STAGE FRIGHTS.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1737, 13 September 1879, Page 3

STAGE FRIGHTS.

Without going back to the days of Garrick or Macready, and a boat of tragedians who always kept in bed nearly the whole of the day to calm their nerves before acting a new part, I can just call to mind one or two cases confined even bat to one theatre, the Old Adelphi. On the first night of a new piece there the Keeleys were always very ill from fright. Leigh Murray suffered as much from it as a cockney does in the “ chops of the Channel.” (Celeste used to dash on in sheer desperation from it, saying to herself, “ Well, dey cannot kill me for it." Alfred Wigan, one of the letter-perfect actors, was a martyr to fright, so much that he occasionally totally forgot the words ; as for his accomplished wife, he was obliged to divert her attention during the day, lest the dread of a first night should overpower her, and at night she, on one occasion, had to throw herself on the ground to subdue the beating of her heart from fright. “Feel my hand,” said Charles Kean to me, when he was playing Cardinal Wolsey for the I don't know how many hundreth time in the provinces. It trembled as if he had 'the ague. Mra Stirling would never venture on the stage without the manuscript of her part in her pocket, as a charm to keep the words in her head; Mr Irving’s nervousness is simply indescribable ; even Mr Toole will not be seen by his moat intimate friends on a first night ; while Mrs Kendal complains that her “ stage fright” increases every year, and with Mr John Parry, everyone knows that it amounted to a positive disease. The malady is too univeral for stage managers not to provide against it by novices. The worst thing for any actor to do is to hang around the wings till his “ call” comes to try and gain courage. “ Keep in the green-room, sir,” says the prompter to the novice. When the “call” comes, the novice is somewhat hustled on to the stage, and, like a dog thrown for the first time into the water, he sometimes struggles out of his difficulty,—“ The Theatre.”