Some very queer things happen behind the scenes, and even on the stage in full view of the audience—occurrences that often mar the pleasure of the play for the people in the auditorium, and raise the wrath of the performer. Anything out of the usual run of business that occurs behind the scenes throws the players off the track frequently. There is a great deal of work going on at all times, out of sight or knowledge of the audience, and a slight disturbance may be an interruption fraught with dire disaster. There are actors and actresses in the wings, often, completing the memorization of their parts—"winging" parts, as it is called—or it may be going over their lines again, if they are not confident that they have full possession of them; and to these people, of course, an interruption is a matter of the merest moment. Actors and actresses have always been credited with good memories, but even the best memory may sometimes be thrown off the track, and, indeed, sometimes is, by an untoward or startling incident.

Speaking of memory, reminds me that an actor once memorized an entire newspaper, when they were smaller than now, in a single night. The actor was a man named Lyon, who was playing small parts through the country. An English actor committed the contents of the London Times, advertisements and all, within a week, besides studying a new part for every night. The feat was accomplished on a wager. An actor in London, sat through a play, and although he had never seen it before, could repeat every line and word of it when he got home. He sat down and wrote it out, and the copy thus written was used for the performance of the play in New York. Many readers will recollect the New York couple prosecuted by the Madison Square Theatre Company for selling copies of "Hazel Kirke" to companies that had no right to play the drama. The wife, it was explained, went to the theatre, sat the play out a few times, and dictated the lines to her husband from memory. She had been an actress. There are many other remarkable instances of swift and retentive memories in the profession, but one of the most astonishing of all these feats is what is known as "winging a part," an expression I have used before in this chapter. This consists in going on the stage without having studied the lines at all, the actor carrying the book in his pocket, and pulling it out every time he gets out of sight of the audience, studying the part in the "wings" until he receives his cue to go on again. This method of going through the part continues during the performance, the actor speaking the lines to the best of his ability, and following the text as closely as possible.

Returning to the subject of the chapter, there are several instances of actors and actresses, prominent and minor, receiving their death strokes on the stage while playing. Mistress Woffington, known as "lovely Peggy," while playing at Covent Garden, London, May 3, 1757, fell to the stage at the end of the fourth act of "As You Like it," in which she was playing Rosalind, and after muttering "O God! O God!" was carried home to die after a lingering confinement of three years to her bed. George Frederick Cooke received his death stroke in New York, while playing Sir Giles Overreach, and Edmund Kean died in England under similar circumstances. The elder Kean and his son Charles were playing together, the former having the role of Othello, the latter that of Iago. The date was March 25, 1833. The event, says a chronicler, created great excitement among play-goers; the house was crammed. Kean, who had worn himself out with dissipation, went through the part, "dying as he went," until he came to the "Farewell," and the strangely appropriate words, "Othello's occupation's gone." Then he gasped for breath and fell upon his son's shoulder, moaning, "I am dying—speak to them for me!" And so the curtain descended upon him—forever. His wife had separated from him. "Come home to me; forget and forgive!" he wrote her after he had been conveyed to Richmond. And she came. An hour before he died he sprang out of bed, exclaiming, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" and he expired with the dying words of Octavian, "Farewell, Flo—— Floranthe!" upon his lips. This was on May 15, 1833, and he was buried in Richmond churchyard. Instances of the same appalling kind might be multiplied, but it is not the purpose of the writer to cover the stage with gloom, or to cause death to masquerade any more than is absolutely necessary before the foot-lights. More interest will be felt, and the heart will be lighter and the appetite better, if we turn to the ludicrous incidents that have caused audiences ready to shed tears over a tragedy, to turn from the lachrymose attitude to one which might be represented as laughter holding both his sides.

Sol Smith tells a funny story about his earliest experiences on the stage; how he stole in through the back door before the performance, and hid in what he thought was a chest, but which turned out to be the coffin used in the play that evening, and when it was carried out on the stage young Smith was so terrified that he pushed up the lid and bounded out, to the surprise of both actors and audience. N.M. Ludlow, who was Smith's partner in the theatrical business, relates a somewhat similar incident about himself.

