Some attempt at
ridiculing it seems to have been made so far back as the seventeenth
century, in the Duke of Buckingham's "Rehearsal." Two characters
enter, each bearing a lute and a drawn sword, and alternately fight
and sing; "so that," as Bayes explains, "you have at once your ear
entertained with music and good language, and your eye satisfied with
the garb and accoutrements of war." In the same play, also, the actors
were wont to introduce hobby-horses, and fight a mimic battle of very
extravagant nature.
Ridicule of a stage army was one of the established points of humour
in the old burlesque of "Bombastes Furioso," and many a pantomime has
won applause by the comical character of the troops brought upon the
scene. It should be said, however, that of late years the more famous
battles of the theatre have been reproduced with remarkable liberality
and painstaking. In lieu of "four swords and bucklers," a very
numerous army of supernumeraries has marched to and fro upon the
boards. In the ornate revivals of Shakespeare, undertaken from time to
time by various managers, especial attention has been directed to the
effective presentment of the battle scenes.
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