A Book Of The Play Part 12

"The Castle Spectre" enjoyed great success. It was supported by the whole strength of the Drury Lane company, John Kemble appearing as Earl Percy, and Mrs. Jordan as the heroine, and was repeated some fifty nights during its first season.

It may be worth recording that in the course of the play, the great John Kemble was required to execute, not exactly what is now known as a "sensation header," but still a gymnastic feat of some difficulty and danger. Earl Percy has something of the agility of a harlequin about him, and when he obtains admission into his enemy's castle to rescue Angela, he is required to climb from a sofa up to a gothic window high above him, and then, alarmed by the approach of his negro sentinels, to fall from the height flat again at full length upon his sofa, and to pretend to be asleep as his guards had previously left him. Kemble is said to have done this "as boldly and suddenly as if he had been shot." When people complimented him upon his unsuspected agility, he would answer: "Nay, gentlemen, Mr. Boaden has exceeded all compliment upon this feat of mine, for he counselled me from Macbeth to 'jump the life to come.'" "It was melancholy," comments Mr. Boaden, recording the success of the play, "to see the abuse of such talents;"

and then he adds the remarkable opinion: "It is only in a barn that the Cato of a company should be allowed to risk his neck!"

Against "The Castle Spectre" the critics, of course, raised their voices. Its popularity was viewed with much bitterness and jealousy.

"The great run the piece had," writes the reverend author of "The History of the Stage," "is a striking proof that success is a very uncertain criterion of merit. The plot is rendered contemptible by the introduction of the ghost." "I hope it will not be hereafter believed," cried Cooke the actor, "that 'The Castle Spectre' could attract crowded houses when the most sublime productions of the immortal Shakespeare could be played to empty benches." A dispute arising in the green-room of the theatre between Lewis and Sheridan, Lewis offered to bet all the money which the play had brought that he was in the right. "No," said Sheridan, "I can't afford to bet so much as that; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll bet you all it's worth."

Still, there was no cavilling down the play. The stage ghost was triumphant. He had attained his apogee. "The Castle Spectre" remained a stock piece for years, and has even appeared upon the stage in quite recent times.

Formerly the public had been satisfied with a very prosaic ghost. A substantial figure, with a whitened face, and a streak of red paint on his brow, was thrust through a trap-door, and it was held that all had been done that was necessary in the way of stage illusion. The ghost of Hamlet's father was frequently attired in a suit of real armour borrowed from the Tower. There is a story of a ghost thus heavily accoutred, who, overcome by the weight of his harness, fell down on the stage and rolled towards the foot-lights, the pit raising an alarm lest the poor apparition should indeed be burnt by the fires of the lamps. Barton Booth, the great actor in the time of Queen Anne and George I., is said to have been the first representative of the ghost in "Hamlet" who wore list shoes to deaden the noise of his footsteps as he moved across the stage. In the poem of "The Actor," by Robert Lloyd, the friend of Churchill, published in 1757, we have an explicit description of the treatment of ghosts then in vogue upon the stage, with special reference to the ghost of "our dear friend" Banquo:

But in stage customs what offends me most Is the slip-door, and slowly rising ghost.

Tell me--nor count the question too severe-- Why need the dismal powdered forms appear?

When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king, And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting, When keenest feelings at his bosom pull, And fancy tells him that the seat is full; Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place, To frighten children with his mealy face?

The king alone should form the phantom there, And talk and tremble at the vacant chair.

Farther on the poet discourses of the ghosts in "Venice Preserved," of which mention has already been made:

If Belvidera her loved lost deplore, Why for twin spectres burst the yawning floor?

When, with disordered starts and horrid cries, She paints the murdered forms before her eyes, And still pursues them with a frantic stare, 'Tis pregnant madness brings the visions there.

More instant horror would enforce the scene If all her shudderings were at shapes unseen.

