triumphant stage illusion, it must be owned that the
presentment of Banquo's ghost still remains incomplete and
unsatisfactory; but where such adroit managers as Mr. Macready, Mr.
Charles Kean, and Mr. Phelps (to name no more) have failed, it seems
vain to hope for success. Pictorially, Banquo's ghost has fared
better, as all who are acquainted with Mr. Maclise's "Macbeth" will
readily acknowledge.
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.
The attempted omission of Banquo's ghost, however, made it clear that
the old substantial shade emerging from a trap-door in the stage had
ceased to satisfy the town. Something more was required. The public
were becoming critical about their ghosts. Credit could not be given
to the spirits of the theatre if they exceeded a certain consistency.
There was a demand for something vaporous and unearthly, gliding,
transparent, mysterious. Scenic illusion was acquiring an artistic
quality. The old homely simple processes of the theatre were exploded.
The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms. Mr. Boaden,
adapting Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" to the stage of
Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper
presentment of its supernatural incidents. The contrivance he hit upon
has since become one of the commonplaces of theatrical illusion. It
was arranged that the spectre should be seen through a bluish-gray
gauze, so as to remove the too corporeal effect of a live actor, and
convert the moving substance into a gliding essence.
The plan, however, was not carried into effect without considerable
difficulty. Mr. Harris, the manager, ordered a night rehearsal of the
play, so that the author might judge of the success of the effects
introduced. The spectre was to be personated by one Thompson, a portly
jovial actor, whose views as to the treatment of the supernatural upon
the stage were of a very primitive kind. He appeared upon the scene
clad in the conventional solid armour of the theatre, with over all a
gray gauze veil, as stiff as buckram, thrown about him. Mr. Boaden
describes his horror and astonishment at the misconception. It had
been intended that the gauze, stretched on a frame, should cover a
portal of the scene, and that the figure of the spectre should be seen
dimly through it. But even then the contour of Thompson was found very
inappropriate to a phantom. It was necessary to select for the part an
actor of a slighter and taller form. At length a representative of the
ghost was found in the person of Follet, the clown, "celebrated for
his eating of carrots in the pantomimes." Follet readily accepted the
part: his height was heroic, he was a skilled posture-maker, he was
well versed in the duties of a mime. Still there was a further
difficulty. The ghost had to speak--only two words, it is true--he had
to utter the words "Perished here!" and, as the clown very frankly
admitted: "'Perished here' will be exactly the fate of the author if
I'm left to say it." The gallery would recognise the clown's voice,
and all seriousness would be over for the evening. It was like the ass
in the lion's skin--he would bray, and all would be betrayed. At last
it was determined that the part should be divided; Follet should
perform the actions of the ghost, while Thompson, in the wings, out of
the sight of the audience, should pronounce the important words. The
success of the experiment was signal. Follet, in a closely-fitting
suit of dark-gray stuff, made in the shape of armour, faintly visible
through the sheet of gauze, flitted across the stage like a shadow,
amidst the breathless silence of the house, to be followed presently,
on the falling of the curtain, by peal after peal of excited applause.
A humorous story of a stage ghost is told in Raymond's "Life of
Elliston," aided by an illustration from the etching-needle of George
Cruikshank, executed in quite his happiest manner. Dowton the actor,
performing a ghost part--to judge from the illustration, it must have
been the ghost in "Hamlet," but the teller of the story does not say
formally that such was the fact--had, of course, to be lowered in the
old-fashioned way through a trap-door in the stage, his face being
turned towards the audience. Elliston and De Camp, concealed beneath
the stage, had provided themselves with small ratan canes, and as
their brother-actor slowly and solemnly descended, they applied their
sticks sharply and rapidly to the calves of his legs, unprotected by
the plate armour that graced his shins. Poor Dowton with difficulty
preserved his gravity of countenance, or refrained from the utterance
of a yell of agony while in the presence of the audience. His lower
limbs, beneath the surface of the stage, frisked and curvetted about
"like a horse in Ducrow's arena." His passage below was maliciously
made as deliberate as possible. At length, wholly let down, and
completely out of the sight of the audience, he looked round the
obscure regions beneath the stage to discover the base perpetrators of
the outrage. He was speechless with rage and burning for revenge.
Elliston and his companion had of course vanished. Unfortunately, at
that moment, Charles Holland, another member of the company,
splendidly dressed, appeared in sight. The enraged Dowton, mistaking
his man, and believing that Holland's imperturbability of manner was
assumed and an evidence of his guilt, seized a mop at that moment at
hand immersed in very dirty water, and thrusting it in his face,
utterly ruined wig, ruffles, point-lace, and every particular of his
elaborate attire. In vain Holland protested his innocence and
implored for mercy; his cries only stimulated the avenger's exertions,
and again and again the saturated mop did desperate execution over the
unhappy victim's finery.
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 melodrama of "The Corsican Brothers," first produced in England at
the Princess's Theatre in 1852, and splendidly revived at the Lyceum
by Mr. Irving in 1880, reawakened the public interest in the ghosts of
the theatre; and the spectre that rose from the stage as from a
cellar, and crossing it, gained his full stature gradually as he
proceeded, was for some time a great popular favourite, though
burlesque dogged his course, and a certain ridicule always attended
his exertions. The fidgety musical accompaniment brought from Paris,
and known as "The Ghost Melody," by M. Varney, excited much
admiration, while the intricate stage machinery involved in the
production of the apparition of Louis dei Franchi gave additional
interest to the performance. Of late years the modern drama has made
scarcely any addition to our stock of stage ghosts. The ingenious
invention known as the Spectral Illusion of Messrs. Dircks and Pepper
obtained great favour at one time, and awakened some interest upon the
subject of theatrical phantoms. But it soon became clear that the
public cared for the Illusion, and not for the Spectre. They were
concerned about the mechanism of the contrivance, not awed by the
supernatural appearances it brought before them. When once you begin
to inquire by what process a ghost is produced, it is clear you are
not moved by its character as a spectre merely. Puppets lose their
power to please when the spectators are bent upon detecting the wires
by which they are made to move.
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.