This accident conjured up a train of reflections upon the vanity of human wishes! “Alas!” exclaimed he, “it is but a few minutes since I fancied myself a hero at the head of a victorious army, before which thousands would turn and fly, or grimly bite the dust; and now I find myself a wretched thing! routed by a base born hind with a muck fork in his hand! Oh! vile disgrace! I only wish that fellow may see me on the boards to-morrow night—I’ll frown him into a liquid.”
Upon the night of this eventful morning the stage-struck Triptolemus had very unquiet dreams; his head was filled, he said, with a chaotic mass of indistinct and indescribable objects. The last thought he had while awake was how he should look when dressed as the gallant Richmond;—and having settled that point to his own satisfaction, he resigned himself to
“Sweet Nature’s second course.”
He waves aloft his glittering steel—he spurs his coal black charger to the field.—Forward! he cries—and the hostile ranks advance in terrible array, inspired by their heroic leader! All then becomes hubbub, turmoil and confusion, higglety pigglety, up and down, slash away work. He meets the tyrant king—fiercely they struggle for the mastery—slap bang go their battle axes; when suddenly a number of shadowy forms, with blood-red cabbage-heads, encircle the enfuriated pair, yelling and dancing at the white-rose king;—the gallant Richmond staggers beneath the prowess of his vigorous opponent, and half believes the field is lost, when through the spectre group a headless horseman breaks with furious speed.—’Tis Buckingham!—he waves his gory head aloft in his red hand, and as Tydides whirled the fragment of a rock upon his foe, even with such fury flung the shade his head, full upon the visage of his fated Richard;—he falls—the shadows vanish with loud cries of joy! when suddenly a dreadful blow is dealt upon the temples of the conquering Richmond;—the chains of sleep are broken, and Triptolemus lies stretched upon the floor.
He arose confused; he pondered upon his dream, rubbed his bruised forehead, and began conclusions from the visions of the night. These proving satisfactory, he descended to the breakfast parlour, inwardly exclaiming,
“May good digestion wait on appetite.”
The rehearsal in the morning gave additional confidence, the manager having pronounced it a very promising specimen of his ability.
Night came—and he was at his post three hours before his presence would be required upon the stage. His hair, of which he had a great profusion, was twisted into innumerable curls by a one-eyed frizzeur who received a payment of twelve pence per night from the manager for decorating the heads of his talented performers; his limbs were cased in the warlike habiliments of the 15th century, which (with the trifling inconvenience, occasioned by their being made for a person of nearly double his dimensions some twenty years before, and the few dilapidations they had received from the numberless falls, thwacks, rents, etc. during their long and faithful servitude) gave him the appearance of a warrior of some personal endowments. The helmet was peculiarly formed, resembling that worn in the 14th century; for this appendage to the son of Mars had been neglected until the very last moment, when it was supposed to be impossible to procure one; but Triptolemus, ever fertile in resources, seized upon a shining tin saucepan, in which the Duke of Buckingham had brought some barley water to the theatre for the purpose of clearing his voice, emptied its contents, and having divested it of its handle, made of it an admirable completion to his costume. At the end of the first act, he walked, with all the self possession of a veteran stager, into an apartment called the green-room, but which exhibited a clear face of white-wash, emblematic of those who frequented its chaste precincts. It was furnished with chairs, stools, and a huge family sofa, evidently the work of the “olden time.” This seemed a seat suited to Triptolemus, puffed out as he was with the pride of his appearance; but unfortunately the light comedian, when playing the part of Doricourt, fell so heavily upon it, in the mad scene, that he made a fatal breach in the bottom, which as yet had not undergone a repair. King Henry the sixth (a short, stout, pompous man, who never moved but one arm in acting, and that with the exact motion of a pump handle) was seated on one side of the fire place, in an altitude of deep thought. Triptolemus remembered his dream, and was astonished at the close resemblance between the red cabbage head of the shadow and the rubicund visage of the portly personage in the chimney corner. His surprise was the greater for that he had not met this gentleman at the rehearsal, he having sent an apology for his absence, being hotly engaged (as he termed it) in making his benefit, i.e. paying his respects to the different taverns in the town, where his merry associates congregated to drink porter, smoke tobacco, and distribute as many tickets as an insinuating address and consummate assurance would enable them to dispose of amongst their boon companions.
The fourth act is over; and Triptolemus experiences a strange sensation rising from the bottom of his abdomen and gradually spreading itself over his whole body!—he feels less valiant than when first he donned the shining helmet (alias saucepan) and fastened the glittering falchion to his mailed side. Ting a ring ting! goes the prompter’s bell! Triptolemus was trembling at his post. The music ceases—the curtain rises—the martial music is played loudly behind the scenes, and the audience with breathless anxiety await the entrance of the dauntless hero, the brave Earl of Richmond.
The trumpeters have almost split their cheeks,—the troops march on, two and two—the Earl of Oxford then advances, next Sir James Blunt, and then Sir Walter Herbert. Triptolemus who had been advised to appear last, and with a rush to “take the natives by surprise,” as it is termed in theatrical phraseology, now darted forward to the footlights, “swift as an arrow from the Tartar bow.” The applause was deafening, and made him fancy that the gods were at war above him; nor was he much out in his conceit, for a chimney sweeper who had edged himself into the centre of the gallery at that moment, caused such a commotion amongst the goddesses, that they assisted, with their screams, the general uproar, and shouts and cat calls “shook the pond’rous roof.” This state of commotion was too violent to last, and at length silence was obtained, and the hero commenced—