Things near & far Chapter 25: Part 25

talked to him for half an hour or more as to the grave mistake he had committed. “You spoke the lines as if they were beautiful poetry,” said Brydone, “and, indeed, they are. If you had been reciting them your reading would have been quite right; but not in the scene, on the stage. So-and-so--I have forgotten the name of the part--is raging against King John; he isn’t thinking of the poetic beauty of the words he is using.” Now, I do not presume to judge whether Brydone were right or wrong in this criticism; such matters are too high for my small experience as an actor; but consider the enormous value to the beginner of living in such an atmosphere of thought and observation and consideration of the things of the theatre. Herbert may have come eventually to the conclusion that he had been right after all, and that Brydone was wrong; but, anyhow, he had worried the question out and weighed it in his mind, and looked at it and around it; and all that, it seems to me, is the very air in which good craftsmanship is born and nurtured and grows great and flourishes. And so, apart from these after-confabulations and dressing-room counsels, a rehearsal in the Benson Company has always struck me as a liberal education in the player’s art. Benson himself--the “Pa” of the affectionate and reverent remembrance of many hundreds of his grateful sons and scholars--has always been an imaginative poet of a high order; though somehow he has never written any poetry. Instead, he has produced Shakespeare, and perhaps he has chosen the better way. He has illuminated his text admirably, and his way was not to come down to the theatre with the whole scheme of things cut and dried in his head, with every intonation, every bit of business and every position settled immutably beforehand, but rather to approach the play, scene by scene, with a liberal and open spirit. The main conception he doubtless brought with him, but any light he could find in the process of rehearsal he would welcome heartily, no matter whether it came from one of the elder brethren or from the newest member of the company. For example, during the rehearsals of “King John” we had come to the scene wherein the Legate, Pandulph, reconciles the King to Holy Church. I was talking to the Legate at the wings during some brief interval, and ventured very tentatively to describe the symbolical embrace known as the Kiss of Peace as a possibly effective bit of business in the reconciliation scene. The Legate, interested, asked me to show him how it was done, and we went through the business. But Benson, who seemed to be considering other matters down stage, had noticed what we were about, and he called out: “I like that: we’ll do it.” And done it was; and I had been a little over two months in the company and on the stage! And another instance, taken from the same play, of a Bensonian rehearsal of those days. The scene was the discovery of the dead body of Prince Arthur. I had to say: “What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge, Second a villain and a murderer?” Whereon Hubert furiously interposed: “Lord Essex, I am none!” And then I had to draw the cloak away from the corpse and exclaim: “Who killed this Prince?” And thereupon a debate arose. Should the words be spoken before the removal of the cloak? Should the cloak be removed before the uttering of the line? Should word and action be simultaneous? The point was discussed with the utmost earnestness, as a matter of vital importance, and I, feeling that I was in mighty deep waters, suggested in all humility that I should speak the words with an indicative gesture and that Hubert should step forward, appalled, and remove the cloak and discover the body of the Prince. But this started another subsidiary debate, and the rehearsal breaking off at this point, Brydone (Hubert) and Frank Rodney (Faulconbridge) were left on the Stratford stage, walking up and down, and wondering, in muttered undertones, whether it would be within the limits of possibility and stage propriety for Hubert to snatch that cloak away. Their faces were grave, earnest and perplexed. Outside in the sunshine by the Avon I encountered “Pa.” He looked at me with a certain waggishness in his eye, as if he suspected bewilderment on my part, and said: “Well, Mr. Machen, what do you think about it yourself?” “Indeed, sir,” I replied, “I don’t venture to have any opinion.” And I meant what I said, for I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that it befits the entered apprentice to express his opinion, or presume to have any opinion, in the presence of past masters. Now it may be thought that I am “guying” the Company methods in this matter of Prince Arthur’s funeral cloak. I am not doing anything of the sort. I only wish I had gone on in the craft, and were now myself entitled to walk up and down the stage, debating just such a point. The matter in itself