CHAPTER XVIII.

STAGE GHOSTS.

The ghost, as a vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct creature. As Bob Acres said of "damns," ghosts "have had their day;" or perhaps it would be more correct to say, their night. It may be some consolation to them, however, in their present fallen state, to reflect that they were at one time in the enjoyment of an almost boundless prosperity and popularity. For long years they were accounted among the most precious possessions of the stage. Addison writes in "The Spectator": "Among the several artifices which are put in practice by the poets, to fill the minds of the audience with terror, the first place is due to thunder and lightning, which are often made use of at the descending of a god, at the vanishing of a devil, or at the death of a tyrant. I have known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in very great alarm all the while it has been ringing. But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play, though he has done nothing but stalked solemnly across the stage, or rose through a cleft in it and sunk again without speaking one word. There may be a proper season for these several terrors, and when they only come in as aids and assistances to the poet, they are not only to be excused but to be applauded."

The reader may be reminded that Shakespeare has evinced a very decided partiality for ghosts. In "The Second Part of King Henry VI.," Bolingbroke, the conjurer, raises up a spirit. In "Julius Cæsar," Brutus is visited in his tent by the ghost of the murdered Cæsar. In "Hamlet," we have, of course, the ghost of the late king. In "Macbeth" the ghost of Banquo takes his seat at the banquet, and in the caldron scene we are shown apparitions of "an armed head," "a bloody child," "a child crowned, with a tree in his hand," and "eight kings" who pass across the stage, "the last with a glass in his hand." In "Richard III." quite a large army of ghosts present and address themselves alternately to Richard and to Richmond. The ghosts of Prince Edward, Henry VI., Clarence, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, Hastings, the two young Princes, Queen Anne, and Buckingham invoke curses upon the tyrant and blessings upon his opponent. It would be hard to find in the annals of the drama another instance of such an assembly of apparitions present upon the stage at the same time.

In Otway's tragedy of "Venice Preserved," the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre, which confronted the distracted Belvidera in the last scene, were for a long time very popular apparitions, although in later performances of the play it was thought proper to omit them, and to allow the audience to imagine their presence, or to conclude that Belvidera only fancied that she saw them. Here, however, is the extract from the original play:

BELVIDERA. Ha! look there! [_The Ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre rise together, both bloody._ My husband bloody, and his friend too! Murder! Who has done this? Speak to me, thou sad vision! [_Ghosts sink._ On these poor trembling knees, I beg it. Vanished! Here they went down. Oh! I'll dig, dig the den up. You shan't delude me thus. Ho! Jaffier, Jaffier, Peep up and give me but a look. I have him! I've got him, father! Oh, now I'll smuggle him! My love! my dear! my blessing! help me! help me! They have hold on me, and drag me to the bottom. Nay, now they pull so hard. Farewell. [_She dies._

MAID. She's dead. Breathless and dead.

This may seem very sad stuff, but it would be unfair to judge Otway's plays by this one extract. "Venice Preserved" is now shelved as an acting drama, but it was formerly received with extraordinary favour, and is by no means deficient in poetic merit. Campbell, the poet, speaks of it, in his life of Mrs. Siddons, as "a tragedy which so constantly commands the tears of audiences that it would be a work of supererogation for me to extol its tenderness. There may be dramas where human character is depicted with subtler skill--though Belvidera might rank among Shakespeare's creations; and 'Venice Preserved' may not contain, like 'Macbeth' and 'Lear,' certain high conceptions which exceed even the power of stage representation--but it is as full as a tragedy can be of all the pathos that is transfusable into action." Belvidera was one of Mrs. Siddons's greatest characters. Campbell notes that "until the middle of the last century the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre used to come in upon the stage, haunting Belvidera in her last agonies, which certainly require no aggravation from spectral agency." The play was much condensed for presentment on the stage; but it would not appear that Belvidera's dying speech, quoted above, was interfered with. Boaden, in his memoir of the actress, expressly commends Mrs. Siddons's delivery of the passage, "I'll dig, dig the den up!" and the action which accompanied the words.

