Part 6 (2/2)
GAS.--GAIETY.--SPECIAL NOTICE.--Arrangements (if necessary) have been made to light this Theatre with lime-lights and oil.
CHAPTER XI.
”COME, THE RECORDERS!”
Among the earlier emotions of the youthful playgoer, whose enthusiasm for dramatic representations is generally of a very fervid and uncompromising kind, must be recognised his pity for the money-taker, forbidden by the cares of office to witness a performance, and his envy of the musicians, so advantageously stationed for the incessant enjoyment of the delights of the theatre. But he perceives, with regretful wonder, that these gentlemen are habitually negligent of their opportunities, and fail to appreciate the peculiar happiness of their position; that they are apt, indeed, their services not being immediately required, to abandon their instruments, and quietly to steal away through the cramped doorway that admits to the mysterious regions beneath the stage. He is grieved to note that for them, at any rate, the play is _not_ ”the thing.” One or two may remain--the performer on the drum, I have observed, is often very faithful in this respect, though I have failed to discover any special reason why a love of histrionic efforts should be generated by his professional occupation--but the majority of the orchestra clearly manifest an almost indecent alacrity in avoiding all contemplation of the displays on the other side of the foot-lights. They are but playgoers on compulsion. They even seem sometimes, when they retain their seats, to prefer gazing at the audience, rather than at the actors, and thus to advertise their apathy in the matter. And I have not heard that the parsimonious manager, who proposed to reduce the salaries of his musicians on the ground that they every night enjoyed admission to the best seats, for which they paid nothing, ”even when stars were performing,” ever succeeded in convincing his band of the justice of his arguments.
The juvenile patron of the drama will, of course, in due time become less absorbed in his own view of the situation, and learn that just as one man's meat is another man's poison, so the pleasures of some are the pains of others. He will cease to search the faces of the orchestra for any evidence of ”pride of place,” or enjoyment of performances they witness, not as volunteers, but as pressed men. He will understand that they are at work, and are influenced by a natural anxiety to escape from work as soon as may be. So, the overture ended, they vanish, and leave the actors to do their best or their worst, as the case may be. But our young friend's sentiments are not peculiar to himself--have been often shared, indeed, by very experienced persons.
We have heard of comic singers and travelling entertainment givers who have greatly resented the air of indifference of their musical accompanist. They have required of him that he should feel amused, or affect to feel amused, by their efforts. He has had to supplement his skill as a musician by his readiness as an actor. It has been thought desirable that the audience should be enabled to exclaim: ”The great So-and-So _must_ be funny! Why, see, the man at the piano, who plays for him every night, who has, of course, seen his performances scores and scores of times, even _he_ can't help laughing, the great So-and-So is so funny.” The audience, thus convinced, find themselves, no doubt, very highly amused. Garrick himself appears, on one occasion at any rate, to have been much enraged at the indifference of a member of his band. Cervetto, the violoncello player, once ventured to yawn noisily and portentously while the great actor was delivering an address to the audience. The house gave way to laughter. The indignation of the actor could only be appeased by Cervetto's absurd excuse, that he invariably yawned when he felt ”the greatest rapture,”
and to this emotion the address to the house, so admirably delivered by his manager, had justified him in yielding. Garrick accepted the explanation, perhaps rather on account of its humour than of its completeness.
Music and the drama have been inseparably connected from the most remote date. Even in the cart of Thespis some corner must have been found for the musician. The custom of chanting in churches has been traced to the practice of the ancient and pagan stage. Music pervaded the whole of the cla.s.sical drama, was the adjunct of the poetry: the play being a kind of recitation, the declamation composed and written in notes, and the gesticulations even being accompanied. The old miracle plays were a.s.sisted by performers on the horn, the pipe, the tabret, and the flute--a full orchestra in fact. Mr. Payne Collier, in his ”Annals of the Stage,” points out that at the end of the prologue to ”Childermas Day,” 1512, the minstrels are required to ”do their diligence,” the same expression being employed at the close of the performance, when they are besought either themselves to dance, or to play a dance for the entertainment of the company:
Also ye menstrelles doth your diligence Afore our depertying geve us a daunce.
