uous. It was
the custom of the audience, especially among those frequenting the
galleries, to regard him as a butt, with whom to amuse themselves
during the pauses between the acts. Something of this habit is yet
extant. Even nowadays the appearance of a servant on the stage for the
necessary purposes of the performance--to carry chairs on or off, to
spread or remove a carpet, &c.--is frequently the signal for cries of
derision from the gallery. Of old the audience proceeded to greater
extremities--even to hurling missiles of various kinds at the
unfortunate candle-snuffer. In Foote's comedy of "The Minor," Shift,
one of the characters, describes the changing scenes of his life. From
a linkboy outside a travelling theatre he was promoted to employment
within. "I did the honours of the barn," he says, "by sweeping the
stage and clipping the candles. Here my skill and address were so
conspicuous that it procured me the same office the ensuing winter, at
Drury Lane, where I acquired intrepidity, the crown of all my
virtues.... For I think, sir, he that dares stand the shot of the
gallery, in lighting, snuffing, and sweeping, the first night of a new
play, may bid defiance to the pillory with all its customary
compliments.... But an unlucky crab-apple applied to my right eye by a
patriot gingerbread baker from the Borough, who would not suffer
three dancers from Switzerland because he hated the French, forced me
to a precipitate retreat."

Mr. Richard Jenkins, in his "Memoirs of the Bristol Stage," published
in 1826, relates how one Winstone, a comic actor, who sometimes
essayed tragical characters, appeared upon a special occasion as
Richard III. He played his part so energetically, and flourished his
sword to such good purpose while demanding "A horse! a horse!" in the
fifth act that "the weapon coming in contact with a rope by which one
of the hoops of tallow candles was suspended, the blazing circle (not
the golden one he had looked for) fell round his neck and lodged
there, greatly to his own discomfiture and to the amusement of the
audience." The amazed Catesby of the evening, instead of helping his
sovereign to a steed, is said to have been sufficiently occupied with
extricating him from his embarrassing situation. Winstone, indeed,
seems to have enjoyed some fame on the score of eccentricity. He took
leave of the stage in 1784, being then about eighty years of age. But
he was at this time so afflicted with deafness