Chapter 25

"ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS."

It is clear that playgoers of the Shakespearean period dearly loved to see a battle represented upon the stage. The great poet thoroughly understood his public, and how to gratify it. In some fifteen of his plays he has introduced the encounter or the marshalling of hostile forces. "Alarums and excursions" is with him a very frequent stage direction; and as much may be said of "they fight," or "_exeunt_ fighting." Combats and the clash of arms he obviously did not count as "inexplicable dumb show and noise." He was conscious, however, that the battles of the stage demanded a very large measure of faith on the part of the spectators. Of necessity they were required to "make believe" a good deal. In the prologue to "Henry V." especial apology is advanced for the presumption of the dramatist in dealing with so comprehensive a subject; and indulgence is claimed for the unavoidable feebleness of the representation as compared with the force of the reality:

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance: Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times; Turning th' accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass.

These conditions, however, were accepted by the audiences of the time in the most liberal spirit. Critics were prone to deride the popular liking for "cutler's work" and "the horrid noise of target fight;" "the fools in the yard" were censured for their "gaping and gazing" at such exhibitions. But the battles of the stage were still fought on; "alarums and excursions" continued to engage the scene. Indeed, variety and stir have always been elements in the British drama as opposed to the uniformity and repose which were characteristics of the ancient classical theatre.

Yet our early audiences must have been extremely willing to help out the illusions of the performance, and abet the tax thus levied upon their credulity. Shakespeare's battles could hardly have been very forcibly presented. In his time no "host of auxiliaries" assisted the company. "Two armies flye in," Sir Philip Sidney writes in his "Apologie for Poetrie," 1595, "represented with four swords and bucklers, and what harde heart will not receive it for a pitched fielde?" So limited an array would not be deemed very impressive in these days; but it was held sufficient by the lieges of Elizabeth. Just as the Irish peasant is even now content to describe a mere squad of soldiers as "the army," so Shakespeare's audiences were willing to regard a few "blue-coated stage-keepers" as a formidable body of troops. And certainly the poet sometimes exercised to the utmost the imaginations of his patrons. He required them to believe that his small stage was immeasurably spacious; that his handful of "supers" was in truth a vast multitude. During one scene in "King John" he does not hesitate to bring together upon the boards the three distinct armies of Philip of France, the Archduke of Austria, and the King of England; while, in addition, the citizens of Angiers are supposed to appear upon the walls of their town and discuss the terms of its capitulation. So in "King Richard III.," Bosworth Field is represented, and the armies of Richard and Richmond are made to encamp within a few feet of each other. The ghosts of Richard's victims rise from the stage and address speeches alternately to him and to his opponent. Playgoers who can look back a score of years may remember a textual revival of the tragedy, in which this scene was exhibited in exact accordance with the original stage directions. Colley Cibber's famous acting version was for once discarded, and Richard and Richmond on the eve of their great battle quietly retired to rest in the presence of each other, and of their audience. However to be commended on the score of its fidelity to the author's intentions, the scene had assuredly its ludicrous side. The rival tents wore the aspect of opposition shower-baths. It was exceedingly difficult to humour the idea that the figures occupying the stage could neither see nor hear one another. Why, if they but outstretched their arms they could have touched each other; and they were supposed to be mutually eager for combat to the death! It became manifest, indeed, that the spectators had lost greatly their ancestors' old power of "making believe." They could no longer hold their reason in suspense for the sake of enhancing the effect of a theatrical performance, though prepared to be indulgent in that respect. What is called "realism" had invaded the stage since Shakespeare's time, and could not now be repelled or denied. Hints and suggestions did not suffice; the positive and the actual had become indispensable.

There can be no doubt, however, that Shakespeare's battles had oftentimes the important aid of real gunpowder. The armies might be small; but the noise that accompanied their movements was surely very great. The stage direction "alarums and chambers go off" occurs more than once in "King Henry V." The Chorus to the play expressly states:

Behold the ordnance on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur; ... and the nimble gunner With linstook now the devilish cannon touches, And down goes all before them.