The Elizabethan stage relied greatly upon the aid of trumpets, cornets, &c., for the ”soundings” which announced the commencement of the prologue, and for the ”alarums” and ”flourishes” which occurred in the course of the representation. Malone was of opinion that the band consisted of some eight or ten musicians stationed in ”an upper balcony over what is now called the stage-box.” Collier, however, shows that the musicians were often divided into two bands, and quotes a stage direction in Marston's ”Antonio's Revenge,” 1602: ”While the measure is dancing, Andrugio's ghost is placed betwixt the music houses.” In a play of later date, Middleton's ”Chaste Maid in Cheapside,” 1630, appears the direction: ”While the company seem to weep and mourn, there is a sad song in the music-room.” Boxes were then often called rooms, and one was evidently set apart for the use of the musicians. In certain of Shakespeare's plays the musicians are clearly required to quit their room for awhile, and appear upon the stage among the _dramatis personae._
The practice of playing music between the acts is of long standing, the frequent inappropriateness of these interludes having been repeatedly commented on, however. A writer in the last century expressly complains that at the end of every act, the audience, ”carried away by a jig of Vivaldi's, or a concerto of Giardini's, lose every warm impression relative to the piece, and begin again cool and unconcerned as at the commencement of the representation.” He advocates the introduction of music adapted to the subject: ”The music after an act should commence in the tone of the preceding pa.s.sion, and be gradually varied till it accords with the tone of the pa.s.sion that is to succeed in the next act,” so that ”cheerful, tender, melancholy, or animated impressions” may be inspired, as the occasion may need. At the conclusion of the second act of ”Gammer Gurton's Needle,” 1566, Diccon, addressing himself to the musicians, says simply: ”In the meantime, fellows, pipe up your fiddles.” But in a later play, the ”Two Italian Gentlemen,” by Anthony Munday, printed about 1584, the different kinds of music to be played after each act are stated, whether a ”pleasant galliard,” a ”solemn dump,” or a ”pleasant allemaigne.” So Marston in his ”Sophonisba,” 1606, indicates particularly the instruments he would have played during the pauses between the acts. After act one, ”the cornets and organs playing loud full of music;” after act two, ”organs mixed with recorders;” after act three, ”organs, viols, and voices;” with ”a base lute and a treble viol” after act four. In the course of this play, moreover, musical accompaniments of a descriptive kind were introduced, the stage direction on two occasions informing us that ”infernal music plays softly.” Nabbes, in the prologue to his ”Hannibal and Scipio,” 1637, alludes at once to the change of the place of action of the drama, and to the performance of music between the acts:
The place is sometimes changed, too, with the scene, Which is transacted as the music plays Betwixt the acts.
The closing of the theatres by the Puritans, in 1642, plainly distressed the musicians almost as much as the players. Their occupation was practically gone, although not declared illegal by Act of Parliament. ”Our music,” writes the author of ”The Actor's Remonstrance,” 1643, ”that was held so delectable and precious that they scorned to come to a tavern under twenty s.h.i.+llings for two hours, now wander with their instruments under their cloaks--I mean such as have any--into all houses of good fellows.h.i.+p, saluting every room where there is company with: 'Will you have any music, gentlemen?'”
At the Restoration, however, king, actors, and orchestra all enjoyed their own again. Presently, for the first time it would seem in an English theatre, the musicians were a.s.signed that intrenched position between the pit and the stage they have so long maintained. ”The front of the stage is opened, and the band of twenty-four violins with the harpsicals and theorbos which accompany the voices are placed between the pit and the stage. While the overture is playing the curtain rises and discovers a new frontispiece joined to the great pilasters on each side of the stage,” &c. So runs one of the preliminary stage directions in the version of Shakespeare's ”Tempest,” arranged by Dryden and Davenant for performance at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1667. The change was, no doubt, introduced by Davenant in pursuance of French example. The authors of the ”Histoire Universelle des Theatres” state, regarding the French stage, that after the disuse of the old chorus in 1630, ”a la place du chant qui distinguoit les actes et qui marquoit les repos necessaires, on introduisit des joueurs d'instrumens, qui d'abord furent places sur les ailes du theatre, ou ils executoient differens airs avant la commencement de la piece et entre les actes. Ensuite ils furent mis au fond des troisieme loges, puis aux secondes, enfin entre le theatre et la parterre, ou ils sont restes.”
