Not so well pleased was the English super who asked for a rise, pleading that he had been playing his part with the utmost care and zeal for a hundred consecutive nights. The manager inquired what part he played.
‘Why, sir,’ said he, ‘I am in the fourth act; I have to stake twenty pounds in the gambling scene.’
‘Very well,’ quoth the manager; ‘from to-night you shall double the stakes.’
Was it the same manager, we wonder, to whom Mr Sala’s small super came crying for a redress of his grievance? He had been cast to play ‘double-four’ in a pantomimic game of animated dominoes; but the dresser had allotted ‘double-four’ to his brother Jim, and insisted upon his being contented with donning the tabard of ‘four and a blank.’ He had protested, he had howled, he had punched Jim’s head, without effect.
‘What am I to do?’ the little pantomimist cried. ‘I’d sooner give up the profession, than be took down so many pegs without never ’avin done nuffin.’
‘Never mind, my boy,’ replied the amused stage-manager; ‘you shall play double-four; and if you behave yourself properly till Boxing Night you shall play double-six.’
That little fellow would never have made such a mess of his ‘business’ as did a street urchin who made his first appearance on any stage under the auspices of Mr J. C. Williamson, when the latter was playing Struck Oil in a country town. Led on by the ear by Lizzie Stofel, and asked: ‘What for you call me Dutchy?’ the debutant blurted out: ‘Cause you told me to!’—to the immense delight of the house. As soon as the act was over, he was told he might go in front; and before any one could stop him, he pulled back the curtain, climbed over the footlights into the orchestra, and coolly left the theatre.
At a performance of Norma at the Cork Theatre, in which Cruvelli played the heroine, the little daughters of the carpenter were pressed into service to represent the children of the priestess. As the curtain drew up on the second act they were seen lying on Norma’s couch quiet enough, for they were frightened nearly to death by the glare of light, the noise in front, and their unaccustomed surroundings. Their fright increased as Norma vented her jealous rage in recitative; and when, dagger in hand, she rushed towards them, they gave a shriek, tumbled off their couch, and ran off the stage as fast as their legs would take them, while the theatre rang with laughter, and Norma herself was fain to sit down until she had recovered from the effect of the unexpected episode.
Boleno the clown never evoked heartier merriment than that caused by his first appearance in public as one of the ‘principal waves’ in the nautical piece Paul Jones. It was at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, soon after the ‘real water,’ for which that house was long famous, had given place to the conventional canvas sea with its wave-rolling boys underneath. The last scene represented the ocean, bearing on its expanse of waters two ships preparing for action. The waves rolled as the boys bobbed up and down, and all would have gone well, had not Master Harry discovered a small hole in the canvas above him. Into this hole he put two fingers, intending to take a peep at the front of the house. The rotten stuff gave way; the waters of the Atlantic divided, and disclosed a small head besmeared with blue paint—the result of friction against the painted cloth. Catching sight of this, young Joe Grimaldi, who was the captain in command of one of the vessels, called out: ‘Man overboard!’ while the stage-carpenter shook his fist at the appalled offender, causing that luckless young rascal to disappear from view, and bob with such vigour at a remote distance, that a sudden storm seemed to have broken over the ocean far away.
An American critic, disgusted with the mob in Julius Cæsar, when that play was acted lately at Booth’s Theatre, because they shewed no discrimination, cheering the meanest soldier walking in procession, while they let Cæsar and Antony go by unrecognised, insists upon the supernumeraries being better taught. It is certainly the duty of the stage-manager to see that they are properly instructed, but it is no use to ask too much of them; like the actor-manager who called upon his supers to assume an oily smile of truculent defiance; and the author of Jeanne d’Arc, who in his stage directions requires the representatives of the English spectators at the procession to the pyre to give vent to a buzz and murmur of hatred and exultation; and the representatives of the Amazon’s countrymen to express their feelings in a buzz and murmur of love, pity, and sympathy. Such exacting gentlemen remind one of the French manager who fined one of the supernumeraries engaged in Paul et Virginie for not making himself black enough, and afterwards discovered that the man he had fined was a nigger born.