equently, and in such
amplified and amended forms, upon the modern stage; but they were
calculated to impress the painter's patrons very considerably; they
were then distinctly innovations due to his curiously inventive
genius, and the result of much labour and heedful ingenuity. If the
theatrical entertainments of the present time manifest little progress
in histrionic art, there has been, at any rate, marked advance in the
matter of scenic illusions and mechanical effects. The thunder of our
modern stage storms may no more proceed from mustard-bowls, or from
"troughs of wood with stops in them," but it is, at any rate,
sufficiently formidable and uproarious, sometimes exciting, indeed,
the anxiety of the audience, lest it should crash through the roof of
the theatre, and visit them bodily in the pit; while for our magnesium
or lime-light flashes of lightning, they are beyond anything that
"spirit of right Nantz brandy" could effect in the way of lambent
flames, have a vividness that equals reality, and, moreover, leave
behind them a pungent and sulphurous odour that may be described as
even supernaturally noxious. The stage storm still bursts upon the
drama from time to time; the theatre is still visited in due course by
its rainy and tempestuous season; and thunder and lightning are, as
much as in Addison's time, among the favourite devices of our
playwrights, "put in practice to fill the minds of an audience with
terror." The terror may not be quite of the old kind, but still it
does well enough.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"DOUBLES."

The "doubling" of parts, or the allotment to an actor of more
characters than one in the same representation, was an early necessity
of theatrical management. The old dramatists delighted in a long
catalogue of _dramatis personae_. There are some fifty "speaking parts"
in Shakespeare's "Henry V.," for instance; and although it was usual
to press even the money-takers into the service of the stage to figure
as supernumerary players, there was still a necessity for the regular
members of the troupe to undertake dual duties. Certain curious stage
directions cited by Mr. Payne Collier from the old extemporal play of
"Tamar Cam," mentioned in Henslowe's "Diary" under the date of
October, 1602, afford evidence of an early system of doubling. In the
concluding scene of the play four-and-twenty persons are required to
represent the nations conquered by the hero--Tartars, Bactrians,
Cattaians