The awkward position of a "masher" who gets into the "wings" by some hook or crook is often extremely laughable. I saw a serio-comic vocalist—as the songstresses of the variety stage are named—astonish a well-dressed and admiring gentleman who was lounging around at his leisure,—having in some mysterious manner passed the stage door-keeper,—by handing him a pin and remarking, "Pin up my skirts." The man's eye-glass was knocked out of place by the impertinence of the demand, but he took the pin and obeyed the lady's command, and this, too, notwithstanding a second female in tights, was near by, who could have done the job a thousand times better. It was the sweet singer's little joke, though.

Charlotte Cushman and her sister were playing in Trenton, New Jersey, one night. The bill announced was "Romeo and Juliet," with Miss Cushman in her afterwards famous impersonation of the male character and her sister as Juliet. The ball-room of the town which was used as a theatre, when occasion required, was sadly lacking in scenery and properties. The sisters went to work, however, and succeeded in getting together everything they needed for the performance, except the balcony in the garden scene. After looking around they found an old bed-quilt, patched, and abounding in numerous colors; it was arranged that a colored bell-boy from an adjacent hotel should, while stationed in the side-scenes, out of view, hold up one end of the quilt while the fair Juliet supported the other. The boy was on hand in the evening, and everything went swimmingly until towards the end of the scene, and in a most tender part, the darkey stuck his head out from the side and said: "I say, Miss Cushing, I hear my bell ringin' an' Ize obliged to let my side ob de house drap!" He dropped the quilt; and not only the balcony, but "the house"—the audience—came down, and that brought the scene to an abrupt and ridiculous end.

Another occasion that was a source of infinite amusement to an audience that had been fully worked up to tragic interest in the play of "Hamlet," occurred at Baltimore, Maryland, a short time ago. The actor cast for King Claudius had given some offence to the call-boy—treated him badly in the presence of the company—so the boy made up his mind to have ample revenge. He got a needle, fitted a long piece of thread in it, and then placed it in the cushion chair that answered for the King's throne, in such a way that when the time arrived, by a simple jerk of the string he might move the needle skyward. He waited until Claudius was supposed to be most interested in the scene before the players, when jerk went the thread, and King Claudius, with an alacrity unbecoming royalty, bounded out of his chair as quickly as if he had suddenly sat down upon the sharp end of a lightning rod. He dropped his sceptre and shouting "Ouch!" and nursing the injured part of his anatomy, jumped and danced around as if he had just caught sight of Hamlet's father's ghost. There was an interruption to the scene that the audience filled in with boisterous laughter. After the act the King, instead of sending one of his officers or guards for the call-boy, as befitted his exalted station, went scouring around the scenery himself, muttering the wildest threats and applying names to that poor boy that he could hardly have won for himself if he lived to be a thousand years old. It is hardly necessary to say that the call-boy did not wait around until the end of that act.

Mrs. Farrel, who was an actress of ability in her time, after being hissed in the part of Zaira, the heroine of "The Mourning Bride," and particularly in the dying scene, rose from the stage, and, approaching the foot-lights, expressed her regret at not having merited the applause of the audience, and explained that she had only accepted the part to oblige a friend, and hoped she would be excused for not playing it better. After this little speech she once more assumed a recumbent position, and was covered by the attendants with a black veil.

On one occasion a danseuse was listening to the protestations of an elderly lover, who was on the point of kissing her hand, when, as he stooped down his wig caught in the spangles of her dress. At that moment she was called to the stage, and made her appearance before the audience amid general laughter and applause; for on the front of her dress was the old beau's wig or scalp, hanging like a trophy from her belt. The applause was renewed when a bald head was seen projecting from the wing in search of its artificial covering. Stories, too, are told of imprudent admirers, who, having excited the jealousy of the stage carpenter, did not take the precaution to avoid traps, and as a consequence found themselves shot up into the "flies," or hastily dropped down to the dismal depths below the stage.

