culty before him when the actors are but distantly acquainted with their parts, or "shy of the syls," that is, syllables, as they prefer to describe their condition. "Where have they got to now?" he has sometimes to ask himself, when he finds them making havoc of their speeches, missing their cues, and leading him a sort of steeple-chase through the book of the play. It is the golden rule of the player who is "stuck"—at a loss for words—to "come to Hecuba," or pass to some portion of his duty which he happens to bear in recollection. "What's the use of bothering about a handful of words?" demanded a veteran stroller. "I never stick. I always say something and get on, and no one has hissed me yet!" It was probably this performer, who, during his impersonation of Macbeth, finding himself at a loss as to the text soon after the commencement of his second scene with Lady Macbeth, coolly observed: "Let us retire, dearest chuck, and con this matter over in a more sequestered spot, far from the busy haunts of men. Here the walls and doors are spies, and our every word is echoed far and near. Come, then, let's away! False heart must hide, you know, what false heart dare not show." A prompter could be of little service to a gentleman so fertile in resources. He may be left to pair off with that provincial Montano who modernised his speech in reference to Cassio:
And 'tis great pity that the noble Moor
Should hazard such a place as his own second
With one of an ingraft infirmity.
It were an honest action to say
So to the Moor—
into "It's a pity, don't you think, that Othello should place such a man in such an office. Hadn't we better tell him so, sir?"
In small provincial or strolling companies it often becomes expedient to press every member of the establishment into the service of the stage. We read of a useful property-man and scene-shifter who was occasionally required to fill small parts in the performance, such, for instance, as "the cream-faced loon" in "Macbeth," and who thus explained his system of representation, admitting that from his other occupations he could rarely commit perfectly to memory the words he was required to utter. "I tell you how I manage. I inwariably contrives to get a reg'lar knowledge of the natur' of the char-ac-ter, and
ginnerally gives the haudience words as near like the truth as need be. I seldom or never puts any of you out, and takes as much pains as anybody can expect for two-and-six a week extra, which is all I gets for doing such-like parts as mine. I finds Shakespeare's parts worse to get into my head nor any other; he goes in and out so to tell a thing. I should like to know how I was to say all that rigmarole about the wood coming; and I'm sure my telling Macbeth as Birnam Wood was a-walking three miles off the castle, did very well. But some gentlemen is sadly pertickler, and never considers circumstances!"
Such players as this provoke the despair of prompters, who must often be tempted to close their books altogether. It would almost seem that there are some performers whom it is quite vain to prompt: it is safer to let them alone, doing what they list, lest bad should be made worse. Something of this kind happened once in the case of a certain Marcellus. Hamlet demands of Horatio concerning the ghost of "buried Denmark:" "Stayed it long?" Horatio answers: "While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred." Marcellus should add: "Longer, longer." But the Marcellus of this special occasion was mute. "Longer, longer," whispered the prompter. Then out spoke Marcellus, to the consternation of his associates: "Well, say two hundred!" So prosaic a Marcellus is only to be matched by that literal Guildenstern who, when besought by Hamlet to "Play upon this pipe," was so moved by the urgent manner of the tragedian, that he actually made the attempt, seizing the instrument, and evoking from it most eccentric sounds.
It is curious how many of the incidents and details of representation escape the notice of the audience. And here we are referring less to merits than to mischances. Good acting may not always obtain due recognition; but then how often bad acting and accidental deficiencies remain undetected! "We were all terribly out, but the audience did not see it," actors will often candidly admit. Although we in front sometimes see and hear things we should not, some peculiarity of our position blinds and deafens us too much. Our eyes are beguiled into accepting age for youth, shabbiness for finery, tinsel for splendour. Garrick frankly owned that he had once appeared upon the stage so inebriated as to be scarcely able to articulate, but "his friends endeavoured to stifle or cover this trespass with loud
applause," and the majority of the audience did not perceive that anything extraordinary was the matter. What happened to Garrick on that occasion has happened to others of his profession. And our ears do not catch much of what is uttered on the stage. Young, the actor, used to relate that on one occasion, when playing the hero of "The Gamester" to the Mrs. Beverley of Sarah Siddons, he was so overcome by the passion of her acting as to be quite unable to proceed with his part. There was a long pause, during which the prompter several times repeated the words which Beverley should speak. Then "Mrs. Siddons coming up to her fellow-actor, put the tips of her fingers upon his shoulders, and said, in a low voice, 'Mr. Young, recollect yourself.'" Yet probably from the front of the house nothing was seen or heard of this. In the same way the players will sometimes prompt each other through whole scenes, interchange remarks as to necessary adjustments of dress, or instructions as to "business" to be gone through, without exciting the attention of the audience. Kean's pathetic whisper, "I am dying, speak to them for me," when, playing for the last time, he sank into the arms of his son, was probably not heard across the orchestra.
Mrs. Fanny Kemble, in her "Journal" of her Tour in America, gives an amusing account of a performance of the last scene of "Romeo and Juliet," not as it seemed to the spectators, but as it really was, with the whispered communications of the actors. Romeo, at the words "Quick, let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms," pounced upon his playfellow, plucked her up in his arms "like an uncomfortable bundle," and staggered down the stage with her. Juliet whispers; "Oh, you've got me up horridly! That'll never do; let me down! Pray let me down!" But Romeo proceeds, from the acting version of the play, be it understood:
There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips,
And call thee back, my soul, to life and love!