GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“I’m used to it,” said Miss Lafitte. “It’s my knowledge of music-hall business that makes me what I am. You wouldn’t catch me on the stage at all, only that my husband’s a bit a swe11 in his own way — he’ll like you for that — and he thinks the theatre more respectable. It dont pay as well, I can tell you; but of course it’s surer and lasts longer.

“Were you nervous at your first appearance?” said Madge.

“Oh, wawn’t I though! Just a little few. I cried at havin’ to go on. I wasn’t cold and plucky like you; but I got over it sooner. I know your sort: you will be nervous all your life. I don’t care twopence for any audience now, nor ever did after my second night.”

“I may have looked cold and plucky,” said Madge, surprised. “but I never felt more miserable in my life before.”

“Yes. Ain’t it awful? Did you hear Lefanu? — stuck up little minx! Her song will be cut out tomorrow. She’s a reg’lar duffer, she is. She gives herself plenty of airs, and tells the people that she was never used to associate with us. I know who she is well enough: her father was an apothecary in Bayswater. She’s only fit to be a governess. You’re worth fifty of her, either on the boards or off.”

Madge did not reply. She was conscious of having contemplated escape from Miss Lafitte by attaching herself to Miss Lefanu, who was a ladylike young woman.

“She looks like a print gown after five washings,” continued Miss Lafitte; “and she don’t know how to speak. Now you speak lovely — almost as well as me, if you’d spit it out a bit more. Who taught you?”

When the pantomime had been played for a fortnight, Madge found herself contemptuously indifferent to Miss Lefanu, and fond of Miss Lafitte. When the latter invited her to a supper at her house, she could not refuse, though she accepted with misgiving. It proved a jovial entertainment — almost an orgie. Some of the women drank much champagne; spoke at the top of their voices; and screamed when they laughed. The men paid court to them with facetious compliments, and retorted their raillery with broad sarcasms. Madge got on best with the younger and less competent actors, who were mostly unpropertied gentlemen, with a feeble amateur bent for singing and acting, who had contrived to get on the stage, not because they were fit for it, but because society had not fitted them for anything else. They talked theatrical shop and green room scandal in addition to the usual topics of young gentlemen at dances; and they shielded Magdalen efficiently from the freer spirits. Sometimes an unusually coarse sally would reach her ears, and bring upon her a sense of disgust and humiliation; but, though she resolved to attend no more suppers, she was able next day to assure her hostess with perfect sincerity that she was none the worse for her evening’s experience and that she had never enjoyed herself as much at any Kensington supper party. Miss Lafitte thereupon embraced her, and told her that she had been the belle of the ball, and that Laddie (a Gentile abbreviation of Lazarus, her husband’s, name) had recognized her as a real lady, and was greatly pleased with her. Then she asked her whether she did not think Laddie a handsome man. Madge replied that she had been struck by his dark hair and eyes that his manners were elegant. “There is one thing” she added, “that puzzles me a little. I always call you Miss Lafitte here, but should I not call you by your real name at your house? I don’t know the etiquette, you see.”

“Call me Sal,” said Mrs Cohen, kissing her.

When the pantomime was over, and the company dispersed, the only member of whose departure she felt a loss was Miss Lafitte; and she never afterwards fell into the mistake of confounding incorrigible rowdyism and a Whitechapel accent with true unfitness for society. By her advice, Madge accepted an engagement as one of the stock company of the Nottingham theater at the salary — liberal for a novice — of two pounds per week. For this she did some hard work. Every night she had to act in a farce, and in a comedy which had become famous in London. In it, as in the pantomime, she had to play the same part nightly for two weeks. Then came three weeks of Shakespeare and the legitimate drama, in which she and the rest of the company had to support an eminent tragedian, a violent and exacting man, who expected them to be perfect in long parts at a day’s notice. When they disappointed him, as was usually the case, he kept them rehearsing from the forenoon to the hour of performance with hardly sufficient interval to allow of their dining. The stage manager, the musicians, the scenepainters and carpenters even, muttered sulkily that it was impossible to please him. He did not require the actors to enter into the spirit of their lines — it was supposed that he was jealous of their attempts at acting, which were certainly not always helpful — but he was inflexible in his determination to have them letter-perfect and punctual in the movements and positions he dictated to them. His displeasure was vented either in sarcasms or oaths; and often Madge, though nerved by intense indignation, could hardly refrain from weeping like many other members of the company, both male and female, from fatigue and mortification. She worked hard at her parts, which were fortunately not long ones, in order to escape the humiliation of being rebuked by him. Yet once or twice he excited her fear and hatred to such a degree that she was on the point of leaving the theatre, and abandoning her profession. It was far worse than what Jack had made her endure; for her submission to him had been voluntary; whilst with the tragedian she could not help herself, being paid to assist him, and ignorant of how to do it properly.

