" The play was much condensed for presentment on the stage; but
it would not appear that Belvidera's dying speech, quoted above, was
interfered with. Boaden, in his memoir of the actress, expressly
commends Mrs. Siddons's delivery of the passage, "I'll dig, dig the
den up!" and the action which accompanied the words.
For the time ghosts had been only incidental to a performance;
by-and-by they were to become the main features and attractions of
stage representation. Still they had not escaped ridicule and
caricature. Fielding, in his burlesque tragedy of "Tom Thumb,"
introduced the audience to a scene between King Arthur and the ghost
of Gaffer Thumb. The king threatens to kill the ghost, and prepares to
execute his threat, when the apparition kindly explains to him, "I am
a ghost and am already dead." "Ye stars!" exclaims King Arthur, "'tis
well."
In his humorous notes to the published play, Fielding states, with
mock gravity: "Of all the particulars in which the modern stage falls
short of the ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the
great scarcity of ghosts.
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