"ALL HAIL, MACBETH!"
The cheering here was tremendous, there being in the village three young men with the names mentioned, each having high pretensions to literary distinction. The Jonesites were vehement in their applause; but the Tomkinsonians were not to be outdone; and the Smithians being thus worked up to an enthusiastic pitch of excitement, it was some time before Mr. Doublethrust could proceed with the address he was speaking. The following were the concluding lines, which elicited the most rapturous shrieks ever heard within an English barn, or indeed beneath a British weathercock:—
Drawing a House.
A Moving Address.
"We pledge ourselves to do our very best,
And leave to fickle fortune all the rest.
Aided by you we boldly laugh at fate,—
And, by the way, half-price at half past eight,
'Tis here that human nature may be learned,—
Vivat Regina!—Money not returned!"
The play of "Macbeth," from the text of Shakspeare, now proceeded, and the manager's candour in using the disjunctive from was speedily visible. The ambitious thane wore a plaid shawl, commonly called a horse-cloth, and a pair of stocking-drawers, with a breast-plate formed of the brass ornaments used to cover the screws of tent bedsteads. The scene with the witches was thrown into such confusion by the performers not knowing their parts, that it was impossible to say which was witch, and, by way of an overflow at half-price, the rain came on in such torrents at about half-past eight, that in the fourth act Macbeth came on under an umbrella, beneath the shelter of which he concluded the performance. The damp thus thrown on the efforts of the new lessee brought the season to a precipitate close, and Doublethrust abdicated the managerial throne after a short rain, but by no means a merry one.