such occasions his memory is much inclined to play him false, and a sudden nervousness will often mar his best efforts.  But, to the gagging player, a sense that his sins and failings are in this way liable to strict note and discovery, is grievously depressing.  Some years ago a strolling company visited Andover, and courageously undertook to represent an admired comedy, with which they could boast but the very faintest acquaintance.  Scarcely an actor, indeed, knew a syllable of his part.  It was agreed that gag must be the order of the night, and that the performance must be “got through” anyhow.  But the manager, eyeing and counting his house through the usual peephole in the curtain, perceived a gentleman in the boxes holding in his hands a printed copy of the play.  The alarm of the company became extreme.  A panic afflicted them, and their powers of gag were paralysed.  They refused to confront the foot-lights.  The audience grew impatient; the fiddlers were weary of repeating their tunes.  Still the curtain did not rise.  At length the manager presented himself with a doleful apologetic face.  “Owing to an unfortunate accident,” he said, “the company had left behind them the prompt-book of the play.  The performance they had announced could not, therefore, be presented; unless,” and here the speech was especially pointed to the gentleman in the boxes, “anyone among the audience, by a happy chance, happened to have brought to the theatre a copy of the comedy.”  The gentleman rose and said his book was much at the service of the manager, and it was accordingly handed to him.  The players forthwith recovered their spirits; exposure of their deficiencies was no longer possible; and the performance passed off to the satisfaction of all concerned.

It has been suggested that gag is leniently, and even favourably considered by audiences; and it should be added that dramatists often connive at the interpolations of the theatre.  For popular actors characters are prepared in outline, as it were, with full room for the embellishments to be added in representation.  “Only tell me the situations; never mind about the ‘cackle,’” an established comedian will observe to his author:  “I’ll ‘fill it out,’” or “I shall be able to ‘jerk it in,’ and make something of the part.”  It is to be feared, indeed, that gag has secured a hold upon the stage, such as neither time nor teaching can loosen.  More than a century ago, in the epilogue as supplied to Murphy’s comedy, Garrick wrote: 

    Ye actors who act what our writers have writ,
    Pray stick to your parts and spare your own wit;
    For when with your own you unbridle your tongue,
    I’ll hold ten to one you are “all in the wrong!”

But this, with other cautioning of like effect, has availed but little.  The really popular actor gains a height above the reach of censure.  He has secured a verdict that is scarcely to be impeached or influenced by exceptional criticism.  Still it may be worth while to urge upon him the importance of moderation, not so much for his own art’s sake—­on that head over-indulgence may have made him obdurate—­but in regard to his playfellows of inferior standing.  He is their exemplar; his sins are their excuses; and the licence of one thus vitiates the general system of representation.