Theatres differ little save in regard to their dimensions. The minor house is governed by the same laws, is conducted upon the same system, as the major one. It is as a humbler and cheaper edition, but it repeats down to minute particulars the example of its costly original.
The orchestra, or some form of orchestra, is always indispensable.
Even that street-corner tragedy which sets forth the story of Punch and Judy, could not be presented without its pandean-pipe accompaniment. The lowest vagrant theatre must, like the lady in the nursery ballad, have music wherever it goes. No doubt this is often of most inferior quality, suggestive of a return to very early musical methods. But poverty constrains to primitiveness. Mr. Pepys, comparing the state of the stage under Killigrew to what it had been in earlier years, notes: ”Then, two or three fiddlers; now, nine or ten of the best,” &c. The orchestra of a strolling theatre has been known to consist of one fiddler only, and he has been required to combine with his musical exertions the discharge of secretarial duties, enlivened by occasional appearances on the stage to strengthen casts, or help fill up the scene. The strollers' band is often of uncertain strength. For when the travelling company meets with misadventure, the orchestra are usually the first to prove unfaithful.
They are the Swiss of the troop. The receipts fail, and the musicians desert. They carry their gifts elsewhere, and seek independent markets. The fairs, the racecourses, the country inn-doors, attract the fiddler, and he strolls on his own account, when the payment of salaries is suspended. A veteran actor was wont to relate his experiences of fifty years ago as a member of the Stratford-upon-Avon company, when the orchestra consisted only of a fife and a tambourine, the instrumentalists performing, as they avowed, ”not from notes but entirely by ear.” Presently the company removed to Warwick for the race week. But here the managerial difficulties increased--no band whatever could be obtained! This was the more distressing in that the performances were to be of an illegitimate character: a ”famous tight-rope dancer” had been engaged. The dancer at once declared that his exhibition without music was not for a moment to be thought of.
One of the company thereupon obligingly offered his services. He could play upon the violin: four tunes only. Now, provided an instrument could be borrowed for the occasion, and provided, moreover, the tight-rope artist could dance to the tune of ”There's Nae Luck,” or ”Drink to Me Only,” or ”Away with Melancholy,” or the ”National Anthem,” here was a way out of the dilemma, and all might yet be well.
Unfortunately a violin was not forthcoming at any price, and the dancer declared himself quite unable to dance to the airs stated! How was faith to be kept with the public? At the last moment a barrel-organ was secured. The organist was a man of resources. In addition to turning the handle of his instrument, he contrived to play the triangle and the pan-pipes. Here, then, was a full band. The dancer still demurred. He must be a.s.sisted by a ”clown to the rope,”
to chalk his soles, amuse the audience while he rested, and perform other useful duties. Another obliging actor volunteered his help. He would ”by special desire and on this occasion only,” appear as clown.
So having played Pangloss in the ”Heir at Law,” the first piece, he exchanged his doctorial costume for a suit of motley, and the performance ”drew forth,” as subsequent playbills stated, ”universal and reiterated bursts of applause from a crowded and elegant audience.” The experiment of the barrel-organ orchestra was not often repeated. The band of the Leamington Theatre was lent to the Warwick house, the distance between the establishments being only two miles.
The Leamington audience were provided with music at the commencement of the evening only; the Warwick playgoers dispensed with orchestral accompaniments until a later period in the performances.
CHAPTER XII.
PROLOGUES.
”It is singular,” Miss Mitford wrote to Mr. Fields, her American publisher, ”that epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of my plays--'Foscari,' and prologues at another--'Rienzi.'” ”Foscari” was originally produced in 1826; ”Rienzi” in 1828. According to Mr. Planche, however, the first play of importance presented without a prologue was his adaptation of Rowley's old comedy, ”A Woman never Vext,” produced at Covent Garden on November 9th, 1824, with a grand pageant of the Lord Mayor's Show as it appeared in the time of Henry VI. At one of the last rehearsals, Fawcett, the stage manager, inquired of the adapter if he had written a prologue? ”No.” ”A five-act play and no prologue! Why, the audience will tear up the benches!” But they did nothing of the kind. They took not the slightest notice of the omission. After that, little more was heard of the time-honoured custom which had ruled that prologues should, according to Garrick's description of them--
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