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Real macaroni in "Masaniello," and real champagne in "Don Giovanni," in order that Leporello may have opportunities for "comic business" in the supper scene, are demanded by the customs of the operatic stage. Realism generally, indeed, is greatly affected in the modern theatre. The audiences of to-day require not merely that real water shall be seen to flow from a pump, or to form

cataract, but that real wine shall proceed from real bottles, and be fairly swallowed by the performers. In Paris a complaint was recently made that, in a scene representing an entertainment in modern fashionable society, the champagne supplied was only of a second-rate quality. Through powerful opera-glasses the bottle labels could be read, and the management's sacrifice of truthfulness to economy was severly criticised. The audience resented the introduction of the cheaper liquor as though they had themselves been constrained to drink it.

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As part also of the modern regard for realism may be noted the "cooking scenes which have frequently figured in recent plays. The old conjuring trick of making a pudding in a hat never won more admiration than is now obtained by such simple expedients as frying bacon or sausages, or broiling chops or steaks upon the stage in sight of the audience. The manufacture of paste for puddings or pies by one of the dramatis persona has also been

very favourably received, and the first glimpse of the real rolling-pin and the real flour to be thus employed, has always been attended with applause. In a late production, the opening of a soda-water bottle by one of the characters was generally regarded as quite the most impressive effect of the representation.

At Christmas-time, when the shops are so copiously supplied with articles of food as to suggest a notion that the world is content to live upon half-rations at other seasons of the year, there is extraordinary storing of provisions at certain of the theatres. These are not edible, however; they are due to the art of the property-maker, and are designed for what are known as the "spill and pelt" scenes of the pantomime. They represent juicy legs of mutton, brightly streaked with read and white, quartern loaves, trussed fowls, turnips, carrots, and cabbages, strings of sausages, fish of all kinds, sizes, and colours; they are to be stolen and pocketed by the clown, recaptured by the policeman, and afterwards wildly whirled in all directions in a general "rally" of all the characters in the harlequinade. They are but adroitly painted canvas stuffed with straw or sawdust. No doubt the property-maker sometimes views from the wings with considerable dismay the severe usage to which his works of art are subjected. "He's an excellent clown, sir," one such was once heard to say, regarding from his own standpoint the performance of

the jester in question; "he don't destroy the properties as some do." Perhaps now and then, too, a minor actor or a supernumerary, who has derided "the sham wine parties of Macbeth and others," may lament the scandalous waste of seeming good victuals in a pantomime. But, as a rule, these performers are not fanciful on this, or, indeed, on any other subject. They are not to be deceived by the illusions of the stage; they are themselves too much a part of its shams and artifices. Property legs of mutton are to them not even food for reflection, but simply properties," and nothing more. Otherwise, a somewhat too cynical disposition might be unfortunately encouraged; and the poor player, whose part requires him to be lavish of banknotes of enormous amount upon the stage, and the hungry "super," constrained to maltreat articles of food which he would prize dearly if they were but real, might be too bitterly affected by noting the grievous discrepancy existing between their private and their public careers the men they are and the characters they seem to be.

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CHAPTER IV.

STAGE WIGS.

WIGS have claims to be considered amongst the most essential appliances of the actors; means at once of their disguise and their decoration. Without false hair the fictions of the stage could scarcely be set forth. How could the old look young, or the young look old, how could scanty locks be augmented, or baldness concealed, if the coiffeur did not lend his aid to the costumier? Nay, oftentimes calvity has to be simulated, and fictitious foreheads of canvas assumed. Hence the quaint advertisements of the theatrical hairdresser in professional organs, that he is prepared to vend

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old men's bald pates" at a remarkably cheap rate. King Lear has been known to appear without his beard-indeed Mr. Garrick, as his portraits reveal, played the part with a cleanshaven face, wearing ruffles, knee-breeches, silk stockings, and diamond buckles, in strange contrast with his flowing robe of ermine

VOL. II.

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trimmed velvet; but could the ghost of Hamlet's father ever have defied the poet's portraiture of him, and walked the platform of Elsinore Castle without a "sable-silvered chin? Has an audience ever viewed tolerantly a bald Romeo, or a Juilet grown gray in learning how to impersonate that heroine to perfection? It is clear that at a very early date the players must have acquired the simple arts of altering and amending their personal appearance in these respects.

The accounts still extant of the revels at court during the reigns of Elizabeth and James contain many charges for wigs and beards. Thus a certain John Ogle is paid "for four yeallowe heares for head attires for women, twenty-six shillings and eightpence;" and "for a pound of heare twelvepence." Probably the auburn tresses of Elizabeth had made blonde wigs fashionable. John Owgle, who is no doubt the same trader, receives thirteen shillings and fourpence for "eight long white berds at twenty pence the peece." He has charges also on account of "a black fyzician's berde," "berds white and black," "heares for palmers," "berds for fyshers," &c. It would seem, however, that these adornments were really made of silk. There is an entry : “John Ogle for curling of heare made of black silk for Discord's heade (being sixty ounces), price of his woorkmanshipp thereon only is seven shillings and eightpence." And mention is

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