Gunpowder was even employed in plays wherein battles were not introduced. Thus at the close of "Hamlet," Fortinbras says: "Go bid the soldiers shoot," and the stage direction runs: "A dead march. _Exeunt_ bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot _off_." And just as, in 1846, the Garrick Theatre, in Goodman's Fields, was destroyed by fire, owing to some wadding lodging in the flies after a performance of the Battle of Waterloo, so in 1613, the Globe Theatre, in Southwark, was burnt to the ground from the firing of "chambers" during a representation of "King Henry VIII." Howes, in his additions to "Stowe's Chronicle," thus describes the event: "Also upon St. Peter's Day, 1613, the playhouse or theatre called the Globe, upon the Bankside, near London, by negligent discharging of a peal of ordnance, close to the south side thereof, the theatre took fire, and the wind suddenly dispersed the flame round about, and in a very short space the whole building was quite consumed and no man hurt; the house being filled with people to behold the play, namely, of 'Henry VIII.;' and the next spring it was new builded in a far fairer manner than before."

The paucity of Shakespeare's stage armies has sometimes found its reflex in the limited means of country theatres of more modern date. The ambition of strolling managers is apt to be far in advance of their appliances; they are rarely stayed by the difficulties of representation, or troubled with doubts as to the adequacy of their troupe, in the words of a famous commander, to "go anywhere and do anything." We have heard of a provincial Rolla who at the last moment discovered that the army, wherewith he proposed to repulse the forces of Pizarro, consisted of one supernumerary only. The Peruvian chieftain proved himself equal to the situation, however, and adapted his speech to the case. Addressing his one soldier, he declaimed in his most dignified manner: "My brave associate, partner of my toil, my feelings, and my fame, can Rolla's words add vigour to the virtuous energies which inspire your heart?" and so on. Thus altered, the speech was found to be sufficiently effective.

In his "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," Dryden complains of the "tumults to which we are subject in England by representing duels, battles, and the like, which renders our stage too like the theatres where they fight prizes. For what is more ridiculous than to represent an army with a drum and four men behind it, all which the hero of the other side is to drive before him? or to see a duel fought and one slain with two or three thrusts of the foils, which we know are so blunted that we might give a man an hour to kill another in good earnest with them?"

Two things were especially prized by the audiences of the past: a speech and a combat. "For God's sake, George, give me a speech and let me go home!" cried from the pit the wearied country squire of Queen Anne's time to his boon companion Powell, the actor, doomed to appear in a part deficient in opportunities for oratory. "But, Mr. Bayes, might we not have a little fighting?" inquires Johnson, in the burlesque of "The Rehearsal," "for I love those plays where they cut and slash one another on the stage for a whole hour together."

The single combats that occur in Shakespeare's plays are very numerous. There is little need to remind the reader, for instance, of the hand-to-hand encounters of Macbeth and Macduff, Posthumus and Iachimo, Hotspur and the Prince of Wales, Richard and Richmond. Romeo has his fierce brawl with Tybalt, Hamlet his famous fencing scene, and there is serious crossing of swords both in "Lear" and "Othello." English audiences, from an inherent pugnacity, or a natural inclination for physical feats, were wont to esteem highly the combats of the stage. The players were skilled in the use of their weapons, and would give excellent effect to their mimic conflicts. And this continued long after the wearing of swords had ceased to be a necessity or a fashion. The youthful actor acquired the art of fencing as an indispensable step in his theatrical education. A sword was one of the earliest "properties" of which he became possessor. He always looked forward to impressing his audience deeply by his skill in combat. Charles Mathews, the elder, has recorded in his too brief chapters of autobiography, "his passion for fencing which nothing could overcome." As an amateur actor he paid the manager of the Richmond Theatre seven guineas and a half for permission to undertake "the inferior insipid part of Richmond," who does not appear until the fifth act of the play. The Richard of the night was a brother-amateur, equally enthusiastic, one Litchfield by name. "I cared for nothing," wrote Mathews, "except the last scene of Richmond, but in that I was determined, to have my full swing of carte and tierce. I had no notion of paying my seven guineas and a half without indulging my passion. In vain did the tyrant try to die after a decent time; in vain did he give indications of exhaustion; I would not allow him to give in. I drove him by main force from any position convenient for his last dying speech. The audience laughed; I heeded them not. They shouted; I was deaf. Had they hooted I should have lunged on in my unconsciousness of their interruption. I was resolved to show them all my accomplishments. Litchfield frequently whispered 'Enough!' but I thought with Macbeth, 'Damned be he who first cries, Hold, enough!' I kept him at it, and I believe we fought almost literally a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. To add to the merriment, a matter-of-fact fellow in the gallery, who in his innocence took everything for reality, and who was completely wrapt up and lost by the very cunning of the scene, at last shouted out: 'Why don't he shoot him?'"

