[Illustration: WHEN ACTORS ARE MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT.]
[Illustration: WHEN ACTORS BECOME MODEST.]
[Illustration: COMEDIAN. Is your play still running?
At a theatre in Glasgow the writer witnessed a very amusing incident in the course of a representation of _Theodora_ by Miss Grace Hawthorne’s Company. There is a tremendously “bluggy” scene in this drama, which closes with the heroine standing in the middle, while a collection of corpses strew the stage. On the night in question the drop curtain refused to perform its office, and after coming half-way down complacently stuck there. The dead bodies lay in dreadful suspense for some time, and then in despair got up and walked off!
[Illustration: BILL. See that cove, ’Arry? He takes the part of Hamlet.
’ARRY. Well, good luck to him if the bloke’s in the right.]
While this immensely delighted a nineteenth-century audience as an absurdity, it appears to have been quite the custom on the Restoration Stage, when players “died” in front of the curtain and were either carried off or walked away afterwards! This is seen from the famous epilogue spoken by Nell Gwynne in Dryden’s _Tyrannick Love_. She played a serious part on this occasion, and in the last act stabs herself twice, and dies. She lies dead on the stage; then, when the bearer comes to carry her off, she starts to her feet, exclaiming--
“Hold! Are you mad? You damned confounded dog! I am to rise and speak the epilogue.”
[Illustration: GOOD AND BAD BUSINESS AT THE THEATRE.
When a play is a success the theatre-goer is treated with less consideration than when it is a failure. In the latter case he is overwhelmed with attention and kind words.]
Stage “waves” have often afforded no little amusement to the audience. The troubled ocean is simulated on the stage by a number of men lying on their backs under a painted canvas, kicking their legs and throwing their arms about with a certain amount of regularity, the men being blindfolded to prevent the dust getting into their eyes. During a performance of the _Black Flag_, at Dundee, a scene in which the waves were required was introduced and went with its usual success till one evening the curtain got entangled with the sea-cloth, and on the former being raised it carried the latter with it, exposing to the view of the audience the group of wave-makers lying on their backs vainly kicking the air. The audience, of course, screamed with laughter, which set the wave men wondering, and, thinking something was amiss, they unfastened the bandages over their eyes and discovered their undignified positions, quitting the stage with the greatest rapidity. The audience were not in a mood for settling down to watch the surging sea after this, and the remainder of the scene was omitted from that performance.