Wilkie Collins composed two powerful dramas for representation at Dickens’s residence, Tavistock House, a portion of which had been already adapted for private theatricals, the rooms so converted being described in the bills as ‘The Smallest Theatre in the World.’ The first of these plays was called The Lighthouse, and the initial performance took place on June 19, 1855. Dickens not only wrote the Prologue and ‘The Song of the Wreck,’ but signally distinguished himself by enacting the part of Aaron Gurnock, a lighthouse-keeper, his clever impersonation recalling Frédérick Lemaître, the only actor he ever tried to take as a model.

With regard to ‘The Song of the Wreck,’ Dickens evidently intended to bestow upon it a different title, for, in a letter addressed to Wilkie Collins during the preparation of the play, he said: ‘I have written a little ballad for Mary—“The Story of the Ship’s Carpenter and the Little Boy, in the Shipwreck.”’ The song was rendered by his eldest daughter, Mary (who assumed the rôle of Phœbe in the play); it was set to the music composed by George Linley for Miss Charlotte Young’s pretty ballad, ‘Little Nell,’ of which Dickens became very fond, and which his daughter had been in the habit of singing to him constantly since her childhood. Dr. A. W. Ward, Master of Peter-house, Cambridge University, refers to ‘The Song of the Wreck’ as ‘a most successful effort in Cowper’s manner.’

THE PROLOGUE
(Slow music all the time; unseen speaker; curtain down.)

A story of those rocks where doom’d ships come
To cast them wreck’d upon the steps of home,
Where solitary men, the long year through—
The wind their music and the brine their view—
Warn mariners to shun the beacon-light;
A story of those rocks is here to-night.
Eddystone Lighthouse!

(Exterior view discovered.)
In its ancient form,
Ere he who built it wish’d for the great storm
That shiver’d it to nothing,[2] once again
Behold outgleaming on the angry main!
Within it are three men; to these repair
In our frail bark of Fancy, swift as air!
They are but shadows, as the rower grim
Took none but shadows in his boat with him.
So be ye shades, and, for a little space,
The real world a dream without a trace.
Return is easy. It will have ye back
Too soon to the old beaten dusty track;
For but one hour forget it. Billows, rise;
Blow winds, fall rain, be black, ye midnight skies;
And you who watch the light, arise! arise!
(Exterior view rises and discovers the scene.)

II.—THE SONG OF THE WRECK

THE SONG OF THE WRECK