STAGE STORMS.
Addison accounted "thunder and lightning--which are often made use of
at the descending of a god or the rising of a ghost, at the vanishing
of a devil or the death of a tyrant"--as occupying the first place
"among the several artifices put in practice by the poets to fill the
minds of an audience with terror." Certainly the stage owes much to
its storms: they have long been highly prized both by playwrights and
playgoers, as awe-inspiring embellishments of the scene; and it must
have been an early occupation of the theatrical machinist to devise
some means of simulating the uproar of elemental strife. So far back
as 1571, in the "Accounts of the Revels at Court," there appears a
charge of £1 2s. paid to a certain John Izarde, for "mony to him due
for his device in counterfeting thunder and lightning in the play of
'Narcisses;' and for sundry necessaries by him spent therein;" while
to Robert Moore, the apothecary, a sum of £1 7s. 4d. is paid for
"prepared corianders," musk, clove, cinnamon, and ginger comfits, rose
and "spike" water, "all which," it is noted, "served for flakes of
snow and haylestones in the maske of 'Janus;' the rose-water sweetened
the balls made for snow-balls, and presented to her majesty by Janus."
The storm in this masque must clearly have been of a very elegant and
courtly kind, with sugar-plums for hailstones and perfumed water for
rain. The tempests of the public theatres were assuredly conducted
after a ruder method. In his prologue to "Every Man in his Humour,"
Ben Jonson finds occasion to censure contemporary dramatists for the
"ill customs" of their plays, and to warn the audience that his
production is not as others are:
He rather prays you will be pleased to see
One such to-day as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please,
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor rolled bullet heard
To say it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles to tell you when the storm doth come, &c.
It has been conjectured that satirical allusion was here intended to
the writings of Shakespeare; yet it is certain that Shakespeare
sustained a part, most probably that of Old Knowell, in the first
representation of Jonson's comedy. Storms are undoubtedly of frequent
occurrence in Shakespeare's plays. Thus, "Macbeth" and "The Tempest"
both open with thunder and lightning; there is "loud weather" in "The
Winter's Tale;" there is thunder in "The First Part of King Henry
VI.," when La Pucelle invokes the fiends to aid her endeavours;
thunder and lightning in "The Second Part of King Henry VI.," when
Margery Jourdain conjures up the spirit Asmath; thunder and lightning
in "Julius Cæsar;" a storm at sea in "Pericles," and a hurricane in
"King Lear." It is to be noted, however, that all these plays could
hardly have been represented so early as 1598, when "Every Man in his
Humour" was first performed.
From Jonson's prologue it appears that the rumbling of thunder was at
that time imitated by the rolling to and fro of bullets or
cannon-balls. This plan was in time superseded by more ingenious
contrivances. It is curious to find, however, that some fifty years
ago one Lee, manager of the Edinburgh Theatre, with a view to
improving the thunder of his stage, ventured upon a return to the
Elizabethan system of representing a storm. His enterprise was
attended with results at once ludicrous and disastrous. He placed
ledges here and there along the back of his stage, and, obtaining a
parcel of nine-pound cannon-balls, packed these in a wheelbarrow,
which a carpenter was instructed to wheel to and fro over the ledges.
The play was "Lear," and the jolting of the heavy barrow as it was
trundled along its uneven path over the hollow stage, and the
rumblings and reverberations thus produced, counterfeited most
effectively the raging of the tempest in the third act. Unfortunately,
however, while the King was braving, in front of the scene, the
pitiless storm at the back, the carpenter missed his footing, tripped
over one of the ledges, and fell down, wheelbarrow, cannon-balls, and
all. The stage being on a declivity, the cannon-balls came rolling
rapidly and noisily down towards the front, gathering force as they
advanced, and overcoming the feeble resistance offered by the scene,
struck it down, passed over its prostrate form, and made their way
towards the foot-lights and the fiddlers, amidst the amusement and
wonder of the audience, and the amazement and alarm of the Lear of the
night. As the nine-pounders advanced towards him, and rolled about in
all directions, he was compelled to display an activity in avoiding
them, singularly inappropriate to the age and condition of the
character he was personating. He was even said to resemble a dancer
achieving the terpsichorean feat known as the egg hornpipe. Presently,
too, the musicians became alarmed for the safety of themselves and
their instruments, and deemed it advisable to scale the spiked
partition which divided them from the pit; for the cannon-balls were
upon them, smashing the lamps, and falling heavily into the orchestra.
