Some fifty years ago Mr. Leman Thomas Rede published "The Road to the Stage, a Player's Vade-Mecum." setting forth, among other matters, various details of the dressing-rooms behind the curtain. Complaint was made at the time that the work destroyed "the romance of the profession," and laid bare the mysteries of the actor's life, such as the world in general had small concern with. But Mr. Rede's revelations do not tell very much; at any rate, the secrets he deals with have come to be things of common knowledge. Nor are his instructions upon the art of making-up to be accounted highly in these times. "Light-comedy calves," he tells us, "are made of ragged silken hose;" and what may be called "Othello's blacking," is to be composed of "burnt cork, pulverised and mixed with porter." Legs coming before the foot-lights must of course be improved by mechanical means, when nature has been unkind, or time has destroyed symmetry; but art has probably discovered a better method of concealing deficiencies than consists in the employment of "ragged silken hose." The veteran light comedian, Lewis, who at a very advanced age appeared in juvenile characters, to the complete satisfaction of his audience, was famed for his skill in costume and making-up. But one night, a roguish actress, while posted near him in the side-wings, employed herself in converting one of his calves into a pincushion. As soon as he discovered the trick, he affected to feel great pain, and drew up his leg as though in an agony; but he had remained too long unconscious of the proceeding to persuade lookers-on of the genuineness of his limb's symmetry. With regard to Othello's complexion, there is what the Cookery Books call "another way." Chetwood, in his "History of the Stage," 1749, writes: "The composition for blackening the face are (sic) ivory-black and pomatum; which is with some pains cleaned with fresh butter." The information is given in reference to a performance of Othello by the great actor Barton Booth. It was hot weather, and his complexion in the later scenes of the play had been so disturbed, that he had assumed "the appearance of a chimney-sweeper." The audience, however, were so impressed by the art of his acting, that they disregarded this mischance, or applauded him the more on account of it. On the repetition of the play he wore a crape mask, "with an opening proper for the mouth, and shaped in form for the nose." But in the first scene one part of the mask slipped so that he looked "like a magpie." Thereupon he was compelled to resort again to lamp-black. The early Othellos, it may be noted, were of a jet-black hue, such as we now find on the faces of Christy Minstrels; the Moors of later times have been content to paint themselves a dark olive or light mahogany colour. But a liability to soil all they touch has always been the misfortune of Othellos. There was great laughter in the theatre one night when Stephen Kemble, playing Othello for the first time with Miss Satchell as Desdemona, kissed her before smothering her, and left an ugly patch of soot upon her cheek. However, as Miss Satchell subsequently became Mrs. Stephen Kemble, it was held that sufficient amends had been made to her for the soiling she had undergone.

Another misadventure, in regard to the complexion of Shakespeare's Moor, has been related of an esteemed actor, for many years past attached to the Haymarket Theatre. While but a tyro in his profession, he had undertaken to appear as Othello, for one night only, at the Gravesend Theatre. But, not being acquainted with the accustomed method of blackening his skin, and being too nervous and timid to make inquiry on the subject, he applied to his face a burnt cork, simply. At the conclusion of the performance, on seeking to resume his natural hue, by the ordinary process of washing in soap and water, he found, to his great dismay, that the skin of his face was peeling off rather than the colour disappearing! The cork had been too hot by a great deal, and had injured his cuticle considerably. With the utmost haste, although announced to play Hamlet on the following evening, the actor—who then styled himself Mr. Hulsingham, a name he forthwith abandoned—hired a post-chaise and eloped from Gravesend.

Making-up is in requisition when the performer desires to look either younger or older than he or she really is. It is, of course, with the first-named portion of the art that actresses are chiefly concerned, although the beautiful Mrs. Woffington, accepting the character of Veturia in Thomson's "Coriolanus," did not hesitate to assume the aspect of age, and to paint lines and wrinkles upon her fair face. But she was a great artist, and her loveliness was a thing so beyond all question that she could afford to disguise it or to seem to slight it for a few nights; possibly it shone the brighter afterwards for its brief eclipse. Otherwise, making-up pertains to an actor's "line of business," and is not separable from it. Once young or once old he so remains, as a rule, until the close of his professional career. There is indeed a story told of a veteran actor who still flourished in juvenile characters, while his son, as a matter of choice, or of necessity, invariably impersonated the old gentlemen of the stage. But when the two players met in a representation of "The Rivals," and Sir Anthony the son, had to address Captain Absolute the father, in the words of the dramatist: "I'll disown you; I'll unget you; I'll never call you Jack again!" the humour of the situation appealed too strongly to the audience, and more laughter than Sheridan had ever contemplated was stirred by the scene.

The veterans who have been accused of superfluously lagging upon the stage, find an excuse for their presence in the skill of their make-up. For the age of the players is not to be counted, by the almanack, but appraised in accordance with their looks. On the stage to seem young is to be young, though occasionally it must happen that actors and audience are not quite in agreement upon this question of aspect. There have been many youthful dramatic heroines very well stricken in years; ingenues of advanced age, and columbines who might almost be crones; to say nothing of "young dogs" of light comedians, who in private life are well qualified to appear as grandsires, or even as great-grandfathers. But ingenuity in painting the face and padding the figure will probably long secure toleration for patriarchal Romeos, and even for matriarchal Juliets.

Recent discoveries have no doubt benefited the toilets of the players, which, indeed, stood in need of assistance, the fierce illumination of the modern stage being considered. In those palmy but dark days of the drama, when gas and lime-lights were not, the disguising of the mischief wrought by time must have been a comparatively easy task.

However, supply, as usual, has followed demand, and there are now traders dealing specially in the materials for making-up, in theatrical cosmetics of the best possible kind at the lowest possible prices: "Superfine rouge, rose for lips, blanc (liquid and in powder), pencils for eyebrows, creme de l'imperatrice and fleur-de-riz for softening the skin," &c. Further, there are the hairdressers, who provide theatrical wigs of all kinds, and advertise the merits of their "old men's bald pates," which must seem a strange article of sale to those unversed in the mysteries of stage dressing-rooms. One inventive person, it may be noted, loudly proclaims the merits of a certain "spirit gum" he has concocted, using which, as he alleges, "no actor need fear swallowing his moustache"—so runs the form of his advertisement.

Of Mademoiselle Guirnard, the famous French opera-dancer, it is related that her portrait, painted in early youth, always rested upon her dressing-table. Every morning, during many years, she carefully made up her face to bring her looks in as close accord as possible with the loveliness of her picture. For an incredible time her success is reported to have been something marvellous. But at last the conviction was forced upon her that her facial glories had departed. Yet her figure was still perfectly symmetrical, her grace and agility were as supreme as they had ever been. She was sixty-four, when, yielding to the urgent entreaties of her friends, she consented to give a "very last" exhibition of her art. The performance was of a most special kind. The curtain was so far lowered as to conceal completely the head and shoulders of the dancer. "Il fut impossible aux spectateurs," writes a biographer of the lady, "de voir autre que le travail de ses jambes dont le temps avait respecte l'agilite et les formes pures et delicates!"

By way of final word on the subject, it may be stated that making-up is but a small portion of the histrionic art; and not, as some would have it, the very be-all and end-all of acting. It is impossible not to admire the ingenuity of modern face-painting upon the stage, and the skill with which, in some cases, well-known personages have been represented by actors of, in truth, totally different physical aspect; but still there seems a likelihood of efforts of this kind being urged beyond reasonable bounds. So, too, there appears to be an excessive use of cosmetics and colouring by youthful performers, who really need little aid of this kind, beyond that application of the hare's-foot which can never be altogether dispensed with. Moreover, it has become necessary for players, who have resolved that their faces shall be pictures, to decide from what part of the theatre such works of art are to be viewed. At present many of these over-painted countenances may "fall into shape," as artists say, when seen from the back benches of the gallery, for instance; but judged from a nearer standpoint they are really but pictorial efforts of a crude, uncomfortable, and mistaken kind.



CHAPTER XIV.

PAINT AND CANVAS.

Vasari, the historian of painters, has much to say in praise of the "perspective views" or scenes executed by Baldassare Peruzzi, an artist and architect of great fame in his day, who was born in 1480 at Florence, or Volterra, or Siena, it is not known which, each of these noble cities of Tuscany having claimed to be his birthplace. When the Roman people held high festival in honour of Giuliano de Medici, they obtained various works of art from Baldassare, including a scene painted for a theatre, so admirably ingenious and beautiful, that very great amazement is said to have been awakened in every beholder. At a later period, when the "Calandra," written by the Cardinal di Bibiena—"one of the first comedies seen or recited in the vulgar tongue"—was performed before Pope Leo, the aid of Baldassare was sought again, to prepare the scenic adornments of the representation. His labours were successful beyond measure; two of his scenes, painted upon this or upon some other occasion, Vasari pronounced to be "surprisingly beautiful, opening the way to those of a similar kind which have been made in our own day." The artist was a fine colourist, well skilled in perspective, and in the management of light, insomuch that his drawings did not look "like things feigned, but rather as the living reality." Vasari relates that he conducted Titian to see certain works of Peruzzi, of which the illusion was most complete. The greater artist "could by no means be persuaded that they were simply painted, and remained in astonishment, when, on changing his point of view, he perceived that they were so." Dying in 1536, Baldassare was buried in the Rotondo, near the tomb of Raffaelo da Urbino, all the painters, sculptors, and architects of Rome attending the interment. That he was an artist of the first rank was agreed on all hands. And he is further entitled to be remembered as one of the very earliest of great scene-painters.