For the time ghosts had been only incidental to a performance; by-and-by they were to become the main features and attractions of stage representation. Still they had not escaped ridicule and caricature. Fielding, in his burlesque tragedy of "Tom Thumb," introduced the audience to a scene between King Arthur and the ghost of Gaffer Thumb. The king threatens to kill the ghost, and prepares to execute his threat, when the apparition kindly explains to him, "I am a ghost and am already dead." "Ye stars!" exclaims King Arthur, "'tis well."

In his humorous notes to the published play, Fielding states, with mock gravity: "Of all the particulars in which the modern stage falls short of the ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the great scarcity of ghosts. Whence this proceeds I will not presume to determine. Some are of opinion that the moderns are unequal to that sublime sort of language which a ghost ought to speak. One says ludicrously that ghosts are out of fashion; another that they are properer for comedy; forgetting, I suppose, that Aristotle hath told us that a ghost is the soul of tragedy," &c. &c. But when, towards the commencement of the present century, melodrama was first brought upon the boards, the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe were being dramatised, and such pieces as "The Tale of Mystery," "The Bleeding Nun," and "The Castle Spectre," were obtaining public favour, it was clear that room was being made for the stage ghost; the way was cleared for it to become the be-all and the end-all of the performance, the prominent attraction of the evening.

Here is an extract from Lewis's "Castle Spectre," including certain stage directions, by no means the least important part of the play.

_Enter_ HASSAN, _hastily_.

HASSAN. My lord, all is lost! Percy has surprised the castle, and speeds this way!

OSMOND. Confusion! Then I must be sudden! Aid me, Hassan!

HASSAN _and_ OSMOND _force_ ANGELA _from her father, who suddenly disengages himself from_ MULEY _and_ ALARIC. OSMOND, _drawing his sword, rushes upon_ REGINALD, _who is disarmed, and beaten upon his knees; when at the moment that_ OSMOND _lifts his arm to stab him,_ EVELINA'S _ghost throws herself between them_. OSMOND _starts back and drops his sword._

OSMOND. Horror! What form is this?

ANGELA. Die!

_Disengages herself from_ HASSAN, _who springs suddenly forward, and plunges her dagger in_ OSMOND'S _bosom, who falls with a loud groan and faints. The ghost vanishes._ ANGELA _and_ REGINALD _rush into each other's arms._

"The Castle Spectre" enjoyed great success. It was supported by the whole strength of the Drury Lane company, John Kemble appearing as Earl Percy, and Mrs. Jordan as the heroine, and was repeated some fifty nights during its first season.

It may be worth recording that in the course of the play, the great John Kemble was required to execute, not exactly what is now known as a "sensation header," but still a gymnastic feat of some difficulty and danger. Earl Percy has something of the agility of a harlequin about him, and when he obtains admission into his enemy's castle to rescue Angela, he is required to climb from a sofa up to a gothic window high above him, and then, alarmed by the approach of his negro sentinels, to fall from the height flat again at full length upon his sofa, and to pretend to be asleep as his guards had previously left him. Kemble is said to have done this "as boldly and suddenly as if he had been shot." When people complimented him upon his unsuspected agility, he would answer: "Nay, gentlemen, Mr. Boaden has exceeded all compliment upon this feat of mine, for he counselled me from Macbeth to 'jump the life to come.'" "It was melancholy," comments Mr. Boaden, recording the success of the play, "to see the abuse of such talents;" and then he adds the remarkable opinion: "It is only in a barn that the Cato of a company should be allowed to risk his neck!"

