sudden necessity for altering the night's programme. This entails upon all actors the duty of looking at the bills regularly every morning as soon as they are published. It will not save an actor from being fined if he protest that he looked at the announcements in the newspapers. The manager will sternly reply

Sir, it is your duty to look at the bills of the theatre.'

Rehearsing is very tedious, wearisome, and vexatious work. Let us peep into the Theatre Royal where they are now preparing a great sensation drama. The piece has been read by the author, and the actors and actresses are assembled on the stage to compare parts. This is the first step of the process. The actors simply read over their parts one with another to see that they have been correctly copied. This is a very necessary preliminary, as the copying of parts is a task of some difficulty, and is rarely performed with complete accuracy. Each part contains only the words spoken by the actor to whom it belongs, and the 'cues' of his interlocutors. The parts are copied in the following manner:

your intended.'

No, sir, yours.'

I am drowned.' 'You're no such thing, sir; and I prefer presenting you to Penelope Ann.'

The few words at the end of the lines are what are called the 'cues;' and occasionally, when an actor has not heard the piece read, these cue words and his replies to them are his only guide to what it is all about.*

The rehearsal of even a short farce like 'Box and Cox' will occupy at least a week; but a drama in three or four acts will require the attendance of all concerned' every day for three weeks or a month. The rehearsal of an important piece generally commences about eleven o'clock in the morning, and not unfrequently lasts until within an hour of the time for opening the doors to the public. During the whole of this time the actors are required to be in attendance at the wing, ready to go upon the stage whenever they are called. The same scenes are rehearsed over and over again until the persons engaged are so thoroughly wearied out that they cease to have any sense or conception of what they are doing. The first rehearsal is generally rather a pleasant affair. On this hopeful occasion, when the new piece is fresh and unhackneyed, the actors and actresses, the manager, the stage manager, and the author, usually make a point of presenting themselves in their best clothes. You may be sure that the leading lady will make her appearance arrayed

The system of reading a piece in the green-room, and then giving out the parts with only cues to guide the actor to the sense of the context, is certainly a bad one. Actors do not listen to the piece as a whole when it is read to them; they are intent only on following the parts which they imagine are intended for themselves. The consequence is that they rarely know what the piece is about, even after they have played in it for a hundred nights.

in all the choicest glory of her wardrobe; she will do her hair in the most attractive style, sport all her jewellery, and wear the most delicate pair of light-coloured kid gloves that she can procure for love or money. The leading man will possibly endue himself in a bran new suit for the occasion; the low comedian will assert his high respectability as a social being by wearing a black frock coat of sober cut; and the author, in a similar fashion, will endeavour to impress the company in general, and the manager in particular, with the idea that he is in good credit with his tailor, and keeps an account at a banker's. After a day or two, however, these efforts to create an impression will gradually relax, and by the end of the week the leading lady will be content to present herself in a linsey-woolsey, while the leading gentleman, the low comedian, and the author will quietly relapse into an indifferent state of second best. After a week of rehearsal, when everybody is getting weary and ill-tempered, and when everybody has had angry words with everybody else, it is useless to keep up this deception any longer. Why should Mr. Author waste another white waistcoat and an embroidered shirt-front upon a leading lady who has had the ungrateful audacity to tell him that her part is weak, and wants writing up? And why should Miss Leading Lady go to the trouble of having her hair dressed, and to the expense of another pair of primrose kid gloves for the sake of a man who declines to write up her part and won't let her introduce her favourite song in that appropriate situation in the second act?

Rehearsing is a painful process. There is nobody to applaud, and, as very few actors show what they are going to do on the night,' there is really nothing to call for applause. The stage manager is a most inexorable person. His word is law, and must be obeyed as implicitly as the mandate of a slavedriver or a taskmaster at the hulks. At his word of command the great man of the theatre, the envied idol

of the public, must clear the stage or appear to his call as submissively as the meanest official in the house.

One of the greatest crimes against the Draconian code of the theatre is to be late for rehearsal and keep the stage waiting. Very amusing are the excuses sometimes made when this law is transgressed.

Really, Mr. Driver,' Mr. Thespis Brown will say, with a countenance full of the deepest concern, ‘I—I could not possibly help it; my cab broke down, and I had a very narrow escape with my life. It's a mercy I'm here at all.'

