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Stage-Land
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Jerome K. Jerome in his element, from the word go!
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"TO THAT HIGHLY RESPECTABLE BUT UNNECESSARILY RETIRING INDIVIDUAL, OF WHOM WE HEAR SO MUCH BUT SEE SO LITTLE, “THE EARNEST STUDENT OF THE DRAMA,” THIS (COMPARATIVELY) TRUTHFUL LITTLE BOOK IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED."
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THE HERO.
"His name is George, generally speaking. “Call me George!” he says to the heroine. She calls him George (in a very low voice, because she is so young and timid). Then he is happy.
"The stage hero never has any work to do. He is always hanging about and getting into trouble. His chief aim in life is to be accused of crimes he has never committed, and if he can muddle things up with a corpse in some complicated way so as to get himself reasonably mistaken for the murderer, he feels his day has not been wasted.
"He has a wonderful gift of speech and a flow of language calculated to strike terror to the bravest heart. It is a grand thing to hear him bullyragging the villain.
"The stage hero is always entitled to “estates,” chiefly remarkable for their high state of cultivation and for the eccentric ground plan of the “manor house” upon them. The house is never more than one story high, but it makes up in green stuff over the porch what it lacks in size and convenience.
"The chief drawback in connection with it, to our eyes, is that all the inhabitants of the neighboring village appear to live in the front garden, but the hero evidently thinks it rather nice of them, as it enables him to make speeches to them from the front doorstep — his favorite recreation."
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THE VILLAIN.
"He wears a clean collar and smokes a cigarette; that is how we know he is a villain. In real life it is often difficult to tell a villain from an honest man, and this gives rise to mistakes; but on the stage, as we have said villains wear clean collars and smoke cigarettes, and thus all fear of blunder is avoided."
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THE HEROINE.
"She is always in trouble — and don’t she let you know it, too! Her life is undeniably a hard one. Nothing goes right with her. We all have our troubles, but the stage heroine never has anything else. If she only got one afternoon a week off from trouble or had her Sundays free it would be something. But no; misfortune stalks beside her from week’s beginning to week’s end."
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THE COMIC MAN.
"He follows the hero all over the world. This is rough on the hero.
"What makes him so gone on the hero is that when they were boys together the hero used to knock him down and kick him. The comic man remembers this with a glow of pride when he is grown up, and it makes him love the hero and determine to devote his life to him."
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THE LAWYER.
"He is very old, and very long, and very thin. He has white hair. He dresses in the costume of the last generation but seven. He has bushy eyebrows and is clean shaven. His chin itches considerably, so that he has to be always scratching it. His favorite remark is “Ah!”
"In real life we have heard of young solicitors, of foppish solicitors, of short solicitors; but on the stage they are always very thin and very old. The youngest stage solicitor we ever remember to have seen looked about sixty — the oldest about a hundred and forty-five.
"By the bye, it is never very safe to judge people’s ages on the stage by their personal appearance. We have known old ladies who looked seventy, if they were a day, turn out to be the mothers of boys of fourteen, while the middle-aged husband of the young wife generally gives one the idea of ninety."
"On the other hand, ladies with the complexion of eighteen are, you learn as the story progresses, quite elderly women, the mothers of middle-aged heroes."
"The good stage lawyer is never by any chance a married man. (Few good men are, so we gather from our married lady friends.) He loved in early life the heroine’s mother. That “sainted woman” (tear and nose business) died and is now among the angels — the gentleman who did marry her, by the bye, is not quite so sure about this latter point, but the lawyer is fixed on the idea.
"In stage literature of a frivolous nature the lawyer is a very different individual. In comedy he is young, he possesses chambers, and he is married (there is no doubt about this latter fact); and his wife and his mother-in-law spend most of the day in his office and make the dull old place quite lively for him."
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THE ADVENTURESS.
"She sits on a table and smokes a cigarette. A cigarette on the stage is always the badge of infamy."
"The adventuress is generally of foreign extraction. They do not make bad women in England — the article is entirely of continental manufacture and has to be imported. She speaks English with a charming little French accent, and she makes up for this by speaking French with a good sound English one."
"She is by no means a bad woman. There is much good in her. This is more than proved by the fact that she learns to love the hero before she dies; for no one but a really good woman capable of extraordinary patience and gentleness could ever, we are convinced, grow to feel any other sentiment for that irritating ass, than a desire to throw bricks at him."
"No stage adventuress can be good while the heroine is about. The sight of the heroine rouses every bad feeling in her breast.
"We can sympathize with her in this respect. The heroine often affects ourselves in precisely the same way."
"She is not always being shocked or insulted by people telling her that they love her; she does not seem to mind it if they do. She is not always fainting, and crying, and sobbing, and wailing, and moaning, like the good people in the play are."
"We sometimes think it would be a fortunate thing — for him — if they allowed her to marry and settle down quietly with the hero. She might make a man of him in time."
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THE SERVANT-GIRL.