was, no doubt, small enough: a stage management in a hurry would have given a ruling and the scene would have proceeded; but under a stage-management in a hurry what would have become of the vivid interest taken in the smallest circumstance of the play by the whole company, from F. R. Benson downward? And, by the way, I trust I am not giving the impression that the Bensonians of that day were a body of solemn pedants? I have not yet forgotten my admiration, my almost awestruck admiration, at seeing the manner in which the man who was to play King John drank home-brewed ale in a triangular parlour of the Windmill on the afternoon before the production. He drank in the manner of the ancient heroes, and he gave a very good performance at night. But the Stratford Festival drew to its dose. On the last Saturday we were rehearsing in the morning, playing in the afternoon and playing again in the evening. Some time in the course of the day I was told that I was to play Nym in the “Merry Wives” on Monday night at Worcester. I bought the play and looked at the part and got the cuts from the Prompt Book--and I wonder why I didn’t drown myself in the Avon after the show as the easiest way out of the difficulty; and if anyone wants to know why, let him read the part of Nym in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and ask himself how he would like to learn that queer gibberish and learn how to play it in a couple of days, he having had three months’ experience of the stage. But instead of drowning myself in the Avon, I ... refreshed myself at a famous tavern of the town together with about half the company; and I think we heard the chimes at two o’clock in the morning, and it was reported that old George Weir, on being asked “to write something” in the hostess’s book had written the words: “When my cue comes call me and I will answeir.” And that reminds me: At the Bensonian dinner in the year in which this great actor, George Weir, died, F. R. Benson began his speech. His manner commanded the cessation of applause, and he raised one hand, and held it high, and said: “This year, one amongst us has answered the summons of the call-boy of the stars.” * * * * * But to return to my small business. On the Sunday we travelled to Worcester, and I spent the rest of the day in a desperate struggle with Nym and “the humour of bread and cheese,” and “that’s the humour of it,” in endeavouring to get into my memory phrases which are not merely old but old-fashioned, for Nym, like Touchstone, discourses for the most part Elizabethan catchwords which, three hundred years before, were “certain of a laugh,” which the process of time and fashion has made meaningless, and phrases such as these are very difficult to learn. But I learned them somehow or other on the Sunday, and the next morning came to the one and only rehearsal. It was not on the stage, more important things were happening there, but in the travellers’ samples room of one of the Worcester inns. Of course there was no scenery, no costumes, no “props” of any kind. A few chairs indicated the set, quite sufficiently, I may say to a man of experience, but dubiously enough to a man of next to no experience. Thus, when it came to my last exit, the Assistant Stage-Manager gave his instructions somewhat as follows: “After you have said the last words to Page, turn round and go up the flight of steps L.C., here, between these chairs. When you have got to the top, turn again and say to Page, over his shoulder: ‘My name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.’ Then exit Left along the terrace.” Simplicity itself, to an actor, but somewhat horrifying to a beginner. And then two or three of the principals were not there--they were rehearsing other scenes, very likely, on the stage, and the Prompter’s: “Mr. Rodney will come on on that cue from the right upper entrance, where that table is, and you go up to him and meet him Centre and say so and so, and then he speaks the line so and so and you cross to the Right”--with much more to the same effect. And my breath was queer and catchy, even though it was only the rehearsal, and I wondered what my voice and I would be like at night! Well, I was paralysed with stage-fright. But I got through, somehow; and I hope the Old Woman of the Company, Miss Denvil, as admirable an actress as George Weir was an actor, meant what she said after I had made my Exit Left along the terrace. She smacked me heartily on the back, and said: “There! I always say the nervous ones are the best!” So the tour went on, and in the course of it I received an odd bit of promotion. I descended from the flower-pot stand in the Trial Scene of the “Merchant” and became the Clerk of the Court. I think he speaks one line and reads a letter, and that is all. It is hardly to be called a part; if the man who had to do it failed at the last moment the Business Manager or, more likely, his assistant, would be summoned and