His Papa whispers to him that he’s not sure, but he’ll look at the bill, a reference to which enables him to inform his son that it is Polonius!
But I need not carry the agonies of this performance further; you will of course understand that the same kind of criticism is carried on through the five acts. I should mention, however, that when, after the end of the scene between the Queen and Hamlet, in the third act, Paterfamilias announces in an authoritative tone to his family, “That he isn’t sure, after all, whether that fellow isn’t Hamlet himself,—”
“My friend!” the old gentleman, jumps up, exclaiming, “I can’t stand this any longer!” and after wishing me a hurried good-night, rushes out of the theatre.
Sometimes I get for a neighbour, a fellow who is the very antipodes of Paterfamilias; that is, knows all the actors and actresses too well, informing the people around him (albeit, perfect strangers to him):—
“Ah, ah, there’s Teddy Wright; what a chap he is, and there’s Sarah Jane!”
“Who, may I ask, is Sarah Jane?” inquires a staid-looking individual.
“Oh, why, Miss Woolgar, to be sure; everyone calls her Sarah Jane.”
And so on, down to the man who brings in a message; even he is known by his Christian name.
Now, I ask, is this sort of neighbour not irritating? But I haven’t nearly done yet. There is, (and this neighbour is a particular aversion of mine) the man or woman who sits next you, and has a method of laughing, the effect of which is a “hiss,” so like it that I have, on several occasions, heard an indignant audience insist upon an individual being “turned out,” who was enjoying the performance quite as much as themselves, but suffered from this unfortunate mode of expressing his or her enjoyment. Closely allied to this is another class of people, who, at every smart saying or bit of repartee in a farce, emit a “cluck, cluck” with their tongue against the roof of the mouth, which, if I had to endure it for longer than an hour or so at a stretch, would inevitably send me into an asylum.
Another case or two, and I think I have adduced sufficient instances to show that I have been in the matter of theatrical amusements a thorough martyr. I go to hear a favourite opera; my fate places me either next a person who has never heard the opera before, but has a book of it, which he studies carefully, and as each air comes on, interrupts my enjoyment of it to ask me to point out, in his book, “where they are now;” or, I am planted in the upper-boxes next a fellow “with a voice” who knows all the airs, and sings them in an undertone, with the performers. Again, I go to see a burlesque, which has made a great sensation, the points and hits at passing events of the day are so telling and so plentiful. My usual luck attends me here, too. I sit next an habitué of the theatres, whom I know slightly; but he has, poor man, a friend from the country with him, who, being unaccustomed to this sort of thing, fails to catch the points and allusions, and at each burst of laughter from the audience, you hear him: “Eh, what; what was that? I didn’t quite catch that; what did he say?” Anon, I go to see a three-act drama of “thrilling interest,” my immediate neighbour has a book; his immediate neighbour (a stranger to him) hasn’t a book, and presumes on that urbanity which marks the British play-goer to ask my neighbour, every five minutes, if he will allow him to look at his book “just for a moment only—a moment, very sorry to trouble him indeed. Let’s see, where is it? Oh, here, yes; thank you. Rather complicated the plot;—don’t you think so, sir?”
I, unfortunately, have an opera glass, so my next but one neighbour, in the intervals, during which he thinks fit to allow the rightful owner of the book to have possession of it, leans across him to me and borrows my glass, just to see “whether that isn’t a friend of his on the other side of the house;” and having satisfied himself that it isn’t, first stares right and left, and then quietly returns it with neither apology nor thanks.
Again, I once went to see Madame Ristori in “Adrienne Lecouvreur.” I did not dream of feeling my usual annoyances on such an occasion as this, the theatre being small, and the sort of performances appealing only to the sympathies of a limited circle, and that circle one of superior breeding and intelligence; but vain hope,—the curtain had not been up two minutes before I found I was oppressed by my usual bugbear. Two ladies sat in the stalls next to me, the one with a “book of the play” in her hand, in Italian and English, from which she read the play to her friend, in the vernacular, as it proceeded.
Now, I have no doubt, these two ladies, on their return home, were enthusiastic in their criticism of Madame Ristori’s delineation of the character she represented, but seeing that their undivided attention was given to the book during the whole performance, it does seem to me that they might have enjoyed the play quite as much by reading it at home; and, I may add, the arrangement would have been considerably more satisfactory to me.
I had nearly forgotten another bête noire of mine at the theatre, from whom I very often suffer. This is an individual who, at a farce, burlesque or pantomime, never allows the faintest smile to pass over his face. I do not know why, but a man of this “genus” exercises a sort of serpent-like fascination over me, so that, though I loathe him, I cannot restrain myself from constantly watching him, and at each sally which sets the house in a roar, I find myself turning round to look at the brute to see if he has been able to withstand that last joke, and there behold him with the same stolid look either of perfect indifference, or pity for the poor idiots who can be amused with such childish nonsense! Now this sort of fellow spoils my evening completely. I get restless and uncomfortable; why doesn’t he go away instead of remaining to look so martyrified?—why does he stop and make me nervous? This last instance, however (for I really must make an end of my grumblings), has fairly exhausted my patience, and probably that of my readers also: but I think I have made out a case, if not for legislative interference, at all events for the sympathies of a British public in favour of a poor playgoer.