In the same way the players will sometimes prompt each other
through whole scenes, interchange remarks as to necessary adjustments
of dress, or instructions as to "business" to be gone through, without
exciting the attention of the audience. Kean's pathetic whisper, "I am
dying, speak to them for me," when, playing for the last time, he sank
into the arms of his son, was probably not heard across the orchestra.
Mrs. Fanny Kemble, in her "Journal" of her Tour in America, gives an
amusing account of a performance of the last scene of "Romeo and
Juliet," not as it seemed to the spectators, but as it really was,
with the whispered communications of the actors. Romeo, at the words
"Quick, let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms," pounced upon his
playfellow, plucked her up in his arms "like an uncomfortable bundle,"
and staggered down the stage with her. Juliet whispers; "Oh, you've
got me up horridly! That'll never do; let me down! Pray let me down!"
But Romeo proceeds, from the acting version of the play, be it
understood:
There, breathe a vital spirit on thy lips,
And call thee back, my soul, to life and love!
Juliet continues to whisper: "Pray put me down; you'll certainly throw
me down if you don't set me on the ground directly.
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