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

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Richmond. “Upon my soul, I could’nt help it!”

Richard. “But oh—! the vast renown thou hast acquired—”

This was too much for the audience to bear—“their visible muscles unmasterly grew,” and the champions were mutually discomposed.

Richmond. “What the devil are they laughing at?”

Richard. “At you to be sure, ‘in conquering Richard.’”

Here another burst of merriment broke from the spectators, and Triptolemus, turning his head, to check, with a high tragedy look, their ill timed mirth, beheld, to his horror and dismay, the inveterate gardener standing upon the front bench of the pit, waving his arms like the sails of a windmill, and who no sooner caught a full view of his countenance than he roared out, “I’m blest if it bea’nt he that I turned up wi’ my pitch fork out of the muck heap!”

“All’s over!” exclaimed Richard, and gave up the ghost, with his back turned to the audience, which created a fresh peal of laughter, groans and hisses. Richmond, shocked at the un-Cesarian position of the monarch, strove to obtain silence, while he spoke the tag, by turning him over with his face to the footlights—which he did with his foot, placing Richard’s nose within half an inch of the burning oil, who grinned his disapprobation of such usage, till the audience shrieked with mirth.