Читать книгу The Pedestrian's Guide through North Wales. A tour performed in 1837 онлайн

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He arose confused; he pondered upon his dream, rubbed his bruised forehead, and began conclusions from the visions of the night. These proving satisfactory, he descended to the breakfast parlour, inwardly exclaiming,

“May good digestion wait on appetite.”

The rehearsal in the morning gave additional confidence, the manager having pronounced it a very promising specimen of his ability.

Night came—and he was at his post three hours before his presence would be required upon the stage. His hair, of which he had a great profusion, was twisted into innumerable curls by a one-eyed frizzeur who received a payment of twelve pence per night from the manager for decorating the heads of his talented performers; his limbs were cased in the warlike habiliments of the 15th century, which (with the trifling inconvenience, occasioned by their being made for a person of nearly double his dimensions some twenty years before, and the few dilapidations they had received from the numberless falls, thwacks, rents, etc. during their long and faithful servitude) gave him the appearance of a warrior of some personal endowments. The helmet was peculiarly formed, resembling that worn in the 14th century; for this appendage to the son of Mars had been neglected until the very last moment, when it was supposed to be impossible to procure one; but Triptolemus, ever fertile in resources, seized upon a shining tin saucepan, in which the Duke of Buckingham had brought some barley water to the theatre for the purpose of clearing his voice, emptied its contents, and having divested it of its handle, made of it an admirable completion to his costume. At the end of the first act, he walked, with all the self possession of a veteran stager, into an apartment called the green-room, but which exhibited a clear face of white-wash, emblematic of those who frequented its chaste precincts. It was furnished with chairs, stools, and a huge family sofa, evidently the work of the “olden time.” This seemed a seat suited to Triptolemus, puffed out as he was with the pride of his appearance; but unfortunately the light comedian, when playing the part of Doricourt, fell so heavily upon it, in the mad scene, that he made a fatal breach in the bottom, which as yet had not undergone a repair. King Henry the sixth (a short, stout, pompous man, who never moved but one arm in acting, and that with the exact motion of a pump handle) was seated on one side of the fire place, in an altitude of deep thought. Triptolemus remembered his dream, and was astonished at the close resemblance between the red cabbage head of the shadow and the rubicund visage of the portly personage in the chimney corner. His surprise was the greater for that he had not met this gentleman at the rehearsal, he having sent an apology for his absence, being hotly engaged (as he termed it) in making his benefit, i.e. paying his respects to the different taverns in the town, where his merry associates congregated to drink porter, smoke tobacco, and distribute as many tickets as an insinuating address and consummate assurance would enable them to dispose of amongst their boon companions.