In England, some six-and-thirty years later, there was born an artist and architect of even greater fame than Peruzzi: Inigo Jones, who, like Peruzzi, rendered important aid to the adornment of the stage. In his youth Inigo had studied landscape-painting in Italy. At Rome he became an architect; as Walpole expresses it, "he dropped the pencil and conceived Whitehall."

Meanwhile a taste, even a sort of passion, had arisen at the English court for masques and pageants of extraordinary magnificence. Poetry, painting, music, and architecture were combined in their production. Ben Jonson was the laureate; Inigo Jones the inventor and designer of the scenic decorations; Laniere, Lawes, and Ferabosco contributed the musical embellishments; the king, the queen, and the young nobility danced in the interludes. On these entertainments L3000 to L5000 were often expended, and on more public occasions L10,000 and even L20,000. "It seems," says Isaac Disraeli, "that as no masque writer equalled Jonson, so no 'machinist' rivalled Inigo Jones." For the great architect was wont to busy himself in devising mechanical changes of scenery, such as distinguishes modern pantomime. Jonson, describing his "Masque of Blackness," performed before the court at Whitehall, on Twelfth Night, 1605, says: "For the scene was drawn a landscape, consisting of small woods, and here and there a void place, filled with hangings; which falling, an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth, as if it flowed to the land, raised with waves, which seemed to move, and in some places the billows to break, as imitating that orderly disorder which is common in nature." Then follows a long account of the appearance, attire, and "sprightly movements of the masquers:" Oceanus, Oceaniae, Niger and his daughters, with Tritons, mermaids, mermen, and sea-horses, "as big as the life." "These thus presented," he continues, "the scene behind seemed a vast sea, and united with this that flowed forth, from the termination or horizon of which (being the head of the stage, which was placed in the upper end of the hall) was drawn by the lines of perspective, the whole work shooting downwards from the eye, which decorum made it more conspicuous, and caught the eye afar off with a wondering beauty, to which was added an obscure and cloudy night piece, that made the whole set off. So much for the bodily part, which was of Master Inigo Jones's design and art." Indeed, Inigo was not simply the scene-painter; he also devised the costumes, and contrived the necessary machinery. In regard to many of these entertainments, he was responsible for "the invention, ornaments, scenes, and apparitions, with their descriptions;" for everything, in fact, but the music or the words to be spoken or sung.

These masques and court pageants gradually brought movable scenery upon the stage, in place of the tapestries, "arras cloths," "traverses," or curtains drawn upon rods, which had previously furnished the theatre. Still the masques were to be distinguished from the ordinary entertainments of the public playhouses. The court performances knew little of regular plot or story; ordinarily avoided all reference to nature and real life; and were remarkable for the luxurious fancifulness and costly eccentricity they displayed. They were provided by the best writers of the time, and in many cases were rich in poetic merit. Still they were expressly designed to afford valuable opportunities to the musical composer, to the ballet-dancers, mummers, posture-makers, and costumiers. The regular dramas, such as the Elizabethan public supported, could boast few attractions of this kind. It was altogether without movable scenery, although possessed of a balcony or upper stage, used to represent, now the walls of a city, as in "King John," now the top of a tower, as in "Henry VI.", or "Antony and Cleopatra," and now the window to an upper chamber. Mr. Payne Collier notes that in one of the oldest historical plays extant, "Selimus, Emperor of the Turks," published in 1594, there is a remarkable stage direction demonstrating the complete absence of scenery, by the appeal made to the simple good faith of the audience. The hero is represented conveying the body of his father in a solemn funeral procession to the Temple of Mahomet. The stage direction runs: "Suppose the Temple of Mahomet"—a needless injunction, as Mr. Collier remarks, if there had existed the means of exhibiting the edifice in question to the eyes of the spectators. But the demands upon the audience to abet the work of theatrical illusion, and with their thoughts to piece out the imperfections of the dramatists, are frequently to be met with in the old plays. Of the poverty of the early stage, in the matter of scenic decorations, there is abundant evidence. Fleckno, in his "Short Discourse of the Stage," 1664, by which time movable scenery had been introduced, writes: "Now for the difference between our theatres and those of former times; they were but plain and simple, with no other scenes nor decorations of the stages but only old tapestry, and the stage strewed with rushes."

The simple expedient of writing up the names of the different places, where the scene was laid in the progress of a play, or affixing a placard to that effect upon the tapestry at the back of the stage, sufficed to convey to the spectators the intentions of the author. "What child is there," asks Sir Philip Sidney, "that, coming to a play and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes?" Oftentimes, too, opportunity was found in the play itself, or in its prologue, to inform the audience of the place in which the action of the story is supposed to be laid. "Our scene is Rhodes," says old Hieronymo in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," 1588. And the title of the play was also exhibited in the same way, so that the audience did not lack instruction as to the purport of the entertainment set before them.

The introduction of movable scenes upon the stage has been usually attributed to Sir William Davenant, who, in 1658, evading the ordinance of 1647, by which the theatres were peremptorily closed, produced, at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, an entertainment rather than a play, entitled "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, expressed by vocal and instrumental music, and by art of perspective in scenes:" an exhibition which Cromwell is generally supposed to have permitted, more from his hatred of the Spaniards than by reason of his tolerance of dramatic performances. The author of "Historia Histrionica," a tract written in 1699, also expressly states that "after the Restoration, the king's players acted publicly at the Red Bull for some time, and then removed to a new-built playhouse in Vere Street, by Clare Market; there they continued for a year or two, and then removed to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, where they first made use of scenes, which had been a little before introduced upon the public stage by Sir William Davenant." It is to be observed, however, that inasmuch as the masques, such as the court of Charles I. had so favoured, were sometimes produced at the public theatres, and could hardly have been presented there, shorn of the mechanical appliances and changes which constituted a main portion of their attractiveness, movable scenery, or stage artifices that might fairly be so described, could not be entirely new to a large portion of the public. Thus the masque of "Love's Mistress, or the Queen's Masque," by Thomas Heywood, 1640, was "three times presented before their Majesties at the Phoenix in Drury Lane;" Heywood expressly acknowledging his obligation to Inigo Jones, who "changed the stage to every act, and almost to every scene."

It must not be supposed, however, that the introduction of scenery was hailed unanimously as a vast improvement upon the former condition of the stage. There was, no doubt, abundance of applause; a sufficient number of spectators were well pleased to find that now their eyes were to be addressed not less than their ears and their minds, and were satisfied that exhibitions of the theatre would be presently much more intelligible to them than had hitherto been the case. Still the sages shook their heads, distrusting the change, and prophesying evil of it. Even Mr. Payne Collier has been moved by his conservative regard for the Elizabethan stage and the early drama to date from the introduction of scenery the beginning of the decline of our dramatic poetry. He holds it a fortunate circumstance for the poetry of our old plays, that "painted movable scenery" had not then been introduced. "The imagination only of the auditor was appealed to, and we owe to the absence of painted canvas many of the finest descriptive passages in Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and immediate followers." Further, he states his opinion that our old dramatists "luxuriated in passages descriptive of natural or artificial scenery, because they knew their auditors would have nothing before their eyes to contradict the poetry; the hangings of the stage made little pretensions to anything but coverings for the walls, and the notion of the place represented was taken from what was said by the poet, and not from what was attempted by the painter."

It need hardly be stated that the absence of scenes and scene-shifting had by no means confined the British drama to a classical form, although regard for "unity of place," at any rate, might seem to be almost logically involved in the immovable condition of the stage-fittings. Some two or three plays, affecting to follow the construction adopted by the Greek and Roman stage, are certainly to be found in the Elizabethan repertory, but they had been little favoured by the playgoers of the time, and may fairly be viewed as exceptions proving the rule that our drama is essentially romantic. Indeed, our old dramatists were induced by the absence of scenery to rely more and more upon the imagination of their audience. As Mr. Collier observes: "If the old poets had been obliged to confine themselves merely to the changes that could at that early date have been exhibited by the removal of painted canvas or boarding, we should have lost much of that boundless diversity of situation and character allowed by this happy absence of restraint." At the same time, the liberty these writers permitted themselves did not escape criticism from the devout adherents of the classical theatre. Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Apology for Poetry," 1595, is severe upon the "defectious" nature of the English drama, especially as to its disregard of the unities of time and place. "Now," he says, three ladies "walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden; by-and-by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock; upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then, what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?" Dryden, it may be noted, in his "Essay of Dramatic Poesie," has a kindred passage as to the matters to be acted on the stage, and the things "supposed to be done behind the scenes."

Of the scenery of his time, Mr. Pepys makes frequent mention, without, however, entering much into particulars on the subject. In August, 1661, he notes the reproduction of Davenant's comedy of "The Wits," "never acted yet with scenes;" adding, "and, indeed, it is a most excellent play and admirable scenes." A little later he records a performance of "'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,' done with scenes very well, but, above all, Betterton did the prince's part beyond imagination." It is satisfactory to find that in this case, at any rate, the actor held his ground against the scene-painter. Under another date, he refers to a representation of "The Faithful Shepherdess" of Fletcher, "a most simple thing, and yet much thronged after and often shown; but it is only for the scene's sake, which is very fine." A few years later he describes a visit "to the King's Playhouse all in dirt, they being altering of the stage, to make it wider. But my business," he proceeds, "was to see the inside of the stage, and all the 'tiring-rooms and machines; and, indeed, it was a sight worth seeing. But to see their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things there was—here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and particularly Lacy's wardrobe and Shotrell's. But then, again, to think how fine they show on the stage by candlelight, and how poor things they are to look at too near at hand, is not pleasant at all. The machines are fine, and," he concludes, "the paintings very pretty." In October, 1667, he records that he sat in the boxes for the first time in his life, and discovered that from that point of view "the scenes do appear very fine indeed, and much better than in the pit."

