There are a score of other cases on record in which death has appeared on the stage of a theater for the purpose of marking its victims.
It was a fateful irony that Signor Castelmary should be fatally stricken on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the midst of the bright and romantic scenes of "Martha." A tragi-comedy if ever there were one!
Yet this overpowering mingling of the real and the unreal is by no means an unusual element of stage life. History records many instances of deaths on the stage; some of them the result of accidental violence, but by far the greater number caused by the sudden effect of overwrought emotions.
Sometimes death comes instantaneously; sometimes the blow is received from which recovery is impossible, and the actor lingers on with nothing but suffering and death before him. Both tragedy and comedy have been the scenes of actual death on the stage.
Peg Woffington, it will be remembered, was stricken with paralysis while playing Rosalind. She had gone through the entire play with a life and spirit which gave no sign of the weakening powers plainly evident to her companions on the stage, and had nearly concluded the epilogue:
"If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me——"
Her last words on the stage had been spoken. Staggering off the scene, she fell apparently lifeless, and recovered only to live three long years of loneliness and retirement away from the work she loved.
But most wonderful of all was Edmund Kean's last night on the stage. He was playing Othello to his son's Iago at Covent Garden, and, worn out with physical and mental excess, barely managed to conceal his incapacity and weakness from the audience.
Reaching the great scenes of the third act, they proved too much for his waning powers, and uttering the words, "Othello's occupation's gone," he began the next line, but was unable to complete it, and fell into his son's arms, with the faint cry:
"God, I am dying! Speak to them, Charles."