The Master of the Shell

by Talbot Baines Reed

Railsford, after what he had witnessed, was prepared to admit this, and left the disciple of the dramatic Muse to himself and the lamp-post, and secretly hoped when the performance of the Comedians came off he might get an “order” for the stalls.

Although the Grandcourt House Comedians were an old institution, they had not always been equally flourishing. At Railsford’s, for instance, in past years they had decidedly languished. The performances had possibly been comic, but that was due to the actors, not the author, for the scenes chosen were usually stock selections from the tragedies of Shakespeare; such, for instance, as the death of King Lear, the ghost scene in Hamlet, the conspirators’ scene in Julius Caesar, and the banquet in Macbeth. But as soon, as the irrepressible Wake got hold of the reins, as of course he did, the old order changed with startling rapidity. The new director made a clean sweep of Shakespeare and all his works.

“What’s the fun of doing Roman citizens in Eton jackets and white chokers,” said he, “and sending everybody to sleep? Let’s give them a change, and make them laugh.”

As if everybody hadn’t laughed for years at the Roman citizens in Eton jackets!

So he hunted about and made inquiries of friends who were supposed to know, and finally submitted to the company a certain screaming farce, entitled, After You! with—so the description informed him—two funny old gentlemen, one low comedian, two funny old ladies, and one maid-of-all-work, besides a few walking gentlemen and others. It sounded promising, and a perusal of the piece showed that it was very amusing. I cannot describe it, but the complications were magnificent; the two old gentlemen, one very irascible the other very meek, were, of course, enamoured of the two old ladies, one very meek, and the other very irascible; the low comedian was, of course, the victim and the plague of both couples, and took his revenge by the usual expedient of siding with each against the other, and being appointed the heir to both. The walking gentlemen were—need it be said?—the disappointed heirs; and the maid-of-all-work, as is the manner of such persons, did everybody’s work but her own.

The parts were allotted with due care and discrimination. The two funny old gentlemen were undertaken by Sherriff and Ranger, the two funny old ladies by Dimsdale and Maple, the low comedian by Sir Digby Oakshott, and the maid-of-all-work by Arthur Herapath. As for the walking gentlemen, cabmen, detective, et hoc genus omne, they were doled out to anyone who chose to take them. There had been no regular rehearsals yet, but private preparation, of the hole-and-corner kind I have described, had been going on for a week or so. The actors themselves had been looking forward with eagerness—not to say trepidation—to the first rehearsal, which was appointed to take place this evening in the Fourth class-room, in the presence of Wake and Stafford, and a few other formidable critics of the upper school. Great, therefore, was the dismay when it was rumoured that the low comedian and the maid-of-all-work were on the sick list with a doctor’s certificate.

The first impulse was to postpone the date, but on Wake representing that there was no evening for ten days on which they could get the use of the room, it was resolved to do the best they could with the parts they had, and read the missing speeches from the book. Although the house generally was excluded from the rehearsals, the Fourth-form boys managed to scramble in on the strength of the class-room in which the performance was to take place being their own. And besides the invited guests named above, it was frequently found, at the end of a performance, when the gas was turned up, that the room was fuller of Juniors and Babies than it had been when the curtain rose.

On the present occasion, not being a full-dress rehearsal, there was no curtain, nor was there anything to distinguish the actors from their hearers, save the importance of their faces and the evident nervousness with which they awaited the signal to begin.

And here let me give my readers a piece of information. A screaming farce is ever so much more difficult to act than a tragedy of Shakespeare. Any—well, any duffer can act Brutus or Richard the Third or the Ghost of Banquo, but it is reserved only to a few to be able to do justice to the parts of Bartholomew Bumblebee or Miss Anastatia Acidrop. And when one comes to compare the paltry exploits and dull observations of the old tragedy heroes with the noble wit and sublime actions of their modern rivals it is not to be wondered at! So it happened on the present occasion.

After You was far too ambitious a flight for the Comedians at Railsford’s; they had far better have stuck to King Lear. In the first place, none of the characters seemed to understand what was expected of them. Sherriff, the funny, irascible old gentleman, skulked about in the back of the scene, and tapped his fingers lightly on the top of his hat, and stamped his foot gently, with the most amiable of smiles on his countenance. His one idea of irascible humour seemed to be to start every few moments to leave the room, and then stop short half-way to the door, and utter a few additional remarks over his shoulder, and then to make again for the door with a noise which sounded half-way between a sneeze and the bleating of a goat.