It may have been due to Lloyd's poem, and to the opinions it expressed and obtained favour for, that when Drury Lane Theatre opened in 1794 with a performance of "Macbeth," the experiment was tried of omitting the appearance of Banquo's ghost, and leaving its presence to be imagined by the spectators. The alteration, however, was not found to be agreeable to the audience. While granting that Mr. Kemble's fine acting was almost enough to make them believe they really did see the ghost, they preferred that there should be no mistake about the matter, and that Banquo's shade should come on bodily--be distinctly visible. Further, they were able to point to Shakespeare's stage direction: "Enter the ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeth's place."

Surely there could be no mistake, they argued, as to what the dramatist himself intended. In subsequent performances the old system was restored, and in all modern representations of the tragedy the phantom has not failed to be visible to the spectators. Nevertheless Banquo's ghost remains the _crux_ of stage managers. How to get him on? How to get him off? How to make him look anything like a ghost--respectable, if not awful? How to avoid that distressing t.i.tter generally audible among those of the spectators who cannot suppress their sense of the ludicrous even in one of Shakespeare's grandest scenes? Upon a darkened stage a ghost, skilfully attired in vaporous draperies, may be made sufficiently impressive, as in "Hamlet," for instance. The shade of the departed king, if tolerably treated, seldom provokes a smile, even from the most hardened and jocose of spectators. But in "Macbeth" the scene must be well lighted, for the n.o.bles, courtiers, and guests are at high banquet; and the ghost must appear towards the front of the stage, otherwise Macbeth will be compelled to turn his back upon the public, and his simulated horror will be absolutely thrown away; if the actor's face cannot be seen, his acting, of necessity, goes for little or nothing. Even in our own days of triumphant stage illusion, it must be owned that the presentment of Banquo's ghost still remains incomplete and unsatisfactory; but where such adroit managers as Mr. Macready, Mr.

Charles Kean, and Mr. Phelps (to name no more) have failed, it seems vain to hope for success. Pictorially, Banquo's ghost has fared better, as all who are acquainted with Mr. Maclise's "Macbeth" will readily acknowledge.

A curious fact in connection with the Banquo of Betterton's time may here be noted. Banquo was represented by an actor named Smith; the ghost, however, was personated by another actor--Sandford. Why this division of the part between two performers? Smith was possessed of a handsome face and form, whereas Sandford was of "a low and crooked figure." He was the stage villain of his time, and was famed for his uncomely and malignant aspect; "the Spagnolet of the stage," Cibber calls him; but it is certainly strange that he should therefore have enjoyed a prescriptive right to impersonate ghosts.

The attempted omission of Banquo's ghost, however, made it clear that the old substantial shade emerging from a trap-door in the stage had ceased to satisfy the town. Something more was required. The public were becoming critical about their ghosts. Credit could not be given to the spirits of the theatre if they exceeded a certain consistency.

There was a demand for something vaporous and unearthly, gliding, transparent, mysterious. Scenic illusion was acquiring an artistic quality. The old homely simple processes of the theatre were exploded.

The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms. Mr. Boaden, adapting Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" to the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper presentment of its supernatural incidents. The contrivance he hit upon has since become one of the commonplaces of theatrical illusion. It was arranged that the spectre should be seen through a bluish-gray gauze, so as to remove the too corporeal effect of a live actor, and convert the moving substance into a gliding essence.

