The Great "American Tragedian."
And in Macbeth, King Duncan, after being carved up by his treacherous kinsman with two white handled butcher-knives, returns as Hecate in the witch scenes, and afterwards as court physician to Lady M., besides which he generally blows the flourishes on the trumpet for the entrances of the King, beats the bass drum, and attends to the sheet-iron thunder.
I have always had a passion for theatricals, and was at one time of my variegated existence much more intimately connected with the stage than at present—and on reaching this city I felt, of course, a great desire to behold again the theatre, with all its brilliant fascinations—the light, the music, the varied scenery comprising gardens, chambers, cottages, mountains, "cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces," bar-rooms, churches, huts and hovels—to look again upon the glass jewels, the tinselled robes of mimic royalty, the pasteboard banquets and molasses wine, and all the glory, "pride, pomp and circumstance" and humbug which I once "knew so well," "et quorum magna pars fui."
So, with my trusty friends, Damphool and Bull Dogge, I wended my way to the Metropolitan Theatre No. 1, to see and hear the distinguished Mr. Rantanrave Hellitisplit, the notorious American tragedian, in his great, original, unapproachable, inconceivable, inexplicable, incomprehensible part of "What a bore O, the last of the Vollypogs."
I had heard so much of this great actor in this particular part, that I expected to behold nothing less than the "Eighth wonder of the world."
Opera glasses were continually levelled at us by people who, impelled by a laudable curiosity, were anxious to see all that could be seen. (Damphool says, that when you see a woman with one of these implements, you may be sure she wants to be looked at—and called my attention to the confirmatory fact, that all the ladies with the finest busts, and the best developed forms, wore their dresses the lowest in the neck, and sported the biggest opera glasses). (Bull Dogge asserts that they were invented by the author of "Staring made Easy," and "A Treatise on the Use of Globes.")
After a season of tramping by the intelligent audience, which seemed, by its measured regularity, to intimate that they had learned the motion in the treadmill, the bell jingled and the members of the orchestra entered, one by one.
The audience endured the prolonged tuning of the instruments, conducted in a masterly manner by the leader of the band, the music got "good ready" for a fair start, and at the word "go" they went.
Could not critically analyse the uproar, but it seemed to be composed of these elements: a predominance of drum and cymbals—a liberal allowance of flute and horn—a spasmodic sprinkling of trombone—a small quantity of oboe, and a great deal of fiddle. The tumult was directed by the leader, who waved the fiddle over his head, jumped up and down upon his seat, kicked up his heels, disarranged his shirt collar, threw his arms wildly about, stamped, made faces, and conducted himself as if he was dancing a frantic hornpipe for the gratification of the crazy whims of an audience of Bedlamites.
At length the curtain went up—two men came on and said something, then two others came on and did something—then the scene changed, and some others came on and listened to a shabby-looking general, who seemed to be their "magnus Apollo" and who certainly was very long-winded.