520 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION H, 



having been invented specially, which on explosion leaves no trace. 

 Great caution, however, has to be observed in the use of firearms, 

 and in the French Theatres the ramrod is always fixed by a chain 

 to the wall, as in the huriy it is often forgotten in the gun. 

 Thunder on the stage is represented by a truck laden with shot 

 wheeled along and which tilts over" — it was less than a year ago 

 that a stage employe at the Tyne Theatre, Newcastle, was killed 

 by one of these shots falling upon him. The Oxy-hydrogen light 

 again, has often proved dangerous owing to the irregular mixture 

 of the gases, — I myself have collected particulars of five such 

 cases within less than as many years. It will be recognised that 

 many of these accidents in connection with stage-apparatus, of 

 which the above will serve as typical examples, are in a great 

 measure preventible, and therefore ought to be as far as possible 

 guarded against. There are certain sources of accident however 

 which only special legal enactment would seem able to cope with, 

 the pi'ohibition indeed of any public exhibition or performance 

 whereby the life or limbs of the players are endangered. There 

 is exactly the same skill in walking on a tight-rope three feet from 

 the ground, as there is when the rope is fixed at thirty, with the 

 addition that in case of a fall, it would be but trivial in the former 

 case, possibly fatal in the latter. Morbid craving for such sensa- 

 tional displays ought certainly to be checked ; if the management 

 insist on having the rope fixed at a dangerous height, the law ought 

 certainly to insist upon there being a network provided beneath. 

 So far as scenic illusion is concerned, there is on the stage itself 

 great room for improvement in connection with footlights, the 

 scenic apparatus, and the scene-shifting. Footlights might advan- 

 tageously be abolished, and a reversion made to the old system of 

 illuminating from above and from the sides— the natural order of 

 things in everyday life ; if, however, they be insisted on, they 

 ought certainly to be sunk below the stage level, and thus rendered 

 invisible to the audience. The old system of flats, side scenes, 

 and borders, has of late vears been tentatively replaced by elabo- 

 rately built-up scenery, an unhappy innovation, in that the rules 

 of perspective and distance cannot be properly carried out. 

 Change of scene ought certainly to be effected noiselessly, speedily, 

 and in obscurity. The unnecessary glare of light in which the 

 stage is bathed has ah'eady been alluded to. Among other con- 

 ditions interfering with the illusion, and of which the refoi'm li<s 

 in the hands of the management, may be mentioned the following, 

 viz. : — The custom of jaitching flowers on the stage, or handing 

 them over the footlights, and the interruption to the action on the 

 stage by artists advancing to the front to receive these demonstra- 

 tions of the audience. Nothing is more irksome than the delays 

 which thus often occur in the most interesting part of a play, and 

 all such practices, as in Austria, should always be most rigourously 

 prevented and suppressed. 



