[147] This gentlewoman has generally been considered as intended for the ghost: from her employment, I rather think she is the representative of tragedy:
"Death in her hand, and murder in her eye."
The sage Melpomene herself could not go through the business with more philosophic indifference.
[148] By the halter near them, it may be conjectured that these balls were intended to represent bullets, and designed to hint that some one of this noble company might on a leisure evening, in humble imitation of the heroic Captain Machcath, endeavour to turn his lead to gold; and, like that very great man, be in consequent danger of making an exit with a rope round his neck.
[149] We are told by John Milton, that cannon were invented by the devil. We are told by Alexander Pope, that stage thunder was invented by that great critic John Dennis; and so jealous was Dennis of his bolt being wielded by an improper hand, that being once in the pit at Drury Lane Theatre, when the company were performing Macbeth, he, on hearing the bowls rattling over his head, started from his seat, grasped his oaken stick, and exclaimed, with an emphasis that drowned the voices of the players, "Eternal curses light on these scoundrels! they have stolen my thunder, and don't know how to roll it!"
[150] Our royal theatres have sometimes neglected and violated the costume. We have seen the head of Cato covered with a periwig that emulated Sir Cloudesley Shovel's; a Prince of Denmark decorated with the order of St. George; Othello habited as a captain of the foot guards; and Kent, the tough old Kent, as a Chelsea pensioner.
[151] In the second act of Oedipus is the following stage direction:—"The cloud draws that veiled the heads of the figures in the sky, and shows them crowned with the names of Oedipus and Jocasta written above, in great characters of gold."
[152] That these representatives of royalty sometimes meet with such accidents, appears by the following letter from a late lecturer upon heads, at a time when he belonged to a company of comedians at Yarmouth:—
"Yarmouth Gaol, 27th May 1761.
"Sir,—When I parted from you at Lincoln, I thought long before now to have met with some oddities worth acquainting you with. It is grown a fashion of late to write lives: I now, and for a long time, have had leisure sufficient to undertake mine, but want materials for the latter part of it; for my existence now cannot properly be called living, but what the painters term still life, having ever since March 13th been confined in this town gaol for a London debt. As the hunted deer is always shunned by the happier herd, so am I deserted by the company, my share taken off, and no support left me except what my wife can spare out of hers: