ON THE STAGE— —AND OFF.
Sometimes a voice from the “gods” may be the means of swamping a play. This was the case with the only dramatic piece ever written by Miss Braddon, the famous novelist. In one of the acts a child was kidnapped from its mother, and at the end, when all the characters in the play were being made happy, the restoration of the child was taken for granted. This was a dramatic mistake, and while suited for a novel, was not to be accepted in the theatre. The omission passed unnoticed for half a minute after the fall of the curtain; then one of the “gods” leaned over the gallery and coolly inquired—“What about the kid?” The piece was doomed in the uncontrollable peals of laughter that followed.
Instances where members of a cast, through ignorance or forgetfulness, take some scene or dialogue literally, are most mirth-moving, if somewhat rare. A highly entertaining instance of this kind occurred once when John Kemble was playing Hamlet in a country town. An actor, who was sustaining the part of “Guilderstein,” was, or imagined himself to be, a capable musician. “Hamlet,” in the usual course of the play, asked him—
“Will you play upon this pipe?”
“My Lord, I cannot.”
“I do beseech you.”
“Well, if your lordship insists upon it, I will do as well as I can.”
And to the great consternation of “Hamlet” and the amazement of the audience, he proceeded to play “God Save the King.”
A delightful piece of literalism is told about a property man who on one occasion was deputizing at a rehearsal of Macbeth in which a well-known actor was filling the title rôle. Here is a scrap of the dialogue—
Property Man. As I looked towards Birnam, anon, methought the wood began to move.