Ned, too, was looking at the stage from his nook in the great man's chair behind the wing. The by-play behind the scenes had absorbed him hitherto, but he grew intensely interested when the star spoke to the actor who had lurked and listened in the wings. Hamlet seemed to be instructing him how to play a part, and in honest fact the subordinate had shown in a scene in the previous act that he stood in grievous need of such tuition.
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise; I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it."
All at once was presented a strange, unexpected attraction, not set down in the bills. The four or five players to whom this is addressed are wont to receive it with bows of acquiescence, intelligent glances at each other and at their instructor to express comprehension, concurrence of opinion, and willingness. The actor who had lurked and listened had the rôle of the "first player," and was the spokesman of the party. He led these demonstrations with sufficient discretion, but when his cue was given he responded with a hoarse drunken thickness ornamented with an unmistakable hiccup.
"I'se warrant yer (hic) honor!"
His potations before he made his first appearance this evening had not been so deep as to intoxicate him, but he had since reinforced them heavily. He had sought to sober himself by a cold application to the head and neck before again "going on;" the heated air, however, and the excitement were fast doing away with its good effects.
Hamlet, striving to maintain his composure and self-possession in the presence of the audience, addressed the second long exhortation chiefly to the others. He could not have devised a worse expedient. The "first player," eager to assert his precedence among his fellows, and to impress the star with the conviction that he was perfectly sober and reliable, gave such prominence to his acquiescent dumb show that it became extravagant and uncouth, and before the lines of the admonition were concluded he was bowing about the stage like a clown.
There was a vague, suppressed titter in the parquet. A sharp, sibilant hiss swept down from the gallery. The other mock players, forgetting their appropriate pantomime, stood as still as if stricken into stone. The equilibrium of the great star was fairly shaken. There was a quiver singularly like stage fright in those clear melodious tones, but he gallantly persisted to the end, and gave the "first player" his cue.
"Reformed!" exclaimed the "first player" automatically,—he had forgotten every word of his lines but this. "We've reformed," he reiterated, "an'—an'—we ain't never goin' ter do it no more," he declared, leering facetiously at the audience.
"Come off! Come off!" insisted the frenzied stage manager, in a sepulchral undertone from behind the scenes.
But the sodden idiot advanced to the foot-lights beyond the reach of the sheltering curtain which would fain have gathered him in.