I.
“It is almost like getting home again,” said Irving, “to find one’s self in New York once more. The first place one stops at in a new country always impresses the imagination and lives in the memory. I should say that is so with pioneers; and more particularly when your first resting-place has been pleasant. Let us get Monday night well over, and we may look for something like a little leisure during our closing month in New York. We shall produce “Much Ado” as completely as it is possible for us to do it, outside of our own theatre. If no hitch occurs I think we will run it for two, Palser even proposes three, weeks. If we have been complimented upon our scenic and stage-managerial work on the other pieces, what may we expect for ‘Much Ado’? Lent is severely kept in New York, I am told; Holy Week being among the churches, if not a fast in regard to food, a fast from amusements. We must therefore be content, I suppose, to let ‘Much Ado’ grow, in time for the restoration of social pleasures at Easter.”[62]
On Monday, at a quarter to eleven, Irving was at his post, on the stage of the Star Theatre, for a complete rehearsal. Scenery, properties, lighting, grouping of supernumeraries, the entire business of the piece, was gone through. Not a detail was overlooked, not a set but was viewed as completely from the stalls as from the stage.
“Pardon me,” says Irving to Claudio; “if you get your hand above your head in that position, you will never get it down again. Suppose you adopt this idea, eh? What do you think?”
“Certainly, it is better,” says Claudio.
Irving, as he speaks, illustrates his own view of the scene.
“Then we will try it again.”
The scene is repeated.
“Yes, very good, that will do.”
The rehearsal goes on.
“No, no,” says Irving, “there must be no wait; the second procession must come on promptly at the cue. Try it again. And hold your halberd like this, my boy; not as if you were afraid of it. There, that’s it.”
The supernumerary accepts his lesson; the music cue is repeated; the halberdiers file in; the military strains cease, the organ peals out, the wedding procession comes on.
“Bow, bow,—don’t nod,” says Irving, stepping forward to instruct a subordinate in the scene; “that’s better—go on.”
The solemn voice of Mead opens the scene, and as it proceeds, Irving calls Loveday aside.
“Too much light at the back there, eh?”
“Do you think so?” says Loveday. “Lower the light there,—the blue medium.”
Steps have been placed as a way from the stage to the stalls. Irving (“Charlie” following at his heels) goes into the third row, Loveday watching and waiting.
“Yes, that will do,” says Irving, at the same time turning to me to remark, “do you see what a difference that makes? You have no difficulty now in imagining the distance the subdued light suggests,—chapels, vestries, dim cathedral vistas. Do you notice what a last touch of reality to the scene the hurried entrance of the pages give?—they break up the measured solemnity of the processions with a different step, a lighter manner, the carelessness of youth; they have no censers to carry, no ecclesiastical robes to wear.”
As he is speaking he strides up the steps and upon the stage once more.
“Mr. Ball! Call Mr. Ball, please.”
The musical director appears.
“The basses are too loud; they spoil the closing movement, which is too quick altogether. Come into the stalls and hear it.”
“Howson!” says Ball, “please give them the time.”
Ball goes into the stalls. The movement is repeated and repeated again, the last time entirely to Irving’s satisfaction.
In these passing notes I merely desire to give the reader a hint at the kind of work which was done at rehearsal on the Monday of the production of “Much Ado.” It lasted until a quarter-past five. Irving was there until the end. Out of sight of the audience he had done enough work to entitle him to a night’s rest; but, so far as the critics and the public were concerned, his labors were only just beginning. Shortly after seven he was on the stage again, and when the play began he was never more heartily engaged in his rôle as actor.
“Yes, I am rather tired,” he said, in his quiet way, when I spoke to him at the wing; “feel inclined to sit down,—hard work, standing about all day,—but this is the reward.”
He pointed to the setting of the garden scene, which was progressing quite smoothly.
“If we pull through with the cathedral set all right, one will not mind being a little tired.”
I waited to see the work done, and, though I am familiar with the business behind the scenes, I was glad to escape from the “rush and tumble” of it on this occasion. At the Lyceum every man knows the piece, or flat, for the position of which he is responsible. He goes about his work silently, and in list slippers; he fetches and carries without hurry; nothing seems more simple; you see the scene grow into completeness, silently but surely. At the Star, on this first night, it was, to all appearance, chaos. Wings were slid about; curtains unrolled; tapestries hauled up by unseen strings; great pillars were pushed here and there; images of saints were launched into space from the flies, to be checked by ropes, just as you might think they were coming to grief; a massive altar-piece was being railed in, while a painted canopy was hoisted over it; a company of musicians were led out of the way of falling scenes to join a chorus party of ladies and gentlemen, who were gradually losing themselves among a picturesque crowd of halberdiers. Everybody seemed to be in everybody’s way; it looked like a general scramble. Irving, with “Less noise, my boys—less noise!” continually on his lips, moved about among the throng; and as Ball, who had made a third and last effort to find a prominent position from which to conduct his band, stepped upon a bench, which was instantly drawn from under him by the stage hands who had it in charge, I went to the front of the house. Ball’s musicians struck up their impressive strains of the “Gloria,” and the curtain slowly rose upon the cathedral at Messina, as if it had been there all the time, only waiting the prompter’s signal. Pandemonium behind the curtain had given place to Paradise in front. It was a triumph of willing hands under intelligent and earnest direction.