We have heard of comic singers and travelling entertainment givers who
have greatly resented the air of indifference of their musical
accompanist. They have required of him that he should feel amused, or
affect to feel amused, by their efforts. He has had to supplement his
skill as a musician by his readiness as an actor. It has been thought
desirable that the audience should be enabled to exclaim: "The great
So-and-So _must_ be funny! Why, see, the man at the piano, who plays
for him every night, who has, of course, seen his performances scores
and scores of times, even _he_ can't help laughing, the great
So-and-So is so funny." The audience, thus convinced, find themselves,
no doubt, very highly amused. Garrick himself appears, on one occasion
at any rate, to have been much enraged at the indifference of a
member of his band. Cervetto, the violoncello player, once ventured to
yawn noisily and portentously while the great actor was delivering an
address to the audience. The house gave way to laughter. The
indignation of the actor could only be appeased by Cervetto's absurd
excuse, that he invariably yawned when he felt "the greatest rapture,"
and to this emotion the address to the house, so admirably delivered
by his manager, had justified him in yielding. Garrick accepted the
explanation, perhaps rather on account of its humour than of its
completeness.

Music and the drama have been inseparably connected from the most
remote date. Even in the cart of Thespis some corner must have been
found for the musician. The custom of chanting in churches has been
traced to the practice of the ancient and pagan stage. Music pervaded
the whole of the classical drama, was the adjunct of the poetry: the
play being a kind of recitation, the declamation composed and written
in notes, and the gesticulations even being accompanied. The old
miracle plays were assisted by performers on the horn, the pipe, the
tabret, and the flute--a full orchestra in fact. Mr. Payne Collier, in
his "Annals of the Stage," points out that at the end of the prologue
to "Childermas Day," 1512, the minstrels are required to "do their
diligence," the same expression being employed at the close of the
performance, when they are besought either themselves to dance, or to
play a dance for the entertainment of the company:

Also ye menstrelles doth your diligence
Afore our depertying geve us a daunce.

The Elizabethan stage relied greatly upon the aid