The plan, however, was not carried into effect without considerable difficulty. Mr. Harris, the manager, ordered a night rehearsal of the play, so that the author might judge of the success of the effects introduced. The spectre was to be personated by one Thompson, a portly jovial actor, whose views as to the treatment of the supernatural upon the stage were of a very primitive kind. He appeared upon the scene clad in the conventional solid armour of the theatre, with over all a gray gauze veil, as stiff as buckram, thrown about him. Mr. Boaden describes his horror and astonishment at the misconception. It had been intended that the gauze, stretched on a frame, should cover a portal of the scene, and that the figure of the spectre should be seen dimly through it. But even then the contour of Thompson was found very inappropriate to a phantom. It was necessary to select for the part an actor of a slighter and taller form. At length a representative of the ghost was found in the person of Follet, the clown, "celebrated for his eating of carrots in the pantomimes." Follet readily accepted the part: his height was heroic, he was a skilled posture-maker, he was well versed in the duties of a mime. Still there was a further difficulty. The ghost had to speak--only two words, it is true--he had to utter the words "Perished here!" and, as the clown very frankly admitted: "'Perished here' will be exactly the fate of the author if I'm left to say it." The gallery would recognise the clown's voice, and all seriousness would be over for the evening. It was like the a.s.s in the lion's skin--he would bray, and all would be betrayed. At last it was determined that the part should be divided; Follet should perform the actions of the ghost, while Thompson, in the wings, out of the sight of the audience, should p.r.o.nounce the important words. The success of the experiment was signal. Follet, in a closely-fitting suit of dark-gray stuff, made in the shape of armour, faintly visible through the sheet of gauze, flitted across the stage like a shadow, amidst the breathless silence of the house, to be followed presently, on the falling of the curtain, by peal after peal of excited applause.

A humorous story of a stage ghost is told in Raymond's "Life of Elliston," aided by an ill.u.s.tration from the etching-needle of George Cruikshank, executed in quite his happiest manner. Dowton the actor, performing a ghost part--to judge from the ill.u.s.tration, it must have been the ghost in "Hamlet," but the teller of the story does not say formally that such was the fact--had, of course, to be lowered in the old-fashioned way through a trap-door in the stage, his face being turned towards the audience. Elliston and De Camp, concealed beneath the stage, had provided themselves with small ratan canes, and as their brother-actor slowly and solemnly descended, they applied their sticks sharply and rapidly to the calves of his legs, unprotected by the plate armour that graced his shins. Poor Dowton with difficulty preserved his gravity of countenance, or refrained from the utterance of a yell of agony while in the presence of the audience. His lower limbs, beneath the surface of the stage, frisked and curvetted about "like a horse in Ducrow's arena." His pa.s.sage below was maliciously made as deliberate as possible. At length, wholly let down, and completely out of the sight of the audience, he looked round the obscure regions beneath the stage to discover the base perpetrators of the outrage. He was speechless with rage and burning for revenge.

Elliston and his companion had of course vanished. Unfortunately, at that moment, Charles Holland, another member of the company, splendidly dressed, appeared in sight. The enraged Dowton, mistaking his man, and believing that Holland's imperturbability of manner was a.s.sumed and an evidence of his guilt, seized a mop at that moment at hand immersed in very dirty water, and thrusting it in his face, utterly ruined wig, ruffles, point-lace, and every particular of his elaborate attire. In vain Holland protested his innocence and implored for mercy; his cries only stimulated the avenger's exertions, and again and again the saturated mop did desperate execution over the unhappy victim's finery.

Somewhat appeased at last, Dowton stayed his hand; but in the meantime Holland was summoned to appear upon the stage. The play was proceeding--what was to be done! All was confusion. It was not possible for Holland to present himself before the audience in such a plight as he had been reduced to. An apology was made "for the sudden indisposition of Mr. Holland," and the public were informed that "Mr.

De Camp had kindly undertaken to go on for the part." Whether Dowton ever discovered his real persecutors is not stated. The story, indeed, may not be true, or it may be much rouged and burnt-corked, as are so many theatrical anecdotes, to conceal its natural poverty and weakness of const.i.tution. But it is an amusing legend in any case.