"Sometimes the servant-girl is good and faithful, and then she is Irish. All good servant-girls on the stage are Irish."
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THE CHILD.
"The stage child is much superior to the live infant in every way. The stage child does not go rampaging about a house and screeching and yelling till nobody knows whether they are on their heads or their heels. A stage child does not get up at five o’clock in the morning to practice playing on a penny whistle. A stage child never wants a bicycle and drives you mad about it.
"A stage child does not ask twenty complicated questions a minute about things that you don’t understand, and then wind up by asking why you don’t seem to know anything, and why wouldn’t anybody teach you anything when you were a little boy."
"We ourselves had a friend once who suffered from this misfortune. He was a married man, and Providence had been very gracious, very good to him: he had been blessed with eleven children, and they were all growing up well and strong.
"The “baby” was eleven weeks old, and then came the twins, who were getting on for fifteen months and were cutting their double teeth nicely. The youngest girl was three; there were five boys aged seven, eight, nine, ten, and twelve respectively — good enough lads, but — well, there, boys will be boys, you know; we were just the same ourselves when we were young. The two eldest were both very pleasant girls, as their mother said; the only pity was that they would quarrel so with each other.
"We never knew a healthier set of boys and girls. They were so full of energy and dash."
"His wife said she could not see what he had to complain of. She was sure better-hearted children no man could have.
"Our friend said he didn’t care a straw about their hearts. It was their legs and arms and lungs that were driving him crazy."
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THE COMIC LOVERS.
"They are always very rude to each other, the comic lovers. Everybody is more or less rude and insulting to every body else on the stage; they call it repartee there! We tried the effect of a little stage “repartee” once upon some people in real life, and we wished we hadn’t afterward. It was too subtle for them. They summoned us before a magistrate for “using language calculated to cause a breach of the peace.” We were fined 2 pounds and costs!"
"It is very curious, by the bye, how deserted all public places become whenever a stage character is about. It would seem as though ordinary citizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villains to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strand entirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer’s afternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage.
"As for Trafalgar Square, the hero always chooses that spot when he wants to get away from the busy crowd and commune in solitude with his own bitter thoughts; and the good old lawyer leaves his office and goes there to discuss any very delicate business over which he particularly does not wish to be disturbed.
"And they all make speeches there to an extent sufficient to have turned the hair of the late lamented Sir Charles Warren White with horror. But it is all right, because there is nobody near to hear them. As far as the eye can reach, not a living thing is to be seen. Northumberland Avenue, the Strand, and St. Martin’s Lane are simply a wilderness. The only sign of life about is a ‘bus at the top of Whitehall, and it appears to be blocked.
"How it has managed to get blocked we cannot say. It has the whole road to itself, and is, in fact, itself the only traffic for miles round. Yet there it sticks for hours. The police make no attempt to move it on and the passengers seem quite contented."
"The comic lovers do not have the facilities for love-making that the hero and heroine do. The hero and heroine have big rooms to make love in, with a fire and plenty of easy-chairs, so that they can sit about in picturesque attitudes and do it comfortably. Or if they want to do it out of doors they have a ruined abbey, with a big stone seat in the center, and moonlight.
"The comic lovers, on the other hand, have to do it standing up all the time, in busy streets, or in cheerless-looking and curiously narrow rooms in which there is no furniture whatever and no fire."
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THE PEASANTS.
"They are so clean. We have seen peasantry off the stage, and it has presented an untidy — occasionally a disreputable and unwashed — appearance; but the stage peasant seems to spend all his wages on soap and hair-oil.
"They are always round the corner — or rather round the two corners — and they come on in a couple of streams and meet in the center; and when they are in their proper position they smile.
"There is nothing like the stage peasants’ smile in this world — nothing so perfectly inane, so calmly imbecile.
"They are so happy. They don’t look it, but we know they are because they say so. If you don’t believe them, they dance three steps to the right and three steps to the left back again. They can’t help it. It is because they are so happy.
"When they are more than usually rollicking they stand in a semicircle, with their hands on each other’s shoulders, and sway from side to side, trying to make themselves sick. But this is only when they are simply bursting with joy.
"Stage peasants never have any work to do.
"Sometimes we see them going to work, sometimes coming home from work, but nobody has ever seen them actually at work. They could not afford to work — it would spoil their clothes."
"What particularly rouses them is the heroine’s love affairs. They could listen to them all day."
"When the stage peasantry do talk, however, they soon make up for lost time. They start off all together with a suddenness that nearly knocks you over.
"They all talk. Nobody listens. Watch any two of them. They are both talking as hard as they can go. They have been listening quite enough to other people: you can’t expect them to listen to each other. But the conversation under such conditions must be very trying.
"And then they flirt so sweetly! so idyllicly!
