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E had five rehearsals for this play.

“What the dickens do they want with with so many?” was the indignant comment of the First Old Woman. “Why, they’ll rehearse it more times than they’ll play it.”

I thought five a ridiculously small number at the time, especially when I remembered my amateur days, and the thirty or so rehearsals, nearly all full-dressed ones, required for a short farce; but there came a time when I looked upon two as betokening extraordinary anxiety about a production. In the provinces, I have known a three-act comedy put on without any rehearsal at all, and with half the people not even knowing the patter. “Business” was arranged in whispered consultations, while the play was proceeding, and when things got into a more than usually glorious muddle, one or other of the characters would come off the stage and have a look at the book. As for the prompter, after vainly struggling to keep them to one act at a time, and to dissuade the hero from making love to the wrong girl, he came to the conclusion that he was only in the way, and so went and had a quiet pipe at the stage-door, and refrained from worrying himself further.

The rehearsals got more ship-shape as we went on. At the fourth every one was supposed to be “letter perfect,” and “parts” were tabooed. On this occasion, the piece was played straight through with nothing omitted, and the orchestra (two fiddles, a bass-viol, cornet, and drum) appeared in full force. For the last rehearsal, props and scenery were called. We had an exciting time with Jim, over the scenery, as might be expected. He had a row with everybody, and enjoyed himself immensely.

I saw our scene painter then for the first time. He was a jolly little fellow, and as full of cheery contrivance as a Mark Tapley. No difficulties seemed to daunt him. If a court of justice were wanted for the following night, and the nearest thing he had to it were a bar parlor, he was not in the least dismayed. He would have the bar parlor down; paint in a bit here; paint out a bit there; touch up a bit somewhere else—there was your court of justice! Half an hour was quite long enough for him to turn a hay-field into a church-yard, or a prison into a bedroom.

There was only one want, in the present case, that he didn’t supply, and that was cottages. All the virtuous people in the play lived in cottages. I never saw such a run on cottages. There were plenty of other residences to which they would have been welcome—halls, palaces, and dungeons the saloon cabin of a P. and O. steamer, drawingroom of No. 200 Belgrave Square (a really magnificent apartment this, with a clock on the mantelpiece). But no, they would all of them live in cottages. It would not pay to alter three or four different scenes, and turn them all into cottages, especially as they might, likely enough, be wanted for something else in a week’s time; so our one cottage interior had to accommodate about four distinct families. To keep up appearances, however, it was called by a different name on each occasion. With a round table and a candle, it was a widow’s cottage. With two candles and a gun, it was a blacksmith’s house. A square table instead of a round one—“Daddy Soloman’s home on the road to London. ‘Home, sweet home.’” Put a spade in the corner, and hang a coat behind the door, and you had the old mill on the Yorkshire moors.

It was all no use though. The audience, on the opening night, greeted its second appearance with cries of kindly recognition, and at once entered into the Humor of the thing. A Surrey-side Saturday-night audience are generally inclined to be cheerful, and, if the fun on the stage doesn’t satisfy them, they rely on their own resources. After one or two more appearances, the cottage became an established favorite with the gallery. So much so, indeed, that when two scenes passed without it being let down, there were many and anxious inquiries after it, and an earnest hope expressed that nothing serious had happened to it. Its reappearance in the next act (as something entirely new) was greeted with a round of applause, and a triumphant demand to know, “Who said it was lost?”

It was not until the last rehearsal that the supers were brought into play—or work, as they would have called it. These supers were drawn from two distinct sources. About half of them were soldiers, engaged to represent the military force of the drama, while the other half, who were to be desperate rioters, had been selected from among the gentry of the New Cut neighborhood.

The soldiers, who came under the command of their sergeant, were by far the best thing in the play. They gave an air of reality to all the scenes in which they appeared. They were soldiers, and went about their business on the stage with the same calm precision that they would have displayed in the drill yard, and with as much seriousness as if they had been in actual earnest. When the order was given to “fix bayonets and charge,” they did so with such grim determination, that there was no necessity at all to direct the stage mob to “feign fear and rush off L. I. E.” They went as one man, in a hurry. There was no trouble, either, about rehearsing the soldiers—no cursing and swearing required, which, in itself, was an immense saving of time. The stage manager told the sergeant what was wanted. That gruff-voiced officer passed the order on to his men (first translating it into his own unintelligible lingo), and the thing was done.