Some Striking Instances of How Death Has Stepped Behind the Footlights
and Claimed His Victims in Full View of Audiences Who Have Mistaken Real
Tragedy for Play.
"Into Thy hands, O Lord! Into Thy hands!"
These words, inscribed on a card that was fastened to the cross of lilies
sent by Queen Alexandra of England to be laid on the casket containing the
body of Sir Henry Irving, were the last uttered on the stage by that
famous actor. They are the last words of _Becket_, in Tennyson's drama of
that name.
Though Irving did not die on the stage, the hand of death was upon him at
the close of that last performance. He was scarcely more than outside the
theater in Bradford, England, when he was stricken with syncope, and he
died a few minutes after reaching his hotel.
There are a score of other cases on record in which death has appeared on
the stage of a theater for the purpose of marking its victims.
It was a fateful irony that Signor Castelmary should be fatally stricken
on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the midst of
the bright and romantic scenes of "Martha." A tragi-comedy if ever there
were one!
Yet this overpowering mingling of the real and the unreal is by no means
an unusual element of stage life. History records many instances of deaths
on the stage; some of them the result of accidental violence, but by far
the greater number caused by the sudden effect of overwrought emotions.
Sometimes death comes instantaneously; sometimes the blow is received from
which recovery is impossible, and the actor lingers on with nothing but
suffering and death before him. Both tragedy and comedy have been the
scenes of actual death on the stage.
Peg Woffington, it will be remembered, was stricken with paralysis while
playing _Rosalind_. She had gone through the entire play with a life and
spirit which gave no sign of the weakening powers plainly evident to her
companions on the stage, and had nearly concluded the epilogue:
"If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
pleased me----"
Her last words on the stage had been spoken. Staggering off the scene, she
fell apparently lifeless, and recovered only to live three long years of
loneliness and retirement away from the work she loved.
But most wonderful of all was Edmund Kean's last night on the stage. He
was playing _Othello_ to his son's _Iago_ at Covent Garden, and, worn out
with physical and mental excess, barely managed to conceal his incapacity
and weakness from the audience.
Reaching the great scenes of the third act, they proved too much for his
waning powers, and uttering the words, "Othello's occupation's gone," he
began the next line, but was unable to complete it, and fell into his
son's arms, with the faint cry:
"God, I am dying! Speak to them, Charles."
He was carried to his home, where he died seven weeks later.
The story of the death of John Palmer, while acting in "The Stranger" at
Liverpool, in 1798, offers an instance almost analogous to the death of
Castelmary. He had gone on with his part into the fourth act, when,
faltering in his lines, he fell prostrate before his companion actor and
died while being carried off the stage. The story that he died while
uttering the lines in an earlier act, "There is another and a better
world," is a fiction which requires denial almost as often as the story of
his death is repeated.
Others have met with accidental death in melodramatic scenes at the hands
of their overzealous brother actors. Sometimes the actor does himself
actual violence, and there are a few instances on record of the murder of
actor by actor during the performance of a play.
Crozier, for example, was accidentally stabbed by a brother actor in "Sins
of the Night," at the Novelty, in London, on August 10, 1896. In 1820 Mme.
Linsky was fatally shot in a melodrama by a soldier super; and in 1891, at
a school representation of "Romeo and Juliet," in Manchester, England, the
youngster playing _Tybalt_ killed _Romeo_ in the quarrel scene.
In 1898 Miss Ethel Marlowe died from heart disease at the Knickerbocker,
New York, during a performance of "The Christian." Her sister, Virginia
Marlowe, in 1896, and her father, Owen Marlowe, in 1876, also died on the
stage in view of the audience.
Creating Wealth From Waste.