Gilbert very properly objects to any business being interpolated without his sanction, especially if its sole object is merely to raise a laugh, and thereby stop the action of the piece. In The Mikado, Miss Jessie Bond and I were kneeling side by side, with our heads on the floor, and she used to give me a push, and I accordingly rolled completely over. Gilbert asked me if I would mind omitting that action on my part.
I replied:
"Certainly, if you wish it; but I get an enormous laugh by it."
"So you would if you sat on a pork-pie," replied he.
It is a very easy thing to get a laugh on the stage, and a very difficult thing to sacrifice it. It has amused me intensely when some of the gentlemen who play my parts on the country tour inform me of certain laughs which they get when they play. Some of them have even kindly advised me of "new business" which they have inserted.
I quite agree with Mr. Gilbert in reference to the "pork-pie" method of obtaining laughter; and I have often stated that my ambition is, to play in a farce in which there is a bandbox placed carefully on an arm-chair, and that the curtain should finally fall without my having sat on the box in question.
I have no intention of dwelling on the incidents attending the production of each of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, but mine has been rather an odd career. I have been on the stage over ten years, and have only played regularly nine parts, including the Judge in Trial by Jury. At a great benefit matinee, I have sometimes taken some small part, but that I count as nothing: but of the above I have, in one or two of the pieces, played the same part night after night, and two performances on Saturday, for a year and a half; while Sir Joseph Porter, in H.M.S. Pinafore, I played incessantly for nearly two years.
I have been asked if long runs affect the nerves. I do not think they affect the nerves so much as they affect the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a dreadful enemy to contend against. I try hard to fight against it personally, and I believe I succeed. There is one thing I always do—I always play my best to a bad house; for I think it a monstrous thing that an actor should slur through his work because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who have come for the fault of those who have not.
Mrs. Howard Paul impressed so strongly upon me the importance and the justness of playing one's best to a poor house, that I not only have never forgotten her injunction, but have endeavoured to abide by it.
To act without recognition, by applause, laughter, or tears, from an audience is galling to an actor; but, fortunately, I have had a good training in this respect in the private-house engagements, and have got used to it.