"But you've never tried them with the Quarrel Scene from Julius Cæsar before. Everybody has a breaking point."
The argument was specious, but Hugo shook his head.
"In the good old days I could have done Hamlet's Soliloquy, and the hall would have rung with hearty cheers. It's just this modern lawlessness and Bolshevism. There was a very tough collection of the Budd Street element standing at the back, who should never have been let in. They started straight away chi-yiking the vicar during his short address. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I merely supposed that they wanted him to cheese it and let the entertainment start. I thought that directly Ronnie and I came on we should grip them. But we were barely a third of the way through when there were loud cries of 'Tripe!' and 'Get off!'"
"I see what that meant. You hadn't gripped them."
"I was never so surprised in my life. Mark you, I'll admit that Ronnie was perfectly rotten. He kept foozling his lines and saying 'Oh, sorry!' and going back and repeating them. You can't get the best out of Shakespeare that way. The fact is, poor old Ronnie is feeling a little low just now. He got a letter this morning from his man, Bessemer, in London, a fellow who has been with him for years and has few equals as a trouser presser, springing the news out of an absolutely clear sky that he's been secretly engaged for weeks and is just going to get married and leave Ronnie. Naturally, it has upset the poor chap badly. With a thing like that on his mind, he should never have attempted an exacting part like Brutus in the Quarrel Scene."
"Just what the audience thought, apparently. What happened after that?"
"Well, we buzzed along as well as we could, and we had just got to that bit about digesting the venom of your spleen though it do split you, when the proletariat suddenly started bunging vegetables."
"Vegetables?"
"Turnips, mostly, as far as I could gather. Now, do you see the significance of that, John?"
"How do you mean, the significance?"