or finery, tinsel for splendour.
Garrick frankly owned that he had once appeared upon the stage so
inebriated as to be scarcely able to articulate, but "his friends
endeavoured to stifle or cover this trespass with loud applause," and
the majority of the audience did not perceive that anything
extraordinary was the matter. What happened to Garrick on that
occasion has happened to others of his profession. And our ears do not
catch much of what is uttered on the stage. Young, the actor, used to
relate that on one occasion, when playing the hero of "The Gamester"
to the Mrs. Beverley of Sarah Siddons, he was so overcome by the
passion of her acting as to be quite unable to proceed with his part.
There was a long pause, during which the prompter several times
repeated the words which Beverley should speak. Then "Mrs. Siddons
coming up to her fellow-actor, put the tips of her fingers upon his
shoulders, and said, in a low voice, 'Mr. Young, recollect yourself.'"
Yet probably from the front of the house nothing was seen or heard of
this. In the same way the players will sometimes prompt each other
through whole scenes, interchange remarks as to necessary adjustments
of dress, or instructions as to "business" to be gone through, without
exciting the attention of the audience. Kean's pathetic whisper, "I am
dying, speak to them for me," when, playing for the last time, he sank
into the arms of his son, was probably not heard across the orchestra.

Mrs. Fanny Kemble, in her "Journal" of her Tour in America, gives an
amusing account of a performance of the last scene of "Romeo and
Juliet," not as it seemed to the spectators, but as it really was,
with the whispered communications of the actors. Romeo, at the words
"Quick, let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms," pounced upon his
playfellow, plucked her up in his arms "like an uncomfortable bundle,"
and staggered down the stage with her. Juliet whispers; "Oh, you've
got me up horridly! That'll never do; let me down! Pray let me down!"
But Romeo proceeds, from the acting version of the play, be it
understood:

There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips,
And call thee back, my soul, to life and love!

Juliet continues to whisper: "Pray put me down; you'll certainly throw
me down if you don't set me on the ground directly." "In the midst of
'cruel, cursed fate,' his dagger fell out of his dress. I, embracing
him tenderly, crammed it back again, because I knew I should want