Poor Madge! Not many weeks afterwards she was playing Rosalind, when she was, at the age of forty-four, struck with the fit that slowly conducted her to the grave. Her last words were, “If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me.” The stroke followed, then a scream, and she who had charmed multitudes was for ever charmless. I will only add here that it is said of O’Brien, of whom I have spoken elsewhere as having married an earl’s daughter, that “in the drawing of his sword he threw all other performers at a wonderful distance by his swiftness, grace, and superior elegance.” But O’Brien was the son of a fencing-master, and his brother actors were as jealous of him as Pepys of his friend Pen, as illustrated by the entry which says (May, 1662), “Walked with my wife to my brother Tom’s; our boy waiting on us with his sword, which this day he begins to wear, _to outdo Sir W. Pen’s boy_.” From which it would appear that gentlemen and footmen once had fashions, if not vices, in common; and that our ancestors, with regard to pride, were as great fools as ourselves; and _that_ is eminently, nay, pre-eminently consoling. The players were not scared from using swords as well as displaying them. When Garrick played Bayes in the ‘Rehearsal,’ in 1741-2, he gave imitations of Hall, Delaney, Ryan (the ex-tailor), Bridgewater, and of Gifford. The first four bore the ridicule better than Roscius would have endured the like of himself; but Gifford was so dreadfully enraged at the liberty taken with him that he sent Davy a challenge, and the two mimes fought until Gifford, whipping his rapier through the fleshy part of Garrick’s arm, laid him up for a fortnight, and cured him of mere mimicry. I have noticed above how Peg Woffington, with her pointed dagger, punched the ribs of the exquisite Bellamy; a similar, but more disagreeable sort of excitement, once seized on Woodward, the old pupil of Merchant Tailors’, who had turned actor. He was playing Petruchio to Kitty Clive’s Catherine, when, borne away by his towering rage, he not only threw the lady down, but ran a fork into her finger; and as he had no love for Kitty, it is said that there was more design than accident in the matter. But this I do not believe. More credit, I fancy, is to be attached to the story which says, that when Pasta played Otello to Sontag’s Desdemona, the former was so excited by the superabundant applause gained by her rival, that in the killing scene Otello twisted a strong hand into Desdemona’s luxuriant hair, and gave it a series of such hearty tugs, that the gentle lady, married to the Moor, screamed with all her might, _au naturel_!