NOT DOWN IN THE BILL.
Some very queer things happen behind the scenes, and even on the stage
in full view of the audience--occurrences that often mar the pleasure
of the play for the people in the auditorium, and raise the wrath of
the performer. Anything out of the usual run of business that occurs
behind the scenes throws the players off the track frequently. There is
a great deal of work going on at all times, out of sight or knowledge
of the audience, and a slight disturbance may be an interruption
fraught with dire disaster. There are actors and actresses in the
wings, often, completing the memorization of their parts--"winging"
parts, as it is called--or it may be going over their lines again, if
they are not confident that they have full possession of them; and to
these people, of course, an interruption is a matter of the merest
moment. Actors and actresses have always been credited with good
memories, but even the best memory may sometimes be thrown off the
track, and, indeed, sometimes is, by an untoward or startling incident.
[Illustration: LIZZIE M'CALL.]
Speaking of memory, reminds me that an actor once memorized an entire
newspaper, when they were smaller than now, in a single night. The
actor was a man named Lyon, who was playing small parts through the
country. An English actor committed the contents of the London _Times_,
advertisements and all, within a week, besides studying a new part for
every night. The feat was accomplished on a wager. An actor in London,
sat through a play, and although he had never seen it before, could
repeat every line and word of it when he got home. He sat down and
wrote it out, and the copy thus written was used for the performance of
the play in New York. Many readers will recollect the New York couple
prosecuted by the Madison Square Theatre Company for selling copies of
"Hazel Kirke" to companies that had no right to play the drama. The
wife, it was explained, went to the theatre, sat the play out a few
times, and dictated the lines to her husband from memory. She had been
an actress. There are many other remarkable instances of swift and
retentive memories in the profession, but one of the most astonishing
of all these feats is what is known as "winging a part," an expression
I have used before in this chapter. This consists in going on the stage
without having studied the lines at all, the actor carrying the book in
his pocket, and pulling it out every time he gets out of sight of the
audience, studying the part in the "wings" until he receives his cue to
go on again. This method of going through the part continues during the
performance, the actor speaking the lines to the best of his ability,
and following the text as closely as possible.
Returning to the subject of the chapter, there are several instances
of actors and actresses, prominent and minor, receiving their death
strokes on the stage while playing. Mistress Woffington, known as
"lovely Peggy," while playing at Covent Garden, London, May 3, 1757,
fell to the stage at the end of the fourth act of "As You Like it,"
in which she was playing _Rosalind_, and after muttering "O God! O
God!" was carried home to die after a lingering confinement of three
years to her bed. George Frederick Cooke received his death stroke in
New York, while playing _Sir Giles Overreach_, and Edmund Kean died
in England under similar circumstances. The elder Kean and his son
Charles were playing together, the former having the role of _Othello_,
the latter that of _Iago_. The date was March 25, 1833. The event, says
a chronicler, created great excitement among play-goers; the house
was crammed. Kean, who had worn himself out with dissipation, went
through the part, "dying as he went," until he came to the "Farewell,"
and the strangely appropriate words, "Othello's occupation's gone."
Then he gasped for breath and fell upon his son's shoulder, moaning,
"I am dying--speak to them for me!" And so the curtain descended upon
him--forever. His wife had separated from him. "Come home to me; forget
and forgive!" he wrote her after he had been conveyed to Richmond. And
she came. An hour before he died he sprang out of bed, exclaiming,
"A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" and he expired with the
dying words of Octavian, "Farewell, Flo---- Floranthe!" upon his lips.
This was on May 15, 1833, and he was buried in Richmond churchyard.
Instances of the same appalling kind might be multiplied, but it is not
the purpose of the writer to cover the stage with gloom, or to cause
death to masquerade any more than is absolutely necessary before the
foot-lights. More interest will be felt, and the heart will be lighter
and the appetite better, if we turn to the ludicrous incidents that
have caused audiences ready to shed tears over a tragedy, to turn from
the lachrymose attitude to one which might be represented as laughter
holding both his sides.
[Illustration: "PIN UP MY SKIRTS."]
Sol Smith tells a funny story about his earliest experiences on the
stage; how he stole in through the back door before the performance,
and hid in what he thought was a chest, but which turned out to be the
coffin used in the play that evening, and when it was carried out on
the stage young Smith was so terrified that he pushed up the lid and
bounded out, to the surprise of both actors and audience. N. M. Ludlow,
who was Smith's partner in the theatrical business, relates a somewhat
similar incident about himself.
The awkward position of a "masher" who gets into the "wings" by some
hook or crook is often extremely laughable. I saw a serio-comic
vocalist--as the songstresses of the variety stage are named--astonish
a well-dressed and admiring gentleman who was lounging around at
his leisure,--having in some mysterious manner passed the stage
door-keeper,--by handing him a pin and remarking, "Pin up my skirts."