Meantime, exposed to the full gaze of the house, lay prone, beside his
empty barrow, the carpenter, the innocent invoker of the storm he had
been unable to allay or direct, not at all hurt, but exceedingly
frightened and bewildered. After this unlucky experiment, the manager
abandoned his wheelbarrow and cannon-balls, and reverted to more
received methods of producing stage storms.
In 1713, a certain Dr. Reynardson published a poem called "The Stage,"
which the critics of the time agreed to be a pretty and ingenious
composition. It was dedicated to Addison, the preface stating that
"'The Spectator's' account of 'The Distrest Mother' had raised the
author's expectation to such a pitch that he made an excursion from
college to see that tragedy acted, and upon his return was commanded
by the dean to write upon the Art, Rise, and Progress of the English
Stage; which how well he has performed is submitted to the judgment of
that worthy gentleman to whom it is inscribed." Dr. Reynardson's poem
is not a work of any great distinction, and need only be referred to
here for its mention of the means then in use for raising the storms
of the theatre. Noting the strange and incongruous articles to be
found in the tiring-room of the players--such as Tarquin's trousers
and Lucretia's vest, Roxana's coif and Statira's stays, the poet
proceeds:
Hard by a quart of bottled lightning lies
A bowl of double use and monstrous size,
Now rolls it high and rumbles in its speed,
Now drowns the weaker crack of mustard-seed;
So the true thunder all arrayed in smoke,
Launched from the skies now rives the knotted oak,
And sometimes naught the drunkard's prayers prevail,
And sometimes condescends to sour the ale.
There is also allusion to the mustard-bowl as applied to theatrical
uses in "The Dunciad:"
"Now turn to different sports," the goddess cries,
"And learn, my sons, the wondrous power of NOISE.
To move, to raise, to ravish every heart,
With Shakespeare's nature or with Jonson's art,
Let others aim; 'tis yours to shake the soul
With thunder rumbling from the mustard-bowl."
And further reference to the frequency of stage storms is continued in
the well-known lines, written by way of parodying the mention of the
Duke of Marlborough in Addison's poem "The Campaign:"
Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease,
'Mid snows of paper and fierce hail of pease;
And proud his mistress' orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
A note to the early editions of "The Dunciad" explains that the old
ways of making thunder and mustard were the same, but that of late the
thunder had been advantageously simulated by means of "troughs of wood
with stops in them." "Whether Mr. Dennis was the inventor of that
improvement, I know not," writes the annotator; "but it is certain
that being once at a tragedy of a new author he fell into a great
passion at hearing some, and cried: ''Sdeath! that is my thunder.'"
Dennis's thunder was first heard on the production at Drury Lane
Theatre, in 1709, of his "Appius and Virginia," a hopelessly dull
tragedy, which not even the united exertions of Booth, Wilkes, and
Betterton could keep upon the stage for more than four nights. "The
Dunciad" was written in 1726, when Pope either did not really know
that the old mustard-bowl style of storm was out of date, or purposely
refrained from mentioning the recent invention of "troughs of wood
with stops in them."
In July, 1709, Drury-lane Theatre was closed by order of the Lord
Chamberlain, whereon Addison published in "The Tatler" a facetious
inventory of the goods and movables of Christopher Rich, the manager,
to be disposed of in consequence of his "breaking up housekeeping."
Among the effects for sale are mentioned:
A mustard-bowl to make thunder with.
Another of a bigger sort, by Mr. D----'s directions, little used.
The catalogue is not of course to be viewed seriously, or it might be
inferred that Dennis's new thunder was still something of the
mustard-bowl sort. Other items relative to the storms of the stage and
their accessories are:
Spirits of right Nantz brandy for lambent flames and
apparitions.
Three bottles and a half of lightning.
A sea consisting of a dozen large waves, the tenth bigger than
ordinary, and a little damaged.
