Comedian. Is your play still running?
Tragedian. No—but the manager is!
At a theatre in Glasgow the writer witnessed a very amusing incident in the course of a representation of Theodora by Miss Grace Hawthorne’s Company. There is a tremendously “bluggy” scene in this drama, which closes with the heroine standing in the middle, while a collection of corpses strew the stage. On the night in question the drop curtain refused to perform its office, and after coming half-way down complacently stuck there. The dead bodies lay in dreadful suspense for some time, and then in despair got up and walked off!
Bill. See that cove, ’Arry? He takes the part of Hamlet.
’Arry. Well, good luck to him if the bloke’s in the right.
While this immensely delighted a nineteenth-century audience as an absurdity, it appears to have been quite the custom on the Restoration Stage, when players “died” in front of the curtain and were either carried off or walked away afterwards! This is seen from the famous epilogue spoken by Nell Gwynne in Dryden’s Tyrannick Love. She played a serious part on this occasion, and in the last act stabs herself twice, and dies. She lies dead on the stage; then, when the bearer comes to carry her off, she starts to her feet, exclaiming—
“Hold! Are you mad? You damned confounded dog! I am to rise and speak the epilogue.”