Against "The Castle Spectre" the critics, of course, raised their voices. Its popularity was viewed with much bitterness and jealousy. "The great run the piece had," writes the reverend author of "The History of the Stage," "is a striking proof that success is a very uncertain criterion of merit. The plot is rendered contemptible by the introduction of the ghost." "I hope it will not be hereafter believed," cried Cooke the actor, "that 'The Castle Spectre' could attract crowded houses when the most sublime productions of the immortal Shakespeare could be played to empty benches." A dispute arising in the green-room of the theatre between Lewis and Sheridan, Lewis offered to bet all the money which the play had brought that he was in the right. "No," said Sheridan, "I can't afford to bet so much as that; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll bet you all it's worth." Still, there was no cavilling down the play. The stage ghost was triumphant. He had attained his apogee. "The Castle Spectre" remained a stock piece for years, and has even appeared upon the stage in quite recent times.

Formerly the public had been satisfied with a very prosaic ghost. A substantial figure, with a whitened face, and a streak of red paint on his brow, was thrust through a trap-door, and it was held that all had been done that was necessary in the way of stage illusion. The ghost of Hamlet's father was frequently attired in a suit of real armour borrowed from the Tower. There is a story of a ghost thus heavily accoutred, who, overcome by the weight of his harness, fell down on the stage and rolled towards the foot-lights, the pit raising an alarm lest the poor apparition should indeed be burnt by the fires of the lamps. Barton Booth, the great actor in the time of Queen Anne and George I., is said to have been the first representative of the ghost in "Hamlet" who wore list shoes to deaden the noise of his footsteps as he moved across the stage. In the poem of "The Actor," by Robert Lloyd, the friend of Churchill, published in 1757, we have an explicit description of the treatment of ghosts then in vogue upon the stage, with special reference to the ghost of "our dear friend" Banquo:

But in stage customs what offends me most Is the slip-door, and slowly rising ghost. Tell me--nor count the question too severe-- Why need the dismal powdered forms appear? When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king, And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting, When keenest feelings at his bosom pull, And fancy tells him that the seat is full; Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place, To frighten children with his mealy face? The king alone should form the phantom there, And talk and tremble at the vacant chair.

Farther on the poet discourses of the ghosts in "Venice Preserved," of which mention has already been made:

If Belvidera her loved lost deplore, Why for twin spectres burst the yawning floor? When, with disordered starts and horrid cries, She paints the murdered forms before her eyes, And still pursues them with a frantic stare, 'Tis pregnant madness brings the visions there. More instant horror would enforce the scene If all her shudderings were at shapes unseen.

It may have been due to Lloyd's poem, and to the opinions it expressed and obtained favour for, that when Drury Lane Theatre opened in 1794 with a performance of "Macbeth," the experiment was tried of omitting the appearance of Banquo's ghost, and leaving its presence to be imagined by the spectators. The alteration, however, was not found to be agreeable to the audience. While granting that Mr. Kemble's fine acting was almost enough to make them believe they really did see the ghost, they preferred that there should be no mistake about the matter, and that Banquo's shade should come on bodily--be distinctly visible. Further, they were able to point to Shakespeare's stage direction: "Enter the ghost of Banquo, and sits in Macbeth's place." Surely there could be no mistake, they argued, as to what the dramatist himself intended. In subsequent performances the old system was restored, and in all modern representations of the tragedy the phantom has not failed to be visible to the spectators. Nevertheless Banquo's ghost remains the _crux_ of stage managers. How to get him on? How to get him off? How to make him look anything like a ghost--respectable, if not awful? How to avoid that distressing titter generally audible among those of the spectators who cannot suppress their sense of the ludicrous even in one of Shakespeare's grandest scenes? Upon a darkened stage a ghost, skilfully attired in vaporous draperies, may be made sufficiently impressive, as in "Hamlet," for instance. The shade of the departed king, if tolerably treated, seldom provokes a smile, even from the most hardened and jocose of spectators. But in "Macbeth" the scene must be well lighted, for the nobles, courtiers, and guests are at high banquet; and the ghost must appear towards the front of the stage, otherwise Macbeth will be compelled to turn his back upon the public, and his simulated horror will be absolutely thrown away; if the actor's face cannot be seen, his acting, of necessity, goes for little or nothing. Even in our own days of triumphant stage illusion, it must be owned that the presentment of Banquo's ghost still remains incomplete and unsatisfactory; but where such adroit managers as Mr. Macready, Mr. Charles Kean, and Mr. Phelps (to name no more) have failed, it seems vain to hope for success. Pictorially, Banquo's ghost has fared better, as all who are acquainted with Mr. Maclise's "Macbeth" will readily acknowledge.

