Many good stories are told of the facetiousness of Dublin audiences. Here is one that Macready used to relate:—One night while performing “Pierre” in Venice Preserved, the Jaffier, an actor ponderous in person as well as in style, was drowsing out his dying speech, when a voice from the gallery exclaimed, “Ah, now, die at once!” to which another from the opposite side of the house responded, “Hould your tongue, you blackguard!” then, in a patronising tone to the Jaffier, “Take your time now!”
There was humour, and what is often much akin to that, pathos, in the appeal wrung from the unlucky representative of crook-backed Richard, who, finding it impossible to make head against the disapprobation evoked by his histrionic efforts, dropped blank verse, and in very plain prose told his audience—“Mr. Kean is playing this part in London at a salary of thirty pounds a night; I receive but fifteen shillings a week; and if it isn’t good enough for the money, may Heaven give you more humanity!”
At a crowded country theatre in France a woman fell from the gallery into the pit, and was picked up by one of the spectators, who, hearing her groaning, asked her if she was much injured. “Much injured!” exclaimed the woman; “I should think I am. I have lost the best seat in the very middle of the front row.”
THE BALD BARON
Or, THE FALSE HEIR AND THE ABSENT WILL
A SENSATIONAL DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS.
Bald Baron. Alas, noble stranger, my heir was taken off eighty years ago!
Noble Stranger. Yer’s a-go—old man, be-hold thy long-lost chyield.
(They embrace.)