He flattered me with this distinction; so I took my seat at the piano, and sang a song with a refrain, in which the noisy portion of the audience commenced to join. This was not quite approved of; so for a time I contented myself with recitals from Dickens, Hood, &c., which I cribbed from my father's repertoire.
I soon returned to the comic songs again, but selected those of a milder form, like "He, She, and the Postman," a story without a chorus, and some out of Howard Paul's entertainment.
It was once suggested that we should give the short burlesque on Hamlet to which I have already referred. We arrived with several bags of costumes, which alarmed the vicar, and the performance did not take place. The audience, to our intense satisfaction, expressed its disappointment in an unmistakable manner; so much so, that the chairman announced that it should be played on a future occasion. Meanwhile, he stipulated with me that there should be no costumes. I could not consent to this, and, after a long discussion, we met each other half-way. I was to be permitted to wear a cloak for Hamlet—or, rather, an old black shawl thrown over my shoulders. Horatio and the King were tabooed costumes. The Ghost (T. Bolton) was permitted to adorn himself with a clean tablecloth. My brother, who was only ten years of age, was to double the parts of Ophelia and Gravedigger. In the former, being so young, it was considered no harm for him to wear a muslin body and skirt; while, as the Gravedigger, he was allowed to take off his coat, and appear, for this occasion only, in his shirt-sleeves.
Somehow or other, Leclercq, the original representative of the Queen, could not appear, and I arranged with one of my schoolfellows from the North London Collegiate School to play the part. He had never acted before, and in all probability has never acted since. As he was about seventeen years of age, and looked a veritable young man, with a perceptible moustache, the vicar would not on any account allow him to assume ladies' attire. We eventually decided he should be allowed to throw a plaid shawl round his shoulders.
The eventful evening approached, and, as the intended performance had been whispered about, the rooms were crammed. All went well until the entrance of the Queen, late on in the piece which only played twenty minutes altogether. Ta the horror of the vicar, and to my own surprise, he had, behind the screen, slipped on a servant's cotton frock, and put on what is vulgarly known as a carotty wig. The vicar, who was, as usual, seated on the platform—a very small one, by-the-by,—rose and said in an undertone to me:
"I forbade this."
I replied that it was against my knowledge.
The performance went on, however; for the young man who played the Queen such a stick that he was quite inoffensive, and uttered his words one after the other in the legitimate schoolboy fashion. But quiet people are always the most dangerous, and so it transpired with my young friend. We approached the finale, which, by the way, appears to me to be worth quoting. The characters are all lying on the stage, supposed to be dead.
HAMLET (sitting up)—
What? Everybody dead? Why, that won't do;
For who's to speak the tag? I must—
HORATIO (rising)—
Not you.
You've had your share of talking; so now stow it.
I'll speak the tag—