The man's eye-glass was knocked out of place by the impertinence of the
demand, but he took the pin and obeyed the lady's command, and this,
too, notwithstanding a second female in tights, was near by, who could
have done the job a thousand times better. It was the sweet singer's
little joke, though.
[Illustration: ANNIE PIXLEY AS "M'LISS."]
Charlotte Cushman and her sister were playing in Trenton, New Jersey,
one night. The bill announced was "Romeo and Juliet," with Miss Cushman
in her afterwards famous impersonation of the male character and her
sister as _Juliet_. The ball-room of the town which was used as a
theatre, when occasion required, was sadly lacking in scenery and
properties. The sisters went to work, however, and succeeded in getting
together everything they needed for the performance, except the balcony
in the garden scene. After looking around they found an old bed-quilt,
patched, and abounding in numerous colors; it was arranged that a
colored bell-boy from an adjacent hotel should, while stationed in the
side-scenes, out of view, hold up one end of the quilt while the fair
_Juliet_ supported the other. The boy was on hand in the evening, and
everything went swimmingly until towards the end of the scene, and in a
most tender part, the darkey stuck his head out from the side and said:
"I say, Miss Cushing, I hear my bell ringin' an' Ize obliged to let my
side ob de house drap!" He dropped the quilt; and not only the balcony,
but "the house"--the audience--came down, and that brought the scene to
an abrupt and ridiculous end.
[Illustration: THE CALL-BOY'S REVENGE.]
Another occasion that was a source of infinite amusement to an
audience that had been fully worked up to tragic interest in the
play of "Hamlet," occurred at Baltimore, Maryland, a short time ago.
The actor cast for _King Claudius_ had given some offence to the
call-boy--treated him badly in the presence of the company--so the
boy made up his mind to have ample revenge. He got a needle, fitted a
long piece of thread in it, and then placed it in the cushion chair
that answered for the _King's_ throne, in such a way that when the
time arrived, by a simple jerk of the string he might move the needle
skyward. He waited until _Claudius_ was supposed to be most interested
in the scene before the players, when jerk went the thread, and _King
Claudius_, with an alacrity unbecoming royalty, bounded out of his
chair as quickly as if he had suddenly sat down upon the sharp end
of a lightning rod. He dropped his sceptre and shouting "Ouch!" and
nursing the injured part of his anatomy, jumped and danced around as
if he had just caught sight of _Hamlet's_ father's ghost. There was an
interruption to the scene that the audience filled in with boisterous
laughter. After the act the _King_, instead of sending one of his
officers or guards for the call-boy, as befitted his exalted station,
went scouring around the scenery himself, muttering the wildest threats
and applying names to that poor boy that he could hardly have won for
himself if he lived to be a thousand years old. It is hardly necessary
to say that the call-boy did not wait around until the end of that act.
Mrs. Farrel, who was an actress of ability in her time, after being
hissed in the part of _Zaira_, the heroine of "The Mourning Bride," and
particularly in the dying scene, rose from the stage, and, approaching
the foot-lights, expressed her regret at not having merited the
applause of the audience, and explained that she had only accepted the
part to oblige a friend, and hoped she would be excused for not playing
it better. After this little speech she once more assumed a recumbent
position, and was covered by the attendants with a black veil.
On one occasion a danseuse was listening to the protestations of an
elderly lover, who was on the point of kissing her hand, when, as he
stooped down his wig caught in the spangles of her dress. At that
moment she was called to the stage, and made her appearance before the
audience amid general laughter and applause; for on the front of her
dress was the old beau's wig or scalp, hanging like a trophy from her
belt. The applause was renewed when a bald head was seen projecting
from the wing in search of its artificial covering. Stories, too, are
told of imprudent admirers, who, having excited the jealousy of the
stage carpenter, did not take the precaution to avoid traps, and as
a consequence found themselves shot up into the "flies," or hastily
dropped down to the dismal depths below the stage.
[Illustration: THOS. W. KEENE.]
It is a very common trick to let people through a trap-door. I was
present several times in the theatre when victims were carried down
to the black and uninviting space below the stage. At a benefit given
to a popular treasurer in St. Louis, a well-known young man who was
in the liquor business was prevailed upon to appear in the programme
and was put down for a lecture on temperance. The house was crowded
that night, and P---- H---- was there in all the glory and wealth of his
wardrobe, fully prepared to entertain the audience for half an hour or
so. One of the boys had had the pleasure--so he termed it--of hearing
H---- read his lecture through, and he gave the others the cue for
the fun. The lecturer's table was placed just at the edge of a trap,
and a trick candle, one such as is used in pantomime, and that keeps
on growing taller and taller as the clown in vain tries to get within
reach of the flame, stood at one side of the piece of furniture. H----
went on the stage bowing his neatest and smiling his sweetest. He was,
of course, received with "thunders of applause," and storms of the
same kind interrupted him at frequent intervals. At last the place was
reached where the fun was to commence. "Bang!" went a gun in the air,
the thunder rolled, there was red fire, and the floor parted. Down went
H---- slowly, and up went the candle. He was so terror-stricken that he
could do nothing, and was left to grope his way through the darkness to
the stairs. The language he used when he once more found himself among
his friends was stronger and less elegant than were the phrases of his
lecture. He appears at no more benefits.
