I tried to laugh, as if I considered the proposition an excellent joke; but I have every reason to believe the wretch was serious. I began to perceive that every person engaged on the stage, though only to deliver a message, thinks himself the principal performer; he also is of opinion that there is no disparity of rank upon the boards, but that what the clown does, may also be done by the tragedian. I have no doubt Diavolo Antonio looked down on Edmund Kean. I was on the point of renewing the conversation, when an enormous noise at the pit-entrance attracted my notice. A thrill of gratification came into my heart. All regard for Shakspeare is not yet extinct, in spite of fencing Hamlets and ignorant managers. The rush into the pit was prodigious. I looked through the green curtain once more. Her Majesty's ship, the Periander, 44, had been paid off that morning, and the gallant crew and their wives filled every bench. The majority of the valiant defenders of their country were polygamists to the most undeniable amount, and seemed rather proud of the extent to which they broke the law. Those who rejoiced in single blessedness limited themselves to one wife. The trebly blessed were numerous, and the boatswain had six to share his heart and fortunes. Here I perceived the manager's perils, but not from ginger-beer. There were cans of gin and rum, that would have supplied a tavern for a week. Single bottles of whisky were brandished in the air, as on festive occasions landsmen wave their hats; and in a short time the calls for music became overpowering, and the manager sent secretly for a company of marines and a division of the police. "If that hairy-cheeked foreigner doesn't come," said Osric, with unaffected fear, "there will be a row, like the boarding of an enemy's ship. They always think us foreigners when we wear slashed doublets; and in the war time they shipped off my predecessor, who was acting a Parisian marquis, in a cartel that was just starting with a batch of French prisoners to be exchanged. The poor man died in the hulks at Toulon, for he had been counted against an English captain, and they kept him in captivity because the captain refused to return."