It is a very common trick to let people through a trap-door. I was present several times in the theatre when victims were carried down to the black and uninviting space below the stage. At a benefit given to a popular treasurer in St. Louis, a well-known young man who was in the liquor business was prevailed upon to appear in the programme and was put down for a lecture on temperance. The house was crowded that night, and P—— H—— was there in all the glory and wealth of his wardrobe, fully prepared to entertain the audience for half an hour or so. One of the boys had had the pleasure—so he termed it—of hearing H—— read his lecture through, and he gave the others the cue for the fun. The lecturer's table was placed just at the edge of a trap, and a trick candle, one such as is used in pantomime, and that keeps on growing taller and taller as the clown in vain tries to get within reach of the flame, stood at one side of the piece of furniture. H—— went on the stage bowing his neatest and smiling his sweetest. He was, of course, received with "thunders of applause," and storms of the same kind interrupted him at frequent intervals. At last the place was reached where the fun was to commence. "Bang!" went a gun in the air, the thunder rolled, there was red fire, and the floor parted. Down went H—— slowly, and up went the candle. He was so terror-stricken that he could do nothing, and was left to grope his way through the darkness to the stairs. The language he used when he once more found himself among his friends was stronger and less elegant than were the phrases of his lecture. He appears at no more benefits.

A young society man now of Cincinnati was treated in the same way, a trap having been left open upon which he stepped in the middle of a play in which he took the leading part with a company of amateurs, when down he went, to the dismay of his friends, the delight of the young fellows who had "put up the job," and to his own horror. In Leadville, Col., a serio-comic singer who had incurred the displeasure of one of the stage hands, was retiring into the side scenes bowing gracefully and kissing her hand to the audience, when suddenly down went one of her pink-clad limbs through an open trap, and her moment of triumph was turned into one of ridicule, and in addition to her mortification the leg was broken. Such tricks are always dangerous and more frequently are followed by mourning than fun.

Powell, the English actor, sought in vain one night for a "super" who was wont to dress him, but who on this occasion had undertaken to play the part of Lothario's corpse in "The Fair Penitent." Powell, who took the principal character, shouted in an angry tone for Warren, who could not help raising his head from out the coffin in which he was lying, and answering, "Here, sir." "Come, then," continued Powell, not knowing where the voice came from, "or I'll break every bone in your body!" Warren, knowing that his master was quite capable of carrying out the threat, sprang in his fright out of the coffin and ran in his winding-sheet across the stage.

The dying heroes and heroines of the present day wait to regain animation until the curtain has fallen, when they reappear in their own private characters at the foot-lights. A distinguished tenor, Signor Giuglini, being much applauded one night for his singing in the "Miserere" scene of "Il Trovatore," quitted the dungeons in which Manrico is supposed to be confined, came forward to the public, bowed, and then, not to cheat the executioner, went quietly back to prison again. A much more modern story of the confusion of facts with appearances is told, and with truth, of a distinguished military amateur, who had undertaken, for one occasion only, to play the part of Don Giovanni. In the scene in which the profligate hero is seized and carried down to the infernal regions, the principal character could neither persuade nor compel the demons, who were represented by private soldiers, to lay hands on one whom, whatever part he might temporarily assume, they knew well to be a colonel in the army. The demons kept at a respectful distance, and, when ordered in a loud whisper to lay hands on their dramatic victim, contented themselves with falling into an attitude of attention.

Jules Janin, in the collection of his feuilletons published under the title of "Histoire de la LittÉrature Dramatique," tells how in the ultra-tragic tragedy of "Tragadalbas," an actor, in the midst of a solemn tirade, let a set of false teeth fall from his mouth. This was nothing more or less than an accident which might happen to any one. Lord Brougham is said to have suffered the same misfortune while speaking in the House of Lords. But the great tragedian showed great presence of mind, and also a certain indifference to the serious nature of the work in which he was engaged, when he coolly stooped down, picked up the teeth, replaced them between his jaws, and continued his speech.

At some French provincial theatre, where a piece was being played in which the principal character was that of a blind man, the actor to whom this part had been assigned was unwell, and it seemed necessary to call upon another member of the company to read the part. Thus the strange spectacle was witnessed of a man supposed to be totally blind, who read every word he uttered from a paper he carried in his hand.

At an English performance of "William Tell," the traditional arrow, instead of going straight from Tell's bow to the heart—perforated beforehand—of the apple placed on the head of Tell's son, stopped half way on the wire over which it should have travelled to its destination. Everything, however, succeeded in Rossini's "William Tell," except the apple incident, as everything failed in "Dennis's Appius," except that thunder which Dennis recognized and claimed as his own when he heard it a few nights afterward in "Macbeth." Yet it has never been very difficult to represent thunder on the stage. One of the oldest theatrical anecdotes is that of the actor, who, playing the part of a bear, hears a clap of stage-thunder, and mistaking it for the real thing, makes the sign of the cross.