The names of the artists whose works won Mr. Pepys's applause have not come down to us. Of Robert Streeter, sergeant-painter to King Charles II., there is frequent mention made in the "Diary" of Evelyn, who highly lauds the artist's "very glorious scenes and perspectives," which adorned Dryden's play of "The Conquest of Granada," on its representation at Whitehall. Evelyn, not caring much for such entertainments, seems, nevertheless, to have frequently attended the plays and masques of the Court. In February, 1664, he saw acted "The Indian Queen" of Sir Robert Howard and Dryden—"a tragedy well written, so beautiful with rich scenes as the like had never been seen here, or haply (except rarely) elsewhere on a mercenary theatre." At a later date, one Robert Aggas, a painter of some fame, is known to have executed scenes for the theatre in Dorset Garden. Among other scene-painters of distinction, pertaining to a comparatively early period of the art, may be noted Nicholas Thomas Dall, a Danish landscape-painter, who established himself in London in 1760, was long occupied as scene-painter at Covent Garden Theatre, and became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1771; Hogarth, who is reported to have painted a camp scene for the private theatre of Dr. Hoadley, Dean of Winchester; John Richards, a member of the Royal Academy, who, during many years, painted scenes for Covent Garden; Michael Angelo Rooker, pupil of Paul Sandby, and one of the first Associates of the Academy, who was scene-painter at the Haymarket; Novosielsky, the architect of the Opera House, Haymarket, who also supplied that establishment with many notable scenes, and, to pass over many minor names, De Loutherbourg, Garrick's scene-painter, and one of the most renowned artists of his period.

It will be remembered that Mr. Puff, in "The Critic," giving a specimen of "the puff direct" in regard to a new play, says: "As to the scenery, the miraculous powers of Mr. De Loutherbourg are universally acknowledged. In short, we are at a loss which to admire most, the unrivalled genius of the author, the great attention and liberality of the managers, the wonderful abilities of the painter, or the incredible exertions of all the performers." Shortly after his arrival in England, about 1770, De Loutherbourg became a contributor to the exhibition of the Royal Academy. In 1780 he was elected an Associate; in the following year he obtained the full honours of academicianship. His easel-pictures were for the most part landscapes, effective and forcible after an unconventional fashion, and wholly at variance with the "classically-composed" landscapes then in vogue. Turner, when, in 1808, he was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy, is said to have taken up his abode at Hammersmith, in order that he might be near De Loutherbourg, for whose works he professed cordial admiration. The old scene-painter's bold and strong effects, his daring treatment of light and shade, his system of colour, bright even to gaudiness, probably arrested the attention of the younger artist, and were to him exciting influences. Upon De Loutherbourg's landscapes, however, little store is now placed; but as a scene-painter he deserves to be remembered for the ingenious reforms he introduced. He found the scene a mere "flat" of strained canvas extending over the whole stage. He was the first to use "set scenes" and "raking pieces." He also invented transparent scenes with representations of moonlight, sunshine, firelight, volcanoes, &c., and obtained new effects of colour by means of silken screens of various hues placed before the foot and side lights. He discovered, too, that ingenious effects might be obtained by suspending gauzes between the scene and the spectators. These are now, of course, but commonplace contrivances; they were, however, distinctly the inventions of De Loutherbourg, and were calculated to impress the playgoers of his time very signally. To Garrick De Loutherbourg rendered very important assistance, for Garrick was much inclined for scenic decorations of a showy character, although as a rule he restricted these embellishments to the after-pieces, and for the more legitimate entertainments of his stage was content to employ old and stock scenery that had been of service in innumerable plays. Tate Wilkinson, writing in 1790, refers to a scene then in use which he remembered so far back as the year 1747. "It has wings and a flat of Spanish figures at full length, and two folding-doors in the middle. I never see those wings slide on, but I feel as if seeing my old acquaintance unexpectedly."

Of later scene-painters, such as Roberts and Stanfield, Grieve and Telbin, and to come down to the present time, Beverley and Calcott, Hawes Craven and O'Connor, there seems little occasion to speak; the achievements of these artists are matters of almost universal knowledge. It is sufficient to say that in their hands the art they practise has been greatly advanced, even to the eclipse now and then of the efforts of both actors and dramatists.

Some few notes, however, may be worth making in relation to the technical methods adopted by the scene-painter. In the first place, he relies upon the help of the carpenter to stretch a canvas tightly over a frame, or to nail a wing into shape; and subsequently it is the carpenter's duty, with a small sharp saw, to cut the edge of irregular wings, such as representations of foliage or rocks, an operation known behind the curtain as "marking the profile." The painter's studio is usually high up above the rear of the stage—a spacious room, well lighted by means of skylights or a lantern in the roof. The canvas, which is of course of vast dimensions, can be raised to the ceiling, or lowered through the floor, to suit the convenience of the artist, by means of machinery of ingenious construction. The painter has invariably made a preliminary water-colour sketch of his scene, on paper or cardboard. Oftentimes, with the help of a miniature stage, such as schoolboys delight in, he is enabled to form a fair estimate of the effect that may be expected of his design. The expansive canvas has been sized over, and an outline of the picture to be painted—a landscape, or an interior, as the case may be—has been boldly marked out by the artist. Then the assistants and pupils ply their brushes, and wash in the broad masses of colour, floods of light, and clouds of darkness. The dimensions of the canvas permit of many hands being employed upon it, and the work proceeds therefore with great rapidity. But the scene-painter is constant in his supervision of his subordinates, and when their labours are terminated, he completes the design with numberless improving touches and masterly strokes. Of necessity, much of the work is of a mechanical kind; scroll-work, patterned walls, or cornices are accomplished by "stencilling" or "pouncing"—that is to say, the design is pricked upon a paper, which, being pressed upon the canvas, and smeared or dabbed with charcoal, leaves a faint trace of the desired outline. The straight lines in an architectural scene are traced by means of a cord, which is rubbed with colour in powder, and, having been drawn tight, is allowed to strike smartly against the canvas, and deposit a distinct mark upon its surface. Duty of this kind is readily accomplished by a boy, or a labourer of little skill. Scenes of a pantomime order, in which glitter is required, are dabbed here and there by the artist with thin glue; upon these moist places, Dutch metal—gold or silver leaf—is then fixed, with a result that large audiences have never failed to find resplendent and beautiful. These are some, but, of course, a few only, of the methods and mysteries of the scene-painter's art.



CHAPTER XV.

THE TIRING-ROOM.

The information that has come down to us in relation to the wardrobe department of the Elizabethan theatre, and the kind of costumes worn by our early actors, is mainly derived from the diaries of Philip Henslowe and his partner, Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College. Henslowe became a theatrical manager some time before 1592, trading also as a pawnbroker, and dealing rather usuriously with the players and playwrights about him. Alleyn married the step-daughter of Henslowe, and thereupon entered into partnership with him. Malone has made liberal extracts from Henslowe's inventories, which bear date 1598-99, and were once safely possessed by Dulwich College, but have now, for the most part, disappeared. Among the articles of dress enumerated appear "Longshanks' suit;" "Tamberlane's breeches of crimson velvet," and the same hero's "coat with coper lace;" "Harye the Fifth's velvet gown and satin doublet, laid with gold lace;" Dido's robe and Juno's frock; Robin Hood's hat and green coat; and Merlin's gown and cape. Then there are gowns and caps for senators, suits for torchbearers and janissaries, shepherds' coats, yellow leather doublets for clowns, robes of rich taffety and damask, suits of russet and of frieze, fools' caps and bells, cloth of gold, French hose, surplices, shirts, farthingales, jerkins, and white cotton stockings. From another document, the cost of theatrical apparel may be fairly estimated. A list headed: "Note of all such goods as I have bought for the company of my Lord Admiral's men, since the 3rd April, 1598," has the sum paid for each article plainly stated, and contains such items as: "Bought a damask cassock, garded with velvet, eighteen shillings;" "bought a payer of paned rownd hose of cloth, whiped with silk, drawn out with taffety, and one payer of long black woollen stockens, eight shillings;" "bought a robe for to go invisibell and a gown for Nembia, three pounds ten shillings" (Malone conjecturing that the mysterious "robe for to go invisibell" pertained to some drama in which the wearer of the garment specified was supposed to be unseen by the rest of the performers); "bought a doublet of white satten layd thick with gold lace, and a pair of rowne paned hose of cloth of silver, the panes layd with gold lace, seven pounds ten shillings," and so on.