The melodrama of "The Corsican Brothers," first produced in England at the Princess's Theatre in 1852, and splendidly revived at the Lyceum by Mr. Irving in 1880, reawakened the public interest in the ghosts of the theatre; and the spectre that rose from the stage as from a cellar, and crossing it, gained his full stature gradually as he proceeded, was for some time a great popular favourite, though burlesque dogged his course, and a certain ridicule always attended his exertions. The fidgety musical accompaniment brought from Paris, and known as "The Ghost Melody," by M. Varney, excited much admiration, while the intricate stage machinery involved in the production of the apparition of Louis dei Franchi gave additional interest to the performance. Of late years the modern drama has made scarcely any addition to our stock of stage ghosts. The ingenious invention known as the Spectral Illusion of Messrs. Dircks and Pepper obtained great favour at one time, and awakened some interest upon the subject of theatrical phantoms. But it soon became clear that the public cared for the Illusion, and not for the Spectre. They were concerned about the mechanism of the contrivance, not awed by the supernatural appearances it brought before them. When once you begin to inquire by what process a ghost is produced, it is clear you are not moved by its character as a spectre merely. Puppets lose their power to please when the spectators are bent upon detecting the wires by which they are made to move.

The old melodramatic stage ghost--the spectre of "The Castle Spectre"

school of plays--the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong and a teaspoonful of blue fire was lighted in the wings, probably found its last home in the travelling theatre long known as "Richardson's." Expelled from the regular theatre, it became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, appearing at country fairs, and bringing to bear upon remote agricultural populations those terrors that had long since lost all value in the eyes of the townsfolk. It lived to become a thing of scorn. "Richardson's Ghost" became a byword for a bankrupt phantom--a preposterous apparition, that was, in fact, only too thoroughly seen through: not to apply the words too literally. Whether there is still a show calling itself "Richardson's"

(the original Richardson died a quarter of a century ago, and his immediate followers settled in a permanent London theatre long years back), and whether there is yet a phantom perambulating the country and calling itself "Richardson's Ghost," may be left to the very curious to inquire into and determine. The travelling theatre nowadays has lost its occupation. When the audiences began to travel, the stage could afford to be stationary.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BOOK OF THE PLAY.

Mr. Thackeray has described a memorable performance at the Theatre Royal, Chatteries. Arthur Pendennis and his young friend Harry Foker were among the audience; Lieutenants Rodgers and Podgers, and Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private box. The play was "The Stranger." Bingley, the manager, appeared as the hero of the sombre work; Mrs. Haller was impersonated by Miss Fotheringay. "I think ye'll like Miss Fotheringay in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan,"

observed the father of the actress. Bingley, we are told, was great in the character of the Stranger, and wore the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which stage tradition has duly prescribed as the costume of that doleful personage. "Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker had previously remarked. He had the stage jewellery on too, selecting "the largest and most shining rings for himself," and allowing his little finger to quiver out of his cloak, with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of the finger, and twiddling it in the faces of the pit. It is told of him that he made it a favour to the young men of his company to go on in light-comedy parts with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. "It had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who may have bought it for a shilling." But Bingley fancied the world was fascinated by its glitter.

And he read out of that stage-book--the genuine and old-established "book of the play"--that wonderful volume, "which is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never do hold books: and points with his finger to a pa.s.sage, and wags his head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the ceiling, professing to derive some intense consolation from the work between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Any one," proceeds the author of "Pendennis," "who has ever seen one of our great light comedians X., in a chintz dressing-gown, such as n.o.body ever wore, and representing himself as a young n.o.bleman in his apartments, and whiling away the time with light literature, until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or his father shall come down to breakfast--anybody, I say, who has seen the great X. over a sham book, has indeed had a great pleasure, and an abiding matter for thought."

The Stranger reads from morning to night, as his servant Francis reports of him. When he bestows a purse upon the aged Tobias, that he may be enabled to purchase his only son's discharge from the army, he first sends away Francis with the stage-book, that there may be no witness of the benevolent deed. "Here, take this book, and lay it on my desk," says the Stranger; and the stage direction runs: "Francis goes into the lodge with the book." Bingley, it is stated, marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. Two acts later, and the Stranger is again to be beheld, "on a seat, reading." But after that he has to put from him his precious book, for the incidents of the drama demand his very serious attention.