Towards the end of the second week her business became easier by repetition. She appeared as the player queen in Hamlet, the lady-in-waiting in Macbeth, and the widow of King Edward IV, and began to feel for the first time a certain respect for the silently listening, earnest audiences that crowded the house. It was the first dim Stirring in her of a sense that her relation as an actress to the people was above all her other relations. If the tragedian had felt this between the audience and the company of which he was a part, he might have inspired them to work all together with a will to realize the plays to the people. But he was a “star,” recognizing no part and no influence but his own. She and her colleagues were dwarfed and put out of countenance; their scenes were cut short and hurried through; the expert swordsman who, as Richmond and Macduff slew the star thrice a week in mortal combat was the only person who shared with him the compliment of a call before the curtain. Naturally, they all hated Shakespeare; and the audiences distinctly preferring the tragedian to the poet, never protested his palming off on them versions by Cibber or Garrick as genuine Shakespearian plays

On the second Saturday, when Madge was congratulating herself on having only six days more of the national Bard to endure, the principal actress sprained her ankle; and the arrangements for the ensuing week were thrown into confusion. The manager came to Madge’s lodging on Sunday morning, and told her that she must be prepared to play Ophelia, Lady Ann, and Marion Delorme (in Lytton’s “Richelieu”) in the course of the following week. It was, he added, a splendid chance for her. Madge was distracted. She said again and again that it was impossible, and at last ventured to remind the manager that she was not engaged for leading parts. He disposed of this objection by promising her an extra ten shillings for the week, and urged upon her that she would look lovely as Ophelia; that the tragedian had made a point of giving the parts to her because he liked her elocution; that his fierceness was only a little way of his which meant nothing; that he had already consented to substitute “Hamlet” and “Richelieu” for “Much Ado” and “Othello” because he was too considerate to ask her to play Beatrice and Desdemona; and, finally, that he would be enraged if she made any objection. She would, said the manager, shew herself as willing as old Mrs Walker, who had undertaken to play Lady Macbeth without a moment’s hesitation. Madge, ashamed to shrink from an emergency, and yet afraid of failing to please the tyrant at rehearsal, resisted the manager’s importunity until she felt hysterical. Then, in desperation, she consented, stipulating only that she should be released from playing in the farces. She spent that Sunday learning the part of Ophelia, and was able to master it and to persuade herself that the other two parts would not take long to learn, before she went to bed, dazed by study and wretched from dread of the morrow. “Hamlet” had been played twice already, and only the part of Ophelia and that of the player queen needed to be rehearsed anew. On Monday morning the tragedian was thoughtful and dignified, but hard to please. He kept Madge at his scene with Ophelia for more than an hour. She had intended to try and fancy that she was really Ophelia, and he really Hamlet; but when the time came to practice this primitive theory of acting, she did not dare to forget herself for a moment. She had to count her steps and repeat her entrance four times before she succeeded in placing herself at the right moment in the exact spot towards which the tragedian looked when exclaiming “Soft you now! The fair Ophelia.” For a long time she could not offer him the packet of letters in a satisfactory manner; and by the time this difficulty was mastered, she was so bewildered that when he said, “I loved you not,” she, instead of replying, “I was the more deceived,” said “Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so,” whereupon he started; looked at her for a moment, uttered imprecations between his teeth, and abruptly walked off the stage, leaving her alone, wondering. Suddenly, she bethought herself of of what had done; and her cheeks began to tingle. She was relieved by the return of Hamlet, who, unable to find words to express his feelings, repeated his speech without making any verbal comment on her slip. This time she made the proper answer and the rehearsal proceeded. The new player queen suffered less than Madge had done a week before, the tragedian treating her with brief disdain. He was very particular about Ophelia’s chair and fan in the play scene; but when these were arranged, he left the theatre without troubling himself about the act in which he did not himself appear. Madge, left comparatively to her own devices in rehearsing it, soon felt the want of his peremptory guidance, and regretted his absence almost as much as she was relieved by it. The queen, jealous, like the other actresses, of Madge’s promotion, was disparaging in her manner; and the king rehearsed with ostentatious carelessness, being out of humor at having to rehearse at all. Everybody present shewed that they did not consider the scene of the least importance; and Madge sang her snatches of ballads with a disheartening sense of being unpopular and ridiculous.