Alleyn's inventory still exists, or did exist very recently, in his own handwriting, at Dulwich College; it is without heading or date, and relates almost exclusively to the dresses worn by himself in his personation of various characters upon the stage. It is of interest, seeing that it demonstrates the assumption by Alleyn of various parts, if not in Shakespeare's plays, at any rate in the earlier dramas upon which the poet founded certain of his noblest works. Thus the actor's list makes mention of "a scarlet cloke with two brode gould laces with gould down the same, for Leir"—meaning, doubtless, "King Lear;" "a purple satin cloke, welted with velvett and silver twist, Romeo's;" "Hary the VIII. gowne;" "blew damask cote for the Moor in Venis;" and "spangled hoes in Pericles." Such entries as "Faustus jerkin and cloke," "Priams hoes in Dido," and "French hose for the Guises," evidence that the actor took part in Marlowe's "Faustus" and "Massacre of Paris," and the tragedy of "Dido," by Marlowe and Nash. Then there are cloaks and gowns, striped and trimmed with gold lace and ermine, suits of crimson, and orange-tawny velvet, cloth of gold and silver, jerkins and doublets of satin taffety and velvet, richly embroidered, and hose of various hues and patterns. The actor's wardrobe was clearly most costly and complete, and affords sufficient proof that theatrical costumes generally, even at that early date, were of a luxurious nature. In considering the prices mentioned in Henslowe's list, the high value of money in his time should of course be borne in mind.

It is plain, however, that splendour was much more considered than appropriateness of dress. Some care might be taken to provide Robin Hood with a suit of Lincoln green; to furnish hoods and frocks for friars and royal robes for kings; but otherwise actors, dramatists, and audience demanded only that costly and handsome apparel should appear upon the scene. Indeed, the desire for correctness of dress upon the stage is of modern origin. Still, now and then may be found, even in very early days, some inclination towards carefulness in this respect; as when, in 1595, Thomas Nevile, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, applied to Lord Treasurer Burghley for the loan of the royal robes in the Tower, in order to perform, "for the exercise of young gentlemen and scholars in our college," certain comedies and one tragedy, in which "sondry personages of greatest estate were to be represented in ancient princely attire, which is nowhere to be had but within the office of the roabes of the Tower." This request, it seems, had been granted before, and probably was again complied with on this occasion. Indeed, at a much later date there was borrowing from the stores of the Tower for the decoration of the stage; as Pope writes:

Back fly the scenes and enter foot and horse: Pageant on pageants in long order drawn, Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn; The champion, too! And to complete the jest, Old Edward's armour beams on Cibber's breast.

By way of reflecting the glories of the coronation of George II., "Henry VIII.," with a grand spectacle of a coronation, had been presented at the theatres, the armour of one of the kings of England having been brought from the Tower for the due accoutrement of the champion. And here we may note a curious gravitation of royal finery towards the theatre. Downes, in his "Roscius Anglicanus," describes Sir William Davenant's play of "Love and Honour," produced in 1662, as "richly cloathed, the king giving Mr. Betterton his coronation suit, in which he acted the part of Prince Alvaro; the Duke of York giving Mr. Harris his, who did Prince Prospero; and my lord of Oxford gave Mr. Joseph Price his, who did Lionel, the Duke of Parma's son." Presently we find the famous Mrs. Barry acting Queen Elizabeth in the coronation robes of James II.'s queen, who had before presented the actress with her wedding suit. Mrs. Barry is said to have given her audience a strong idea of Queen Elizabeth. Mrs. Bellamy played Cleopatra in a silver tissue "birthday" dress that had belonged to the Princess of Wales; and a suit of straw-coloured satin, from the wardrobe of the same illustrious lady, was worn by the famous Mrs. Woffington, in her performance of Roxana. The robes worn by Elliston, when he personated George IV., and represented the coronation of that monarch upon the stage of Drury Lane, were probably not the originals. These became subsequently the property of Madame Tussaud, and long remained among the treasures of her waxwork exhibition in Baker Street. A tradition prevails that Elliston's robes were carried to America by Lucius Junius Booth, the actor, who long continued to assume them in his personation of Richard III., much to the astonishment of the more simple-minded of his audience, who naively inquired of each other whether the sovereigns of Great Britain were really wont to parade the streets of London in such attire? Among other royal robes that have likewise descended to the stage, mention may also be made of the coronation dress of the late Queen Adelaide, of which Mrs. Mowatt, the American actress, became the ultimate possessor.

Many noblemen and fine gentlemen also favoured the actors with gifts of their cast clothes, and especially of those "birthday suits"—Court dresses of great splendour, worn for the first time at the birthday levees, or drawing-rooms of the sovereign. As Pope writes:

Or when from Court a birthday suit bestowed, Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load.

Indeed, to some of the clothes worn by actors a complete history is attached. The wardrobe of Munden, the comedian, contained a black Genoa velvet coat, which had once belonged to King George II.; while another coat boasted also a distinguished pedigree, and could be traced to Francis, Duke of Bedford, who had worn it on the occasion of the Prince of Wales's marriage. It had originally cost L1000! But then it had been fringed with precious stones, of which the sockets only remained when it fell into the hands of the dealers in second-hand garments; but, even in its dilapidated state, Munden had given L40 for it. Usually, however, fine clothes, such as "birthday suits," became the property rather of the tragedians than the comedians. Cibber describes the division on the subject of dress, existing in the "Commonwealth" company, of which he formed a member, in 1696. "The tragedians," he writes, "seemed to think their rank as much above the comedians as the characters they severally acted; when the first were in their finery, the latter were impatient at the expense, and looked upon it as rather laid out upon the real than the fictitious person of the actor. Nay, I have known in our company this ridiculous sort of regret carried so far that the tragedian has thought himself injured when the comedian pretended to wear a fine coat." Powel, the tragedian, surveying the dress worn by Cibber as Lord Foppington, fairly lost his temper, and complained, in rude terms, that he had not so good a suit in which to play Caesar Borgia. Then, again, when Betterton proposed to "mount" a tragedy, the comic actors were sure to murmur at the cost of it. Dogget especially regarded with impatience "the costly trains and plumes of tragedy, in which, knowing himself to be useless, he thought they were all a vain extravagance." Tragedy, however, was certainly an expensive entertainment at this time. Dryden's "All for Love" had been revived at a cost of nearly L600 for dresses—"a sum unheard of for many years before on a like occasion." It was, by-the-way, the production of this tragedy, in preference to his "adaptation" of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus," that so bitterly angered Dennis, the critic, and brought about his fierce enmity to Cibber.

To the hero of tragedy a feathered headdress was indispensable; the heroine demanded a long train borne by one or two pages. Pope writes:

Loud as the wolves on Orca's stormy steep Howl to the roarings of the northern deep, Such is the shout, the long-applauded note, At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat.

Hamlet speaks of a "forest of feathers" as part of an actor's professional qualification. Addison, writing in "The Spectator" on the methods of aggrandising the persons in tragedy, denounces as ridiculous the endeavour to raise terror and pity in the audience by the dresses and decorations of the stage, and takes particular exception to the plumes of feathers worn by the conventional hero of tragedy, rising "so very high, that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same thing." Then he describes the embarrassment of the actor, forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the time he speaks, when, "notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see by his action that his greatest care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from falling off his head." The hero's "superfluous ornaments" having been discussed, the means by which the heroine is invested with grandeur are next considered: "The broad sweeping train that follows her in all her motions, finds constant employment for a boy who stands behind her, to open and spread it to advantage. I do not know how others are affected at this sight, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the page's part; and as for the queen, I am not so attentive to anything she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her as she walks to and fro upon the stage. It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle to see a queen venting her passion in a disordered motion, and a little boy taking care all the while that they do not ruffle the tail of her gown. The parts that the two persons act on the stage at the same time are very different; the princess is afraid that she should incur the displeasure of the king, her father, or lose the hero, her lover, whilst her attendant is only concerned lest she should entangle her feet in her petticoat." In the same way Tate Wilkinson, writing in 1790 of the customs of the stage, as he had known it forty years before, describes the ladies as wearing large hoops and velvet petticoats, heavily embossed and extremely inconvenient and troublesome, with "always a page behind to hear the lovers' secrets, and keep the train in graceful decorum. If two princesses," he continues, "meet on the stage, with the frequent stage-crossings then practised, it would now seem truly entertaining to behold a page dangling at the tail of each heroine." The same writer, referring to the wardrobe he possessed as manager of the York and Hull theatres, describes the dresses as broadly seamed with gold and silver lace, after a bygone fashion that earned for them the contempt of London performers. "Yet," he proceeds, "those despicable clothes had, at different periods of time, bedecked real lords and dukes," and were of considerable value, if only to strip of their decorations and take to pieces. He laments the general decline in splendour of dress, and declares that thirty years before not a Templar, or decently-dressed young man, but wore a rich gold-laced hat and scarlet waistcoat, with a broad gold lace, also laced frocks for morning dress.

