“I can never do it,” he wailed to me. “I haven't had time to form a conception of it and to get up byplay. You see, it's an eccentric character part,—a man from the country whom everybody takes for a fool, but who shows up strong at the last. I can't—”
“Oh, don't act it. You're only engaged in the emergency, you know. Simply go on and say your lines and come off.”
“That's all I can do,” he said, with a dubious shake of the head. “If only I'd had time to study it!”
American plays had taken foothold, and this premier of a new one by an author of two previous successes drew a “typical first night audience.” Newgag, having abandoned all idea of making a hit, or of acting the part any further than the mere delivery of the speeches went, was no longer inordinately nervous. When he first entered he was a trifle frightened, and his unavoidable lack of prepared stage business made him awkward and embarrassed for a time. The awkwardness remained, but the embarrassment eventually passed away. He spoke in his natural voice and retained his actual manner. When the action required him to laugh, he did so, exhibiting his characteristic perfunctory smile.
He received a special call before the curtain after the third act. He had no thought that it was meant for him until the stage manager pushed him out from the wings. He came back looking distressed.
“Are they guying me?” he asked the stage manager.
The papers agreed the next day that one of the hits of the performance was made by Newgag “in an odd part which he had conceived in a strikingly original way, and impersonated with wonderful finish and subtle drollery.”
“What does it mean?” he gasped.
I enlightened him.
“My boy, you simply played yourself. Did it never occur to you that in your own person you're unconsciously one of the drollest men I ever saw?”