The famous Mrs. Jordan was, it seems, unknown to Mathews, present among the audience on this occasion, having been attracted from her residence at Bushey by the announcement of an amateur Richard. "Years afterwards," records Mathews, "when we met in Drury Lane green-room, I was relating, amongst other theatrical anecdotes, the bumpkin's call from the gallery in commiseration of the trouble I had in killing Richard, when she shook me from my feet almost by starting up, clasping her hands, and in her fervent, soul-stirring, warm-hearted tones, exclaiming: 'Was that you? I was there!' and she screamed with laughter at the recollection of my acting in Richmond, and the length of our combat."

"Where shall I hit you, Mr. Kean?" inquired a provincial Laertes of the great tragedian. "Where you _can_, sir," was the grim reply. For Kean had acquired fencing under Angelo, and was proud of his proficiency in the art. He delighted in prolonging his combats to the utmost, and invested them with extraordinary force and intensity. On some occasions he so identified himself with the character he represented as to decline to yield upon almost any terms. Hazlitt censures certain excesses of this kind which disfigured his performance of Richard. "He now actually fights with his doubled fists, after his sword is taken from him, like some helpless infant." "The fight," writes another critic, "was maintained under various vicissitudes, by one of which he was thrown to the earth; on his knee he defended himself, recovered his footing, and pressed his antagonist with renewed fury; his sword was struck from his grasp--he was mortally wounded; disdaining to fall"--and so on. No wonder that many Richmonds and Macduffs, after combating with Mr. Kean, were left so exhausted and scant of breath as to be scarcely able to deliver audibly the closing speeches of their parts. The American stage has a highly-coloured story of an English melodramatic actor with the pseudonym of Bill Shipton, who, "enacting a British officer in 'The Early Life of Washington,' got so stupidly intoxicated that when Miss Cuff, who played the youthful hero, had to fight and kill him in a duel, Bill Shipton wouldn't die; he even said loudly on the stage that he wouldn't. Mary Cuff fought on until she was ready to faint, and after she had repeated his cue for dying, which was, 'Cowardly, hired assassin!' for the fourteenth time, he absolutely jumped off the stage, not even pretending to be on the point of death. Our indignant citizens then chased him all over the house, and he only escaped by jumping into the coffin which they bring on in Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard." The story has its humour, but is not to be implicitly credited.

