Yet many of these factious people, who did not dislike the King because they loved liberty, were delighted to mark the unrestrained enjoyment of the royal family at the theatre. If George III. roared at the oft-repeated tricks of the clown, little Queen Charlotte shook with silent laughter at the intelligible action of the great comic performers. Once, when Foote, caricaturing an over-dressed lady, with a head-tire a yard in height, and nearly that in breadth, accidentally let fall the whole scaffolding of finery, and stood bare-polled upon the stage, the Queen's laughter was then audible through the house. Perhaps it was all the higher as she herself wore a modest and becoming adornment for the head. Indeed, she was proud only of her beautiful arms, and these the plain-featured lady contrived to display to the lieges assembled, with a dexterity worthy of the most finished coquette. There was great homeliness, so to speak, in this intercourse between royal and lay folk, in those days, and much familiarity. The young Princes were often behind the scenes. On one of these occasions, the "sailor-prince," the Duke of Clarence, saw Bannister approach, dressed for Ben, in "Love for Love." The actor wore a coloured kerchief round his neck. "That will never do for a man-of-war's man," said the Prince; who, forthwith, ordered a black kerchief to be sent for, which, putting round the pseudo-sailor's neck, he tied the ends into the nautical slip-knot, and pronounced the thing complete. The royal patronage and presence did not always give rise to hilarity. Tragedy sometimes attended it. I can remember nothing more painful in its way than a scene, at the Haymarket, on the third of February 1794. The King and Queen had commanded three pieces, by Prince Hoare--"My Grandmother," "No Song, No Supper," and the "Prize." Fifteen lives were lost that night in the precipitate plunge down the old pit-stairs, as the little green doors were opened to the loyal and eager crowd. Whether those who rushed over the fallen bodies were conscious of the extent of the catastrophe, cannot be determined; but the royal family were kept in ignorance of it, from their arrival till the moment they were about to depart. While they had been laughing to the utmost, many a tear had been flowing for the dead, many a groan uttered by the wounded who had struggled so frightfully to share in the joyousness of that evening, and the King's own two heralds, York and Somerset, were lying crushed to death among the slain.