A curious fact in connection with the Banquo of Betterton's time may here be noted. Banquo was represented by an actor named Smith; the ghost, however, was personated by another actor--Sandford. Why this division of the part between two performers? Smith was possessed of a handsome face and form, whereas Sandford was of "a low and crooked figure." He was the stage villain of his time, and was famed for his uncomely and malignant aspect; "the Spagnolet of the stage," Cibber calls him; but it is certainly strange that he should therefore have enjoyed a prescriptive right to impersonate ghosts.

The attempted omission of Banquo's ghost, however, made it clear that the old substantial shade emerging from a trap-door in the stage had ceased to satisfy the town. Something more was required. The public were becoming critical about their ghosts. Credit could not be given to the spirits of the theatre if they exceeded a certain consistency. There was a demand for something vaporous and unearthly, gliding, transparent, mysterious. Scenic illusion was acquiring an artistic quality. The old homely simple processes of the theatre were exploded. The audience would only be deceived upon certain terms. Mr. Boaden, adapting Ann Radcliffe's "Romance of the Forest" to the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, records the anxiety he felt about the proper presentment of its supernatural incidents. The contrivance he hit upon has since become one of the commonplaces of theatrical illusion. It was arranged that the spectre should be seen through a bluish-gray gauze, so as to remove the too corporeal effect of a live actor, and convert the moving substance into a gliding essence.

The plan, however, was not carried into effect without considerable difficulty. Mr. Harris, the manager, ordered a night rehearsal of the play, so that the author might judge of the success of the effects introduced. The spectre was to be personated by one Thompson, a portly jovial actor, whose views as to the treatment of the supernatural upon the stage were of a very primitive kind. He appeared upon the scene clad in the conventional solid armour of the theatre, with over all a gray gauze veil, as stiff as buckram, thrown about him. Mr. Boaden describes his horror and astonishment at the misconception. It had been intended that the gauze, stretched on a frame, should cover a portal of the scene, and that the figure of the spectre should be seen dimly through it. But even then the contour of Thompson was found very inappropriate to a phantom. It was necessary to select for the part an actor of a slighter and taller form. At length a representative of the ghost was found in the person of Follet, the clown, "celebrated for his eating of carrots in the pantomimes." Follet readily accepted the part: his height was heroic, he was a skilled posture-maker, he was well versed in the duties of a mime. Still there was a further difficulty. The ghost had to speak--only two words, it is true--he had to utter the words "Perished here!" and, as the clown very frankly admitted: "'Perished here' will be exactly the fate of the author if I'm left to say it." The gallery would recognise the clown's voice, and all seriousness would be over for the evening. It was like the ass in the lion's skin--he would bray, and all would be betrayed. At last it was determined that the part should be divided; Follet should perform the actions of the ghost, while Thompson, in the wings, out of the sight of the audience, should pronounce the important words. The success of the experiment was signal. Follet, in a closely-fitting suit of dark-gray stuff, made in the shape of armour, faintly visible through the sheet of gauze, flitted across the stage like a shadow, amidst the breathless silence of the house, to be followed presently, on the falling of the curtain, by peal after peal of excited applause.