(According to poetic authority, it may be noted, the tenth wave is
always the largest and most dangerous.)
A dozen and a half of clouds trimmed with black, and well
conditioned.
A set of clouds after the French mode, streaked with lightning
and furbelowed.
One shower of snow in the whitest French paper.
Two showers of a browner sort.
It is probably to this mention of snow-storms we owe the familiar
theatrical story of the manager who, when white paper failed him, met
the difficulty of the situation by snowing brown.
The humours of the theatre afforded great diversion to the writers in
"The Spectator," and the storms of the stage are repeatedly referred
to in their essays. In 1771, Steele, discoursing about inanimate
performers, published a fictitious letter from "the Salmoneus of
Covent Garden," demanding pity and favour on account of the unexpected
vicissitudes of his fortune. "I have for many years past," he writes,
"been thunderer to the playhouse; and have not only made as much noise
out of the clouds as any predecessor of mine in the theatre that ever
bore that character, but have also descended, and spoke on the stage
as the Bold Thunderer in 'The Rehearsal.' When they got me down thus
low, they thought fit to degrade me further, and make me a ghost. I
was contented with this for these last two winters; but they carry
their tyranny still further, and not satisfied that I am banished from
above ground, they have given me to understand that I am wholly to
depart from their dominions, and taken from me even my subterraneous
employment." He concludes with a petition that his services may be
engaged for the performance of a new opera to be called "The
Expedition of Alexander," the scheme of which had been set forth in an
earlier "Spectator," and that if the author of that work "thinks fit
to use firearms, as other authors have done, in the time of Alexander,
I may be a cannon against Porus; or else provide for me in the burning
of Persepolis, or what other method you shall think fit."
In 1714, Addison wrote: "I look upon the playhouse as a world within
itself. They have lately furnished the middle region of it with a new
set of meteors in order to give the sublime to many modern tragedies.
I was there last winter at the first rehearsal of the new thunder,
which is much more deep and sonorous than any hitherto made use of.
They have a Salmoneus behind the scenes, who plays it off with great
success. Their lightnings are made to flash more briskly than
heretofore; their clouds are also better furbelowed and more
voluminous; not to mention a violent storm locked up in a great chest
that is designed for 'The Tempest.' They are also provided with a
dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many
unsuccessful poets, artificially cut and shredded for that vise." In
an earlier "Spectator" he had written: "I have often known a bell
introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the
whole assembly in a very great alarm all the while it has been
ringing." Pope has his mention in "The Dunciad" of the same artifice:
With horns and trumpets now to madness swell.
Now sink in sorrow with a tolling bell;
Such happy arts attention can command,
When fancy flags and sense is at a stand.
The notion of storing lightning in a bottle for use when required
seems to have been frequently reverted to by the authors of the last
century as a means of entertaining the public. Thus a writer in "The
World," in 1754, makes no doubt "of being able to bring thunder and
lightning to market at a much cheaper price than common gunpowder,"
and describes a friend who has applied himself wholly to electrical
experiments, and discovered that "the most effectual and easy method
of making this commodity is by grinding a certain quantity of air
between a glass ball and a bag of sand, and when you have ground it
into fire your lightning is made, and then you may either bottle it
up, or put it into casks properly seasoned for that purpose, and send
it to market." The inventor, however, confesses that what he has
hitherto made is not of a sufficient degree of strength to answer all
the purposes of natural lightning; but he is confident that he will
soon be able to effect this, and has, indeed, already so far perfected
his experiments that, in the presence of several of his neighbours, he
has succeeded in producing a clap of thunder which blew out a candle,
accompanied by a flash of lightning which made an impression upon a
pat of butter standing upon the table. He is also confident that in
warm weather he can shake all the pewters upon his shelf, and fully
expects, when his thermometer is at sixty-two degrees and a half, to
be able to sour all the small beer in his cellar, and to break his
largest pier-glass. This paper in "The World," apart from its humorous
intention, is curious as a record of early dabblings in electrical
experiments. It may be mentioned that in one of Franklin's letters,
written apparently before the year 1750, the points of resemblance
between lightning and the spark obtained by friction from an
electrical apparatus are distinctly stated. It is but some thirty-five
years ago that Andrew Crosse, the famous amateur electrician, was
asked by an elderly gentleman, who came to witness his experiments
with two enormous Leyden jars charged by means of wires stretched for
miles among the forest trees near Taunton: "Mr. Crosse, don't you
think it is rather impious to bottle the lightning?"