Monmouth Street, St. Giles's, is now known by another name; but for many years its dealers in cast clothes rendered important aid to the actors and managers. It was to Monmouth Street, as he confesses, that Tate Wilkinson hastened, when permitted to undertake the part of the Fine Gentleman in Garrick's farce of "Lethe," at Covent Garden. For two guineas he obtained the loan, for one night only, of a heavy embroidered velvet spangled suit of clothes, "fit," he says, "for the king in 'Hamlet.'" Repeating the character, he was constrained to depend upon the wardrobe of the theatre, and appeared in "a very short old suit of clothes, with a black velvet ground and broad gold flowers, as dingy as the twenty-four letters on a piece of gilded gingerbread"—the dress, indeed, which Garrick had worn when playing Lothario, in "The Fair Penitent," ten years before. And it was to Monmouth Street that Austin repaired, when cast for a very inferior part—a mere attendant—in the same tragedy, in order to equip himself as like to Garrick as he could—for Garrick was to reappear as Lothario in a new suit of clothes. "Where did you get that coat from, Austin?" asked the great actor, surveying his subordinate. "Sir!" replied Austin boldly, "it is part of my country wardrobe." The manager paused, frowned, reflected. Soon he was satisfied that the effect of Austin's dress would be injurious to his own, especially as Austin was of superior physical proportions. "Austin," he said at length, "why, perhaps you have some other engagement—besides, the part is really beneath you. Altogether, I will not trouble you to go on with me." And not to go on as an attendant upon Lothario was precisely what Austin desired.

O'Keeffe, in his "Memoirs," has related a curious instance of the prompt bestowal of an article of apparel upon an actor attached to the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin. Macklin's farce of "The True-born Irishman" was in course of performance for the first time. During what was known as "the Drum Scene" ("a 'rout' in London is called a 'drum' in Dublin," O'Keeffe explains),—when an actor, named Massink, had entered as the representative of Pat FitzMongrel—a gentleman, who with a large party occupied the stage-box, was seen to rise from his chair, with the view, as it seemed, of interrupting the performance. It should be stated that the gentleman was known to have recently inherited a large fortune, and had evinced a certain eccentricity of disposition. He was now of opinion that an attempt was being made to personate him on the stage. "Why, that's me!" he cried aloud, pointing to the figure of Pat FitzMongrel. "But what sort of a rascally coat is that they've dressed me in! Here, I'll dress you, my man!" So saying he stood up, divested himself of the rich gold-laced coat he wore, and flung it on to the stage. "Massink took it up smiling, stepped to the wing, threw off his own, and returned upon the stage in the gentleman's fine coat, which produced the greatest amount of applause and pleasure among the audience."

To suit the dress demands the actor's art, Yet there are some who overdress the part. To some prescriptive right gives settled things— Black wigs to murderers, feathered hats to kings. But Michael Cassio might be drunk enough, Though all his features were not grimed with snuff. Why should Poll Peachum shine in satin clothes? Why every devil dance in scarlet hose?

Thus, in regard to the conventionalism of stage costumes, wrote Churchill's friend, Robert Lloyd, in his poem of "The Actor," 1762. And something he might have added touching the absurd old fashion of robing the queens of tragedy invariably in black, for it seemed agreed generally that "the sceptred pall of gorgeous tragedy" should be taken very literally, and should "sweep by" in the funereal fashion of sable velvet. "Empresses and queens," writes Mrs. Bellamy, the actress, in 1785, "always appeared in black velvet, with, upon extraordinary occasions, the additional finery of an embroidered or tissue petticoat; the younger actresses in cast gowns of persons of quality, or altered habits rather soiled; whilst the male portion of the dramatis personae strutted in tarnished laced coats and waistcoats, full bottom or tie wigs, and black worsted stockings." Yet the lady once ventured to appear as Lady Macbeth, and to wear the while a dress of white satin. This took place at Edinburgh, and the startling innovation was only to be accounted for by the fact that the wardrobes of the actresses and of the company she had joined had been accidentally consumed by fire. Some portion of the theatre had been also destroyed, but boards were hastily nailed down and covered with carpets, so as to form a temporary stage until the damage could be repaired. Meantime appeal was made to the ladies of Edinburgh to lend clothes to the "burnt out" actress, who estimated the loss of her theatrical finery at L900, there being among the ashes of her property "a complete set of garnets and pearls, from cap to stomacher." Dresses of various kinds poured in, however. "Before six o'clock I found myself in possession of above forty, and some of these almost new, as well as very rich. Nor did the ladies confine themselves to outward garments only. I received presents of all kinds and from every part of the adjacent country." But inasmuch as "no black vestment of any kind had been sent among the numerous ones of different colours which had been showered upon me by the ladies," the necessity arose for dressing Lady Macbeth for the very first time in white satin.

Mrs. Bellamy, according to her own account, had been wont to take great pains and to exercise much good taste in regard to the costume she assumed upon the stage. She claimed to have discarded hooped skirts, while those unwieldy draperies were still greatly favoured by other actresses, and to have adopted a style of dress remarkable for an elegant simplicity then very new to the stage. Still, the lady has freely admitted that she could be very gorgeous upon occasions; and concerning one of two grand tragedy dresses she had obtained from Paris, she has something of a history to narrate. The play was to be the "Alexander" of Nat Lee; the rival actresses were to appear—Mrs. Bellamy as Statira, and the famous Mrs. Woffington as Roxana. The ladies did not love each other—rival actresses oftentimes do not love each other—and each possessed a temper. Moreover, each was a beauty: Mrs. Woffington, a grand brunette, dark browed, with flashing eyes and stately mien: Mrs. Bellamy, a blonde, blue-eyed and golden-haired—an accomplished actress, if an affected one. Now, Mrs. Bellamy's grand dress of deep yellow satin, with a robe of rich purple velvet, was found to have a most injurious effect upon the delicate straw-coloured skirts of Mrs. Woffington; they seemed to be reduced to a dirty white hue. The ladies fairly quarrelled over their dresses. At length, if we may adopt Mrs. Bellamy's account of the proceeding, Mrs. Woffington's rage was so kindled "that it nearly bordered on madness. When, oh! dire to tell! she drove me off the carpet and gave me the coup de grace almost behind the scenes. The audience, who, I believe, preferred hearing my last dying speech to seeing her beauty and fine attitude, could not avoid perceiving her violence, and testified their displeasure at it." Possibly the scene excited mirth in an equal degree. Foote forthwith prepared a burlesque, "The Green-room Squabble; or, A Battle Royal between the Queen of Babylon and the Daughter of Darius." The same tragedy, it may be noted, had at an earlier date been productive of discord in the theatre. Mrs. Barry, as Roxana, had indeed stabbed her Statira, Mrs. Boutell, with such violence that the dagger, although the point was blunted, "made its way through Mrs. Boutell's stays and entered about a quarter of an inch into the flesh." It is not clear, however, that this contest, like the other, is to be attributed to antagonism in the matter of dress.

The characteristics of the "tiring-room" have always presented themselves in a ludicrous light to the ordinary observer. There is always a jumble of incongruous articles, and a striking contrast between the ambitious pretensions of things and their real meanness—between the facts and fictions of theatrical life. Mr. Collier quotes from Brome's comedy, "The Antipodes," 1640, a curious account of the contents of the "tiring-house" of that time. Byeplay, an actor, one of the characters, is speaking of the hero Peregrine, who is in some sort a reflection of Don Quixote:

He has got into our tiring-house amongst us, And ta'en a strict survey of all our properties.

* * * * *

Whether he thought 'twas some enchanted castle, Or temple hung and piled with monuments Of uncouth and of varied aspects, I dive not to his thoughts.... But on a sudden, with thrice knightly force, And thrice thrice puissant arm, he snatched down The sword and shield that I played Bevis with; Rusheth among the foresaid properties, Kills monster after monster, takes the puppets Prisoners, knocks down the Cyclops, tumbles all Our jigambobs and trinkets to the wall. Spying at last the crown and royal robes I' the upper wardrobe, next to which by chance, The devils vizors hung and their flame-painted Skin-coats, these he removed with greater fury, And (having cut the infernal ugly faces All into mammocks), with a reverend hand He takes the imperial diadem, and crowns Himself King of the Antipodes and believes He has justly gained the kingdom by his conquest.

A later dealing with the same subject may be quoted from Dr. Reynardson's poem of "The Stage," dedicated to Addison, and first published in 1713:

High o'er the stage there lies a rambling frame, Which men a garret vile, but players the tire-room name: Here all their stores (a merry medley) sleep Without distinction, huddled in a heap. Hung on the self-same peg, in union rest Young Tarquin's trousers and Lucretia's vest, Whilst, without pulling coifs, Roxana lays, Close by Statira's petticoat, her stays.... Near these sets up a dragon-drawn calash; There's a ghost's doublet, delicately slashed, Bleeds from the mangled breast and gapes a frightful gash.... Here Iris bends her various-painted arch, There artificial clouds in sullen order march; Here stands a crown upon a rack, and there A witch's broomstick, by great Hector's spear: Here stands a throne, and there the cynic's tub, Here Bullock's cudgel, and there Alcides' club. Beards, plumes, and spangles in confusion rise, Whilst rocks of Cornish diamonds reach the skies; Crests, corslets, all the pomp of battle join In one effulgence, one promiscuous shine. Hence all the drama's decorations rise, Hence gods descend majestic from the skies. Hence playhouse chiefs, to grace some antique tale, Buckle their coward limbs in warlike mail, &c. &c.