A humorous story of a stage ghost is told in Raymond's "Life of Elliston," aided by an illustration from the etching-needle of George Cruikshank, executed in quite his happiest manner. Dowton the actor, performing a ghost part--to judge from the illustration, it must have been the ghost in "Hamlet," but the teller of the story does not say formally that such was the fact--had, of course, to be lowered in the old-fashioned way through a trap-door in the stage, his face being turned towards the audience. Elliston and De Camp, concealed beneath the stage, had provided themselves with small ratan canes, and as their brother-actor slowly and solemnly descended, they applied their sticks sharply and rapidly to the calves of his legs, unprotected by the plate armour that graced his shins. Poor Dowton with difficulty preserved his gravity of countenance, or refrained from the utterance of a yell of agony while in the presence of the audience. His lower limbs, beneath the surface of the stage, frisked and curvetted about "like a horse in Ducrow's arena." His passage below was maliciously made as deliberate as possible. At length, wholly let down, and completely out of the sight of the audience, he looked round the obscure regions beneath the stage to discover the base perpetrators of the outrage. He was speechless with rage and burning for revenge. Elliston and his companion had of course vanished. Unfortunately, at that moment, Charles Holland, another member of the company, splendidly dressed, appeared in sight. The enraged Dowton, mistaking his man, and believing that Holland's imperturbability of manner was assumed and an evidence of his guilt, seized a mop at that moment at hand immersed in very dirty water, and thrusting it in his face, utterly ruined wig, ruffles, point-lace, and every particular of his elaborate attire. In vain Holland protested his innocence and implored for mercy; his cries only stimulated the avenger's exertions, and again and again the saturated mop did desperate execution over the unhappy victim's finery.

Somewhat appeased at last, Dowton stayed his hand; but in the meantime Holland was summoned to appear upon the stage. The play was proceeding--what was to be done! All was confusion. It was not possible for Holland to present himself before the audience in such a plight as he had been reduced to. An apology was made "for the sudden indisposition of Mr. Holland," and the public were informed that "Mr. De Camp had kindly undertaken to go on for the part." Whether Dowton ever discovered his real persecutors is not stated. The story, indeed, may not be true, or it may be much rouged and burnt-corked, as are so many theatrical anecdotes, to conceal its natural poverty and weakness of constitution. But it is an amusing legend in any case.

The melodrama of "The Corsican Brothers," first produced in England at the Princess's Theatre in 1852, and splendidly revived at the Lyceum by Mr. Irving in 1880, reawakened the public interest in the ghosts of the theatre; and the spectre that rose from the stage as from a cellar, and crossing it, gained his full stature gradually as he proceeded, was for some time a great popular favourite, though burlesque dogged his course, and a certain ridicule always attended his exertions. The fidgety musical accompaniment brought from Paris, and known as "The Ghost Melody," by M. Varney, excited much admiration, while the intricate stage machinery involved in the production of the apparition of Louis dei Franchi gave additional interest to the performance. Of late years the modern drama has made scarcely any addition to our stock of stage ghosts. The ingenious invention known as the Spectral Illusion of Messrs. Dircks and Pepper obtained great favour at one time, and awakened some interest upon the subject of theatrical phantoms. But it soon became clear that the public cared for the Illusion, and not for the Spectre. They were concerned about the mechanism of the contrivance, not awed by the supernatural appearances it brought before them. When once you begin to inquire by what process a ghost is produced, it is clear you are not moved by its character as a spectre merely. Puppets lose their power to please when the spectators are bent upon detecting the wires by which they are made to move.

The old melodramatic stage ghost--the spectre of "The Castle Spectre" school of plays--the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong and a teaspoonful of blue fire was lighted in the wings, probably found its last home in the travelling theatre long known as "Richardson's." Expelled from the regular theatre, it became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, appearing at country fairs, and bringing to bear upon remote agricultural populations those terrors that had long since lost all value in the eyes of the townsfolk. It lived to become a thing of scorn. "Richardson's Ghost" became a byword for a bankrupt phantom--a preposterous apparition, that was, in fact, only too thoroughly seen through: not to apply the words too literally. Whether there is still a show calling itself "Richardson's" (the original Richardson died a quarter of a century ago, and his immediate followers settled in a permanent London theatre long years back), and whether there is yet a phantom perambulating the country and calling itself "Richardson's Ghost," may be left to the very curious to inquire into and determine. The travelling theatre nowadays has lost its occupation. When the audiences began to travel, the stage could afford to be stationary.