The giant, assisted by Fitzroy, Willie, and Molly herself, was not long in getting the stage up, and the curtain too. The weather was fine. That was good luck; for nothing diminishes a house more speedily than a heavy shower, or a squall of wind and rain.
The Wandering Minstrels had to put up with all that, however, and during splendid weather they made quite a pot of money, as the caravan master, Fitzroy, termed it.
But a show or travelling theatre of this sort, with a company which was far from a powerful one, required a good deal of thought, and some skilful treatment. For the players had not only to play, but to act as the band, the carpenters, and the scene-shifters, and sometimes even take two parts in the same play.
The orchestra was down under the elevated stage, which was tented or covered with tarpaulins. The musicians were hidden from the audience by a screen, and played there before the opening of the piece, and until some of their number were required on the stage, when, laying down their instruments, they entered the tent, whence steps led on to the boards. It was all very simple and nice.
The scenery was simple too, and ferns, pine branches, and the wild-flowers of the forest were worked in most effectually and artistically.
Perhaps it was this very simplicity that had caused “The Forest Maiden” to catch on so quickly. For the bucolic mind, or, in simple language, the rustic, loves neither ambiguity nor plot. Such as these come to the theatre not to confuse his brains—if he has some—with mystery on the unravelling of a plot. He wants to see and hear what he can understand, and nothing more. This play, “The Forest Maiden,” which they were led to believe had ravished the senses of every crowned head in Europe, was precisely the play for their money. (Front seats sixpence for the élite, or for the lover and his lass; back, threepence; and if anyone kept loafing about far in the rear and tried to get a treat for nothing, Ralph the blood-hound was sent to reason with him, and this method of reasoning was always effectual.)
“The Forest Maiden” was a comedy, combined with a good slice of tragedy, and a good deal of the rough and ranting fun which the gods in the low-class theatres of London so delight in. It was in five acts, not long ones, certainly, but full of go, excitement, and strong situations, with a vein of true love running all through it like the blue thread on Government canvas. Oh, dearie me! as old Molly used to say, my memory is so bad that I cannot even describe the plot to my readers, although I was once present in the New Forest when the play was put on the boards there.
Let me see now if I can possibly recollect some little portion of it. I know, for instance, that it opened with low, sweet music of violin and flute, that came welling up from the orchestra beneath the stage, music so artfully concealed that even I, quick-eared though I be, could not tell whence it proceeded. At one time it seemed high up among the wind-stirred, whispering trees, at another it mingled with the sound of the sea-waves breaking solemnly on the shingle far in the rear, anon I could have felt certain the music was up yonder among the fleecy clouds. Now so interested was I with the simple scene before me when the curtain rose, that I soon forgot the music, and simply was content to know it was everywhere around.
The little Forest Maiden, seated by her cottage door, a rustic porchway overhung with roses yellow and red, the girl herself not less rustic, none the less sweet, Leely she is to name, and she is knitting a stocking while she sings to herself. So breathless was the audience at this moment that you might have heard a pin fall, though it would have fallen on the grass. Leely presently let that stocking drop in her lap, and looked for a minute, or more, rather listless and sad. But presently, “Hist!” she said, with the point of a perfectly shaped and tiny forefinger on her rosy lips.
The great blood-hound, who had been asleep as she sang, raised his noble head.