The town of Etherington afforded no theatre; and the room fitted up for the night's performance could contain but two boxes, one of which was secured for Mrs. Arlbery and her friends.
The attentive Major was ready to offer his hand to Camilla upon her arrival. The rest of the officers were in the box.
The play was Othello; and so miserably represented, that Lavinia would willingly have retired after the first scene: but the native spirits of Camilla revisited her in the view of the ludicrous personages of the drama. And they were soon joined by Sir Sedley Clarendel, whose quaint conceits and remarks assisted the risibility of the scene. She thought him the least comprehensible person she had ever known; but as he was totally indifferent to her, his oddity entertained without tormenting her.
The actors were of the lowest strolling kind, and so utterly without merit, that they had never yet met with sufficient encouragement to remain one week in the same place. They had only a single scene for the whole performance, which depictured a camp, and which here served for a street, a senate, a city, a castle, and a bed-chamber.
The dresses were almost equally parsimonious, everyone being obliged to take what would fit him, from a wardrobe that did not allow quite two dresses a person for all the plays they had to enact. Othello, therefore, was equipped as king Richard the third, save that instead of a regal front he had a black wig, to imitate wool: while his face had been begrimed with a smoked cork.
Iago wore a suit of cloaths originally made for Lord Foppington: Brabantio had borrowed the armour of Hamlet's Ghost: Cassio, the Lieutenant General in the christian army, had only been able to equip himself in Osmyn's Turkish vest; and Roderigo, accoutred in the garment of Shylock, came forth a complete Jew.
Desdemona, attired more suitably to her fate than to her expectations, went through the whole of her part, except the last scene, in the sable weeds of Isabella. And Amelia was fain to content herself with the habit of the first witch in Macbeth.
The gestures, both of the gentlemen and ladies, were as outrageous as if meant rather to intimidate the audience, than to shew their own animation; and the men approached each other so closely with arms a-kimbo, or double fists, that Sir Sedley, with pretended alarm, said they were giving challenges for a boxing match.
The ladies also, in the energy of their desire not to be eclipsed, took so much exercise in their action, that they tore out the sleeves of their gowns; which, though pinned up every time they left the stage, completely exposed their shoulders at the end of every act; and they raised their arms so high while facing each other, that Sir Sedley expressed frequent fears they meant to finish by pulling caps.
So imperfect were they also in their parts, that the prompter was the only person from whom any single speech passed without a blunder.