CHAPTER XIX.
THE BOOK OF THE PLAY.
Mr. Thackeray has described a memorable performance at the Theatre Royal, Chatteries. Arthur Pendennis and his young friend Harry Foker were among the audience; Lieutenants Rodgers and Podgers, and Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private box. The play was "The Stranger." Bingley, the manager, appeared as the hero of the sombre work; Mrs. Haller was impersonated by Miss Fotheringay. "I think ye'll like Miss Fotheringay in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan," observed the father of the actress. Bingley, we are told, was great in the character of the Stranger, and wore the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which stage tradition has duly prescribed as the costume of that doleful personage. "Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker had previously remarked. He had the stage jewellery on too, selecting "the largest and most shining rings for himself," and allowing his little finger to quiver out of his cloak, with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of the finger, and twiddling it in the faces of the pit. It is told of him that he made it a favour to the young men of his company to go on in light-comedy parts with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. "It had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who may have bought it for a shilling." But Bingley fancied the world was fascinated by its glitter.
And he read out of that stage-book—the genuine and old-
established "book of the play"—that wonderful volume, "which is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry like the hero or heroine who holds it; and who holds it as people never do hold books: and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the ceiling, professing to derive some intense consolation from the work between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. Any one," proceeds the author of "Pendennis," "who has ever seen one of our great light comedians X., in a chintz dressing-gown, such as nobody ever wore, and representing himself as a young nobleman in his apartments, and whiling away the time with light literature, until his friend Sir Harry shall arrive, or his father shall come down to breakfast—anybody, I say, who has seen the great X. over a sham book, has indeed had a great pleasure, and an abiding matter for thought."
The Stranger reads from morning to night, as his servant Francis reports of him. When he bestows a purse upon the aged Tobias, that he may be enabled to purchase his only son's discharge from the army, he first sends away Francis with the stage-book, that there may be no witness of the benevolent deed. "Here, take this book, and lay it on my desk," says the Stranger; and the stage direction runs: "Francis goes into the lodge with the book." Bingley, it is stated, marked the page carefully, so that he might continue the perusal of the volume off the stage if he liked. Two acts later, and the Stranger is again to be beheld, "on a seat, reading." But after that he has to put from him his precious book, for the incidents of the drama demand his very serious attention.
Dismissed from the Stranger, however, the stage-book probably reappears in the afterpiece. In how many dramatic works figures this useful property—the "book of the play"? Shakespeare has by no means disdained its use. Imogen is discovered reading in her bed in the second act of "Cymbeline." She inquires the hour of the lady in attendance:
Almost midnight, madam.