Of the theatrical wardrobe department of to-day it is unnecessary to say much. Something of the bewildering incongruity of the old "tiring-room" distinguishes it—yet with a difference. The system of the modern theatre has undergone changes. Wardrobes are now often hired complete from the costume and masquerade shops. The theatrical costumier has become an independent functionary, boasting an establishment of his own, detached from the theatre. Costume plays are not much in vogue now, and in dramas dealing with life and society at the present date, the actors are understood to provide their own attire. Moreover, there is now little varying of the programme, and, in consequence, little demand upon the stock wardrobe of the playhouse. Still, when in theatres of any pretension, entertainments in the nature of spectacles or pantomimes are in course of preparation, there is much stir in the wardrobe department. There are bales of cloth to be converted into apparel for the supernumeraries, yards and yards of gauze and muslin for the ballet; spangles, and beads, and copper lace in great profusion; with high piles of white satin shoes. Numerous stitchers of both sexes are at work early and late, while from time to time an artist supervises their labours. His aid has been sought in the designing of the costumes, so that they may be of graceful and novel devices in fanciful or eccentric plays, or duly correct when an exhibition, depending at all upon the history of the past, is about to be presented by the manager.



CHAPTER XVI.

"HER FIRST APPEARANCE."

From the south-western corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields a winding and confined court leads to Vere Street, Clare Market. Midway or so in the passage there formerly existed Gibbon's Tennis Court—an establishment which after the Restoration, and for some three years, served as a playhouse; altogether distinct, be it remembered, from the far more famous Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, situate close by in Portugal Street, at the back of the College of Surgeons. Nevertheless, the Vere Street Theatre, as it was called, can boast something of a history; at any rate, one event of singular dramatic importance renders it memorable. For on Saturday, the 8th of December, 1660, as historians of the drama relate, it was the scene of the first appearance upon the English stage of the first English actress. The lady played Desdemona; and a certain Mr. Thomas Jordan, an actor and the author of various poetical pieces, provided for delivery upon the occasion a "Prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage in the tragedy called 'The Moor of Venice.'"

So far the story is clear enough. But was this Desdemona really the first English actress? Had there not been earlier change in the old custom prescribing that the heroines of the British drama should be personated by boys? It is certain that French actresses had appeared here so far back as 1629. Prynne, in his "Histriomastix," published in 1633, writes: "They have now their female players in Italy and other foreign parts, and Michaelmas, 1629, they had French women-actors in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was great resort." These ladies, however, it may be noted, met with a very unfavourable reception. Prynne's denunciation of them was a matter of course. He had undertaken to show that stage-plays of whatever kind were most "pernicious corruptions," and that the profession of "play-poets" and stage-players, together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of stage-plays, was unlawful, infamous, and misbecoming Christians. He speaks of the "women-actors" as "monsters," and applies most severe epithets to their histrionic efforts: "impudent," "shameful," "unwomanish," and such like. Another critic, one Thomas Brande, in a private letter discovered by Mr. Payne Collier in the library of Lambeth Palace, and probably addressed to Laud while Bishop of London, writes of the just offence to all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town "given by the vagrant French players who had been expelled from their own country," and adds: "Glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted" (pippin-pelted is a good phrase) "from the stage, so as I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Mr. Brande was further of opinion that the Master of the Revels should have been called to account for permitting such performances. Failing at Blackfriars, the French company subsequently appeared at the Fortune and Red Bull Theatres, but with a similar result, insomuch that the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert, who had duly sanctioned their performance, records in his accounts that, "in respect of their ill luck," he had returned some portion of the fees they had paid him for permission to play.

Whether these French "women-actors" failed because of their sex or because of their nationality, cannot now be shown. They were the first actresses that had ever been seen in this country. But then they were not of English origin, and they appeared, of course, in a foreign drama. Still, of English actresses antecedent to the Desdemona of the Vere Street Theatre, certain traces have been discovered. In Brome's comedy of "The Court Beggar," acted at the Cockpit Theatre, in 1632, one of the characters observed: "If you have a short speech or two, the boy's a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part; women-actors now grow in request." Was this an allusion merely to the French actresses that had been seen in London some few years before, or were English actresses referred to? Had these really appeared, if not at the public theatres, why, then, at more private dramatic entertainments? Upon such points doubt must still prevail. It seems certain, however, that a Mrs. Coleman had presented herself upon the stage in 1656, playing a part in Sir William Davenant's tragedy of "The Siege of Rhodes"—a work produced somehow in evasion of the Puritanical ordinance of 1647, which closed the theatres and forbade dramatic exhibitions of every kind; for "The Siege of Rhodes," although it consisted in a great measure of songs with recitative, explained or illustrated by painted scenery, did not differ much from an ordinary play. Ianthe, the heroine, was personated by Mrs. Coleman, whose share in the performance was confined to the delivery of recitative. Ten years later the lady was entertained at his house by Mr. Pepys, who speaks in high terms both of her musical abilities and of herself, pronouncing her voice "decayed as to strength, but mighty sweet, though soft, and a pleasant jolly woman, and in mighty good humour."

If this Mrs. Coleman may be classed rather as a singer than an actress, and if we may view Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" more as a musical entertainment than as a regular play, then no doubt the claim of the Desdemona of Clare Market to be, as Mr. Thomas Jordan described her, "the first woman that came to act on the stage," is much improved. And here we may say something more relative to the Vere Street Theatre. It was first opened in the month of November, 1660; Thomas Killigrew, its manager, and one of the grooms of the king's bedchamber, having received his patent in the previous August, when a similar favour was accorded to Sir William Davenant, who, during Charles I.'s reign, had been possessed of letters patent. King Charles II., taking it into his "princely consideration" that it was not necessary to suppress the use of theatres, but that if the evil and scandal in the plays then acted were taken away, they might serve "as innocent and harmless divertisement" for many of his subjects, and having experience of the art and skill of his trusty and well-beloved Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, granted them full power to elect two companies of players, and to purchase, build and erect, or hire, two houses or theatres, with all convenient rooms and other necessaries thereunto appertaining, for the representation of tragedies, comedies, plays, operas, and all other entertainments of that nature. The managers were also authorised to fix such rates of admission as were customary or reasonable "in regard of the great expenses of scenes, music, and such new decorations as have not been formerly used:" with full power "to make such allowances out of that which they shall so receive to the actors and other persons employed in the same representations, in both houses respectively, as they shall think fit." For these patents other grants were afterwards substituted, Davenant receiving his new letters on January 15th, and Killigrew his on April 25th, 1662. The new grants did not differ much from the old ones, except that the powers vested in the patentees were more fully declared. No other companies but those of the two patentees were to be permitted to perform within the cities of London and Westminster; all others were to be silenced and suppressed. Killigrew's actors were styled the "Company of his Majesty and his Royal Consort;" Davenant's the "Servants of his Majesty's dearly-beloved brother, James, Duke of York." The better to preserve "amity and correspondence" between the two theatres, no actor was to be allowed to quit one company for the other without the consent of his manager being first obtained. And forasmuch as many plays formerly acted contained objectionable matter, and the women's parts therein being acted by men in the habits of women, gave offence to some, the managers were further enjoined to act no plays "containing any passages offensive to piety and good manners, until they had first corrected and purged the same;" and permission was given that all the women's parts to be acted by either of the companies for the time to come might be performed by women, so that recreations which, by reason of the abuses aforesaid, were scandalous and offensive, might by such reformation be esteemed not only harmless delights, but useful and instructive representations of human life to such of "our good subjects" as should resort to see the same.

These patents proved a cause of numberless dissensions in future years. Practically they reduced the London theatres to two. Before the Civil War there had been six: the Blackfriars and the Globe, belonging to the same company, called the King's Servants; the Cockpit or Phoenix, in Drury Lane, the actors of which were called the Queen's Servants; a theatre in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, occupied by the Prince's Servants; and the Fortune, in Golden Lane, and the Red Bull in St. John Street, Clerkenwell—establishments for the lower class, "mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people." Earlier Elizabethan theatres, the Swan, the Rose, and the Hope, seem to have closed their career some time in the reign of James I.

The introduction of actresses upon the English stage has usually been credited to Sir William Davenant, whose theatre, however, did not open until more than six months after the performance of "Othello," with an actress in the part of Desdemona, at Killigrew's establishment in Vere Street. "Went to Sir William Davenant's opera," records Pepys, on July 2nd, 1661, "this being the fourth day it had begun, and the first that I have seen it." Although regular tragedies and comedies were acted there, Pepys constantly speaks of Davenant's theatre as the opera, the manager having produced various musical pieces before the Restoration. Of the memorable performance of "Othello" in Vere Street, on December 10th, 1660, Pepys makes no mention. He duly chronicles, however, a visit to Killigrew's theatre on the following 3rd January, when he saw the comedy of "The Beggar's Bush" performed; "it being very well done, and was the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." He had seen the same play in the previous November, when it was represented by male performers only. But even after the introduction of actresses the heroines of the stage were still occasionally impersonated by men. Thus in January, 1661, Pepys saw Kynaston appear in "The Silent Woman," and pronounced the young actor "the prettiest woman in the whole house." As Cibber states, the stage "could not be so suddenly supplied with women but that there was still a necessity to put the handsomest young men into petticoats."