Dismissed from the Stranger, however, the stage-book probably reappears in the afterpiece. In how many dramatic works figures this useful property--the "book of the play"? Shakespeare has by no means disdained its use. Imogen is discovered reading in her bed in the second act of "Cymbeline." She inquires the hour of the lady in attendance:

Almost midnight, madam.

IMOGEN. I have read three hours, then; mine eyes are weak.

Fold down the leaf where I have left! To bed!

By-and-by, when Iachimo steals from his trunk to "note the chamber,"

he observes the book, examines it, and proclaims its nature:

She hath been reading late The tale of Tereus! here's the leaf turned down Where Philomel gave up.

Brutus reads within his tent:

Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turned down Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.

How ill this taper burns! Ha! Who comes here?

And thereupon enters the ghost of Caesar, and appoints a meeting at Philippi.

In the third act of "The Third Part of King Henry VI.," that monarch enters, "disguised, with a prayer-book." Farther on, when a prisoner in the Tower, he is "discovered sitting with a book in his hand, the Lieutenant attending;" when Gloucester enters, abruptly dismisses the Lieutenant, and forthwith proceeds to the a.s.sa.s.sination of the king.

But Gloucester himself is by-and-by to have dealings with the "book of the play." In the seventh scene of the third act of "King Richard III.," a stage direction runs: "Enter Gloucester in a gallery above, between two bishops." Whereupon the Lord Mayor, who has come with divers aldermen and citizens to beseech the duke to accept the crown of England, observes:

See where his grace stands 'tween two clergymen!

Says Buckingham:

Two props of virtue for a Christian prince, To stay him from the fall of vanity; And, see, a book of prayer in his hand; True ornaments to know a holy man.

The mayor and citizens departing, Gloucester, in Cibber's acting version of the tragedy, was wont wildly to toss his prayer-book in the air. Here is an apposite note from John Taylor's "Records of my Life,"

relative to Garrick's method of accomplishing this piece of stage business: "My father, who saw him perform King Richard on the first night of his appearance at Goodman's Fields, told me that the audience were particularly struck with his manner of throwing away the book when the lord mayor and aldermen had retired, as it manifested a spirit totally different from the solemn dignity which characterised the former old school, and which his natural acting wholly overturned."

A certain antiquary, when Kemble first a.s.sumed the part of Richard, took objection to the prayer-book he affected to read in this scene.

"This book," writes Boaden, "for aught I know the 'Secret History of the Green Room,' which Kemble took from the property-man before he went on, our exact friend said should have been some illuminated missal. This was somewhat inconsistent, because one would suppose the heart of the antiquary must have grieved to see the actor skirr away so precious a relic of the dark ages, as if, like Careless, in 'The School for Scandal,' he would willingly 'knock down the mayor and aldermen.'" It was at this time, probably, that antiquarianism first stirred itself on the subject of scenic decorations. The solitary banner unfurled by Kemble, as Richard, bore a white rose embroidered upon it. "What!" cried the antiquaries, "a king of England battling with invaders and yet not displaying his royal banner!" And remark was made upon the frequent mention of armour that occurs in the later scenes of the play. We have "locked up in steel;" "What! is my beaver easier than it was?" "And all my armour laid into my tent;" "The armourers accomplishing the knights;" "With clink of hammers closing rivets up;" "Your friends up and buckle on their armour." Yet, as Boaden relates, it was no less strange than true, that, in Kemble's time, "excepting the breastplate and thigh-pieces on Richmond, not one of the _dramatis personae_ had the smallest particle of armour upon him in either army."

There is a stage-book in "King Henry VIII." The Duke of Norfolk, in the second act, "opens a folding-door; the king is discovered sitting and reading pensively." The book of Prospero is spoken of, but not seen. In "Hamlet" the stage-book plays an important part. Says Polonius to Ophelia, when he and Claudius would be "lawful espials" of her meeting with Hamlet:

Read on this book, That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness.