|MOST everyone, who was not born blind, knows that the stage bald-head
is a delusion and a snare. The only all-wool, yard-wide bald-head we
remember on the American stage, is that of Dunstan Kirke as worn by the
veteran Couldock.
Effie Ellsler wears her own hair and so does Couldock, but Couldock
wears his the most. It is the most worn anyhow.
What we started out to say, is, that the stage bald-head and the average
stage whiskers make us weary with life. The stage bald-head is generally
made of the internal economy of a cow, dried so that it shines, and
cut to fit the head as tightly as a potatoe sack would naturally fit a
billiard cue. It is generally about four shades whiter than the red
face of the wearer, or _vice versa_. We do not know which is the worst
violation of eternal fitness, the red-faced man who wears a deathly
white bald-head, or the pale young actor who wears a florid roof on his
intellect. Sometimes in starring through the country and playing ten
or fifteen hundred engagements, a bald-head gets soiled. We notice that
when a show gets to Laramie the chances are that the bald-head of the
leading old man is so soiled that he really needs a sheep-dip shampoo.
Another feature of this accessory of the stage is its singular failure
to fit. It is either a little short at both ends, or it hangs over the
skull in large festoons, and wens and warts, in such a way as to make
the audience believe that the wearer has dropsy of the brain.
You can never get a stage bald-head near enough like nature to fool the
average house-fly. A fly knows in two moments whether it is the genuine,
or only a base imitation, and the bald-head of the theatre fills him
with nausea and disgust. Nature, at all times hard to imitate, preserves
her bald head as she does her sunny skies and deep blue seas, far beyond
the reach of the weak, fallible, human imitator. Baldness is like fame,
it cannot be purchased. It must be acquired. Some men may be born bald,
some may acquire baldness, and others may have baldness thrust upon
them, but they generally acquire it.
"The stage beard is also rather dizzy, as a rule. It looks as much like
a beard that grew there, as a cow's tail would if tied to the bronze dog
on the front porch. When you tie a heavy black beard on a young actor,
whose whole soul would be churned up if he smoked a full-fledged cigar,
he looks about as savage as a bowl of mush and milk struck with a club."