'Oh, Mr. Driver! I am so sorry,' says the leading lady; but mamma was taken with a fainting fit just as I was leaving home, and I was obliged to stop until the doctor came. Poor thing! she is really very seriously ill.'

Stop! stop! don't say a word,' exclaims the comic man, anticipating Mr. Driver's wrath and the imposition of a fine. My house was broken into this morning by burglars, and the fellows made a clean sweep of my silver tea-service, my watch and chain, and all my wife's jewels. It's a mercy they didn't murder us in our beds, for they actually took the watch and chain from under my pillow as I lay peacefully reposing in the arms of Morpheus.'

Who could resist this? Not even Mr. Driver; for he can appreciate the loss of silver spoons. And then think of the narrow escape of Mr. Mopus! What if he had been-? Horrible to think of! There would have been no one to take the part. It would have been necessary to postpone the piece-perhaps to abandon it altogether. How could any one have the heart to fine a man who has been robbed of his silver teapot and has narrowly escaped having his throat cut?

'All over again' is not unfrequently the order which salutes the ear of the wearied actor after he has been rehearsing for three or four hours. He has scarcely a leg to stand upon (for Mr. Driver does not permit the luxury of seats), and he is faint and sick with hunger. That 'all over again' is like the quarter

deck order for four dozen more lashes. Mr. Thespis is once more tied up to the halyards, and Mr. Driver cuts away at him with his cat-o'-' nine-tails for three or four hours

more.

And, after all, stage rehearsals constitute but the mechanical portion of the preparation for the public performance of the piece. On the stage the actor learns and practises the business of the various scenes, marks his exits and his entrances, arranges where he is to cross, turn up, take the stage, &c. But he has yet to study his part. He has to conceive the character and shape the manner of its embodiment. This important part of the work he must do at home, in his own study, in the street as he walks along, or in some secluded spot in the Park, where there is nobody to overhear his ravings and witness his strange gesticulations. This part of an actor's work is often performed under serious difficulties. It occasionally happens that the person who lives in the next house, or lodges in the floor below, entertains a strong, if not a conscientious, objection to the daily practice of the words and business of a hero of tragedy addicted to vociferous exclamations and broad-sword combats. Others have a similar distaste for domestic practice in nigger melodies and break-down dances. When these objections are urged with force and determination, the actor finds it convenient to betake himself to the wilds of Regent's Park or the solitudes of Hampstead Heath. Turf, however, is not a good thing to take,' in the stage sense, and low comedy goes for nothing in a high wind. Trees and stones are insensible to the beauties I of the nigger melody, and the daisies respond but dully to the peculiar humours of the break-down dance. Rehearsing out of doors, too, has this disadvantage-that when you are caught at it, the lieges put you down as a lunatic, and wonder why your friends have let you out without a keeper. The feelings of any sensitive person who is caught offering his kingdom for a horse on Hampstead Heath at

noontide are by no means to be envied.

But in preparation for the performance of a piece, there are other matters besides rehearsal and study which employ the time and occupy the anxious attention of the actor. He has to look after his dress and properties. It is, of course, of the highest importance that an actor should look the character he represents; and one important essential to this end is a characteristic makeup. In order to secure this the actor finds it necessary to spend a good deal of time in the wardrobe of the theatre. Now the wardrobe of a theatre is not generally a very pleasant place; nor is the wardrobekeeper generally a very agrecable person to deal with. The room bears a close resemblance to those first-floor salons at our uncle's which we are accustomed to catch a glimpse of, occasionally, when the windows are open in warm weather. There is a general second-hand aspect about the place, and a pervading smell of stale humanity, which are anything but pleasant. The costumes are wrapped up in bundles and stowed away in racks all round the room, and the dingy, greasy linings of doublets, trunks, and shirts, which you see peeping out, are by no means suggestive of magnificence or splendour. To get what you want out of this extensive and varied stock is no easy matter. The wardrobe-keeper insists, as a rule, that any article he may chance to lay his hand upon is exactly what you require. Inform him that you want the habiliments necessary for the due embodiment of Jem Baggs, and he will complacently offer you a slouched hat and a slashed doublet. Announce yourself as Alexander the Great, and he will endeavour to convince you that a square-cut blue coat with brass buttons is the very thing. The ideas of the propertyman are bound fast in the rusty shackles of tradition: Stalker always wore that black velvet shape, why shouldn't you? Mugginton had that pair of check trousers made expressly for the part; you couldn't possibly do better than don the trousers, and follow in the footsteps