Strange to say, the name of the actress who played Desdemona under Killigrew's management in 1660 has not been discovered. Who, then, was the first English actress, assuming that she was the Desdemona of the Vere Street Theatre? She must be looked for in Killigrew's company. His "leading lady" was Mrs. Ann Marshall, of whom Pepys makes frequent mention, who is known to have obtained distinction alike in tragedy and in comedy, and to have personated such characters as the heroine of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady," Roxana in "Alexander the Great," Calphurnia in "Julius Caesar," Evadne in "The Maid's Tragedy," and so on; there is no record, however, of her having appeared in the part of Desdemona. Indeed, this part is not invariably assumed by "leading ladies;" it has occasionally devolved upon the seconda donna of the company. And in a representation of "Othello" on February 6th, 1669, at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (to which establishment Killigrew and his troop had removed from Vere Street in April, 1663), it is certain, on the evidence of Downes's "Roscius Anglicanus," that a Mrs. Hughes played the part of Desdemona to the Othello of Burt, the Iago of Mohun, and the Cassio of Hart. Now, was this Mrs. Hughes, who had been a member of Killigrew's company from the first, the Desdemona on whose behalf, nine years before, Mr. Thomas Jordan wrote his apologetic prologue? It seems not unlikely. At the same time it must be stated that there are other claimants to the distinction. Tradition long pointed to Mrs. Betterton, the wife of the famous tragedian, as the first woman who ever appeared on the English stage. She was originally known as Mrs. Saunderson—the title of Mistress being applied alike to maidens and matrons at the time of the Restoration—and married her illustrious husband about the year 1663. She was one of four principal actresses whom Sir William Davenant lodged at his own house, and she appeared with great success as Ianthe upon the opening of his theatre with "The Siege of Rhodes." Pepys, indeed, repeatedly refers to her by her dramatic name of Ianthe. Has the belief that she was the first actress arisen from confusing her assumption of Ianthe with the performance of the same part by Mrs. Coleman in 1656, a fact of which mention has already been made? Otherwise it is hardly creditable that she, one of Davenant's actresses, had been previously attached to Killigrew's company, and had in such wise chanced to play Desdemona in Vere Street. There is no evidence of this whatever, nor can it be discovered that she appeared as Desdemona at any period of her career. The Vere Street Desdemona, we repeat, must be looked for in Killigrew's company, which commenced operations more than half a year before the rival theatre. It is true that some time before the opening of this theatre Davenant had been the responsible manager in regard to certain performances at the Blackfriars Theatre and elsewhere; but there is no reason to suppose that actresses took part in these entertainments; it is known, indeed, that the feminine characters in the plays exhibited were sustained by the young actors of the company—Kynaston, James Nokes, Angel, and William Betterton. Altogether, Mrs. Betterton's title to honour as the first English actress seems defective; and as much may be said of the pretensions of another actress, Mrs. Norris, although she has met with support from Tom Davies in his "Dramatic Miscellanies," and from Curl in his "History of the Stage," a very unworthy production. Mrs. Norris was an actress of small note attached to Davenant's company; she was the mother of Henry Norris, a popular comedian, surnamed "Jubilee Dicky," from his performance of the part of Dicky in Farquhar's "Constant Couple." Chetwood correctly describes her as "ONE of the first women that came on the stage as an actress." To her, as to Mrs. Betterton, the objection applies that she was a member of Davenant's company—not of Killigrew's—and therefore could not have appeared in Vere Street. Moreover, she never attained such a position in her profession as would have entitled her to assume a part of the importance of Desdemona.

On the whole, the case of Mrs. Hughes seems to have the support of more probabilities than any other. But even if it is to be accepted as a fact that she was in truth the first actress, there the matter remains. Very little is known of the lady. She lived in a world which kept scarcely any count of its proceedings—which left no record behind to be used as evidence, either for or against it. She was in her time the subject of talk enough, very likely; was admired for her beauty, possibly for her talents too; but hardly a written scrap concerning her has come down to us. The ordinary historian of the time, impressed with a sense of the dignity of his task, did not concern himself with the players, and rated as insignificant and unworthy of his notice such matters as the pursuits, pastimes, tastes, manners, and customs of the people. We know more of the manner of life in Charles II.'s time from the diarist Pepys than from all the writers of history put together. Unfortunately, concerning Mrs. Hughes, even Pepys is silent. It is known that in addition to the character of Desdemona, which she certainly sustained in February, 1669, at any rate, she also appeared as Panura, in Fletcher's "Island Princess," and as Theodosia, in Dryden's comedy of "An Evening's Love, or, The Mock Astrologer," to the Jacyntha of Nell Gwynne; there is scarcely a record of her assumption of any other part, unless she be the same Mrs. Hughes who impersonated Mrs. Monylove, in a comedy called "Tom Essence," produced at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1676. But it is believed that she quitted or was taken from her profession—was "erept the stage," to employ old Downes's phrase—at an earlier date. The famous Prince Rupert of the Rhine was her lover. He bought for her, at a cost of L20,000, the once magnificent seat of Sir Nicholas Crispe, near Hammersmith, which afterwards became the residence of the Margrave of Brandenburg; and at a later date the retreat of Queen Caroline, the wife of George IV. Ruperta, the daughter of Mrs. Hughes, was married to Lieutenant-General Howe, and, surviving her husband many years, died at Somerset House about 1740. In the "Memoirs" of Count Grammont mention is found of Prince Rupert's passion for the actress. She is stated to have "brought down and greatly subdued his natural fierceness." She is described as an impertinent gipsy, and accused of pride, in that she conducted herself, all things considered, unselfishly, and even with some dignity. The King is said to have been "greatly pleased with this event"—he was probably amused at it; Charles II. was very willing at all times to be amused—"for which great rejoicings" (why rejoicings?) "were made at Tunbridge; but nobody was bold enough to make it the subject of satire, though the same constraint was not observed with other ridiculous personages." Upon the Prince the effect of his love seems to have been marked enough. "From this time adieu alembics, crucibles, furnaces, and all the black furniture of the forges; a complete farewell to all mathematical instruments and chemical speculations; sweet powder and essences were now the only ingredients that occupied any share of his attention." Further of Mrs. Hughes there is nothing to relate, with the exception of the use made of her name by the unseemly and unsavoury Tom Brown in his "Letters from the Dead to the Living." Mrs. Hughes and Nell Gwynne are supposed to address letters to each other, exchanging reproaches in regard to the impropriety of their manner of life. Nell Gwynne accuses her correspondent of squandering her money and of gaming. "I am ashamed to think that a woman who had wit enough to tickle a Prince out of so fine an estate should at last prove such a fool as to be bubbled of it by a little spotted ivory and painted paper." "Peg Hughes," as she is called, replies, congratulating herself upon her generosity, treating the loss of her estate as "the only piece of carelessness I ever committed worth my boast," and charging "Madam Gwynne" with vulgar avarice and the love of "lucre of base coin." We can glean nothing more of the story of Mrs. Hughes.

It is uncertain indeed in what degree the advent of the first actress affected her audience; whether the novelty of the proceeding gratified or shocked them the more. It was really a startling innovation—a wonderful improvement as it seems to us; yet assuredly there were numerous conservative playgoers who held fast to the old ways of the theatre, and approved "boy-actresses"—not needing such aids to illusion as the personation of women by women, but rather objecting thereto, for the same reason that they deprecated the introduction of scenery, because of appeal and stimulus to the imagination of the audience becoming in such wise greatly and perilously reduced. Then of course there were staid and sober folk who judged the profession of the stage to be most ill-suited for women. And certainly this view of the matter was much confirmed by the conduct of our earlier actresses, which was indeed open to the gravest reproach. From Mr. Jordan's prologue may be gathered some notion of the situation of the spectators on the night, or rather the afternoon, of December 8th, 1660. The theatre was probably but a poor-looking structure, hastily put together in the Tennis-court to serve the purpose of the manager for a time merely. Seven years later, Tom Killigrew, talking to Mr. Pepys, boasted that the stage had become "by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever before." There had been improvement in the candles; the audience was more civilised; the orchestra had been increased; the rushes had been swept from the stage; everything that had been mean was now "all otherwise." The manager possibly had in his mind during this retrospect the condition of the Vere Street Theatre while under his management. The audience possessed an unruly element. 'Prentices and servants filled the gallery; there were citizens and tradesmen in the pit, with yet a contingent of spruce gallants and scented fops, who combed their wigs during the pauses in the performance, took snuff, ogled the ladies in the boxes, and bantered the orange-girls. The prologue begins:

I come, unknown to any of the rest, To tell the news: I saw the lady drest— The woman plays to-day; mistake me not, No man in gown or page in petticoat.

* * * * *

'Tis possible a virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness and yet play; Play on the stage—where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour? In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em. The difference lies only in the custom.

The gentlemen sitting in that "Star Chamber of the house, the pit," were then besought to think respectfully and modestly of the actress, and not to run "to give her visits when the play is done." We have, then, a picture of the male performers of female characters:

But to the point: in this reforming age We have intent to civilise the stage. Our women are defective, and so sized You'd think they were some of the guard disguised; For, to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen; With bone so large and nerve so incompliant. When you call Desdemona, enter giant.

The prologue concludes with a promise, which certainly was not kept, that the drama should be purged of all offensive matter:

And when we've put all things in this fair way, Barebones himself may come to see a play.

In the epilogue the spectators were asked: "How do you like her?"—especial appeal being made to those among the audience of the gentler sex:

But, ladies, what think you? For if you tax Her freedom with dishonour to your sex, She means to act no more, and this shall be No other play but her own tragedy. She will submit to none but your commands, And take commission only from your hands.

The ladies, no doubt, applauded sufficiently, and "women-actors" from that time forward became more and more secure of their position in the theatre. At the same time it would seem that there lingered in the minds of many a certain prejudice against them, and that some apprehension concerning the reception they might obtain from the audience often occupied the managers. A prologue to the second part of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," acted in April, 1662, demonstrates that the matter had still to be dealt with cautiously. Indulgence is besought for the bashful fears of the actresses, and their shrinking from the judgment and observation of the wits and critics is much dwelt upon.