"It has been our privilege to see real peasantry flirt, and it has always struck us as a singularly solid and substantial affair — makes one think, somehow, of a steam-roller flirting with a cow — but on the stage it is so sylph-like. She has short skirts, and her stockings are so much tidier and better fitting than these things are in real peasant life, and she is arch and coy. She turns away from him and laughs — such a silvery laugh. And he is ruddy and curly haired and has on such a beautiful waistcoat! how can she help but love him? And he is so tender and devoted and holds her by the waist; and she slips round and comes up the other side. Oh, it is so bewitching!
"The stage peasantry like to do their love-making as much in public as possible. Some people fancy a place all to themselves for this sort of thing — where nobody else is about. We ourselves do. But the stage peasant is more sociably inclined. Give him the village green, just outside the public-house, or the square on market-day to do his spooning in."
"There are no married people in stage villages and no children (consequently, of course-happy village! oh, to discover it and spend a month there!). There are just the same number of men as there are women in all stage villages, and they are all about the same age and each young man loves some young woman. But they never marry.
"They talk a lot about it, but they never do it. The artful beggars! They see too much what it’s like among the principals."
"He has a keen sense of humor and is easily amused. There is something almost pathetic about the way he goes into convulsions of laughter over such very small jokes. How a man like that would enjoy a real joke! One day he will perhaps hear a real joke. Who knows? It will, however, probably kill him."
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THE GOOD OLD MAN.
"The people on the stage think very highly of the good old man, but they don’t encourage him much after the first act. He generally dies in the first act.
"If he does not seem likely to die they murder him."
"His particular firm is always on the verge of bankruptcy. We have only to be told that he has put all his savings into a company — no matter how sound and promising an affair it may always have been and may still seem — to know that that company is a “goner.”
"No power on earth can save it after once the good old man has become a shareholder."
"No one, we are sure, could be more ready and willing to make amends (when found out); and to put matters right he will cheerfully sacrifice his daughter’s happiness and marry her to the villain.
"The villain, by the way, has never a penny to bless himself with, and cannot even pay his own debts, let alone helping anybody else out of a scrape. But the good old man does not think of this."
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THE IRISHMAN.
"He says “Shure” and “Bedad” and in moments of exultation “Beghorra.” That is all the Irish he knows.
"He is very poor, but scrupulously honest. His great ambition is to pay his rent, and he is devoted to his landlord.
"He is always cheerful and always good. We never knew a bad Irishman on the stage. Sometimes a stage Irishman seems to be a bad man — such as the “agent” or the “informer” — but in these cases it invariably turns out in the end that this man was all along a Scotchman, and thus what had been a mystery becomes clear and explicable."
"The stage Irishman has also an original taste in hats. He always wears a hat without a crown; whether to keep his head cool or with any political significance we cannot say."
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THE DETECTIVE.
"He is the only man in the play who does not swallow all the villain tells him and believe it, and come up with his mouth open for more. He is the only man who can see through the disguise of an overcoat and a new hat.
"There is something very wonderful about the disguising power of cloaks and hats upon the stage. This comes from the habit people on the stage have of recognizing their friends, not by their faces and voices, but by their cloaks and hats.
"A married man on the stage knows his wife, because he knows she wears a blue ulster and a red bonnet. The moment she leaves off that blue ulster and red bonnet he is lost and does not know where she is.
"She puts on a yellow cloak and a green hat, and coming in at another door says she is a lady from the country, and does he want a housekeeper?
"Having lost his beloved wife, and feeling that there is no one now to keep the children quiet, he engages her. She puzzles him a good deal, this new housekeeper. There is something about her that strangely reminds him of his darling Nell — maybe her boots and dress, which she has not had time to change."
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THE SAILOR.
"Sailors in real life do not have nearly so much trouble with their trousers as sailors on the stage do. Why is this? We have seen a good deal of sailors in real life, but on only one occasion, that we can remember, did we ever see a real sailor pull his trousers up."
"The thing that the stage sailor most craves in this life is that somebody should shiver his timbers.
"“Shiver my timbers!” is the request he makes to every one he meets. But nobody ever does it."
"The stage sailor is good to his mother and dances the hornpipe beautifully. We have never found a real sailor who could dance a hornpipe, though we have made extensive inquiries throughout the profession. We were introduced to a ship’s steward who offered to do us a cellar-flap for a pot of four-half, but that was not what we wanted."
"By the way, speaking of the sea, few things are more remarkable in their behavior than a stage sea. It must be difficult to navigate in a stage sea, the currents are so confusing."
"A wreck at (stage) sea is a truly awful sight. The thunder and lightning never leave off for an instant; the crew run round and round the mast and scream; the heroine, carrying the stage child in her arms and with her back hair down, rushes about and gets in everybody’s way. The comic man alone is calm!"
"The way small boats are managed at (stage) sea is even more wonderful than the way in which ships are sailed.
"To begin with, everybody sits sideways along the middle of the boat, all facing the starboard. They do not attempt to row. One man does all the work with one scull. This scull he puts down through the water till it touches the bed of the ocean, and then he shoves.
"“Deep-sea punting” would be the technical term for the method, we presume."
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October 06, 2020 - October 08, 2020.
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