Forty Years on the Stage Author:John H Barnes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill The autumn of 1872 found me back in London at Drury Lane in Andrew Halliday's version of Sir Walter Scott's romance, " The Lady of the Lake." The manag... more »er of the theatre was F. B. Chatterton, the gentleman who gave out the oft-quoted statement that " Shakespeare spelt ruin and Byron bankruptcy," which was pretty nearly true as he understood it; but, in the words of a well-known saying, " There were others." Halliday seemed, at that time, to have a " corner " in Scott's works, and produced one nearly every year. I am afraid this one was not a good play, but it had a very successful feature, namely, a gorgeously painted panorama of Loch Katrine, by that scenic master, William Beverley. The cast was a strong one—James Fernandez (Fitzjames), Henry Sinclair (Roderick Dhu) J. Dewhurst (Douglas), William Terriss (Malcolm Graeme), and our leading lady was a beautiful and charming creature, Miss Maria B. Jones, quite a talented actress, who died at an early age, to the sorrow of a large circle of friends and the inexpressible grief of her husband, F. C. Philips, the distinguished dramatist and novelist, author of As in a Looking Glass. On the first night a contretemps occurred which would have broken the nerve and heart of any one less inearnest than I was. I played a small part called Captain Lewis, and I remember I was dressed in an all-yellow costume, looking like a large animated mustard pot. At a certain point I had to advance, with my sword drawn, to protect the heroine from the unwelcome attentions of a body of soldiery, saying: " Stand back, ye knaves ! " I did this correctly as rehearsed, but, unhappily, our stage manager, Mr. Edward Sterling, who was growing old and somewhat oblivious, had not sufficiently instructed them in their advances or " business," and I ...« less