REAL FOOTLIGHT TRAGEDIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 65

REAL FOOTLIGHT TRAGEDIES.

Recently a young actress, while singing on the stage the popular s-ong, "Good-bye, Dolly, I mu&t leave you, ' fell forward to the footlights — dead! Such real tragedies of the footlights are by no means uncommon in stage life. In nearly every recorded instance pathos lends> itself to such scenes as much by reason of the fact that they have "died at their posts with a smile on their lips " as aught else.

Records of stage history sho-v the first instance of death upon the stage to have occurred in 1735. when an actor by the name of William Bond, while playing the part of Lusignan in Voltaire's '"Zaire, ' expired in full view of the audience. His acting of the old Christian was, according to the chronicles of the time, full of moving pathos. In the second act, on discovering hi"- long-lost children, he fainted away. The audience, thinking it to be a lemarkable piece of acting, applauded to tLe echo, and the house rang with cheeis. "Bravo! bia\o!" ies,ounded from pit to stalls

But there was no movement from the actor, and the others on the -stage became tinea-v Rushing to him. one of their iimnbi-i bent over him, while the audience k oked ou in rapt silence. Slowly the actor \\a<& raised from the floor, and in a feeble voice lie exclaimed the next line^ of his part. "My son! My daughter' Lost in embracing you. I would now die lest this should prove a dream. Then thc/e wai a gasp, and the actor, u-~ if in propheticutterance, gasped his last Perhaps, the most pathetic of all the.se leal tragedies of the footlights was the death of Eumuud Kean at the Covent Carden Theatre on March 25, 1833. when he and his 'son Charles were playing together on the London stage for the first and last time. ' The play was "Othello," Mr Kean taking the title role, and Charles bein^ cast for the part of lago. The great tragedian wa.s worn out with illne".. but \\i struggled through his part till he came to the touching farewell speech. As h» uttered the curiously prophetic words, "Othello's occupation s gone," his strength failed him. He sank upon his son's shoulder and whispered : "I am dying — speak to them foi me." and the curtain Cell on one of the jjieatest ireniuses the

stage has ever known, for in three vteks Edmund Kean was dead.

Mrs Glover died in 1850. on the night of her benefit, and Maria Linley died at Bath while singing, "I know that my Re-

deemer liveth."'

On Boxing Night, 1895, Miss Kitty Tyrrell, who was playing King Cat in the pantomime at the Elephant and Castle Theatre, London, died on the stage under her husband's eves.

The Great Vance was yet another popular "lion comique " who breathed his last in full view of the audience at the old South London Music Hall.