The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1890-05-30
A Terrible Audience.

A Terrible Audience.
Having had long rest from act
ing, I returned to Melbourne to play
short engagement with my former
partner at the Haymarket, and then
sailed for Van Dieman's Land, now
called Tasmania. This lovely island
had formerly been a convict station,
where life sentenced prisoners from
England had been sent. There was
at the time I speak of, and is now, a
most refined society in Tasmania,
though among the lower classes
there was strong flavor of the con-
Wet element / acted "The Ticket
of-Leave Man, for the first time in
Hobart Town, and there was much
excitement in the city when the play
was announced. At least one hum
dred ticket-of-leave men were in the
pit on the first night of its produc-
ton. Before the curtain rose, look
ed through it at this terrible audi
ence; the faces in the pit were study.
Men with low foreheads and small,
peering, ferret-looking eyes, some
with fat noses, and square, cruel
jaws, and sinister expressions,-leer-
ing, low, and cunning all wearing a
sullen, logged look, as though they
would tear the benches from the pit
and gut the theater of it's scenery
if one of their kind was held up to
public scorn upon the stage. This
shows the power of the drama. An
author might write an article abus-
ing them, or an artist paint a picture
showing up the hideous deformity of
their features-all this they could
bear and even laugh at; but put one
of their ilk upon the stage in human
form, surrounded by the sympathetic
story of play, and they would no
more submit to an ill-usage OF him
than they would to personal at
tack upon themselves.
The first act of the play progressed
with but little excitement. These
men seemed to enjoy the humorous
and pathetic side of the story with
great relish; but when l came upon
the stage in the second act, revealing
the emaciated features of a returned
convict, with sunken eyes and q
closely shaved head, there was a
painful stiffness in the house. The
whole pit seemed to lean forward and
strain their eager eyes upon the scene;
and as Bob Briefly revealed to his
sweetheart the "secrets of the prison
house." there were little murmurs of
recognition and shakings ofthe head,
as though they fully recognized the
local illusions that they so we'll re-
membered; deep-dawn signs for
the suffcrings that Bob had
gone through, and little smooth
cred laughs at some of the old,
well-remembered Inconvenience Of
prison life; but then, Bob was hero,
and their sympathies were caught by
the nobleness of his character and
his innocence of crime, as though
each one of these villains recognized
, how prosecuted he and Bob had been.
AS the play progressed, their en-
thusiasm increased. Whenever Bob
was bounded by a detective, or i'll
treated by the old Jew, they would
howl their Indignation at the actors;
and when he came out unscathed at
the end of the play a monument of
perfect innocence, they cheered to the
very echo. This performance rem
dered me extremely popular with
some of the old Gags of Hobart
Town; and l was often accosted on
the street by these worthless and told
secutions. In fact they quite looked
on me as an old pal" These courte-
sizes were very flattering, but the
inconvenience that l was caused by
being poked in the ribs and winked
at now and then, as much as to say,
Albright, old boy, we know,-you've
been there" rendered my favoritism
among these fellows rather irksome
Joseph Jefferson, in The Century.
~