THE FIRST NIGHT OF A PANTOMIME.
'Tis boxing night—every theatre is crammed,
As close as a jelly the people are jammed;
Every corner is full from the roof to the floor,
And money is being refused at the door.
The play of George Barnwell is being gone through,
'Mid the usual regular hullabaloo.
A middle-aged actor appears on the scene,
Representing the weak-minded youth of eighteen;
'Tis true he's past forty, but collars turned down,
With tie à la Byron, and wig of light brown,
With whiskers shaved off, and rouge daubed on in plenty,
The old boy of forty looks something like twenty.
But our sympathies, somehow, he doesn't engage,
He's laughed at whenever he comes on the stage;
His uncle they wont let him murder in peace,
But the incident causes a cry of "police."
The uncle elicits no pity at all,
For shouts of rude merriment follow his fall;
And when his assassin has killed him outright,
Some "wag" in the gallery bids him "good night."
The pathos of Trueman, though good of its sort,
Is met with proposals for cutting it short;
And Barnwell goes off to be hanged 'mid a cry
Of "shame," "turn him out," "serve him right" and "good-bye."
The pantomime now is awaited by all;
The house for the overture raises a call;
Confusion prevails, bits of orange-peel flit
From the gallery's hands to the heads of the pit;
The cat-call so loud, and the whistle so shrill,
Are blended with shouts such as "Bob, where's your 'Bill!'"
At length the musicians have taken their seats,
The leader a lamp with his fiddle-stick beats;
Such silences ensues that the dropping of pins
Might be heard through the house when the playing begins.
The overture's always a musical salad,
A mixture of Polka, Cachuca, and ballad:
If the season has furnished a popular air,
The ear that is ticklish will meet with it there.
The taste of the public will often insist on
A solo for trumpet or cornet-à-piston,
Which, played well or ill, from the audience draws,
At Christmas, a general round of applause;
During holiday time you can never do wrong
If even a passage you gave to the gong,
Or formed a quartette most delicious and tender,
With poker, and shovel, and tongs, and the fender.
The overture's finished, the curtain's ascended,
A scene is before us exceedingly splendid.
A lovely princess is reduced to despair
At long being wooed by a man she can't bear,
A wretch in a mask with inelegant features,
That are found nowhere else but in pantomime creatures;
But after the lady there constantly dangles
A youth whose thin calves are bedizened with spangles;
For under his cloak his legs we discover,
And "afterwards harlequin" peeps through the lover.
Of course the princess has a father severe,
With a mouth quite extending from ear unto ear;
His head is terrific, and, monstrous surprise,
If you look down his mouth you'll distinguish his eyes.
And as to his voice, if its source you should trace,
You'll find it proceeds from a very odd place—
A sort of incision just under his chin,
Through which he sends forth a most horrible din.
The choice of his daughter he does not approve,
And nothing the heart of the tyrant will move;
The lovers are both to despair giving way,
When of splendid machinery there's a display.
Some clouds from the stage unexpectedly rise,
While a sort of pavilion descends from the flies;
But somehow or other, it seems, in the air,
Their machine always is out of repair;
The clouds make a hitch, and refuse to expand,
Or the flying pavilion is brought to a stand.
The obstacle soon is surmounted, when straight
A fairy appears—the expounder of fate.
She bids the fair lady abandon her gloom,
And the aspect of columbine quickly assume;
At which the princess, being gone to the wing,
Has the whole of her dress dragged away by a string;
Then in petticoats wondrously short she advances,
And gives at the house the most sunny of glances.
To the youth in the spangles the fairy next speaks,
And bids him of harlequin practise the freaks;
The shape he assumes, and attention to win,
His head he sets off in a wonderful spin—
So rapidly twisting and twirling it round,
That we wonder it does not drop off on the ground.
The father and friend are let loose on the town,
As pantaloon one—and the other as clown;
A loud "here we are!" gains a general shout,
Pantaloon says his mother's aware he is out;
And then, 'mid a mutual kicking of shins,
The fun of the pantomime fairly begins.
Of course there's a baker who's robbed by the clown;
Of course there's an image-tray coolly pushed down;
Of course there's a baby crushed flat as a flounder;
Of course there's a lady with pickpockets round her;
Of course there's a pie, and of course (who could doubt of it?)
Directly it's opened, live pigeons fly out of it;
Of course there's a window, and steadfastly view it,
Of course you'll see harlequin neatly jump through it;
Of course there's an uproar, and then, to enrich it,
Of course there's a clamour for "Tippitywitchet;"
Of course it's encored, and, it need not be said,
Of course we're indulged with "Hot Codlins" instead;
Of course they all meet in the Cave of Despair,
And of course no one knows how they ever got there;
And of course the last scene is the Realms of Delight,
And of course there's a hope that you'll come every night;
And of course the kind fairy appears once again,
But why, she of course don't attempt to explain;
Of course she propitiates "all her kind friends."
The curtain then falls, and the pantomime ends.