It is worthy of note that the leading actors who took part in the representation of "Othello" at the Vere Street Theatre had all in early life been apprentices to older players, and accustomed to personate the heroines of the stage. Thus Burt, the Othello of the cast, had served as a boy under the actors Shanke and Beeston at the Blackfriars and Cockpit Theatres respectively. Mohun, the Iago, had been his playfellow at this time; so that when Burt appeared as Clariana in Shirley's tragedy of "Love's Cruelty," Mohun represented Bellamonte in the same work. During the Civil War Mohun had drawn his sword for the king, acquiring the rank of major, and acquitting himself as a soldier with much distinction. He was celebrated by Lord Rochester as the AEsopus of the stage; Nat Lee delighted in his acting, exclaiming: "O Mohun, Mohun, thou little man of mettle, if I should write a hundred plays, I'd write one for thy mouth!" And King Charles ventured to pun upon his name as badly as even a king might when he said of some representation: "Mohun (pronounce Moon) shone like a sun; Hart like the moon!" Charles Hart, the Cassio of the Vere Street Theatre, could boast descent from Shakespeare's sister Joan, and described himself as the poet's great-nephew. He, too, fought for the king in the great Civil War, serving as a lieutenant of horse under Sir Thomas Dallison in Prince Rupert's regiment. He had been apprenticed to Robinson the actor, and had played women's parts at the Blackfriars Theatre, winning special renown by his performance of the Duchess in Shirley's tragedy of "The Cardinal." As an actor Hart won extraordinary admiration; he soon took the lead of Burt, and from his physical gifts and graces was enabled even to surpass Mohun in popularity. He introduced Nell Gwynne to the stage, and became one of the sharers in the management and profits of the theatrical company to which he was attached.

There was soon an ample supply of actresses, and a decline altogether in the demand for boy-performers of female characters. There was an absolute end, indeed, of that industry; the established actors had no more apprentices, now to serve as their footboys and pages, and now as heroines of tragedy and comedy. A modern playgoer may well have a difficulty in believing that these had ever any real existence, sharing Lamb's amazement at a boy-Juliet, a boy-Desdemona, a boy-Ophelia. There must have been much skill among the players; much simple good faith, contentment, and willingness to connive at theatrical illusion on the part of the audience. It must have been hard to tolerate a heroine with too obvious a beard, or of very perceptible masculine breadth of shoulders, length of limb, and freedom of gait. Let us note in conclusion that there is clearly a "boy-actress" among the players welcomed by Hamlet to Elsinore, although the modern stage has rarely taken note of the fact. The player-queen, when not robed for performance in the tragedy of "The Mousetrap," should wear a boy's dress. "What, my young lady and mistress!" says Hamlet jestingly to the youthful apprentice; and he adds allusion to the boy's increase of stature: "By'r lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the altitude of a chopine!"—in other words: "How the boy has grown!"—a chopine being a shoe with a heel of inordinate height. And then comes reference to that change of voice from alto to bass which attends advance from boyhood to adolescence.



CHAPTER XVII.

STAGE WHISPERS.

When the consummate villain of melodrama mysteriously approaches the foot-lights, and, with a scowl at the front row of the pit, remarks: "I must dissemble," or something to that effect, it is certain that he is perfectly audible in all parts of the theatre in which he performs; and yet it is required of the personages nearest to him on the stage—let us say, the rival lover he has resolved to despatch and the beauteous heroine he has planned to betray—that they should pretend to be absolutely deaf to his observation, the manifest gravity of its bearing upon their interests and future happiness notwithstanding. Moreover, we who are among the spectators are bound to credit this curious auricular infirmity on the part of the lover and the lady. We can of course hear perfectly well the speech of their playfellow, and are thoroughly aware that from their position they must of necessity hear it at least as distinctly as we do. Yet it is incumbent upon us to ignore our convictions and perceptions on this head. For, indeed, the drama depends for its due existence and conduct upon a system of connivance and conspiracy, in which the audience, no less than the actors, are comprehended. The makeshifts and artifices of the theatre have to be met half-way, and indulgently accepted.

The stage could not live without its whispers, which, after all, are only whispers in a non-natural sense. For that can hardly be in truth a whisper, which is designed to reach the ears of some hundreds of persons. But the "asides" of the theatre are a convenient and indispensable method of revealing to the audience the state of mind of the speaker, and of admitting them to his confidence. The novelist can stop his story, and indulge in analytical descriptions of his characters, their emotions, moods, intentions, and opinions; but the dramatist can only make his creatures intelligible by means of the speeches he puts into their mouths. So, for the information of the audience and the carrying on of the business of the scene, we have soliloquies and asides, the artful delivery of which, duly to secure attention and enlist sympathy, evokes the best abilities of the player, bound to invest with an air of nature and truth-seeming purely fictitious and unreasonable proceedings.

But there are other than these recognised and established whispers of the stage. Voices are occasionally audible in the theatre which obviously were never intended to reach the public ear. The existence of such a functionary as the prompter may be one of those things which are "generally known;" but the knowledge should not come, to those who sit in front of the curtain, from any exercise of their organs of sight or of sound. To do the prompter justice, he is rarely visible; but his tones, however still and small they may pretend to be, sometimes travel to those whom they do not really concern. One of the first scraps of information acquired by the theatrical student relates to the meaning of the letters P.S. and O.P. Otherwise he might, perhaps, have some difficulty in comprehending the apparently magnetic attraction which one particular side of the proscenium has for so many of our players. We say our players advisedly, for the position of the prompter is different on the foreign stage. Abroad, and, indeed, during alien and lyrical performances in this country, he is hidden in a sort of gipsy-tent in front of the desk of the conductor. The accommodation provided for him is limited enough; little more than his head can be permitted to emerge from the hole cut for him in the stage. But his situation has its advantages. He cannot possibly be seen by the audience; he can conveniently instruct the performers without requiring them "to look off" appealingly, or to rush desperately to the wing to be reminded of their parts; while the sloping roof of his temporary abode has the effect of directing his whispers on to the stage, and away from the spectators. It seems strange that this system of posting the prompter in the van instead of on the flank of the actors has never been permanently adopted in this country. But a change of the kind indicated would certainly be energetically denounced by a number of very respectable and sensible people as "un-English," an objection that is generally regarded as quite final and convincing, although it is conceivable, at any rate, that a thing may be of fair value and yet of foreign origin. "Gad, sir, if a few very sensible persons had been attended to we should still have been champing acorns!" observed Luttrell the witty, when certain enlightened folk strenuously opposed the building of Waterloo Bridge on the plea that it would spoil the river!

It is certain, however, that with the first introduction here of operatic performances came the gipsy-tent, or hut, of the prompter. The singers voted it quite indispensable. It was much ridiculed, of course, by the general public. It was even made the special subject of burlesque on a rival stage. A century ago the imbecility was indulged in of playing "The Beggar's Opera" with "the characters reversed," as it was called; that is to say, the female characters were assumed by the actors, the male by the actresses. This was at the Haymarket Theatre, under George Colman's management. The foolish proceeding won prodigious applause. A prologue or preliminary act in three scenes was written for the occasion. The fun of this introduction seems now gross and flat enough. Towards the conclusion of it, we read, a stage-carpenter raised his head through a trap in the centre of the stage. He was greeted with a roar of laughter from the gallery. The prompter appears on the scene and demands of the carpenter what he means by opening the trap? The carpenter explains that he designs to prompt the performers after the fashion of the Opera House on the other side of the Haymarket. "Psha!" cries the prompter, "none of your Italian tricks with me! Shut up the trap again! I shall prompt in my old place; for we won't do all they do on the other side of the way till they can do all we do on ours." So soundly English a speech is received with great cheering—the foreigners and their new-fangled ways are laughed to scorn, and the performance is a very complete success.

To singers, the convenient position of the prompter is a matter of real importance. Their memories are severely tried, for, in addition to the words, they have to bear in mind the music of their parts. While delivering their scenas they are compelled to remain almost stationary, well in front of the stage, so that their voices may be thrown towards their audience and not lose effect by escaping into the flies. Meanwhile their hasty movement towards a prompter in the wings, upon any sudden forgetfulness of the words of their songs, would be most awkward and unseemly. It is very necessary that their prompter and their conductor should be their near neighbours, able to render them assistance and support upon the shortest notice. But this proximity of the prompter has, perhaps, induced them to rely too much upon his help, and to burden their memories too little. The majority of singers are but indifferently acquainted with the words they are required to utter. They gather these as they want them, from the hidden friend in his hutch at their feet. The occupants of the proscenium boxes at the opera-houses must be familiarly acquainted with the tones of the prompter's voice, as he delivers to the singers, line by line, the matter of their parts; and occasionally these stage whispers are audible at a greater distance from the foot-lights. In operatic performances, however, the words are of very inferior importance to the music; the composer quite eclipses the author. A musician has been known to call a libretto the "verbiage" of his opera. The term was not perhaps altogether inappropriate. Even actors are apt to underrate the importance of the speeches they are called upon to deliver, laying the greater stress upon the "business" they propose to originate, or the scenic effects that are to be introduced into the play. They sometimes describe the words of their parts as "cackle." But perhaps this term also may be accepted as applying, fitly enough, to much of the dialogue of the modern drama.