



Produced by James Rusk





PEG WOFFINGTON

By Charles Reade


To T. Taylor, Esq., my friend, and coadjutor in the comedy of "Masks and
Faces," to whom the reader owes much of the best matter in this tale:
and to the memory of Margaret Woffington, falsely _summed up_ until
to-day, this "Dramatic Story" is inscribed by CHARLES READE.--

LONDON. Dec. 15, 1852.




CHAPTER I.

ABOUT the middle of the last century, at eight o'clock in the evening,
in a large but poor apartment, a man was slumbering on a rough couch.
His rusty and worn suit of black was of a piece with his uncarpeted
room, the deal table of home manufacture, and its slim unsnuffed candle.

The man was Triplet, scene painter, actor and writer of sanguinary
plays, in which what ought to be, viz., truth, plot, situation and
dialogue, were not; and what ought not to be, were--_scilicet,_ small
talk, big talk, <DW2>s, ruffians, and ghosts.

His three mediocrities fell so short of one talent that he was sometimes
_impransus._

He slumbered, but uneasily; the dramatic author was uppermost, and his
"Demon of the Hayloft" hung upon the thread of popular favor.

On his uneasy slumber entered from the theater Mrs. Triplet.

She was a lady who in one respect fell behind her husband; she lacked
his variety in ill-doing, but she recovered herself by doing her one
thing a shade worse than he did any of his three. She was what is called
in grim sport an actress; she had just cast her mite of discredit on
royalty by playing the Queen, and had trundled home the moment the
breath was out of her royal body. She came in rotatory with fatigue,
and fell, gristle, into a chair; she wrenched from her brow a diadem and
eyed it with contempt, took from her pocket a sausage, and contemplated
it with respect and affection, placed it in a frying-pan on the fire,
and entered her bedroom, meaning to don a loose wrapper, and dethrone
herself into comfort.

But the poor woman was shot walking by Morpheus, and subsided
altogether; for dramatic performances, amusing and exciting to youth
seated in the pit, convey a certain weariness to those bright beings who
sparkle on the stage for bread and cheese.

Royalty, disposed of, still left its trail of events. The sausage began
to "spit." The sound was hardly out of its body, when poor Triplet
writhed like a worm on a hook. "Spitter, spittest," went the sausage.
Triplet groaned, and at last his inarticulate murmurs became words:
"That's right, pit now, that is so reasonable to condemn a poor fellow's
play before you have heard it out." Then, with a change of tone, "Tom,"
muttered he, "they are losing their respect for specters; if they do,
hunger will make a ghost of me." Next he fancied the clown or somebody
had got into his ghost's costume.

"Dear," said the poor dreamer, "the clown makes a very pretty specter,
with his ghastly white face, and his blood-boltered cheeks and nose. I
never saw the fun of a clown before, no! no! no! it is not the clown, it
is worse, much worse; oh, dear, ugh!" and Triplet rolled off the couch
like Richard the Third. He sat a moment on the floor, with a finger
in each eye; and then, finding he was neither daubing, ranting, nor
deluging earth with "acts," he accused himself of indolence, and sat
down to write a small tale of blood and bombast; he took his seat at the
deal table with some alacrity, for he had recently made a discovery.

How to write well, _rien que cela._

"First, think in as homely a way as you can; next, shove your pen under
the thought, and lift it by polysyllables to the true level of fiction,"
(when done, find a publisher--if you can). "This," said Triplet,
"insures common sense to your ideas, which does pretty well for a
basis," said Triplet, apologetically, "and elegance to the dress they
wear." Triplet, then casting his eyes round in search of such actual
circumstances as could be incorporated on this plan with fiction, began
to work thus:


        TRIPLET'S FACTS.                  TRIPLET