A young society man now of Cincinnati was treated in the same way, a
trap having been left open upon which he stepped in the middle of a
play in which he took the leading part with a company of amateurs, when
down he went, to the dismay of his friends, the delight of the young
fellows who had "put up the job," and to his own horror. In Leadville,
Col., a serio-comic singer who had incurred the displeasure of one of
the stage hands, was retiring into the side scenes bowing gracefully
and kissing her hand to the audience, when suddenly down went one of
her pink-clad limbs through an open trap, and her moment of triumph was
turned into one of ridicule, and in addition to her mortification the
leg was broken. Such tricks are always dangerous and more frequently
are followed by mourning than fun.
[Illustration: EMMA THURSBY.]
Powell, the English actor, sought in vain one night for a "super" who
was wont to dress him, but who on this occasion had undertaken to play
the part of _Lothario's_ corpse in "The Fair Penitent." Powell, who
took the principal character, shouted in an angry tone for Warren, who
could not help raising his head from out the coffin in which he was
lying, and answering, "Here, sir." "Come, then," continued Powell, not
knowing where the voice came from, "or I'll break every bone in your
body!" Warren, knowing that his master was quite capable of carrying
out the threat, sprang in his fright out of the coffin and ran in his
winding-sheet across the stage.
[Illustration: LILLIAN RUSSELL.]
The dying heroes and heroines of the present day wait to regain
animation until the curtain has fallen, when they reappear in their
own private characters at the foot-lights. A distinguished tenor,
Signor Giuglini, being much applauded one night for his singing in
the "Miserere" scene of "Il Trovatore," quitted the dungeons in which
_Manrico_ is supposed to be confined, came forward to the public,
bowed, and then, not to cheat the executioner, went quietly back to
prison again. A much more modern story of the confusion of facts with
appearances is told, and with truth, of a distinguished military
amateur, who had undertaken, for one occasion only, to play the part
of _Don Giovanni_. In the scene in which the profligate hero is seized
and carried down to the infernal regions, the principal character could
neither persuade nor compel the demons, who were represented by private
soldiers, to lay hands on one whom, whatever part he might temporarily
assume, they knew well to be a colonel in the army. The demons kept at
a respectful distance, and, when ordered in a loud whisper to lay hands
on their dramatic victim, contented themselves with falling into an
attitude of attention.
[Illustration: JOE JEFFERSON.]
Jules Janin, in the collection of his _feuilletons_ published under
the title of "Histoire de la Littérature Dramatique," tells how in
the ultra-tragic tragedy of "Tragadalbas," an actor, in the midst of
a solemn tirade, let a set of false teeth fall from his mouth. This
was nothing more or less than an accident which might happen to any
one. Lord Brougham is said to have suffered the same misfortune while
speaking in the House of Lords. But the great tragedian showed great
presence of mind, and also a certain indifference to the serious nature
of the work in which he was engaged, when he coolly stooped down,
picked up the teeth, replaced them between his jaws, and continued his
speech.
[Illustration: ROLAND REED.]
At some French provincial theatre, where a piece was being played in
which the principal character was that of a blind man, the actor to
whom this part had been assigned was unwell, and it seemed necessary
to call upon another member of the company to read the part. Thus the
strange spectacle was witnessed of a man supposed to be totally blind,
who read every word he uttered from a paper he carried in his hand.
[Illustration: LIZZIE WEBSTER.]
At an English performance of "William Tell," the traditional arrow,
instead of going straight from _Tell's_ bow to the heart--perforated
beforehand--of the apple placed on the head of _Tell's_ son, stopped
half way on the wire over which it should have travelled to its
destination. Everything, however, succeeded in Rossini's "William
Tell," except the apple incident, as everything failed in "Dennis's
Appius," except that thunder which Dennis recognized and claimed as his
own when he heard it a few nights afterward in "Macbeth." Yet it has
never been very difficult to represent thunder on the stage. One of the
oldest theatrical anecdotes is that of the actor, who, playing the part
of a bear, hears a clap of stage-thunder, and mistaking it for the real
thing, makes the sign of the cross.
[Illustration: LAWRENCE BARRETT.]