"Let me answer your question by asking another," said Crosse,
laughing. "Don't you think it might be considered rather impious to
bottle the rain-water?"
Further, it may be remembered that curious reference to this part of
our subject is made by "the gentleman in the small clothes" who lived
next door to Mrs. Nickleby, and presumed to descend the chimney of her
house. "Very good," he is reported to have said on that occasion,
"then bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a
corkscrew."
The early days of George Frederick Cooke were passed at
Berwick-upon-Tweed. Left an orphan at a very tender age, he had been
cared for and reared by two aunts, his mother's sisters, who provided
him with such education as he ever obtained. There were no play-books
in the library of these ladies, yet somehow the youth contrived to
become acquainted with the British drama. Strolling companies
occasionally visited the town, and a certain passion for the theatre
possessed the boys of Berwick, with Cooke, of course, among them. They
formed themselves into an amateur company, and represented, after a
fashion, various plays, rather for their own entertainment, however,
than the edification of their friends. And they patronised, so far as
they could, every dramatic troupe that appeared in the neighbourhood
of Berwick. But they had more goodwill than money to bestow upon the
strollers, and were often driven to strange subterfuges in their
anxiety to see the play, and in their inability to pay the price of
admission to the theatre. On one occasion Cooke and two or three
friends secreted themselves beneath the stage, in the hope of stealing
out during the performance and joining the audience by means of an
opening in a dark passage leading to the pit. Discovery and
ignominious ejection followed upon this experiment. Another essay led
to a curious adventure. Always on the alert to elude the vigilance of
the doorkeeper, the boys again effected an entrance into the theatre.
The next consideration was how to bestow themselves in a place of
concealment until the time for raising the curtain should arrive, when
they might hope, in the confusion and bustle behind the scenes, to
escape notice, and enjoy the marvels of the show. "Cooke," records his
biographer, "espied a barrel, and congratulating himself on this safe
and snug retreat, he crept in, like the hero of that immortal modern
drama, 'Tekeli.'" Unfortunately this hiding-place was one of
considerable peril. Cooke perceived that for companion tenants of his
barrel he had two large cannon-balls--twenty-four pounders; but being
as yet but incompletely initiated into the mysteries of the scene, he
did not suspect the theatrical use to which these implements of war
were constantly applied. He was in the thunder-barrel of the theatre!
The play was "Macbeth," and the thunder was required in the first
scene, to give due effect to the entrance of the witches. "The Jupiter
Tonans of the theatre, _alias_ the property-man, approached and seized
the barrel. Judge the breathless fear of my hero--it was too great for
words, and he only shrunk closer to the bottom of his hiding-place.
His tormentor proceeded to cover the open end of the barrel with a
piece of old carpet, and to tie it carefully, to prevent the thunder
from being spilt. Still George Frederick was most heroically silent;
the machine was lifted by the Herculean property-man, and carried
carefully to the side scene, lest in rolling the thunder should rumble
before its cue. It would be a hopeless task to paint the agitation of
the contents of the barrel. The property-man, swearing the barrel was
unusually heavy, placed the complicated machine in readiness, the
witches entered amid flames of rosin; the thunder-bell rang, the
barrel renewed its impetus, and away rolled George Frederick and his
ponderous companions. Silence would now have been no virtue, and he
roared most manfully, to the surprise of the thunderer, who,
neglecting to stop the rolling machine, it entered on the stage, and
George Frederick, bursting off the carpet head of the barrel, appeared
before the audience just as the witches had agreed to meet when 'the
hurly-burly's done.'" Cooke's biographer, Mr. William Dunlap, thought
that this story bore "sufficient marks of probability." It must be
said, however, that as to anecdotes touching their heroes, biographers
are greatly prone to be credulous.
