Some of these "sensation" melodramas, or rather farces, might vie in the number of nights in which the performances took place, with some of the "sensation" or popular theatrical pieces of the present day. Here is one entitled, "The Drummer of Tedworth" (what a capital heading for a "play bill!"), in which the ghost or evil spirit of a drummer, or the ghost of a drum (for it does not appear clearly which of the two it was), performed the principal part in this drama, with slight intervals, for "two entire years."
Oh! this drummer, oh! this drummer,
I'll tell you what he used to do,
He used to beat upon his drum,
The "Old Gentleman's tattoo."
The "plot" runs thus:—In March, 1661, Mr. Mompesson, a magistrate, caused a vagrant drummer to be arrested, who had been annoying the country by noisy demands for charity, and had ordered his drum, "oh that drum!" to be taken from him and left in the bailiff's hands. About the middle of April following (that is in 1661), when Mr. Mompesson was preparing for a journey to London, the bailiff sent the drum to his house. Upon his return home he was informed that noises had been heard, and then he heard the noises himself, which were a "thumping and drumming" accompanied by "a strange noise and hollow sound." The sign of it when it came, was like a hurling in the air, over the house, and at its going off, the beating of a drum, like that at the "breaking up of a guard."
"After a month's disturbance outside the house ('which was most of it of board') it came into the room where the drum lay." "For an hour together it would beat 'Roundheads and cockolds,' the 'tattoo,' and several other points of war, as well as any drummer." Upon one occasion, "when many were present, a gentleman said, 'Satan, if the drummer set thee to work, give three knocks,' which it did very distinctly and no more." And for further trial, he bid it for confirmation, if it were the drummer, to give five knocks and no more that night, which it did, and left the house quiet all the night after.
All this seems very strange, about this drummer and his drum,
But for myself, I really think this drumming ghost was "all a hum."
But strange as it certainly was, is it not still more strange, that educated gentlemen, and even clergymen, as in this case also, should believe that the Almighty would suffer an evil spirit to disturb and affright a whole innocent family, because the head of that family had, in his capacity as magistrate, thought it his duty to take away a drum, from no doubt a drunken drummer, who by his noisy conduct had become a nuisance and an annoyance to the neighbourhood?