Stage-Land Part 7

HE. Halloo! got out o' bed the wrong side again? I say, Jane, if you go on like that you'll never get a man to marry you.

SHE. So I thought when I engaged myself to you.

HE. Oh! come, Jane, don't be hard.

SHE. Well, one of us must be hard. You're soft enough.

HE. Yes, I shouldn't want to marry you if I weren't. Ha! ha! ha!

SHE. Oh, you gibbering idiot! (_Said archly._)

HE. So glad I am. We shall make a capital match (_attempts to kiss her_).

SHE (_slipping away_). Yes, and you'll find I'm a match that can strike (_fetches him a violent blow over the side if the head_).

HE (_holding his jaw--in a literal sense, we mean_). I can't help feeling smitten by her.

SHE. Yes, I'm a bit of a spanker, ain't I?

HE. Spanker. I call you a regular stunner. You've nearly made me silly.

SHE (_laughing playfully_). No, nature did that for you, Joe, long ago.

HE. Ah, well, you've made me smart enough now, you boss-eyed old cow, you!

SHE. Cow! am I? Ah, I suppose that's what makes me so fond of a calf, you German sausage on legs! You--

HE. Go along. Your mother brought you up on sour milk.

SHE. Yah! They weaned you on thistles, didn't they?

And so on, with such like badinage do they hang about in the middle of that road, showering derision and contumely upon each other for full ten minutes, when, with one culminating burst of mutual abuse, they go off together fighting and the street is left once more deserted.

It is very curious, by the bye, how deserted all public places become whenever a stage character is about. It would seem as though ordinary citizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villains to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strand entirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer's afternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage.

As for Trafalgar Square, the hero always chooses that spot when he wants to get away from the busy crowd and commune in solitude with his own bitter thoughts; and the good old lawyer leaves his office and goes there to discuss any very delicate business over which he particularly does not wish to be disturbed.

And they all make speeches there to an extent sufficient to have turned the hair of the late lamented Sir Charles Warren White with horror. But it is all right, because there is n.o.body near to hear them. As far as the eye can reach, not a living thing is to be seen. Northumberland Avenue, the Strand, and St. Martin's Lane are simply a wilderness.

The only sign of life about is a 'bus at the top of Whitehall, and it appears to be blocked.

How it has managed to get blocked we cannot say. It has the whole road to itself, and is, in fact, itself the only traffic for miles round. Yet there it sticks for hours. The police make no attempt to move it on and the pa.s.sengers seem quite contented.

The Thames Embankment is an even still more lonesome and desolate part.

Wounded (stage) spirits fly from the haunts of men and, leaving the hard, cold world far, far behind them, go and die in peace on the Thames Embankment. And other wanderers, finding their skeletons afterward, bury them there and put up rude crosses over the graves to mark the spot.

The comic lovers are often very young, and when people on the stage are young they _are_ young. He is supposed to be about sixteen and she is fifteen. But they both talk as if they were not more than seven.

In real life "boys" of sixteen know a thing or two, we have generally found. The average "boy" of sixteen nowadays usually smokes cavendish and does a little on the Stock Exchange or makes a book; and as for love! he has quite got over it by that age. On the stage, however, the new-born babe is not in it for innocence with the boy lover of sixteen.

So, too, with the maiden. Most girls of fifteen off the stage, so our experience goes, know as much as there is any actual necessity for them to know, Mr. Gilbert notwithstanding; but when we see a young lady of fifteen on the stage we wonder where her cradle is.

The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love-making that the hero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make love in, with a fire and plenty of easy-chairs, so that they can sit about in picturesque att.i.tudes and do it comfortably. Or if they want to do it out of doors they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in the center, and moonlight.

The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it standing up all the time, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking and curiously narrow rooms in which there is no furniture whatever and no fire.

And there is always a tremendous row going on in the house when the comic lovers are making love. Somebody always seems to be putting up pictures in the next room, and putting them up boisterously, too, so that the comic lovers have to shout at each other.

THE PEASANTS.

They are so clean. We have seen peasantry off the stage, and it has presented an untidy--occasionally a disreputable and unwashed--appearance; but the stage peasant seems to spend all his wages on soap and hair-oil.

They are always round the corner--or rather round the two corners--and they come on in a couple of streams and meet in the center; and when they are in their proper position they smile.

There is nothing like the stage peasants' smile in this world--nothing so perfectly inane, so calmly imbecile.

They are so happy. They don't look it, but we know they are because they say so. If you don't believe them, they dance three steps to the right and three steps to the left back again. They can't help it. It is because they are so happy.

When they are more than usually rollicking they stand in a semicircle, with their hands on each other's shoulders, and sway from side to side, trying to make themselves sick. But this is only when they are simply bursting with joy.

Stage peasants never have any work to do.

Sometimes we see them going to work, sometimes coming home from work, but n.o.body has ever seen them actually at work. They could not afford to work--it would spoil their clothes.

They are very sympathetic, are stage peasants. They never seem to have any affairs of their own to think about, but they make up for this by taking a three-hundred-horse-power interest in things in which they have no earthly concern.

What particularly rouses them is the heroine's love affairs. They could listen to them all day.

They yearn to hear what she said to him and to be told what he replied to her, and they repeat it to each other.

In our own love-sick days we often used to go and relate to various people all the touching conversations that took place between our lady-love and ourselves; but our friends never seemed to get excited over it. On the contrary, a casual observer might even have been led to the idea that they were bored by our recital. And they had trains to catch and men to meet before we had got a quarter through the job.

Ah, how often in those days have we yearned for the sympathy of a stage peasantry, who would have crowded round us, eager not to miss one word of the thrilling narrative, who would have rejoiced with us with an encouraging laugh, and have condoled with us with a grieved "Oh," and who would have gone off, when we had had enough of them, singing about it.

By the way, this is a very beautiful trait in the character of the stage peasantry, their prompt and unquestioning compliance with the slightest wish of any of the princ.i.p.als.

"Leave me, friends," says the heroine, beginning to make preparations for weeping, and before she can turn round they are clean gone--one lot to the right, evidently making for the back entrance of the public-house, and the other half to the left, where they visibly hide themselves behind the pump and wait till somebody else wants them.

The stage peasantry do not talk much, their strong point being to listen. When they cannot get any more information about the state of the heroine's heart, they like to be told long and complicated stories about wrongs done years ago to people that they never heard of. They seem to be able to grasp and understand these stories with ease. This makes the audience envious of them.

When the stage peasantry do talk, however, they soon make up for lost time. They start off all together with a suddenness that nearly knocks you over.

They all talk. n.o.body listens. Watch any two of them. They are both talking as hard as they can go. They have been listening quite enough to other people: you can't expect them to listen to each other. But the conversation under such conditions must be very trying.

And then they flirt so sweetly! so idyllicly!