The illusions of the stage were much enhanced by Garrick's Alsatian
scene-painter, Philip James de Loutherbourg, a man of genius in his
way, and an eminent innovator and reformer in the matter of theatrical
decoration. Before his time the scenes had been merely strained
"flats" of canvas, extending the whole breadth and height of the
stage. He was the first to introduce set scenes and what are
technically called "raking pieces." He invented transparent scenes,
with representations of moonlight, rising and setting suns, fires,
volcanoes, &c., and contrived effects of colour by means of silk
screens of various hues placed before the foot and side lights. He was
the first to represent a mist by suspending a gauze between the scene
and the spectator. For two seasons he held a dioramic exhibition of
his own, called the Eidophusikon, at the Patagonian Theatre in Exeter
Change, and afterwards at a house in Panton Square. The special
attraction of the entertainment was a storm at sea, with the wreck of
the "Halsewell," East Indiaman. No pains were spared to picture the
tempest and its most striking effects. The clouds were movable,
painted upon a canvas of vast size, and rising diagonally by means of
a winding machine. The artist excelled in his treatment of clouds, and
by regulating the action of his windlass he could direct their
movements, now permitting them to rise slowly from the horizon and
sail obliquely across the heavens and now driving them swiftly along
according to their supposed density and the power ascribed to the
wind. The lightning quivered through transparent places in the sky.
The waves carved in soft wood from models made in clay, coloured with
great skill, and highly varnished to reflect the lightning, rose and
fell with irregular action, flinging the foam now here, now there,
diminishing in size, and dimming in colour, as they receded from the
spectator. "De Loutherbourg's genius," we are informed, "was as
prolific in imitations of nature to astonish the ear as to charm the
sight. He introduced a new art--the picturesque of sound." That is to
say, he imitated the noise of thunder by shaking one of the lower
corners of a large thin sheet of copper suspended by a chain; the
distant firing of signals of distress from the doomed vessel he
counterfeited by suddenly striking a large tambourine with a sponge
affixed to a whalebone spring, the reverberations of the sponge
producing a peculiar echo as from cloud to cloud dying away in the
distance. The rushing washing sound of the waves was simulated by
turning round and round an octagonal pasteboard box, fitted with
shelves, and containing small shells, peas, and shot; while two discs
of tightly-strained silk, suddenly pressed together, produced a hollow
whistling sound in imitation of loud and fitful gusts of wind.
Cylinders, loosely charged with seed and small shot, lifted now at one
end, now at the other, so us to allow the contents to fall in a
pattering stream, effectually reproduced the noise of hail and rain.
The moon was formed by a circular aperture cut in a tin box containing
a powerful argand lamp, which was placed at the back of the scene, and
brought near or removed from the canvas as the luminary was supposed
to be shining brightly or to be obscured by clouds. These contrivances
of Mr. de Loutherbourg may now, perhaps, be deemed to be of rather a
commonplace description--they have figured so frequently, and in such
amplified and amended forms, upon the modern stage; but they were
calculated to impress the painter's patrons very considerably; they
were then distinctly innovations due to his curiously inventive
genius, and the result of much labour and heedful ingenuity. If the
theatrical entertainments of the present time manifest little progress
in histrionic art, there has been, at any rate, marked advance in the
matter of scenic illusions and mechanical effects. The thunder of our
modern stage storms may no more proceed from mustard-bowls, or from
"troughs of wood with stops in them," but it is, at any rate,
sufficiently formidable and uproarious, sometimes exciting, indeed,
the anxiety of the audience, lest it should crash through the roof of
the theatre, and visit them bodily in the pit; while for our magnesium
or lime-light flashes of lightning, they are beyond anything that
"spirit of right Nantz brandy" could effect in the way of lambent
flames, have a vividness that equals reality, and, moreover, leave
behind them a pungent and sulphurous odour that may be described as
even supernaturally noxious. The stage storm still bursts upon the
drama from time to time; the theatre is still visited in due course by
its rainy and tempestuous season; and thunder and lightning are, as
much as in Addison's time, among the favourite devices of our
playwrights, "put in practice to fill the minds of an audience with
terror." The terror may not be quite of the old kind, but still it
does well enough.