Broad-sword combats were at one time very popular interludes at minor theatres. They were often quite distinct performances, prized for their own sake, and quite irrespective of their dramatic relevancy. It cannot be said that they suggested much resemblance to actual warfare. Still they demanded of the performers skill of a peculiar kind, great physical endurance and ceaseless activity. The combat-sword was an unlikely-looking weapon, very short in the blade, with a protuberant hilt of curved bars to protect the knuckles of the combatant. The orchestra supplied a strongly-accentuated tune, and the swords clashed together in strict time with the music. The fight raged hither and thither about the stage, each blow and parry, thrust and guard, being a matter of strict pre-arrangement. The music was hurried or slackened accordingly as the combat became more or less furious. "One, two, three, and under; one, two, three, and over;" "robber's cuts;" "sixes"--the encounter had an abundance of technical terms. And each performer was allowed a fair share of the feats accomplished: the combatants took turns in executing the strangest exploits. Alternately they were beaten down on one knee, even lower still, till they crawled serpent-wise about the boards; they leaped into the air to avoid chopping blows at their lower members; they suddenly span round on their heels, recovering themselves in time to guard a serious blow, aimed with too much deliberation at some vital portion of their frames; occasionally they contrived an unexpected parry by swiftly passing the sword from the right hand to the left. Now and then they fought a kind of double combat, wielding a sword in either hand. Altogether, indeed, it was an extraordinary entertainment, which evoked thunders of applause from the audience. The eccentric agility of the combatants, the peculiarities of their method of engagement, the stirring staccato music of the band, the clashing of the swords and the shower of sparks thus occasioned, were found quite irresistible by numberless playgoers. Mr. Crummles, it will be remembered, had a very high opinion of this form of entertainment.

Of late, however, the broadsword combat has declined as a theatrical attraction if it has not altogether expired. The art involved in its presentment is less studied, or its professors are less capable than was once the case. And perhaps burlesque has exposed too glaringly its ridiculous or seamy side. It was not one of those things that could long endure the assaults of travesty. The spell was potent enough in its way, but it dissolved when once interruptive laughter became generally audible. A creature of theatrical tradition, curiously sophisticated and enveloped in absurdities, its long survival is perhaps more surprising than the fact of its decease. Some attempt at ridiculing it seems to have been made so far back as the seventeenth century, in the Duke of Buckingham's "Rehearsal." Two characters enter, each bearing a lute and a drawn sword, and alternately fight and sing; "so that," as Bayes explains, "you have at once your ear entertained with music and good language, and your eye satisfied with the garb and accoutrements of war." In the same play, also, the actors were wont to introduce hobby-horses, and fight a mimic battle of very extravagant nature.

Ridicule of a stage army was one of the established points of humour in the old burlesque of "Bombastes Furioso," and many a pantomime has won applause by the comical character of the troops brought upon the scene. It should be said, however, that of late years the more famous battles of the theatre have been reproduced with remarkable liberality and painstaking. In lieu of "four swords and bucklers," a very numerous army of supernumeraries has marched to and fro upon the boards. In the ornate revivals of Shakespeare, undertaken from time to time by various managers, especial attention has been directed to the effective presentment of the battle scenes. The "auxiliaries" have frequently consisted of soldiers selected from the household troops. They are reputed to be the best of "supers," imposing of aspect, stalwart and straight-limbed, obedient to command, and skilled in marching and military formations. Londoners, perhaps, are little aware of the services their favourite regiments are prompt to lend to theatrical representations. Notably our grand operas owe much to the Coldstreams and Grenadiers. After a performance of "Le Prophète" or "L'Etoile du Nord," let us say, hosts of these warriors may be seen hurrying from Covent Garden back to their barracks. Plays that have depended for their success solely upon the battles they have introduced have not been frequent of late years, and perhaps their popularity may fairly be counted as a thing of the past. We have left behind us the times when versatile Mr. Gomersal was found submitting to the public by turns his impersonation of Napoleon at Waterloo and Sir Arthur Wellesley at Seringapatam; when Shaw, the Lifeguardsman, after performing prodigies of valour, died heroically to slow music; when Lady Sale, armed with pistol and sabre, fought against heavy Afghan odds, and came off supremely victorious. Perhaps the public have ceased to care for history thus theatrically illustrated, or prefers to gather its information on the subject from despatches and special correspondence. The last theatrical venture of this class referred to our army's exploits in Abyssinia. But the play did not greatly please. Modern battles have, indeed, outgrown the stage, and the faculty of making "imaginary puissance" has become lost. In the theatre, as elsewhere, the demand is now for the literal, the accurate, and the strictly matter of fact.