“Howson!” says Ball, “please give them the time.”
Ball goes into the stalls. The movement is repeated and repeated again, the last time entirely to Irving’s satisfaction.
In these passing notes I merely desire to give the reader a hint at the kind of work which was done at rehearsal on the Monday of the production of “Much Ado.” It lasted until a quarter-past five. Irving was there until the end. Out of sight of the audience he had done enough work to entitle him to a night’s rest; but, so far as the critics and the public were concerned, his labors were only just beginning. Shortly after seven he was on the stage again, and when the play began he was never more heartily engaged in his rôle as actor.
“Yes, I am rather tired,” he said, in his quiet way, when I spoke to him at the wing; “feel inclined to sit down,—hard work, standing about all day,—but this is the reward.”
He pointed to the setting of the garden scene, which was progressing quite smoothly.
“If we pull through with the cathedral set all right, one will not mind being a little tired.”
I waited to see the work done, and, though I am familiar with the business behind the scenes, I was glad to escape from the “rush and tumble” of it on this occasion. At the Lyceum every man knows the piece, or flat, for the position of which he is responsible. He goes about his work silently, and in list slippers; he fetches and carries without hurry; nothing seems more simple; you see the scene grow into completeness, silently but surely. At the Star, on this first night, it was, to all appearance, chaos. Wings were slid about; curtains unrolled; tapestries hauled up by unseen strings; great pillars were pushed here and there; images of saints were launched into space from the flies, to be checked by ropes, just as you might think they were coming to grief; a massive altar-piece was being railed in, while a painted canopy was hoisted over it; a company of musicians were led out of the way of falling scenes to join a chorus party of ladies and gentlemen, who were gradually losing themselves among a picturesque crowd of halberdiers. Everybody seemed to be in everybody’s way; it looked like a general scramble. Irving, with “Less noise, my boys—less noise!” continually on his lips, moved about among the throng; and as Ball, who had made a third and last effort to find a prominent position from which to conduct his band, stepped upon a bench, which was instantly drawn from under him by the stage hands who had it in charge, I went to the front of the house. Ball’s musicians struck up their impressive strains of the “Gloria,” and the curtain slowly rose upon the cathedral at Messina, as if it had been there all the time, only waiting the prompter’s signal. Pandemonium behind the curtain had given place to Paradise in front. It was a triumph of willing hands under intelligent and earnest direction.
II.
Next day, when the success of the night had been duly chronicled in the press,[63] I suggested to Irving that we should place on record some account of the manner in which the Lyceum scenery, dresses, and properties had been dealt with on the tour; to what extent the equipment with which he had set out had been used; and, as a concluding chapter, that we should tell the story of the production of “Much Ado” in New York. After a consultation with Loveday, and the verification of some necessary statistics, Irving exhausted the subject in a very pleasant and instructive chat, the points of which are not too technical to mislead the general reader, while they are sufficiently technical to be of special interest to actors and managers.