ary should be fatally stricken
on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the midst of
the bright and romantic scenes of "Martha." A tragi-comedy if ever there
were one!

Yet this overpowering mingling of the real and the unreal is by no means
an unusual element of stage life. History records many instances of deaths
on the stage; some of them the result of accidental violence, but by far
the greater number caused by the sudden effect of overwrought emotions.

Sometimes death comes instantaneously; sometimes the blow is received from
which recovery is impossible, and the actor lingers on with nothing but
suffering and death before him. Both tragedy and comedy have been the
scenes of actual death on the stage.

Peg Woffington, it will be remembered, was stricken with paralysis while
playing _Rosalind_. She had gone through the entire play with a life and
spirit which gave no sign of the weakening powers plainly evident to her
companions on the stage, and had nearly concluded the epilogue:

"If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
pleased me----"

Her last words on the stage had been spoken. Staggering off the scene, she
fell apparently lifeless, and recovered only to live three long years of
loneliness and retirement away from the work she loved.

But most wonderful of all was Edmund Kean's last night on the stage. He
was playing _Othello_ to his son's _Iago_ at Covent Garden, and, worn out
with physical and mental excess, barely managed to conceal his incapacity
and weakness from the audience.

Reaching the great scenes of the third act, they proved too much for his
waning powers, and uttering the words, "Othello's occupation's gone," he
began the next line, but was unable to complete it, and fell into his
son's arms, with the faint cry:

"God, I am dying! Speak to them, Charles."

He was carried to his home, where he died seven weeks later.

The story of the death of John Palmer, while acting in "The Stranger" at
Liverpool, in 1798, offers an instance almost analogous to the death of
Castelmary. He had gone on with his part into the fourth act, when,
faltering in his lines, he fell prostrate before his companion actor and
died while being carried off the stage. The story that he died while
uttering the lines in an earlier act, "There is another and a better
world," is a fiction which requires denial almost as often as the story of
his death is repeated.

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